Fan Mail Friday

When sharing your faith with a Latter-day Saint, it helps to know what their church has taught on several basic topics. For this reason, Mormonism Research Ministry has provided its Crash Course Mormonism. Crash Course Mormonism includes concise articles highlighting what LDS leaders and church manuals have taught on issues that will probably come up in a typical conversation.

You can find these informative articles at CrashCourseMormonism.com. That's Crash Course Mormonism.com. It's Fan Mail Friday. Welcome to this edition of Viewpoint on Mormonism. I'm your host, Bill McKeever, founder and director of Mormonism Research Ministry.

With me today is Eric Johnson, my colleague at MRM. It's Fan Mail Friday. It's a day that we set aside occasionally to go through some of the email that we have received. As you can imagine, there are a lot of Latter-day Saints who do listen to this show, and some of them are not too happy with some of the things that we are saying. And so that word fan mail obviously is in quotation marks.

We received an email from a man by the name of Darren who lives in the United Kingdom. He writes, I am requesting that you review your viewpoint on Mormonism and other activities that are used only to bash another charity, namely the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He goes on and says, I would like for starters for you to stop using the word movement when describing Mormonism. The LDS Church is a valid and government recognized charity and church and deserves to be called as such.

Also, I would like to see opposing views other than your own to be used in your programming. The LDS Church is a church and you are treating the LDS Church like a terrorist organization. I understand you have a different viewpoint than LDS members, but as a recognized charity, your sole purpose cannot be to bash another religion.

Other subtle words and phrases used by you, and you know what they are, in your program are clearly bigoted and mean spirited. I would like my concern to be filed and processed in accordance with your organization's policies. I am requesting a response from you on this issue before I take further actions.

Thank you, Darren. I did respond to Darren. I said, I admit I am a bit miffed by your email. The UK Charity Commission has no jurisdiction over us here in the United States. So I don't know why he thinks reporting us to the United Kingdom Charity Commission is going to have any bearing on us whatsoever.

I told him, I said, I am glad to respond to your email and hope that if you do proceed, you will include my response to whomever you contact. Now, I said that on purpose because I'm going to respond to some of the accusations that he makes and I'm going to show that in many areas he gets it completely wrong. And another area is he's actually acting hypocritical when he says, I am requesting that you review that you review your viewpoint on Mormonism and other activities that are used only to bash another charity. First of all, let me say I can understand we are being critical of things that he believes. We understand that. We know there's a sensitivity there. We try very hard to be as sensitive as we possibly can be in our criticisms.

So when he uses the word bash, I wrote him and I said, that's an unfortunate and a very subjective word. But since 1979, we have been carefully critiquing the truth claims of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by examining its doctrine in history, primarily from original sources produced by the LDS Church itself. This is what Joseph Smith himself said in History of the Church Volume 5, page 499.

Bill, so many people today are critical of those who might disagree, but we're not disagreeing against the person, we're disagreeing against the viewpoint, the ideology. And so our ministry is not out to bash the religion itself. We're to critique it, though, and to see does it stand up with what Mormonism claims for itself being a true Christian religion. And when we look at the information that we present here on this show, I think it's very clear that there are tremendous differences between Mormonism and biblical Christianity.

And again, I can understand the sensitivity on this individual's part because we are saying things that obviously upset him. The problem is the things that we are saying, for the most part, are quotations from their own sources. So if you have a problem with us citing LDS sources, really, isn't your argument more with those who said those things in the first place and not us, who are merely repeating them now? When he goes on to say, for starters, he wants us to stop using the word movement when describing Mormonism.

Many times I do use that expression. I talk about the Latter-day Saint movement or the movement that was started by Joseph Smith. I really don't know why he finds that word offensive because technically a movement can be any organized effort by a group to meet an objective.

That's the dictionary definition of it. Joseph Smith's church, quote unquote, especially in the early years, would certainly qualify under that definition. But here's what I found fascinating. I was reading an article the other day and it had a citation from a former Mormon historian by the name of D. Michael Quinn. And in this article that cites him and that was in the Salt Lake Tribune, it says, The American-born movement has always seen its mission as serving both the spiritual and physical needs of its people. So here is a former Mormon who's still loyal to Mormonism, by the way, using the word movement.

It just shows that the use of that word is not really out of line at all. I think this is what we might call quibbling about minor things, because whether it's a movement or a church, what does it really matter? The question is, is what Mormonism teach true? And we would say no. So I think that's more important than trying to get into the legality of, is it really a movement or a charity in church? He also said that he would like to see opposing views other than our own used in our programming. It's not that we don't bring in opposing views, because most of what we are citing, again, is from LDS sources. So that would be an opposing view as far as our world is concerned. It's not that we're afraid of having someone on who has a different viewpoint, that's for sure. If he's talking about the legality of it, there's nothing that says you have to have the opposing viewpoint. And if so, then maybe we would request a space at the General Conference where we would maybe get 10 or 15 minutes to give our side. I mean, that would get to be ridiculous. Well, I even asked Darren, I said, are you inviting yourself to be on the show?

Would he want to come on? I don't know. He also said this, he said, the LDS church is a church, and you are treating the LDS church like a terrorist organization. Now, this is where I get a little bit wearisome of this kind of flame language that people use.

This language is over the top. What does that even mean that we are treating the LDS church like a terrorist organization? Is he implying that somehow we have the ability to put out drone strikes on, let's say, a mission president or a stake president?

Of course not. And we would never even think of even wanting to bring any type of physical harm to a person in the Mormon church. But what do you mean we're treating the LDS church like a terrorist organization? I don't even know what he means by that. So I wrote him back and said, could you please explain what you mean when you say we treat the LDS church like a terrorist organization?

That language is kind of silly. And as I said, it's a little bit over the top. But then he goes on to say, I understand you have a different viewpoint than LDS members, but as a recognized charity, your sole purpose cannot be to bash another religion. Now, this seems to be a more subjective conclusion on the part of Darren. And I said, actually, Darren, one of our primary goals is to share the New Testament gospel with members of the LDS church. And I explained to him, I personally serve as a missionary in the state of Utah.

And to effectively do this, it is often necessary to address presuppositions that a person may have in order to effectively communicate a different position. As a ministry, we also educate Christians on how to better understand the LDS people. Again, you use the word bash, we have had many LDS compliment us on our tone and appreciate the demeanor we display. So again, this subjective idea that somehow we are being mean spirited or bigoted, it's more reflected on the individual because some Mormons who write us don't feel that way at all. So maybe Darren is just a little bit too sensitive in this area. Maybe he should listen to the show a little bit more.

I don't know. Let me give you a couple more quotes. This comes from Brigham Young. The first one is from Discourses of Brigham Young, page 11. He said, our doctrine and practice is, and I have made it mine through life to receive truth no matter where it comes from. And he also said on page 126 of the same book, take up the Bible, compare the religion of the Latter-day Saints with it, and see if it will stand the test. I think, Bill, that's what we're doing here at MRM. We're taking the Bible.

We're taking what the leaders have said. We put them together and let the truth stand wherever it is. Well, when he says that he understands that we have a different viewpoint, the reason why I wanted to respond to him by saying, look, sometimes when you're dealing with people of a different viewpoint, you have to address those differences. I don't think a lot of Mormons seem to understand that. The reason why we take so much time critiquing what Mormon leaders have said, because it's necessary to find out exactly where they are on a particular topic in order to address it properly.

And it's the same in a witnessing situation. If you're talking with someone who has a different worldview, who has a different understanding of something, it's very important to address where they are in order to give an opposing viewpoint. You have to make sure you're both on the same page, understanding each other and the differences that you have in order to try to explain your particular view in the conversation. But then when he says other subtle words and phrases used by you and you know what they are in your program are clearly bigoted and mean spirited. And I wrote him back and I says, actually, I don't know what they are. Perhaps you can clarify what you mean. He doesn't give me any examples.

He just throws that little hand grenade out there and expects me to respond to it. But here's what I did. I did cite at the end of my email a number of quotations from Mormon leaders who were very critical of what we as Christians believe. For instance, a statement by Brigham Young where he said, the people called Christians are shrouded in ignorance and read the scriptures with darkened understanding.

What about the first vision account that Mormons believe today? All the churches are wrong, their creeds are an abomination, their professors are corrupt. That sounds like it's a little bit mean spirited. Perhaps some could even take it as bigoted. What do you do with statements like that? You see, Mormon leaders have been very critical about what we as Christians believe. But you know what? A mature Christian will take them and go, OK, well, let's address what you think. Why do you think that?

Let's talk about that. They don't usually write people and call them names and then threaten to have something done by some kind of government agency to do what? To take us off the air in the United States?

They have no authority to do that. In closing, let me just say that I do lament the fact that Darren sees us as some sort of enemy because, Darren, if you should happen to listen to this, you need to see that we are not your enemy. We are not the enemy of any Latter-day Saint. But as Christians, we do have a healthy fear of the Lord. And that fear of the Lord causes us great concern for those that we believe are living in error. And just like the Apostle Paul and his comment in 2 Corinthians, chapter 5, verse 11, he says, Knowing therefore the fear of the Lord, we persuade men. That is our motivation.

And I hope that Darren can see that we don't look at him as an enemy, and I would hope that he would not see us as an enemy either. We hope you will join us again as we look at another Viewpoint on Mormonism. If you desire the latter, may we suggest the book Answering Mormon's Questions by Mormonism Research Ministries' Bill McKeever and Eric Johnson. Answering Mormon's Questions is available wherever you find quality Christian books.