It is, first, at home that we must contradict the perverse idealism of the ideological extremist, religious or otherwise. If we can’t talk our own off the ledge, we have little say -- authoritatively anyway -- to others. So, whether your folk are blowing up women’s clinics, practicing white or black supremacy, or one of the other favored expressions of religio-political extremism, I invite you commemorate September 11 by saying “no” to extremism among your own, not just to others. My own is Mormonism and, though it is a relatively new and small tradition, it is intense and full of the kind of pitfalls that characterize revelatory communities. Many extremists have been drawn to it and many others have been drawn away from it into extremism.

Mormonism is broad religious movement comprised of many churches of diverse beliefs and mutual antagonism. All of them look to Joseph Smith as the means of their founding vision and many, notwithstanding their radical differences, share similar names to a confusing degree. The most populous and well known is the 12-million member Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or “LDS,” headquartered in Salt Lake City. Its thorn-in-the-side, embarrassing cousins are the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or “FLDS,” a rural community of 6,000 that straddles the Arizona-Utah border. The LDS prefer to act as if the FLDS don’t exist; a literal expression of their excommunicated status. In turn, the FLDS delight in charging the LDS with apostasy from Smith’s restoration of Old Testament marriage forms or, as it was called historically, “plural marriage.” Though originally a much more complex form of relationship, plural marriage was reduced to the label and practice of “polygamy:” the marriage of more than one woman to one man. The LDS have not practiced polygamy for over a century; the FLDS practice a twisted form of it with vengeance, especially towards their daughters whom they force to marry early and their sons whom they expel to maintain the marital prerogatives of the fathers. In this and much else, the FLDS are foremost among the extremists of the Mormon movement.

Yesterday, jury selection began in the trial of Warren Jeffs, leader of the FLDS, on charges of being an accomplice to rape. Americans always stress “alleged” when talking about ongoing court matters and, yes, in the U.S., the accused is innocent until proven guilty. Here the circumstances don’t seem to require such scrupulosity. The substance of the charges do not appear to trouble the defendant since his defense is that it isn’t rape, but religion that defines what he did to the victim. He was not pimping for his brethren or prostituting the fourteen-year-old when he coerced her nuptials to her cousin, he claims. Luckily for Jeffs the groom was uncharacteristically young -- nineteen, not ninety -- but it appears that he was no less able to take” no” for an answer when his child bride resisted him sexually. Her mother, too, is depicted as having “carried” the bride down the aisle against her protests.

Jeffs will be judged by a jury of his citizen peers who will determine the relevancy of his religious defense to the two felony charges against him. I’m guessing they will say “no.” No, you are wrong. No, this is not religion; it is rape. These words need to be said by his religious peers also. The various churches within Mormonism need to say to the FLDS: “No, this is not and was not plural marriage as practiced by our ancestors. It is sexual exploitation. It is contrary to the substance and spirit of the tradition you claim to be a part of.” Insiders need to remind insiders of Smith’s words written from a Missouri jail when his own conscience was being coerced: “We have learned by sad experience that it is the nature and disposition of almost all men, as soon as they get a little authority, as they suppose, they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion. . . . No power or influence can or ought to be maintained by virtue of the priesthood, only by persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned; By kindness, and pure knowledge, which shall greatly enlarge the soul without hypocrisy, and without guile.”

Threatening, much less killing people into cooperation, is both demonic and doomed to fail, though it will cause much heartache before it does. We must all say “no” to the extremists in our own traditions because if they won’t listen to us, they won’t listen to anybody.