Posted on 04/19/2012 9:03:29 PM PDT by Colofornian
When presidential contender Rick Santorum bowed out of the GOP White House race April 10, it cleared the way for Mitt Romney’s all-but-inevitable nomination. Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will for the first time see one of the faithful nominated for president by a major political party.
But while the faithful rejoice, so do the church critics, whose cries of hosanna may be just as loud as LDS members’. For them, Romney’s nomination is an opportunity for the nation to finally pick up on their rebuke of the church’s beliefs and practices, as a wider liberal audience narrows its scrutiny of Romney as the ultimate challenger to Barack Obama in the presidential fall election.
And the LDS Church is bracing itself for scrutiny. Voters across the country are looking to the Internet for answers, which is cause for concern for the church, especially since late 2011, when Reuters news services published an unscripted, audio-recorded talk Elder Marlin Jensen gave to a religious-studies class at Utah State University. In the candid conversation, Jensen—who is a General Authority, in the church’s First Quorum of the Seventy—acknowledged that people were leaving the church en masse, and that since the church’s early history, “We’ve never had a period of—I’ll call it apostasy—like we’re having now.”
Critics say the uncomfortable doctrines of the LDS Church are often what scare members away, and it’s that information they want to get out to the general public.
“I am concerned that most journalists don’t know that much about Mormonism,” says Richard Packham, a spokesman for the ExMormon Foundation, which holds annual conferences for those who have left the LDS flock. He says that in the past few months, he’s been receiving frequent calls from international journalists asking about the church. Packham, in turn, has provided them with his testimony of the Mormon problem.
“First of all, they go to the Mormon church, and the public-relations [staff] give them a sweet, sugary story about how nice it is and how wonderful the church is—and it’s deceptive.” He sees church PR efforts of the past few years as being carefully orchestrated to prepare for this moment of public attention.
“It isn’t coincidental that the church has got this ‘I Am a Mormon’ campaign going and that they are urging members to get on the Internet and spread their testimony,” Packham says of an ad campaign that features videos of members introducing themselves as Mormons. The campaign has featured average Mormons and more well-known Mormons, including Brandon Flowers, lead singer of The Killers.
In 2011, the church hired tech guru and entrepreneur Jesse Stay as a social-media strategist. By May 2011, Stay had helped the LDS Church claim Facebook’s No. 1 ranking for churches and religious organizations—a ranking the church has held as of this issue’s press date, having 587,776 “likes.”
Packham, whose organization runs ExMormon.org, which hosts forums for disaffected former church members and other critics, hopes the uncomfortable questions the site has posed over the years will now emerge in the national discourse, thanks to the presidential election.
Packham has even developed questions he offers to reporters to grill Romney about his faith. He suggests asking Romney whether, if the church no longer believes in polygamy, it believes the polygamist wives of church founders still join them in the afterlife.
“Reporters don’t have the sense to ask: ‘Well, Brigham Young was sealed to about 50 wives, do you believe they are with him now in the Celestial Kingdom?’” Packham says.
John Dehlin, while a member of the LDS Church,* has for years sought to offer a resource to questioning members that strikes a balance between sites with clear axes to grind and staunch LDS Church apologists.
“I’m talking with reporters from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, CBS—and they don’t know where to get [LDS] interpretations and perspectives from, because so often the church PR just won’t engage with them,” Dehlin says.
His nonprofit Open Stories Foundation features a podcast where he hosts pro and con speakers to talk about hot topics of LDS interest. He says in the past year, his podcasts have more than doubled their downloads, now averaging 25,000 to 35,000 downloads. He hopes sites like his can offer media and other members of the public a neutral LDS resource. As for the impact of dissenting Mormon resources, Dehlin believes more stories are going to come out about the church.
“A lot of reporters have told me they were waiting for Romney to clinch the nomination before they started putting stories out,” Dehlin says. “I think a lot of that stuff is going to be hitting now.”
But others are doubtful. Fred Karger, a former Ronald Reagan staffer and the only gay Republican presidential candidate, has been largely self-financing a costly campaign (he’d spent more than $400,000 as of the end of 2011) aimed largely at sticking it to Romney about his loyalty to the church and the LDS Church’s involvement in campaigning for 2008’s Proposition 8 to repeal same-sex marriage in California.
“I brought up some of my concerns, and they usually land with a thud,” Karger says. “There is a very hesitant feeling from all circles to bring that issue up.”
University of Utah political-science professor Matthew Burbank also doubts anti-Mormon lines of enquiry will tangle up the GOP candidate. Burbank likens church critics assailing Romney to the “birther” movement that tried to discredit Obama’s candidacy in the 2008 election by suggesting he was born in Africa instead of the United States.
Burbank doesn’t see the religious-obedience question resonating with the general public the way financial or sex scandals do. “It’s unlikely at the campaign level that that’s going to be a big issue,” Burbank says.
But even if a difference isn’t felt on Election Day, for Packham, the opportunity is a vital one for Americans—Mormons and non-Mormons—to ask harder questions about the LDS faith; the kind of questions he wishes he would have asked himself earlier in life. Packham, 79, spent the first 25 years of his life as a devout Mormon, having served a mission and been married in the temple. He didn’t scrutinize his own faith until later in his life.
Though his falling away resulted in him separating from his wife of eight years and their three children, he doesn’t regret the questions he’s asked and hopes more will do the same.
“I expect the church leaders aren’t too happy about the [publicity] they’re getting,” Packham says. “They’re concerned about what they call ‘misinformation,’ which is their code word for the unpleasant truths about Mormonism—but it’s got to come out.”
This WHAT?
Exposing HERESY, lies and deception?
I agree with you 100%.
However: MORMONism is NOT 'christian'. It is a HERESY - a false teaching; and it MUST be exposed as such.
I would suggest that you and your neighbors ask your priest to have a training session about MORMONism.
Find out what the RCC knows and teaches about it.
Still trying to float this boat I see.
MORMONism HIGHJACKED Christianity (well, is TRYING to) and will send a soul FLYING into HELL!
Would those be MORMON, perhaps?
A LOT of them have managed to DISAPPEAR from veiw.
Funny and ACCURATE!
What a combo!
Oh?
I have MISSED the 'fact' that he has the nomination of the Republican Party.
Yeah its been all over ALL of the Networks. Which is nice cuz now we don't need to waste time with Primaries and Conventions and such we just have to tune into MSNBC or FOX and find out who they picked to be the nominees. [/sarc]
And then you DIE!
1 Corinthians 6:9-10
9. Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived:
Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders
10. nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.
"Sad to see your endless attacks against Americans and the church they choose to attend condoned here."
If it bothers you just don't have the religion forum included in what you routinely see. Read the help information and you can configure FR so that you'll never see any of the stuff posted to the religion forum and won't even know it exists if that's what you want. If you find some people are insisting on putting their religion assertions and arguments in other than the religion forum just contact the FR admin and they'll see that posts are moved to the religion forum if their focus is primarily religion rather than news and current events.
No one need stop coming to FR just because there is a forum that allows religious arguments they don't like seeing. If they say that's why they left then their focus was on finding a religious site the thought was properly moderated, not in finding a solid Conservative news and activism site. Regards
One of the reasons Mitts has been chosen is to distract us from the thug Obama
He’s not running on religion. He’s running on the economy. I guess sharia law is preferable to some, ‘cause it’s coming.
Is that law based on religion??
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THE
DOCTRINE AND COVENANTS OF THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS SECTION 132
51–57, Emma Smith is counseled (commanded) to be faithful and true; 58–66, Laws governing the plurality of wives are set forth.
51 Verily, I say unto you: A commandment I give unto mine handmaid, Emma Smith, your wife, whom I have given unto you, that she stay herself and partake not of that which I commanded you to offer unto her; for I did it, saith the Lord, to aprove you all, as I did Abraham, and that I might require an offering at your hand, by covenant and sacrifice.
52 And let mine handmaid, Emma Smith, areceive all those that have been given unto my servant Joseph, and who are virtuous and pure before me; and those who are not pure, and have said they were pure, shall be destroyed, saith the Lord God.
53 For I am the Lord thy God, and ye shall obey my voice; and I give unto my servant Joseph that he shall be made ruler over many things; for he hath been afaithful over a few things, and from henceforth I will strengthen him.
55 But if she will not abide this commandment, then shall my servant Joseph do all things for her, even as he hath said; and I will bless him and multiply him and give unto him an ahundredfold in this world, of fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, houses and lands, wives and children, and crowns of beternal lives in the eternal worlds.
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This is the religion forum if you don’t like the discussion stay away.
This discussion is about mormonISM not individual mormons.
mormonISM will be laid bare, exposed for what it is - SLC is at the same time excited about Romney fulling prophecy and terrified people will find out what mormonISM actually is.
place marker
You’re right.
Straw man argument. I don't believe any of the 911 hijackers are running for office this go around.
Much better question you should be asking:
When was the last time a Mormon seized a government office and used it to further the killing of tens of thousands of innocent babies - subsidized by the taxpayers - and then undermined the sacred institution of marriage by willfully appointing liberal, gay-favoring, judges, and followed that up by personally approving hundreds of gay marriages, and then followed it up by attacking the liberty of citizens using coercive government mandates?
Gee, I can only think of one time and one Mormon who did this... and I'm guessing you want to pull the lever to put him in office?
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