Tossing Out Their Cake and Having It Too

There is a peculiar character that haunts Mormonish circles who sometimes is a Mormon and usually not. This person is not the same as the Jack Mormon who maintains ties to his religious community but falters in observance or faith and will set down the cigarrette to tell you straight out “Yeah, I’m a Mormon.” This person, though two decades absent from Sunday meetings, knows in detail what is wrong with them. This person for the most part would not identify himself as a Mormon, except when claiming a say in what the church should be. In that special case, no concept of Mormonness may ignore him. In The Nigger of the “Narcissus”, Joseph Conrad described him well:

“He was the man that cannot steer, that cannot splice, that dodges the work on dark nights; that, aloft, holds on frantically with both arms and legs, and swears at the wind, the sleet, the darkness; the man who curses the sea while others work. The man who is the last out and the first in when all hands are called. The man who can’t do most things and won’t do the rest. The pet of philanthropists and self-seeking landlubbers. The sympathetic and deserving creature that knows all about his rights, but knows nothing of courage, of endurance, and of the unexpressed faith, of the unspoken loyalty that knits together a ship’s company.”