Free Republic

...anti-Mormon stories coming out now that it looks like Mitt Romney vs. Barack Obama in November. Mormons vs. Democratic morons. Brigham Young vs. Tax 'em Young (aka Tax 'em Old, Tax 'em All). Mormons baptize the dead. Democrats have the dead vote. It's going to be a fun election season.

The Christian World just recently celebrated Easter. But as a general rule, it seems to me that Easter Sunday is NOT properly observed -at least in the ward's I have belonged to. I remember vividly an Easter Sunday (15 years ago) wherein the sacrament meeting was a missionary farewell--no particular emphasis on Easter, Christ's Atonement of Resurrection. I went to Sunday School--the instructor simply taught the next lesson in the manual--no emphasis whatsoever on Easter related topics. I went to Priesthood Meeting--same story in my Elder's Quorum. Finally, after going from classroom to classroom I discovered that the Priest's quorum...

Each spring millions of Christians celebrate the death and resurrection of their Lord. In light of the fact that this is one of the most important events within the Christian tradition, it is important for us to examine and understand the spiritual significance of Christ's sacrifice in light of the teachings of past LDS leaders. Philippians 2:7 tells us that Christ made Himself of no reputation and took "the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men." Hebrews 2:17 tells us this was done in order that He might make "reconciliation for the sins of the...

Mormons and race. The Mormon Church excluded African-Americans from leadership until 1978, so it’s no surprise that the number of black Mormons is very small. What may be more of a surprise is that the number is growing. African-Americans now make up about 3 percent of the 5.5 million Mormons in the United States. Blacks make up about 11 percent of the U.S. population, so they’re still dramatically underrepresented. And while the Mormon Church is making special efforts to reach out to African-Americans, it’s hard to explain away—short of a full renunciation, which doesn’t seem likely—passages from the Book of...

FARMINGTON, Utah -- Sen. Orrin Hatch predicted President Obama's campaign team would use Mitt Romney's Mormon faith against him in the general election. Speaking to a group of GOP delegates at a campaign stop Tuesday, the six-term Republican incumbent warned, "You watch, they're going to throw the Mormon church at him like you can't believe." Asked to elaborate in an interview later, Hatch fingered campaign adviser David Axelrod and White House aide David Plouffe as the masterminds who would insert the issue into the campaign. "Let me tell you something. The Obama people have some of the best political consultants...

Larry O'Donnell makes a living attacking Mormonism. We noted years ago how he lambasted the LDS church as "demented" and "ridiculous." The MSNBC host was back at it again tonight. On this evening's Last Word, O'Donnell dismissed Mormonism as a religion "invented" by its founder, Joseph Smith, for purposes of excusing his infidelity. A sneering O'Donnell added that Mitt Romney "says his believes" in his religion. View the video here.

Yesterday, Religion Dispatches contributor Max Mueller published a piece at Slate detailing posthumous marriage rites performed in LDS temples that have wed Mormon and non-Mormon slaveholders to their former slave concubines—including Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings. The article sheds light on another form of posthumous religious rites performed in LDS temples. In addition to posthumous baptisms, LDS Church members routinely perform proxy temple marriages or “sealings” for their ancestors and other deceased couples. Church doctrine teaches that marriages performed within LDS temples “seal” husband and wife together not only for mortality but for eternity. Mormonism uniquely emphasizes eternal marriage as...

Mary sealed to Heavenly Father by LDS proxy temple rites The Mormon Baptism of Mary, Mother of God By Helen Radkey Hail Holy Queen Mary (the mother of Jesus) was a Jewish woman of Nazareth in Galilee, identified in the New Testament as the wife of Joseph and the mother of Jesus of Nazareth. Christians believe Mary conceived Jesus miraculously by the agency of the Holy Spirit. For twenty centuries, Christians have cherished Mary and given her titles that reflect their love and admiration—such as the Blessed Virgin Mary, Theotokos (Mother of God), Our Lady, and Queen of Heaven. As...

...notes from...Utah Valley University’s Mormonism and the Internet conference. ...Joanna Brooks, “The Challenge of Mormon Studies for the Digital Age”...Charge of modern Mormon duplicity: behind...public image of friendly clean-cut family types...are dark secrets and a sinister agenda. Brooks cites Daymon Smith’s ideas on Mormon discursive practices: trustworthy (official LDS) versus untrustworthy (other) sources; insider versus outsider narratives; guarded public speech to avoid open discussion of private LDS knowledge. Do Mormons have a divided sense of self? Do LDS scholars write to different (insider and outsider) audiences? Traditional theocratic control of LDS history and sources contrasted with...open source world of modern...

...if Mitt Romney becomes the...nominee...Critics of Mormonism could well attack the LDS Church's racially-exclusionary past, while its defenders could charge prejudice against the...contemporary LDS Church. The current controversy was sparked when the Washington Post published statements attributed to Randy Bott, a professor at LDS Church-owned Brigham Young University, repeating..."folk doctrine"...once offered to explain the ban... In a nutshell, the folk doctrine alleged that blacks were "cursed" by choices made in a pre-mortal confrontation, known among Mormons as the "war in heaven."... The Washington Post article provoked a strong reaction in Mormon circles...The president of Genesis, a support group for black...

OREM -- Online exploration of formerly taboo subjects is changing how Mormons talk about their faith, both officially and socially. What this means to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its members was the subject of a UVU conference which launched on Thursday. Joanna Brooks, an award-winning religious scholar and writer, gave the keynote address of the "Mormonism and the Internet" gathering on Thursday morning. "One of our big challenges right now is that young people do have a lot of access to information about our history that is not discussed at home and at church," Brooks...

Yesterday, Religion Dispatches contributor Max Mueller published a piece at Slate detailing posthumous marriage rites performed in LDS temples that have wed Mormon and non-Mormon slaveholders to their former slave concubines—including Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings. The article sheds light on another form of posthumous religious rites performed in LDS temples. In addition to posthumous baptisms, LDS Church members routinely perform proxy temple marriages or “sealings” for their ancestors and other deceased couples. Church doctrine teaches that marriages performed within LDS temples “seal” husband and wife together not only for mortality but for eternity. Mormonism uniquely emphasizes eternal marriage as...

Thomas Jefferson’s most famous slave, and the mother of several of the third American president’s children, died in 1835...We don’t know when news of Joseph Smith’s... religious movement reached...where Sally Hemings spent most of her 62 years, as a house servant and eventually as Jefferson’s “paramour.” But even if Mormon missionaries had come to Monticello during Heming’s lifetime, they would, per the instructions of Smith himself, have worked first to convert the masters, and only then—with the masters’ permission—the slaves. Heming’s chance to become a Mormon came much later, in a Mormon temple in Mesa, Ariz., 13 years after the...

John Dehlin first started the Open Stories Foundation as a means of giving Mormons with questions of faith a neutral resource for questions. Now, after having polled more than 3,000 doubting members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Dehlin will release his survey results at a conference at Utah Valley University on Thursday. “I went through my own struggles with my testimony 11 or 12 years ago when I was seminary teacher,” Dehlin says. “It was really painful and hard for me...” Since that time, Dehlin has started a podcast, Mormon Stories, that runs in conjunction with...

...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...

The Republican presidential primaries this year have turned into a religious census. There is little precedent in modern politics for the extent to which a state’s choice for a nominee has coincided so closely with how many of its ballots were cast by white evangelical voters. Where evangelicals cast a minority of the ballots, Mitt Romney has won. Where evangelical voters predominated, Romney has lost, in most cases to Rick Santorum. Romney’s victory Tuesday in Illinois fit snugly within this pattern. The result pointed to a continuing problem for Santorum: He has yet to break through in places where evangelicals...

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...