Utah Lighthouse Ministry shutting down

[boblloyd91]

https://www.sltrib.com/news/2022/11/25/after-nearly-60-years-salt-lake/

Apparently the Tanners outfit is shutting down. Thoughts?

[mfbukowski]

Heartbreaking. 😜

[bluebell]

It’s sad about all the crime in those neighborhoods. I feel bad for people who live there and have for decades. 

[Kenngo1969]

"We need more anti-Mormon books [sic].  They keep us on our toes."

     —Hugh W. Nibley

 

[CV75]

1 hour ago, boblloyd91 said:

https://www.sltrib.com/news/2022/11/25/after-nearly-60-years-salt-lake/

Apparently the Tanners outfit is shutting down. Thoughts?

I find the metaphor quite fitting!

[Pyreaux]

Ah, do y'all remember those golden days? I recall the Tanners keeping a solid block of lead according to the dimension of the golden plates. This lead block weighed 140 pounds, they would encourage visitors to try to pick it up off the table as an analogue for the golden plates and to imagine running through the woods as Joseph Smith said (as though the dimensions of the "golden" plates described a solid block, void of any gaps with pages that rustled like tin sheets). Which disregarded all accounts of those who hefted the plates said it was around “forty to sixty” pounds, and had to be either gold or lead, and Joseph Smith must be telling the truth, as he did not have the money for that much lead. Now, so it seems neither do the Tanners.

I guess there must be someone having a worse Thanksgiving.

Edited November 26, 2022 by Pyreaux

[LoudmouthMormon]

I wish I lived in the ward that had Sandra Tanner in its boundaries.  I'd get the Elders Quorum to help her move.  

Wow.  I never met, but during the late-'90's the decade after, holy heck did I bash away happily on forums with critics full of themselves and anti materials.   Folks with Tanner-born stuff tended to be more formidable opponents.  As I look through my old notes, I see the Tanners never believed the moronic Spaulding Manuscript theory.   I have snippets of conversations from folks with usernames like "JustCurious", who were such blatant biased antimormons it was just funny.  That was the online era of "lying for the LORD", where people would show up pretending to be active LDS and try to spout little-known LDS doctrine at us to shock us into abandoning our faith.  That was the era where an itinerant speaker could almost make a living giving talks at Baptist churches about the monstrous cult known as mormonism.  

We had the Zions Lighthouse Message Board.  There was a "Dialogue and Discussion" board at fairlds.org.  There was mormonapologetics.org.  Before Twitter ever had "TheReal[CelebrityName]" to indicate someone was real, the precursor of mormondialogue.org had Daniel Peterson's title of "DCP His Own Self".  Such a never-ending flood of Christians seeking us out to defeat our theology and prove us to be nonChristians.  People forecasted the immediate dissolution of the church after Paul H. Dunn admitted making crap up.  We fought through DNA science for 5 years, and emerged with our faith intact and our enemies exposed.  "Apologist" was an insult, akin to "transphobe". 

 

Here's a random sampling of the quality of much criticism, from an anti who went by the name of Speedo:

Quote

[the Book of Mormon] has undergone over 4,000 changes including some very heavy doctrinal changes. Need reference? Look up Sandra Tanner in the Salt Lake City phone book, she'd be happy to help you find them for yourselves, or go to UTLM.org.

Such was the nature of many antimormon arguments at the time.  They thought they were on to something because they knew it, and we didn't.  And just mentioning such things constituted an argument so powerful, it obviously proved mormonism false. 

FARMS dug up and showed us all sorts of stuff we never knew was part of our faith.   We got so good at pointing out the biblical source of our beliefs, more than one Christian antimormon became disillusioned with Christianity and lost faith.

I miss those days.  And I'm sorry Mrs. Tanner has to move because her neighborhood apparently went to crap.  I wish I could do something nice for her.

Edited November 26, 2022 by LoudmouthMormon

[rodheadlee]

3 hours ago, bluebell said:

It’s sad about all the crime in those neighborhoods. I feel bad for people who live there and have for decades. 

I didn't think you guys had those problems up there in Salt Lake City.

[Judd]

1 hour ago, LoudmouthMormon said:

There was a "Dialogue and Discussion" board at fairlds.org.  There was mormonapologetics.org

Both of those were this board, no?

[The Nehor]

[JLHPROF]

Just like every other small business forced to close because the new businesses do it better and cheaper.

 

[Derl Sanderson]

2 hours ago, JLHPROF said:

Just like every other small business forced to close because the new businesses do it better and cheaper.

 

Alternately ... Just like every other anti-Mormon "ministry" that finds itself on the scrapheap of history.

[gopher]

Where can one go now for reliable and trustworthy anti-Mormon information?  It seems many critics have gotten lazier lately and now focus more on pushing emotional arguments.  Now they make the hilariously amusing claim that Elder Holland's musket reference is a call for violence and that not-so-amusing false claim that the Nov 2015 policy caused 26 (or 32) LDS gay teens in Utah to take their lives during the three months following its release. I understand emotional arguments can be more persuasive than logical arguments, but I wonder if the era of destroying faith by intellectual and scholarly means is coming to an end. 

[gav]

18 minutes ago, gopher said:

Where can one go now for reliable and trustworthy anti-Mormon information?  It seems many critics have gotten lazier lately and now focus more on pushing emotional arguments.  Now they make the hilariously amusing claim that Elder Holland's musket reference is a call for violence and that not-so-amusing false claim that the Nov 2015 policy caused 26 (or 32) LDS gay teens in Utah to take their lives during the three months following its release. I understand emotional arguments can be more persuasive than logical arguments, but I wonder if the era of destroying faith by intellectual and scholarly means is coming to an end. 

Welcome to the postmodern world...

[Navidad]

If I may recount an event . . . Several years ago at a lunch at an MHA meeting I was seated with a number of well-known LDS historians and authors. You would all recognize their names. The seat to my right was empty. Just after the prayer a very pleasant lady questioned whether the seat was vacant and sat down. Everyone at the table knew who she was, stood up, and greeted her warmly. I soon realized that she was Sandra Tanner. She was delightful and shared stories back and forth with those at the table for the entire meal. I had a wonderful time. I had no such stories to tell, but certainly enjoyed listening to the very pleasant conversations. There was no discomfort, no uneasiness at all. I felt she was a completely accepted member of their fraternity. She and almost everyone at the table had a story from the past about their interactions and pleasant times together. In fact, I learned more at that luncheon than at the rest of the conference.

[Teancum]

On 11/25/2022 at 5:58 PM, mfbukowski said:

Heartbreaking. 😜

The Tanners certainly did have a negative impact on the Church.  and they did it under great opposition. 

[Snodgrassian]

11 hours ago, gopher said:

Where can one go now for reliable and trustworthy anti-Mormon information?  It seems many critics have gotten lazier lately and now focus more on pushing emotional arguments.  Now they make the hilariously amusing claim that Elder Holland's musket reference is a call for violence and that not-so-amusing false claim that the Nov 2015 policy caused 26 (or 32) LDS gay teens in Utah to take their lives during the three months following its release. I understand emotional arguments can be more persuasive than logical arguments, but I wonder if the era of destroying faith by intellectual and scholarly means is coming to an end. 

"Anti-Mormon" is a tired phrase. There are plenty of people conducting research and sharing it online. The game has changed during the internet years. Back when the Tanner's started their "ministry", some form of physical publication was required, now, anyone can publish anything they want with the click of button. There is bit more noise out there, from both sides of the table so it is easy to get turned off from it all because you have to swim through the trash to find the more serious analysis. 

The part I cant stand is the "pod casters" from both sides playing the oneupmanship game and the "bro" culture that is pouring out of it all. 

[Teancum]

On 11/25/2022 at 6:43 PM, Kenngo1969 said:

"We need more anti-Mormon books [sic].  They keep us on our toes."

     —Hugh W. Nibley

 

Do they now?  

[Teancum]

On 11/26/2022 at 7:01 PM, Derl Sanderson said:

Alternately ... Just like every other anti-Mormon "ministry" that finds itself on the scrapheap of history.

Yet the church grows slower than even and is losing more and more members than ever before. Good members. Solid members.  But keep patting yourselves in the back.

[Teancum]

12 hours ago, gopher said:

but I wonder if the era of destroying faith by intellectual and scholarly means is coming to an end. 

Hardly. The Church cannot withstand intellectual and scholarly criticism.  And the most successful critics are not the Evangelical and other Christian critics. If is from the secular and disaffected member ranks. 

Edited November 28, 2022 by Teancum

[Calm]

45 minutes ago, Snodgrassian said:

and the "bro" culture that is pouring out of it all. 

Explain please…

[Kenngo1969]

1 hour ago, Teancum said:

Yet the church grows slower than even and is losing more and more members than ever before. Good members. Solid members.  But keep patting yourselves in the back.

With due respect, the two statements in your first sentence are contradictory and, in fact, are mutually exclusive.  Care to clarify?  

[Pyreaux]

1 hour ago, Teancum said:

Hardly. The Church cannot withstand intellectual and scholarly criticism.  And the most successful critics and not the Evangelical and other Christian critics. If is from the secular and disaffected member ranks. 

Hardly, we are the scholarly now, we have the PHDs, we embrace new discoveries that neo-critics are unequipped to handle. Thus, our greatest critics and dissenters are now woke-secular hyperbolic teenagers who were only schooled in overthrowing patriarchal systems and middle-aged men who feel oppressed by their wholesome upbringing and want to relate to woke teenagers, and their scholarly research was done on an iPhone. You think the dreed CES Letter came from reading books, or was it cut and paste from a blog?

Edited November 28, 2022 by Pyreaux

[Kenngo1969]

On 11/25/2022 at 4:43 PM, Kenngo1969 said:

"We need more anti-Mormon books [sic].  They keep us on our toes."

     —Hugh W. Nibley

 

 

1 hour ago, Teancum said:

Do they now?  

Yes, but you needn't take my word for it.  You're welcome to ask Professor Nibley when you see him.

[Arthur Vandelay]

I appreciate the Tanners for bringing some important historical documents to light.  For better or worse, they played a role in the Church becoming more transparent about history etc.

But as for the ministry, it won't be missed.