RALEIGH – Last weekend, I broke out my somewhat-dusty copy of the Book of Mormon.
No, I wasn’t having a spiritual crisis or undergoing a religious conversion. If there was anything deeply meaningful in my action, it was less about theology than it was about the philosophical musings of psychologist Carl Jung, who coined the term synchronicity to describe unexpected and downright spooky coincidences that supposedly pervade human experience.
My moment of synchronicity involved the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, which is the proper name of the main denomination of Mormons. First, when assembling a stack of books to take with me to the beach, I tossed onto the pile a couple of novels by Greensboro-based Orson Scott Card, an acquaintance and fellow contributor to the Rhinoceros Times. Card is a fascinating writer of science fiction — Ender’s Game and its many sequels are probably his best-known work in the genre – as well fantasy and historical fiction.
The books I snagged — Seventh Son and Red Prophet — form the beginning of his Alvin Maker fantasy series, which retells the story of 19th century America as if folk magic were real. Actually, it is a full-fledged work of alternative history in which the Puritans continued to rule England after 17th century civil war, the Stuart monarchy relocated to the southern American colonies (ruling from Charleston), the Iroquois formed their own state in the United States, and other fascinating speculations.
The Alvin Maker books work as fiction on their own terms, as I can now report, but they are also apparently at least an unconscious retelling of the historical founding of Mormonism by Joseph Smith, whose real-life older brother was named Alvin (in one of very many parallels). After scanning some Internet sites on the subject, I discovered that reading certain passages of the Book of Mormon might further illustrate some of the common language and concepts, which is one reason why I flipped through my religion shelf to find the volume (can’t remember how I ended up with it, but I’ve read selections in the past for curiosity).
I would have cracked the book anyway, as it turns out, because the old synchronicity kicked in a day after I got to the beach, when I pulled out one of my magazines, the Weekly Standard, and found a cover story devoted to the presidential prospects of Mitt Romney, the Republican governor of Massachusetts – and, significantly, a Mormon. Author Terry Eastland (who used to work as an editorial writer here in NC at the old Greensboro Daily News, to continue the eerie linkages) chronicles Romney’s business and political career as well as his combination of fiscal and social conservatism (both less than doctrinaire, I should add). “But would his religion hurt him?,” Eastland then asks. “Would he run into a prejudicial wall? Maybe, though there are reasons to think otherwise.”
A couple of days after that, I picked up another magazine, National Review, and saw yet another cover story on Mitt Romney asking essentially the same question – is a conservative who is also a Mormon capable of getting the Republican nomination? This piece was written by John Miller, an old friend of mine from college-journalism days (and an even-older friend of JLF’s own Joe Coletti).
Weird, huh? And now, back to studying up on the Mormons.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.