Is Harry Reid really Mormon? Wow...I'm a little afraid now. Sorry but

[NNguyenMD]

after reading "Under the Banner of Heaven" by John Krakauer I've become a bit frightened by Mormons in general. No personal offense, I'm sure they're very nice people but if you read this book detailing how they came to become the fastest growing religion in the country, you'd be frightened too.

[utahgirl]

1. And I'm pretty sure

none of them are democrats or liberals. And none of them can read, right?

Maybe you should get your information from something besides that book.

utahgirl

[NNguyenMD]

9. it was a good book you should read it

[porkrind]

27. That is an excellent book.

You really should read it. The history of the mormon church is well know and well documented by both mormon and non-mormon sources. If you only read sanitized history approved and published by the mormon church, you will only get one side of the story. I've read both kinds, and I think Krakauer's account is more truthful.

Also, mormonism is not the fastest growing religion as stated by the original poster. This is a mormon marketing slogan. FYI, Evangelical christianity is #1. In terms of world population percentage, mormonism isn't even keeping up.

You are right that there are many liberal lefties in utah (I'm one), mostly in the more urban areas of the SL valley and summit county (park city). We have mostly been gerrymandered into a powerless minority. The rural areas are mostly uber-conservative republicans.

[Rowdyboy]

2. Mormons are great, just don't want your sister to marry one, right?

God, bigots make my skin crawl.

[Jack Rabbit]

3. Mormons are like anybody else

They're no more a monlithic group than Methodists or Jews.

And yes, I know some who are liberals.

[MuseRider]

13. Me Me........sort of.

Jack Mormon and most assuredly a forever bleeding heart liberal. Mormons are for the most part very good people. It was not for me but most religious groups are not for me.

[latteromden]

4. "After Sept. 11th, I've become a bit frightened by Muslims in general."

Sound familiar?

Yes, of course, Harry Reid is part of a huge Mormon conspiracy. (What?)

[Erika]

5. Mormons vote 99.8% GOP

Reid is the exception to the rule.

The scary thing to me as a woman, is that the woman must be called up to heaven by their husbands. If the husband desn't deem them worthy of being called up, no heaven for the woman. This sets a scenario where the woman thinks of herself as subservient and therefore, acts that way.

I know, I read my grandmother's diary where she wrote she hoped she had been a good enough wife that my grandfather would call her up to heaven upon her death. Puke a thousand times.

They also will ex-communicate gays and demand a 10% tithing of all members regardless of income. In addition, an extra contribution is demanded once a month on Fast Sunday. When they build a new church building, the members in the affected area are sent a bill for their
charge.

[Cleita]

7. Hush your mouth honey.

You can't say those things, no matter how true. You will be alerted on.

[Erika]

12. Uh, my ancestors were part of the

original founders in New York. Some were chased out of Nauvoo and founded the Salt Lake valley. I have visited many family graves that show the golden seal of the handcart showing they made the original trek.

Then I could give you the polygamy background, but enough for now. Especially if an alert button is out there.

[MuseRider]

15. Not true.

Nobody ever demanded anything from me when I was a member. Never, not ever. They did build a new building here when I was a member and we were never asked to pay for any of it. The gay thing I do not know about although I would not be surprised, I know they have "programs" for them.

[Cleita]

28. You never had to tithe?

Every Mormon I ever knew had to tithe?

[MuseRider]

33. Yes but there were

no demands. My family was not Mormon (long story, they got me in the hospital when I was delirious and I thought it would be interesting)so they never expected me to tithe any more that I wanted to. I was actually referring to the extra fees for new churches etc. that the poster above was talking about. I do not remember any pressure to make a person pay anymore than they said they cold afford to. We did have meetings with the bishop every year to keep accounting straight but never was there pressure.

[Cleita]

6. After today, I guess I am not allowed to point out some

truths about the Church of Latter Day Saints. (Got alerted on, *boo hoo*).

However, I would be more afraid of Orrin Hatch, a person who pretends to be a good Mormon, but is pushing to get that ammendment passed so our very own sexual predator Gov. Schwarzenegger of California can run for President. I don't think any true believing Mormon can accept this.

[Erika]

8. The wife will accept it if

her husband tells her to accept it. They don't want to lay in the cold ground forever.

[rowire]

10. Who Cares?

Jeez, who cares what religion they are as long as they aren't a-holes. I've actually met good Baptists, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Mormons, Hindus, Atheists, Agnostics, Methodists, and Episcopals. In fact, I've even met good Evangelicals (very frequently).

[Cleita]

14. So have I. It's not the individual people, it's the institutions. n/t

[MuseRider]

16. That is it.

Thanks. I am sorry to hear you were alerted on. There is much about the institution in the church that is interesting to discuss.

[Cleita]

17. So much in all churches that need to be discussed,

but the Mormons seem to be especially thin skinned, more so than other religions, like Catholics and Jews, but then they have been scrutinized for many more millenium than the newer upstarts.

[MuseRider]

19. That was one

of the first things they taught me was about the persecution. It is still so new I guess you are right about that. I think, but could be wrong about the date by a few years, but I think it was still legal to kill a Mormon in Missouri until 1968. That is how new it still is to them. I have been long gone from them but still have several friends who are members and I cherish them, they are good people and have never tried to force anything on anyone. It is an odd group, that is certain, but they are good people (except for voting so Republican).

[Cleita]

23. Although I was raised a Catholic,

I used to go to Mormon Sunday School with some neighborhood kids. Like in any church the families that are the backbone of any religion are people trying to do the right thing. The heirarchy and the control factor of the institutions really needs to be questioned. I don't think any church members of any religion should be hunted down and killed anymore than any race should be. But I'm not surprised Missouri still had laws like that on the books. Okay now I am going to have a dozen Missourians and probably Kansans attacking me.

[MuseRider]

25. I'm from Kansas!

Why would they attack you? It is history. There were reasons they were treated the way they were. Of course not good reasons, there never is a good reason to do that to others, but there were reasons they were not liked and they worried the population. It is really very interesting, sad but true.

[sonicx]

11. Ken Jennings, the Jeopardy champion, was a mormon...

and a liberal too.

[JohnLocke]

20. Is Jennings liberal?

Hadn't heard that. Wouldn't be surprised.

[oasis]

31. Steven R. Covey, the "Seven Habits" author is mormon. He seems as down

to earth and practical as the next guy.

[NNguyenMD]

18. its not about politics, and I'm sorry I shouldn't paint Mormons with such

a broad brush. I didn't mean to insinuate that all Mormons were Republicans or Bush loving red-staters.

I'm probably not one to judge having only read one whole book...but, if you read this one you'd get a detailed account on the history of Mormonism traced back to its origins in Upstate New York in the mid 1800s (I think I lent the book to a friend awhile ago "Under the Banner of Heaven). Its not a hatchet job on Mormonism by any means. Krakauer is essentially searching for the roots of fundamentalism, and uses the example of the famous murdur in the 1980's by Mormon Fundamentalist brothers who claim that god told them to kill their sister in-law and niece.

He takes you back to the history of Mormonism going back to Joseph Smith, the transcriber of what is known today as "The Book of Mormon", and I'll be frank, its sounds a bit over the top. Smith clalimed that an Angel Mornoni came down from the sky and told him to dig out 2 golden tablets from some nearby tree and transcribe them for him using a pair of magic spectacles, and/or somekind of magic stone while sticking his head in a tub of water. I'm really butchering the story, but it essentially plagiarizes the story of Moses. The Mormons become persecuted from town to town, Joseph Smith eventually is killed by a angry mob in Missouri, and thats when the Mormons lead by Brigham Young make their exodus to what is now known at Utah.

Go ahead, come after me for making gross errors and misrepresentations of Mormonism. I'm not claiming to be an expert on the religion, all I'm saying is if you read this book, you might see Mormons in a slightly different light.

But dont' take my word for it, really read it its a great page turning book, now on paperback too!

[MuseRider]

21. It is a good book.

I read it a few months ago. It is a rough sketch of their beginnings. It was the issue of the fundies who are Mormons that worried me, I did not know there were so many. These people, as far as I know from what I was told, are not accepted. They are scorned by most Mormons because they know what they do to their reputation. Actually, if you look into the business of the religion you might be even more frightened, they seem to own everything under the sun.

[Erika]

22. The Mormons first went from New York

to Nauvoo. Then they headed west.

[MuseRider]

24. With a rather

difficult time in Missouri. They were slaughtered there. Then they went on to become the slaughterers supposedly in the Mountain Meadows Massacre in Utah but that has never been proven, just suspected.

[ultraist]

29. Mormonism is legally a cult in France

All major religions have mysticism, supernatural beings, etc. Most religions do not condone homosexuality. I'm not so sure that Mormonism is that different than other types of Christianity but I may be way off.

I am not too concerned with what religion a politician is if they respect separation of church and state. For instance, many are opposed to abortion but believe it should be legal.

On the other hand, if the beliefs are really bizarre, one does have to question their judgment.

[Cleita]

32. My problem with religions is when they interject themselves

into politics and the personal lives of people who don't want them there. Do you agree?

[oasis]

26. Mormons are okay. It's the fanatical "saved" evangelicals like Bush,

Falwell and Rev. Dobson that are screwing everthing up with their short sighted hypocrisy.

[Cleita]

30. They voted for Bush and essentially his agenda.

How do you explain this as being all right?

[neebob]

34. I'm a former Mormon ...

finally and fully recovered, I think, thanks to John Krakauer's book. It only took about 25 years.

The thing is, Dr. Nguyen (or are you Mr. Nguyen from Maryland?), Krakauer makes less of a distinction between the modern and fundamentalist Mormon churches than most LDS church members who practice and/or claim the faith are comfortable with. And while that might help someone like me discover and purge myself of the last remnants of what I now consider to be cult programming, it isn't really fair.

Members of the modern LDS church don't have all the same beliefs and practices as the fundamentalists, and the present-day members of a church are not responsible for its history.

If Harry Reid is scary, it isn't necessarily because of his religion. And the modern Mormon church isn't any more frightening or cultlike than some others, in my opinion. It's actually pretty low on my list of menaces to society.

P.S. My great-great grandpa had five wives. :-)

[NNguyenMD]

35. Thank you, and no I'm not a doctor...yet that is. But you've given me some

perspective, because it really was stupid of me to have this preexisting impression of members of an entire religion.

I suppose whats frightening is at how this church, with somewhat of a questionable past oyu have to agree, has become so powerful in the last century, in its growing membership and vast wealth.

I've fallen into that same fear a more paranoid America had for Catholics in the early 1960's when Kennedy got elected president. Beacuse I've associated the PDS church with Clandestine wealth and power, I've inappropiate blanketed that association with all Mormons.

Anywyas, thanks for helping me realize that error. I enjoy the Krakauer book very much, and glad that you did as well.

[Radical Activist]

36. Here are a couple reviews of that book from a Mormon perspective

I'm usually very skeptical of anything I read about Mormons. Of course Mormon writers want to put the best face on things, and there is enough cleverly written anti-Mormon hate literature that even well intentioned researchers can be easily mislead. It is a church that has been extremely controversial since the day it was founded. I'm no longer Mormon but I can still be annoyed by the frequent distortions made about the religion.

Here is what I guess was an official response by someone from the LDS church that sparked more interest in the book. It points out a number of factual errors from the book.
http://www.meridianmagazine.com/churchupdate/030711response.html

From the review:
Although other examples could be given, these suffice to demonstrate that Krakauer does violence to Mormon history in order to tell his “Story of Violent Faith.” The vast majority of Latter-day Saints in the nineteenth century, like today’s Saints, were peace-loving people who wished to practice their religion in a spirit of nonviolence, allowing “all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may” (The Articles of Faith of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Article 11, first published in 1842).


Here's a long review that obviously has an agenda but makes a scholarly crticism of the history and tone of the book.
http://farms.byu.edu/display.php?table=review&id=530
A quote:
Turley and others have demonstrated that Krakauer seems to lack historical training. Evidently Krakauer took at face value statements and accusations made in jaundiced secondary literature. Rather than searching for and analyzing the primary sources, Krakauer merely regurgitates old assertions.

On another note, one of the most profound stories of non-violence I have read in any religious text is in the Book of Mormon. I wish it received more attention in Mormon churches, but there is certainly a strong strain of teaching non-violence in the LDS church even though it isn't completely pascifist.

[Skinner]

37. I am locking this thread.

It seems to me that judging someone based on the religious (or racial, or ethnic, or whatever) group they belong to is pretty much the definition of bigotry.