Interview with Sandra Tanner Mormonism: Shadow or Reality

Mormonism 101, a book by Mormonism Research Ministries, Bill McKeever and Eric Johnson, has helped many who want to understand what separates Mormonism from the Christian faith. Mormonism 101 is available at your favorite Christian bookstore or online at mrm.org. Viewpoint on Mormonism, the program that examines the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from a Biblical perspective. Viewpoint on Mormonism is sponsored by Mormonism Research Ministry. Since 1979, Mormonism Research Ministry has been dedicated to equipping the body of Christ with answers regarding the Christian faith in a manner that expresses gentleness and respect. And now, your host for today's Viewpoint on Mormonism.

Hoping you're having a very pleasant Friday. Welcome to this edition of Viewpoint on Mormonism. I'm your host, Bill McKeever, founder and director of Mormonism Research Ministry, and with me today is Eric Johnson, my colleague at MRM. But we are also pleased to have with us Sandra Tanner, who is the head of the Utah Lighthouse Ministry and also runs the Utah Lighthouse Bookstore on West Temple across from the ballpark. Good to have you back, Sandra. I've really enjoyed this.

Every time we have you on, I always learn new things. But today, as we've been talking about your book, Mormonism Shadow or Reality, a book that you and your husband, Gerald Tanner, wrote back in the early 1960s, the information that you included in this book naturally is going to upset a lot of members of the LDS Church, perhaps for different reasons. But it seems normal that something that is this groundbreaking is going to render a lot of criticism. One of the criticisms that was made against your book was written by a Mormon by the name of Ian Barber. Now, we don't have his criticism in existence any longer.

Apparently, it's not around. But what was the title of that critique, Eric? Because I think that is noteworthy. He titled it What Mormonism Isn't, and it was published in New Zealand by Pioneer Books in 1981. What Mormonism Isn't. And the reason I wanted to mention that is because it's not uncommon for someone such as yourself, and even Eric and I have experienced the same thing, that we are basically criticizing a caricature of Mormonism and not actual Mormonism. But yet, as we've mentioned this week, most of what we find in Mormonism Shadow or Reality are quotations right from LDS sources. How does that support a title of this criticism, What Mormonism Isn't?

Would you like to address that? Well, the Mormons have always tried to say that the critics of Mormonism have just done a caricature of what Mormonism really is. And I would say it's more a matter of Mormonism has tried very hard to hide what it really is.

They have kept very tight control on all their records and their documents so that people wouldn't see how it all really developed and changed through the years. Now today, you'll find many of the Mormon historians admitting many of the things that we've written about, but they try to make it in a more faith promoting way. So that while we say that the Book of Abraham is Joseph Smith's invention, they would say, well, it's not a translation of the papyri.

They will concede that. Now they say, well, it was a revelation. He looked at the papyri and that brought to his mind the revelation of the Book of Abraham.

And I don't see that's a whole lot different than saying Joseph Smith invented it. Earlier in this week, we talked about Curt Bench in the bookstore that he has here. Curt Bench is a Latter-day Saint and he runs Benchmark Books. He listed your book among the top 50. Does it make any sense at all that a man such as Curt Bench would list your book in the top 50? And yet it's talking about Mormon doctrine that isn't really Mormon doctrine or Mormon history that really isn't Mormon history. That doesn't seem to make any sense to me whatsoever.

Sander, let me ask you this question. In 1977, there was a Latter-day Saint historian, that's what he called himself, quote, unquote, a Latter-day Saint historian. He wrote a 63-page booklet and it was titled this, similar to the book we were just talking about, Gerald and Sandra Tanner's Distorted View of Mormonism, A Response to Mormonism, Shadow or Reality. Now, he didn't say who he was, but you suspected right away that this was LDS historian D. Michael Quinn and Quinn and historian Leonard B. Arrington both denied that that was the case, although later it came out that it really was D. Michael Quinn. How did you know it was D. Michael Quinn that wrote that? Well, Gerald had read so much of Quinn's research that he had a pretty good feel for Quinn's style. And there was a phrase that Quinn used in that little book against us where he talked about post hoc ergo proctor hoc, Latin phrase.

And who uses this? But Quinn does. And in his thesis, he has that phrase. Gerald thought, well, that's a nail in the coffin that it has to be Quinn because I've never read any Mormon historian who ever uses the phrase post hoc ergo proctor hoc. So that just convinced Gerald that it had to be Quinn. And as I was doing some research on this, I found that Arrington said he felt bad about lying. I don't know if Quinn ever felt bad about that, but why did he write it anonymously? Well, I think there's several problems here. The church did not want to acknowledge our existence or give us any free press or tell people we even existed.

So that'd be one angle. Second, the church historian's office would have gotten in trouble themselves for dealing with something so controversial and to publicly name us as existing could possibly send Mormons to our store that wouldn't come otherwise. So there was a real effort to not mention us any more than they had to. Even Hugh Nipley, when he was writing in response to some of the things that we had written about way back in the 60s and 70s, he had referred to us in one of his articles as certain parties in Salt Lake have alleged. So why would you not just say the Tanners have said?

Because if you don't know who we are, they didn't want to give you any help finding us. So it was a real effort to avoid giving publicity to the other side. Now you wrote a response to the 63-page booklet and you titled it Answering Dr. clandestine, a response to the anonymous LDS historian. And let me just give a couple of the criticisms that Quinn gave. One, he said this, if you have waded through Mormonism shadow reality with its more than 500 pages of closely written commentary and document excerpts, both of which are presented with such heavy-handed repetition that I felt I was enduring a Chinese water torture when I read the book, then you should be able to get through this letter all right. And we need to mention he's writing this because somebody is possibly leaving Mormonism based on your writings. And so he's trying to convince them that your writings are not good. And he calls it Chinese water torture.

How would you respond to that? There is a certain amount of repetition. And I know, well, you have to understand how our book first came about. It was different pamphlets that were gradually put together to form a book. So you didn't have the ability to easily change text.

Like now, when you have a computer generated book, you can easily go in and change edit and all of that. But when you have to type every page of the book to make any corrections, it's a big process to go back and retype those pages and correlate them back into your book to keep all the pagination. And so Gerald would repeat quite often, like when he talked about the three witnesses to the Book of Mormon, he would say the three witnesses of the Book of Mormon, Martin Harris, David Whitmer, Oliver Cowdery.

And so all the way along line to keep being reminded that these men are the three witnesses to the Book of Mormon. So yeah, there's a lot of repetition in some introductions to certain people. And that's a technical matter of editing. Yes, we could have used an editor, but then you'd have to retype everything. So it was part of a problem of the technology of what we were working with. And for those who are listening, who might not know what a typewriter is, it was an instrument you used before a computer that you didn't have the opportunity, like you said, to be able to move text around, to be able to take things out. You would have to retype the entire piece all over again. Let me just inject, how many of our listeners even know what whiteout is?

I mean, that's something that I used all the time because my typing is horrible. I'm sure a lot of people don't even realize the difficulties that were involved back when you and Gerald were doing this. Another criticism that Quinn gave, he said this, the most important comment to be made about the approach of Gerald and Sandra Tanner to Mormonism, is their selective use of evidence. And then he wrote this, a non-Mormon historian who has spent many years studying Mormonism recently commented that the Tanners choose only the most negative evidence to portray the reality of Mormonism in its history while ignoring evidence or entire issues that do not support their interpretations.

What's your response to that criticism? Well, think in terms of having a court case of a man that robbed a bank and the defense gets up and says, all you've presented is negative information about my client. You didn't talk at all about how nice he was to his wife or his children. I mean, is that really relevant if you're trying to prove the man robbed the bank? His good deeds are not that important. We felt that Mormon Church did plenty of PR on their own to promote what they did good. We're trying to we're trying to show that they're hiding all sorts of bad things.

They did their own PR on their good things. So yes, it's one-sided in that sense, but it's like in a trial, your lawyer is not going to spend time on the good things the bank robber did. Did you and Gerald ever have a relationship with this anonymous writer D. Michael Quinn? No, I have seen Michael Quinn at many historical functions and listened to his talks.

I've even asked questions from the audience at some of his lectures, but I've never had a personal discussion with him. As we wrap up this segment, what would you say to an individual who, well, I want to get the book. I don't know if I can read through nearly 600 pages. What are some of the strongest chapters that you would recommend someone read who has this book? Well, I think foundational is the Joseph Smith's involvement in magic and money digging at the beginning of Mormonism because it sets a picture of the type of man he was and that he was already involved in deception before he started Mormonism. I think the chapter on first vision is really important because that's the foundational argument for God's call on his life. And the chapter on the Book of Mormon, I think is pivotal because that is the launching of Mormonism to the world. They want you to read the Book of Mormon and pray about it. So those three areas are critical for the truth claims of Mormonism.

All the rest is evidence against its truth claims, but those are foundational. Now, if somebody wants to order this book or there's even an electronic version of it, how can they get that from you? Well, they can go to our website at utlm.org and order it online. Then you can get either the digital format or the actual printed copy. People can call the bookstore. Utah Lighthouse phone number order line is 801-485-8894. Is this your most popular selling book?

In today's world, I'm not sure what is the most popular one, but it's one of our steady sellers because it's like buying an encyclopedia. It is such a basic text of a little bit of everything. We've been speaking to Sandra Tanner. She co-authored the book, Mormonism Shadow or Reality with her husband Gerald. Sandra, thanks again for being with us.

Like I said before, I always learn new things when we have you on. Thanks for giving us this time. Thank you. Thank you.