“Evil is no faceless strangers,
living in a distant neighborhood.
Evil has a wholesome, hometown face,
with merry eyes and an open smile.
Evil walks among us, wearing a mask,
which looks like all our faces. “
(The Book of Counted Sorrows)—
“You will see the constitution of the United States almost destroyed. It will hang like a thread…A terrible revolution will take place in the land of America…[T]he land will be left without a Supreme Government…[Mormonism] will have gathered strength, sending out Elders to gather the honest in heart…to stand by the Constitution of the United States…In these days…God will set up a Kingdom, never to be thrown down…[T]he whole of America will be made the Zion of God.”
LESSONS FROM HISTORY
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The Mormon Church has altered the wording of a prophecy about Indians so that it no longer says native Americans will develop ”white” skin if they join the religion. In a new edition of the Book of Mormon, a prophecy that had said Indians would become ”white and delightsome” has been altered to read that they will become ”pure and delightsome.”
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Church members accept the Book of Mormon as holy scripture equivalent to the Bible. . . Church leaders, including Mr. Kimball, have said the curse of dark skin would be lifted from Indians who embraced the Mormon religion.
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In 1960, before he was elevated to the presidency, Mr. Kimball said in a speech that Indian children living with Mormons had lighter skin than those who remained on reservations [and that even their DNA changed].
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The church has a program of temporarily placing Indian children with Mormon families so the youngsters can attend non-Indian public schools.
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Los Angeles Times, September 2, 1989, Saturday, Home Edition
From Associated Press SALT LAKE CITY –
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George P. Lee, the first American Indian appointed to the Mormon Church hierarchy, was excommunicated Friday after telling the leadership that it is spiritually slaughtering his people.
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The first excommunication of a major Mormon leader in 46 years was announced in a terse, one-paragraph statement from church headquarters here.
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Lee, who was an elder of the church, was expelled for “apostasy and other conduct unbecoming a member of the church,” the statement said. Lee, a Navajo and former president of the College of Ganado on the Navajo Reservation, was at the meeting when the decision was made, it said.
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Church spokesman Don LeFevre said he could not elaborate on the statement on the instructions of church leaders. But Lee said the action stemmed from basic doctrinal disagreements with church leaders about the role of Indians in the religion and from his contention that the leadership is racist, materialistic and bent on changing the meaning of Mormon scripture.
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“It got to the point where I had to follow them or Jesus Christ, and I chose to follow Jesus Christ,” Lee said in an interview Friday afternoon. “I told them they are the ones that are apostatizing — teaching false doctrine.”
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Lee, 46, was made a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy in 1975. The First Quorum of the Seventy is responsible for administering the affairs of the 6.7 million-member church under the direction of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and governing First Presidency.
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Members of the three all-male bodies are known as general authorities. In an hourlong meeting with church President Ezra Taft Benson, Benson’s two counselors and the Twelve, Lee read a 23-page, handwritten letter in which he accused his fellow churchmen of distorting doctrine to satisfy their own racial bias, relegating Indians to second-class status and denying them their rightful place in the faith’s theology.
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“You are slowly causing a silent subtle scriptural and spiritual slaughter of the Indians,” the letter said. “While physical extermination may have been one of (the) federal government’s policies long ago . . . your current scriptural and spiritual extermination . . . is the greater sin and great shall be your condemnation for this.”
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Lee’s excommunication was particularly sensitive to a church that believes Indians in the Americas are descendants of ancient peoples described in the Book of Mormon, the faith’s most cherished scripture. The Lamanites, as the Indian ancestors are known in the book, were themselves described as descendants of a prophet named Lehi who brought his family from Jerusalem to the New World about 600 BC.
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Lee said prophesies in the Book of Mormon are clear in defining Indians and Jews as literal descendants of the House of Israel and all others as “Gentiles,” or “adopted Israel.”
No.
The Mormon Church made an offer today that LGBT people should refuse.
A CBS News headline reads, “Mormon leaders vow support for gay rights — with conditions.”
They should refuse because human rights are unconditional.
The CBS News report says, “The church is promising to support some housing and job protections for gays and lesbians …”
They should refuse because every human being’s right to equal protection of the laws and freedom from discrimination is non-negotiable.
” … in exchange for legal protections for believers who object to the behavior of others.”
They should refuse because homosexuality is a biological condition, not a behavioral choice, and because the Mormons’ religious beliefs confer on them no right to “object to the behavior” of others.
“The church insists it is making no changes in doctrine, and still believes it’s against the law of God to have sex outside marriage between a man and a woman.”
They should refuse because marriage is a civil right, and the decision of two non-Mormon gays to marry is none of the Mormon Church’s damn business; whether the Mormons admit gays to membership in their church, or choose to perform gay wedding ceremonies, is up to them as a matter of their religious freedom. But outside their Church, what others do is none of their damn business.
“But church leaders who held a rare news conference Tuesday said ‘we must all learn to live with others who do not share the same beliefs or values.’”
We can agree on that. Now let’s see them practice it.
“The language of the [Mormon Church’s] new campaign mirrors a website the church launched in 2012 instructing Latter-day Saints to be more accepting and compassionate toward gays.”
This is a good general principle for treating all people. But in this context, it’s patronizing, somewhat like saying white cops should stop shooting unarmed African-Americans.
“The church made clear then and now that it still opposes gay marriage and insists on its right to apply its own rules within church-affiliated charities, schools, businesses and properties, even those that provide services to non-Mormons.”
Some this is within their rights, but some of it is illegal discrimination. They’re entitled to oppose gay marriage as an expression of their political views; that’s simply exercising free speech. They’re entitled to apply their own rules within their church, charities, and private schools. But the government has the power and right to regulate businesses to prevent discrimination, and should do so; and the Mormon Church is subject to secular laws the same as everyone else. If a church-affiliated business violates anti-discrimination laws, it should be prosecuted like any other lawbreaker.
“The church’s stance toward gays has softened considerably since it was one of the leading forces behind California’s ban on same-sex marriage in 2008.”
Should gays be grateful to the Mormon Church for agreeing to tone down — but not eliminate — its anti-gay hate?
“Church leaders condemned discrimination against gays in stark terms, speaking of centuries of ‘persecution and even violence against homosexuals. Ultimately, most of society recognized that such treatment was simply wrong, and that such basic human rights as securing a job or a place to live should not depend on a person’s sexual orientation,’ said Neill Marriott, a member of the church’s Public Affairs Committee.”
That’s nice, but if you want to be taken seriously, then walk your talk. Didn’t you just say, in a previous breath, that the Mormon Church still insists on “applying its own rules” in church-affiliated businesses, including those providing services to non-Mormons? This means nothing if gays still can’t rent a Mormon-owned apartment or buy a wedding bouquet at a Mormon-owned flower shop.
“Mormon leaders still want to be able to hire and fire workers based not only on religious beliefs, but also on behavior standards known as honor codes.”
Which totally negates, and renders meaningless, their empty tolerance talk.
Gays and lesbians would have to agree to remain celibate or marry someone of the opposite sex.
No.
The church also wants legal protections for religious objectors who work in government and health care, such as a physician who refuses to perform artificial insemination for a lesbian couple.
No.
“After coming under intense criticism for leading the fight for California’s Proposition 8, church leaders have been … appealing to gay and lesbian Mormons to stay in the church.”
No.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/mormon-leaders-vow-support-for-gay-rights-with-conditions/
Religion is unique in its ability to influence human attitudes and behavior. People who thought they were carrying out God’s will have been responsible for wars, genocides, pogroms, torture, murder, terrorism, and oppression on a scope and scale never attained by any political ideology. Religious belief is capable of corrupting otherwise good people and prompting them to monstrous behavior toward their fellow human beings. Therefore, churches and religious leaders have a special responsibility to promote tolerance and fight against all forms of discrimination and persecution.
The Mormon Church’s statement today, while perhaps well-intentioned, although its self-serving aspects can’t be overlooked, fails this test because of the Church’s insistence on reserving a right to discriminate against gay people and asserting a right to interfere in the private lives of others. The gay community shouldn’t cut a deal with the Mormons on those terms. They should respond, “You don’t have a right to treat us this way.” And other Christians should respond, “No, our understanding of Christianity doesn’t leave room for judging or discriminating against others.” And we all should respond, “No, your religious freedom stops where other people’s rights begin. That’s a line you can’t cross.”
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Mormon “Church” Changes Stance on Race
Mormon Church Changes Stance on Race
See Full article at: https://disinfo.com/2013/12/mormon-church-changes-stance-race/
Mormon Jesus approves.
Just as the Roman Catholic Church has become more liberal, the Church of Latter-Day Saints, or Mormon Church, has decided that “dark skin” is no longer the “mark of Cain.” I tell ya, the End must be extremely goddamn nigh.
The LDS church has finally confessed. It admits that it was wrong about
race from the church’s beginning in 1830 until 1978 when God changed
his mind about black people.
Here is what the new document “Race and the Priesthood” says about it:
Today, the Church disavows the theories advanced in the past that black skin is a sign of divine disfavor or curse … that mixed-race marriages are a sin; or that blacks or people of any other race or ethnicity are inferior in any way to anyone else.
If that is true, then the LDS church disavows the Book of Mormon, which says that God cursed people by blackening their skin, causing them to be “a dark, filthy, and loathsome people,” and that any “white and delightsome” person who “mixes seed” with them will be “cursed with the same cursing.”
Here are just a few passages in the Book of Mormon that the Mormon church now disavows:
After they had dwindled in unbelief they became a dark, and loathsome, and a filthy people, full of idleness and all manner of abominations. 1 Nephi 12:23
He had caused the cursing to come upon them … wherefore, as they were white, and exceedingly fair and delightsome, that they might not be enticing unto my people the Lord God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them. And thus saith the Lord God: I will cause that they shall be loathsome unto thy people … Cursed shall be the seed of him that mixeth with their seed; for they shall be cursed even with the same cursing. 2 Nephi 5:21-23
And the skins of the Lamanites were dark …which was a curse upon them because of their transgression against their brethren…therefore they were cursed; and the Lord God set a mark upon them. And this was done that their seed might be distinguished from the seed of their brethren, that thereby the Lord God might preserve his people.Alma 3:6-8
This people … shall become a dark, a filthy, and a loathsome people … because of their unbelief and idolatry … They were once a delightsome people … But now, behold, they are led about by Satan. Mormon 5:15-18
In the document, the LDS church tries to blame its racist past on the early 19th century American culture from which it arose. It claims, for example, that it was commonly believed in the early 1800s “that God’s ‘curse’ on Cain was the mark of a dark skin.” And that “[a]ccording to one view, which had been promulgated in the United States from at least the 1730s, blacks descended from the same lineage as the biblical Cain, who slew his brother Abel.”
Which is true enough (except for the fact that there was no United States in the 1730s). But what the document doesn’t say is that this same view is clearly expressed in its own scripture (Thebook of Moses in the Pearl of Great Price).
And Enoch also beheld the residue of the people which were the sons of Adam; and they were a mixture of all the seed of Adam save it was the seed of Cain, for the seed of Cain were black, and had not place among them. Moses 7:22
The document also says that “[b]lack servitude was sometimes viewed as a second curse placed upon Noah’s grandson Canaan as a result of Ham’s indiscretion toward his father.”
There was a blackness came upon all the children of Canaan, that they were despised among all people. Moses 7:8
Now this king of Egypt was a descendant from the loins of Ham, and was a partaker of the blood of the Canaanites by birth. … from Ham, sprang that race which preserved the curse in the land … Pharaoh … seeking earnestly to imitate that order established by the fathers in the first generations, in the days of the first patriarchal reign, even in the reign of Adam, and also of Noah, his father, who blessed him with the blessings of the earth, and with the blessings of wisdom, but cursed him as pertaining to the Priesthood. Abraham 1:21-26
So now the LDS church is no longer just embarrassed by its scriptures, it rejects them entirely.
Now it’s time for all Mormons to do likewise.
Mormon Church: Dark Skin A Sign of God’s Curse No Longer
As of Friday, December 6, the Mormon Church has officially renounced the doctrine that brown skin is a punishment from God.
In the Book of Mormon, (not the musical but the actual sacred text) dark skin is a sign of God’s curse, while white skin is a sign of his blessing. The book tells of a conflict between two lost tribes of Israel, the Lamanites and Nephites, who journeyed to the New World and made their home in Mesoamerica. The Lamanites sinned against God, and “because of their iniquity….the Lord God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them” (2 Nephi 5:21). Later, when Lamanites became Christians, “their curse was taken from them, and their skin became white like unto the Nephites” (3 Nephi 2:15).
These verses have been thought to explain the dark skin of Native Americans. In 1960, Church apostle Spencer W. Kimball suggested at the general conference that Native Americans who converted to Mormonism were gradually becoming lighter skinned:
I saw a striking contrast in the progress of the Indian people today… The day of the Lamanites is nigh. For years they have been growing delightsome, and they are now becoming white and delightsome, as they were promised. In this picture of the twenty Lamanite missionaries, fifteen of the twenty were as light as Anglos, five were darker but equally delightsome. The children in the home placement program in Utah are often lighter than their brothers and sisters in the hogans on the reservation. At one meeting a father and mother and their sixteen-year-old daughter we represent, the little member girl—sixteen—sitting between the dark father and mother, and it was evident she was several shades lighter than her parents—on the same reservation, in the same hogan, subject to the same sun and wind and weather… These young members of the Church are changing to whiteness and to delightsomeness.
The blackness of Africans derived from an even more ancient stain, Cain’s murder of his brother Abel in the Genesis story.
Joseph Smith taught that Black people are cursed as “sons of Cain” but also could be saved. Brigham Young, his successor, was harsher: “Shall I tell you the law of God in regard to the African race? If the white man who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot. This will always be so” (Journal of Discourses, vol. 10). Since dark skin was a divine punishment for sin (rather like Eve’s curse, which causes women to suffer in childbirth), Black men could not be ordained into the priesthood of the LDS church, a designation open to any white male age 12 and older who is “morally upright.”
During the civil rights movement, the LDS Church came under pressure as such teachings became offensive to a growing number of people. Simultaneously, the church expanded its missionary efforts into Brazil where almost everyone has some slave ancestors. How pureblooded did a light-skinned man have to be to receive ordination or enter the temple? In this context, Spencer Kimball, who was now Church president, announced a new revelation in 1978, and Black men were granted the priesthood. But in Mormon sacred texts, the old racism remained.
Over the years, ordinary Mormons and church leaders have struggled with this heritage. One racist passage in the scripture has simply been fixed by Mormon authorities. 2 Nephi 30:6 originally said that conversion to Christianity creates a “white and delightsome people,” but in 1981 the Church adopted a variant which reads, “a pure and delightsome people.” (Joseph Smith had used each of the phrases.)
Now, with 2013 winding down, Church authorities have decided to tackle the problem head on. In a 2000 word document posted Friday, officials emphatically renounced the racist teachings of the past:
The church disavows the theories advanced in the past that black skin is a sign of divine disfavour or curse, or that it reflects actions in a premortal life; that mixed-race marriages are a sin; or that blacks or people of any other race or ethnicity are inferior in any way to anyone else. Church leaders today unequivocally condemn all racism, past and present, in any form.
Much of what is in the new document has been said before by Mormon scholars attempting to reconcile modern ethics with Church history. But this new statement is noteworthy because it comes from the Church headquarters in Salt Lake City. Unlike many other forms of Christianity, the Mormon hierarchy maintains strict control over doctrinal evolution and public statements. A group called the “Correlation Committee” carefully reviews official documents and even Sunday school curricula to ensure consistency in teachings, emphasis and tone. Consequently, this document can be seen as part of an official trend toward greater openness and transparency about Mormon history.
Increasingly, Mormon authorities are adopting the stance that the best way to meet criticism is with good humor and well-framed candor. After expressing big disapprovalover Big Love, Church leaders shifted strategies and met the hit musical, the “The Book of Mormon,” with bemused acceptance, praising it “for really nailing the Mormon sweetness, niceness, and sense of do-gooderness.” They filled theater programs with their own advertisements.
Thanks to a number of factors, including the Romney presidential run, Mormons see an opportunity to move from being perceived as a fringe “cult” to being recognized as a thread in the tapestry of Christianity. In an effort to reassure Evangelical voters during his presidential candidacy, Mitt Romney inserted the phrase “the same god” into his domestic policy debate against Barack Obama. Church leaders have since issued a communique addressing the question of whether Mormons are Christians (answer: yes). Even some LDS quirks seem to be turning into positives. Shifting sexual mores have made Mormon polygamy and sacred undergarments a matter of slightly kinky fascination rather than Puritan disgust.
Friday’s document from Mormon headquarters explains even the Church’s history of racism in terms that say, we are simply part of American culture:
The Church was established in 1830, during an era of great racial division in the United States. At the time, many people of African descent lived in slavery, and racial distinctions and prejudice were not just common but customary among white Americans. Those realities, though unfamiliar and disturbing today, influenced all aspects of people’s lives, including their religion.
Efforts to mainstream Mormon religion are taking many forms. Over the course of 2012, the LDS Church promoted “I’m a Mormon,” a multi-million dollar marketing campaign about ordinary Americans who are also ordinary Mormons. The Church is reaching out to young people, and the current emphasis on civil rights can be seen as one strong way of allying with youth culture. That said, as former Mormon Garrett Amini explains, getting the Mormon hierarchy to embrace other civil rights like real equality for women and gays may present an even bigger theological challenge than equality for Blacks.
Also, the question of whether Mormon beliefs will be accepted as mainstream has challenges of its own. Per Amini, materials approved by the Correlation Committee “have significantly de-emphasized the more controversial doctrines in recent years.” Dr. Tony Nugent, retired professor of religious studies, agrees. In 2012, Nugent compiled a list oftwelve teachings that Mormon authorities tend to downplay, each of which is, in one way or another, dubious. A quick read suggests they also are far from mainstream.
With Friday’s clear and authoritative repudiation of racism, the list is down to eleven. May the process of wrestling and growth continue.
Valerie Tarico is a psychologist and writer in Seattle, Washington. She is the author ofTrusting Doubt: A Former Evangelical Looks at Old Beliefs in a New Light and Deas and Other Imaginings, and the founder of www.WisdomCommons.org. Subscribe to her articles at Awaypoint.Wordpress.com.
Related:
The Same God? Twelve Beliefs the Mormon Church Might Not Want You to Know About
Related Articles:
International Education and Imperial Penetration, Cooptation and Control
MORMONISM: A CULT OF DECEIT, RACISM, IMPERIALISM AND GENOCIDE
http://jimcraven10.wordpress.com/2013/09/21/outrageous-influence-covert-and-clandestine-and-intrigue-in-the-white-house/
http://jimcraven10.wordpress.com/2012/07/06/interview-with-tiocasin-ghosthorse-wbai-ny-on-thanksgiving-and-skull-and-bones/
International Education and Imperialism:
From the bbs system at Tsinghua University, Beijing, China:
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Hi! How are you? I hope you are doing well in school and feeling happy. I am back in New York now and miss all my students at Tsinghua very much.
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Richard
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Due to extensive media connections and ownership by Mormons, often when young Mormon women are kidnapped, particularly blond and blue-eyed young women, they not only get media attention that many non-white missing children and adults never get, but, also, the focus on the missing and their families is often used to showcase–and try to mainstream–Mormonism.
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According to the authoritative “The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith”, he had 49 “plural wives” among whom 11 were married to other men when Smith took them, 8 of whom represented 4 pairs of sisters and 2 of whom represented a mother and daughter.
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Many thousands of Indian children regarded as “Lamanites”, who, according to the Book of Mormon and subsequent Mormon doctrine (over 60% of the Book of Mormon, this “Divine Revelation”, was rewritten, to attempt to gloss over inherent contradictions in it, after Joseph Smith’s death, according to “One Nation Under Gods: A History of the Mormon Church” by Richard Abanes) Lamanites [Indians] are the descendants of one of the “Lost Tribes of Israel” [named after Laman, Nephi’s brother] who were “rebellious” against the Nephites [read white colonizing settlers seen to be the faithful to the commandments of God named after their mightiest “prophet” Nephi] and, in order to prohibit racial intermarriage [still prohibited by Mormons] as well as “curse” them [Lamanites] “God” gave them and all their descendants “a skin of blackness so that they might not be enticing to the white and exceedingly fair and delightsome Nephites.” (Book of Mormon, 1830 ed, 73 2 Nep hi 5: 21, modern edition).
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According to the Book of Mormon (BOM) the appearance of the Lamanites with their black skin was so repulsive that they became “loathsome” to look upon (BOM 1 Nephi, 12:23, modern edition), and they became “an idle people, full of mischief and subtlety” (BOM, 2 Nephi, 5: 24, modern edition). Supposedly “God” warned the Nephites: “Cursed shall be the seed of him that mixeth with their seed: for they shall be cursed even with the same cursing.”(BOM, 2 Nephi, 5: 23, modern edition).
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So why would Mormons be grabbing these thousands of “cursed”, “loathsome”, “evil”, little “Lamanites”? Well God is also merciful and if these little Lamanites are converted and repentant, wanting to “join” and “be of service to” the Nephites, then “their curse was [to be] taken from them and their skin became white like unto the Nephites; And their young men and their daughters became exceedingly fair.” (BOM, 3 Nephi 2:14-16, modern edition). And the “good news” is, this is not just some far away promise of Salvation and turning “white and delightsome”–changed to “pure and delightsome” in the 1981 edition of the BOM–for the little “Lamanites who convert and serve, no, according to former “Prophet/Seer/Revelator Spencer Kimball, little Lamanite children in Mormon custody see their “DNA change” and are progressively changing to “whiteness and delightsomeness” and joking that one elder and his companion “were donating blood regularly to the hospital in the hope that the process might be accelerated.” (Spencer W. Kimball, “The Day of the Lamanites”, The Improvement, Era, Dec. 1960, p. 923).
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Indian children were grabbed by various means and used for various purposes. Mormons, unlike the United Church, Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans, Presbyterians and others did not maintain “Residential Schools” for Indians only; rather the children were integrated into Mormon communities–always at the margins. Sometimes the children were adopted out to families in which the wife was “barren”–in those days seen not to be a “real woman”–and matched by phenotypes and skin shades so that the children could “pass” as the biological children of the adopters. Sometimes the children were used and farmed out as cheap labor for surrounding farms. Sometimes the lighter-skinned ones could be brought into the Mormon Church as tokens to draw others into the Church. In many cases Indian children were physically and sexually brutalized in Mormon “care.
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” The Mormons often noted that there was a promise of something better for those little Lamanites who repented and served:”The day of the Lamanites is nigh. For years they have been growing delightsome, and they are now becoming white and delightsome, as they were promised. In this picture of the twenty Lamanite missionaries, fifteen of the twenty were as white as Anglos; five were darker but equally delightsome. The children in the home placement program in Utah are often lighter than their brothers and sisters in the hogans on the reservation.” (Spencer W. Kimball, Ibid. p. 923)
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Like African-Americans, “Lamanites” were never seen as “full members” of the Church. Unlike African-Americans, Indians have not got “new revelations” of a change in status like that “given to African-Americans when, in June 1978, after speaking with “The Heavenly Father” on the planet “Kolob”, Spencer W. Kimball said that a change had come and now Blacks could become full participants of the Mormon Church if they are “worthy”. Of course, it would be cynical to suppose that threatened loss of tax-exempt status by the U.S. Government for practicing racist exclusionism had nothing to do with Kimball hooking up with “The Lord” and getting but another addendum memo to the BOM eh?
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Former Mormon Testimonials and Revelations
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Hello,
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Steven aka Cricket
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From the Los Angeles Times
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From the time he was a child in Peru, the Mormon Church instilled in Jose A. Loayza the conviction that he and millions of other Native Americans were descended from a lost tribe of Israel that reached the New World more than 2,000 years ago.
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“We were taught all the blessings of that Hebrew lineage belonged to us and that we were special people,” said Loayza, now a Salt Lake City attorney. “It not only made me feel special, but it gave me a sense of transcendental identity, an identity with God.”
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A few years ago, Loayza said, his faith was shaken and his identity stripped away by DNA evidence showing that the ancestors of American natives came from Asia, not the Middle East.”I’ve gone through stages,” he said. “Absolutely denial. Utter amazement and surprise. Anger and bitterness.”
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For Mormons, the lack of discernible Hebrew blood in Native Americans is no minor collision between faith and science. It burrows into the historical foundations of the Book of Mormon, a 175-year-old transcription that the church regards as literal and without error.
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For those outside the faith, the depth of the church’s dilemma can be explained this way: Imagine if DNA evidence revealed that the Pilgrims didn’t sail from Europe to escape religious persecution but rather were part of a migration from Iceland — and that U.S. history books were wrong.
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Critics want the church to admit its mistake and apologize to millions of Native Americans it converted. Church leaders have shown no inclination to do so. Indeed, they have dismissed as heresy any suggestion that Native American genetics undermine the Mormon creed.Yet at the same time, the church has subtly promoted a fresh interpretation of the Book of Mormon intended to reconcile the DNA findings with the scriptures.
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This analysis is radically at odds with long-standing Mormon teachings.Some longtime observers believe that ultimately, the vast majority of Mormons will disregard the genetic research as an unworthy distraction from their faith.”This may look like the crushing blow to Mormonism from the outside,” said Jan Shipps, a professor emeritus of religious studies at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, who has studied the church for 40 years. “But religion ultimately does not rest on scientific evidence, but on mystical experiences.
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There are different ways of looking at truth.”According to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, an angel named Moroni led Joseph Smith in 1827 to a divine set of golden plates buried in a hillside near his New York home.God provided the 22-year-old Smith with a pair of glasses and seer stones that allowed him to translate the “Reformed Egyptian” writings on the golden plates into the “Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ.”
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Mormons believe these scriptures restored the church to God’s original vision and left the rest of Christianity in a state of apostasy. The book’s narrative focuses on a tribe of Jews who sailed from Jerusalem to the New World in 600 BC and split into two main warring factions. The God-fearing Nephites were “pure” (the word was officially changed from “white” in 1981) and “delightsome.” The idol-worshiping Lamanites received the “curse of blackness,” turning their skin dark.
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According to the Book of Mormon, by 385 AD the dark-skinned Lamanites had wiped out other Hebrews. The Mormon church called the victors “the principal ancestors of the American Indians.” If the Lamanites returned to the church, their skin could once again become white.
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Over the years, church prophets — believed by Mormons to receive revelations from God — and missionaries have used the supposed ancestral link between the ancient Hebrews and Native Americans and later Polynesians as a prime conversion tool in Central and South America and the South Pacific.
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“As I look into your faces, I think of Father Lehi [patriarch of the Lamanites], whose sons and daughters you are,” church president and prophet Gordon B. Hinckley said in 1997 during a Mormon conference in Lima, Peru. “I think he must be shedding tears today, tears of love and gratitude…. This is but the beginning of the work in Peru.
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“In recent decades, Mormonism has flourished in those regions, which now have nearly 4 million members — about a third of Mormon membership worldwide, according to church figures.
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“That was the big sell,” said Damon Kali, an attorney who practices law in Sunnyvale, Calif., and is descended from Pacific Islanders. “And quite frankly, that was the big sell for me. I was a Lamanite. I was told the day of the Lamanite will come.”
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A few months into his two-year mission in Peru, Kali stopped trying to convert the locals. Scientific articles about ancient migration patterns had made him doubt that he or anyone else was a Lamanite.”
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Once you do research and start getting other viewpoints, you’re toast,” said Kali, who said he was excommunicated in 1996 over issues unrelated to the Lamanite issue. “I could not do missionary work anymore.”
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Critics of the Book of Mormon have long cited anachronisms in its narrative to argue that it is not the work of God. For instance, the Mormon scriptures contain references to a seven-day week, domesticated horses, cows and sheep, silk, chariots and steel. None had been introduced in the Americas at the time of Christ.
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In the 1990s, DNA studies gave Mormon detractors further ammunition and new allies such as Simon G. Southerton, a molecular biologist and former bishop in the church.Southerton, a senior research scientist with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization in Australia, said genetic research allowed him to test his religious views against his scientific training.
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Genetic testing of Jews throughout the world had already shown that they shared common strains of DNA from the Middle East. Southerton examined studies of DNA lineages among Polynesians and indigenous peoples in North, Central and South America. One mapped maternal DNA lines from 7,300 Native Americans from 175 tribes.Southerton found no trace of Middle Eastern DNA in the genetic strands of today’s American Indians and Pacific Islanders.
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In “Losing a Lost Tribe,” published in 2004, he concluded that Mormonism — his faith for 30 years — needed to be reevaluated in the face of these facts, even though it would shake the foundations of the faith.The problem is that Mormon leaders cannot acknowledge any factual errors in the Book of Mormon because the prophet Joseph Smith proclaimed it the “most correct of any book on Earth,” Southerton said in an interview.
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“They can’t admit that it’s not historical,” Southerton said. “They would feel that there would be a loss of members and loss in confidence in Joseph Smith as a prophet.”Officially, the Mormon Church says that nothing in the Mormon scriptures is incompatible with DNA evidence, and that the genetic studies are being twisted to attack the church.
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“We would hope that church members would not simply buy into the latest DNA arguments being promulgated by those who oppose the church for some reason or other,” said Michael Otterson, a Salt Lake City-based spokesman for the Mormon church. “The truth is, the Book of Mormon will never be proved or disproved by science,” he said.
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Unofficially, church leaders have tacitly approved an alternative interpretation of the Book of Mormon by church apologists — a term used for scholars who defend the faith.The apologists say Southerton and others are relying on a traditional reading of the Book of Mormon — that the Hebrews were the first and sole inhabitants of the New World and eventually populated the North and South American continents.The latest scholarship, they argue, shows that the text should be interpreted differently.
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They say the events described in the Book of Mormon were confined to a small section of Central America, and that the Hebrew tribe was small enough that its DNA was swallowed up by the existing Native Americans.
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“It would be a virtual certainly that their DNA would be swamped,” said Daniel Peterson, a professor of Near Eastern studies at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, part of the worldwide Mormon educational system, and editor of a magazine devoted to Mormon apologetics. “And if that is the case, you couldn’t tell who was a Lamanite descendant.”
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Southerton said the new interpretation was counter to both a plain reading of the text and the words of Mormon leaders.”The apologists feel that they are almost above the prophets,” Southerton said. “They have completely reinvented the narrative in a way that would be completely alien to members of the church and most of the prophets.”The church has not formally endorsed the apologists’ views, but the official website of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — http://www.lds.org/ — cites their work and provides links to it.
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“They haven’t made any explicit public declarations,” said Armand L. Mauss, a church member and retired Washington State University professor who recently published a book on Mormon race and lineage. “But operationally, that is the current church’s position.”The DNA debate is largely limited to church leaders, academics and a relatively small circle of church critics.
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Most Mormons, taught that obedience is a key value, take the Book of Mormon as God’s unerring word.”It’s not that Mormons are not curious,” Mauss said. “They just don’t see the need to reconsider what has already been decided.”
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Critics contend that Mormon leaders are quick to stifle dissent. In 2002, church officials began an excommunication proceeding against Thomas W. Murphy, an anthropology professor at Edmonds Community College in Washington state.He was deemed a heretic for saying the Mormon scriptures should be considered inspired fiction in light of the DNA evidence.
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After the controversy attracted national media coverage, with Murphy’s supporters calling him the Galileo of Mormonism, church leaders halted the trial.Loayza, the Salt Lake City attorney, said the church should embrace the controversy.”They should openly address it,” he said.
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“Often, the tack they adopt is to just ignore or refrain from any opinion. We should have the courage of our convictions. This [Lamanite issue] is potentially destructive to the faith.”
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Otterson, the church spokesman, said Mormon leaders would remain neutral. “Whether Book of Mormon geography is extensive or limited or how much today’s Native Americans reflect the genetic makeup of the Book of Mormon peoples has absolutely no bearing on its central message as a testament of Jesus Christ,” he said.
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Mauss said the DNA studies haven’t shaken his faith. “There’s not very much in life — not only in religion or any field of inquiry — where you can feel you have all the answers,” he said.”I’m willing to live in ambiguity. I don’t get that bothered by things I can’t resolve in a week.”
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For others, living with ambiguity has been more difficult. Phil Ormsby, a Polynesian who lives in Brisbane, Australia, grew up believing he was a Hebrew.”I visualized myself among the fighting Lamanites and lived out the fantasies of the [Book of Mormon] as I read it,” Ormsby said. “It gave me great mana [prestige] to know that these were my true ancestors.”
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The DNA studies have altered his feelings completely.”Some days I am angry, and some days I feel pity,” he said. “I feel pity for my people who have become obsessed with something that is nothing but a hoax.”Copyright © 2006, The Los Angeles Times
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SUNDAY REVELATIONS: Romney’s Choice
Is Mitt Romney Now A Candidate to Become the Prophet of the Church of Latter Day Saints?
Despite the remarkable success of his presidency, Mitt Romney has decided not to run for re election. His decision reflects the President’s deep commitment to his Mormon faith. As President of the United States, Mr, Romney could not be selected as a prophet to lead his Church. The current prophet and President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Thomas S. Monson. The office was held by Joseph Smith, founder of the movement, and assumed by Smith’s claimed successors, such as Brigham Young, Joseph Smith III, Sidney Rigdon, and James Strang. Several other titles have been associated with this office, including First Elder of the church,[1] Presiding High Priest,[2] President of the High Priesthood,[2] Trustee-in-Trust for the church,[3] Prophet,[4] Seer,[4] Revelator,[4] and Translator.[4]
The President’s first step in moving to Utah. He recently registered to vote in Utah and is abandoning his homes in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, Boston, and La Jolla. The former Mormon Bishop is building a mansion in Halladay, a wealthy Mormon suburb in the foothills of the Wasatch Range .
The mansion is rising in the Salt Lake Valley, a site first settled by his Mormon ancestors. The now one term President, the first Mormon to rise to that rank, the former bishop is revered for his family’s roots and the devout Mormonism of the entire Romney family. Utah is the one place on earth that understands the President’s sincerity in mediating the post mortem conversion of Ann Romney’s dad. a militant atheist while he was alive.
John Miller, a close friend of the Romneys, helepd the P4reseident make this decision. “He feels very at home here. This is a very prayerful thing. . . . In the end, it’s really a decision between he and Ann and their belief system, their God. That’s the authentic Mitt.”
As President, Mr. Romney has not been able to share the doctrines of his faith. No services were held in the White House even though Mr., Romney is a priest. Back in his homeland, Mr. Romney speaks openly about his service as a lay pastor in the Mormon Church, recites Scripture to audiences, muses about salvation and the prophet, urges students to marry young and “ have a quiver full of kids ,” and even cracks jokes about Joseph Smith’s polygamy.
In November, Mr. Romney addressed the student body at Brigham Young University, which is owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
“There may be times in your life when you may feel that it is a bit of a burden being a member of the church. Some folks will think you’re not Christian, some may be insulted that you don’t drink, and others will think you’re trying to be better than them by not swearing. But I can affirm this: Your fellow members of the church will be a blessing to you that far more than compensates.”