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3 May 2012
Mormon Helping Hands: Fix Up, Clean Up, Build It in California and Hawaii
May 2, 2012
Thousands of Mormon Helping Hands volunteers painted, collected food, planted trees, cleaned and fixed up the states of California and Hawaii.
Mormon Helping Hands are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon) anxious to make a difference by being good neighbors in beautifying their communities. Approximately 70,000 people participated in the daylong activity on Saturday, 28 April, and not all the volunteers were Latter-day Saints; 17,000 were people of other faiths. Volunteers donated 227,280 hours on 536 projects.
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Mormons brace for a mean political season
May 3, 2012
Fox News
America’s Mormons have built plenty of resilience over nearly two centuries as outsiders, but they’re anxious about the next few months. Mitt Romney is about to become the first Mormon nominee for U.S. president on a major party ticket.
His nomination by the Republicans will give Mormons a chance like no other to explain their tradition to the public. But critics of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will have a bigger platform, too. And it will all take place amid the emotion of what may well be a nasty general election.
The church’s focus is on getting its own story out. In fact, since 2010, it has been running a multimillion-dollar series of ads, called “I’m a Mormon,” to dispel stereotypes by telling stories of individual Mormons.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/05/03/mormons-brace-for-mean-political-season/
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Late Night: Jon Stewart defends Mitt Romney’s Mormonism
May 3, 2012
Los Angeles Times (California)
Jon Stewart is hardly an admirer of Mitt Romney, but he prefers to target the presidential candidate for his ever-shifting political opinions, not for his Mormon faith.
On “The Daily Show” Wednesday night, Stewart went after critics from both sides of the aisle who’ve voiced concerns — and in some cases, stereotypes — about Romney’s beliefs. Religious tolerance has long been one of Stewart’s favorite issues, so despite his evident dislike for the former Massachusetts governor, his stance on Mormon-bashing is not terribly surprising.
During the Republican primary, most of the anti-Mormonism came from those on the right, according to Stewart. He pointed to Christian fundamentalists such as Dallas megachurch pastor Robert Jeffress, who called Mormonism a “cult” and Bryan Fischer of the American Family Assn. said its believers worship “a false god.” Jeffress recently changed his tune, saying that he’d prefer a “Mormon like Mitt Romney” to a “Christian like Barak Obama.” Stewart summarized his stance this way: “I hate Barack Obama more than I love Jesus.”
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Jon Stewart skewers critics of Romney’s Mormonism
May 3, 2012
Salt Lake Tribune (Utah)
The subject of Mitt Romney and his Mormon faith came up last night on “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart.”
But Stewart wasn’t making fun of Mormonism – his targets were people zealously attacking Romney because of his faith.
Stewart started with a few digs at evangelical Christians who attacked Romney during the Republican primaries, but are now endorsing him. Stewart summed up the shifting attitude: “Simple math: I hate Barack Obama more than I love Jesus.”
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/blogsmoviecricket/54041877-66/stewart-romney-mormon-donnell.html.csp
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Jon Stewart Criticizes Lawrence O’Donnell, Martin Bashir For Mormon Comments (VIDEO)
May 3, 2012
Huffington Post
He then turned to O’Donnell. “I guess at least Bashir’s not saying Romney belongs to a fake religion and worships a false God,” he continued. “That would be Lawrence O’Donnell’s job.”
Video of O’Donnell saying that Mormonism “was created by a guy in upstate New York in 1830 when he got caught having sex with the maid and explained to his wife that God told him to do it” followed. O’Donnell apologized for those comments, though Stewart did not mention this. He played more video of O’Donnell — this time, showing the host asking whether Romney believed that he would “die on the spot” if he had sex with a black woman.
“As a question it is ridiculous!” Stewart cried. He said it was unfair to hold Romney accountable for every word of his fsith.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/03/jon-stewart-romney-mormon-msnbc_n_1473910.html
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Jon Stewart on Mitt Romney’s Mormon ‘Problems’
May 3, 2012
Rolling Stone
Before Mitt Romney wrapped up the GOP presidential nomination, the, ahem, agents of intolerance on the Christian right weren’t shy about basically calling him, by virtue of his Mormonism, a non-Christian cult member, and as such unfit to be president. As Jon Stewart noted on last night’s Daily Show, now that Romney is the candidate, some of these same right-wingers have come around to him, because apparently they “hate Barack Obama more than they love Jesus.” That’s not to say Romney’s Mormonism has gone away as an issue. Not with Democrats shamelessly bringing up the whole polygamy thing.
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Jon Stewart on the Problem with Romney’s Mormon ‘Problem’
May 3, 2012
The Atlantic
Jon Stewart has noticed two things related to Mitt Romney’s Mormonism as he’s locked up the GOP nomination. First, many of the Republicans who once dinged Romney for how “fake” his religion is have now come around into thinking he’s such a great guy. Which, secondly, has left the real Mormon-hating to those who do it best: Democrats. Roll clips of Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer’s and MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell’s attacks on a Romney’s faith, as if Mormonism is the only religion with a troubled past. “You can’t cherrypick the worst aspects of a religion and then hold every member of that religion solely responsible for it,” Stewart points out, noting how some might find Jesus’s virgin birth a little suspect, too.
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Mitt Romney and the Ghost of Anti-Mormonism
May 2, 2012
Religion Dispatches
If there is one book every politics or religion reporter in America should read right now to get ready for the 2012 general election, it is The Politics of American Religious Identity: The Seating of Reed Smoot, Mormon Apostle by Kathleen Flake.
Flake is associate professor of American Religious History at Vanderbilt University and may be the nation’s finest scholar of Mormons in American political life. Her book scrutinizes a multi-year Congressional hearing and national show trial occasioned by the 1903 election of an LDS Senator from Utah named Reed Smoot–a trial that interrogated whether observant Mormons could be fit for public office.
http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/politics/5936/mitt_romney_and_the_ghost_of_anti-mormonism/
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Study: Mormonism is fastest-growing faith in half of USA
May 2, 2012
USA Today
Romney’s Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints reported 2 million new adherents and new congregations in 295 counties where they didn’t exist a decade ago, making them the fastest-growing group in the U.S.
Mormons were the fastest-growing group in 26 states, expanding beyond their historic home in Utah to the heart of the Bible Belt and as far away as Maine.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/story/2012-05-02/religion-census-mromon/54701198/1?csp=34news
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Muslim, Mormon growth spurts found
May 2, 2012
The Washington Times
There are 6.1 million U.S. members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, more commonly known as the Mormons, up 45 percent for the same period; and there are 1 million Buddhists, located mostly in the western part of the country. Mormonism, founded in upstate New York, is spread throughout the nation, although 1 in 3 members of the LDS Church live in Utah, the study revealed.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/may/2/muslim-mormon-growth-spurts-found/
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Mosques and Mormon temples filling fastest in U.S.
May 3, 2012
Globe and Mail (Canada)
Islam and Mormonism are the fastest-growing faiths in the United States over the last decade, according to a religious census based on self-reporting by congregations.
The numbers of Muslims more than doubled while the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Mormons, added nearly two million members.
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Change lowers Mormonism’s growth rate
May 2, 2012
Salt Lake Tribune (Utah)
If you suspected the newly released U.S. Religion Census overstated the LDS Church’s growth rate, you were right. That’s because, this time around, the Utah-based faith changed the way it reported its membership to the researchers.
The once-a-decade study was assembled by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies, which included self-reported data on adherents for 153 participating bodies.
Its report pegged U.S. Mormon growth at 45.5 percent, jumping from 4,224,026 in 2000 to 6,144,582 in 2010. The 2000 figure, though, was much lower than the 5,208,827 listed in the LDS Church’s almanac. If researchers had been given that figure, the percentage of growth would have been considerably smaller, closer to 18 percent.
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/faith/54036926-142/church-lds-membership-percent.html.csp
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Minister Critical of Romney and ‘Mormon Cult’ Suggests Third-Party Options
May 3, 2012
Christian Post
Keller recently compared the choice of voting for Mitt Romney or for President Barack Obama as “flipping a coin where Satan is on both sides.”
“The Republican choice will be a member of the satanic Mormon cult who will never have to say a word for his cult to take advantage of their ultimate goal since they were founded 200 years ago, and that is to gain mainstream acceptance, giving them all the ammunition they need to aggressively seek converts to their cult’s beliefs,” Keller said.
The Internet evangelist explained in a phone interview with The Christian Post Tuesday that he was not telling people who to vote for, but was encouraging Christians to consider spiritual issues besides politics. He said voters should consider all options, including third parties, during the general election.
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Race, religion collide in presidential campaign
May 2, 2012
The Trentonian (New Jersey)
And yet, here it is: Barack Obama vs. Mitt Romney, an African-American and a white Mormon, representatives of two groups and that have endured oppression to carve out a place in the United States. How much progress has America made against bigotry? By November, we should have some idea. Perhaps mindful of the lingering power of prejudice, both men soft-pedal their status as racial or religious pioneers. But these things “will be factors whether they’re explicitly stated or not, because both Obama and Romney are minorities,” said Nancy Wadsworth, co-editor of the anthology “Faith and Race in American Political Life.” Mormons are 1.7 percent of the U.S. population, according to the Pew Research Center; African-Americans are 12.6 percent
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Ring’s reflections: Hohokam, Mormons all part of Rillito’s past
May 3, 2012
Arizona Daily Star
Around 1900 two communities developed along Tucson’s Rillito River – communities that flourished because of plentiful and dependable river water. One of these was a pioneer Mormon settlement that included farms just north of the river bend and the more urban settlement of Binghampton (pronounced bing-hámp-ton), south of the Rillito River at today’s North Dodge Boulevard and East Fort Lowell Road.
The second community, east of the Mormons, at old Fort Lowell, was started by Mexican farmers and ranchers.
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Romney, Mormons brace for a mean political season
May 3, 2012
San Francisco Chronicle (California)
As 20,000 Mormons streamed from the church conference center, a ragtag group of protesters stood across the street shouting that the Latter-day Saints were going to hell. Mormon families, who had gathered here for two days of speeches and spiritual guidance called General Conference, ignored the hecklers or laughed and kept walking.
This, after all, is a church accustomed to much worse.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2012/05/03/national/a102410D08.DTL
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A simple explanation works best for the Restoration
May 3, 2012
Deseret News (Utah)
We left off last week with the notion that the Book of Mormon was plagiarized from a manuscript written by Solomon Spalding, who had died in 1816. Sidney Rigdon, so the story goes, stole the work from Spalding’s family and, for whatever reason, used it to set the young farmer Joseph Smith up as a prophet.
Though lacking any real historical support, this was the dominant non-Mormon theory of the origin of the Book of Mormon for more than a century. In recent decades, though, it’s fallen on hard times.
It didn’t help, probably, that, when Spalding’s lost manuscript was found, it was also found to bear no significant resemblance to the Book of Mormon.
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Mormon FAIR-Cast 86: Mesoamerican Evidences for the Book of Mormon
May 2, 2012
FAIR Blog
Martin Tanner discusses various mesoamerican evidences for the historicity of the Book of Mormon in this episode of Religion Today that originally aired on September 4, 2011.
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Okay, let’s go over this again…
May 1, 2012
FAIR Blog
Perennial ex-Mormon gadfly Richard Packham apparently fails to understand that the Book of Mormon is a translation, and translations render ancient words — including names — into modern forms that didn’t exist at the time.
For example, in the New Testament, there are several individuals named “James”, including an apostle and a bishop of Jerusalem. However, there was no name “James” in Greek during the first century A.D.; that word is a late-twelfth century Middle English form of the late Latin Jacomus, which itself derives from old Latin Jacobus. All of these are translations of the Koine Greek ιακωβον (Iakobos), which is a Greek version of the Hebrew יעקב (Ya’aqob), which itself is typically rendered in English as “Jacob.”
http://www.fairblog.org/2012/05/01/okay-lets-go-over-this-again/
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Looking Honestly
May 2, 2012
FAIR Blog
It seems to me that a common ailment of those who lose their faith after study is that they look at those who maintain their faith after the same study as somehow dishonest and lacking objectivity. They see in others a lack of what they imagine in themselves–after all, they have only gone where the facts have led them, and to reach any other conclusion is prima facia evidence of a problem or defect in the other.
So I thought I would pose the question here that John raises in the middle of his answer; the one that he seems to obliquely answer by his own faith journey: What happens when a person looks honestly at the facts or issues of Mormonism? Does honesty demand that such questions inevitably lead to a loss of faith, or can one be honest and remain a member of the church?
http://www.fairblog.org/2012/05/02/looking-honestly/
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NOTE: This is posted for those who are interested in keeping abreast what is being said around the world about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its members. MormonVoices cannot and does not guarantee the validity or truthfulness of any information reported. The responsibility for the interpretation and use of this information lies with the reader. As all information comes from other news sources and has not been independently verified, MormonVoices cannot guarantee or be responsible for the security of links in the clipping service. MormonVoices will attempt as much as possible to exclude news articles containing strongly offensive language or which lead to offensive images, but cannot guarantee that some will not slip through.
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