What “Renounce War and Proclaim Peace” Means

Latter-day Saints Renouncing War

I came across this the other day through the Mormon Worker blog:

ldsrenouncewar.org

It says on its homepage,

We, the undersigned, are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons).

We believe following Jesus requires us to be Peacemakers, to “Renounce War and Proclaim Peace” (D&C 98:16), and, as an act of faith, “lay down our weapons of war.” (Mormon 7:4).

Therefore, based on our personal religious beliefs, each of us, hereby, publicly renounce war and proclaim peace by Conscientiously Objecting to all nation-to-nation wars and armed conflicts.

and then it lists the signatures.  Anyone can sign the declaration and there are also essays on the web site explaining the position.

I am not going to give my opinion on this effort. My only purpose with this post is to show the meaning of the phrase “renounce war and proclaim peace.” For that, I must turn to Webster’s 1928 Dictionary.

RENOUNCE war and proclaim peace

Let’s start with renounce.

RENOUNCE, v.t. renouns’. [L. renuncio; re and nuncio, to declare, from the root of nomen, name.]

1. To disown; to disclaim; to reject; as a title or claim; to refuse to own or acknowledge as belonging to; as, to renounce a title to land or a claim to reward; to renounce all pretensions to applause.

2. To deny; to cast off; to reject; to disclaim; as an obligation or duty; as, to renounce allegiance.

3. To cast off or reject, as a connection or possession; to forsake; as, to renounce the world and all its cares.

We have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty. 2 Cor. 4.

In D&C 98:16, renounce means to forsake, which is the third shade. We are to renounce, or forsake, a sin. (Keep that in mind.)

renounce WAR and proclaim peace

Next is the word war.

WAR, n. [G., to perplex, embroil, disturb. The primary sense of the root is to strive, struggle, urge, drive, or to turn, to twist.]

1. A contest between nations or states, carried on by force, either for defense, or for revenging insults and redressing wrongs, for the extension of commerce or acquisition of territory, or for obtaining and establishing the superiority and dominion of one over the other. These objects are accomplished by the slaughter or capture of troops, and the capture and destruction of ships, towns and property. Among rude nations, war is often waged and carried on for plunder. As war is the contest of nations or states, it always implies that such contest is authorized by the monarch or the sovereign power of the nation. When war is commenced by attacking a nation in peace, it is called an offensive war, and such attack is aggressive. When war is undertaken to repel invasion or the attacks of an enemy, it is called defensive, and a defensive war is considered as justifiable. Very few of the wars that have desolated nations and deluged the earth with blood, have been justifiable. Happy would it be for mankind, if the prevalence of Christian principles might ultimately extinguish the spirit of war, and if the ambition to be great, might yield to the ambition of being good.

Preparation for war is sometimes the best security for peace.

2. In poetical language, instruments of war.

His complement of stores, and total war.

3. Poetically, forces; army.

Oer the embattled ranks the waves return, and overwhelm their war.

4. The profession of arms; art of war; as a fierce man of war. Isaiah 2.

5. Hostility; state of opposition or contest; act of opposition.

6. Enmity; disposition to contention.

The words of his mouth were smoother than butter, but war was in his heart. Psalm 55.

Man of war, in naval affairs, a ship of large size, armed and equipped for attack or defense.

Holy war, a crusade; a war undertaken to deliver the Holy Land, or Judea, from infidels. These holy wars were carried on by most unholy means.

The only shade of meaning that is always a sin is #6, which is enmity; disposition to contention. This is what we are to renounce. So, to renounce war, as written in D&C 98:16, means to forsake enmity or to forsake the disposition to contention. It does not mean to refuse to take up arms in self-defense of your life, property, family, neighbors or nation. It does not mean there is no such thing as justified warfare, or that God will not ever command His people to go out to battle against another people. It cannot mean these latter things because the rest of D&C 98 gives the church God’s laws concerning justified conflict and wars, showing that it was never the Lord’s intention that “renounce war” meant to refuse to participate or support any and all wars, no matter how justified they may be. Instead, “renounce war” is a personal thing, dealing with the sin of enmity and the disposition to contention. I suppose I ought to define enmity, huh?

EN’MITY, n.

1. The quality of being an enemy; the opposite of friendship; ill will; hatred; unfriendly dispositions; malevolence. It expresses more than aversion and less than malice,and differs from displeasure in denoting a fixed or rooted hatred, whereas displeasure is more transient.

I will put enmity between thee and the woman. Gen.3.

The carnal mind is enmity against God.Rom. 8.

2. A state of opposition.

The friendship of the world is enmity with God. James 4.

Enmity, then, is hatred.

renounce war and PROCLAIM peace

PROCLA’IM, v.t. [L. proclamo; pro and clamo, to cry out. See Claim.]

1. To promulgate; to announce; to publish; as, to proclaim a fast; to proclaim a feast. Lev.23. 1 Kings 21.

He hath sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives. Is.61.

2. To denounce; to give official notice of. Heralds were formerly employed to proclaim war.

3. To declare with honor; as, to proclaim the name of the Lord, that is, to declare his perfections. Ex.33.

4. To utter openly; to make public. Some profligate wretches openly proclaim their atheism.

Most men will proclaim every one his own goodness. Prov.20.

5. To outlaw by public denunciation.

I heard myself proclaimed.

Thus, when we proclaim peace, we are letting people publicly know of our peaceful intentions, that we bear no ill-will towards men.

renounce war and proclaim PEACE

Finally, peace means,

PEACE, n. [L. pax, paco, to appease.]

1. In a general sense, a state of quiet or tranquillity; freedom from disturbance or agitation; applicable to society, to individuals, or to the temper of the mind.

2. Freedom from war with a foreign nation; public quiet.

3. Freedom from internal commotion or civil war.

4. Freedom from private quarrels, suits or disturbance.

5. Freedom from agitation or disturbance by the passions, as from fear, terror, anger, anxiety or the like; quietness of mind; tranquillity; calmness; quiet of conscience.

Great peace have they that love the law. Ps.119.

6. Heavenly rest; the happiness of heaven.

7. Harmony; concord; a state of reconciliation between parties at variance.

8. Public tranquillity; that quiet,order and security which is guaranteed by the laws; as, to keep the peace; to break the peace.

This word is used in commanding silence or quiet; as, peace to this troubled soul.

Peace, the lovers are asleep.

To be at peace, to be reconciled; to live in harmony.

To make peace, to reconcile, as parties at variance.

To hold the peace, to be silent; to suppress one’s thoughts; not to speak.

Although the other shades of meaning are important, in the context of D&C 98:16, it is shade #7 that is to be proclaimed. In other words, we are to let people know that we seek reconciliation, if possible. This is part of the ministry of reconciliation to which all saints are called.

And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation; to wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. (2 Cor. 5:18-19)

When the Lord authorizes warfare

Only if after renouncing war and proclaiming peace a number of times, if that person or group or nation still threatens warfare and refuses reconciliation, then warfare is justified by the Lord and we must take up arms and go to battle. In other words, we are commanded to go to battle, as an actual commandment of the Lord. Those who do not go to battle or support the war effort become guilty of sin. This is why we take no oath of non-violence, refusing to ever take up arms. The Lord reserves the right to assume, at any moment of His choosing, His divine role as Lord of Hosts, that He might show forth His miraculous strength (the strength of the Lord), which necessitates that His earthly people be unencumbered by such oaths and covenants.

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Do we really need a standing army?

I thought I’d try my hand at a short post, for once.  I was looking over Jacob’s sermon in 2 Nephi and was struck by this verse in chapter 10:

And I will fortify this land against all other nations.  (2 Ne. 10:12)

If the Lord has already stated that He Himself will fortify the promised land—which the singular Gentile nation will occupy, and this singular Gentile nation is obviously the United States of America—against all other nations, then why are there latter-day saints who support and promote a standing army?  This seems to me to be a lack of faith in the promises of the Lord.  Surely the U.S. military cannot be the fulfillment of this prophecy of the Lord fortifying the land, for the Lord works by miraculous power, not by the arm of flesh.

Shouldn’t we be living our lives peaceably in this land and simply trust that the Lord will do as He promised to do?  Shouldn’t the Mormon Gentiles be encouraging the other Gentiles on this land to put their trust in the Lord and lay down their weapons of war, unless He commands them to take them, as explained in D&C 98?  And shouldn’t we be preaching against the “support our troops” fervor, since none of these troops have been commanded to go to war by the Lord?  Or am I being naïve?

From my reading of the scriptures, it does not appear that the ancient people of the Lord ever had a standing army.  They only had temporary armies, which were raised from the civilian population only during a war and disbanded once the war was over.  So why aren’t we following this same pattern?

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Going from Concrete to Flowers

Nothing is as delicate and brittle as thing-oriented group of people – so easily shattered by envy, covetousness, and strife once the pressure is put on.

ye do walk in the pride of your hearts; […] [do] lift yourselves up in the pride of your hearts, unto the wearing of very fine apparel, unto envying, and strifes, and malice, and persecutions, and all manner of iniquities;

and your churches, yea, even every one, have become polluted because of the pride of your hearts.

For behold, ye do love money, and your substance, and your fine apparel, and the adorning of your churches,

more than ye love the poor and the needy, the sick and the afflicted.

Zion is not a pie-in-the-sky utopia that falls in our laps once we’ve occupied our time long enough — waiting around for Jesus to return to sort everything out.

It is a permeating culture or way of life.  Jesus showed the world what this utopian kingdom looks like by the miraculous works of the Father that He manifested – showing us how to end the reign of the four horsemen [statism, war, famine, and death] and establish the Reign of God.

Those works that He did are what bring about an apocalypse –

The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass

but we [as free agents] must do those works for the image to become reality – revealing Jesus Christ in ourselves, being the Jesus Christ in our own situations — making the Word become flesh in us.

If not, it remains the idea of Zion — what we wait around for and sit around and talk about.

We can spend our Life searching for salvation, enlightenment, etc. “out-there” — when all the time, we carry it around in us:

behold, the kingdom of God is within you.

We must surrender [or die to] all our earthly attachments, our vain imaginations, our worldly ideas, and our petty emotions — they must all be nailed to the cross of Christ so we can change our minds [repent] and move on —

— on to that immortal aspect we have in each one of us, You as God [or God as You] — and that’s who Jesus Christ was — God as a human, or humans as God.

That’s what Jesus was showing us:

Here, in that gold-lit realm of Zion lies our true reality, where we are who we are in our right-brain-hearts – once all pretense and personas have been dropped.  Where we are the fully naked-Self that just is.

Unless that change has occurred:

• where we have the same mind in us which was in Christ Jesus,
• where we’ve stopped relating to God as the “out-there”, elderly man on the throne,
• where we no longer just tag”the name of Jesus Christ” onto the words and actions of our left-brain concept of Self,
• but have begun to identify ourselves with [or as] Christ in mind and in heart

we cannot expect a physical change in our environment to manifest.

Once we’ve denied [or disowned] our Self with the fear, trembling, sorrow, weeping, and broken heart brought about by the gospel of Jesus Christ preached in its purity [by the power of the Holy Ghost and in the spirit of prophecy and revelation], taken up our cross, and started doing the same works as Jesus — then may we begin to see eye-to-eye with those in Zion.

How beautiful upon the mountains have been the feet of the one

proclaiming good tidings,

sounding peace;

proclaiming good tidings,

sounding salvation;

saying to Zion, “Thy God has reigned!”

The voice of thy watchmen!

they have lifted up their voice, crying aloud together:

because, eye-to-eye, they see YHVH turning back to Zion.

Break forth into joy, sing together,

O waste places of Jerusalem:

for YHVH hath comforted his people,

he hath redeemed Jerusalem.

YHVH hath made his holy arm bare

in the eyes of all the nations;

and all the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.

Living out their story in our own life, seeing the things that they saw with our own eyes, making the word become flesh — comes as we stop working in our own names, and begin to connect as family [united order] through the bonds of covenant, which knit together strangers into joint-stewards:

And now, a commandment I give unto you concerning Zion, that you shall no longer be bound as a united order to your brethren of Zion, only on this wise— […]

they shall be organized in their own names; and they shall do their business in their own name.  And you shall do your business in your own name.

And this I have commanded to be done for your salvation, and also for their salvation, in consequence of that which is to come.

The covenants being broken through transgression, by covetousness and feigned words — Therefore, you are dissolved as a united order with your brethren, that you are not bound only up to this hour unto them,

And again, a commandment I give unto you concerning your stewardship which I have appointed unto you.  Behold, all these properties are mine, or else your faith is vain, and ye are found hypocrites, and the covenants which ye have made unto me are broken;

And if the properties are mine, then ye are stewards; otherwise ye are no stewards.  But, verily I say unto you, I have appointed unto you to be stewards over mine house.

And for this purpose I have commanded you to organize yourselves, […] For the purpose of building up my church and kingdom on the earth, and to prepare my people for the time when I shall dwell with them, which is nigh at hand.

In contrast to the current political/economic narrative of a selfish, depraved, calculating human –

Kinship governs who we are in ways current theories fail to account for:

In a world characterized by familial relationships, there is no such thing as “self-interest” [in a self-seeking, calculating sense].

For a time, humans gathered only according to their tribe and their land.  Familial ties are the natural form of human community.  “Advancement” has really just meant that we could begin “bonding” through other things like commerce or information – making communities out of largely unrelated persons.

The cost of this great advancement has been that few of us find joy in the work we do on this earth – few of us have time to cook healthy food and raise healthy families – and by the time most of us stop working the jobs we don’t really like, our health and family are so damaged that we’ll spend the remaining years alone, medicated in a nursing home.

When we are a thing-oriented society [instead of people-oriented] – we are all about the acquiring and the advancing.  Big concrete streets to accommodate big cars, to drive to big stores to buy big plastic-stuff – building the biggest house that’ll fit on the allotted property, having tiny backyards that are paved with concrete anyway, and then sitting inside in chairs to passively observe reality on pixelated screens – and that’s supposed to create joy?

That is so far detached from the Earth:

From the dirt that God gave us – that chaos from which we can create and nurture Life.  Truly living, as a people-oriented society is not about the acquiring – it’s about the connecting.  It’s not about the advancing – it’s about the enduring.  The struggle of human experience is to break through the barriers – and into connection, intimacy, and companionship.

This involves coming to know that – there is no value in things.  They are literally no-thing at all.

The only thing of enduring, true reality is the connections between human beings.  Connectivity is the key.

Humans are naturally social beings.  And the family is the charitable gift society that we are all born into – for the purpose of learning the only lesson we can learn that will save us – charity.  Those who learn charity will enter the charitable gift society that exists in heaven – the family of God.

For a gathered body of family is the only society that can be free and eternal – an everlasting Zion, worlds without end.

Nature [though it follows similar patterns] is ever-new and always creating:

Never boring.  Each new generation that comes along learns about the mystery of the Earth as it is – the world of nature, which was patterned after that eternal world where God resides.

One would think that stability and endurance in a society would breed utter boredom and monotony.  However, where we see utterly boring sameness is in our current skylines, TV shows, brand-names, and highways.  Where we see monotony is in our city-states, monetary systems, concepts of property, monogamy, monoculture, etc.  We are boxed-in with the whole world property-lined, zoned, speed-limited, paved, taxed, regulated, registered, addressed, and licensed.

But nobody left room for Life.

Life here on Earth is just a limited time in what is really a brief probationary situation.  It’s the same play acted out on the same stage for millennia.  The ancients faced the same trials and triumphs, had the same drives and desires that we do.

The props, the technology and fashions, etc. might get constantly replaced, but the plot always remains the same – to commune with God and with one another.

How many more different props and costume changes can a single play have?  How many more shiny things can I own?

It is we who take something like nature – which is amoral, impartial, and anarchic — come in and bring judgments and value-claims such as kindness and cruelty, meaning and order to the whole thing.  But nature itself, outside of a human left-brain-mind, is a blank canvas for our projection.

And humans have been working for millennia to make nature a safe, organized place:

But any attempt to control a single variable in a natural system will only result in more variables becoming chaotic.  This is because a natural system is at rest.  It is at equilibrium and can stay at equilibrium without any energy input indefinitely.

When force is applied to one part of the system, the other parts react proportionately in an attempt to restore that equilibrium point.

This is man’s fall [which is pride] — setting themselves up as Gods in their own right — trying to control the world with control, dominion, and compulsion – instead of just being spontaneously, naturally — as we suppose children or animals to be – and allowing our kingdom to flow unto us without compulsory means.

When Isaiah the prophet was told to prophesy to Israel, the Lord said:

Go and loose the sackcloth from off thy loins, and put off thy shoe from thy foot.  And he did so, walking naked and barefoot.

God gave humans barefeet because He covered the Earth in dirt and grass.  But man thought he could do better than God and he covered the world in concrete.  So man had to invent shoes to walk on the concrete.

One thing we do begets the need to do another thing in response [so on and so forth], until we reach the point we are at currently, where we spend most of our energy fighting to control what our attempts at control have caused.

The structure. 

We’ve separated ourselves within our little families with the minimum amount of adults required, each having our own properties and our own possessions – to such an extent that we miss out on the richness of oneness with others – the simple salve of being freely connected to all our human brothers and sisters.

That safety in numbers that comes as we gather.  Our souls cry-out for this connection and free association – but like when the body is missing a necessary component or nutrient, we may be able to cope but can never truly be made whole without it.

This satisfying level of community comes as human-beings connect with other human-beings.  A husband, wife, and resulting children look exactly like how the scriptures define a paradisaical, Zion community — the kind of community believers in Christ are supposed to be building, making it “on earth“, as it is “in heaven“.

Such a body of believers in Christ [who are bound by both kinship and shared belief] should continue to grow itself along the same lines — as a family.

Families meet together naturally, they do not “have meetings”.  Going door-to-door, handing out religious tracts – that’s advertising.  That’s marketing religion and religious paraphernalia.

Church and missionary work are about being engaged in gathering the tribes of Israel – gathering people out from among the tribes of the earth.  Everyone who comes unto Christ, whether they are of the direct bloodline of Israel [Jacob] or not [a Gentile], is automatically numbered among the house of Israel when they are converted to the Lord.   The covenants that the church priesthood administers are what takes unrelated believers in Christ and binds them [knits them] together into bona-fide tribes of Israel – the Lord’s family.

The reason we are all “one in Christ” is that we all become His sons and daughters.  That rebirth is fundamentally conceived of and described along tribal lines:

• it is patterned after the image of being embraced by a bendoin sheik and being brought into his tent.
• it is the chain of eternal family sealings going back to Adam and Eve.
• it is the fathers’ hearts turning to children and the children’s hearts to the fathers.

It’s all tribal in nature.

When we take unrelated believers in Christ and knit them together by covenant into a family – we restore the tribal notion of Israel, a separate people-group, or nation of kings & priests and queens & priestesses.

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The anarchic laws of D&C 98

I’m going to refrain from expounding these scriptures and just let them speak for themselves. If you take a good, long look at the following laws, you’ll notice that in order for certain parts of them to be complied with, you would need to be living in anarchy because under current governments, if you were to attempt to fulfill the letter of these laws, you’d end up in jail. So, as we can’t today follow their letters (their spirits being another matter altogether), what is the Lord trying to tell us about the future?

LAW OF JUSTIFICATION CONCERNING PERSECUTION FROM ENEMIES

The Lord said, “Now, I speak unto you concerning your families—if men will smite you, or your families, once, and ye bear it patiently and revile not against them, neither seek revenge, ye shall be rewarded; but if ye bear it not patiently, it shall be accounted unto you as being meted out as a just measure unto you. And again, if your enemy shall smite you the second time, and you revile not against your enemy, and bear it patiently, your reward shall be an hundredfold. And again, if he shall smite you the third time, and ye bear it patiently, your reward shall be doubled unto you four-fold; and these three testimonies shall stand against your enemy if he repent not, and shall not be blotted out. And now, verily I say unto you, if that enemy shall escape my vengeance, that he be not brought into judgment before me, then ye shall see to it that ye warn him in my name, that he come no more upon you, neither upon your family, even your children’s children unto the third and fourth generation. And then, if he shall come upon you or your children, or your children’s children unto the third and fourth generation, I have delivered thine enemy into thine hands; and then if thou wilt spare him, thou shalt be rewarded for thy righteousness; and also thy children and thy children’s children unto the third and fourth generation. Nevertheless, thine enemy is in thine hands; and if thou rewardest him according to his works thou art justified; if he has sought thy life, and thy life is endangered by him, thine enemy is in thine hands and thou art justified. Behold, this is the law I gave unto my servant Nephi, and thy fathers, Joseph, and Jacob, and Isaac, and Abraham, and all mine ancient prophets and apostles.” (D&C 98: 23-32)

LAW OF JUSTIFICATION CONCERNING PROCLAMATIONS OF WAR BY ENEMIES

The Lord said, “And again, this is the law that I gave unto mine ancients, that they should not go out unto battle against any nation, kindred, tongue, or people, save I, the Lord, commanded them. And if any nation, tongue, or people should proclaim war against them, they should first lift a standard of peace unto that people, nation, or tongue; and if that people did not accept the offering of peace, neither the second nor the third time, they should bring these testimonies before the Lord; then I, the Lord, would give unto them a commandment, and justify them in going out to battle against that nation, tongue, or people. And I, the Lord, would fight their battles, and their children’s battles, and their children’s children’s, until they had avenged themselves on all their enemies, to the third and fourth generation. Behold, this is an ensample unto all people, saith the Lord your God, for justification before me.” (D&C 98: 33-38 )

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Scriptural Discussion #12: War—To Be Renounced

WAR—TO BE RENOUNCED

The Lord said, “Therefore, renounce war and proclaim peace, and seek diligently to turn the hearts of the children to their fathers, and the hearts of the fathers to the children;” (D&C 98: 16)

Discuss.

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Book of Mormon Anarchy

In 3 Nephi chapter 7 there is the very interesting account of the destruction of the Nephite government and the introduction of tribal-based anarchy. A quick summary: The chief judge is murdered by the secret combination (v. 1) and it causes a great contention in the land, causing virtually everyone to become wicked (v. 7); the government and its regulations are destroyed (v. 2, 6); the people separate (v. 2, 14) into exceedingly large tribes (v. 4) with appointed leaders or chiefs (v. 3) consisting of family, kindred and friends (v. 2, 4, 14); the tribes have their own separate laws (v. 11, 14) including laws on how to interact with other tribes (v. 14); the tribes have no wars among them (v.5) and are united, but not according to their laws (v. 11, 14); the secret combination forms a monarchy with king Jacob as the monarch (v. 9-10); the tribes are united in their hatred of the kingdom of Jacob (v. 11) ; king Jacob and his subjects escape to the north (v. 12-13); the tribes stone and cast out any prophets that come among them (v. 14); Nephi ministers with great power and authority to the tribes, making but few converts, who also witness of their conversion through signs and miracles (v. 15-22.)

One of the arguments against anarchy, made chiefly by statists, is that anarchy cannot exist without a totally moral people. They argue, essentially, that since the natural man is an enemy to God, people living in anarchy would murder, rape, steal and do other very wicked deeds without a government to check their wicked ways. Nevertheless, 3 Nephi chapter 7 flies in the face of that logic, showing that even wicked people living under anarchy had “in some degree…peace in the land” (v. 14.) Obviously, “some degree of peace” applied to a temporal sense, as spiritually, these people were completely devoid of the peace of Jesus.

People normally learn about anarchy from statists, who have a vested interest to vilify and smear anarchy, because anarchy is the natural enemy of statism. Thus, a statist will say that anarchy breeds violence and chaos. Yet the Book of Mormon account of anarchy, an admitted account of a wicked people that stoned prophets of God, is one of an ordered society that, although separated into tribes, were still united and had strict agreements (treaties) between the tribes.

Some believe that once a government is removed and the natural anarchic order is allowed to settle in, family ties are strengthened exceedingly and families naturally start to coalesce into clans. (See the articles that Mary Ruwart and Phillip E. Jacobson have written on this very subject.) This is based upon historical, non-Book of Mormon data. However, the ancient books of scripture used by the LDS add to the body of evidence for this belief. Both the Bible and Book of Mormon examples of anarchy are tribal-based, a tribe essentially being a clan, or a very large clan. Tribal or clan-based anarchy appears to be the natural order of anarchy.

Jacob and his followers were king-men, attempting to establish a monarchy so that they could rule over the souls of men. These were die-hard statists and it is telling that as soon as the government was dissolved, they grouped together and created their own little state, a kingdom with a monarch (Jacob, not Jesus) to rule over them.

Another interesting point to note is that Mormon explains that it was the dividing of the people and their separation into tribes that destroyed the government (v. 2.) On the surface this might not seem like enough to destroy a government, but when you live in a tribe of your family, kindred and friends and your tribe has laws, your allegiances become torn. As they say, blood is thicker than water. These people are your relatives. To which laws do you owe your allegiance, the government or your tribe, if there is a conflict between the two sets of regulations? As long as families are nuclear and small (a mother, a father and children,) the power and pull of a family will be small and the power and pull of government will be large, but when families group together in common biological or friendship links (blood brothers), the power of a tribal family becomes large. The allegiance to it also increases. This may be why organized crime Mafia clans, which have blood ties and their own laws, command greater allegiance from their members than the legal government around them does. So, if you take the entire country, the USA, for example, and suddenly have everyone placed into a family clan or family tribe, suddenly the government loses all power, as allegiance to the government goes down to zero and allegiance to family, clan and tribe becomes all important.

A last thought: Before I learned anarchy from anarchists, I learned anarchy from state propaganda. I, like most, thought of anarchy as a great evil, to be avoided at all costs. I thought that any government was better than no government at all. Reading verse 5 of 3 Nephi chapter 7 seemed to solidify the propaganda. When Mormon used the phrase “all this iniquity,” I just figured he was talking about the anarchic, empowered tribal state, in other words, the destruction of the government. Now, though, I realize that tribes are not intrinsically evil. In fact, as LDS, we are placed into one of 12 tribes. So, Mormon was talking of different iniquities and not the ones that my state propaganda-ized mind was assigning, the iniquities of which he explains in this and the preceding chapter.

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