The Philosophy Of Leaving The Church Over Historical Issues-Like What Is It?

[Duncan]

In the Mormon Stories podcast with John and Brook McLay (the CES instructor who left the Church), he tells the story of visiting with an unnamed apostle after they left the Church, and then on their way out of the building they bump into President Monson.

You can hear what happens 1:20:00 in part three...

As Cobalt-70 said, today the crisis is the internet. When the final history of the Church is written, it will have two parts:

Part I: Before the Internet

Part II: After the Internet

I'm not sure which will do more damage: the easy access to pornography or the easy access to damaging Church history. But either way, the world has changed for the Church, and only time will tell what happens.

listening to that part now, howcome a regular member can't see a GA?! lucky!

[Duncan]

In the Mormon Stories podcast with John and Brook McLay (the CES instructor who left the Church), he tells the story of visiting with an unnamed apostle after they left the Church, and then on their way out of the building they bump into President Monson.

You can hear what happens 1:20:00 in part three...

As Cobalt-70 said, today the crisis is the internet. When the final history of the Church is written, it will have two parts:

Part I: Before the Internet

Part II: After the Internet

I'm not sure which will do more damage: the easy access to pornography or the easy access to damaging Church history. But either way, the world has changed for the Church, and only time will tell what happens.

I suspect it was Elder Scott that they met with, he was a Mission Pres. in Argentina and that's where Mark McConkie served and had some future GAs also serve. I wonder though how many members read about Church stuff on the 'net-good research topic

[Sky]

I think it’s worth mentioning that the internet has also done a lot of good for the Church. The message of the restored gospel is able to be accessed far and wide and in the privacy of one’s own home. More good things are in the works, such as the Joseph Smith Papers project. In the end, people can always find reasons to believe or not believe regardless of what is on the internet. It still comes down to having faith. Just because a critic of the faith has a website does not necessarily mean that what they say is true. Regardless of what impact the internet has, the Church is not going anywhere. No unhallowed hand can stop the work from progressing!!

[ExAntiMormon]

People leave in relation to historical issues because they've developed or believe a certain conclusion about something of history, generally several things, and then after awhile, those several things to them make them believe the Church simply cannot be true.

What they do not realize however, is that they've only just started learning, and that they are "picking" an argument against the Church and assuming it's true, that it's the entire truth of the matter. They don't realize that for nearly all the claims against the Church, there is actually more to the story, and because they have stopped their learning, that they have their judgment, they almost never come to understand the actual truth beyond the critical claim.

I believe the "Stages of Faith" can relate some to this phenomena.

[Libs]

There is a lot of truth in what you say about "more to the story", Ex-anti-Mormon (love your handle, btw! )..

The problem is, there is so MUCH information, I was feeling that I could spend a lifetime trying to sort through all of it.

I guess that's why faith is important. Really, that is the bottom line. Faith and what you believe to be a Holy Spirit confirmation of the things you believe. Plus, a lot of people rely on their own experiences with the gospel, which is not a bad way to go, either. It works for them. The "proof" is in living it and seeing it work in your life.

[Storm Rider]

There is a lot of truth in what you say about "more to the story", Ex-anti-Mormon (love your handle, btw! )..

The problem is, there is so MUCH information, I was feeling that I could spend a lifetime trying to sort through all of it.

I guess that's why faith is important. Really, that is the bottom line. Faith and what you believe to be a Holy Spirit confirmation of the things you believe. Plus, a lot of people rely on their own experiences with the gospel, which is not a bad way to go, either. It works for them. The "proof" is in living it and seeing it work in your life.

You really have hit the nail on the head. One can never learn all the facts and one could spend the rest of their life studying history and still never know everything. I wonder what it would be like if we had all the history about the first apostles and each of the prophets in the Ot and NT. At the end of the day, it is faith and faith alone that moves us. It removes the mountain of doubts, you soothes the wounds from careless leaders and other members, and it overcomes the pain of mortality. Are we willing to take one more step as a disciple of Jesus Christ or not? It can get easier, but it is never a life of constant upward progression. There will be troughs along the way, but it remains that it is about just one more step.

[why me]

I suppose the only way for you to understand it would be to imagine possible scenarios where you learn something new about Church history and it causes you to leave the Church. What would it take?

If the answer is "nothing", then you'll never understand it.

I think that it comes down to empathy and the ablitly to imagine ourselves in the shoes of that person for better understanding. One reason that one may fall away from church is because of the perception of what church should be: something perfect and known. When a person reads of an imperfection and something unknown, a problem can result. However, since all history is made by humans, we should never expect any history to be perfect or known.

[why me]

People leave the church because of historical issues when the study of history informs them that the church isn’t what they thought it was.

How many Americans burned their passport when they read Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States? Not many: And why? Because no one reading American history expects a perfect history and yet, in High School I got a pretty perfect history of the US. The US did not wrong. And yet, according to that book, the United States is far from having a perfect history and most ameicans are clueless about it. However, with lds history, some people do expect perfection in its history and when imperfection is discovered, it brings on a crisis of faith. But should it? Perhaps not.

[why me]

So the critical argument as I understand it is that Joseph Smith behaved at times in seemingly morally repugnant actions such as on occasion marrying other women without the permission or knowledge of his wife Emma. Hence this should be taken into account as negative evidence when we evaluate his claims to being guided by a perfectly moral loving God. Sure maybe he really believed God wanted him to institute polygamy and this is the reason he behaved the way he did. But simply because a person who behaves in a morally objectionable fashion believes God wants them to so behave does not in fact mean God really does want them to.

Best,

Uncertain

Is this the same god who killed the couple who cheated on their tithing in the new testament? Moral loving God? Here is the deal: I find Joseph to be between a rock and a hard place with polygamy. His first known plural wife was Fanny. He then waited several years before going on a sealing spree for a period of two years. Why? Could it be pressure from god to implement polygamy and if so, what should Joseph have done if Emma was not on board. Disobey god? And say to god, sorry but emma does not want me to do it? And how would god respond: Okay lets forget about it.

To understand Joseph we wil need to see what happens when prophets disobey god in the old testament or in the new testament if people disobey him. Many critics mock the threat of the sword by the angel when it comes to JS's polygamy. And yet, in the bible the sword threat is mentioned quite often.

Edited January 19, 2012 by why me

[why me]

.

As Cobalt-70 said, today the crisis is the internet. When the final history of the Church is written, it will have two parts:

Part I: Before the Internet

Part II: After the Internet

I'm not sure which will do more damage: the easy access to pornography or the easy access to damaging Church history. But either way, the world has changed for the Church, and only time will tell what happens.

I think that the problem comes from how people interpret history. Critics put a negative spin on certain aspects of church history but ignore the positives. Why? Because they have an agenda of casting doubt in people. And the lds church has a more positive interpretation of their history. So, the key would be to see the bias and see the interpretation as clouded. Such is history. How did you feel (if you are an american) when it was discovered that the painting of George Washingtom crossing the delaware was not accurate?

[why me]

I wonder what it would be like if we had all the history about the first apostles and each of the prophets in the Ot and NT.

Most nonlds do not think about this at all. They tend to see the early apostles as pretty near perfect and yet, we know that at the time of christ they were far from perfect. But after christ's death and when they went about with the missionary effort, people view them as pretty much perfect. It is as if a wonderful transformation took place after Christ was murdered. But knowing human nature, we should be able to guess that they were never perfect regardless if the new testament more or less implies so. The unwanted accounts were weeded out long ago.

[Kevin Christensen]

People leave in relation to historical issues because they've developed or believe a certain conclusion about something of history, generally several things, and then after awhile, those several things to them make them believe the Church simply cannot be true.

What they do not realize however, is that they've only just started learning, and that they are "picking" an argument against the Church and assuming it's true, that it's the entire truth of the matter. They don't realize that for nearly all the claims against the Church, there is actually more to the story, and because they have stopped their learning, that they have their judgment, they almost never come to understand the actual truth beyond the critical claim.

I believe the "Stages of Faith" can relate some to this phenomena.

Fowler's stages of faith model is quite well known, and some find it helpful. I prefer the Perry Scheme for Cognitive and Ethical Growth because, with regard to doctrines, it is more concerned with how people process information than the conclusions they come to hold.

The following is from an email I got from Veda Hale, based on her Sunstone Paper that used the Perry Scheme as a way to view Levi Peterson's Canyon's of Grace. I post it now and then, and it seems relevant to what I see on this thread.

Kevin Christensen

Pittsburgh, PA

PERRY SCHEME OF COGNITIVE AND ETHICAL GROWTH

TABLE OF TRAITS BY POSITION AND TRANSITION

POSITION 1 - Basic Duality. (Garden of Eden Position: All will be well.)

The person perceives meaning divided into two realms-Good/Bad, Right/wrong, We/They, Success/Failure, etc. They believe that knowledge and goodness are quantitative, that there are absolute answers for every problem and authorities know them and will teach them to those who will work hard and memorize them.

Agency is "Out there". The person is so embedded here that there is no place from which to observe themselves, yet they have a dim sense of there being a boundary to Otherness somewhere that gives their Eden-like world view boundary.

Transition 1-2 - Dualism modified. (Snake whispers.) The person starts to be aware of others and of differing opinions, even among authorities. This started the feeling of uncertainty. But they decide it is part of the authority's job to pose problems. It takes hard work to deny the legitimacy of diversity and to keep the belief in the simplicity of truth.

(It should be kept in mind that in any of the transition states it is easy for the person to become depressed. It takes time for the "guts to catch up with leaps of mind." When a sense of loss is accorded the honor of acknowledgement, movement is more rapid and the risk of getting stuck in apathy, alienation, or depression is reduced. When one steps into new perceptions he is unlikely to take another until he comes to terms with the losses attendant on the first.)

POSITION 2 - Multiplicity Prelegitimate. (Resisting snake)

Now the person moves to accept that there is diversity, but they still think there are TRUE authorities who are right, that the others are confused by complexities or are just frauds. They think they are with the true authorities and are right while all others are wrong. They accept that their good authorities present problems so they can learn to reach right answers independently.

TRANSITION: 2-3 - Dualism modified

Now the person admits that good authorities can admit to not knowing all the answers yet, but they will teach what they know now and teach the rest when they have it. They accept that disciplines are divided into the definite and the vague, but that in the end even science fails. Though they have given up dividing meaning into just two realms, they still feel knowledge and goodness are quantitative and that agency is "out there".

POSITION 3 - Multiplicity Legitimate but Subordinate. (Snake's logic considered)

The person still feels that the nature of things naturally produces differing opinions, but it's as it should be, because the Authorities will figure it all out and hand on their conclusions eventually.

ALL OF THE POSITIONS ABOVE FEEL ABANDONMENT IN UNSTRUCTURED LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS. WHEN CHANGES IN THINKING START TO HAPPEN, IT CAN BE A DANGEROUS TIME. (The forbidden fruit has been partaken and one is out of the Garden of Eden.)

There are seven ways a person can go.

Transition 1. The person can make the transition by modifying dualism drastically to where one no longer trusts authority to have any answers, and they think it will be a long, long time before they will; therefore, there is really no way to be judged by them. Bitterness sets in, as it seems as if rewards don't come by hard work and rightness, but by good expression and arbitrary factors. With an inability to distinguish between abstract thought and "bull", disillusion settles and blinds the person to where they become dangerously cynical and take advantage of any opportunity to get gain.

Transition 2. The person could decide that, if there are so many different answers a depending on individual perspective, that it is impossible for any true judgment; therefore anything goes. All is of equal value. To have an opinion makes it right.

Transition 3. Same as above, except it dawns that there are some facts that, if known, can make for a better choice among the many.

Transition 4. Anger and frustration win out. Instead of becoming cynical and opportunistic, person acts out negatively.

Transition 5. The person is moving closer to accepting relativity. He trusts authorities to have valid grounds for evaluations. To get along, one needs to accept that authorities are using reasonable information in making their answers. So the person tries to discover what it is authorities think and want.

Transition 6. Person realizes that on some matters, reasonable people reasonably disagree, that knowledge is qualitative and is context-dependent. They begin weighing factors and approaches in ways that force comparison of patterns of thought, they think about thinking and this occupies the foreground. But they still tend to want to conform so much that they have trouble thinking independently.

Transition 7. This position between multiplicity and relativity is now closer to relativity. The person sees that thinking relatively isn't just what the authorities he has been dealing have reasoned out and want him to accept, it is the way the world works, in most cases.

NOW UNCERTAINTIES OR DIVERSITIES MULTIPLY UNTIL THEY TIP THE BALANCE AGAINST CERTAINTY AND HOMOGENEITY, PRECIPITATING A CRISIS THAT FORCES THE CONSTRUCTION OF A NEW VISION OF THE WORLD, BE IT ONE MARKED BY CYNICISM, ANXIETY, OR A NEW SENSE OF FREEDOM.

POSITION 5 Relativism discovered.

The person accepts that all thinking is relative for everyone and are much taken with this new perspective. It could be a time of profound anxiety as the person struggles to understand how to make right choices. They decide they can and must do something about this new world view, but they may spend a long time before sensing a need for commitment. They can take responsibility for a task at hand, but don't yet realize they have a responsibility to choose commitments.

THIS POSITION COULD MAKE FOR A PERSON WHOSE AGENCY FOR MAKING SENSE HAS VANISHED ENTIRELY. THEY COULD ALSO REACT BY POSTPONING DECISIONS, FALLING INTO APATHY OR GOING INTO A RAGE. IT COULD GET SO BAD IT COULD APPEAR THE PERSON NEEDS CLINICAL HELP. THE POTENTIAL FOR CYNICISM COULD BECOME EQUALLY ALARMING EDUCATIONALLY.

If the person RETREATS, rage takes over and he loses agency to make sense. He survives by avoiding complexity and ambivalence and regresses to Dualism, position 2, (multiplicity prelegitimate). He becomes moralistic righteous and has "righteous" hatred for otherness. He complains childlike and demands of authority figures to just tell him what they want.

If the person at this point doesn't retreat, he may go into a state of TEMPORIZING. His agency for making sense has vanished, but he postpones any movement. He may reconsign agency to some possible event. If so, Guilt and shame accompany the uneasiness about a failure of responsibility they feel hopeless to cope with.

Or if not either of the above then the person may try to ESCAPE. He becomes apathetic. His agency for making sense has also vanished, but in his feeling of being alienated, he abandons responsibility and uses his understanding of multiplicity and relativism as a way to avoid commitment. He is drifting and has some sense that later he will find himself to be living a hollow life. This drifting with insecurity about "goodness" of his position can make for such a detachment that precludes any meaningful involvement. He starts to rely on impulse. THIS CAN BECOME A SETTLED CONDITION. "For the students reporting their recovery of care,...their period of alienation appears as a time of transition. In this time the self is lost through the very effort to hold onto it in the face of inexorable change in the world's appearance. It is a space of meaninglessness between received belief and creative faith. In their rebirth they experience in themselves the origin or meanings, which they had previously expected to come to them from outside." (page 92 of the Perry Scheme.)

POSITION 6. Commitment Foreseen.

FROM HERE ON THE PERSON WILL FEEL FRUSTRATION IN TOO-STRUCTURED OF AN ENVIRONMENT.

Now the person thinks he is alone in an uncertain world, making his own decisions, with no one to say he is right. He makes choices aware of relativism and accepts that the agency to do so is within the individual. He sees that to move forward he must make commitments coming from within. He foresees the challenge of responsibility and feels he needs to get on with it. He also senses that the first steps require arbitrary faith or willing suspension of disbelief. He knows he needs to narrow his focus, center himself and become aware of internal, what could be called, spiritual strength.

He starts to see how he must be embracing and transcending of: certainty/doubt, focus/breadth, idealism/realism, tolerance/contempt, stability/flexibility. He senses need for affirmation and incorporation of existential or logical polarities. He senses need to hold polarities in tension in the interest of Truth.

He begins to maintain meaning, coherence, and value while conscious of their partial, limited, and contradictable nature. He begins to understand symbol as symbols and acknowledges the time-place relativity of them. He begins to affirm and hold absolutes in symbols while still acknowledging them to be relativistic. He begins to embrace viewpoints in conflict with his own. Now the person has a field-independent learning style, has learned to scan for information, accepts that hierarchical and analytic notes are evidence of sharpening of cognition. He is willing to take risks, is flexible, perceptive, broad, strategy-minded, and analytical.

The TRANSITION position between Position 6, "Commitment Foreseen", and position 7, "Commitments in Relativism developed" is as follows:

Besides the above, the person feels he is lost if he doesn't decide, that if he can once make one decision, everything else will be OK.

POSITION 7. Commitments in Relativism developed.

The person makes first commitment while being aware of Relativism, and has a vivid sense of CLAIMING AND POWER. He now more fully feels that agency is within him and foresees responsibility with excitement and anticipates more empowering as he makes more commitments and choices. The TRANSITION between Position 7 and Position 8, sees the person having made his first commitment but feeling that everything else is still in limbo and he is foreseeing problems coming from trying to juggle responsibility. He senses need to be: wholehearted--but tentative, to be able to fight for his own values--yet respect others. Now, besides the other ways of studying, the person begins to read not to conciliate Authority, but to learn on his own initiative.

POSITION 8. Commitments in Relativism developed continues.

The person makes several more Commitments while realizing he must find balance and establish painful priorities of energy, action and time. He starts to experience periodically serenity and well-being in the midst of complexity. He has a sense of living with trust in the midst of heightened awareness of risk. He accepts fact that order and disorder are fluctuations in experience. He searches for models of knowledgeability and courage to affirm commitment in full awareness of uncertainty. HE STILL NEEDS TO RECOGNIZE THAT EVEN

THE MODEL MUST BE TRANSCENDED, AND HE SENSES HE NEEDS TO DEVELOP IRONY. The TRANSITION between Position 8 and 9 brings trauma. The person feels everything is contradictory and he just can't make sense out of life's dilemmas. But he begins to develop sense of irony and sees he must embrace viewpoints in conflict with his own, not in the old multiplistic way of "separate but equal" or "live and let live" but truly embrace them with what might as well be called "love".

POSITION 9. Commitments in Relativism further developed.

The person now has a developed sense of irony and can more easily embrace other's viewpoints. He can accept life as just that "life", just the way IT is! Now he holds the commitments he makes in a condition of "PROVISIONAL ULTIMACY", meaning that for him what he chooses to be truth IS his truth, and he acts as if it is ultimate truth, but there is still a "provision" for change. He has no illusions about having "arrived" permanently on top of some heap, he is ready and knows he will have to retrace his journey over and over, but he has hope that he will do it each time more wisely. He is aware that he is developing his IDENTITY through Commitment. He can affirm the inseparable nature of the knower and the known--meaning he knows he as knower contributes to what he calls known. He helps weld a community by sharing realization of aloneness and gains strength and intimacy through this shared vulnerability. He has discarded obedience in favor of his own agency, and he continues to select, judge, and build.

[Jaybear]

How many Americans burned their passport when they read Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States? Not many: And why? Because no one reading American history expects a perfect history and yet, in High School I got a pretty perfect history of the US. The US did not wrong. And yet, according to that book, the United States is far from having a perfect history and most ameicans are clueless about it. However, with lds history, some people do expect perfection in its history and when imperfection is discovered, it brings on a crisis of faith. But should it? Perhaps not.

Huh? Why would any burn their passport? That woudl just mean they couldnt leave the country.

Nah, a better, simplier analogy is the husband who after years of being happily married finds out that his wife had lied to him, and was not a virgin on their wedding night.

Such information would understandably create a crisis in many marriages.

Should it cause a crisis? Pfft. That is a personal decision. Its not really my business to tell someone whether and what conditions they should stay married.

[Kevin Christensen]

Huh? Why would any burn their passport? That woudl just mean they couldnt leave the country.

Nah, a better, simplier analogy is the husband who after years of being happily married finds out that his wife had lied to him, and was not a virgin on their wedding night.

Such information would understandably create a crisis in many marriages.

Should it cause a crisis? Pfft. That is a personal decision. Its not really my business to tell someone whether and what conditions they should stay married.

The thing about adopting the metaphor of marriage and late disclosure here is that it assumes covenant obligations that don't actually exist between me and my teachers in the church.

"There is always danger of a metaphor once adopted becoming the master instead of the servant."

(E. A. Payne, cited in Hugh Nibley, Mormonism and Early Christianity CWHN vol 4 (Salt Lake City and Provo, Deseret Book and Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies) 1987, page 194, note 2.)

The only covenant that I have entered into with any member of the church besides my wife is to "sustain" them in their callings. Looking up "sustain" in the dictionary, I find that it refers to upholding, supporting, suffering, permitting, and enduring. When I raise my hand to sustain anyone in an LDS calling, high or low, it is me promising Christ (not any earthy representative or institution) that I will put up with any crap that comes along because I trust God. It's the same issue as putting one's trust in the "arm of the flesh."

The metaphor also assumes deliberate withholding of information. While the scriptures do recognize four valid reasons for withholding information, which I'll get to in a moment, it seems to me that most of the stuff I've run across in my own studies that I did not get from teachers in Sunday school, or hear in conference, or find in the manuals, happened because the people involved simply did not know. This, I submit, is very different that the picture of deliberate withholding of something relevant to a personal, sacred covenant.

For "Paradigms Crossed" in RBBM 7:2, i wrote this:

The scriptures do recognize four valid motives for managing access to information: (1) pedagogy—when the information cannot be understood without significant preparation or experience (3 Nephi 17:2-3; Hebrews 5:11-14), (2) confidentiality on personal matters (D&C 42:88, 92), (3) sacredness (3 Nephi 17:17; D&C 63:64), and (4) social danger¹⁸³ —this restriction never applies to ideas, but only to spelling out methods.

Information management in these cases derives from genuine love on the part of the teacher and free consent on the part of the student. Full knowledge remains available to those who seek it.

Our scriptures caution all of us against limiting knowledge in order to cover sins, gratify pride and vain ambition, or to exercise control, dominion, or compulsion over people in any degree of unrighteousness (cf. D&C 121:37). Pure knowledge, we are told, greatly enlarges the soul, without hypocrisy and without guile (D&C 121:42). That is, if the knowledge is pure, we can expect to see an increase of love and empathy, as when Enos first prays for himself, then for his family, and then for his enemies. It follows then, that impure knowledge leads to hypocrisy, impatience, and intolerance, all of which signify a contracting of the soul (D&C 121:39). This does not mean, however, that pure knowledge, sharp criticism, and love are always strangers to each other.

Take note that those who send out the young unprepared, or who create faulty background expectations for them, have just as much to answer for as those who stand in the great and spacious building, zealously or morbidly pointing out problems. Whether they intend to or not, both camps can lead innocent individuals to feel shame at clinging to the iron rod, and to lose their way, and wander lost in the broad roads. The disillusioned got their illusions somewhere.¹⁸⁴

I've long wanted better manuals, and better informed teachers, and consequently, better prepared saints. Part of being better saints is having perspective. And the best way I've found to improve my own perspective is to cast the motes out of my own eyes first.

Kevin Christensen

Pittsburgh, PA

[KevinG]

How did you feel (if you are an american) when it was discovered that the painting of George Washingtom crossing the delaware was not accurate?

...well duh? (Standing in a boat on an icy river - heh).

[Matthew J. Tandy]

Kevin,

Thanks for sharing the Perry model. Interesting. I think it accurately (as far as one really can on such a complex issue) reflects possible positions adn steps along a person's psychological journey in the agnostic/aetheistic path. The loanguage itself is loaded to some degree, assigning one position as inferior to another. Accepting dualism is an infantile step to accepting relativism, etc. Any attempt to go from higher steps to lower is deemed regressive. However, if one were to in fact personally have a visit from God (ala Joseph Smith, John Taylor, etc), then that would essentially toss the steps up and down out the window. I understand you can rationalize those events of others or even yourself away, but it is a massive wrench nontheless. However, using this same framework is still possible within the position of faith. For isntance, I believe in the restoration and its inherent underlying principles of ethics. I also reject much fo what I consider dross (false tradition) in the church. I actively embrace people from a multitude of faiths and itneract with them regularly, not just Christian, but Islamic, Hindu, Jewish, Bahai, New Age, etc. In many complex ways I am at stage 9, while holding to other stages. As such, the Perry model is really mostly useful to analyze someone who is moving from a fundamentalist religious or moral position to one of rejection of the previous self, followed by embracing personal and world relativism (thus in a sense re-empowering them).

[KevinG]

We are awash in information - some of it accurate, lots of it inaccurate. Some of it is relevant, lots is irrelevant. It is up to us to discern. The Holy Ghost is a great truth and relevancy detector.

[california boy]

Is this the same god who killed the couple who cheated on their tithing in the new testament? Moral loving God? Here is the deal: I find Joseph to be between a rock and a hard place with polygamy. His first known plural wife was Fanny. He then waited several years before going on a sealing spree for a period of two years. Why? Could it be pressure from god to implement polygamy and if so, what should Joseph have done if Emma was not on board. Disobey god? And say to god, sorry but emma does not want me to do it? And how would god respond: Okay lets forget about it.

To understand Joseph we wil need to see what happens when prophets disobey god in the old testament or in the new testament if people disobey him. Many critics mock the threat of the sword by the angel when it comes to JS's polygamy. And yet, in the bible the sword threat is mentioned quite often.

Yet the members of the church think polygamy is more immoral than having sex outside of marriage according to a recent poll. Can someone explain that? I certainly can't

[Analytics]

How many Americans burned their passport when they read Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States? Not many: And why? Because no one reading American history expects a perfect history and yet, in High School I got a pretty perfect history of the US. The US did not wrong. And yet, according to that book, the United States is far from having a perfect history and most ameicans are clueless about it. However, with lds history, some people do expect perfection in its history and when imperfection is discovered, it brings on a crisis of faith. But should it? Perhaps not.

I disagree with the analogy. Gordon B. Hinckley said:

Each of us has to face the matter—either the Church is true, or it is a fraud. There is no middle ground. It is the Church and kingdom of God, or it is nothing.

The actual history of the church does in fact have bearing on whether or not the church is true or a fraud. And whether or not it is true or a fraud has direct bearing on whether or not somebody ought to consecrate his or her life to it.

In contrast, citizenship in the United States isn't based upon the premise that the U.S. is the only true and living country in which God is pleased, and which He wants everyone to join.

Edited January 19, 2012 by Analytics

[KevinG]

The analogy is appropriate if not taken too far.

How much of an impact on the truthfulness of the LDS Churchis based upon the fact that Joseph is portrayed translating behind a sheet or head in hat?

None.

[california boy]

I think that the problem comes from how people interpret history. Critics put a negative spin on certain aspects of church history but ignore the positives. Why? Because they have an agenda of casting doubt in people. And the lds church has a more positive interpretation of their history. So, the key would be to see the bias and see the interpretation as clouded. Such is history. How did you feel (if you are an american) when it was discovered that the painting of George Washingtom crossing the delaware was not accurate?

I am not saying I have a problem with the history of the church, but I think the major problem some people have concerning church history is the seemingly coverup of certain known historical facts. Perhaps you can illustrate what the positive spin the church gives on Joseph Smith marrying other mens wives and 14 year old girls. Maybe that will help others understand how you feel the church should or has dealt with some historical facts.

[KevinG]

The Church being a stickler about record keeping and journaling seems peculiar - If we wanted to cover up the facts of Joseph's sealings and other historical details.

I think the fairest" treatment of Joseph's relationships I've read is to be had in Bushman's Rough Stone Rolling.

[Calm]

Yet the members of the church think polygamy is more immoral than having sex outside of marriage according to a recent poll. Can someone explain that? I certainly can't

I would assume it is because at this time, polygamy is not commanded by the Lord and they view it as not only adultery, but something more often involving apostasy.

FWIW, I don't agree with saying one sin is more "immoral" than another. It would depend on the situation---who was harmed for example.

Edited January 19, 2012 by calmoriah

[KevinG]

I would assume it is because at this time, polygamy is not commanded by the Lord and they view it as not only adultery, but something more often involving apostasy.

I don't agree with saying one sin is more "immoral" than another. It would depend on the situation---who was harmed for example.

Honestly I think the polls reflecting a distate for Polygamy over Adultry stem from the LDS reflecting the sensibilities of the general population and perhaps wanting to disavow the peculiar history that sets us apart from the general community.

[Analytics]

The Church being a stickler about record keeping and journaling seems peculiar - If we wanted to cover up the facts of Joseph's sealings and other historical details.

You haven’t studied this in much detail, have you. Throughout his life, Joseph Smith adamantly denied practicing polygamy, and the Church’s denials were canonized in the D&C. When William Law publically accused Joseph Smith of secretly teaching and practicing polygamy, Joseph Smith responded,

For the last three years I have a record of all my acts and proceedings, for I have kept several good, faithful, and efficient clerks in constant employ; they have accompanied me everywhere, and carefully kept my history, and they have written down what I have done, where I have been, and what I have said; therefore my enemies cannot charge me with any day, time, or place, but what I have written testimony to prove my actions; and my enemies cannot prove anything against me.

Joseph Smith was effectively in a conspiracy with his clerks to create an exhaustive and comprehensive record which could be used prove he didn’t practice polygamy. That is one reason why Joseph Smith III and the reorganized church denied he practiced polygamy at all, and why the Brigham Young branch can’t definitively list who he married and on what dates.

Edited January 19, 2012 by Analytics