Are Mormons the new Catholics?
Wednesday November 26, 2008
Categories: Media
That question pops out of a guest post at A Motley Vision in a quote from an NPR review of Twilight, the movie I know you're just dying to see this weekend. I don't imagine Mormons would be any happier as stock characters in Hollywood productions than Catholics are.
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This blog is no longer updated and is closed for comments. We welcome your comments about Mormonism in our Latter-day Saints forums.
David Banack is an attorney living in Jackson Hole. He joined the LDS Church at age 15 and later served a two-year LDS mission to France and Switzerland. He has lived up and down the West Coast, as well as in Fiji, Samoa, Sweden, Utah, and now Wyoming. Dave has been running the Mormon Inquiry site discussing LDS and Christian issues since 2003. He is a website editor for Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought and also participates at the LDS weblog Times and Seasons. The views expressed on this blog are his own.Search This Blog
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Yes, they are 'Christ' believing. The only problem is that the 'Christ' they believe in is not the one in the Bible.
Not a reason to persecute them, but it would be nice if they stopped playing semantic games and just were 'themselves'.
Many religious groups have had folks upset with them at one time or another. Everybody gets a turn....
Mormon's get very little of the persecution they dole out back in return in my opinion. It would be wonderful if people of all faiths and of no faith could get along, but that's not really possible when people who justify bigotry with religion continue to thrive.
For years, I spoke out against the religious bigotry I heard spoken about the Mormons, especially when people hypocritically equated their religion with some sort of cult (as if all religion isn't essentially a set of concocted rituals that supposedly are the only way to have a relationship with God). To be honest, given their history of being persecuted for their beliefs, I would think the Mormons, of all our American faiths, would hold a deeper respect for the separation of church and state, and a deeper appreciation for the maligned and persecuted in our society.
However, given their recent collusion with the Catholic Church in a multi-million dollar bankrolling of efforts to pass Prop 8 in California, I now have lost all respect for the leaders of this church, and have relegated it to the same levels of respect that I have for the KKK, the fundamentalist Christians, and the Islamists.
Hopefully, the youth in the Mormon church will someday take it's leadership reigns and steer it back to a religion based on love, good works, and community, not denying human beings their fundamental human rights.
Matthew Kennedy, the owner of LDS Living magazine is a convert to the LDS Church. He was raised a Catholic and converted when he was 18 years old. He recently did a fireside in Salt Lake City and talked about how much the Catholic Church had done for the Japanese after World War II in Japan. He served his mission there and pointed out how many young Japanese people could quote the bible, sing hymns, and say a meaningful prayer. Kennedy attributed his ability to teach the Japanese about the restored Gospel to their foundation in Christianity built by the Catholics. He says that LDS Living magazine goes out to about half a million people and that very often they get letters or emails from Catholics who enjoy the magazine and although they are not LDS they do see a lot of common ground in the Mormon teachings. It's hard to look at the money issue of the two Churches and leave out the human element. The fact that these two religions have milions of people who are willing to acknowledge the good in their lives as a result of the teachings of their Churches stands as a seperate issue of good. These are people who are not rich, have never given more than hundreds of dollars to their Church... and yet they are the good of the world. I don't know if LDS Living magazine uses its money to support the poor or build buildings, but it does add to the good out their and that issue needs to be pointed out more.
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