Is Frank [Griswold] a Mormon?

I mean it. It’s a good questions, because he seems to believe in at least two LDS doctrines. We know that he believes in Continuing Revelation. That’s how he explains his novel teaching on sexuality. It isn’t my idea, he says, it’s the Holy Spirit speaking to us. This is a nifty tactic, of course, because it not only gets Our Lord the Spirit behind the innovation, but declares that anyone who disagrees with the innovation isn’t listening to the Spirit, and that would be bad.

Wait: there’s more. But first a little digression.

Between 1810 and 1830 wagon loads of cousins left the areas around Hoosick, New York and North Kingston, RI for the Midwest. Most came to Illinois. Some diverted into Michigan, and a few more to Wisconsin. They were all looking for land, and they were all abolitionists. The prestatehood arrivals played a part in making sure that Illinois came into the Union as a free state. At least one of them seems to have run a station on the Underground Railway.

When the war came, quite a few served in the Union Army at various times. My great-great-grandfather raised and equipped a rifle company that was later absorbed into one of the regular Pennsylvania regiments. He served as for at least a year. His daughter, my great grandmother, was a little girl then. His actions were not a young man’s lark, but serious actions coming out of serious commitment. Later, he helped to found and endow an Episcopal parish in Philadelphia, and served as senior warden for decades. Here’s a picture of him in uniform,

and in old age

(One of these days I’ll find out how my farm-boy, Baptist great grandfather met his mildly well to do, Episcopalian Rebecca. I know it was when he was in medical school in Philadelphia, but I don’t know how. She didn’t have any brothers who might have known Great Grandad, and opportunities for meeting and courtship were a bit more restricted in 1870 then they are now).

There were deaths in that generation: Antietem, Shiloh, Andersonville. The survivors came home, farmed their land, took their part in local government (Roads Commissioners, School Boards), and voted Republican. That’s what the veterans of that war did.

The reparations movement has always seemed shaky to me because the ancestors of a lot of modern Americans were never involved in slavery, or actively fought it. Should long established Chinese Americans (whose ancestors had a fairly rough time of it themselves) be forced to contribute to a reparations pool? What about people whose ancestors came here after 1863? What about those whose ancestors risked their lives, shed their blood, to end slavery? Just doesn’t seem well thought through.

Not surprisingly, Frank Griswold and his sideboys and girls are getting behind this whole reparations thing. Of course, no Episcopalian has owned a slave for a while. You can probably find more Episcopalians who think that women are inferior than who think that black people are. But Frank is putting himself behind a movement to “repent” of the Episcopal Church’s involvement in slavery.

Of course, you can’t repent of sin you haven’t committed. Or can you? Another important LDS teaching involves getting baptized (in the LDS fashion) on behalf of ancestors, substituting your action for theirs since they lived before the angel Moroni showed Joseph Smith the golden plates. In Frank’s theology, he is suggesting to modern Episcopalians, themselves innocent of the sin of slavery, repent on behalf of Episcopalians long dead who didn’t have the advantage of this new revelation.

So we have continuing revelation and substitutional repentance, just for starters. You’ve got to wonder what else is rattling around in Frank's head. I begin to worry that there's plenty of room.

A tug o’ the forelock to Christopher Johnson, who reads Frank’s utterance so the rest of us don’t have to.

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