THE WORLD OF ANTI‑MORMONS

By Marcel Kahne

Translated by Gerald D. Woodard

(Original French text at www.idumea.org)

It is a well known reality that people do not like it when other people think different than they do and, if there is one area where intolerance is particularly rampant, it is clearly religion. In the past, those seen as heretics, those who believed something other than the majority of their fellow citizens, have been massacred, tortured and burned. The most difficult part of all that is that such violence, at least in the Christian world, was committed in the name of a loving God who taught “Love thy neighbour as thyself,” “do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” “I am meek and lowly in heart” and “be ye therefore perfect even as your Father in Heaven is perfect.” Obviously, mankind is perfectly able to believe one thing and do the complete opposite, without seeing that as possibly being illogical.

All new religious movements have been victims of persecutions, at least in the beginning. We could therefore expect the same to be true for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter‑Day Saints, and that is what happened. It had its share of physical persecution (lynching, expulsions, spoliations), but the most surprising thing has been the intensity of the crusade led against it in publications since the beginning, a crusade that only continues to grow. The Encyclopaedia of Mormonism states: “From the organization of the Church in 1830 to 1989, at least 1,931 anti‑Mormon books, novels, pamphlets, tracts and flyers have been published in English. Numerous other newsletters, articles and letters have been circulated. Since 1960 these publications have increased dramatically… more than half were published between 1960 and 1990 and a third of them between 1970 and 1990.”[1] Given the number of various publications each year, we have now far exceeded 2,000. In the United States alone, some 150 anti‑Mormon organizations have been identified (plus a large number of Web sites). Created by former Mormons or by evangelical groups, their sole purpose is to distribute literature against the Church.

WHAT IS AN ANTI‑MORMON?

The fact that someone disagrees with the Mormons or expresses that disagreement does not necessarily make that person an anti‑Mormon. An anti‑Mormon is someone who actively fights against the Church, whether through publications, the media or both. The typical anti‑Mormon spends years of his life fighting against the Church. The Tanners, a former Mormon couple, have been doing so since 1959, Pastor Wesley P. Walters has dedicated 30 years of his life to doing so, Walter Martin published works and held conferences and radio and television shows until the time of his death, etc.[2]

A second characteristic of anti‑Mormons is that they have made up their mind in advance. They do not condemn the Church based on their research, they conduct research to condemn the Church. An honest researcher gathers all the facts, pro and con, and examines them equally. Anti‑Mormons only retain the elements that they can use in favour of their theory.

A third characteristic of anti‑Mormons is that, in their opinion, the ends justify the means. The end is to discredit the Church, its doctrines and its leaders. The means are selecting sources, truncating quoted texts and/or taking them out of context in order to modify their meaning. A classic example is the accusation that there have been 3,915 changes to the original edition of the Book of Mormon, claiming that, if the book was translated by divine revelation, not a single thing should be changed. This goes against intellectual probity in two ways. First is the retention of information: they do not tell the reader that the changes were made by Joseph Smith himself in the second edition. Nor do they say that the changes were grammatical corrections, typographical corrections and word changes that had no effect on the meaning of the text or on doctrine.[3] Secondly, their goal is to lead the reader to make an incorrect assumption, i.e. that no changes can be made to a text translated by revelation. They are not in a position to address this, as they deny modern revelation and have thus had no experience with revelation. Furthermore, they contradict themselves, as they consider the Bible, the revealed word of God, to be inerrant, that it does not contain any errors, when it has been clearly established that we do not have the original texts and that the current text is the result of a choice between thousands of variations.

One technique often used by anti‑Mormons is to convince Church members that the Church is hiding something from them and that, through them, the anti‑Mormons, members will finally be made aware. Where are the anti‑Mormons obtaining their information? The archives that the Church has carefully preserved and made available to researchers. If the Church wanted to hide something, would it not have been easier to simply destroy the sensitive archives or make them inaccessible to the public? In the 1970s, when I locked horns with an apostate printer who regularly sent anti‑Mormon literature to his former fellow Church members, I obtained the sources that he used so I could check his quotes. I had no difficulty in obtaining works such as the Journal of Discourses, 28 volumes containing the discourses of General Authorities form 1853 to 1886, the Times and Seasons, 5 volumes of a newspaper published in Nauvoo, the History of the Church, the Documentary History of the Church, a photocopy of a page of the History of the Church manuscript, the content of which was claimed to have been altered before it was printed, and even a photocopy of the only anti‑Mormon newspaper in Nauvoo, the Nauvoo Expositor. Anyone can obtain whatever they want, if they are interested, due to the Church’s policy of carefully preserving all historical archives possible and making them available to anyone interested. Better still, cost is no longer an issue with the release of several thousand books on CD by FARMS (Infobase Library) and Deseret Book (Gospelink).[4]

There are two main lines of anti‑Mormonism. The first has used defamation, recounting terrible things about Joseph Smith, the Mormons and their leaders, relying on sensationalism. Obviously, the very excesses of such literature undermines any credibility and the more careful anti‑Mormons have abandoned it in favour of an image of careful, methodical and scientific research, which, by its nature, is more impressive to an uninformed reader. This does not mean that there are no longer advocates of the other method; not by a long shot.

The “activism” aspect must also be mentioned. When a General Conference is held, they are at the entrances distributing anti‑Mormon literature. When a new church is dedicated, they are there picketing. When a new temple is built, they stir up the entire region. They hold seminars at which they attack the Church’s teachings. They publish books and brochures, make movies, speak on radio and television and campaign to exclude the Church from the Christian world. They do so much and do it so well that people see Mormons as monsters. This is no exaggeration. On a flight I was on from Denver to Salt Lake City, there was a pastor in front of me who suggested some “good Christian literature” to me. When I said “Sure, I’m Mormon” he immediately turned his back on me. When I got back, while waiting for a connecting flight at the airport in Denver, I began a conversation with a woman at a table who was offering literature about Messianic Jews (an evangelical group seeking to convert Jews). When I told her that I was a Mormon, she began to scream like she had seen the devil himself. When I tried to talk with a woman near Temple Square, thinking that she was a Mormon who was also on her way to conference, I was insulted and can still remember the hateful tone with which she pronounced the words “their prophet,” who at that time was President Kimball, the gentlest man you could imagine.

We should also mention the existence of marginal intellectuals who no longer believe in the divinity of the Book of Mormon or in Joseph Smith’s visions and who challenge various points of the Church’s doctrines or policies. Some are still members of the Church, but many no longer are. They express their opinions in books, some of which are published by Signature Books, which claims it is not anti‑Mormon, as well as in magazines such as Dialogue and Sunstone (which also publish articles by faithful members of the Church). In short, they are unhappy people who want to remain faithful to Mormon traditions, but who would like to change things to suit themselves but face resistance from the Church.[5]

OTHER ANTI-MORMON AUTHORS

It is not my intention to provide a full inventory of the world of anti-Mormons. Several volumes would be needed and it would serve no purpose. The goal of this article is to encourage those who come into contact with anti-Mormon literature or with anti-Mormons themselves to be on their guard, to not see them as the defenders of humanity and not take what they say as absolute truth without first checking it. I therefore only mention what I feel is essential.

E. D. Howe and the Spaulding Theory

The first major anti-Mormon work to be published was Mormonism Unvailed by Eber D. Howe, published in 1834. The originator of this book was one Philastus Hurlbut, twice excommunicated for immorality and bent on revenge against Joseph Smith. He was appointed by a committee to gather all the information possible against the Prophet. He went and found Joseph Smith’s neighbours and collected 72 statements presenting the Smith family in a very poor light, statements that were suspect for their great similarity.[6] He was also the source of the Spaulding theory. Having learned of a manuscript written by Pastor Spaulding, who died in 1816 without having published it, he persuaded his widow to lend it to him so he could use it to convince people that Joseph Smith had used it to write the Book of Mormon. Given his very questionable reputation, Hurlbut could not publish the book under his name, so he gave it to Eber D. Howe, owner of the Painesville Telegraph. Howe published the book under his own name, but never returned the manuscript to Spaulding’s widow. The Telegraph and its archives were sold to L. Rice in 1839-1840. In 1884, J. H. Fairchild, President of Oberlin College, asked Rice to find some documents in the newspaper’s archives. It was during that search that Rice discovered the Spaulding manuscript. He made a copy, which he sent to Joseph Smith III, the prophet’s son and President of the Reorganized Church, sending the original to Fairchild to be kept in the library at Oberlin College in Columbus, Ohio. The Reorganized Church quickly published the manuscript in 1885 to show that there was no relationship to the Book of Mormon.[7] The Spaulding theory has thus been outdated for over a hundred years, but there are still those who write of it in superficial books and pamphlets about sects, more worried about making money than doing serious work, in order to perpetuate this legend and offer it to be browsed by a public that only wants to believe it. We can thus rest assured that the Spaulding theory will be with us until the Second Coming.

I. Woodbridge Riley and View of the Hebrews

The inability of someone as uneducated as Joseph Smith to write a book as complex as the Book of Mormon continued to haunt non-Mormons who were interested in the matter, but who did not want to believe the explanation given by Joseph Smith himself. With the Spaulding theory discredited, they needed to find another source for the Prophet’s inspiration. In 1903, in his book The Founder of Mormonism, I. Woodbridge Riley proposed parallels between an 1823 publication by Ethan Smith, View of the Hebrews, in which the author defended the popular theory of the day that the American Indians were descendants of the lost ten tribes (something that the Book of Mormon never claims). Several Mormon authors have examined this theory. The first was B. H. Roberts, a General Authority of the Church, who did so as part of a study that was not intended for publication (see below) and which, in 1922, identified 26 similarities between View of the Hebrews and the Book of Mormon.[8] Then, in 1985, John W. Welch developed a list of 84 differences between the two works, showing the impossibility of plagiarism by Joseph Smith.[9] Finally, L. Ara Norwood, in a review of a work by anti-Mormon David Persuitte that attempted to demonstrate the influence of View of the Hebrews on the Book of Mormon, statistically proved that, according to Persuitte’s argument, only 296 of the Book of Mormon’s 6,578 verses, or 4.49%, could have been influenced by View of the Hebrews.[10]

Fawn Brodie

In 1945, Fawn Brodie, the niece of David O. McKay, the ninth President of the Church, published No Man Knows My History, for a long time making her the uncontested and definitive authority on Joseph Smith and the Church. She obviously rejected anything supernatural, seeing the Book of Mormon as a reflection of the concerns of the 19^th century, and even stated that Joseph Smith’s religious vocation only arose after publication of the book. Brodie had no training as a historian, having a degree in English literature. She also had a penchant for psychohistory, leading her to claim to know what Joseph Smith was thinking, his motivations and how he had evolved psychologically. In short, she mixed history, literature and personal views. The outside world applauded her. Mormons protested. In 1946, Hugh Nibley wrote a brief but devastating review entitled No Ma’am That’s Not History. No one paid it any attention. For once and for all, Brodie had settled the matter of the impostor Joseph Smith, and that was all that mattered. In 1974, in the lead-up to the United States’ bicentennial, Brodie published a biography of Thomas Jefferson[11], using the same procedures as she had for Joseph Smith. This time, she had attacked a giant, a president of the United States, and not just any president. There were protests similar to those by Mormons thirty years earlier. Historians specializing in Jefferson stated that Brodie’s book was based on “half-truths, unwarranted assumptions and grievous misinterpretation of the known facts.” They also accused Brodie of not considering facts that went against her preconceived ideas. They concluded that Brodie “cannot rob… Jefferson of [his] laurels, but can scribble graffiti on [his statue]. It is unfortunate that dirty words are so hard to erase, and it is shocking that the scribblers should be so richly rewarded.”[12]

Ed Decker

In 1983, the apostate Ed Decker produced a film entitled The God Makers, which was shown in protestant congregations throughout the United States. In 1984, a book of the same name was published and, later, two other films were released, The God Makers II and Temple of the God Makers. The contents were so scandalous that the film was condemned by the regional branch of B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation League (Jewish movement) and by the Arizona regional office of the National Conference of Christians and Jews.[13] A rabid anti-Mormon, Decker did not stop there. On 25 July 1986, accompanied by a group of partisans, he attempted to present a petition to the leaders of the Church demanding that Mormons stop referring to themselves as Christians. As the offices were closed that day, his associate Richard Baer finally submitted it on 8 August. The petition had close to 21,000 signatures and the campaign was not over.[14] When the Church began construction of Brigham Young University’s Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies, Decker went and showed The God Makers to a sub-commission of the Knesset in an unsuccessful attempt to sway the Israeli government to his side. In Ghana, he convinced the government of Jim Rawlins to suspend the Church’s activities in June 1989 and the film The God Makers was aired on Ghanaian national television one week before publication of the decree. Missionaries were expelled, buildings were locked and meetings banned for almost eighteen months. He also convinced the government of Chile that Mormonism was unconstitutional and caused a furor among his audience by connecting the Church with the FBI, the CIA and international politics. As a result, from 1984 to 1990, more than 200 Mormon churches were the targets of bombings.[15]

Jerald and Sandra Tanner

Jerald and Sandra Tanner, a former Mormon couple who converted to Protestantism, are in the other category from Decker, of whom they disapprove. They began to publish texts criticizing the Church in 1959 and are still doing so. They are professional anti-Mormons who have opened a library, making a living from their anti-Mormon activities. They are highly viewed in anti-Mormon circles and, in 1964, published a book entitled Mormonism: Shadow or Reality?, which has been updated several times, as well as other works and articles. They also sell old documents that are usually easy to obtain. Their mantra is that the Mormon Church hides things from its members, searching in the Church History archives to support their claims. Attention: their quotes are truncated, their sources are selective, their information is rearranged and their logic is partisan.[16] Two examples demonstrate the degree to which they should be mistrusted: the Roberts case and the Nelson case.

Brigham H. Roberts, a General Authority, member of the Quorum of the Seventy and author of the Comprehensive History of the Church, a monumental six‑volume history, was a highly respected man in the Church, an incisive man and a renowned speaker and debater. In 1922 a certain Mr. Couch wrote to a friend who was a member of the Church to ask some questions about the Book of Mormon. The letter was forwarded to James E. Talmage and, by him, on to B. H. Roberts, who decided to inventory all objections that could be made to the Book of Mormon and attempt to respond to them, which, for some, was impossible at that time. The results of the study were sent to the First Presidency and the Twelve, with a cover letter indicating Roberts' opinion.[17] The Roberts text was not intended for publication, but the Tanners published it in 1980, stating that the great B. H. Roberts had lost his faith in the Book of Mormon, obviously not including the cover letter, which would have disproved their argument. Nor did they publish the many statements that Roberts made from 1922 until his death (on 27 September 1933) that show that he remained faithful to his testimony of the Book of Mormon to the end,[18] thus making them guilty of concealing the truth from their readers.

Dee Jay Nelson

One of the chapters in Mormonism: Shadow or Reality? is entitled “Fall of the Book of Abraham” and is dedicated to proving that the Book of Abraham is false. The author is one D. J. Nelson, an ex-Mormon who claims to be an Egyptologist.[19]

For twelve years, Nelson had travelled the United States, earning a living giving conferences against the Church. In 1980, he arrived in Mesa, Arizona at the invitation an organization of ex-Mormons. There, he gave two conferences, which were attended by a Mormon couple, Robert and Rosemary Brown. He indicated his degrees and qualifications, declaring himself to be the “world’s leading authority on Egyptology” and invited his audience to check the accuracy of his claims. The Browns decided to take him up on it. They recorded the conference and went to work. When they had finished, they found that, during his two-hour conference, Nelson had made 95 false or misleading statements.[20] None of his degrees were authentic. He had not even finished high school. And the Tanners? Were they aware of this? The Brown’s were intrigued by the fact that everyone called Nelson “Dr.” or “Professor” Nelson, but the Tanner’s never referred to him by those titles. A letter from Sandra Tanner to one Richard Ball revealed that they were aware. The Brown’s informed the Tanners of their discoveries. They also advised Moody Press, the Tanners’ publisher, which advised them that they would have to revise future editions of their works or they would not be reprinted. The Tanners had no choice but to comply.[21]

The Tanners’ specialty is attacking the Church’s credibility using historical documents that an ordinary reader would have trouble finding, knowing that most people would never try to check to ensure that they were interpreting them correctly. However, the authenticity of a church is not determined by digging through its history. It is determined based on its doctrinal statements and how they compare to scripture. In this regard, Edward K. Watson wrote: “I determine Jerald and Sandra Tanner’s credibility on how they use easily accessible material (i.e. the scriptures). This is where they blatantly and repeatedly display either an inability to comprehend proper hermeneutics and exegesis or are merely engaging in dishonesty.”[22]

Now consider this statement by a third party, a non-Mormon scholar who spent many years of hard work studying the Church. This is what Lawrence Foster, a senior lecturer on American history with the Georgia Institute of Technology, has said of the Tanners]: [Until they] “are prepared to abide by accepted standards of scholarly behaviour and common courtesy, they can expect little sympathy from serious historians. The Tanners have repeatedly assumed a holier-than-thou stance, refusing to be fair in applying the same debate standard of absolute rectitude which they demand of Mormonism to their own actions, writings and beliefs… The Tanners seem to be playing a skilful shell game in which the premises for judgment are conveniently shifted so that the conclusion is always the same – negative."[23]

Wesley P. Walters

Wesley P. Walters was a pastor who spent thirty years of his life finding out everything he could about the origins of the Church. His main contribution to anti-Mormonism was to propose the theory that the First Vision could not have taken place in 1820 because the religious revival spoken of by Joseph Smith in his story did not happen in 1820, but in 1824. For more information, see Reinventing Mormonism: To Remake or Redo on the Web site of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Studies, or a French translation on the Idumea site.

Walter Martin

Another anti-Mormon who has fought tirelessly against the Church is Walter Martin. The author of The Maze of Mormonism and The Kingdom of the Cults, he was called “Dr. Walter Martin,” although he had none degrees to which he laid claim. He also claimed to have been ordained a Baptist pastor, which was false. Among other things, he bragged of being a descendant of Brigham Young, which was also a lie.[24] His information was entertaining, but he was an orator who knew how to stir up a crowd. In an article in Newsweek, Martin’s book The Kingdom of the Cults was listed among the most popular religious books of the day. At the time, it had sold 319,320 copies at $14.95, totalling $4,477,282 in gross sales... Add to this the fact that the Christian Research Institute that he founded was only a small rented office with a small parking lot for two or three cars. The CRI served as a pretext for Martin to conduct fundraising that, from 1979 to 1982, raised $12,000,000 in gross revenues, tax free because it was a religious organization. There is no record of what was done with those funds.[25]

BETTER TIMES AHEAD?

Will there ever be true dialogue between Mormons and those outside the Church who claim to follow Christ?

A first experience took place in 1997, when Evangelical Craig L. Blomberg and Mormon Stephen E. Robinson began such dialogue, an honest and courteous dialogue, with a true desire to listen to each other. That experience led to a book entitled How Wide the Divide? A Mormon and an Evangelical in Conversation. Mormons were thrilled. Anti-Mormons were furious, as is seen in the comments online, hostile criticisms, radio programs encouraging people not to read the book and several fundamentalist evangelical bookstores refusing to put a copy on their shelves. You can get a sense of the feelings that motivated these people by reading the following comment by an anti-Mormon in the anti-Mormon publication The Evangel, regarding one such bookstore: “Our local Christian bookstore operator—bless him—said he'd sooner carry Mein Kampf!”[26] However, the contents of FARMS Review of Books, vol. 11, n°2, 1999, is a model of what we would like to see. The review gives voice to evangelicals Paul L. Owen and Carl A. Mosser, who give a 102‑page critique of the Blomberg and Robinson book. Mormons Blake T. Ostler, William J. Hamblin and Daniel C. Peterson give a critique of the same book and, finally, Mormons David L. Paulsen and Daniel C. Peterson respond to Owen and Mosser, all in a spirit of true dialogue.

At the very least, the exchange had the merit of showing that dialogue is possible between decent and moderate people. Is it possible with others? At least Owen and Mosser understood the true issue, delivering a severe warning to the evangelical world, accusing it of underestimating the competency of its Mormon audience and warning that if it did not seriously work to validly counter them, it would end up losing the battle.[27]

CONCLUSION

In closing, the following two recommendations are important when faced with anti-Mormon literature:

1. Always tell yourself that the quote presented may be truncated or taken out of context. Do not pay any attention to it if you cannot verify it.

2. Do not take the reasoning given as fact. Ask yourself: Where are trying to lead me? What do they not want me to see?

And if you still have a problems. Contact a reliable source like the church or Idumea (in French). They will help.