Free Republic

Just before the Democratic National Convention kicks off Monday, Joe Biden’s campaign staged a national virtual event Saturday in which a parade of Latter-day Saints told fellow church members why they support the former vice president. And sometimes they also said why they see President Donald Trump as wicked. It came during an event where participants opened and closed with prayer, quoted scriptures, repeated teachings of church leaders and sometimes shared testimonies that helped put Biden in a divine light. “We can probably all agree that Donald Trump isn’t good or right,” said Abigail Woodfield, president of BYU College Democrats....

Of all the dozens and dozens of signs pointing to the imminent return of Christ, two clearly stand above the rest: 1. In a technical sense the Gospel has now been preached to every nation on earth in fulfillment of Mark 13:10.  Some scholars argue that we must interpret the Greek word for "nation" strictly as an individual ethnic group, but even if that is the correct interpretation, this prophecy was likely fulfilled sometime toward the end of the 20th century or the beginning of this century.  There are certainly still several isolated tribes where the Gospel has not been preached,...

Rattling around my brain for some time now has been the Manifesto of 1890 by the Church of Latter Day Saints and how it led to the eventual statehood for Utah. Basically, the Manifesto of 1890 had the church strip the polygamy tenets from their religion. Islam in its current form is incompatible with a democratic republic. The United States has a precedence in having a religion change one of its core tenets. Sharia Law could be separated from Islam so that Islam could be compatible with the western world. The problem with this idea though, is that the government...

West Jordan • Many professional boxers have colorful and jarring nicknames designed to instill fear in opponents, capture the imagination of the general public and perhaps bring some extra publicity and headlines. But when it came to having a trademark moniker, Utah's Gene Fullmer wasn't like many of his counterparts. In a 2009 interview with The Salt Lake Tribune, Fullmer said he just preferred to be called by the name his parents, Tuff and Mary Fullmer, gave him when he was born in 1931. The former world middleweight boxing champion died late Monday night at a care center near his...

Christianity is by far the largest religion in the United States; more than three-quarters of Americans identify as Christians. A little more than half of us identify as Protestants, about 23 percent as Catholic and about 2 percent as Mormon. But what about the rest of us? In the Western U.S., Buddhists represent the largest non-Christian religious bloc in most states. In 20 states, mostly in the Midwest and South, Islam is the largest non-Christian faith tradition. And in 15 states, mostly in the Northeast, Judaism has the most followers after Christianity. Hindus come in second place in Arizona and...

A fledgling Mormon dating site reports that IRI, the intellectual property rights arm of the LDS Church, is attempting to shutter the planned launch of Mormon Match because of its use of the word “Mormon” and its appropriation of an image of the Salt Lake Temple.Here’s what the front page of the site-in-progress looks like now:For a good discussion of the issues involved, see Holly Welker’s post in Religion Dispatches. (I don’t think RD’s headline is quite accurate, though; as far as I know, the Church has not filed a lawsuit but applied pressure and commenced an “opposition proceeding.” According...

NBC’s Utah affiliate KSL-TV strikes again. The station, which is owned by the Mormon church, announced today that it won’t air the network’s new comedy series New Normal. Co-created by Ryan Murphy and Ali Adler, The New Normal stars Andrew Rannells and Justin Bartha as gay partners who are having a baby through a surrogate. “For our brand, this program simply feels inappropriate on several dimensions, especially during family viewing time,” Jeff Simpson, CEO of KSL’s parent company, Bonneville International, told local papers, including KSL sibling Deseret News. The New Normal is scheduled to air Tuesdays at 8:30 PM. Simpson...

Given the depth and breadth of the cumulative circumstantial and direct physical evidence related to the timing of the Mormon movement, the character and motive of Joseph Smith, the manner in which Smith claimed to find and translate the Book of Mormon, the errant and peculiar characteristics of the Book of Mormon and the true and contradictory translation of the Book of Abraham, there is more than enough reason to conclude that Joseph Smith was a fraud and that the Book of Mormon is a work of fiction.

VATICAN, November 28, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – One of the highest ranking cardinals in the Vatican has said that the United States is “well on the way” to the persecution of Christians. Cardinal Raymond Burke Cardinal Raymond Burke, former Archbishop of St. Louis and now the head of the Vatican’s highest court, told Catholic News Agency that he could envision a time when the Catholic Church in the U.S., “even by announcing her own teaching,” is accused of “engaging in illegal activity, for instance, in its teaching on human sexuality.” Asked if the cardinal could even see American Catholics being arrested...

Polygamist leader’s request to remove judge denied SAN ANTONIO (AP) — A visiting judge on Tuesday denied polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs’ second attempt to remove the West Texas judge overseeing his upcoming sexual assault trial, this time because of alleged bias after she made calls to inquire about progress in the case and accepted extra police protection because of threats associated with it. Judge John Hyde of Midland listened to more than five hours of testimony on Jeffs’ motion to recuse District Judge Barbara Walther during a hearing Monday but wrote a day later that much of it rested...

NEW YORK — The profane musical "The Book of Mormon" and the zany revival of "Anything Goes" received the most nominations Friday from the Drama Desk, which honors both Broadway and off-Broadway productions.

SALT LAKE CITY — The immigration controversy has reached the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints with one Latino member of the Utah community's request that Mexico suspend all LDS missionary visas to the nation. Raul Lopez-Vargas, former vice president of Centro Civico Mexicano, one of Utah's oldest Latino community centers, has sent a letter to Mexican Presdient Felipe Calderon seeking the temporary suspension of visas for LDS missionaries. He also delivered the letter in person Monday to the Mexican consulate in Utah. Lopez-Vargas says the request is a response to his view that the LDS Church won't take...

The makers of the hit television reality show “Jon & Kate Plus 8” are producing a new series that easily could be called “Kody & Meri & Janelle & Robyn Plus 15.” “Sister Wives,” a seven-episode series for the TLC network, is the first reality show that follows a polygamist family. Filmmakers are profiling Kody Brown and his three sister wives, a group of fundamentalist Mormons in Utah (the family does not want to reveal the city they live in). The show, which was introduced at the Television Critics Association summer press tour in Beverly Hills Friday, premieres Sept. 26...

The problem with writing a column about Glenn Beck is that everyone already has said everything about him. His story has been told, his politics dissected, his rhetoric debated, his personal life invaded and his net worth revealed. And it's all been done to the point of redundancy. And yet the Glenn Beck conversation thrives, especially in Mormon circles. In an effort to take something of a sociological snapshot, I posted this question on my Facebook wall on Thursday: "What do you think of Glenn Beck?" Within a couple of hours, 10 people had responded. Some of them commented more...

... A new Web site pitching itself as a Mormon myth-buster recently launched, causing me once again to wonder about why we Latter-day Saints take so much joy in spreading unsubstantiated stories about ourselves. The site, HolyFetch.com, is run by Casey Cummings, a resident of Kaysville, Utah, who says he got interested in the world of Mormon myths when he was on his mission in Austria. The site's basic format is similar to that of sites like snopes.com. People submit popular Mormon myths, and then Cummings investigates them and deems them either "true" or "false." I'm frankly surprised that something...

It looked like a stunning reversal: the same church that helped defeat gay marriage in California standing with gay-rights activists on an anti-discrimination law in its own backyard. On Tuesday night, after a series of clandestine meetings between local gay-rights backers and Mormons in Salt Lake City, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced it would support proposed city laws that would prohibit discrimination against gays in housing and employment. The ordinances passed and history was made: It marked the first time the Salt Lake City-based church had supported gay-rights legislation.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” today that he wept with relief when the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the Mormons, announced a 1978 revelation that the priesthood would no longer be denied to persons of African descent. Romney’s eyes appeared to fill with tears as he discussed the emotional subject during a high-stakes appearance that he handled with no major blunders. “I was anxious to see a change in my church,” said the Republican presidential candidate, appearing for the full hour just two weeks ahead of the crucial Iowa caucuses. “I can...

One of the big stories in the Republican presidential race last week was a series of controversial survey calls in Iowa and New Hampshire that asked respondents some pointed questions about Mitt Romney. Specifically, voters in the first two Republican contests received calls with negative messages about the former governor’s religion, his Vietnam-era military deferments, his sons’ lack of military service, and the notion that Mormons believe the Book of Mormon is superior to the Bible. The question, of course, was who was responsible for the calls. For one thing, they may have been illegal — as the Union Leader...

DALLAS - When a pair of Mormon missionaries knocked at the door of Jerry Pierce's home in a north Dallas suburb last month, he marshaled his arguments and stood his ground. "I look forward to encounters like that. I like to talk to them about the nature of Christ and who Jesus is," said Pierce, a staunch Southern Baptist, the biggest Protestant denomination in the United States. Mitt Romney, a Mormon, is running into similar resistance as he tries to win over Southern Baptists and other evangelical Protestants in the race for the Republican Party's nomination for the 2008 U.S....

Whodunnit? Here is why it is unlikely that Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson or any top-tier challenger to Mitt Romney had anything to do with the wave of anti-Mormon, Anti-Romney phone calls in Iowa and New Hampshire. Think about the reward. Would the questions asked by the firm elicit any meaningful data for the campaign who wrote them? Would the relative reward of a few dozen voters changing their minds about Romney because of his Mormonism be worth the avalanche of embarassment and ill-will that would accrue to the candidate who authorized the phone calls? Political consultants aren't stupid -- they...