Book Of Mormon Chicago

No one can deny the success of The Book of Mormon—the runaway hit musical by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, that is. The irony is that it isn't really about the gospel according to the Church of Latter-Day Saints. To understand why, it is necessary to look at the evolution of religious sects in general.

"Evolution"—you heard that word right. The fundamental beliefs may remain the same, but quite frequently, their practice changes over time. Within Christian sects, for example, we don't see as many flagellants nowadays as in Medieval times, "mortification of the flesh" no longer being regarded as a measure of individual piety, nor in America do we hear of trials calling for the execution of heretics—and while the communal practice of symbolically devouring the body of its founder may puzzle those outside the faith, the purpose behind the act is today understood to be a metaphor.

The Mormon church is a relatively new congregation, however, its birth tracing from 1830, when the Reverend Joseph Smith claims to have received a divine missive comprising the LDS ethos to this day. To be sure, in 1852, Brigham Young, one of its chief proponents, interpreted the sacred texts in a manner advocating racial inequality within its hierarchy, but by 1978, wiser minds (corroborated by visions from on high, so they maintained) prevailed, and the exclusionary doctrine was rescinded.

Therein lies the secret to Book of Mormon's widespread appeal: any society continuing beyond its initial membership, sooner or later, must take cognizance of the human values—kindness, tolerance, compassion, preservation of life—shared by creeds the world over, summarized in our culture under the title of "The Golden Rule." The turning point in Parker and Stone's story is the moment when Elder Cunningham, a missionary with more heart than brains, acknowledges the inability of his dogma to address the spiritual needs of those it would comfort, driving him to equivocate, even embellish, in his zeal to banish the despair he witnesses.

Is this sacrilege? Perversion of Holy writ? Some speaking today might say so, but imagine the outrage among post-Renaissance priests upon being told that sculptors' depictions of Moses wearing bovine horns—among them, such classical masters as Michelangelo—were based in a too-literal translation of the Hebrew "qaran" into Latin as "Cornuta esset facies sua." A few millenniums hence, after the old sermons are passed down to its descendants by imperfect mortals employing imperfect means, who knows what hybrid scriptures may answer the universal yearning of mortals for mystical explanations giving order to a contradictory and often terrifying universe?

The Book of Mormon runs at the Bank of America Theatre through September 8.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Contributing Writer