I came to write a different comment, and ended up writing an essay in response to Drew. Ugh. That got me worked up.
I've been pondering this essay on and off since I read it and want to share a personal example of how, if virulent anti-Mormonism were to spread in the way that Dr. Iscoll would like it to spread, lives would be affected:
For a period of about 10 years, I worked in the film industry from my desk in Oklahoma City. First for LD Entertainment which was based in Hollywood and Oklahoma City. Next for the Erwin Brothers/Kingdom Story Company, which was based originally in Birmingham, AL and later moved to Franklin, TN.
I was hired by the founders of LD Entertainment after they had to remove the prior VP of Finance. The partner who interviewed me specifically noted my attendance at BYU's Marriott School and began asking questions that his HR department would have hated. I'm not saying that I was hired BECAUSE I was a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but after our meeting, he had a pretty good idea of my morals and standards, and it didn't hurt.
If Dr. Iscoll had his way, I'd have been immediately dismissed from the interview for being a demon and worshipping demons.
From that hire, I've been able to work on films like "Risen", "I Can Only Imagine", "Jesus Music", "Jesus Revolution", "I Still Believe" and more. I've rubbed shoulders with many Evangelicals. I've been pointed to as the token "Mormon" in meetings. I helped the Erwin Brothers with their rebrand to Kingdom Story Company and assisted with the move to Tennessee so they'd have more access to amazing creative talents.
For my part those were amazing opportunities and I loved (and still love) my Evangelical brothers and sisters who write, produce, create, edit, and market films like these that our culture desperately needs.
All those opportunities would have vanished from my life if anti-Mormonism had become mainstream by the 2010s. Those groups may have found someone else to do the work that I did - I'm sure they would have - but I like to think that I added to their lives as well.
I hope and pray Baptists, Methodists, Non-denominational Christians, and other Evangelical groups AND Mormons find ways to break down more walls and work together, rather than raising more walls.
I know your Substack is not specifically for combating anti-Mormonism, but I am enjoying it and I am grateful for your two most recent essays on that topic in any case.
Thank you for your comment, Brian! It was very encouraging, and I’m very glad you’ve taken the time to read and reply. That means a lot.
And woooow that’s amazing you’ve been able to work on those films. What an incredible privilege! I agree about find ways to work together—it’s a no-brainer to me, e.g., moral, ethical, social cooperation. There’s actually a long (yet relatively unknown) history of evangelicals promoting just that. A German Reformed preacher was invited to speak by Brigham Young at a general conference, and Young affirmed his message afterwards. D.L. Moody preached against social vices at the Tabernacle in 1899, then Cecil B DeMille on the Ten Commandments 50 years later, and Al Mohler about 10 years ago on religious liberty. We need more of that sort of thing.
So true. I love the story of the friendship between Cecil B. DeMille and David O. McKay. That's a model for us. The first story that Jon Erwin (filmmaker) told me when we met was his fond recollection of his collaboration with the LDS Church when he and his brother, Andy, went to Utah to film a series of Old Testament stories for their church in Birmingham. The Church lent them costumes and equipment that elevated the series beyond anything they could have hoped for. I believe that pre-dated the Jersusalem set in Goshen, Utah, but they had access to anything else they needed.
Thanks for this. I've noted in years past that evangelicals tend to run on a spectrum in approaches to the LDS and other religions. Perhaps there is one farther to the end beyond polemical that might be anti-Mormon. Here I have in mind the Street Preachers like the late Rubin Israel. Thoughts?
I’m not familiar enough with him to say one way or another, but I agree in principle, and have been toying with the idea of gradation with anti-Mormonism itself, but that’s probably for an expert to take up, like BYU’s Jared Halverson, who researches this sort of thing.
Your doctoral thesis questioning the historicity of The Book of Mormon seems polemic. Would you say, in the last 9 years, you've changed from being polemic to ambassadorial? Or, would you say that being ambassadorial is a pretense becoming more polemic once you've established a connection? I'm wary of the ambassadorial people, because it always feels like a trojan horse.
That being said, I'm 40, and I'm a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. One of my earliest introductions to evanglical "anti-Mormon" stuff was in high school with a binder from Matt Slick's CARM that a friend at school gave me. It was a binder on how to minister to "Mormons" and I think my friend got tired of using it against me, and not having it work, so he just gave me the whole binder and told me to read it. lol.
All that being said - very interesting thesis. Regarding Isaiah & David the Book of Mormon feels a lot like the New Testament. There's a lot of Paul in it. There's a lot of John the Revelator in it.
Do you mean my master's thesis? Just to clarify, my doctoral work was on Wingfield Watson and James Strang's church after his death, but my ThM was on the relative absence of Davidic references in the Book of Mormon, which I believe is evidence against its historicity.
I don't think it's necessarily polemic to say something like that; I don't find it polemic when, say, NT scholars strongly doubt the authorship of certain Pauline letters, or question the reliability of certain manuscript traditions, or OT scholars flat out reject any thing remotely resembling an Israelite exodus of Egypt, etc. Polemicism is taking that next step: "Paul didn't acutally write Colossians; therefore, you shouldn't believe it and you are wrong if you do."
But, after having submitted and published my thesis, I learned very quickly that, no matter how hard you try, something like that is always going to come across as inflammatory and even "anti-Mormon" for many folks, so I definitely shifted gears. (One Latter-day Saint even made fun of my last name, riffing of me not being very sharp for having "shears" in my name, so I'm still traumatized from that ;) haha.)
That said, I'm generally uninterested these days in engaging in apologetics. I'm much more interested in LDS history and providing an evangelical pastoral-scholarly reflection on the LDS tradition at large, if that makes sense. So, yes, maybe you're sensing something in me that I'm not even aware of yet, a migration from polemicist to ambassador. Certainly, many years ago, I'd have considered myself a polemicist, so perhaps you're right!
And I remember Matt Slick! I watched him debate an atheist at a university campus and don't recall being particularly impressed with either side. Matt belongs to an era that I think has largely faded (the counter-cult) but is being replaced with something I'm calling the "countra-cult" movement. Whereas the counter-cult movement policed evangelical identity, the "countra-cult" movement performs evangelical identity for public consumption. I'll be writing on that in December or Jan, I think.
Anyway, Stephen, nice to meet you (digitally)! Thanks for reading and taking the time to comment. I really does mean a lot to me.
Oh, I did mean your masters thesis. I'll have to check our your doctoral thesis. I've been thinking about Strang a lot in the last 48 hours, and wanted to read some things about him. Do you have a link to it?
I'm currently writing a historical fiction trilogy set during the time of Isaiah. And, I wanted to pattern the character of Yahu-Bihdi after Strang.
“Mormons believe Elohim had sex with Mary to conceive Jesus” and “All Mormons think they’ll get their own planet and a harem of wives to populate it when they die.” As someone who recently left mormonism, after spending over 30 years in it, I can attest that the mass majority of mormons still believe these two statements.
Thank you for reading and taking the time to reply. You may have missed my point. I didn’t say these things were necessarily untrue or disbelieved, but that they are sensationalized “into crude or lurid caricature[s].”
I didn’t miss your point, you claimed those statements themselves were examples of “sensationalizing” and “stretching doctrine into crude or lurid caricature”. I am saying this is false as these are accurate representations of what the mass majority of Mormons believe.
No, mormons deny everything that is controversial when speaking with christians. You could not even get mormons to admit that they believe Jesus and Satan are brothers. Only when speaking to other mormons do they affirm such things. This is how cults work.
I've been raised in the LDS Church since birth, nearly 56 years ago. Raised in Utah, have held all the priesthood leadership callings from Deacon's quorum president through Bishop, served a mission in Brazil, and have taught various classes, including Gospel Doctrine, since I was 19 years old. I have lived in dozens of wards across the country, and have personally associated with hundreds (maybe thousands) of Latter-day Saints both in Utah and outside of Utah, and you're absolutely wrong.
We don't discuss these two topics in classes, and we don't discuss them in small group meetings, or at home.
I'm sure that I won't convince you of your wrongness, but so be it. Hopefully others will read my comments and conclude, as I have, that your statement is ludicrous.
I have heard the “Elohim had sex with Mary to conceive Jesus” line exactly once from an individual who spent way too much time researching "deep doctrine" for his own good. I was in my early 30s at the time and was shocked by this concept. It was in the middle of a class I was teaching, and I felt the Spirit depart the meeting. His comment offended me. He later apologized to me and confessed he was (a) in the wrong to bring it up during a gospel doctrine class I was teaching, and (b) more importantly that he was wrong entirely.
It's a fringe belief, if that. And, it's false doctrine.
As for the “they’ll get their own planet and a harem of wives to populate it when they die” line, that is a caricature.
Candidly, we don't have any idea what it means to be co-heirs with Christ (Romans 8:17). We know that Jesus Christ, as heir, will inherit all that the Father has, including his Glory and eternal nature. (Already has as far as I can tell.) If we're co-heirs doesn't that mean we'd have access to the same blessings?
The doctrine that is being exaggerated reads this way: "Then shall they be gods [small g], because they have no end; therefore shall they be from everlasting to everlasting, because they continue; then shall they be above all, because all things are subject unto them. Then shall they be gods, because they have all power, and the angels are subject unto them." (D&C 132:20).
Maybe that's "strange doctrine" but I don't believe it's that different from Romans 8:17. Had Paul expounded on the idea of us being co-heirs with Jesus Christ, he may have given us a similar verse as D&C 132:20. (Obviously, I'm speculating.)
Either way, the actual verse is pretty far from the idea that “they’ll get their own planet and a harem of wives to populate it when they die.” and Kyle is correct about how that's a cartoonish distortion meant to make people outraged and discourage dialogue... and it's frequently used by disaffected former members of the Church like you to do exactly that.
You proved my point by lying. What do you think “literal” son of god means? It’s in all your manuals annd statements of your prophets. And what you do think “eternal increase” means? It’s in Mormon scripture and expounded upon in the temple sealing ceremony. But you are literally not allowed to divulge that second part to non Mormons. This is why it’s so silly when people pretend Mormons do not have secret ceremonies where these things are taught.
Just to clarify, you believe that Latter-day Saints privately affirm to one another that “Elohim had sex with Mary to conceive Jesus” and “they’ll get their own planet and a harem of wives to populate it when they die.”
(I’m trying to maintain my original point that it is not the doctrine per se but the framing of doctrine that is the problem.)
Ok if you think framing matters more than doctrine, I think we are never going to see eye to eye. Btw it’s silly to treat the framing itself as static and monolithic. For example Mormons will say things in much cruder ways to each other in private conversations than to you and I. They are taught things in the temple that are literally not allowed to be spoken of outside of the temple. Have a nice day.
I came to write a different comment, and ended up writing an essay in response to Drew. Ugh. That got me worked up.
I've been pondering this essay on and off since I read it and want to share a personal example of how, if virulent anti-Mormonism were to spread in the way that Dr. Iscoll would like it to spread, lives would be affected:
For a period of about 10 years, I worked in the film industry from my desk in Oklahoma City. First for LD Entertainment which was based in Hollywood and Oklahoma City. Next for the Erwin Brothers/Kingdom Story Company, which was based originally in Birmingham, AL and later moved to Franklin, TN.
I was hired by the founders of LD Entertainment after they had to remove the prior VP of Finance. The partner who interviewed me specifically noted my attendance at BYU's Marriott School and began asking questions that his HR department would have hated. I'm not saying that I was hired BECAUSE I was a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but after our meeting, he had a pretty good idea of my morals and standards, and it didn't hurt.
If Dr. Iscoll had his way, I'd have been immediately dismissed from the interview for being a demon and worshipping demons.
From that hire, I've been able to work on films like "Risen", "I Can Only Imagine", "Jesus Music", "Jesus Revolution", "I Still Believe" and more. I've rubbed shoulders with many Evangelicals. I've been pointed to as the token "Mormon" in meetings. I helped the Erwin Brothers with their rebrand to Kingdom Story Company and assisted with the move to Tennessee so they'd have more access to amazing creative talents.
For my part those were amazing opportunities and I loved (and still love) my Evangelical brothers and sisters who write, produce, create, edit, and market films like these that our culture desperately needs.
All those opportunities would have vanished from my life if anti-Mormonism had become mainstream by the 2010s. Those groups may have found someone else to do the work that I did - I'm sure they would have - but I like to think that I added to their lives as well.
I hope and pray Baptists, Methodists, Non-denominational Christians, and other Evangelical groups AND Mormons find ways to break down more walls and work together, rather than raising more walls.
I know your Substack is not specifically for combating anti-Mormonism, but I am enjoying it and I am grateful for your two most recent essays on that topic in any case.
Thank you for your comment, Brian! It was very encouraging, and I’m very glad you’ve taken the time to read and reply. That means a lot.
And woooow that’s amazing you’ve been able to work on those films. What an incredible privilege! I agree about find ways to work together—it’s a no-brainer to me, e.g., moral, ethical, social cooperation. There’s actually a long (yet relatively unknown) history of evangelicals promoting just that. A German Reformed preacher was invited to speak by Brigham Young at a general conference, and Young affirmed his message afterwards. D.L. Moody preached against social vices at the Tabernacle in 1899, then Cecil B DeMille on the Ten Commandments 50 years later, and Al Mohler about 10 years ago on religious liberty. We need more of that sort of thing.
So true. I love the story of the friendship between Cecil B. DeMille and David O. McKay. That's a model for us. The first story that Jon Erwin (filmmaker) told me when we met was his fond recollection of his collaboration with the LDS Church when he and his brother, Andy, went to Utah to film a series of Old Testament stories for their church in Birmingham. The Church lent them costumes and equipment that elevated the series beyond anything they could have hoped for. I believe that pre-dated the Jersusalem set in Goshen, Utah, but they had access to anything else they needed.
And that seems to have repeated itself with The Chosen!
Great read, really liked you taking the woman at the well experience and translating modern discord into prior scriptural discourse.
Thank you, Andreas! That means a lot to me. Thank you for your time to read this.
Thanks for this. I've noted in years past that evangelicals tend to run on a spectrum in approaches to the LDS and other religions. Perhaps there is one farther to the end beyond polemical that might be anti-Mormon. Here I have in mind the Street Preachers like the late Rubin Israel. Thoughts?
I’m not familiar enough with him to say one way or another, but I agree in principle, and have been toying with the idea of gradation with anti-Mormonism itself, but that’s probably for an expert to take up, like BYU’s Jared Halverson, who researches this sort of thing.
Your doctoral thesis questioning the historicity of The Book of Mormon seems polemic. Would you say, in the last 9 years, you've changed from being polemic to ambassadorial? Or, would you say that being ambassadorial is a pretense becoming more polemic once you've established a connection? I'm wary of the ambassadorial people, because it always feels like a trojan horse.
That being said, I'm 40, and I'm a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. One of my earliest introductions to evanglical "anti-Mormon" stuff was in high school with a binder from Matt Slick's CARM that a friend at school gave me. It was a binder on how to minister to "Mormons" and I think my friend got tired of using it against me, and not having it work, so he just gave me the whole binder and told me to read it. lol.
All that being said - very interesting thesis. Regarding Isaiah & David the Book of Mormon feels a lot like the New Testament. There's a lot of Paul in it. There's a lot of John the Revelator in it.
Do you mean my master's thesis? Just to clarify, my doctoral work was on Wingfield Watson and James Strang's church after his death, but my ThM was on the relative absence of Davidic references in the Book of Mormon, which I believe is evidence against its historicity.
I don't think it's necessarily polemic to say something like that; I don't find it polemic when, say, NT scholars strongly doubt the authorship of certain Pauline letters, or question the reliability of certain manuscript traditions, or OT scholars flat out reject any thing remotely resembling an Israelite exodus of Egypt, etc. Polemicism is taking that next step: "Paul didn't acutally write Colossians; therefore, you shouldn't believe it and you are wrong if you do."
But, after having submitted and published my thesis, I learned very quickly that, no matter how hard you try, something like that is always going to come across as inflammatory and even "anti-Mormon" for many folks, so I definitely shifted gears. (One Latter-day Saint even made fun of my last name, riffing of me not being very sharp for having "shears" in my name, so I'm still traumatized from that ;) haha.)
That said, I'm generally uninterested these days in engaging in apologetics. I'm much more interested in LDS history and providing an evangelical pastoral-scholarly reflection on the LDS tradition at large, if that makes sense. So, yes, maybe you're sensing something in me that I'm not even aware of yet, a migration from polemicist to ambassador. Certainly, many years ago, I'd have considered myself a polemicist, so perhaps you're right!
And I remember Matt Slick! I watched him debate an atheist at a university campus and don't recall being particularly impressed with either side. Matt belongs to an era that I think has largely faded (the counter-cult) but is being replaced with something I'm calling the "countra-cult" movement. Whereas the counter-cult movement policed evangelical identity, the "countra-cult" movement performs evangelical identity for public consumption. I'll be writing on that in December or Jan, I think.
Anyway, Stephen, nice to meet you (digitally)! Thanks for reading and taking the time to comment. I really does mean a lot to me.
Oh, I did mean your masters thesis. I'll have to check our your doctoral thesis. I've been thinking about Strang a lot in the last 48 hours, and wanted to read some things about him. Do you have a link to it?
I'm currently writing a historical fiction trilogy set during the time of Isaiah. And, I wanted to pattern the character of Yahu-Bihdi after Strang.
https://repository.sbts.edu/bitstream/handle/10392/6603/Beshears_sbts_0207D_10678.pdf
Skip to chapter 3
Ok that trilogy sounds fascinating.
DM me?
“Mormons believe Elohim had sex with Mary to conceive Jesus” and “All Mormons think they’ll get their own planet and a harem of wives to populate it when they die.” As someone who recently left mormonism, after spending over 30 years in it, I can attest that the mass majority of mormons still believe these two statements.
Thank you for reading and taking the time to reply. You may have missed my point. I didn’t say these things were necessarily untrue or disbelieved, but that they are sensationalized “into crude or lurid caricature[s].”
I didn’t miss your point, you claimed those statements themselves were examples of “sensationalizing” and “stretching doctrine into crude or lurid caricature”. I am saying this is false as these are accurate representations of what the mass majority of Mormons believe.
So, you’re saying that if I presented those beliefs exactly as stated, the majority of Latter-day Saints would nod in affirmation?
No, mormons deny everything that is controversial when speaking with christians. You could not even get mormons to admit that they believe Jesus and Satan are brothers. Only when speaking to other mormons do they affirm such things. This is how cults work.
I've been raised in the LDS Church since birth, nearly 56 years ago. Raised in Utah, have held all the priesthood leadership callings from Deacon's quorum president through Bishop, served a mission in Brazil, and have taught various classes, including Gospel Doctrine, since I was 19 years old. I have lived in dozens of wards across the country, and have personally associated with hundreds (maybe thousands) of Latter-day Saints both in Utah and outside of Utah, and you're absolutely wrong.
We don't discuss these two topics in classes, and we don't discuss them in small group meetings, or at home.
I'm sure that I won't convince you of your wrongness, but so be it. Hopefully others will read my comments and conclude, as I have, that your statement is ludicrous.
I have heard the “Elohim had sex with Mary to conceive Jesus” line exactly once from an individual who spent way too much time researching "deep doctrine" for his own good. I was in my early 30s at the time and was shocked by this concept. It was in the middle of a class I was teaching, and I felt the Spirit depart the meeting. His comment offended me. He later apologized to me and confessed he was (a) in the wrong to bring it up during a gospel doctrine class I was teaching, and (b) more importantly that he was wrong entirely.
It's a fringe belief, if that. And, it's false doctrine.
As for the “they’ll get their own planet and a harem of wives to populate it when they die” line, that is a caricature.
Candidly, we don't have any idea what it means to be co-heirs with Christ (Romans 8:17). We know that Jesus Christ, as heir, will inherit all that the Father has, including his Glory and eternal nature. (Already has as far as I can tell.) If we're co-heirs doesn't that mean we'd have access to the same blessings?
The doctrine that is being exaggerated reads this way: "Then shall they be gods [small g], because they have no end; therefore shall they be from everlasting to everlasting, because they continue; then shall they be above all, because all things are subject unto them. Then shall they be gods, because they have all power, and the angels are subject unto them." (D&C 132:20).
Maybe that's "strange doctrine" but I don't believe it's that different from Romans 8:17. Had Paul expounded on the idea of us being co-heirs with Jesus Christ, he may have given us a similar verse as D&C 132:20. (Obviously, I'm speculating.)
Either way, the actual verse is pretty far from the idea that “they’ll get their own planet and a harem of wives to populate it when they die.” and Kyle is correct about how that's a cartoonish distortion meant to make people outraged and discourage dialogue... and it's frequently used by disaffected former members of the Church like you to do exactly that.
You didn't miss his point. You proved his point.
You proved my point by lying. What do you think “literal” son of god means? It’s in all your manuals annd statements of your prophets. And what you do think “eternal increase” means? It’s in Mormon scripture and expounded upon in the temple sealing ceremony. But you are literally not allowed to divulge that second part to non Mormons. This is why it’s so silly when people pretend Mormons do not have secret ceremonies where these things are taught.
Just to clarify, you believe that Latter-day Saints privately affirm to one another that “Elohim had sex with Mary to conceive Jesus” and “they’ll get their own planet and a harem of wives to populate it when they die.”
(I’m trying to maintain my original point that it is not the doctrine per se but the framing of doctrine that is the problem.)
Ok if you think framing matters more than doctrine, I think we are never going to see eye to eye. Btw it’s silly to treat the framing itself as static and monolithic. For example Mormons will say things in much cruder ways to each other in private conversations than to you and I. They are taught things in the temple that are literally not allowed to be spoken of outside of the temple. Have a nice day.