"hypnotic triplets" was coined by my exmo friend and professor of philosophy, Alex, e.g.: "Lives were touched, hearts were warmed, (pause, change pitch and tempo) tears were shed."
lol, so true =)
would be awesome if someone made a compilation of examples of this from general conference talks =)
Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 08/16/2011 03:54AM by Nick Humphrey.
i remember even as a TBM it always bugged the hell out of me how the GA's spoke and prayed in GC and i would always refer to something on a truman madsen tape i had about how joseph smith said that "god" prefers praying in a natural voice, comparing it to how this one minister was speaking to joseph once in a fire-and-damnation type voice and truman said that joseph said "you wanna wrestle?"
that always made me laugh =) good ole joe =) but seriously, most GA's have always bugged me with the way they talk. i remember at least at his end that david b haight talked in a normal way, which i liked (and he didnt use a teleprompter--i also respected that--and that was another thing that bugged me--teleprompter? these are "apostles" for god's sake!)
I wonder how many of the hypnotic and choked up rhetorical moves go back to Smith and how many of the teary, emotional, sentimental moves that I associate most with Mormonism are owing to the development and refinement of a "peculiar" culture and history.
...the charismatic preachers of his day, particularly the tent revival preachers of the Second Great Awakening. Remember, Protestant preachers got hired by congregations, who wanted the most inspirational preachers they could find. Your average LDS bishop would never get hired, unless there was a congregation of insomniacs who needed to be put to sleep.
I have seen pictures, drawings, renderings of people swooning and flailing about during a typical camp revival meeting circa 1820-something. The BOM supports some of this to the extent that it owes its rhetoric and emotionalism to the same revival meetings (see Grant Palmer).
Now General Conference is a much more restrained affair than a camp revival meeting or a present day Pentacostal revival meeting. It is as though uptight Puritanism and money-loving Calvinism got the upper hand in the church, especially after Smith (seems like an understatement). Trembling lips, efforts at restraining tears, apologies for getting emotional are not uncommon in Mormon talks. And yet there it is: the effort to deny or restrain emotion works to show the audience just how sincere the speaker is in displaying the presumably potent and therefore deep (one gags to say it: "spiritual") emotion.
The confusion of emotionalism with spiritualism is thoroughly marbled into Mormonism and to me marks it as a superficial and under-developed faith, which is what one expects from a religion ran by businessmen and lawyers.
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/16/2011 12:40PM by derrida.