Keeping Faith: Paul Cuff

The following is the fifth installment of “Keeping Faith,” a six-part series of conversations between politics professor Robert George and University professors of various faiths.

Paul Cuff is an electrical engineering professor and practicing Mormon. His work focuses on information theory.

ROBERT GEORGE: Paul, were you born into the Mormon community, or are you aconvert to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints?

PAUL CUFF: Both of my parents were members of the Church when I was born. My mother joined when she was about 20, while she was in college. My father’s family tree includes Parley P. Pratt, who knew Joseph Smith personally and was imprisoned with him on occasion. He kept an extensive journal that is used as a source of Church history.

RG: Can you tell us something about the LDS church’s founding?

PC: The Church was founded in the early 19th century in upstate New York. It’s now associated with Utah because the Mormon community moved there after a couple of decades. The founder, Joseph Smith, grew up studying the Bible. He decided he needed baptism for the remission of sins, so he set about deciding which church to join. He went into a local grove of trees to pray, and he had a vision in which our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ visited him and told him that his sins are forgiven, and that he should not join a particular church but should await further instruction.

RG: So is it believed that he continued to have experiences of revelation?

PC: Yes. And over a period of about 10 years, he was instructed to find and translate — through the power of God — an ancient record written on gold plates, which became the Book of Mormon. This is a record of some ancient inhabitants in the Americas. And one of the final record-keepers and prophets was named Mormon. So the book is named after him.

RG: The Book of Mormon within the LDS community is scripture, correct?

PC: Exactly. It’s now published with the subtitle “another testament of Jesus Christ.”

RG: The first testament being the New Testament?

PC: The first being the entire Bible, including the Hebrew scriptures commonly called the Old Testament. In addition, we have another book of “modern” (as opposed to “ancient”) scripture. These are revelations that Joseph Smith received and recorded as what we call the Book of the Doctrine and Covenants of the Church. We also have a very short book of scripture called the Pearl of Great Price.

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RG: Tell us about the Mormon Church’s governance.

PC: The leadership is headed by a President, two counselors and 12 apostles. We believe all of them to be prophets, seers and revelators.

RG: As I understand it, the LDS belief is that further revelation could come. Could it come through any of these general authorities?

PC: If a major revelation came through, say, an apostle, it would be discussed by the Quorum of the Twelve and end up coming to the Church from the Presidency and the Quorum.

RG: And is it called the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles because the members are regarded as successors of the original 12 apostles?

PC: Yes, that is our belief. This is the same body of leadership for the Church that the original apostles were at the time of Christ.

RG: Now it’s the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — so the Mormon faithful seek to follow Christ and obey his commands. Do the LDS share with Catholics, Eastern Orthodox and Protestants the belief that Jesus of Nazareth is the Savior, the Messiah promised to the chosen people from ancient times?

PC: Yes. In our belief, Jesus is the central figure in our Heavenly Father’s plan for us on this earth. Jesus Christ created the earth, and his atonement is our means for salvation. He is the only person to give a perfect example of life.

RG: Was Joseph Smith’s goal to get back to the beliefs and practices of the early Christian community, before the great ecumenical councils that articulated what other churches regard as central doctrines, such as that of the Trinity?

PC: This concept of the Trinity is one of the few pieces of doctrine that often becomes sort of a wedge in conversations between Latter-day Saints and members of other churches. When people say that Mormons are not really Christians, often this a central point in their argument. People say “Oh, you don’t believe in the same Jesus Christ as we do because you don’t believe in the Trinity.” Well, it’s true that there are differences. We believe that God the Father and Jesus Christ are separate beings, and that the Father and Son actually have physical bodies. But on the idea of the Trinity itself, part of the difference may be more semantic. We think of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit as the Godhead. We believe that the three work in perfect unity. But my reading of scripture is that each has his own will.

RG: If God the Father is a physical being, does that mean he came to be in time? Or is he eternal outside of time?

PC: Well, this is a part of our doctrine that’s not completely clear. It’s not something that is frequently discussed.

RG: In all faiths there are aspects of doctrine that are not completely clear. That’s not unique to Mormonism.

PC: We do have a notion of eternal progression. We believe we’re all eternal beings in a sense. Before we were born we actually were spiritually in the presence of the Father.

RG: So there’s a belief in the pre-existence of the spirit of each individual?

PC: Yes.

RG: So all of us would have existed eternally but not in a bodily condition?

PC: Yes. God the Father became our spiritual Father before this earth existed; and he has a plan for us to come and receive bodies and return to live with him and continue to progress after this life. That’s part of our belief.

And we believe that the Father himself may have progressed to this point in his eternal progression and may not have always been exactly as he is now. This was discussed by Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, his successor, in the earliest days of the Church.

RG: Is there a belief in the bodily resurrection? Or is the belief that in the end we will return to the state of pure spirits?

PC: We will receive bodies and have eternal bodies.

RG: In the early days of the Church, the leaders and some others practiced polygamy — just like the Hebrew patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. But then polygamy was rejected in the Christian faith and in the Jewish faith. Similarly, polygamy has been rejected by the LDS Church, though many mistakenly believe that LDS people still practice polygamy. The church’s official teaching completely bans it. Am I correct?

PC: Yes. In the late 1800s, there was a lot of political pressure from the U.S. government not to practice polygamy. So partly out of necessity, the Church discontinued the practice of it. And it took a couple of decades to be completely out of practice, because you had families who were already in polygamist relationships. But then in the early 1900s, it was a second time very strongly emphasized that the church members could not practice polygamy. From that point on, members have been excommunicated if they do practice polygamy.

RG: Many non-LDS folks know of Mormonism because of the missionaries’ knock on the door. I’ve always been impressed by LDS young people’s willingness to give a year or more to the mission of spreading the faith. Did you yourself do that?

PC: When I was 19 years old, after my first year of college, I took two years off and went to Japan as a missionary. It’s an expectation for faithful members of the Church. Of course not everyone goes. It’s a big commitment and sacrifice, but growing up I always knew I would do it. I believed in what the Church stood for and it was part of my plan for life.

The mission is an amazing growing-up experience. You learn discipline, you learn to work hard. But I also found that my faith grew tremendously during that time.

RG: Mormons hold and live by a demanding moral code. I don’t just mean the rejection of alcohol or stimulants like caffeine. It is a very strict set of standards regarding personal honesty and integrity, sexual morality, the sanctity of marriage, the mission of sharing the faith and so forth.

PC: Yes, it’s a very involved religion. We believe that we should be involved in furthering God’s kingdom and living up to Christ’s example and teachings as much as possible. We take seriously what we call the law of chastity, forbidding sexual relationships outside of marriage. Of course, Christians believe this in general and for the most part strive to live up to it. But Mormons do seem to have a lot of success in raising children who keep these covenants.

As far as marriage goes, we believe that marriage is actually an important part of our life and our eternal progression afterwards.

RG: The Church believes in marriage as the union of husband and wife. Its leadership and faithful became active in the debate about marriage in California and Proposition 8. I’m guessing that you and other LDS people knew that there would be a price for that.

PC: Sure. I was in the Bay area. It was not a place where traditional views about marriage were popular.

RG: Did you yourself get involved?

PC: Yes. There was encouragement from the Church to get involved and share our views on this out in California. I was at Stanford, and I thought I had something to say about law and marriage that wasn’t being heard on Stanford’s campus. A few of us organized in support of Proposition 8. A number of students would tell us that they agreed with us but were afraid to say so in that environment.

RG: I suppose you were accustomed to being in the minority.

PC: Yes, exactly. And one thing about our church as it relates to this issue is that our church emphasizes sexual purity overall very strongly. Our moral code makes strong demands on all of us in this area.

RG: What are the principal components of the spiritual life of a faithful Mormon?

PC: Prayer, certainly. Our most frequent prayers are individual and personal. We pray at home as families, and also in church. Services are three hours long on Sunday. And every member of the church, since we don’t have a paid ministry, is asked to fulfill some calling to serve the church as a community.

RG: In Salt Lake City, I once visited facilities that are used in the Mormon’s social services’ outreach, and I was very impressed by how much work the church does for the poor here in the United States and around the world.

PC: Well, the church is highly organized, and we do a lot in other countries and also locally. Whenever there’s a disaster, our members will get involved in the assistance effort. We don’t just send money, food, clothing and so forth; we show up in person to help. In fact, during the flooding in northern New Jersey this summer after Hurricane Irene, many of our local congregations canceled church services so that our members could donate tens of thousands of man-hours cleaning up disaster damage in the homes of the community. I had the opportunity to make the trip up a couple of days with a group of about 50 church members from the Princeton area to take part in this effort.

RG: Now in some places, for example here in Princeton, there is an LDS Church. In other places there’s something called a temple.

PC: We have fewer than 150 temples throughout the world. The nearest one here is in Manhattan. And the temple’s not even open on Sunday, so it’s not a place for Sunday meetings. It’s a building that serves a larger area geographically. And is a place for peace and quiet and contemplating and also doing ordinances such as weddings.

RG: You used the term ordinances. Is that something similar to what in the Catholic and Orthodox traditions would be called sacraments?

PC: Yes, it is similar to that. They are ritual activities. For example, when I was married, the marriage was performed in the temple.

We also do some ordinances for deceased people. Our normal baptism does not need to be done in the temple. Someone can be baptized in any body of water. But we also perform in proxy for deceased people.

RG: So that would be at the request of relatives or something like that?

PC: Our belief, actually, is that there are ordinances that God has laid out for us that need to be completed for our salvation, such as baptism. They of course don’t earn us salvation, but they’re sort of necessary steps. And clearly there are numerous people who do not have this opportunity, who may never even hear the name of Jesus Christ during their life.

We believe that God requires all people who’ve reached a certain age to have these ordinances completed, and the physical part at least can be done in proxy in a temple. Of course the more important acceptance of the ordinance has to be done by the individual who may dwell in the spirit world. But the physical part we can do for them. This is usually done by researching your own family, but we also endeavor to do this work for the human family at large.

RG: The LDS church leadership is deeply committed to religious liberty for everyone, not just Mormons. Do you suppose that comes out of the Mormons’ own history of being persecuted?

PC: Yes, I think it probably does. Even early on, Joseph Smith gave a newspaper 13 articles of faith to describe our church. And one of those had to do with religious freedom. If you look at the historical context, it does seem that this coincides with the lack of freedom that the LDS were experiencing. But also, one of our central beliefs is free will. The decision for faith must be a free one. Even God himself does not coerce faith. Religious freedom is a central part of God’s plan for us.

The next installment of “Keeping Faith” will run on Thursday, Dec. 15.