Faithful TBM to doubter in 6 hours on ex-Mormon Reddit

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toon
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Re: Faithful TBM to doubter in 6 hours on ex-Mormon Reddit

Post by toon »

Moksha wrote:
Mon Jul 04, 2022 5:54 am
Which is the truest automobile manufacturer: General Motors or Toyota?
Was the Vespa the world's truest motor scooter?
I brought my bike wheels to the mechanic the other day to have them trued. Maybe when people say that the church is true, all they are saying is that it is in alignment with its self. Something correlation accomplishes.

What Elvis Costello saying when he tells Allison this is aim is true? That he’s sincere? Perhaps the church is sincere.

So the church as an organization can be true, even though all it’s truth and supernatural claims are baloney.

I should have gone to church yesterday and shared my testimony.
Chap
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Re: Faithful TBM to doubter in 6 hours on ex-Mormon Reddit

Post by Chap »

Kishkumen wrote:
Mon Jul 04, 2022 6:07 pm
D&C 1:30
30 And also those to whom these commandments were given, might have power to lay the foundation of this bchurch, and to bring it forth out of obscurity and out of darkness, the only true and living church upon the face of the whole earth, with which , the Lord, am well pleased, speaking unto the church collectively and not individually.
Thanks! It is an old and common expression amongst Christians in general to talk about "the one true church" founded by Jesus Christ: see the Wikipedia article on that topic. Mormons would be within that tradition if they simply said "The COJCoLDS is the true church".

Thus there is a document of the Second Vatican Council that stated:
B) [In Caput I in genere: Act Syn III/II 297-301]
“4 – Expressius dicatur unam solam esse veram Ecclesiam Christi; hanc esse Catholicam Apostolicam Romanam; omnes debere inquirere, ut eam cognoscant et ingrediantur ad salutem obtinendam…

B) [In Caput I in genere: Act Syn III/II 297-301]
“4 – Let it be said more expressly that there is one sole true Church of Christ; that this is the Apostolic Roman Church; that all must seek to know Her and enter Her in order to obtain salvation…
In my view, however, that is not quite the same as the distinctively Mormon declaration that "the Church is true", whose origins I am trying to trace here. I hope this does not sound like hair-splitting.
Maksutov:
That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
Mayan Elephant:
Not only have I denounced the Big Lie, I have denounced the Big lie big lie.
honorentheos
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Re: Faithful TBM to doubter in 6 hours on ex-Mormon Reddit

Post by honorentheos »

It's a good question. My first thought was to see if it was at all prominent in the Reformation period in the mid-1850's as a statement of belief or as a question asked by the "home missionaries". It seems clear it wasn't where belief in the truths of the restoration was spoken of but not as professional of knowing the Church to be true.

My next instinct was to look at the period of tension as the Church integrated into secular society. To share one resource as an example, this pdf discussed the tension among the emerging intellectual class of Mormons and the more conservative leadership exemplified by in the person of B.H. Roberts: https://scholarworks.unr.edu/bitstream/ ... _13054.pdf

In reviewing it I found statements expressing belief in the church possessing truths, but statements to the effect of knowing the Church is true weren't apparent. But it seems likely it was out of this conflict that the practice emerged. More digging seems required.
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Re: Faithful TBM to doubter in 6 hours on ex-Mormon Reddit

Post by Physics Guy »

"This church is true" also struck me as grammatically weird when I first heard it, for exactly the same reasons Chap has given. "This church is The True Church" I could parse without trouble; "This statement is true" also works for me.

Even "This person is true" kind of works, as an archaic way of saying that the person is faithful or reliable; this meaning of "true" survives now mostly in expressions like "tried and true" or "true believer". If a lover cheated then they were "untrue", not as a deduction that they must not have been a real lover if they cheated, but just by definition.

I can imagine a cavalier colonel declaring that his regiment was true, meaning that it was loyal to the king. I just don't know any linguistic precedent in English for saying of a church that it is true. This seems to be a uniquely Mormon idiom.

I did ask about this on this forum a few years ago. I don't remember any really satisfying answers. Mormons had simply grown up with the expression and didn't find it weird. I didn't think to ask Chap's question of when the phrase was first coined. It's probably a more fruitful question than my vague, "What's up with that?"
I was a teenager before it was cool.
honorentheos
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Re: Faithful TBM to doubter in 6 hours on ex-Mormon Reddit

Post by honorentheos »

The two GA/Presidents I'm looking most closely at are J. Reuben Clark and Joseph Fielding Smith since they seem to have been the major players resistant to the influence of open inquiry and scientific evidence that challenged the metaphysical and mythic aspects of faith.

Of interest but not definitive is a statement in Joseph Fielding Smith's Doctrines of Salvation from 1954 regarding the incompatibility of evolution and the Mormon Church's claims:

IF EVOLUTION IS TRUE, THE CHURCH IS FALSE.

If life began on the earth, as advocated by Darwin, Huxley, Haeckel (who has been caught openhanded perpetrating a fraud), and others of this school, whether by chance or by some designing hand, then the doctrines of the Church are false. Then there was no Garden of Eden, no Adam and Eve, and no fall. If there was no fall; if death did not come into the world as the scriptures declared that it did — and to be consistent, if you are an evolutionist, this view you must assume — then there was no need for a redemption, and Jesus Christ is not the Son of God, and he did not die for the transgression of Adam, nor for the sins of the world. Then there has been no resurrection from the dead! Consistently, logically, there is no other view, no alternative that can be taken. Now, my brethren and sisters, are you prepared to take this view?


This is an inverse of the declaration being sought but it seems possible that the Mormonism arises out of Wasatch Front grammatic indifference composed as statements affirming a member sides with President Smith. To say the Church is false is a step in the same direction as to say it is true, anyway.

Still need to dig but thought this was worth pointing out as a potential milepost.
honorentheos
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Re: Faithful TBM to doubter in 6 hours on ex-Mormon Reddit

Post by honorentheos »

Oh. Just searched for the term on the BYU conference talk archive.

You can search for it yourself and browse the context.
https://www.lds-general-conference.org/

It's clearly used in the conjugate in question in a talk in 1898. It's appearance in conference jumps in the 1960s but it is as old as Utah.
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Re: Faithful TBM to doubter in 6 hours on ex-Mormon Reddit

Post by Moksha »

Did the Masons ever suggest "this is the one true lodge or the one true temple?"
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Chap
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Re: Faithful TBM to doubter in 6 hours on ex-Mormon Reddit

Post by Chap »

honorentheos wrote:
Tue Jul 05, 2022 4:26 am
Oh. Just searched for the term on the BYU conference talk archive.

You can search for it yourself and browse the context.
https://www.lds-general-conference.org/

It's clearly used in the conjugate in question in a talk in 1898. It's appearance in conference jumps in the 1960s but it is as old as Utah.
Excellent find!!

Charles W. Penrose, 1898
We have no need to prove that all these different churches in modern Christendom have gone out of the way. God Almighty has said they have all gone out of the way, and that they are not accepted of him. " They draw near to me with their mouths; they honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me; and their fear toward me is taught by the precepts of men, not by the power and demonstration of the Holy Ghost. Therefore, they are not my Church. " The Lord thus establishes His Church on the earth in the last days and for the last time, and sends out His servants in all the world to bear this witness. This is my testimony: I know that this Church is true. I know it by the witness of the Holy Ghost.


As you say, the first example in the form we are discussing is in the 1890s, but the frequency rises markedly from the 1960s onwards, suggesting that something happened to boost the popularity of stating that "the Church is true" around that time.

Tabulating only complete decades thereafter, we find:

  • 1890s 1
    1900s
    1910s
    1920s 1
    1930s 2
    1940s 2
    1950s 2
    1960s 8
    1970s 11
    1980s 7
    1990s 13
    2000s 12
    2010s 7
Maksutov:
That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
Mayan Elephant:
Not only have I denounced the Big Lie, I have denounced the Big lie big lie.
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Kishkumen
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Re: Faithful TBM to doubter in 6 hours on ex-Mormon Reddit

Post by Kishkumen »

For me the upshot of this is that the statement is a later development and not present in earliest Mormonism. I find it odd, and it is telling, in my view, that it gains strength in an era when people were increasingly seeing things in stark binaries such as capitalism vs. communism.
“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about the answers.”~Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
KevinSim
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Re: Faithful TBM to doubter in 6 hours on ex-Mormon Reddit

Post by KevinSim »

drumdude wrote:
Mon Jul 04, 2022 2:09 am
I think that's admirable.
Thanks!
drumdude wrote:If I said, "It's incredible how nice Mormons are" would you correct me and make sure I said "but not every Mormon?"
Perhaps. It'd depend on what mood I was in. You know, you've got to pick your battles and all that.
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