Introduction: The Case for "Norse-Mormonism"

 

I have noticed that a lot of Ortho-bros in the 2020s argue that Jesus didn't really mean to turn the other cheek as they quote a verse here and there to justify self-defense and even going on the aggressive offense and insulting people. The problem is that while there was a germanization of medieval Christianity, the fact is the people who read or listened to the contents of the New Testament for the last 2000 years have continuously ended up as mostly extreme pacifists. So regardless of the redefining of New Testament verses by Christian thinkers after Augustine, you can't ignore the facts of History: that the first Christians, in especially the first two centuries, most of them did not fight back which is why Paul constantly boasts of being bullied and whipped and attacked and never retaliates! This is because Paul's message ("gospel") is clear that the more you lose status wise and suffer and are oppressed, the more you imitate his cosmic Christ as the model of suffering, as you too are to be holy (set-apart) offering to the Jewish deity. In fact, they also took Paul's recommendation to be celibate very seriously as well, The Council of Nicaea in 325 AD enacted a rule (Canon 1) prohibiting self-castration or castration by others for clergy, forbidding such individuals from joining the clergy. This was an early attempt to curb a practice influenced by Paul's teachings in 1 Corinthians 7 and Jesus in Mathew 19: 12, leading to ascetic motives. But despite this, the Catholic Church later struggled to enforce this rule against popular trends and today Catholic Priests are celibate. On top of that, besides pacifism and celibacy, seeking to die a martyr was also believed to be the true way of a Christian. In fact, there were cases where the Romans were turning these Christians away saying that basically that if they wanted to die that badly to just martyr themselves. So you cannot rewrite history. and pretend this was not the mindset of the first Christians. 

The New Testament claims to be a regulatory document from the Apostle Paul and it repeatedly speaks of this suffering mysticism described above, where you are more connected with the Suffering Messiah the more you suffer, not the more you fight back or gain wealth or physical power and prowess; but the more you decrease in strength and are beaten up to the point of death, that is the consistent message of the writings of Paul. All of the quote mining and ignoring of this by modern Christians is just word games. History is history. So what most Christians do is reinterpret the New Testaments through their image as modern Americans living in a democracy when angels don't appear constantly and demons are regularly exorcised from people. 

This is where Mormonism becomes the better version of Christianity in my view, because I agree that there is a lot in the New Testament that did provide some psychological usefulness: it did encourage humility and kindness and compassion in a way that was needed as a kind of pendulum swing away from some of the extreme abuse of power and cruelty taking place among the Roman elites in the first century. But what 19th century Mormonism does is move beyond the first century Pauline suffering-mysticism by instead balancing Pauline ideals with the ideals of modern America as it synthesizes the best in New Christianity Christianity with Norse energy. Note that I often use the term Norse as meaning both ancient Nordic Vikings and the Anglo-Saxons (I discuss why I do this in my essay here). The way Joseph Smith did this is he flips the script from a suffering mysticism to a triumphal mysticism: where America is now a holy land and advancing in power and strength and even retaliating after the fourth attack is holy and justified. The English speaking Smith was not like Paul seeking to be martyred as a weakling but died shooting back in self-defense. He promoted military action to defend himself as a true American. So as I see it, if you're going to be Christian if you're going to go down that road and you are Norse / Anglo-Saxon, I can't imagine why you would not choose Mormonism as it is Christian worldview that balances one's Norse ancestry with American exceptionalism and Christian idealism combined. That seems to make the Mormon Scriptures better books of scripture to choose from. 

The way I see it, Pauline-Christianity was an amalgamation of the apostle's Paul's suffering-mysticism with the ethics of the Stoics and Judaism mixed together (see Everything is a Remix on YouTube). I personally do not see anything particularly supernaturally "special" in this as the only authority of this type of "revelatory" phenomenon, because as I see it Paul and other New Testament writes had simply remixing several worldviews and ethical ideals together, some Jewish ideas and some Greco-Roman ideas (like Stoicism and the Mystery Religions). So what Christianity was, and what it did. was combine what Nietzsche called the slave morality and the master morality but made the slave virtues the only moral system for mortals; for the Master Morality was reserved for the Jewish Lord of Hosts when the Jewish Messiah was going to fly down and enforce a type of Master Morality. With this view in mind, what I see Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery doing with Mormonism doing is remixing Norse / Anglo-Saxon heritage embedded in their DNA and collective unconscious, as they revealed a "restored gospel": wherein just as Christianity was a remix of Stoicism, Mystery Religion and Maccabean Judaism and Paul's suffering-mysticism, Mormonism was a remix of Christianity with ancient Hebrew priesthood lineage theology, and Freemasonry (which influenced the founding of America). So I agree with the Orthobros that modern Christian morality is useful but as an Anglo-Nordic person, why not go with the version of Christianity that better matches modern American living today and was filtered through a fellow Anglo-American (Joseph Smith)? 

The way I see it, you can't remove the ethnic Jewishness and cultural values and mindset of the Jewish writings of the New Testament. They had a specific agenda to convert the Gentile nations to the bowing down before the ethnically Jewish deity, and that is fine. They were basically saying we have searched the Jewish Scriptures (Old Testament) and found in it a hidden mystery: the story of the Suffering Jewish Messiah who was crucified, rose from the dead like Osiris, and offers the gift of his pneuma containing his Jewish DNA, which can be supernaturally poured into Gentiles so that Jew and Gentile become one by this supernatural transforming of Gentiles into "spiritual Jews." So that is fine to teach that or believe in that. But as a proud Northern European, why take that literally? Also, if that message can be "revealed" through "revelation," what can't another alternative "restored gospel" offer new revelation? If revelation can come through a Jewish person like Paul or John of Patmos, etc., why not an Anglo-Saxon like Joseph Smith? Why is only the Jewish Scriptures and the Hebrew language and Paul, who borrowed from the Greeks and Romans, a legitimate source of revelation. What not Paul a fallible human being with his own ethnic biases and cultural blind spots? Why can't the American and Anglo-Saxon Joseph Smith reveal new scripture which contains not just pro-Jewish ideas but also elevates Anglo-Saxons to a higher spiritual status so to speak? Why can't God reveal something through an American's ethnolinguistic culture and heritage? Can God not filter a divine message through a Northern European like Joseph Smith just as well as a Middle Eastern Benjamite named Paul? Why say that God can only be reveal scripture through the Jewish writers of the New Testament and not the Anglo-Saxon revealers of the restored gospel?

What Norse-Mormonism does is recognize the positive cultural moral impact of Christianity in the West as covered by Tom Holland, but also recognizes the negative impacts as well; and sees in Mormonism a corrective mythos, where the cultural memory and energy of the Anglo-Saxons and Norse People is channeled into new scripture through Mormon midrash; which is just as valid in my mind as Jewish midrash. So I don't see only one ethnic group as superior to all others in being able to channel the voice of God. The way I see it, my Anglo-Saxon and Norse ancestors are just worthy of revealing scriptures as were the Jews in the Middle East in the first and second century. Furthermore, only Mormon Scriptures presents American land as holy land the US Constitution as holy writ. So I see what I call Norse-Mormonism as a balancing of Norse Vitality and Judeo-Christian Mortality, combing these two cultural forces of energy within an Americanist framework. To be clear, I am not advocating taking the Viking writings literally, for example, I am not advocating treating the Prose Edda for example as holy scripture or divine revelation. But I am saying that just as the early Christians quote mined the Old Testament and used what they liked and discarded the rest, the same type of thing was done in Mormonism. I see Mormonism as a modern Midrashic remixing of ideas, that combined my ancestor's Anglo-Norse vitality and cultural memory with the compassionate energy of Judeo-Christianity and American exceptionalism.