Comments on: Since Lowell Brought It Up… http://www.article6blog.com/2008/08/27/since-lowell-brought-it-up/ "Religion, Politics, the Presidency: Commentary by a Mormon, an Evangelical, and an Orthodox Christian" Wed, 08 Feb 2012 14:35:26 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1 By: coltakashi http://www.article6blog.com/2008/08/27/since-lowell-brought-it-up/comment-page-1/#comment-12761 coltakashi Wed, 27 Aug 2008 20:22:05 +0000 http://www.article6blog.com/2008/08/27/since-lowell-brought-it-up/#comment-12761 Belz wrote: "Do these officials hold to the fantastical 1827 golden tablets of Mormon founder Joseph Smith—or not? Well, they seem to say: We believe it when we want to, and we don’t when it’s less convenient. Where Mormonism isn’t shrouded in deliberate secrecy, it is covered with confusion." What is he talking about? There IS a church that is very wavering in its commitment to the reality of Joseph Smith's explanations for the origin of the Book of Mormon, but it is called the Community of Christ (formerly the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), is headquartered in Independence, Missouri, and has about 250,000 members. It was founded by people who didn't want to follow the LDS Church into exile in the desert in the 1840s and 1850s. A generation ago, its leaders abandoned their predecessors' commitment to the prophetic calling of Joseph Smith, and sought to turn their church into a place where an Episcopalian would feel comfortable worshipping. On the other hand, anyone who bothers looking at the LDS Church web page can access all of the church scriptures, the church lesson plans, the church magazines, the church leader sermons at the semi-annual church-wide conferences, and many other materials, including copies of interviews carried in the commercial news media. I challenge Belz to show us a specific instance in which any of the senior leaders of the church (the "general authorities") has in any way backed away from the assertion that Joseph Smith was a prophet and that the Book of Mormon is a real record translated from real metal plates. Belz is certainly entitled to disbelieve what they assert, but he is being dishonest--a breach surely of Christian ethics--in saying that the church leaders have disclaimed the Book of Mormon and Smith's statement as to its origin. In other words, we have the hypocrisy of a man who is criticizing the LDS Church and all of its members (including Mitt Romney) for being dishonest, when the facts point to the only misrepresentation being his own. This scenario is a recurring feature of much of the anti-Mormon literature that is sold to a credulous public by professional anti-Mormons. People who are in that business, and their best customers, who buy it wholesale and retail it to their parishioners, are severely threatened by the possibility of Mitt Romney being the vice-presidential nominee of the Republican Party. They know that if Americans get to know Romney as a real person, they will realize that Belz and others have lied to them about the Mormons, which is very threatening to those who have invested so much in maintaining the myth of Mormons as a threat to Christianity and society. Belz wrote: “Do these officials hold to the fantastical 1827 golden tablets of Mormon founder Joseph Smith—or not? Well, they seem to say: We believe it when we want to, and we don’t when it’s less convenient. Where Mormonism isn’t shrouded in deliberate secrecy, it is covered with confusion.”

What is he talking about? There IS a church that is very wavering in its commitment to the reality of Joseph Smith’s explanations for the origin of the Book of Mormon, but it is called the Community of Christ (formerly the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), is headquartered in Independence, Missouri, and has about 250,000 members. It was founded by people who didn’t want to follow the LDS Church into exile in the desert in the 1840s and 1850s. A generation ago, its leaders abandoned their predecessors’ commitment to the prophetic calling of Joseph Smith, and sought to turn their church into a place where an Episcopalian would feel comfortable worshipping.

On the other hand, anyone who bothers looking at the LDS Church web page can access all of the church scriptures, the church lesson plans, the church magazines, the church leader sermons at the semi-annual church-wide conferences, and many other materials, including copies of interviews carried in the commercial news media. I challenge Belz to show us a specific instance in which any of the senior leaders of the church (the “general authorities”) has in any way backed away from the assertion that Joseph Smith was a prophet and that the Book of Mormon is a real record translated from real metal plates. Belz is certainly entitled to disbelieve what they assert, but he is being dishonest–a breach surely of Christian ethics–in saying that the church leaders have disclaimed the Book of Mormon and Smith’s statement as to its origin.

In other words, we have the hypocrisy of a man who is criticizing the LDS Church and all of its members (including Mitt Romney) for being dishonest, when the facts point to the only misrepresentation being his own.

This scenario is a recurring feature of much of the anti-Mormon literature that is sold to a credulous public by professional anti-Mormons. People who are in that business, and their best customers, who buy it wholesale and retail it to their parishioners, are severely threatened by the possibility of Mitt Romney being the vice-presidential nominee of the Republican Party. They know that if Americans get to know Romney as a real person, they will realize that Belz and others have lied to them about the Mormons, which is very threatening to those who have invested so much in maintaining the myth of Mormons as a threat to Christianity and society.

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