Howard Berkes, Salt Lake-based reporter for National Public Radio, explores anew the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) public relations campaign to distance themselves from their polygamous sibling the F(undamental)LDS.Berkes reports:
Mormons want the world to know this: They're not polygamists. And the FLDS polygamists in Texas are not Mormons.
A recent poll the LDS Church paid for found that more than 90 percent of Americans heard about the raid on the Eldorado, Tx., ranch owned by the FLDS. But here's what really bugs the church: Nearly one in three respondents believed the FLDS were Mormons.
LDS spokesman Mike Otterson says:We're certainly aware that there is some confusion out there. But when that comes back as three out of every four people either not knowing that there is a difference [between Mormons and FLDS polygamists] or actually thinking that there is a connection, that's sobering.
But Berkes reports the public can be excused their confusion. Richard Bushman, a Mormon and visiting professor in Mormon studies at Claremont Graduate University in California, acknowledges polygamy persists in LDS theology:
A man can be sealed [in eternal marriage] to two women if one of them dies and he marries again. There's sort of an implicit heavenly plural marriage that is still authorized and acknowledged. So at the very best we're caught in kind of an ambiguous situation, and people probably pick that up.
The new Mormon public relations effort does not address these ambiguities, says Berkes. But Otterson argues the point is irrelevant because there's no polygamy in earthly Mormon life.
Above: A bevy of Brigham Young's wives.
7 Comments:
Glen - the name is "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints"
HMMM let see,
The believe in the Book of Mormon.
They regard Joseph Smith as a prophet.
They practice the teachings of Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, John Taylor.
But don't you dare call the FLDS...Mormons.
The LDS own the copyright to that title.
Whatever...They are just one branch of the tree that is Mormonism.
-Dale-
OMG! Mormons suck have got to be the rudest people that have ever walked the earth. "The church" and its religon is a scam!!!
Just because a man is sealed to more than one woman, does NOT mean that he will have more than one wife...when we seal families together in genealogy and a woman has been married more than once, we seal her to ALL her husbands. It will all be worked out in the eternities.
So all in all, it does not mean that polygamy will be practiced in the eternities. There are PLENTY of men to go around...
Interesting story.
Mormons get upset when Christians say Mormons aren't Christian and question the authority of Christians to determine who is a Christian and who isn't.
Yet somehow, Mormons get to determine who is Mormon and who isn't.
Further...
If Mormons get to claim to be Christian because they believe in "Jesus Christ", don't the FLDS get to be Mormon because they believe in Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, the Book of Mormon, Book of Abraham, temple garments, temple ordinances, Word of Wisdom, and so on?
The LDS church can't have it both ways. It brought polygamy to Utah and the West, then denounced it 1) after many hundreds of polygamist marriages (can't get the toothpaste back in the tube); 2) in order to get national permission to join the union as a state. I guess it was another of those quick-change-of-mind for God.
The church wants this: no polygamy on earth that in any way relates to the main Mormon church, but there will be polygamy in the afterlife where anti-Mormons can't make fun of it.
The main church, which, really isn't a church but a corporation, needs a scent of reality.
Isn't it curious, though, how the church-owned Deseret Morning News covers the FLDS fiasco as if the brethern were involved? Seems to me it would shun such coverage if, indeed, it really denounced polygamy.
Again, Tommy Monson and his henchmen can't have it both ways. Methinks there is a touch, a scent, a stench of hypocrisy here.
Ah, but the lord works in mysterious ways...
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