Why we fear Mormons

Written by J. Spencer Fluhman, an assistant professor of history at Brigham Young University

This article paints with a board brush anyone critical of the LDS church.

From the article:




Once again we see that anyone critical of the church is portrayed as insincere or trying to compensate for something. This time I think it was taken to a ridiculous extreme.

The latter bit you quoted is perhaps a bit closer to the reasons why people fear the LDS Church, imo. While I think that some of this "bullying"/marginalization stuff figures in to it in a tangential way, I think that the real reasons have to do with the Church's secrecy, and with people's perceptions of its power and influence. When you take into account a variety of things: the Church's global sweep; its financial power; its occasional tendencies in the past to use litigation to silence critics; its high numbers of people in the FBI and CIA; its SCMC; its treatment of "so-called intellectuals"; its vast real estate holdings and other financial interests--and if you combine all this with the Church's secrecy, and its tendency to tell "little white lies" about things like polygamy, blood atonement, and so on, I don't think it's hard to see why people would be fearful or concerned.

Guess what Mormons, no one has an obligation to accept your religion.

He labeled the whole world "anti-Mormon". That's funny. Do other religions do this? If I say that I don't like Catholicism and I would never be Catholic, would they label me an anti-Catholic?

He is just showing everyone the us vs them attitude of Mormonism. Where I live people don't know enough about Mormonism to be anti-Mormon, and furthermore they don't care enough to find out.

I think a lot of people will find the term "anti-Mormon" strange. It will only confirm their idea that Mormons are a little weird.

Mormons are anti-Catholic.

Guess what? That's one of our articles of Faith. But if you seek eternal life, you will have to accept it.

LOL. Make up your mind.

My point though, was the article screams, "give up your strongly held beliefs in order that Mormons don't feel offended".

As to what? You are under no obligation to accept eternal life.



That's right. You can bring the truth you have with you but you'll have to strip yourself of false doctrine as well.

Yeah, Mormons aren't that scary. According to bcspace, as long as you're not one of them, you won't be forced to live with them for the eternities.

Mormon sophistry doesn't impress me as a form of cleverness. (JSYK)

Always fist in line to be victims.

In a nutshell bc inadvertently expresses the core issue of Mormonism's alienation from the Christian world.....and they act like the offended party.

No one has the obligation to accept the catholic religion either. But there are still many anticatholics out there. Go back in american history and one can read very hostile articles in the american press against catholicism. I suppose that if a catholic wrote something about it and gave his or her interpretation, a anticatholic could have written:

Guess what catholics, no one has an obligation to accept your religion.

Go tell this to your non member friends and colleagues. Let us know how that works out for ya.

I like Dr. Fluhman a lot. He helped me a bit during parts of my undergrad. He was a professor in the religion department until last year.

Your deflection away from the subject, which is Mormonism, aside. The author of this article has an obvious bias against Evangelical Protestantism. Because Evangelicals criticize Mormonism, they must be anti-Mormon.

Hypocritical article, from beginning to end. Mormonism is founded on criticizing all of Christianity. Must be that Mormons are anti-Christian.

I liked the article. I thought it was well done. And I do think that scrutiny of Mormons is unusually exacting for such a large sect with at least heretically Christian beliefs. People are much nastier these days about Mormons than most other major religious groups except Muslims, perhaps. I don't see what all of the complaints are about.

Because they are. But then again, so where the catholics and the jews. So were the native americans and african americans. All offended parties from bigoted people. Mormons are just one many groups in america that have been offended.

The title of the editorial seems disingenuous. "Why We Fear Mormons" sounds like it was written by somebody who is trying to come to grips with his own Mormonphobia. A more accurate title would be, "Why You Fear Us Mormons."

No deflection. Just gave you something to think about since you are catholic. Catholics have had their share of anticatholicism in their history in the american press. Now it is the Mormons turn. You need to show sympathy since it also happened to your own faith.

And yes, it was the protestants that had a great deal of anticatholicism. It goes with the turf.