The Mormons

Dude he said something like "I am not a Mormon running for president, I'm a man running for president who was born a Mormon."

OOOOOOoooo that's gonna lose points with the Mormons! I mean, I could say that! Korihor could say that! That kinda distancing is crepey somehow, god, bcz if there's anything I know abt Mormons is if you don't wear your membership on your sleeve they will get SHIFTY-EYED SUSPICIOUS of that member.

Haven't read the whole thread so maybe it's been mentioned but if it hasn't, have a read at this and watch the video http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/justinwebb/

and the comments http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/justinwebb/2007/12/unchristian_behaviour.html#commentsanchor

A British (Catholic) academic friend recently blogged:

Mormonism is (apart from the anti-Gay bit) a really NICE religion. It encourages group solidarity; it does NOT condemn all non-Mormons to hell (just a less nice heaven); Mormon architecture is on the edge of the camp and inspiration, but it is pretty great over all. Despite all this, I think Joseph Smith was a fraud from upstate New York. Why don't I think this about all founders of religions?

Mormonism is (apart from the anti-Gay bit) a really NICE religion. It encourages group solidarity; it does NOT condemn all non-Mormons to hell (just a less nice heaven);

See though that would be worse for me. Being teased with something "good" when I could have achieved something "great" messes with my competitive nature.

Reviving because the typical cult-standoff story has mushroomed into a, well, HFS story

More than 400 children, mostly girls in pioneer dresses, were swept into state custody from a polygamist sect in what authorities described Monday as the largest child-welfare operation in Texas history.

The dayslong raid on the sprawling compound built by now-jailed polygamist leader Warren Jeffs was sparked by a 16-year-old girl's call to authorities that she was being abused and that girls as young as 14 and 15 were being forced into marriages with much older men.

Dressed in home-sewn, ankle-length dresses with their hair pinned up in braids, some 133 women left the Yearning for Zion Ranch of their own volition along with the children.

State troopers were holding an unknown number of men in the compound until investigators finished executing a house-to-house search of the 1,700-acre property, which includes a medical facility, numerous large housing units and an 80-foot white limestone temple that rises discordantly out of the brown scrub.

"In my opinion, this is the largest endeavor we've ever been involved in in the state of Texas," said Children's Protective Services spokesman Marleigh Meisner, who said she was also involved in the 1993 siege of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco.

The members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints spent their days raising numerous children, tilling small gardens and doing chores. But at least one former resident says life was not some idyllic replica of 19th-century life.

"Once you go into the compound, you don't ever leave it," said Carolyn Jessop, one of the wives of the alleged leader of the Eldorado complex. Jessop left with her eight children before the sect moved to Texas.
Jessop said the community emphasized self-sufficiency because they believed the apocalypse was near.

BY-PRODUCTS OF MORMON CULTURE

http://m1.2mdn.net/1563414/10019_40181_300x250.gif

i have found a planet full of Mormon babez

I had questions no one would answer SAD FACE

Gov't should tax these fuckers. And the Scientologists.

http://www.costco.com/Browse/Product.aspx?Prodid=11487214&cm_mmc=BCEmail_Sept2010Mailer-_-Focus-_-83-_-ShelfRelianceTHRIVE

Holy wow.

haha, I love freeze dried fruit so much. I don't think I'd want to survive the apocalypse on four different flavors of TVP.

This whole thing is weird because they have Mormon canneries where you can buy this stuff or go put your own cheap rice and dried fruit in cans.

http://providentliving.org/content/display/0,11666,7636-1-4104-1,00.html

Okay, this actually DOES look like a bowl of soil.

http://content.costco.com/Images/Content/ProductLarge/426464LL_v1.jpg

More useful for cost comparison: here are the prices to buy stuff from the Mormon church: http://providentliving.org/content/display/0,11666,8133-1-4352-1,00.html

I just get the feeling this is cheaper than what Costco's offering. OTOH they don't have freeze dried fruit. How can you pretend you're ruining everyone's Strawberry Special K by stealing all the freeze dried strawberries, if you just get stuff from this order form?

Thrive, more like Hive, amirite?

Jeffs = life in prison

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-17036046

The Mormon Church has apologised for posthumously baptising the parents of Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal.

Asher and Rosa Rapp Wiesenthal were baptised in proxy ceremonies by church members in the US states of Arizona and Utah in January, records show.

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints spokesman Michael Purdy said the Church' s leaders "sincerely regret" the actions of "an individual member".

The Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center denounced the news.

"We are outraged that such insensitive actions continue in the Mormon temples," said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, a spokesman at the centre.

The Mormon religion allows baptism after death, and believes the departed soul can then accept or reject the baptismal rites.

An agreement in 1995 was supposed to ban the practice of baptising by proxy Holocaust victims, after it was discovered the names of hundreds of thousands of those who died had been entered into Mormon records.

Simon Wiesenthal's parents are long since deceased, with his father dying in World War I and his mother perishing in the Holocaust.

Wiesenthal himself died in 2005 after surviving the Holocaust and dedicating his life to documenting Nazi crimes and hunting down perpetrators.
'Serious breach'

Mr Purdy told the Associated Press news agency that the church considered the act "a serious breach of our protocol".

According to Mr Purdy, the names of the Wiesenthal family were simply entered into a genealogical database by one person.

"We have suspended indefinitely this person's ability to access our genealogy records," he said.

The name of that individual or the individuals who performed the rite were not released.

Evidence that Wiesenthal's parents had been baptised was found by Helen Radkey, a researcher and former Mormon, AP reported.

She regularly checks the Church' s database, and also recently found the names of Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel and several family members on the Mormon list.

"None of the three names were submitted for baptism and they would not have been under the Church' s guidelines and procedures," said Mr Purdy, the Mormon Church spokesman said.

Rabbi Cooper said any further discussion of the problem was useless.

"The only way such insensitive practices would finally stop is if church leaders finally decided to change their practices and policies on posthumous baptisms, a move which this latest outrage proves that they are unwilling to do," he said.

The Catholic Church has also objected to posthumous baptisms of its members.

I had no idea they did this. It's seriously fucked up.

Baptisms for the dead, or specifically for Holocaust victims?

this is a very well-known practice of the church fwiw, people have been complaining about it for decades

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdiZOsHOG6o

the, uh, epistemological, metaphysical, and theological questions around how non-co-religionists could feel aggrieved by mormons baptizing their relatives seem... subtle.

abbott - either!

the, uh, epistemological, metaphysical, and theological questions around how non-co-religionists could feel aggrieved by mormons baptizing their relatives seem... subtle.

really? a major religion (with its own presidential candidate and everything) is going through the ancestries of jewish families and claiming to convert and purify the souls of the dead so they can finally get into real heaven. i'm entirely unsurprised that people are outraged by this, and not just the descendents of the deceased. it's more a question of basic respect than of whether or not you believe mormons have magical post-mortem baptism powers.

right, ethically, it seems pretty obviously bad (to the point that anyone doing it would have huge reservations, you would think). but if you're not mormon, then... do you think it could work somehow? and if you don't, then couldn't it also seem silly rather than offensive?

let's not overlook the fact that it's a deliberate attempt to obscures/obfuscates actual family histories and increase the rolls of people that the church can claim to be Mormon.

this could all be used against Romney, right?

not really. this is a pretty well-worn grudge topic against the Mormons, it's not like this is anything new or that Romney's even involved

oh yeah, it seems silly to me, but i can see as how others would be infuriated. never underestimate the ability of people to take offense.

re: j

i wonder if any of the souls ever decline to be baptized.

They do temple marriages for the dead by proxy, too, but I don't think it's as on big of a scale. It's what my parents do on vacation!

yeah but when you're running for chance to run as republican candidate , where a lot of voters are evangelical christians, his enemies will stop at nothing to smear him, right? Tie him in with it and he could lose votes. Thats how politics works right?

not really. this is a pretty well-worn grudge topic against the Mormons, it's not like this is anything new or that Romney's even involved

i dunno. suspect that a lot of american voters know next to nothing abt mormonism. and lots of conservative voters are deeply religious. could see some uproar among the base at the idea that romney's minions might have secretly rebaptised the corpse of grampa joe.

i wonder if any of the souls ever decline to be baptized.

This was always my question –– I did hundreds of baptisms for the dead as a teeen. They have the option to decline, but if you're in this clearly Mormon construction of the afterlife, why would you choose to? Or do other faiths have recruiting efforts in Spirit Paradise (as they call it)? Never got an answer.

there should probably be an anti-romney scare site about this, tbh. "how mormons are trying to steal the souls of the christian dead" or somesuch, implying that your loved ones could be next.

pretty sure Romney had his atheist father-in-law baptized posthumously

suspect that a lot of american voters know next to nothing abt mormonism. and lots of conservative voters are deeply religious.

deeply religious conservative voters know PLENTY about the Mormon church, including (most likely) their penchant for posthumous baptisms, and the majority of these deeply religious conservative voters already have concluded that a) Mormons are not Christians and b) how that will impact their vote. This particular instance is not news to anybody in the American electorate, and will not make waves.

xp

xxpost it's only fair imo. i mean christ can you imagine if the shoe were on the other foot

catholics'l' take you right up to the actual time of death but tbh once you're gone you're gone

you've got a lot more faith in the depth of religious education enjoyed by most americans than i do, shakey...

this is seriously not news to anyone who follows Christian theology in America. GOP Xtian primary voters have already made up their minds as to how they feel about Romney and his Mormonism - some will undoubtedly refuse to vote for him and that will be one of the reasons, others will find plenty of other reasons not to vote for him. And some will vote for him anyway and say it doesn't matter.

xp

re: abbott

well, sure, your own planet sounds awesome, but people are always declining salvation in all the other religions too. i guess if they never built 'finding out whether the soul really wants it' into the baptism ceremonies then the default answer is, no, they don't really concern themselves with that possibility.

i'm imagining, like, a ceremony where you wait to see if a light goes on. or a candle burns out.

hey if it's good enough to choose a pope........

you've got a lot more faith in the depth of religious education enjoyed by most americans than i do, shakey...

lol do you know what the biggest show on Broadway is this year? Do you know how much American evangelicals have had to say about the Mormon church over the years? Do you know how many Mormons are out there proselytizing about their religion to the general public on a daily basis? gimme a break.

if even a small percentage of conservative/independent voters were repelled by this, it could make a huge difference in romney's chances overall. liberal and anti-romney religious leaders are seriously dropping the ball if they don't try to manufacture a big OUTRAGE! over this. libs get a pass, of course, if they'd rather see romney in the general...

if geo. lucas CGI'd your dead ancestor into phantom menace, there'd probably be some legal recourse, but would there really be any in this case? I suspect a lot of the offense is amplified by there being no other deterrent.

no one will manufacture a big outrage over this because it is not news.

also directly impugning anyone's religion is reaaaaaallly treacherous territory politically - which is why, so far, most of the evangelicals who actively hate Mormons and don't consider them Christians have, for the most part, kept quiet about this small bigotry. Romney has plenty of other liabilities ripe for exploitation, no need to lay any landmines re: his religion.