Mormon Coffee

A disconcerted Mormon from Utah reviews In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith, by Mormon scholar Todd Compton (available at our bookstore).

This book takes away from the spirit and I would not recommend it to anyone; there are too many false and/or misrepresented facts.

First red flag for this book is that it is published by Signature Books, NOT a reputable company for good LDS literature. In fact, many LDS bookstores have pulled some signature books off shelves because of their questionable material. The second red flag with this book is that I found when I started reading, the spirit left the room. This book has a lot of false and/or misrepresented facts. If you really want to learn about Joseph Smith, there are much better books out there. This is not a book to read. It only takes away from the spirit and I do not recommend it to anyone.

So here’s a question to our Mormon friends out there: What alternative book would you recommend that focuses on the known wives of Joseph Smith and yet doesn’t “take away from the spirit”? Would you expect to find a book on such a subject that makes you feel good about Joseph Smith?

Comments (42)

“Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation.” - Mark 16:15

After all the pomp involved in bloviating on “missional paradigm”, “contextualization”, “incarnational ministry”, “cross-cultural communication”, “interreligious dialog”, at the end of the day Christians still have a God-given mandate to preach the gospel to all creation, to communicate those basic elements of the gospel which need no major contextualization and are universally relevant.

And may God grant that we not disobey Christ’s mandate by avoiding evangelism to strangers and limiting it to what we stubbornly demand as prerequisite, well-established relationships of credibility and trust.

September Dawn opened in theaters last Friday. Opinions on the movie vary widely. It seems that, much like reactions to Helen Whitney’s PBS documentary The Mormons, viewers either love or hate September Dawn.

If you have watched the movie, we’d like to know what you thought of it. Please comment here only if you have seen September Dawn.

For those of you unfamiliar with the topic, we recommend a video clip by Living Hope Ministries and an article by Bill McKeever.

Comments (57)

Today the Hollywood movie September Dawn opens in 1000 theaters nationwide. The dramatized portrayal of the Mountain Meadows Massacre–wherein Mormon men massacred 120 emigrants as they peacefully passed through southern Utah in 1857–is unwelcome among Latter-day Saints. The film has been called “controversial” by the news media, but has received stronger condemnation from Latter-day Saints.

For example, the Los Angeles Times reported,

“According to Tom Kimball, a sixth-generation Mormon who is book review editor for the Mormon History Assn., the film has been put on a ‘do not watch’ list by LDS Church officials.

“‘It’s blacklisted already,’ he said.”

The Boston Globe reported,

“‘This is a bit of salacious trash, designed to sensationalize a terribly tragic event and horrible atrocity as well as to exploit current anti-Mormon and anti-religious sentiment that seems to be sweeping through popular culture,’ said Gene A. Sessions, chairman of the history department at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah.”

As of this writing the LDS Church hasn’t released an official statement about the film, but back in February LDS Church-owned KSL-TV reported,

“A movie that hasn’t even been released yet is drawing strong reaction from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints… The church calls it a distortion…”

Nevertheless, September Dawn will likely have its run in American movie theaters. If the film had been made in the 1920s, though, this may not have been the case.

On August 24th 1921 LDS Church President Heber J. Grant wrote a letter to U.S. Senator and fellow Latter-day Saint Reed Smoot. President Grant expressed his deep concern–and that of the LDS First Presidency–over the nationwide distribution and showing of the motion picture “Riders of the Purple Sage,” based on a novel by Zane Grey.

The Church considered the movie’s portrayal of LDS history to be “scandalous.” President Grant praised Senator Smoot,

“I am also very glad to note that you have taken up the matter of preventing the motion picture houses from showing Zane Grey’s novel ‘Riders of the Purple Sage.’ Thru the efforts of the Commercial Club here and also others who have endeavored to have this stopped, I am informed that the picture is no longer passing censorship in the State of Michigan. I sincerely hope that it will not be necessary to bring suit in this matter.

“Don’t you think that if it could get to the National Board of Motion Picture Review that litigation is likely to follow if exhibition of this scandalous picture is not prohibited that good results might obtain? It would seem to me that large damages could be collected and I don’t know but that the advertising we would get might be beneficial. Sometimes I think we are too passive and do not defend ourselves as we should against such onslaught.” (Messages of the First Presidency 5:203)

A few weeks later President Grant again wrote Senator Smoot:

“I have read with very much interest the manner in which you succeeded in having the objectionable picture entitled ‘Riders of the Purple Sage’ by Zane Grey and which was produced by the Fox Film Corporation eliminated from the screen and I assure you that I am very grateful for your efforts in this direction and much gratified at the result.” (Messages of the First Presidency, 14 September 1921, 5:204)

Comments (13)

When it comes to the Godhead of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, there have been many theories about whether or not the Christian concept of the Trinity is true. Both Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons will attack the Trinity as being “incomprehensible” and therefore “illogical.” Too often these folks like to aim their artillery at the Council of Nicea that convened in A.D. 325 and was attended by approximately 300 bishops from the east and west churches.

Of course, I cannot cover in detail every nuance of the council or of the Trinity to show why I and millions of other Christians believe this doctrine makes good biblical sense. (Two good books I can recommend for study on the Trinity, though, are E. Calvin Beisner’s God in Three Persons and James White’s The Forgotten Trinity.) But it needs to be established that the issue of the Trinity did not originate in the fourth century. In fact, Christians, for the most part, have held very dearly to the idea of the Hypostatic Union (Jesus as the God-man was 100% God and 100% man, as detailed in Phil. 2:5-11) since the days of the apostles. It wasn’t until Arius came along that the Christian community needed to evaluate this critical teaching.

Typically, detractors opposed to the Trinity will immediately use the name of Constantine in an attempt to show how the Council of Nicea was used to promote a pagan concept of God. When someone does this, ask her how well she has studied the process of how the decision was made. Rarely have I found anyone able to explain the major players of the council (Alexander and Athanasius versus Arius), let alone the century the council took place (4th)!

The truth is that less than two dozen bishops (out of some 300) attending the council were ever in favor of Arianism, and by the time the council concluded, only two did not favor the Orthodox position. Truly Constantine’s goal was for reconciliation and had nothing to do with the decision made in Nicea, which was overwhelmingly confirmed in a fuller form at the Council of Constantinople in A.D. 381. As Steve Brandt points out,

“Constantine did play an important role at the Council. Eusebius of Caesarea reports that he played a key part in calming, convincing, and bringing all to agreement on contested points. The account of Eusebius fairly glows in regard to the Emperor, and he is portrayed as a key figure. It is nowhere suggested, however, that he was permitted to vote with the bishops nor that he used any form of force to obtain an outcome.”

While the word “Trinity” is never used in the Bible, neither is the concept “Heavenly Mother” nor “Paradise Earth” used in the Bible, even though some might argue these are biblically true ideas. Yet the Trinity clearly solves problems and is a correct belief based on the teaching of the Bible. It shows that, while there is one God (Deut. 6:4; Mark 12:29), there are three separate Persons who are fully and completely God. (Quick. Who raised Jesus from the dead? Of course, God the Father did according to Acts 3:15. But Jesus also raised Himself from the dead, according to John 2:19 and the Spirit gets credit in Romans 8:11.)

The Trinity is supported by the testimony of Jesus as well as His apostles and brothers. In his book What Have They Done with Jesus, New Testament scholar Ben Witherington III carefully considers the early witnesses of the historical Jesus Christ. In his conclusion on page 291, he writes,

“The historical probabilities surely lie with the suggestion that these were honest witnesses, struggling mightily to explain the significance of a person they had encountered and who, in the process had irrevocably changed their lives. One has to decide, then, whether the Jesus they remembered and tried to explain, grasping after terms and titles large enough to convey his importance, was the real Jesus or not. Bear in mind that it is not a matter of trusting much later Christian testimony—say, for the Council of Nicea conspiracies to concoct a Jesus-is-God theology. No, it is a matter of trusting the very earliest witnesses of the historical Jesus, some of those who knew him best.”

James R. Edwards, a biblical languages professor at Whitworth College in Spokane, WA, agrees, writing in Is Jesus the Only Savior that “we do not find an evolutionary trend to elevate Jesus in the creedal tradition of Christianity” (p. 69) In fact, he writes on pages 55-56,

“The idea that the early church fabricated a portrait of Jesus that eventually resulted in the Nicene formulation of ‘true God of true God’ from a historical Jesus who was simply a first-century Jew about whom little was known, and who was either uncertain or confused about his identity, is a highly improbable—and unadvised—leap of faith. It is not surprising that an imposing line of biblical scholars has opposed it for nearly two centuries.”

It would be refreshing for critics of the Trinity to refrain from attacking the Council of Nicea to disprove the Trinity. If you don’t agree with the Trinity, use scripture for your source. This is a much better place to begin.

Comments (102)