Just a few weeks ago, Rusty Bowers, who had served as the Republican Speaker of the House in Arizona got himself royally ousted by his party--by thirty points! Warn't a bit close. He was marked for defeat by the Orange Man himself, after Bowers' riveting appearance before the January 6th committee of the House.
That public testimony outlined how the Trump Administration attempted to alter the outcome of Arizona's 2020 election, in which, contrary to expectation, Trump lost. Conservatism has been a way of life in Arizona, almost ever since statehood. It's the home of the 1964 Republican Presidential candidate, Barry Goldwater, but as America moves more and more toward and into the sunbelt, the state's newcomers don't always share a willingness to stand at the state's traditional political walls. Arizona's two senators are both Democratic, and, as unlikely as it seemed, the state went for Biden in 2020.
When it did, the old guard went loco. For his honesty before the committee, Bowers was formally censured by his party. Subsequently, he got blown out by a opposing candidate who claimed Donald Trump had won the 2020 election "in a landslide," as the boss is want to say.
Just recently, in an interview with CNN, Bowers repeated his claims about the 2020 election, then sounded an alarm about the direction of his Republican lawmakers, his old and presumably ex-friends, including the bloke who beat him, a man who believes the country is under siege by "a conspiracy headed up by the Devil himself." Don't misinterpret: "the Devil" is not Joe Biden. It's the actual real Satan.
Bowers is a devout Mormon, a BYU grad, a man who gains his trust in doing right from the faith he is not at all afraid of expressing. He told the January 6th committee he could not violate his oath to the Constitution and remain faithful to his beliefs. “I do not want to be a winner by cheating. I will not play with laws I swore allegiance to with any contrived desire toward deflection of my deep foundational desire to follow God’s will, as I believe he led my conscience to embrace,” Bowers said, reading a passage from his personal journal.
I'm thankful for Rusty Bowers. I needed him to say that because Saturday night at the BYU-Oregon football game, a bunch of Oregonians took up a "F___ the Mormons" chant, at which I all too easily smiled. Brigham Young was no saint, despite his claims to the contrary; and those pioneer Mormons who came across the country in handcarts--you know the story--weren't saints either, even though they called themselves such.
Holier-than-thou-ism doesn't win friends easily. LDS history in Indiana and Illinois isn't pretty, but neither was their behavior. The anger, the violence committed against Mormons was inexcusable, but sometimes, sadly, understandable.
But then the Mountain Meadows Massacre was undertaken by the faithful, not some renegades, or the Paiutes the Mormons wanted the world to blame. After it happened, Mormons--Brigham Young himself-- created an campaign of utter silence that lasted nearly a century.
Mormons aren't saints, no matter what they call themselves, and Utah isn't Zion, even if it does have a national park whose beauty is quite heavenly.
I just finished Under the Banner of Heaven, Jon Krakauer's devastating analysis of the "Blood Atonement" carried out by cold-blooded killers following their radical, fundamentalist reading of the LDS's own wildly manic scriptures. The Laffertys were stark, raving mad, and totally convinced they were the only truly righteous in Utah, a state brim-full of righteousness.
What happened at the Oregon/BYU game was reprehensible, and I am sorry for entertaining the notion for a few seconds that maybe Brigham Young's own brood (the man had 55 wives and 57 children) deserved condemnation.
I needed Rusty Bowers to tell me that his Mormon faith was directly responsible for his standing firm for the truth in the mess that is Arizona politics these days. I needed to hear that his Mormon faith was at the heart and soul of his strength. This morning I'm thankful for ex-Rep. Rusty Bowers.
It's not just what we believe, but how we practice what we believe that is the real essence of our faith.
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