Here’s a wonderful example of the sort of unbiased media attention coming our way due to Mitt Romney’s White House bid:
In a front-page article the Asia Times, a fairly significant voice in Far East news, their reporter reviews the history and doctrines of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The primary source material appears to be an article on the Catholic.com apologetic web site entitled “The Wacky World of Joseph Smith,” and the infamous South Park episode “All About Mormons.”
Yes, someone has clearly done their homework.
Here are some of the more amusing examples of what the reporter has discovered about us:
Voters may reject a candidate whose religious views are crazy, for example, someone who thinks he talks to God. [MP: Has the reporter ever heard of “prayer”?] Does Romney believe that he himself will become God, as Mormon doctrine teaches?
* * *
Just what is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, commonly called the Mormons? Joseph Smith Jr, the forger, treasure-hunter, magician, polygamist and self-styled priest-king of the American continent, invented an American version of Europe’s ethnically-founded idolatry. Each European tribe that rebelled against Christianity styled itself the Chosen People. Smith concocted a tale in which Americans actually were the Chosen People, and America was the Promised Land of the ancient Hebrews and Jesus Christ. In short, Smith took to the extremes of fantasy and forgery an impulse towards national self-worship that always lurks somewhere in American Christianity.
* * *
Belief in the Book of Mormon is one of the strangest collective delusions in history. The circumstances of its forgery are transparent and exhaustively documented. After supposedly finding golden tablets composed by the aptly-named Angel Moroni, Smith “translated” 16 pages of them using his treasure-hunting stones. A friend showed the manuscript to his suspicious wife, who hid or destroyed it. Smith could not exactly reproduce the “translation” which he had dictated free-style, and stood in danger of exposure were he to produce a different version. Instead he received a new revelation to translate not those golden tablets, but yet another set of tablets that no one else could see. [MP: Note that the reporter hopeless garbles the details of the early translation attempts. One would hope that getting the basic facts right would be the first step to writing a major article.]
Historians have demonstrated that a sizable chunk of the supposed Book of Mormon was copied from a novel by a certain Reverend Solomon Spalding, who concocted the notion of an ancient Hebrew migration to North America as an entertainment. [MP: For crying out loud, even Fawn Brodie and the Tanners reject the Spaulding theory!]
* * *
If the Austro-Hungarian Empire was a tyranny tempered by incompetence, as the old joke goes, the Mormon Church is a megalomania atrophied by age. Although the Latter Day Saints claim 13 million members, less than one-third are active. Unlike American Christian denominations, the Mormons have had small success in Africa and Asia, the centers of Christian evangelization. As punishment for their sins, the Mormons must live in their promised land in the Rockies. [MP: The reporter pulled the “one-third” figure out of nowhere. He ignores the success we’ve seen in Latin and South America, and in Asian countries like Mongolia. And he fails to note that more Mormons live outside the United States than inside it.]
And so forth.
For all the unintended humor that one can find in this article, it unfortunately gives us a glimpse of what the Latter-day Saint movement is up against in Asia and the world at large. Despite what we think of ourselves, there is still a great deal of misunderstanding driven by misinformation from the popular press.
We have a lot of work ahead of us.
It’s making a comeback. Even some of the ”Recovery from Mormonism” brain trust are blaming Oliver Cowdery or Sidney Rigdon for the Book of Mormon–demonstrating once again the lack of a coherent counter-explanation that makes sense of all the data.
With his treasure hunting and magic practices certain part’s of the Bible are used against it. Specifically Deut. 18:10 and Jeremiah 29:8,9 is used to say Joseph Smith could not be chosen as a prophet. Anybody mixed up in the occult practices cannot be a prophet in their mind. I am not sure the Old Testament prevent’s God from choosing Joseph Smith. One would have to exalt the Old Testament as the final authority for God not God as i believe. Since God is higher than the Old Testament, the law and it’s rule’s he can choose Joseph Smith.
Here’s a link to an article in the American Spectator about Gordon B. Hinckley. It’s a little more balanced. I hope the link works.
http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=12684
Interesting article, Brent. Thank you for sharing that.
There are some historical inaccuracies in the section on the Mark Hofmann saga, to wit:
This overstates the case. Hinckley and the Church leaders and historians weren’t nearly so gullible. Hofmann claimed to have authentic letters. Experts confirmed they were likely the real thing. The Church has a mission to collect items of historical importance, so they bought them. Hinckley always expressed reservations about their authenticity, using phrases like, “They are interesting documents of whose authenticity we are not certain and may never be,” etc.
See:
http://en.fairlatterdaysaints.org/Mark_Hofmann
This is just patently untrue. The Church, in fact, published the full text of the Salamander Letter in the Church News, and its text was reproduced in publications around the United States and the world. The original documents were protected in accordance with responsible archiving procedures, but the Church didn’t hide the text.
See:
http://en.fairlatterdaysaints.org/Church_reaction_to_Hofmann_forgeries
This is the strangest thing of all — the notion that a prophet of God couldn’t be deceived! The scriptures have multiple examples of prophets who were deceived by people whom the trusted. God doesn’t endow them with a “Holy Ghost lie detector” that goes off any time they speak to a dishonest person.
It frustrates me that the history of the Church is so often written by its critics.
I don’t know if they trusted Mark Hoffmann. They certainly let handwriting expert’s to decide on the validity of his documents. I see revelation as coming in the form of yes, no, go, or pause. And it’s sometime’s hard to discern if God is answering you, or you giving yourself a flawed answer. Outside of an unambiguous worded prophetic revelation it would be hard to excercise discernment on such a guy. No such clear revelation was claimed at the time by either the LDS, or my Community of Christ/RLDS leadership.
We ended up with the Joseph Smith 3rd Blessing. I am not sure whether we ended up with any other document’s or not. But we printed it for a time in the back of our Book of Doctrine and Covenants. That was until his deception was uncovered. And that took more sophisticated tests than they had when it was authenticated.
One of the complaint’s i have read is that Mark Hoffmann would not have forged so much stuff without the LDS church. It’s true he saw money to be made. If the Lord wanted to stop the guy from victimizing the church he could have. I don’t think the Lord choosing to be silent, or not correcting church leader’s mean they are never inspired.
I also think it’s possible for the Lord to let a spiritual leader think God confirmed their bad decision for them. And Hinckley tried to test his decision via the handwriting expert’s.
Whatever people may say about the church’s appearance in the media, or its methods of outreach, it is simply impossible to deny there is misrepresentation and misinformation sold (whether sold unknowingly or knowingly-I believe both happen) to the world. I view it is as ridiculous to see the church judged based on fallacies or speculations assumed to be true. The Spaulding theory is a perfect example. No assessment grounded in such things can be viewed as acceptable in my eyes. At least not with a much more thorough consideration of the facts. There are plenty of things to attack the church on, couldn’t they at least pick something with a basis in fact, or at least something that hasn’t been dealt with by many scholars?
The linked wiki page does not address the church’s handling of the Smith-Stowell letter between January 1983 (when the church purchased it for $15,000) and May 1985 (when the letter’s text was released by the church).
Good point, Justin. I’ll look into adding something about that.
Justin,
I was aware of the letter but had to go through Turley’s book to understand its history.
I don’t see what the excitement is over. The letter doesn’t really say anything that would make it urgent to deal with at the same level as, say, the Salamander letter or the KEP discovery, for which every effort was made to get something published at the first reasonable opportunity. The Stowell letter doesn’t really make very many claims that would shock someone who read Bushman’s 1984 book and Hinckley was right, even in hindsight, not to take a move as long as its authenticity was suspect.
If more historical department personnel had been aware of its existence perhaps more urgency would have been taken to take the steps to authenticate it. As soon as the Salamander letter makes its appearance, I think it is understandable that the Stowell letter is placed further on the backburner. Why would there be a rush to publish it in August 1984 when it was known that a transcript of the letter was already circulating?
That is just some of my reaction, but the FAIR wiki response, if any, will be determined by FAIR’s collective analysis. Of course we will take any suggestions we get here in bloggernacle into consideration. Thanks, Justin, for bringing this issue to my attention.
Keller has a good point. When President Hinckley purchased the Stowell letter in January 1983 the Salamander Letter — and its surrounding controversy — had not yet appeared. The Church has a mandate to acquire material related to its history, so sometimes dubious or unusual things come along. To expect the First Presidency to run to the media every time they acquire something curious is unreasonable.
Considering the timeline of events following the appearance of the Salamander Letter, I think the Church acted with appropriate prudence and caution. That’s an opinion, of course.
I’ve never known God to do for us what we could reasonably do ourselves. Even though God did provide the victory, Gideon and three hundred soldiers still had to go out and fight the battle [Judges 7].
Indeed, the D&C addressed that issue directly to Joseph Smith.
35 Marvel not that I said unto you: Here is wisdom, show it not unto the world—for I said, show it not unto the world, that you may be preserved.
36 Behold, I do not say that you shall not show it unto the righteous;
37 But as you cannot always judge the righteous, or as you cannot always tell the wicked from the righteous, therefore I say unto you, hold your peace until I shall see fit to make all things known unto the world concerning the matter.
(Doctrine and Covenants | Section 10:35 – 37)
The Lord makes it very clear that no one can “always tell the wicked from the righteous,” even Joseph Smith, and even with regard to the vitally important matter of the Book of Mormon translation.
God doesn’t dash about averting muggings, mobbings, murders, or murmuring. There are far greater evils and tragedies that unrestrained agency permits, and the LDS worldview has no problem with the theodicy there.
Why on earth ought members of the Church presume themselves to be exempt or immune? Hofmann had his choices, and made them.
It is important to remember too that in 1983, President Hinckley was the sole functioning member of the First Presidency. His workload was enormous, and I doubt very much that he gave any thought to the Stowell letter.
Subsequent history demonstrates, I think, how retiring Pres. Hinckley was in doing things on his own initiative until he became President of the Church. When he finally took the reins (even though he had been the de facto administrator and leader of the Church for years under Presidents Kimball, Benson, and (to an extent) Hunter, he was remarkably careful not to run ahead of them.)
Critics may scoff, but I very much suspect that President Hinckley (if he thought about it at all) would not have necessarily thought that releasing such a document without analysis was his decision to make.
Until the appearance of Salamander, and Hofmann’s efforts to use dupes like Brent Metcalfe to convince people about Oliver Cowdery histories and the like, it was hardly a priority for an under-strength First Presidency.
Besides, if the Church had announced that it was convinced it was a forgery, one can imagine the hue and cry. If Hofmann was going to forge, probably better for the Church in the long-haul that it came out in the way that it did.
With the forgery charge his evidence remind’s me of something Jerald and Sandra Tanner wrote. Did not they write something called Covering up the Black Whole in The Book of Mormon? I can’t give a summary of it. I don’t see making a case, coming to conclusion’s, throwing quote’s out as presenting an unquestionably documented research. I disagree with stuff that’s supposedly well documented that i read all the time.
I don’t think it was lost 16 page’s, but 116. Anyway the author of the article relied on somebody else’s research. And the Catholic article relied on still somebody else’s Anti-Mormon research.
With Joseph Smith being a polygamist i do not get the idea any of the wive’s thought he was a bad man. The assumption is if someone is a polygamist they can’t be a good man. I don’t see what’s said about him as evidence he was a hypocrite or a fraud. I get the feeling he was a sincere man.