I was raised LDS in a military family. We moved lot- went to 5 different high schools. Only lived in 2 countries outside the US, but lived in several different states, cities, wards & branches. Not once has a Church authority told me, asked me, or suggested that I not read anti lit. Never.
Ok, no one told you to not read anti lit. Did you still have the idea that reading anti lit was "risky", frowned upon, despite never being directly told not to read anti lit?
Never. No such direction given explicitly or implicity.
It's difficult as time goes by to remember the attitude (implicit or explicit) towards non-mormon literature. I read everything that the local library had on Mormonism when I was a teenager, which really wasn't much, and a lot of it was probably inaccurate. No one told me not to, but a few said that they wouldn't be faith promoting, and I should be reading out of the 'best books'. My mums visiting teachers did tell her not to read CS Lewis...duh....told her to keep to church books for spiritual subjects.... Mum thought that was most strange.
I think that I monitored myself a lot of the time. A testimony is precious. It needs to be watered etc etc. That kind of thinking. Part of that testimony of course is that Joseph Smith was a prophet. A good, honest, upright and decent man. Qualities we associate (whether justified or not I'm not so sure) with biblical prophets.
So when I picked up Mormon Polygamy (Van Wagoner) from the regional symposium (church sponsored) I did so with a kind of sick feeling in my stomach. Part of me, didn't want to question what I had learned to hold as sacred. I went and read it anyway. It had a great effect on me and I turned to the Stake President who turned to the regional rep for answers. I WISH I had kept the letter which the stake president gave/showed to me back from the GA's. It asked to be careful of the sources, that people (even Van Wagoner) might twist things, and that the period of time which Van Wagoner was dealing with was the Wild West.... It wasn't satisfactory to me in any way.
I was told to concentrate on the first principles of the gospel. Faith, repentence, baptism and the holy ghost, and of course my spiritual witness. (as I remember)
The real shunning started to come in from some other members of my home ward when I began to voice my doubts on the nature of the prophethood of Joseph Smith. Questioning him was Satanic.
I think it wise to remember that until the last few years, when anti-Mormonism has proliferated in large part because of the internet, Mormonism wasn't all that familiar to most people in the world, but anti-Mormonism was considerably more obscure.
I first came across anti-Material on my mission--and that, not because I was shielded from the material or told not to read it, but because there was so little of it out there that for one to come across it necessitated that one knew it existed (which I didn't) and seek it out--or, as with "Miss Taken", stumble across it in the library. As it was, the first piece of anti material that I saw, was hastely printed up by a minister in the area of my mission in which I was working, and in reaction to my having taught one of his members, and it was shown to me by a member of the ward in my area who had belonged to the minister's Church and who apparently was still on his roles. The material was so inane and laughable, that I found it useful to share with ward members.
Given the relative obscurity of anti material until of late, what need would there have been to warn against reading it even were it to be much of a testimony threat (which, from what I saw, it wasn't)? Telling people to not read things they aren't aware of, will tend to increase the chances that it will actually be read.
Even today, with the extensive and broad range of material available on the internet, the anti-Mormon material, while more pervasive than in times past, is still relatively obscure and as a rule not much less inane than its predicessors.
wenglund wrote:I think it wise to remember that until the last few years, when anti-Mormonism has proliferated in large part because of the internet, Mormonism wasn't all that familiar to most people in the world, but anti-Mormonism was considerably more obscure.
I first came across anti-Material on my mission--and that, not because I was shielded from the material or told not to read it, but because there was so little of it out there that for one to come across it necessitated that one knew it existed (which I didn't) and seek it out--or, as with "Miss Taken", stumble across it in the library. As it was, the first piece of anti material that I saw, was hastely printed up by a minister in the area of my mission in which I was working, and in reaction to my having taught one of his members, and it was shown to me by a member of the ward in my area who had belonged to the minister's Church and who apparently was still on his roles. The material was so inane and laughable, that I found it useful to share with ward members.
Given the relative obscurity of anti material until of late, what need would there have been to warn against reading it even were it to be much of a testimony threat (which, from what I saw, it wasn't)? Telling people to not read things they aren't aware of, will tend to increase the chances that it will actually be read.
Even today, with the extensive and broad range of material available on the internet, the anti-Mormon material, while more pervasive than in times past, is still relatively obscure and as a rule not much less inane than its predicessors.
Thanks, -Wade Englund-
You at least concede that it is less inane. Thank you for your sincerity.