Anti-Mormon Media

[prisonchaplain]

Even the most conciliatory and respectful interfaith dialogues between evangelicals and LDS will include some measure of hope from both sides that the other will convert. Blomberg and Robinson (co-authors of How Wide the Divide: A Mormon and an Evangelical in Conversation) admitted that each side would continue to do so. Johnson and Millet, in their public discourses, likewise recognize that each side has errors they would like to correct (though they are careful to say only God can do the convincing).

It's only natural that former members will be more aggressive. Also, that some strains of evangelical find it necessary to be direct and "high-pressure" in presenting their "questions/concerns."

So, what to do? From the other side, I recently had two LDS elders/missionaries come by our house. I listened a bit, engaged in some general dialogue. One was from Korea, so we spoke a bit about that, since I'd spent six years there. At the end, I offered to pray with them, and asked God to bless the sincerity of their hearts and to grant us all wisdom and discernment.

Sometimes the conversation can take on a whole different tone by infusing it with humanness (I happen to be a person here!) and prayer (who can argue with a prayer for help and blessing offered in Jesus' name?)

[GADBabaganoosh]

(who can argue with a prayer for help and blessing offered in Jesus' name?)

Sadly the most vehement would. They would say we were offering it in the name of a different Jesus. I can't tell you the number of times I had that thrown at me on my mission.

But other than that, no one can argue a sincere prayer in the name of christ, uttered by a child of God.

[prisonchaplain]

I understand the idea of your doctrine of Jesus being different...but I wouldn't carry that to the extent of saying the Jesus you pray to is literally different. Our understandings about him perhaps, but not a different person. But yeah...some folks just don't want to play nice...:::sigh:::

[Faded]

Well, the reason agree that its important to know what anti-LDS people are saying, is because one of the favorite arguments they like to use is that we are all "being lied to".

They like to claim that the REAL doctrine is being hidden from us, and that the books we are reading (BOM, Pearl, DC) are only part of the story, and that our own church is hiding the rest from us...

You can read the above 3 books all you want, but that will only prepare you for misinterpretations people make about what is plainly written in them. In that case, you can simply open the books and point out the words to people.

But it doesn't prepare you for things that anti-LDS people claim are "left out of the books". Because obviously, opening the books to prove to people that those bits of false doctrine aren't in there, doesn't help your case.

They're just going to fire back with, "See? Its not in there! You're church is covering things up!"

Most of the non-LDS people I talk to think that the modern LDS church, is the same as the fundamentalists with multiple wives. They think all the LDS men have multiple wives. When I try to explain that this is not true, people gang up on me and say, "Well, of course she'll deny it. She's brain washed to believe that she has to protect their way of life!"

When I was 15 (and inactive), my 40-year-old neighbor saw me wearing my old CTR ring, for nostalgia sake. She said, "You should take that off and throw it away!"

When I asked her why, she said, "That church has NO respect for women. Did you know that if you go to Utah wearing that ring, a Mormon boy your age can just walk up and take you as his wife, and there would be nothing you could do about it? The laws are different out there, you wouldn't have any rights.." bla, bla, bla. Scared the daylights out of me, because I was about to travel through Utah, on my way to visit my sister! lol. I found out it wasn't true before I went, but still...

People actually think this stuff is the truth.

When Catholics and Protestants want to engage in honest dialog with us about the differences between our beliefs that is one thing. But when they actively and falsely report "Mormon conspiracy theories" that are blatantly false and completely unprovable, that is when it just turns my stomach in disgust.

The Spanish Inquisition is not still ongoing and non-Catholic "heretics" are no longer being tortured and burned alive to "save their souls from hell." The Southern Baptist Church is no longer defending the right to own slaves as "ordained of God," preaching the inferiority of the African race, and entirely refusing admission for membership to all blacks. Yet these things are very real facts of their religious history. Nobody is beating Catholics and Southern Baptists over the head with their history nearly to the same extent we experience. You don't have a general consensus myth, actively upheld and encouraged by "men of God" (ministers, pastors, priests, etc.) that Catholic Inquisitions are still ongoing with non-Catholics being tortured and burned at the stake to this very day. You don't have anyone claiming that Southern Baptists are still holding African Americans as their slaves. But for some idiotic reason, your ecclesiastical leadership among both Protestants and Catholics actively continues to perpetuate the myth that we're still practicing polygamy. Those religious leaders who do it know they're lying. They know that polygamy is 120 years gone. But they maintain the myth that we're still practicing it and doing nothing to set their followers straight on the matter because it helps keep people afraid of "the Mormons." The media helps them too.

When "Christians" and "men of God" undertake bearing false witness, lying and deceiving their flock in some misguided attempt to protect their followers, then their complete hypocrisy becomes apparent and undoubtedly God is not with them. "For by their fruits ye shall know them." Lies and deceptions are not the ways of God.

[Jamie123]

When Catholics and Protestants want to engage in honest dialog with us about the differences between our beliefs that is one thing. But when they actively and falsely report "Mormon conspiracy theories" that are blatantly false and completely unprovable, that is when it just turns my stomach in disgust.

The Spanish Inquisition is not still ongoing and non-Catholic "heretics" are no longer being tortured and burned alive to "save their souls from hell." The Southern Baptist Church is no longer defending the right to own slaves as "ordained of God," preaching the inferiority of the African race, and entirely refusing admission for membership to all blacks. Yet these things are very real facts of their religious history. Nobody is beating Catholics and Southern Baptists over the head with their history nearly to the same extent we experience. You don't have a general consensus myth, actively upheld and encouraged by "men of God" (ministers, pastors, priests, etc.) that Catholic Inquisitions are still ongoing with non-Catholics being tortured and burned at the stake to this very day. You don't have anyone claiming that Southern Baptists are still holding African Americans as their slaves. But for some idiotic reason, your ecclesiastical leadership among both Protestants and Catholics actively continues to perpetuate the myth that we're still practicing polygamy. Those religious leaders who do it know they're lying. They know that polygamy is 120 years gone. But they maintain the myth that we're still practicing it and doing nothing to set their followers straight on the matter because it helps keep people afraid of "the Mormons." The media helps them too.

When "Christians" and "men of God" undertake bearing false witness, lying and deceiving their flock in some misguided attempt to protect their followers, then their complete hypocrisy becomes apparent and undoubtedly God is not with them. "For by their fruits ye shall know them." Lies and deceptions are not the ways of God.

I wouldn't be so sure of that. For the record I've known a lot of...well not hostility exactly, but open disappoval...from evangelicals towards Roman Catholics and "High Church" or liberal protestants. I remember once going to an evangelical "free church" in Loughborough where a friend was getting married. Chatting to one of the ministers afterwards, I remarked how sad it was that in my own village of Shepshed there was so little dialogue between the ecumenical "Churches Together in Shepshed" (consisting of the Roman Catholics, Anglicans and one of the three Baptist churches) and the evangelical free church. His reply was something like: "It would do more harm than good! Don't you know the Catholics actually believe the bread and wine physically become the body and blood of Christ?" Though this "factlet" is often thrown in Catholics' faces, it's as bad a misrepresentation as many things you read in the anti-LDS media.

I've always admired what Lutheran bishop Krister Stendahl once said about inter-faith dialogue. He summed it up in three rules:

(1) When you are trying to understand another religion, you should ask the adherents of that religion and not its enemies.

(2) Don't compare your best to their worst.

(3) Leave room for "holy envy".

Edited September 28, 2010 by Jamie123

[Faded]

You're referencing a hostile retelling of a legitimate and accepted belief of the Roman Catholic Church: Transubstantiation. Yes the wording is contemptuous in its disapproval, but it does reference something that the RCC really does believe in.

This is not the same thing as continually perpetuating the myth that polygamy is still being practiced by us 120 years after we ended the practice of it. Protestants might even go so far as to say, "Catholics would resume their bloody Inquisitions if they could get away with such barbarism," but what you do not see the vast majority of Protestants insistently claiming that the horrors of the Inquisitions -- torture, murder, burning at the stake, etc -- are still fully in practice by the entire Roman Catholic Church right now and that the RCC never stopped torturing and murdering people they branded as "heretics." You do see a majority of Protestant and Catholics clergy either doing nothing to set the record straight or actively perpetuating the myth that we still practice polygamy to this very day.

[Jamie123]

You're referencing a hostile retelling of a legitimate and accepted belief of the Roman Catholic Church: Transubstantiation. Yes the wording is contemptuous in its disapproval, but it does reference something that the RCC really does believe in.

Yes - transubstantiation IS genuinely believed in by Catholics, but what does "transubstantiation" actually mean? Does Heavenly Father give us grace through the real presence of His Son in Holy Communion? Or is it just some crazy combination of voodoo magic and cannibalism? You'll hear variations of the latter from some anti-Catholics, and as far as I can see it's just as bad a misrepresentation as anything the anti-Mormons will tell you.

This is not the same thing as continually perpetuating the myth that polygamy is still being practiced by us 120 years after we ended the practice of it. Protestants might even go so far as to say, "Catholics would resume their bloody Inquisitions if they could get away with such barbarism," but what you do not see the vast majority of Protestants insistently claiming that the horrors of the Inquisitions -- torture, murder, burning at the stake, etc -- are still fully in practice by the entire Roman Catholic Church right now and that the RCC never stopped torturing and murdering people they branded as "heretics." You do see a majority of Protestant and Catholics clergy either doing nothing to set the record straight or actively perpetuating the myth that we still practice polygamy to this very day.

Your experience may be different from mine, but I've never heard any minister, Protestant or Catholic suggest that polygamy is still practiced in the mainstream LDS church. I admit I have heard heavy criticism of Mormons, but never worse than the anti-Catholic opinions expressed by evangelicals. In fact my old parish priest at Shepshed once said he had the highest respect for the Mormons. He and his family had had all missionary discussions, and their decision not to join had nothing to do with any irrational hatred of Mormonism - they just simply never felt quite comfortable with it. Edited September 28, 2010 by Jamie123

[prisonchaplain]

Just for the record, I've never heard it said by evangelical clergy, nor even by folk like Walter Martin, that Mormons continue to practice polygamy today. Sometimes there is jesting about polygamy, but never a serious suggestion that it continues. The closest I've seen is criticism that the decision to end it was perported to be revelation, but was likely really due to pressure from the federal government. Of course, that is accusatory speculation at best, and usually offered as off-the-cuff opinion, rather than a serious analysis of the historical material.

[Faded]

I guess what has me puzzled is that the vast majority of people you run into out there seem to only know one thing about "Mormons": They know that we have more than one wife -- which we don't of course. Seeing as how the one "fact" they think they know is completely false, it intrigues me. So many pastors, priests and ministers will actively preach to their flock about "the dangers of Mormonism." Clearly they're not bothering to dispel the myth. I think the majority just lie by omission, letting the mythology do the work of "keeping them scared of Mormonism" for them.

Most of the propagandist garbage that Melissa569 is mentioning came from somewhere. In the 1800's and earlier in the 1900's it most certainly did come from the ministers of religion who fanned the flames of sensationalist opinions and fabricated all manner of stories to scare their followers and make Mormons sound as bad as possible.

If the majority do not continue to perpetuate blatant faslehoods about us, that's a step in the right direction. But seeing how most of the lies came from their fellow ministers of yesteryear, it seems reasonable enough to expect them to actively seek to dispell the myths and right those wrongs. And yes there are some "Christian" ministries that continue to invent false information who do so with the support and blessing of the larger Christian denominations. Pastors, priests and ministers buy their books and publications as text to help them preach against Mormonism to their congregations. They're a little more careful about being overly sensationalist because in this day and age, people are a little less gullible than in generations past. "Mormons have horns" isn't likely to be believed for instance.

Ultimately, what I don't see happening is an accurate portrayal of our beliefs and lifestyle being conveyed. What people have heard about Mormons and what we actually are is night to day different in almost every case.

[bytebear]

I think the polygamy thing persists because people are out their practicing it. Yes, they are not LDS, but imagine if a rogue group of Jews continued animal sacrifice. Imagine the sordid stories the Jewish community would have to deal with. It's unfortunate that we have to carry the burden placed on our backs by people who freely admit they they are not LDS, but it is what it is.

[Jamie123]

I'm not denying that the polygamy myth does still exist. I was just questioning the idea of the non-Mormon clergy as a homogeneous group pointing its collective finger at the Mormons. You hear urban myths and half-truths about practically any group or philosophy: Try reading Jack Chick's tracts on Freemasonry, Evolution and Catholicism and ask yourself if they're any worse than his tract on Mormonism.

Before the missionaries first came to me in 1991, this is what I could have told you about the Mormons:

1. Their real name is "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints".

2. They are a "cult".

3. They don't drink - and their definition of "drink" includes coffee, tea and Coca Cola.

4. Mormon men can have as many wives as they like.

5. They have something called the Book of Mormon, though I'm not exactly sure what's in it. Possibly something about some Jewish guy going to America in ancient times - but I could be wrong.

6. There are a lot of them in one particular part of America. It might possibly be Utah, but I'm not sure. I've a vague idea that they think the Garden of Eden might have been in America.

For me point 4 was certainly the most colourful and interesting, and I think it tends to stick in people's minds for that very reason.

Typical schoolyard conversation about Mormonism:

First boy: Ha ha! Can you believe Joe Schmo is one of those crazy Mormons? What a laugh!

Second boy: Mock not! Don't you know those guys can have as many wives as they want?

Edited September 30, 2010 by Jamie123