• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Mormons

Scientist says DNA challenges basic Mormon teachings

July 30, 2004

BY PATTY HENETZ



SALT LAKE CITY -- Fundamental teachings of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints about some events in the Book of Mormon are changing -- not through revelation, but through church-sanctioned scholars' reinterpretations, an Australian geneticist and former LDS bishop writes in a new book.

In Losing a Lost Tribe: Native Americans, DNA and the Mormon Church, author Simon Southerton applies his own and others' DNA research to Mormon beliefs, while also examining the writings of Brigham Young University scholars at the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies.

Southerton's work examines church teachings that American Indians and Polynesians have a historic bond with ancient Israelites. While the question of whether such a connection exists may seem like an arcane theological point to outsiders, to some Mormons, a reinterpretation would be startling and disturbing.

Southerton, once a bishop leading a local congregation in Brisbane, Australia, left the church because of his conclusion that no such tie exists. The church takes issue with his findings.

Southerton, a senior researcher with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization in Canberra, Australia, also takes aim at Foundation for Ancient Research's assertions that the Book of Mormon's events could only have occurred in parts of Mexico and Guatemala.

That interpretation goes against traditional church teachings that Book of Mormon events took place across the Western Hemisphere and that Native Americans are the descendants of the Hebrews who settled the Americas in 600 B.C., he notes.

''You've got Mormon apologists in their own publications rejecting what prophets have been saying for decades. This becomes very troubling for ordinary members of the church,'' Southerton said.

For a century or so, scientists have theorized that Asians migrated to the Americas across a land bridge at least 14,000 years ago. Over the past 20 years, researchers examining American Indian and Polynesian DNA have found no evidence of Israelite ancestry.

But Mormons have been taught to believe that the Book of Mormon -- the faith's keystone text -- is a literal record of God's dealings with the ancient inhabitants of the Americas. Both the LDS church and the BYU scholars disagree with Southerton's conclusions.

On its Web site, the church declares, ''Recent attacks on the veracity of the Book of Mormon based on DNA evidence are ill considered. Nothing in the Book of Mormon precludes migration into the Americas by peoples of Asiatic origin. The scientific issues relating to DNA, however, are numerous and complex.''

Southerton remains unconvinced by their arguments.

He said that, given the state of DNA research and increasing lay awareness of it, church leaders ought just to own up to the problems that continued literal teachings about the Book of Mormon present for American Indians and Polynesians.
Click to expand...

http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-mormon30.html
 
A little on the El Dorado polygamists

A former member of a polygamous sect has filed a lawsuit accusing three of his uncles of sexually abusing him when he was a child.

One of the defendants is the head of the sect that has been developing a retreat on a 1,300-acre site near the town of El Dorado, north of San Antonio.

The lawsuit by 21-year-old Brent Jeffs of Salt Lake County, Utah, says the three told him the actions were a way to make him a man.

The lawsuit was filed in Third District Court in Salt Lake City. It names Warren Jeffs and his brothers Blaine Jeffs and Leslie Jeffs as defendants.

Warren Jeffs is president of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

An attorney for the sect, Ron Parker, says the church and Jeffs deny the allegations. He says they believe the lawsuit is part of an ongoing effort by church enemies to defame it and its institutions.
Click to expand...

From http://www.woai.com/local/story

Although described in this story as "north of San Antonio," El Dorado (pronounced Eldorayda) is well up on the Edward's Plateau, west in semi-arid country. They've picked a spot with lots of open space, low property values, and hardrock conservative fundamentalist Protestants in charge. Jeffs needs to not annoy the neighbors. They all have gun racks in their trucks.
 
Have any of you read "Under the Banner of Heaven" by Jon Krakauer. It gives a good, serious history of Mormonism while also covering these modern polygamist sects. I guess the LDS heads didn't like the book but I thought he did a good job of emphasizing that the polygamists have all been excommunicated.

Baptizing people (who are dead) without their consent is an abomination.
 
Qestia said:
Baptizing people (who are dead) without their consent is an abomination.
Click to expand...

Makes you wonder how you would get their consent if they were dead. Anyone got Derek Acorah's phone number?

I think Baptising a child is wrong. Wait until it is old enough to understand. About 35 should do the trick.
 
Qestia said:
Have any of you read "Under the Banner of Heaven" by Jon Krakauer. It gives a good, serious history of Mormonism while also covering these modern polygamist sects. I guess the LDS heads didn't like the book but I thought he did a good job of emphasizing that the polygamists have all been excommunicated.

Baptizing people (who are dead) without their consent is an abomination.
Click to expand...

The church has long emphasised that members can only do proxy baptisms for their own deceased ancestors. The practice of doing proxy baptisms for all and sundry (but dead) was discontinued many years ago.

The principle behind baptisms for the dead is that this is a ceremony that can only be carried out by the living, so those who have died, but have since chosen to accept this gospel, cannot undergo this first and fundamental rite of passage into the religion.

The living do the work for the dead - as we cannot know who will and who will not accept the gospel, the dead are then left to decide if they will accept or reject this work done on their behalf.
 
Bosbaba said:
those who have died, but have since chosen to accept this gospel, cannot undergo this first and fundamental rite of passage into the religion.
Click to expand...

So, dead people can convert to Mormonism, but can't do the baptism themselves? Seems if they're able to convert, their salvation would not be contingent on the intervention of a living relative. I'm curious, is there a fee for this service?
 
Emperor said:
In more mormon-related news:

Three wives will guarantee you a place in paradise. The Taliban? No: welcome to the rebel Mormons

(Filed: 19/10/2003)


As a polygamous husband is jailed and traumatised women start to speak out, a siege mentality grips a fundamentalist Mormon sect, reports Julian Coman from Hildale, Utah

High in the mountains above the most notorious polygamous community in America, two grim-faced men on horseback have come to meet - but not welcome - me. "This is private property," said one. "No pictures. You have got to leave right now."

Warren Jeffs: the Mormon 'Prophet' under investigation
The men are blocking the way to a deep man-made cave. Here, according to the few locals prepared to talk, the elders of an eccentric breakaway Mormon sect have prepared a last stand against further interference by Utah state authorities - stockpiling food and, some say, weapons, as if in readiness for a siege.
Click to expand...

And yet more fun from these folk, who sound like great neighbors and pillars of their community:


Sect Took Out Loans Ahead of 'Doomsday'

By PAUL FOY
EPHRAIM, Utah (AP) - For more than a decade, a 9,000-member polygamist sect that believed civilization was about to end was borrowing money like there was no tomorrow.

Members of the sect - a renegade Mormon splinter group called the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints - took out one loan after another from the small-town Bank of Ephraim for business ventures that would prove highly speculative, even half-baked.

One loan went toward a watermelon farm, but not a single melon was ever planted and the bank had to foreclose on the farm. Another loan was taken out by a business that planned to convert military barracks into motels and housing. The venture, in which the church was a partner, collapsed when the barracks were found to have lead paint, asbestos and other hazards. Still another loan was made to a construction company that so underbid municipal sewer and street contracts it was unable to pay for materials, let alone labor. The bank had to write off that loan, too.

Ultimately, the bad loans - along with the embezzlement of nearly $5 million by the bank's head cashier - would lead to the collapse of the 99-year-old bank. Regulators shut it down in June at a cost of millions to shareholders and ordinary depositors who had nothing to do with the sect.

A bank failure was ``the last thing in my mind,'' said Chevrolet dealer Ron Greene, who lost about $100,000. ``I thought of it as the Rock of Gibraltar.''

The Bank of Ephraim had profited for many years from higher-interest loans to the sect, whose members live in the twin cities of Hildale and Colorado City astride the Utah-Arizona state line. But eventually the bank ``got in too deep,'' investing heavily in increasingly risky ventures with sect members who ``didn't have much to lose,'' Utah Banking Supervisor Jim Thomas said.

``They were locked into a community that is - not normal,'' Thomas said.

Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz., are a jumble of unfinished houses on dirt streets, where residents follow a strict pioneer-style dress code of long dresses, high collars and long hair for the women, and plain white shirts and dark trousers for the men. The men take multiple wives, producing dozens of children who supply cheap labor for business.

The insular sect is run by the reclusive Warren Jeffs, who lives in a compound surrounded by a 10-foot wall. Jeffs, 48, demands total obedience from his flock, and his church takes a share of business profits from members. He is buying ranches in Colorado and Texas for what authorities believe may be an exodus.

Jeffs does not grant interviews, and an attorney for the church, Rodney Parker, did not return calls for comment.

Keith Church, who joined the bank as president in 2000, said that after it failed, he learned from several people in the business community that sect members had taken a secret oath in 2000 to borrow as much money as they could to prepare for the day that civilization - along with the financial markets - collapsed.

Sect members who wanted to take out loans from the bank were allowed to put up a dubious form of collateral: their rights to use church land for business purposes.

At one point, the amount of money borrowed by members of the sect amounted to around $18 million, or about 90 percent of the institution's loan portfolio - three times higher than what prudent bank management dictates, regulators said. According to the state, an embezzlement scheme by cashier Randy K. McArthur finally pushed the bank over the edge. He pleaded guilty in September to bank fraud and is awaiting sentencing.

Investigators blamed the loan losses on poor business decisions, not outright fraud.

Church said he puts much of the blame for the bank's failure on a lack of aggressive oversight by regulators. He said he was trying to clean up the mess by calling in bad loans and lining up investors when the state shut the place down.

Many of the bank's customers accused regulators of tolerating the loans until the coming of the Salt Lake 2002 Winter Olympics ushered in a renewed crackdown by Utah law enforcement on polygamists.

With the collapse, 13 of 30 bank employees lost their jobs and pensions, and some must sell their houses. The bank's failure also left 50 uninsured depositors, including turkey farmers, the Chevy dealer and a state college, with a combined $3.6 million in losses. Many were small-business owners who learned too late that deposits over $100,000 are uninsured.

At Moroni Feed Co., which sells the Norbest brand of turkey, a $250,000 loss ``comes right out of the pocket'' of 65 family farms already struggling because of depressed prices, cooperative President David P. Bailey said.

``It's gone - our retirement,'' said Terrie Green, co-owner with her husband of Central Utah Title Co., a real estate title service. They lost $84,000.

Small-business owners mourned the passing of a friendly bank that gave them easy terms.

Ernest ``Gus'' Augustus, who opened a new restaurant on Main Street here, no longer has a $15,000 line of credit and said ``you can't get a dime'' out of other Utah banks.


12/06/04 14:20

© Copyright The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...

http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/news/story.jsp?idq=/ff/story/0001/20041206/1421813873.htm
 
Ex-LDS Church teacher may face excommunication

He wrote book questioning details of church's origins

By Carrie A. Moore
Deseret Morning News

A former employee of the LDS Church Education System is facing possible excommunication for a book he wrote questioning details about the origins of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Grant Palmer, who was employed by the church for 34 years and served as an LDS Institute director in Los Angeles, northern California and at the Utah State Prison before retiring, is scheduled for a church disciplinary council with leaders of his LDS stake on Sunday. The news was announced in a press release issued this week by Signature Books, publisher of Palmer's 2002 book, "An Insider's View of Mormon Origins."
Palmer told the Deseret Morning News he was aware that a press release had been issued by Signature but that he had not seen it.
His book calls into question the details of key events that LDS Church founder Joseph Smith chronicled in the early history of the faith. The book paints a different portrait than the official LDS version of some details surrounding the translation of the Book of Mormon, Smith's accounts of his visit with an angel named Moroni and the restoration of the faith's priesthood through an appearance of Christ's original apostles.

Palmer said he was surprised and dismayed that local LDS leaders are considering termination of his church membership.
"I regard myself as heretical regarding some of the church's teachings, but I don't view myself as an apostate," he said.
LDS Church spokesman Dale Bills said the church "considers disciplinary matters to be confidential" and declined further comment. The church disciplines members it considers to be apostate.
Palmer said he attends church meetings and pays tithing.
"I'm not out to attack the church at all. I don't have an agenda, I haven't committed a sin or criticized the general authorities. The book is an honest expression of what happened in the Mormon past," he said.
But some historians and scholars at church-owned Brigham Young University say Palmer's book is more than merely an attempt to explain details about early LDS origins to garden-variety Latter-day Saints.
Daniel Peterson, director of BYU's Middle Eastern Texts Initiative, said much of what Palmer writes about has long been known by LDS historians and has been used by critics of the church.
"What's made it effective is that it comes from a retired CES instructor who presents it in a gentle tone," Peterson said. "It's not screeching anti-Mormonism."
Peterson, who often fends off LDS critics on Internet forums, said many of those critics and disaffected Latter-day Saints have seen the book as "something of a godsend that they could give to relatives and friends that would be nonthreatening and have the same or more impact."
In fact, he said, some of the recent speculation on the Internet about Palmer's possible excommunication is "that it will deprive them of what would have been a pretty good tool" for criticizing the LDS Church.
The book has been roundly criticized in reviews done by the Foundation for Ancient Research in Mormon Studies (FARMS), comprised of LDS scholars and BYU faculty members who review scholarly work concerning the church.
James Allen, a retired BYU historian and former assistant LDS Church historian, wrote a FARMS review of the book and said he and some colleagues at BYU have discussed it.
"I think the consensus is that we feel bad he came to those conclusions and are sorry for it," Allen said. "We share, very honestly, a totally different opinion. We feel you can come to a testimony of truth regarding Joseph Smith's vision and a testimony of the Book of Mormon, and Palmer doesn't. We feel bad about that."
Palmer said his possible excommunication from the faith "I love is the hardest thing that's ever occurred in my life," above and beyond the death of his wife and dealing with cancer.
"It's so much a part of my life. My ancestors are fifth-, sixth-generation Mormons. I was a very successful missionary and held church employment for 34 years. I describe myself as loving the church too much because I feel only the truth is good enough for the Latter-day Saints. I don't expect everyone to agree with me."
He said he wants to remain a member of the church and is confident that members of the church's First Presidency were not involved in his summons to appear before the disciplinary council.
The press release announcing the possible excommunication says Palmer's stake president approached him a year ago after receiving information from "the church's 'Strengthening Church Members Committee.' " It called the group "comparable in some ways to the Taliban's 'Department of Vice and Virtue.' "
Palmer said he hadn't seen the press release and was "appalled" by the characterization.
The church excommunicated six prominent LDS scholars in September 1993 after they publicly questioned the faith's official doctrine.
Click to expand...

Source
 
While researching our family's history a few years ago, I discovered that several family members had converted to Mormonism in the mid-1800's, after which they'd resettled in Utah. Some remained in Salt Lake and lived even more hellish existences than they would if they'd remained in England, while others (at great danger to themselves) fled Salt Lake and made their way to Nebraska. No one in the family had ever mentioned this family exodus to Utah, so, intrigued, I sought information about early Mormons on the Web. And discovered that Joseph Smith had been involved with the Masons (the extent varies, depending on which account you read) and had also been a Christian lay-preacher, prior to founding Mormonism. It's claimed there are a number of Masonic beliefs contained within Mormonism. But even more interesting is the claim by a researcher (and ex-Mormon, if memory serves me) that Joseph Smith was considered a dangerous character long before he embarked on creating his own religion.

It's claimed that Smith worked at the property of a retired clergyman who, in his retirement, had written a novel. It was rejected several times by publishers. Smith apparently cultivated the clergyman and his wife, who loaned him a copy of the rejected novel. It's claimed that Smith afterwards stole the copy, and used it as the basis for Mormonism. Other copies came to light after Smith had launched Mormonism and it's claimed these demonstrate that Mormonism was based on a failed novel; not upon any visitations from angels.

Those who lived near Joseph Smith's family claimed Smith (and possibly his parents) were involved in necrophilia. Neighbours were afraid of Smith; they claimed he dug up dead bodies and performed ceremonies in an attempt to obtain forbidden information from spirits etc. It was claimed he used a peep-stone; it's been variously described.

When the Mormon missionaries went to England in the mid-1800's, it was decided to delete all reference to polygamy from books and phamplets. It was believed the hoped-for converts would not accept polygamy. So the English converts were deliberately kept in ignorance. On the web are copies of the texts made available to English (and other) converts. Mormonism was steeped in deception from the outset.

Salt Lake City was a brutalizing experience; wives and their daughters were distributed to the Mormon heirarchy. The suffering of these women -- and their husbands and fathers -- can only be imagined. It was a return to primitive excess; 'important' old men snatched young girls as their plural-wives; innocent little girls were passed from one fat old man to the next. It's a matter of record that at least one young man was castrated by the elders, because his future bride had refused to be married off to a fat old man. Any who attempted to leave Salt Lake City were hunted down by Brigham Young's murderous gangs, known as Avenging Angels.

One branch of my family remained in Salt Lake City, but my great-great Uncle only took a second wife under duress and was exiled to southern Utah, in St.George, which was as close to hell on earth as it was possible to get. Another relative of that time refused to live under the depraved Mormon rule, and with his wife and several children, escaped from Salt Lake City in a wagon, aware that if they were tracked and caught, they'd most probably be murdered on the spot. Their flight from Utah is recorded in Sam Bassett's History of Buffalo, Nebraska. On their flight from Utah, they rescued a woman who'd fled Utah alone and on foot, rather than be forced into plural marriage. She'd had to leave all her children behind.

Whilst I admire many of the current-day Mormons, I do believe that the founding Mormon fathers were depraved; corrupt, murderers; deceivers. The suffering they caused is unimaginable and echoes of the corruption, depravity and deceit continues to rot the foundations of the overcompensatory and magnificent temples and tabernacles which form the public face of Mormonism.
 
Re:

.[/quote]
Most other religiously inspired clothing regs. seem to be related to covering the head in some fashion, e.g. the Jewish kippah (s.p.?), the Sikh turban, etc., at least for people who aren't members of the clergy.

Are there theological reasons for this or is it just a traditional thing?[/quote]

Been a while since I read the Bible, but I think its where Paul?, says he does not permit Women to teach spritual matters, but if there is no choice, ie no men present, Women must keep thier heads covered, "for the sake of the Angels"
Now Ive often wondered why, the only thing I could think is that it was seeing how beautifull human women where that caused a third of the Angels to "forsake thier proper dwelling place" and take on Human form to have relations with women becoming demons in the process. So maybe getting a woman to cover her head somehow hides a womans beauty from Angels so they also are not tempted to follow Satan?
 
Lord_Flashheart said:
I also take issue with the jehova's witnesses as they claim jesus was the first man on earth and none of the events in the old testament took place, just seams to me to be an attempt to disrespect the very man you are suposed to venerate (jesus was a Jew and as well as that they recon therefore that none of the work God carryed out before jesus's birth happened).

I'm happy to be a protestant:D
Click to expand...

Lord Flashheart, I think you have mistaken the Jehovahs Witnesses for some other religion?

J.W's belive that it was Adam who was the first man on Earth and that Jesus came much later, after Mary.

J.W's belive in every single word of the Old Testament and go to a considerable amount of time, money and effort to gather as much evidence that it is scientifically accurate as they can, evidence that they are then willing to show you, for free!

Same point as above, J.W's belive that God carried out every single thing he claimed to do before Jesus birth, unlike most "Christian" religions who claim to belive in God but would rather belive so called men of learning who tell them the Bibles a book of stories and that God is therefore a liar, sounds more like they are beliving the Devil to me, who have you been listening too by the way to get these strange Ideas about Jehovahs Witnesses?
 
Joseph Smith Bicentennial Renews Debates Over ‘prophet'



By RICHARD N. OSTLING
Published on 12/17/2004

To loyal Mormons, Joseph Smith Jr. was an American prophet whose creed is preparing for Christ's Second Coming. To skeptics, he was a reprobate impostor — if a remarkably successful one.

Now as Smith's Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints prepares to celebrate the bicentennial year of his birth (Dec. 23, 1805), the occasion will certainly renew debates over one of America's most important — and wooliest — religious careers.

The oft-persecuted Smith was hounded out of New York, Ohio and Missouri, tarred and feathered, jailed and accused of serious crimes. He repeatedly alienated close associates.

In Illinois, he ruled a theocratic city-state as prophet, mayor, chief judge and commander of a 5,000-man militia. In 1844, he was secretly anointed an earthly king while campaigning for the U.S. presidency. When Smith had officers pillage an opposition newspaper, he was arrested, then murdered by a mob.

Smith's prophethood was founded upon his report that, in 1827, an angel gave him golden plates inscribed in an unknown language and buried near Palmyra, N.Y. The plates told the history of Indians' ancient ancestors, who had migrated from Israel and were visited by Jesus. Smith said God miraculously empowered him to understand the language and dictate the Book of Mormon, after which the angel retrieved the plates.

Employing similar means, Smith revised — and in his view corrected — large sections of the Bible. He also produced writings attributed to biblical Abraham and 134 revelations of his own as latter-day scripture.

Both Mormons and non-Mormons still argue over Smith's authenticity.

Just last Sunday, a church tribunal in Utah stripped Grant Palmer, a retired teacher and executive for classes the church provides to high school and college students of a fellowship, because his “An Insider's View of Mormon Origins” says evidence for Smith's claims is “either nonexistent or problematic.”

Palmer's publisher, Signature Books, marked the bicentennial with Dan Vogel's equally skeptical “Joseph Smith: The Making of a Prophet,” which contends that Smith wrote the Book of Mormon from his imagination and life experiences.

Church bicentennial doings include an authorized Book of Mormon publication by secular Doubleday — though last year's University of Illinois Press “reader's edition” is more useful for non-Mormons.

Other upcoming events: a Library of Congress symposium; volume one in the vast “Joseph Smith Papers” series; and a new Smith film for visitors to the church's Salt Lake City headquarters.

The landmark, however, will be Richard Bushman's biography “Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling,” due next October. Bushman, an emeritus professor at Columbia University, is the leading historian of America among devout Mormons.

Bushman observed in an interview that the hostility Smith suffered in his lifetime is hardly surprising, given that his theological views were alien, even abhorrent, to most Christians.

For example, Smith's position on God the Father “is incredibly heretical” by orthodox Christian standards, Bushman said.

Smith said that matter is eternal so “God is the master of the universe, not the creator,” Bushman explained, and humans “are all gods in embryo.” Smith also taught that God was not always God but “was once as we are now, and is an exalted man.”

Mormons “are just driven to continually exalt” Smith, Bushman said. “What I say will run against this idealized version.”

Another major controversy is Smith's practice of polygamy, which the church abandoned under federal government pressure in 1890. Bushman thinks Smith felt that God commanded polygamy but needed to hide his involvement in the practice because he knew it was illegal. But Bushman finds it unsettling that 10 of Smith's 28 or so wives were already married to other men.

The biography also treats the now-established fact that, before he reported unearthing the golden tablets, Smith was active in searches for buried treasure by gazing into so-called magic peep stones. Jan Shipps, a non-Mormon historian, said Smith's critics argue that “he couldn't be a prophet because he was a money-digger,” but maybe there's no contradiction and “he began somehow to search for treasure of much greater value.”

Another perennial issue is whether Smith's unconventional creed is Christian, particularly since he said God regarded teachings of all other churches as “an abomination.” Shipps, emeritus professor at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, terms Mormonism a “new religious tradition” that emerged from Christianity, as Christianity did from Judaism.

Shipps said that 19th-century America had many prophets claiming to speak for God but the “absolutely critical” factor that set Smith apart was that so many believed in his reconstitution of priesthood authority, primitive Christianity and, literally, the people of Israel.

Another non-Mormon historian, University of Notre Dame Provost Nathan Hatch, said Smith's rise also stemmed from the fact that he was a charismatic preacher who appeared just as many Americans were rejecting Europe's established churches and seeking new spiritual options — and as President Andrew Jackson was personifying the rise of the roughhewn common man.

Plus, Smith was an “organizational genius,” Hatch says.

Though Mormons often stress Smith's singularity, scholars increasingly recognize that he was “connected in a savvy and uncanny way to the religious and cultural trends” of his era, said Mormon historian Grant Underwood of Brigham Young University. “He was marvelously in tune with the temper of the times” and “striking a very popular chord” by seeking Christianity's original form.

With Smith, Underwood said, “the grand dramas one reads about in the Bible were not a thing of the past and not just reserved for an elite, but the average American could lay hold on such miraculous experiences.”

Whatever the reasons, Smith has had an undeniable impact.

A church that started with a handful of disciples in 1830 has grown into America's fifth largest denomination. It has a total of 12 million adherents worldwide.

----------------------
Latter-day Saints: www.lds.org
Click to expand...

Source
 
Lord_Flashheart said:
Personaly I haven't trusted mormons since I read 'A study in scarlet' by Authur Conan Doyle...

I did however once have mormons taking to me in my house and they left their little book of mormon for me to look at. I read a bit from it over the next few nights with increasing scheptacisam each day, before hapening on a passage that refered to the persecution of christians that was happening accross the sea. such a shame that the passage was ment to come from the time before Jesuses birth...
Click to expand...

My brother and I let them in once when I was about 19, he 16. They gave us a copy of their book, and then came back a week later and asked for it back! :shock: I said "wasn't it a gift?" and they said "well, yeah, but if you'd like to come to church with us on saturday that would be great." I said no thanks and they said that I wouldn't be needing the book then! I told them that I hadn't finished reading it and I would like a copy for my library anyway, and thanked them very much for their generosity. They left. :lol:
It was funny talking to them though. When they got to the bit about God smote the American Indians and burnt them red my brother laughed. Couldn't help himself. He then asked why there was no archaeological evidence in America for the huge civilization of (white) wrongdoers they claimed lived there before the Israelites landed. The mormons said it was because God burnt them all and blasted all their gear to powdwer. "Even the pottery shards?" my brother asked. "Even the pottery shards" the bloke said earnestly.
That was it for me I'm afraid.
 
If they are named after the book of 'Moroni', why aren't they called morons then? :lol:

I suspect that the founder of the religion was having a bit of a laugh at his followers' expense...
 
What frightens me is how people; otherwise rational, intelligent people; can actually believe in the preposterous tennets of this or any other faith. Mainstream Christians/Muslims/Jews at least have the excuse that their founding text is ancient and hence open to mis-interpretation by modern mankind :?:
 
March 6, 2005, 5:33PM

Have polygamists found their Eldorado?

West Texas compound may be a haven from scrutiny, but neighbors worry

By THOMAS KOROSEC
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle

ELDORADO - In little more than a year, Sylvia Griffin's neighbors have transformed their ranch into a small town, complete with a soaring temple and a 29,000-square-foot house for their self-proclaimed prophet and his dozens of wives.

But the newcomers, a fundamentalist polygamous sect, have yet to stop by the Griffin place to say hello.

"When my husband works the fence line between us, he waves at them," said Griffin, whose family is one of the more prominent in Schleicher County. "They don't wave back."

From her door, Griffin can look across the rocky brown hills dotted with cedar and prickly pear and see the temple, which has been under noisy construction since early January.

"It's unsettling having neighbors you can't be neighbors with," she said of the secretive group. "I wish they'd just go away."

The fact that the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is transforming the 1,700-acre YFZ ranch — short for Yearn for Zion — into a sprawling headquarters is disturbing to others as well in this sleepy West Texas county of 3,000 residents.

"You get a sect like this, and everyone wants to compare it to Waco," said Schleicher County Sheriff David Doran, referring to the deadly stand-off between federal officials and Branch Davidian leader David Koresh in 1993.

"What we've been able to learn in a year is that they have no history of violence. They've complied with everything they've been asked to do," Doran added.

'Celestial kingdom'

The 10,000-member sect has lived throughout its 70-year history in Colorado City, Ariz., and Hilldale, Utah, twin towns north of the Grand Canyon, and in a small outpost just across the Canadian border in Bountiful, British Columbia.

Scorned by the Mormon Church, which renounced polygamy in 1890 under pressure from the federal government, FLDS members consider themselves God's chosen people. They believe to reach the "celestial kingdom" one must have at least three wives, or be one of at least three wives.

Warren Jeffs, 47, a former high school principal who began taking over the sect in the late 1990s, became the undisputed leader after his father's death in 2002. He arranges his followers' marriages through revelation, sometimes ordering sisters or mothers and daughters to wed the same man, former members say. He also is known to banish men and reassign their wives and children to others in the group, according to news reports last year.

Their isolated desert community, which runs like any small town, with church members working as nurses, accountants and shopkeepers, has been left largely alone since 1953. That year, Arizona officials arrested 122 polygamists and declared 233 children wards of the state. Newspaper photos of crying infants being pulled from their mothers reportedly caused a public backlash. Nobody ended up going to jail.

In recent years, though, Jeffs and his group have come under increasing scrutiny from the media, anti-polygamy activists and law enforcement officials. They are facing two civil lawsuits by former members and ongoing criminal investigations by Utah and Arizona authorities, Utah officials said.

Former members accuse Jeffs and other church members of taking wives as young as 14.

Utah authorities are investigating accusations of welfare fraud and tax evasion, and lawsuits filed last year against the sect allege that children were abused.

Rodney Parker, a Salt Lake City lawyer who is the group's only spokesman, denies the allegations and said a 16-month criminal investigation has produced no indictments. "I think a lot of that is political," Parker said.

He said the group, which refuses to talk with the media, wants only to be left alone.

That's abundantly clear in Eldorado, where the YFZ ranch's gate is locked and a "Keep Out" sign is posted. From the county road, everything but the temple's upper reaches is hidden from view.

One theory

Benjamin Bistline, who was a member of the sect until 1980 and has written a history of Colorado City, said he thinks Jeffs is trying to escape the escalating scrutiny.

And Randy Mankin, owner and editor of the weekly Eldorado Success, theorizes that spiritual ideas led the polygamists to Texas.

"They believe that at the end of time, the city of Zion will be built with gold in a precinct near the Gulf of Mexico," Mankin explained. "Now, if you're from Houston, Eldorado may not seem that close to the Gulf. But if you're from Utah, it might."

Jeffs and his father, the prophet known as Uncle Rulon, have predicted the coming of "the destructions," the apocalypse, at least four times in the past five years, Mankin said. The latest doomsday prediction was for Jan. 5.

"What I'm learning is that every time there is one of these apocalyptic visions, it coincides with a spike in the number of underage marriages," Mankin said. "These girls aren't interested in 50- or 60-year-old men, but all of a sudden (the) world is ending and you need to marry to be lifted up to heaven."

When the vision fails, several sources agreed, Jeffs tells his followers they were not faithful enough.

Sam Brower, a private investigator who is working for several lawyers who have sued the church, called Jeffs' followers in Utah "hard-working people, thoroughly devoted" whom he is driving relentlessly to build his Texas compound.

Millions in expansion

"Besides their 10 percent tithing, every family is being asked to donate an extra $1,000 a month and whatever else they can spare," he said.

About $3 million worth of building has been done so far at the Texas ranch, according to preliminary tax assessments. The group has put in a large meeting hall, a school, a dozen large wooden houses, a network of roads, a dairy, a garden, a concrete plant and a quarry from which massive limestone blocks for the temple are being dug up and cut to shape.

The sect's secretiveness and the fact that it "wasn't straightforward" with people when it first came to town have upset residents most, Schleicher County Judge Johnny Griffin said. Church officials originally said they were putting in a hunting retreat.

"If you're operating behind a locked gate, people think what you're doing is illegal or immoral or both," said Justice of the Peace Jimmy Doyle, who has flown over the polygamists' ranch at least 90 times.

"They keep out of sight," he said. In a photo taken from his plane, several women in frontier-style blue or pink gingham dresses and braided hair are seen dashing for the cover of a schoolhouse, a gaggle of children at their feet.

In town, polygamist sightings have been nearly as rare.

"I saw them once at the post office, close as you and I," said Patsy Kellogg, manager of the county welfare office. "There were three men in their 30s. They wore jeans and long-sleeved shirts, starched. The thing I remember is they smelled real nice."
Click to expand...

Source
 
Jews, Mormons to Meet Over Baptisms

By MARK THIESSEN, Associated Press Writer

Thursday, April 7, 2005


(04-07) 19:35 PDT Salt Lake City (AP) --

Jewish leaders claim Mormons continue to posthumously baptize Jews and Holocaust victims, and will confront church leaders with a decade of frustration over what they call broken promises.

"We have proof, and we are bringing that," said Ernest Michel, chairman of the New York-based World Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors.

The Mormon church has long collected names from government documents and other records worldwide for posthumous baptisms. Church members stand in for the deceased non-Mormons, a ritual the church says is required for the dead to reach heaven. The church believes individuals' ability to choose a religion continues beyond the grave.

Michel plans to show posthumous baptism records to church officials in meetings Sunday and Monday. He says the records prove tens of thousands of Jews, including some who died in Nazi concentration camps, were posthumously baptized over the past 10 years and as recently as last month.

A 1995 agreement signed by Jewish leaders and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints called for an immediate halt to unwanted proxy baptisms. After evidence was found in the church's massive International Genealogical Index that the baptisms for many Jews — including Anne Frank — continued, the two faiths reaffirmed the agreement in 2002.

Jewish leaders in New York have bitterly complained the baptisms never stopped, and last year asked Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton to intervene. She met with Sen. Orrin Hatch, an Utah Republican and active Mormon, though neither side would discuss what was said.

The church, too, declined comment Thursday. "The church won't be commenting at all on this issue for the moment. We are looking forward to discussions with our Jewish guests," spokeswoman Kim Farah said.

Under the Mormon practice, most Catholic popes have been proxy baptized, as have historical figures like Ghengis Khan, Joan of Arc, Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin and Buddha, according to Helen Radkey, an independent genealogical researcher in Salt Lake City.

However, the church directed its members after 1995 to not include for baptism the names of Jewish Holocaust victims, celebrities and people who aren't relatives.

The church also assumes the closest living relative of the deceased being offered for proxy baptism has consented.

Carol Skydell, also a researcher, said that didn't happen when her paternal grandparents and aunt and uncle apparently were given a baptism by proxy. She found their proxy baptism records in 2002.

"Nobody asked me, nobody asked my cousin. It's ridiculous," Skydell said.
Click to expand...

I have never heard of this practice before and find it quite disturbing.

Peace
=^..^=217

ref: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... 408D98.DTL
 
Bit presumptuous, to say the least.

The church believes individuals' ability to choose a religion continues beyond the grave.
Click to expand...

...so why force it on the dead?
 
Meanwhile, down the road, an infuriated rabbi is having his revenge:

"Beethoven, now a Jew! Shakespeare, now a Jew! Da Vinci, now a Jew!"

His wife watches the ceremony for a while then cries, "You're a rabbi, not a rabbit! Enough carrots already!" :?
 
Heres a somewhat relevant joke:

"Did you hear about the Irishman who refused to be a Jehovah's witness because he hadn't see the accident?"
 
Church members stand in for the deceased non-Mormons, a ritual the church says is required for the dead to reach heaven.
Click to expand...

They also stump up the fee to cover the ritual, which is perhaps where the real purpose of this lays. Why just get one baptism fee out of a person when you can charge for several generations of ancestors too.

I'm told the mormons have one of (if not the) biggest genealogical records database in the world.
 
Simon Worrall's book The Poet and the Murderer about the literary forger and murderer Mark Hofmann illustrates much that is bizarre in the Mormon faith. (In deference to any Mormons reading this I'm not picking on you - I find all religions bizarre).

Hofmann, a Mormon himself, exploited the faith's obsession with geneology and, what looks to an armchair psychologist like myself, its desperate search for historical legitimacy through the obsessive hunt for and procurement of historical documents relating to the religion and its founders.

What is interesting to a Fortean is the way in which so many normal, intelligent individuals allowed themselves to be conned - presumably because their overwhelming desire for a thing to be genuine far outweighed their judgement. Hofmann turned up documents left, right and centre including items which its not much of an exaggeration to say were the Mormon church's equivalent to the Holy Grail. Rather than question his incredible luck, as I think any church outsider would have done, people paid fortunes for his "finds".
 
Religion is a weird and unfortunately normal human practice.
Thank God I'm not into any of them! ;)
 
That is staggeringly wrong. :shock:

I wonder how this fits in with the Sherlock Holmes story 'A Study In Scarlet''? In the book, the newly arrived and established mormons are struggling to create a large community and there's a big need for women to give birth to children and the young girl in the story is subject to what amounts to an 'honour killing'. Was there any evidence that this kind of practice went on, or was it something that was created for the book?

I wonder as to whether that this baptism by proxy is almost a retconning of peoples religions, and how this actually stands/appears on Mormon records - does it say they were Mormon in life or just in death or just classed as Mormon and no more is said about it. Depending how all this is recorded, it could dramatically alter Mormon history. Although it's not as if Mormons would dare fabricate information about their own heritage is it? ;)
 
It says in the original article that most Catholic Popes have been proxy baptised.

Are we to assume that this only happens once they have passed on, or does the current Pope also get done? I suppose this could be the Mormon's idea of recognising him as the Vicar of Christ and God's representative on Earth, even if they don't necessarily follow his idea of religion.

If the current Pope is baptised out of respect for his position, could other living people be done as well? Could I have been baptised a Mormon without my knowledge or consent?

I know it's stupid, but I have horrible images in my head of rooms full of churchmen sitting around with phone books, ticking people's names off....
 
Was there any evidence that this kind of practice went on, or was it something that was created for the book?
Click to expand...

There's quite a bit in The Divine Supermarket about the early history of the mormon church, and some about the present too. A lot of odd things go on, but this isn't remarked upon as being one of them.
 
As an ex-mormon (I had myself removed from their records last year) who was raised in a mormon family from the age of 5, I feel I can speak with a little authority on this issue.

Contrary to what someone way back in this thread said (sorry, can't be arsed to go back n find it), there is absolutely NO archaeological evidence to back up the claims of the book of mormon at all.

Re the symbols on the Salt Lake City temple. They were pinched wholesale from the masons by good ole Joe Smith. They also appear on the temple garments worn by members who have been married and sealed in the temple.

A great site to check out if you want the properly researched info on this religion is:

http://utlm.org

run by a couple who have researched original church documents and the like. Very interesting reading if you're into this kinda thing.

apologies in advance if the link doesn't work, it's the 1st time I've tried to insert one in this forum.
 
im just waiting for them to try to baptise john paul 2 :D
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top