The Internet And Other Challenges To Lds Faith

[Daniel Peterson]

Some might find this of interest:

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/700220941/Mormons-opening-up-in-an-Internet-world.html

[Analytics]

Sounds like the Church is moving in the right direction. Perhaps in the next edition of the manual Teaching Seminary, they'll replace Packer's "The Mantle is Far, Far Greater than the Intellect" with Quinn's "On Being a Mormon Historian."

Michael Quinn seems to be vindicated with what he said in 1981:

The Accommodation History advocated by Elders Benson and Packer and actually practiced by some LDS writers is intended to protect the Saints, but actually disillusions them and makes them vulnerable. Ezra Taft Benson reports with obvious irritation the fact that LDS Seminary and Institute teachers ask him, "When and where can we begin to tell them our real story?" and Elder Benson observes, "Inferred in that question is the accusation that the church has not been telling the truth."³⁴ The tragic reality is that there have been occasions when Church leaders, teachers, and writers have not told the truth they knew about difficulties of the Mormon past, but have offered to the Saints instead a mixture of platitudes, half-truths, omissions, and plausible denials. Elder Packer and others would justify this because "we are at war with the adversary" and must also protect any Latter-day Saint whose "testimony [is] in seedling stage."³⁵ But such a public-relations defense of the Church is actually a Maginot Line of sandy fortifications which "the enemy" can easily breach and which has been built up by digging lethal pits into which the Saints will stumble. A so-called "faith-promoting" Church history which conceals controversies and difficulties of the Mormon past actually undermines the faith of Latter-day Saints who eventually learn about the problems from other sources.

[Daniel Peterson]

Oh, I certainly hope not.

Moreover, if I were you I wouldn't have a lot of money riding on the possibility.

[Darth_Bill]

As an aside, I'm listening to your interview on MormonStories. You, my good man, are awesome.

[Senator]

It will be interesting to see what an "official" church apologia looks and feels like.

[Sky]

Although I don't usually agree with her, Joanna Brooks has a piece about this in Religion Dispatches.

Time for Mormons to come to terms with Church history