Free Republic

...numerous times Republican candidates and operatives sought to inject "Reverend Jeremiah Wright" into a conversation... ...a glaring double standard exists in Republican circles now...a Republican brings forth suspicious and dubious credentials vis-a-vis his faith of choice... Book of Mormon1 Nephi 12:23..."...became a dark, and loathsome, and a filthy people..." 1 Nephi 13:15 (Gentiles) "...they were white, and exceedingly fair and beautiful..." 2 Nephi 5:21 "...they were white, and exceedingly fair and delightsome, that they might not be enticing unto my people the Lord God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them." 2 Nephi 30:6..."they shall be a...

Listen to these words from the LDS hymn, “O My Father”: “In the heav’ns are parents single? No, the thought makes reason stare! Truth is reason, truth eternal Tells me I’ve a mother there.” It’s a beautiful hymn, written by Eliza R. Snow. We sang it in our ward yesterday. No doubt it was sung in hundreds of other LDS wards and branches. (link) It’s clear Mormons believe in a Heavenly Mother. So why does she gets so little press? My colleague Cal Grondahl quips it’s because she left Heavenly Father a long time ago. Jokes aside, it may because...

From an English person's point of view, pretending to myself that I'd never heard of mormonism, the programme and the delivery and testimonies confirm that mormonism is a cult. All the happy, happy naivety of the TBMs came across as treacly and insincere. Holland was obviously uncomfortable with the interview and lied, obviously, about shunning and denied that the BofA papyri were intrinsic to the translation. Jeff Ricks portrayed, in the midst of a mormon crowd but secretly in the corner, the temple death oaths but this came across as delivered in an oppressive atmosphere and there appeared to be...

We challenge you to question Mormonism. We focus on a source of current events and other information related to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), and to a lesser extent, other groups that claim Joseph Smith, Jr. as a true prophet. As Evangelical Christians, we also desire to convert Mormons and the state of Utah in particular to the real Jesus Christ. MormonInfo.org is a ministry of Courageous Christians United and hosts the Salt Lake City Ex-Mormon Meetup. Differences Between Mormonism and Christianity Mormonism Christianity What is the Church? The LDS Church is the only true...

Mitt's prerogative THE past few days have brought some new calls for Mitt Romney to directly address the fact that he is a Mormon, notably from Frank Bruni in the New York Times and Randall Balmer at the New Republic. It's not as if people ever stopped talking about this issue, but there are several factors that helped drive Mr Romney's religion back into the spotlight, including the fact that he is ever more likely to be the Republican nominee; that he won the Nevada caucus on Saturday with a lot of support from Mormons there; and that Michael Kranish...

Suspicious test scores in roughly 200 school districts resemble those that entangled Atlanta in the biggest cheating scandal in American history, an investigation by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution shows. The newspaper analyzed test results for 69,000 public schools and found high concentrations of suspect math or reading scores in school systems from coast to coast. The findings represent an unprecedented examination of the integrity of school testing. The analysis doesn’t prove cheating. But it reveals that test scores in hundreds of cities followed a pattern that, in Atlanta, indicated cheating in multiple schools. A tainted and largely unpoliced universe of untrustworthy...

SALT LAKE CITY -- The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is attempting to remake downtown Salt Lake City by opening the shopping mall portion of a $2 billion mixed-use space that spans two city blocks and features a meandering creek and retractable glass roofs. Church partner and retail operator Taubman Centers Inc. expects 50,000 visitors today, when City Creek Center's nearly 90 stores open. City Creek Center has outdoor walkways, plazas, fireplaces and metal sculptures. Waterfalls, fountains and a trout pond are part of the village-like development, which includes condominiums and is joined by a pedestrian bridge over...

Two Nevadans are being heard from on the subject of Mitt Romney and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Salon carried an article by Boulder City native Sally Denton, author of bestsellers like The Blue Grass Conspiracy and The Money and the Power. The article is titled “Romney and the White Horse Prophecy.” Denton’s article recalls the presidential campaign of Mormon Church founder Joseph Smith in 1844: “Challenging Democrat James Polk and Whig Henry Clay, Smith prophesied that if the U.S. Congress did not accede to his demands that ‘they shall be broken up as a government and...

Mormons are not Christians in the traditional sense. They hold queer beliefs that would shock many people. Some of these beliefs are downright racist and have some black leaders in Charlotte, N.C. very worried what could happen if Romney manages to get elected as President of the United States. Mormon literature says "dark skinned people" are from "the seed of Cain." "According to this doctrine, it is forbidden to have “interracial marriages” with black people and those that do, will be “cursed” … Their doctrine said the Negro race is cursed as we come from “the seed of Cain." Yet...

More than 125 years ago, the young Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was roiled by a tawdry affair of power-based predator adultery by elderly apostle Albert Carrington, who once named to the church hierarchy used his authority to seduce far younger women, including British converts barely out of their teens. Despite allegations stretching back a decade, Carrington escaped punishment until one of his mistresses confessed the sexual escapades to her new husband. At that point, his fall was swift. Historian Gary Bergera recounts the Carrington case in the Summer 2011 issue of Journal of Mormon History. (It’s the...

The press is pawing over Mitt Romney’s religion, and the candidate may just welcome this scrutiny. It...diverts attention from...Mitt Romney, flip-flopper. Critics point shrilly to well over a dozen strong positions he has conveniently changed...Romney’s concessions...are not uncharacteristic of the church to which he belongs. Mormonism has its own history of political accommodation. SNIP Both the official church and Mormons...backed away from certain beliefs they had gone into the wilderness to secure: ...theocracy of melding secular government with religious hierarchy, a communal living order very like socialism and...plural marriage. These were bedrock doctrines, touchstones of Mormon orthodoxy that could not...be...

Post by Mike SGiven the increased media interest in the Church over the past year, the Mormon Newsroom recently published a document entitled “Mormonism 101: FAQ” . Overall, the document does a good job of clearing up some misconceptions about the Church, and it is very well written, but I do have an issue with some of the manner in which doctrinal things appear to have been changed. To start with, there are some things that I really like about the FAQ:I like that the focus is on Christ. From the document: In addition to the above, Latter-day Saints believe...

Mitt Romney will be the Republican nominee for president. As a Mormon, Romney may become the first non-Christian president of the United States. With president Obama we had our first African American president, something unimaginable a couple of decades ago. It is something to be proud of! American society is evolving. Now we have the possibility of our first Mormon president. This is a very good thing: a stride forward for religious freedom. Mormons are nice people, and even if I don’t share their beliefs, I respect their beliefs and wish them well. A Mormon president would free American politics...

Media speculation abounds that Mitt Romney's poor performance among Evangelical voters in the 2012 Primaries is rooted in anti-Mormonism -- a sentiment that will surely intensify if the former governor loses this week in Alabama and Mississippi. My analysis of seven surveys conducted by YouGov from late January to early March 2012 (pooled n=7,000, with 1,791 likely Republican primary voters), however, suggests that Romney’s religion is not the main reason why he has not won over these voters.  For starters, the data disclose that Evangelical Republicans do not feel that much colder towards Mormons than their fellow partisans.  Non-Evangelical...

Policy or Doctrine: The Mormon Church ban of blacks before 1978

In all the extensive media coverage of Mitt Romney... not a word have I seen about the secrets of Mormonism, the secrets of Romney's life-long beliefs and practices... SNIP And why does Romney (and his church) want to keep people from knowing those secrets? Most Mormons will claim that they are not "secret," but merely..."sacred"...Mormons hold any number of other aspects...to be "sacred," and yet they don't hesitate to discuss them (for example: baptism, conferring the gift of the Holy Ghost, ordination to the priesthood, etc.)... ...I am going reveal those secrets... SNIP Part of the endowment ritual instructs the...

Bias: Having lost that tingly feeling up his leg, MSNBC's Chris Matthews savages GOP presidential candidates as belonging to cults. Well, at least they didn't spend two decades listening to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Imagine the uproar if Rush Limbaugh had called Islam a cult. Yet there was Matthews, whose legs once twitched at every word coming from Barack Obama's teleprompter, telling fellow MSNBC left-winger Ed Schultz in the presence of the Rev. Al Sharpton that the GOP has "two RCs — Roman Catholics — running and a Mormon, so three cultists running." Having Matthews, Schultz and Sharpton on the...

SALT LAKE CITY -- An LDS-oriented group is calling on GOP presidential hopeful Rick Santorum to disavow a pastor who made anti-Mormon comments earlier this week. In a news release, MormonVoices, which is associated with the Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research, called for Santorum to "condemn the anti-Mormon comments made by his supporter, an honorary Florida chairman, the Rev. O'Neal Dozier" of the Worldwide Christian Center. On Monday Dozier said "the Mormon religion is prejudiced against blacks, Jews and native Americans." He called Mormonism a "racist" religion and called on Romney to renounce it. The Church of Jesus Christ...

In state after state, evangelicals have sent Mitt Romney a clear message: We’re just not that into you. Some evangelicals do pull the lever for Romney. But consistently there is a wide gap between Romney’s support among evangelicals and his support among other groups. On average, there is a 19-point difference between Romney’s support among non-evangelicals and his support among evangelicals in Republican primaries, according to ABC News’s survey of primary states with exit- or entrance-polling data available. That’s a sizeable gap — and one that has complicated Romney’s path to the nomination. Evangelical leaders are dismissive of the notion...

Mormon scripture: God curses bad races with black skin2 Nephi 5:21"And the Lord had caused the cursing to come upon them, yea, even a sore cursing, because of their iniquity. For behold, they had hardened their hearts against him, that they had become like unto a flint; wherefore, as they were white, and exceedingly fair and delightsome, that they might not be enticing unto my people the Lord God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them." Alma 3: 6"And the skins of the Lamanites were dark, according to the mark which was set upon their fathers, which...