Mormon Think wrote:The Daily Beast has a new piece up, "God vs. the Internet. And the Winner is…," by Michael Schulson (
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2 ... er-is.html) that touches on the recent LDS essays. His main focus is on how the internet has created a "crisis of authority" because of the shift in who frames the narrative of a religion. He features Mormonism and how the internet has caused the Church to make changes in how much information they disseminate to the general membership.
Schulson says,
"What’s at risk here, really, isn’t faith. Nor is it traditional leadership. It’s the illusion that our founding myths and our factual histories are somehow one and the same. It’s still possible to understand Joseph Smith as a transcendent figure with a powerful spiritual message (his mythic history) who was also a flawed human individual with a fourteen year-old wife (factual history). ... But it’s getting more difficult to pretend that the actual details of Joseph Smith’s life map perfectly onto that archetypal role."
He doesn't seem to cut the Church any slack when he point blank says
"Latter-day Saint authorities acknowledge that Joseph Smith, the church’s founder and first prophet, married between 30 and 40 women. Some of those women already had husbands. One of Smith’s wives was just 14 years old at the time of their marriage."
It's good he also acknowledges that many Mormons didn't know about Joseph Smith's polygamy:
"To historians, that’s old news. But church authorities have traditionally been hesitant to discuss controversial parts of Mormon history. Many Mormons did not know the details of Smith’s polygamy."
MormonThink got a little ink:
"Increasingly, official church historians share historical authority with people like Scott Carles, the managing editor of MormonThink, a website devoted to making information about Mormon history easy to find. Carles told me that MormonThink strives to be objective and impartial. They’re not trying to convert people, but they are trying to push the church to be more transparent. MormonThink’s visitors tend to be Mormons with doubts about the faith, looking for answers. The site gets two million visits per month."
He also links to MT here:
"As Mormons venture online, they’re finding information about the church that contradicts the history they learned growing up. They’re reading about Smith’s polygamy, the church’s troubled racial history, and some especially fishy translations." [The "fishy translations" is a link to MT's Book of Abraham page
http://mormonthink.com/book-of-abraham-issues.htm]
Overall it's worth the read.
Bill