By Jerald and Sandra Tanner
Psychiatrists tell us that the inability to face reality leads to many serious emotional problems. Those who are honest with themselves must admit that at sometime during their life they have had difficulty facing reality. Some of Richard Nixon’s greatest problems seem to stem from his inability to face reality. Even churches can have this problem. The Mormon Church, for instance has some serious problems which the leaders have failed to come to grips with. We have detailed a large number of these problems in our book Mormonism—Shadow or Reality? Now, instead of facing these problems the Mormon leaders have turned their backs and pretended that they do not exist. As early as October 1966, we made this comment in the Salt Lake City Messenger:
Many people have commented that it is very strange that the Mormon leaders have not made a rebuttal to this book. We feel the reason that they have not openly denounced it is because they know it would draw attention to the very things they want to hide from their people and that this would work to our advantage.
In 1972 we enlarged Mormonism—Shadow or Reality? and brought it completely up to date. We are now happy to announce that over 10,000 copies have been sold. During the last month alone we sold about 300 copies. Even though sales are mounting and many people are leaving the Church, Mormon scholars continue to keep silent concerning this book. Neither Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought nor Brigham Young University Studies have carried a review. This is really incredible since these publications have reviewed many books that have been critical of the Church. For instance, the BYU Studies published a 4 1/2-page review of the book Latter-day Saints and the Sabbath.
It seems to be almost unwritten rule among Mormon scholars that they must never mention Mormonism—Shadow or Reality? in print. They apparently feel that they must not allow their people to know of its existence. Fortunately there are a few exceptions. Samuel W. Taylor mentions it in his book Nightfall at Nauvoo, and in Mormonia—A Quarterly Bibliography of Works on Mormonism, Fall 1972, page 89. Mormonism—Shadow or Reality? is referred to as “Perhaps the most exhaustive expose of Mormonism between two covers.” It seems almost beyond belief that Mormon writers will write long reviews of many books and even small pamphlets critical of the Church and yet fail to mention the book which Mormonia calls “Perhaps the most exhaustive expose of Mormonism between two covers.”
We feel that there can be only one explanation for this silence by Mormon writers, and that is that they know that the charges we make are basically correct and cannot be refuted. We do not claim, of course, that Mormonism—Shadow or Reality? is a perfect book. Any book of this size would have a few errors in it and unless Mormon writers can discover substantial defects in this book they would do well to keep silent. One Mormon writer attempted to write a rebuttal to Mormonism—Shadow or Reality? He found, however, that he could not deal with the issues raised in the book. He admitted that the truth concerning the Church was even worse than what we had presented. Finally, this man was excommunicated from the Church.
Since we are more interested in getting the truth out than in making a lot of money, we sell Mormonism—Shadow or Reality? at a very reasonable price—many publishers would charge twice as much for a book this size.
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