That is not a bad thing. The mission of the Church of Jesus Christ is to “go into all the world”. The Doctrine & Covenants begins with “the Lord’s preface” to the revelations given to Joseph Smith, stating that God, knowing the calamity that would come to the earth (preparatory to Christ’s Second Coming), called Joseph as a prophet, and gave him commandments, to teach the original gospel again, and give mankind a choice of responding and preparing for the events of the last days. Joseph said the resurrected warrior Moroni warned him that his (Joseph’s) name would be held for good or evil among all nations. In other words, people would hail him or stone him. It comes with the territory.

And it’s not a bad thing for people in other faiths and denominations to be confronted by the example of the Mormons so they can ask themselves, What do I believe about God and Christ? Do I believe God is real? Do I believe Christ will come again? Do I believe that God cares about me? Do I believe there are things I need to believe, say, and do to prepare for the hereafter?

One of the most foundational of doctrines for Latter-day Saints is the freedom God gave mankind in the Garden of Eden to make our own choices, to choose salvation or misery. Mormons are taught to respect the choice of others, and at the same time their respect for the freedom we all have means that they owe it to us “deciders” (as President Bush puts it) to know about the option they offer, one that they believe God wants them to offer to all mankind.

One of the inevitable side effects of bad information being published about the Latter-day Saints and their beliefs is that it gives Mormons an opportunity to offer to correct the information people think they have about the Church and its doctrines and practices. Rather than have the misinformation stay hidden in people’s minds, times of public discussion of the Church bring it out in the open, where the people can reevaluate it, and where Latter-day Saints can offer to correct it. The net result is that more correct information is disseminated and bad information is cast out, rather than being passed on in an unquestioning way.

After all, many Latter-day Saints, both men and women, spend years of their lives, both before marriage and after retirement, telling their amazing story to hundreds of thousands of people every year, confronting skepticism and downright hostility and defamation, and pressing forward, looking for the few souls who respond to their message, that amazing things denote the participation of God, and that the lack of amazing things, of “marvellous works and wonders” denotes the absence of God. A rational searcher for God will find Him doing the miraculous among mankind.

The significance of the EVENTS driving interest in Mormonism is that they coincide with a time of unprecedented international dialogue through the internet. For the first time, Mormons are able to communicate directly with the readers of newspapers and magazines, correcting false information held by both reporters and the public. Mormons believe that the tone of their apologetics and defense of their faith will demonstrate that their message deserves to be taken seriously, as opposed to the poisoned pens of the most acid critics of Mormonism.

The Church is taking advantage of the fact that people anywhere in the world can use the internet to read detailed information about the Church and its doctrines and people, at any time of the day. They don’t have to feel intimidated by the presence of Mormon missionaries or their own disapproving clergy.

Not every person will lay aside prejudice. Not every person is willikng to put enough energy into studying a religion to really find out what makes Mormons motivated to believe and act as they do.

The New York Times remark about the contrast between the “normalcy” of Mormons and the “unusual” nature of their beliefs, is indicative of how clueless the Times can be. Mormons are “normal” precisely because they believe in miraculous things: the reality of God and Christ, the abiding guidance of the Holy Spirit, the marvelous future that is offered to all mankind, the assurance that God has not left us without essential guidance in a new and confusing world. Mormons are “normal” because they believe that intelligence is a core attribute of God that He wants us, His children, to obtain. Mormons are “normal” because they believe that all men, women and children of every nation and race and religion are just as much children of God the Father as they are, extending back into the past as well, and that is why they search out their ancestors and perform baptisms for those who died before they could receive it.

In a world where there are competing doctrines and viewpoints and “moralities”, Mormons are “normal” because they are not confused about the values that guide their lives, and the lives of their children. Their “unusual” doctrines boil down to this: God still speaks to mankind, and he has specific tasks for us, to prepare ourselves for an eternity with Him. The Book of Mormon as an instrument of communication from God is remarkably pedestrian. Instead of visions of Gabriel dictating to Mohammad, it is an artifact, a written record like many of its era around the world, inscribed on metal to preserve it to be read by future generations. Unlike the parchment that has deteriorated in so many of the Dead Sea Scrolls, or the papyrus that burned or crumbled in the libraries of Herculaneum, metal records of bronze, silver and gold have lasted over millenia, preserving the declarations of Darius and the religious rites of the ancient Italians. The really miraculous thing was the ability to dictate a translation of the record on the metal sheets, in the days when the meaning of hieroglyphs was just being recovered, and the interpretation of other written languages, like Mayan and Minoan B, was still far in the future. Yet the translated text bears sufficient detailed information in both form and content that is indicative of an authentic text from ancient Israel. The Book of Mormon is not like any other book produced in ante-bellum America. It lacks the earmarks of the romantic literature of the time. There is no semblance to the concerns of Jane Austen or even Lew Wallace (author of Ben Hur). It is a narrative that is primarily didactic, describing history only to the minimum extent necessary to give context to its sermons and testimonies.

The Book of Mormon presents itself for all the world to examine, to puzzle out. Its authors are emphatic that it is the world that is being judged, based on its response to the book, and not the book by the world. For that judgment to occur, the world must confront the book. And so, anything that places the book before the world is in the end a positive development.