While I like the trip down history lane given by the blog linked above, the individual writing leaves out some important moments in history
While the church is, without question, paying the price for promoting an overly-simplified “heritage” approach to history, I don’t think the motive was based in intentional deceptiionThat is to say, the author completely skips the formation of the correlation committee and it’s stated goal of making the manuals all tell the same story; and reducing “What it means to be mormon” down to 72 notecards.
In addition here are times the church and the leadership were intentionally deceitful. Anyone who gets this article as evidence that they shouldn’t claim lies can rebut with this post:
- Joseph Smith stood before the public after being on trial and said that he had one wife, when he had more than 17
- Fawn Brodie was excommunicated for writing about Joseph Smith’s wives in “No Man Knows my History”. Today, many of the same facts she uncovered and co-ordinated are published in the Essay on LDS.org as church fact. Brian Hales, work revolved in large part, around the claims made by Brodie.
- Wilford Woodruff stated that the Founding Fathers appeared to him in vision demanding their temple work should be done, when it had previously been done a year before
- Heber J. Grant pushed members to invest in a bank that was nothing more than a hollowed-out burned down building to keep the Quorum of the 12 from going to jail. The investment had to be subsidized by Tens of thousands (Millions in today’s currency) in tithing money or they would have still all lost money.
- The essay on Race in the Priesthood directly contradicts Brigham Young’s own statements on the matter that he gave as doctrine. Despite this, the essay states “Over time, Church leaders and members advanced many theories to explain the priesthood and temple restrictions. None of these explanations is accepted today as the official doctrine of the Church.” This is a very clear whitewashing as when the leaders gave statements it was accepted as official doctrine, and there is no discussion as to how “official doctrine” becomes unofficial. It leaves that as an exercise for the reader.
The count goes on and on. I could literally spend an entire 24 hours writing about specific lies told by leadership, passed off as revelation, or direct attempts by individuals within the correlation department to deceive members. I leave you with my own tale:
I was EQ instructor and prepping a lesson I turned to the Brigham Young manual. There I saw a quote that said something to the effect of “Celestial marriage … is the benefit of every man”. I forget the exact quote, but I remember the trail. I looked at the footnote for the quote and saw it point to a Deseret News article published in 1977. I remember thinking that someone must have miss attributed the quote; because Brigham didn’t live in 1977; and citing a source rather than a source of a source (Hugh Nibley’s big complaint about Fawn Brodie) is sloppy history/writing. So I looked up that news article and it cited a 1976 manual.
Geez, I thought, I don’t have time to track them all down. I pulled out my copy of “The Prophet Speaks”, published by the church and sold at Deseret Book; supposedly of every talk ever given by Prophets, and looked up the quote. It wasn’t there. Now I have a slew of 1970’s quotes of Brigham Young, and a clearly missing quote in a book published by the church.
So I went to the internet. Typed in the quote that I had and presto, I found the actual quote was “Celestial marriage, which is polygamy, is the benefit of every man”
It was very clear this was intentional deception. This wasn’t the history department trying, and having Leonard Arrington blah blah blah. This was someone who knew the truth and had control and power to alter what members thought, burying their tracks intentionally. And the deception covered a range of news articles, published works, and official church manuals. Finding another dozen or so of these led me to where I am today.
So I will keep saying the church lies, thank you. It’s not a simple matter of Heritage vs. History; this is outright deception, codified and incorporated on an institutional scale.
On one hand I would like to give the benefit of the doubt to individuals and institutions that their words were somehow misconstrued and that they didn’t really intend to lie or deceive others.
It is the same courtesy that I would like to receive from others. I make mistakes. I misspeak. I would hate for those mistakes to be boldly stated that I lied and intentionally deceived if that is not what I was doing or intending to do.
HOWEVER.
Many church leaders, over time, have proven repeatedly that they don’t want to tell the whole story. Their job is to affirm faith and to hell with the pesky fleks of history that tell an entirely different story.
These church leaders have lost the right to hide behind the good will of its membership defending them that no one really lied. No one really intended to mislead.
As a missionary for the mormon church I was accosted with “anti-mormon” lies. I looked to the prophets for guidance. I used quotes by Joseph Fielding Smith, Bruce R. McConkie and others to defend the prophets and the church.
And what did I discover decades later. That they had intentionally mislead me. They lied to me. And I in turn lied to those spreading anti-mormon lies which now turn out to be truths.
The door has closed on the church’s claims of being misunderstood.
Their only path forward is to acknowledge their sins, repent and ask forgiveness.
Otherwise, their sins of lying and dishonesty will continue to be proclaimed from the rooftops.
Just my 2 cents.
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The History and heritage of christianity is relative in perspective. The history comes not from the christian bible, or the book of mormon, but comes from the combined and colloborated sources. Thus, history and its timelime today are the baseline. Hiwver dates, and places and nanes slightly vary.
In real christianity the base of the religion is individualized thuseach of the denomination leaders were right in their own persoective and their own connection with god. It just maybe that god has a different path for you then the own you initially got started on.
This is actually what I believe; but I believe that we can look at God’s interactions with man and come to a firm conclusion that He/She/It is not good. The pure number of different paths and individualized responses that are contradictory… well if my boss was such a poor communicator and gave such confusing instructions I could easly say “That is a bad boss”.
As such, those who follow God, I can typically write off as “Bad” as the instructions they receive are bad.
Way to say it like it is!
It’s not just the leaders who lied it’s the 90000 missionaries go out every day and lie by claiming we should all sing the praises of Joseph Smith, omittting the fact that he had 34 wives, 11 of whom were teens and another 11 of whom were married to other men pletely violating the Ten Commandments the law of the priesthood the marriage vows of those couples who were violated and common human decency which should dictate to any conscientious person that screwing other men’s wives is completely wrong sick and twisted, in any context.
I’d love it if a Mormon would answer one simple question for me how do you reconcile the fact that your private practice polyandry with the Ten Commandments prohibition against that activity not to mention your own law of the priesthood D & C 132:61
If the church were true, there’d be zero lies, zero apologetics, and zero missionary work. Anything that’s true is able to stand on its own and survive.
Great post:) always a pleasure to read.
When I was a boy, the historic LDS chapel I attended had this amazing well crafted podium — wonderful, ornate woodworking example of yesteryear. On the face of it was inscribed, in raised, wood lettering, the phrase, “Thy Word Is Truth”. Strange, that after almost sixty years I can still visual that podium in my mind; that for some reason throughout the years it maintained some sort of significance for me. But now I think I know why. I think that this still present image in my mind is the reason behind why I lost all my enthusiasm (testimony) I had (and I had quite a bit!) for the church, which is: THE CHURCH LIES!! I came to the stark realization that the church’s “word” is not “truth”, but largely an obfuscation of truth, especially with regard to so many historical incidences relevant to declared revelations and other supposed workings of an actual God whose one and only true church this supposedly is. I came to the conclusion that Jesus would NEVER be at the forefront of a church whose foundation and ever rising structure is constructed out of so many out-right lies, half-truths, and other types of deceptions and distortions of what and how the historical Jesus want His church to be. Impossible that Mormonism is anything other than a fraud!