Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine ( the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers )

Let me start by saying that the Wakefield Doctrine, (progenitors and DownSprings)  have nothing but respect for the Mormons and the LDS.  ( damn, such an excellent acronym;  counter-culture sixties and radical sixties all rolled into one! Seriously, how cool would a jacket with just LDS on the back, be?  )

Just got back from Salt Lake City and thought that it would be helpful to our Readers to see how the Doctrine and the LDS might relate to each other.  Everyone knows something about the Mormon religion and perhaps a little less about the Wakefield Doctrine.  Nevertheless, it would be instructive to look at any commonalities between the two. And what jumps right out, what both clearly have in common can be summed up in two words: rogers.  If you are reading this, then we expect you to have at minimum a cursory understanding of the rogerian personality type. Beret-wearing engineers? Chapter-verse citing grandmother on the other side of the counter at your local Tax Assessor’s Office, Civil War re-enacting, Ken Burns fan? Yes, those rogers. Of the three personality types, rogers are the social/herd-centric people who live for tradition and history and culture and can tell you how to cook a dinner that your ancestors ate before being wiped out by the Bubonic Plague. It is this need for order, desire for rules that will form the bridge between the Wakefield Doctrine and the LDS.
For our Post today, it is the nature of rogers that we are going to present in relation to the story of Joseph Smith and his founding of the Mormon religion. It is not within the scope of this Post, to try and relate the actual history or dogma or teachings of this widely respected religion, rather we will simply talk about rogers and how they see the world.

As we do know, that it is integral to the rogerian worldview  there be organised religion. This is true simply because rogers have the need not only to establish rules and order for everyone, but to have these rules possess a degree of moral imperative that can only derive from a deity or deities. Most rogerian religious leaders ( not to be too redundant ) know fully well that their followers will wander off if they (their leader) dies or gets a good paying job, unless that is, god is backing the roger’s play.  Suffice to say that, for our rogerian brethren, it is not enough to impose rules of conduct and  the right way to live life;  the ‘choosen people’ that follow the leader must know that it is right to do so because god says so. And it doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to know that you don’t be messin with god, at least not if you expect to wake up the next day.
To bring in Joseph Smith and his creation of what would become a major religion; while Mr. Smith appears to be rogerian enough to want to make up a set of Rules for Life,  the Catholics and them already staked their claim on the best known deity.  (You know, the one with the beard, who took on the Greek, Roman, Norse gods and totally kicked they asses),  Mr Smith needed a new source of authority. Now we are out of our league, factually speaking, so lets bring in our friends from Wikipedia:

Joseph Smith, Jr. (December 23, 1805 – June 27, 1844) was an American religious leader and the founder of what later became known as the Latter Day Saint movement. He was also an author, city planner, military leader, politician, and U.S. presidential candidate.

Raised in western New York, a hotbed of religious enthusiasm, Smith was wary of Protestant sectarianism as a youth. His worldview was influenced by folk magic, and he became known locally as one who could divine the location of buried treasure. In the late 1820s, Smith said that an angel directed him to a buried book of golden plates inscribed with a religious history of ancient American peoples. After publishing what he said was an English translation of the plates as the Book of Mormon, he organized branches of the “Church of Christ“. Adherents of this new religion would later be called Latter Day Saints.

In 1831, Smith moved west to Kirtland, Ohio with the intention of eventually establishing the communal holy city of Zion in western Missouri. These plans were obstructed, however, when Missouri settlers expelled the Saints from Zion in 1833. After leading an unsuccessful paramilitary expedition to recover the land, Smith focused on building a temple in Kirtland. In 1837, the church in Kirtland collapsed after a financial crisis, and the following year Smith fled the city to join Saints in northern Missouri. A war ensued with Missourians who believed Smith was inciting insurrection. When the Saints lost the war, the Missouri governor expelled them, and imprisoned Smith on capital charges.

After being allowed to escape state custody in 1839, Smith led the Saints to build Nauvoo, Illinois on Mississippi River swampland, where he became mayor and commanded the large militia. In early 1844, he announced his candidacy for President of the United States. That summer, after the Nauvoo Expositor criticized Smith’s teachings, the Nauvoo city council, headed by Smith, ordered the paper’s destruction. In an attempt to check public outrage, Smith first declared martial law, then surrendered to the governor of Illinois. He was killed by a mob while awaiting trial in Carthage, Illinois.

Smith’s followers revere him as a prophet, and regard many of his writings as scripture. His teachings include unique views about the nature of godhood, cosmology, family structures, political organization, and religious collectivism. His legacy includes a number of religious denominations, which collectively claim a growing membership of nearly 14 million worldwide

So what is clearest about the Lesson of the LDS and rogers?

Both rogers and by inference, those followers of organised religion provide the world with:

• rules of civil conduct, at least among the adherents of a given religion
• holidays and their attendant days off from work
• conceptualization of the innate human need to imagine life after death
• persecution and death at the hands of the dominant culture, at least until a minority is found to ‘pass-it-on’ with
• preservation of culture and art and a common heritage
• a counter-acting force to the  ‘live for the moment’, instinct-driven rampages of scotts
• interesting and sometimes amusing religion-required clothing ( I’m lookin at you, catholic priests and bishops)
• clean and orderly and safe cities ( Salt Lake City…very nice place)
• opportunity for advancement for minorities and women and such…provided they earn it
• one more way that clarks can feel left out
• an organisational structure that presents a total frickin buffet for the scottian element in every society

So there you have it! The reason you have things like religions popping up almost anywhere, at any time in history, this despite the fact that with an issue that deals with mortality and life beyond this life, one religion should be enough…there is a new one every time you turn around, anthropologically-speaking.  But then again, there are so many rogers out there!