As usual, singing along this past week with a lovely recording of Handel's Messiah brought tears to my eyes at the memory of the many times I performed the work over a 10-year period (mostly in the 1970s). This year, however, my tears are tinged with bitterness and shame at having sung it while associated with one of the Mormon church's musical missionary groups, the Southern California Mormon Choir.
Last week, before the family came home from various parts of the world—Mr Mo from working in Germany, grad school kids from California and Boston, and Youngest Daughter from boarding school south of here—I listened to the first half of Handel's Messiah. I sang all the solos and switched parts in the choruses ... and bawled my eyes out.
Comfort ye my people:
Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem,
And cry unto her that her warfare is accomplished,
That her iniquity is pardoned.*
Many of you will know that I have been a fierce opponent of CA Prop 8 (and similarly discriminatory measures), and that despite not having participated in well over a decade, I am still a "member of record" of the Mormon church. Although I have listed my Mormon bona fides in comments in other writers' related diaries, I want to share this aspect of "just how very Mormon I was," and why the decision to quit is painful to me on yet another level beyond the impact on family and friends.
Every valley shall be exalted,
And every mountain and hill made low.
The crooked straight, and the rough places plain.
In the early 1970s, not long after reaching the minimum membership age, I joined the Southern California Mormon Choir (SCMC), jokingly referred to as "L.A.'s answer to the Tabs [Mormon Tabernacle Choir]," just in time to put in enough rehearsals to sing in the Choir's annual performance of Handel's Messiah in the Los Angeles Music Center's Dorothy Chandler Pavilion (DCP). The DCP was a dazzling venue, and the SCMC had access in large measure only because it was the sole religiously-affiliated group to be listed among the Founders (the Choir having held a series of fund-raising concerts to raise $25,000 toward the DCP's construction).
And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
For the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.
Walking out on the stage for the dress rehearsal and crowding onto the dangerously narrow risers behind the orchestra was great fun, and very exciting. We altos were positioned right behind the organ, and the organist was quite a character in a classically "dirty old man" kind of way. But the rush of the rehearsal was nothing compared to that moment when the curtain opened for the performance itself in front of a packed house.
But who may abide the day of His coming?
And who shall stand when He appeareth?
For he is like a refiner's fire.
This first performance in particular was a proud moment for me, and over the course of the next 10 years I had the opportunity to sing (first as an alto, and then as a soprano) the Messiah many times (in the DCP, at the Shriner's Auditorium, and annual concerts at... Leisure World in Laguna Niguel).
For unto us a Child is born,
Unto us a Son is given;
And the government shall be upon His shoulder,
And his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor,
The Mighty God, the Everlasting Father,
The Prince of Peace.
In contrast to the Tabernacle Choir, whose repertoire was and continues to be strictly and quite directly controlled by church headquarters, the SCMC in my day was a veritable oasis of musical excellence under the baton of its founding conductor, Frederick Davis. A naturalized American born in Tonga, Davis first settled in Salt Lake City, and at one point had aspirations of conducting the Tabernacle Choir... until certain parties made it crystal clear to him that his lack of a pioneer pedigree and especially his "tainted" half-Tongan blood meant that he would never, ever, realize his ambition. He moved to Southern California not long after that "revelation" and ended up founding the "Mormon Choir of Southern California" (later SCMC) in 1953. The choir sang at the dedication of the Los Angeles Temple in 1956, and (so the legend goes) so pleased was then-church president David O. McKay with its performance, that the SCMC was, I believe, the only other choir besides the Tabs authorized to use the word "Mormon" in its name, right up until sometime in the 1980s.
He shall feed His flock like a shepherd,
And He shall gather the lambs with His arm.
Come unto Him, all ye that labor and are heavy laden,
And He will give you rest.
The SCMC introduced me not just to Handel's Messiah, but to many such other glorious religious works as the various Requiems by Mozart, Verdi, and Brahms, Mendelssohn's Elijah, folksongs from numerous countries, and many contemporary works, both religious and secular. We gave concerts roughly once a month in Mormon "stake centers"—all as part of the church's effort to foster a more positive image and "open the doors" to prosetyzing efforts. I loved singing with the choir, and served at various points as the music librarian, publicist, and even as a small group rehearsal accompanist.
How beautiful are the feet of them
That preach the gospel of peace,
And bring glad tidings of good things!
My last SCMC Messiah performance was in 1981. It was Frederick Davis's last performance as well: certain ambitious, behind-the-scenes forces which had long been afoot had finally succeeded in forcing him to retire. I found the machinations ugly and untoward, and went to only a few rehearsals under the baton of Davis's replacement before deciding I couldn't bear to continue. (Mercifully, I got married and moved away from LA only a few short months later.) It is fitting, I suppose, that the SCMC has since come under much tighter control from Salt Lake: in my day, there were a few non-Mormon choir members, and no "worthiness" requirements. These days, only "worthy" Mormons are allowed to sing the straitened permitted repertoire.
All we like sheep have gone astray:
We have turned every one to his own way.
And the Lord hath laid on Him
The iniquity of us all.
Today's corporate and much more centralized Mormon church does not resemble the Mormon church of my childhood and youth. Yes, up until my mid-teens I vaguely knew that black men could not hold priesthood, but first of all, the topic did not come up in my white-bread local congregation; and, too, I also believed all the (pseudo-)"scriptural" arguments I was taught about the policy being "God's will." (I was serving as a full-time Mormon missionary in northern France when the 1978 "revelation" was announced that allowed black men to hold priesthood and black men and women to participate in Mormon temple ceremonies. I and my fellow missionaries literally jumped for joy. The proscription had bothered me for years, especially having learned by then that Joseph Smith had ordained at least one black man; further, I and many others saw the overturning of this policy as a sign of Christ's imminent return.—But I digress.)
There were shepherds abiding in the field,
Keeping watch over their flocks by night;
And lo! the angel of the Lord came upon them.
And the glory of the Lord shone round about them,
And they were sore afraid. ...
And suddenly there was with the angel
A multitude of the heavenly host,
Praising God and saying,
Glory to God in the highest,
And on earth peace, good will towards men.
Back to last week: I wept in part because I miss singing generally. La rase campagne—the middle of nowhere here in southeastern France—does not afford many any real opportunities for professional-level choral singing. And this said, I wept as I have done nearly every year since the very last time I sang the Messiah with the SCMC in Los Angeles more than 25 years ago, even though I have sung it a few times since with other groups in Pittsburgh and Boston... because my SCMC experiences involved so many people who were extremely dear to me, and who are long since dead, Frederick Davis included. I am grieving as well for the passage of time and youth and better health.
Behold, and see if there be any sorrow
Like unto His sorrow.
But this year, my tears are tinged more with bitterness and shame than nostalgia. The motto of the Southern California Mormon Choir is taken from a verse of Mormon scripture: "The song of the righteous is a prayer unto God"—but let me quote it in its entirety:
The song of the righteous is a prayer unto God, and it shall be answered with a blessing upon their heads.—Doctrine & Covenants 25:12
Instead of offering a prayer unto God, the Mormon leadership has pushed lies and deceit; and for this, instead of a blessing, the Mormon church is reaping the curses of those whom it has treated so heartlessly.
Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron,
Thou shalt dash them in pieces
Like a potter's vessel.
I weep at how completely antithetical to justice and righteousness is the Mormon church's hypocritical push to strip gays of their right to marry. As with the ERA, the church has dishonestly framed the fight for full equality as the devil's attempt to "destroy families"—willfully refusing to acknowledge the pain it is causing for a significant number of God's children and their families. I believe it has done so because LDS, Inc. has channeled its leaders' homophobia into not just trying to curry favor with the evangelicals who persist (and will forever persist) in painting Mormonism as a satanic cult, but also to "rally the faithful" and corral the less faithful in the face of slowing conversion rates and even more abysmal retention rates.
I know that my Redeemer liveth,
And that He shall stand at the latter day
Upon the Earth.
I am truly an agnostic when it comes to the religious message of Handel's Messiah and the other religious works that still have the power to thrill my heart and move me to tears. There is mystery and magic and holiness in this most primitive and complex language. But I now deeply regret that so many of these works are inextricably connected to my time as a naïve and eager true believer in a church that has so completely failed to live up to the name that it profanes (in large font sizes and all caps on its buildings and marquees and even letterhead): surely Jesus Christ would refuse to recognize a church that refuses to follow his teachings to love one another, to have mercy, to do justly.
Why do the nations so furiously rage together?
Why do the people imagine a vain thing?
To my gay brothers and sisters: I am so sorry. I entertain no illusions about how effective "trying to effect changes from within" can be in the face of the realities of the Mormon hierarchical gerontocracy. I am figuring out how to get out, and while I do so, I will continue to write and argue and try to persuade and lend as much insider's knowledge as I can to helping you deal with Mormons in meaningful ways. Handel's Messiah will never be the same to me as it once was.
Hallelujah.
With my sincere best wishes for a hopeful holiday season and a truly progressive New Year.
*All citations are from the libretto of Handel's Messiah, which is taken from the King James Bible.