Category: Mormon Culture
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How to Remove Your Name from the LDS Records
Things to consider to help make an exiting decision more more effective.
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LDS Church Growth
By Sandra Tanner While there is a popular assumption among Mormons that their church is the fastest growing faith, it is simply a myth. The Salt Lake Tribune reported on the problems of church growth: Today, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has more than 12 million members on its rolls, more than…
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New Joseph Smith Movie — History or Propaganda?
The history of Joseph Smith and his church is easily painted with heroism and undeserved suffering on screen, but historical records offer a much more complicated picture.
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The Reorganized LDS Church
The RLDS rejected Brigham Young’s leadership after Joseph Smith’s death. They also differ from the mainstream LDS Church in rejecting the teaching of plural gods, polygamy, temple ordinances and the Book of Abraham.
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Temple Ritual Changed … Again
By Sandra Tanner “The Prophet Joseph Smith taught, ‘Ordinances instituted in the heavens before the foundation of the world, in the priesthood, for the salvation of men, are not to be altered or changed.’” Ensign, August 2001, p. 22(citing Joseph Fielding Smith, comp., Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, [1976], p. 308) “Divine revelation adapts…
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Brigham Young Speech on Slavery, Blacks, the Priesthood, and Blood Atonement
Governor Brigham Young argues against Orson Pratt’s support for Black suffrage based on the curse of Cain, which he said prohibits Blacks from the LDS priesthood (and, by extension, from voting or governance). Also, if White “seed” were to “mingle with the seed of Cain” it would bring whole generations under that curse, for which…
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Brigham Young’s Wives and His Divorce from Ann Eliza Webb
By Sandra Tanner [List of Brigham Young’s wives included at the end of this article.] In 1868 Brigham Young, at age sixty-seven, married Ann Eliza Webb, an attractive twenty-four-year-old divorcee with two children. Young had already married dozens of other women. LDS scholar Jeffery Johnson, writing on Brigham Young and his wives, explained: Sixteen women…
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Wanted: “One Mighty and Strong”
Continuous changes in the LDS church are accompanied by fundamentalist claims of apostasy and hopes that “one mighty and strong” leader has now arrived, as prophesied.
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Masonic Symbols and the Salt Lake Temple
Many of the symbols adorning LDS temples derive from Free Masonry, which Joseph Smith was involved in and affected by.
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Brigham Young’s Deseret Alphabet
By Sandra Tanner One of the curious items of early Utah history was Brigham Young’s effort to introduce a new alphabet, known as the Deseret Alphabet, into Mormon use. Western historian David Bigler observed: Old Testament ideas on land ownership and marked ballots were not the only indications that Utah’s earliest settlers were bent on…