Moe, as Administrator Plenipotent of the Staff Reports, I’ll tackle this one for you:
The answer is that the question came to us in 2002, and we urged our practising active Mormon (Monty)to write it, and he promised but never did. No blame attached to that – writing Staff Reports aint easy, and real life imposes conditions that we can’t ignore. Then Rico volunteered to take it on, and we had Monty review it and proclaim it “reasonably objective.”
You other points, I leave to Rico.
Well… ummm… thanks Dex, but I think you meant to address that to emarkp.
I just wanted to know the deal with Utah.
It’s disputed. By the church. The one entity who would have something to lose by it’s being true.
I used the Tanners because I felt their points were valid. And I clearly identified them as “anti-Mormon” in the article.
If an article about Scientology was being written, does that mean I should only use quotes from L. Ron Hubbard and his followers? Or would you want balancing viewpoints? This board is proclaimed as being in a fight against ignorance. I can think of nothing more ignorant than to write this article using only Mormon sources.
Dex answered the first question. I was surprised to hear that Monty had reviewed the article and pronounced it “reasonably objective,” in fact, this has led to a couple of very nice e-mails between myself and my wife with Monty catching up. No animosity there.
As far as the name of the church is concerned, that is the spelling and capitalization that I grew up with. Here is a link to a scanned page of Joseph Smith’s Lectures of Faith showing the spelling back in 1835 to be Latter Day Saints without a hyphen. Why is this a big deal? The name, spelling, capitalization, and many other things about the church have been changed numerous times in its history. There are inconsistencies in caps versus non-caps everywhere in the LDS history. And why are you so bent on such a small, nit-picking point as this.
Because that was the edition I used. If I would have used your copy, I would have used 1972 as my date.
So we should just discount the whole thing? Mormons have an image in their heads about the translation of the plates, and that is of a young man poring over gold plates wearing a breastplate with two clear stones in them, translating the entire book in that manner. That simply is not true, and you admitted it in your statement. And how can something be “factually incorrect” if it was true “part of the time?”
Same argument as before. David Whitmer is one of the principal witnesses, along with Martin Harris and Oliver Cowdery, who were scribes for Smith during the “translation.”
As far as being many years after the fact, the church accepts Joseph Smith’s account of his first vision written in 1838, 18 years after the actual event. I accept Whitmer’s recollection as being true. If you don’t, that’s fine.
I’m not trying to convert anyone to or away from the LDS church. If only Mormons in good standing in the church were allowed to write about the church, how objective would that be?
In closing, if you see a bias, I apologize. I tried to keep the article as factual and balanced between two obviously passionate sides as possible. It was a great compliment to have Monty describe the article as “reasonably balanced,” as he has been one of my greatest critics on this board.
Accept it or leave it alone, emarkp. I stayed accurate. And simply because my article was not exactly “faith-promoting” does not allow complete and total dismissal out of hand.
I’m pretty sure that’s where my car keys ended up, too.
Quoth bup:
I don’t think this is a valid criticism. Yes, we know that the Hebrew civilization existed, or the Romans who eventually came to be in control of Israel, or the Arabs. By the same token, we also know that a civilization existed in New York in the early 1800s. We do not have archaeological evidence for a pre-Columbian civilization in North America with metallurgy and writing, and by the same token, we also do not have archaeological evidence for any of the various Antedeluvian civilizations described in the Bible.
A couple of possibly minor points:
Thanks for the compliments, Rico. (BTW, I haven’t gotten the return e-mail yet.)
The bit about the spelling is, when you come right down to it, kind of silly. For one thing, it apparently only matters in English. I really don’t recollect seeing the hyphen in the name in official material from the Church published in other languages (some languages don’t even use a hypen or dash). And, of course, those languages which do not have majiscule and miniscule letters cannot differentiate between “big D and little d” as English does.
Rico used what he had available to him at the time he wrote his staff report and he referenced it correctly. Had he not listed the date of his material, then that would have been seriously shoddy work. I don’t think anyone expects anyone to go out and purchase every book ever published regarding the LDS just to write one staff report for a message board.
AFAIK, the official Church position on the Golden Plates is just that they were returned to Moroni. I haven’t encountered any official statement as to what Moroni did with them. I’d be delighted if someone could show me such a statement.
This staff report was about a belief (well, a set of beliefs). As with any other belief, there will be those who fervently hold to it, those who fervently deny it, and those who are, for one reason or another, situated somewhere between those two points. I admit I was shocked to discover that Rico was writing the report. As he said above, I was one of his toughest critics on this board when it comes to the LDS. A long time ago, I informed him that the subject of LDS is one that we shan’t discuss between the two of us. Face it: he did a good job on the staff report, and I liked his statement in that report regarding belief.
Moe, I’ll try to answer your question about Utah. Yes, Utah is the headquarters of the LDS church, but in 1844, most of the members lived in and around Nauvoo, Illinois, a community settled by the Mormons on the banks of the Mississippi River.
When the founder, Joseph Smith, was murdered by a mob and the Mormons were driven from their homes they migrated to the west under the leadership of Brigham Young, and settled in the Salt Lake Valley beginning in 1847. The location was selected primarily because noone else wanted it, and they felt that they would be free from outside persecution there.
As Mormonism gained converts from missionary efforts around the world, the new members travelled to Utah to be with the main body of the church, and colonies of Mormon immigrants were established throughout Utah and other western states under Brigham Young’s instructions.
Today, Mormons are scattered throughout the world, and in fact there are more Mormons outside of the United States than in it.
Utah itself still has a large percentage of LDS, but I think is now less than 50%, especially in the larger cities.
Hope this answers some of your questions.
Somebody should tell the Mormons around here, whose sign clearly says “Latter Day…”
Just chiming in to say thanks Rico! Good on ya!
-Tcat
Thanks FBG.
Are you sure it doesn’t say LATTER-DAY?
Aside from the procrastinators, of course, who are the Later-Day Saints.
If you believe in google, it appears to be a very common misspelling of Latter-Day Saints, Latter-day Saints, Latter Day Saints & Latter day Saints.
Kathy
And then, of course, there is the splinter group that likes to meet on rooftops and in high places:
The Ladder-Day Saints…
…And the more fundamentalist group, the Rattle-day Snakes.
and the Sun-worshipping faction, the Lighter-day Saints.
And of course, the interior decorating faction:
The Latter Day Painters.
:smack:
A particularly interesting sect was that group that was briefly around in the 90’s in NYC who used flute music to indoctrinate young children called the Manhattan Pied Pipers.
ok, that was bad,
Well, asserted certainly. Not proven.
Read the Tanners’ stuff yourself, and make up your own mind.
The Tanners are a lot less idiotic than Ed Decker, even though they’re not all that consistent (as has been repeatedly pointed out, many of the arguments they use against Mormonism could apply equally to their own beliefs).
I always thought the “face in his hat” quote was probably just a lie, until I was teaching the eight-year-old Sunday School class in 1996 and found that the official church lesson manual used the quote as part of the lesson on the translation of the Book of Mormon.