While I can’t agree with much of what you wrote, I’d like to only com­ment on one tiny part of it. You wrote that “good Mor­mons get their own plan­ets after they die.” I’ve been an active Mor­mon my whole life and I’ve been a Church leader and teacher for much of that time as well. I have never, ever heard taught that Mor­mons “get their own plan­ets” and I won­der where you got that idea. It is such a per­va­sive com­ment on blogs that are crit­i­cal of Mor­monism and in ant-Mormon lit­er­a­ture that I am really inter­ested to know its source. Mor­mons have a canon that defines the para­me­ters of their doc­trine and this teach­ing doesn’t appear any­where within the LDS canon of four books of scrip­ture. Since I know for a fact that this tibit doesn’t appear in offi­cial LDS lit­er­a­ture and that it isn’t taught in LDS doc­trine classes, but it is ubiq­ui­tous in anti-Mormon lit­er­a­ture, it leads me to believe that it is a dis­tor­tion of what Momons actu­ally believe. Do you know of any LDS source that would indi­cate otherwise?

Alma,
Wel­come to the blog.

A quick perusal of the inter­net turned up some ref­er­ences to this planet idea, includ­ing some­one who inter­viewed Mor­mons and asked them if they believed this and got a unan­i­mous yes answer. But since I don’t think you’d accept any of the sources, I edited the entry to remove that line. To be hon­est, it’s really the least of my objec­tions, and if it turns out it’s not authen­tic, it won’t change things one way or the other.

“But … they have all shared the Apos­tles’ Creed, even if they barely knew what that was. They have all been from churches that were built on the foun­da­tion of the Nicene Creed …”

With the above quote in mind, would you con­sider vot­ing for a Jew­ish, Hindu, or Bud­dhist can­di­date for president?

My wife was raised Mor­mon, and I’ve done some read­ings in both pro– and anti-Mormon cir­cles, so I think I am some­what knowl­edge­able about their reli­gion and some of the more com­mon apolo­get­ics and crit­i­cisms regard­ing their faith. Per­son­ally, I don’t con­sider Mor­mons to be Chris­tians, espe­cially in light of the Chris­t­ian creeds. In say­ing this, how­ever, I don’t mean to den­i­grate either their reli­gion or their per­sonal piety: no more so than say­ing Jews or Mus­lims are not Chris­tians should be con­strued as a slur against either of those religions.

If you were to con­sider them as a dif­fer­ent reli­gion, would you feel any more likely to vote for a Mor­mon can­di­date? And if not, would you agree that your posi­tion is that would never vote for any non-Christian pres­i­den­tial candidate?

That’s a really good ques­tion and I’ll give you the hon­est answer: I wouldn’t have as hard of a time vot­ing for a Bud­dhist or Hindu and I prob­a­bly wouldn’t even think twice about vot­ing for a Jew.

Lest that sound too hor­ri­bly credo-centric (if that’s a word), let me explain the dou­ble stan­dard. It comes down to what I said above: I fol­low the the­ol­ogy — a person’s epis­to­mol­ogy makes a dif­fer­ence. The beliefs of Jews I don’t con­sider to be anti­thet­i­cal to a strong, robust and active Chris­tian­ity. The beliefs of Hin­dus and Bud­dhists I’m less cer­tain of, but I’d be will­ing to con­sider vot­ing for them. The Mor­mon epis­to­mol­ogy I think stands squarely in the way of the Chris­t­ian Church’s integrity and its call­ing to be of one faith uni­ver­sally and eternally.

That doesn’t mean I hold it against each Mor­mon that I meet — I would have to ostra­cize mem­bers of my fam­ily to do that — but it does mean I can­not in good con­science cast a vote for a Mor­mon for president.

And yes, to cover your last ques­tion, it would change things a lot for me if Mor­mons aban­doned the claim to Chris­tian­ity. In try­ing to stretch the def­i­n­i­tion of what it means to be Chris­t­ian, they’ve sown seeds of con­fu­sion and delu­sion. If they would give that up, I wouldn’t feel the same way.

I have to admit, I par­tic­i­pate in a craft that has a large LDS pop­u­la­tion (scrap­book­ing) and have read many argu­ments about this new movie (which doesn’t seem to be “bash­ing” the church at all to me) and about LDS the­ol­ogy, and *I* have a very dif­fi­cult time with the the­ol­ogy, the more I know the more dif­fi­culty I have, I have to admit.

Well, I think an Ortho­dox Chris­t­ian is always going to have a prob­lem, or else a Mor­mon is, because no mat­ter how much we may want to use nicer words and just get along, the fact is that if what the Ortho­dox Church says of Christ is true, then what the Mor­mon Church says of Him can’t be, and vice versa. If Mor­mons pick their words care­fully, they can skirt the areas of non-orthodoxy, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

I’m rush­ing out the door right now, but I may try and research it bet­ter and blog a new post about it.

And of course, NONE of that means a per­sonal vendetta ought to exist between me and any Mor­mons I know. But it’s impor­tant that Ortho­dox know what we believe. Our kids can cer­tainly play together, but we’re not in eucharis­tic com­mu­nion and there’s a good rea­son for that.

I wanted to respond a few days ago, but this is my first chance.

I agree with you in dis­agree­ing with Mor­mon doc­trine, but con­sider the vot­ing records of our Ortho­dox politi­cians — Dukakis, Snow, Sar­bannes, Voinivich. What about Catholics — ever so close to Ortho­doxy in liturgy and doc­trine — Kennedy, Pelosi, Kerry, Dodd, etc.? In fact, on the life issues, reli­gion is more of an anti-predictor than a pre­dic­tor, and Rom­ney squares off with his church’s pro-life views (though I dis­agree with him on embry­onic stem cells).

I think the Moun­tain Mead­ows mas­sacre is every bit as irrel­e­vant as some­thing that hap­pened in the 16th cen­tury, because no one alive par­tic­i­pated in either one. I have no rea­son to believe that the Mor­mon Church cur­rently sup­ports mas­sacring pio­neers as a means of fur­ther­ing its ends (it’s been much too suc­cess­ful by means of good works and per­sua­sion). I also have no rea­son to believe that Mitt Rom­ney would sup­port such means even if his church did.

If any church has no right to cast any stones, it’s ours. The Russ­ian Ortho­dox Church took mil­lions of dol­lars from starv­ing Iraqis in the UNSCAM Oil for Food scan­dal. The Patri­ar­chate of Jerusalem has a high-ranking offi­cial who has advo­cated that Chris­t­ian youths par­tic­i­pate in vio­lent jihad against the Israelis. My own juris­dic­tion is in the midst of a finan­cial scan­dal that involves our met­ro­pol­i­tan and other high-ranking offi­cials mis­ap­pro­pri­at­ing money intended for char­ity. Does that mean you can’t trust me to make a deposit run for a nonprofit?

All I ask is that you base your vote on Romney’s ideas and plans. If he’s “too Mor­mon” for you — what­ever that might mean — it will come out.

And if you’re com­par­ing Hillary Clin­ton to Mitt Rom­ney, remem­ber that she’s a heck of a lot closer to the Branch David­ian mas­sacre and the rape of Ser­bia than Rom­ney is to Moun­tain Mead­ows (though I’m not famil­iar with his posi­tion on Kosovo).

You know, you’re the first one that’s got­ten past pro-Mormon, anti-Mormon and talked about whether to vote for Rom­ney or not. And I’ll take some of the blame for that, but I think it’s also just the nature of any­thing touch­ing on reli­gion when peo­ple who care deeply about their reli­gion get involved.

The bot­tom line is that I haven’t made up my mind yet, and I don’t know who else will be on the ticket. Nobody is say­ing that there’s no dif­fer­ence between Mitt and Hillary — that would just be a bizarre mis­state­ment of the facts.

Mas­sacre: absolutely. Well, no, wait — not totally absolutely. The part of it that is still in the present is what the LDS church does now. I didn’t even know this movie was com­ing out, but if the Mor­mon Church insists on adopt­ing a martyr’s pose over it, they’ll have made a bad thing worse.

The event hap­pened 150 years ago — the ham-fisted attempt to ignore it, cover it up, holler ‘per­se­cu­tion’ when­ever any­one looked into it — THAT’s the recent his­tory. (I remem­ber read­ing an “Amer­i­can Her­itage” arti­cle about it about five years ago that noted that the Mor­mon Church had for­bid­den any his­toric marker to be put up until recently, and when it did, it was one that — in the opin­ion of the writer — was dis­pro­por­tion­ately puny in light of the heinous­ness of the event. That may have changed since then, but if not, shame on them.)

These things are tricky — I’m not say­ing there’s any great value in admit­ting cul­pa­bil­ity for past events, issu­ing an offi­cial apol­ogy or what­not. But to actively deny cul­pa­bil­ity, to require an apol­ogy from any­one report­ing the facts .. that’s more than just a bad PR instinct, it gives evi­dence that this is an orga­ni­za­tion that just doesn’t get it about the whole account­abil­ity thing.

Russ­ian Church scan­dals: ouch. I was aware of the brew­ing scan­dal in the OCA. I didn’t know about the other two. Well, I’ll cc them on the “not get­ting the whole account­abil­ity thing” then. Embez­zle­ment and hate-filled invec­tive in the his­toric Church may not be a mas­sacre in the Old West by a pseudo-Christian sect, but they should hold them­selves to a higher stan­dard or else be pre­pared for oth­ers to hold them to it.

And I’ll grant you that the deny-deny-deny thing is more coun­ter­pro­duc­tive than help­ful — cc the Turks on the Arme­ni­ans while you’re at it.

And the only thing about equat­ing Hillary and Mitt is that if a voter stays home out of an unwill­ing­ness to vote for either, that’s what it comes down to.

I haven’t decided on a can­di­date either. But they all have to over­come my prej­u­dices against some group they belong to — Fred Thomp­son is an actor; McCain is a sen­a­tor; Giu­liani is an Ital­ian from New York; Hillary is a Methodist; Barack is a young sen­a­tor. All they have to over­come those prej­u­dices is their words and their record. And all I have when the time comes is a choice between or among who­ever is on the ballot.

Stay­ing home is a vote for Hillary: ARRRGH!! Skew­ered! Dagnab. Good thing the elec­tion is still 18 months away. I may have to study up and see if I can’t become a meth addict or some­thing by that time.

Actors, Methodists, New York­ers: Ewww. And when you want to get past all that and fig­ure out what the guy (or gal) stands for, you find out they’re all politi­cians, when you come right down to it. Which means that they’re spend­ing the elec­tion sea­son try­ing to look like they’re say­ing every­thing while really say­ing nothing.

My apolo­gies if this is not an in depth thing but my con­cerns are not com­ing from a knowl­edge base but come from some­thing on tele­vi­sion. The doc­u­men­tary on the Mor­mons on tele­vi­sion not long ago along with a few com­ments from var­i­ous souces brought in the author­ity of the Mor­mon Church (prob­a­bly their Pre­sid­ing Coun­cil) over the indi­vid­u­als which con­cerns me a lot more than a mas­sacre over a cen­tury ago (well … the fact that that the mas­sacre involves one of their ‘found­ing fathers’ types makes it more of a prob­lem than some­thing like that nor­mally would).
Has any­one researched the Mor­mon Churches author­ity and con­trol over indi­vid­ual mem­bers which seems to be quite exten­sive or at least that was the impres­sion I got from the show. I think there was men­tion of keep­ing files on their mem­bers to mon­i­tor and con­trol things and the show seemed to indi­cate the use of their ver­sion of excom­mu­ni­ca­tion as a con­trol fac­tor. Is there any rea­son to think that the rul­ing coun­cil in would exert a large amount of con­trol over Rom­ney in the posi­tion of President?

No apolo­gies needed — tak­ing the clear-cut approach you’re tak­ing is elim­i­nat­ing some of the unclear­ness that I seem to have generated.

The research I did for the next arti­cle took me to a site that you may want to check out — Utah Light­house Min­istry (Link HERE). They have a lot of infor­ma­tion not only about the beliefs, but about the prac­tices. I admit a cer­tain cow­ardice — I couldn’t stand to look too closely at just how abu­sive the Mor­mon church is. It would be mad­den­ing, and since Mor­mons still defend it in any case, it would be futile.
I think it’s hard to get an accu­rate pic­ture of just how much con­trol the lead­ers have. Believ­ing Mor­mons would say that that’s because there’s noth­ing to see. I think it has some­thing to do with how con­stantly and aggres­sively Mor­mons pur­sue former-Mormon whistle­blow­ers or outsider-critics of any kind.

I think it also has to do with the sad propen­sity of peo­ple to hold on to a bro­ken and abu­sive belief sys­tem rather than have none at all. But there I go, veer­ing off into beliefs again.

Let me know what you find out.

It sounds to me that you have much amiss in your life, and have trou­ble look­ing for the good in things. Your writ­ings wreak of it. I am a Mor­mon and the sym­bol of our faith is exem­pli­fied in the lives of the mil­lions that are known as Latter-day Saints.
The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the best things to ever hap­pen to me. It has given me direc­tion, hap­pi­ness, and an eter­nal per­spec­tive sec­ond to none. Please curb your fan­ning the flames of reli­gious dif­fer­ences and focus more on the atone­ment of Jesus Christ and the sig­nif­i­cance it can play in our lives. It is only in and through Jesus Chirst that mankind can be saved, and that dear sis­ter, is solid Mor­mon doctrine.

Well, I’m sorry if you think my writ­ings reek — it’s ‘reek,’ by the way, not ‘wreak’ — of some­thing, but con­sider what just one para­graph says about you. I specif­i­cally said that this is not a per­sonal attack on Mor­mons and yet you respond by attack­ing me per­son­ally. But then it’s patently obvi­ous that it was just a bit of pos­tur­ing meant to deflect the con­ver­sa­tion, so let’s move on.

You have a church that means a lot to you — so do I. You feel grieved when it comes under attack — so do I. Yours has been around less than 200 years — the Ortho­dox Church can trace its lin­eage in unbro­ken apos­tolic suc­ces­sion for almost 2000 years. Your church has 24 mil­lion mem­bers — the Ortho­dox Church has 225 mil­lion faith­ful world­wide. Ours is the church of Saints Peter, Paul, Ignatius, Athana­sius, Mary of Egypt, Seraphim of Sarov, John of Shang­hai. If you can man­age to drag your eyes off the two posts that have the word Mor­mon in them, you’ll see quotes, excerpts, ser­mons and read­ings on even this one lit­tle blog from Church fathers and lumi­nar­ies from the 4th cen­tury, the 21st cen­tury and every one in between.

The biggest rea­son I don’t believe in Joseph Smith is because in his main sup­po­si­tion, I know him to be entirely wrong. The Church was not in apos­tasy after the death of the apos­tles. It was alive, and it still is! We cel­e­brate that life with every wor­ship ser­vice, and I feel it to the heart of my heart. I’m no more inter­ested in Smith’s delu­sions than you would be in some­one who arrived at the tem­ple with a chicken that he claimed was a Mor­mon bishop.

As for the basic ques­tion of this post, which is whether or not I’m going to vote for Mitt Rom­ney, you haven’t done your fel­low Mor­mon any favors. If the man doesn’t have the guts to stand up to crit­ics with a lit­tle more char­ac­ter than you’ve shown in attempt­ing to bully some­one ques­tion­ing the entirely ques­tion­able Mor­mon the­ol­ogy, I doubt that he’s pres­i­den­tial material.

I would be inter­ested in your com­ments regard­ing the scrip­tures below. I think they refer to an apos­tasy, a falling away. The church was not alive as you would like to believe.

AMOS 11 ¶ Behold, the days come, saith the Lord GOD, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hear­ing the words of the LORD:
12 And they shall wan­der from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall arun to and fro to seek the word of the LORD, and shall not find it.

ISAIAH 5 The earth also is defiled under the inhab­i­tants thereof; because they have trans­gressed the laws, changed the ordi­nance, bro­ken the ever­last­ing covenant.

MATTHEW 4 And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you.
5 For many shall come in my name, say­ing, I am Christ; and shall deceive many.
6 And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not trou­bled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.
7 For ana­tion shall rise against nation, and king­dom against king­dom: and there shall be famines, and pesti­lences, and earth­quakes, in divers places.
8 All these are the begin­ning of sor­rows.
9 Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations cfor my name’s sake.
10 And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another.
11 And many afalse prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many.
12 And because iniq­uity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.
13 But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.
ACTS 28 ¶ Take heed there­fore unto your­selves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you over­seers, to feed the church of God, which he hath pur­chased with his own blood.
29 For I know this, that after my depart­ing shall agriev­ous wolves enter in among you, not spar­ing the flock.
30 Also of your own selves shall men arise, speak­ing per­verse things, to draw away dis­ci­ples after them.

2 TIMOTHY 1 This know also, that in the alast days per­ilous times shall come.
2 For men shall be lovers of their own selves, cov­etous, boast­ers, proud, blas­phe­mers, dis­obe­di­ent to par­ents, unthank­ful, unholy,
3 With­out nat­ural affec­tion, truce­break­ers, false accusers, incon­ti­nent, fierce, despis­ers of those that are good,
4 Trai­tors, heady, high­minded, lovers of plea­sures more than lovers of God;
5 Hav­ing a form of god­li­ness, but deny­ing the power thereof: from such turn away.

Reform­ers also rec­og­nized this apostasy.

Start­ing in the 14th cen­tury with the Renais­sance, peo­ple began to break free of old ways of think­ing. Sci­ence, art, lit­er­a­ture, and many other areas of learn­ing began to pros­per in Europe. The way opened for new ideas, explo­ration, and inventions.

All these new ideas and the increased avail­abil­ity of the Bible due to new print­ing tech­niques inspired many to eval­u­ate what they knew and how they felt about reli­gion. Peo­ple such as John Wycliffe in Eng­land and John Calvin in Switzer­land began to ques­tion the prac­tices of the Chris­t­ian church. They saw that the church in their time and the Church in New Tes­ta­ment times were not the same.

Mar­tin Luther was another of these peo­ple, called reform­ers, who saw that some of the prac­tices of the Chris­t­ian church were incor­rect. He was a reli­gious and edu­cated man, and he wanted to change the prac­tices of the church that did not match the teach­ings of the Bible. In 1517, in an attempt to pro­mote dis­cus­sion on the prac­tices of the church, Luther wrote a doc­u­ment, iden­ti­fied as his Ninety-five The­ses, and nailed it to the door of a church in Wit­ten­berg, Ger­many. This act marked the begin­ning of the Protes­tant Reformation.

Luther was excom­mu­ni­cated from the Catholic Church for his actions of protest, but he kept his desire to con­form to the teach­ings of the Bible. He opened the way for other reform­ers through his years of work and his Ger­man trans­la­tion of the Bible. Many fol­lowed Luther and oth­ers like him who fought to reform the Chris­t­ian church or to estab­lish new churches. These peo­ple were called Protestants.

What would you tell Luther and his fol­low­ers, Calvin and his fol­low­ers, Wes­ley etc.? Many saw this apos­tasy hap­pen­ing, and had the couareg to speak up. What think ye?

Garry,
Because this com­ment thread is just get­ting too long, I’m going to post your com­ment as a blog post and we can add com­ments on to that.