how the EVs soured me on anti-Mormonism for years

[_Sethbag]

Actually it wasn't just the EVs. I recall seeing a tabloid newspaper when I was like 16 or so with a headline about "Bizarre Mormon Sex Rituals in the Temple" or something like that. It had me kinda worried in the back of my mind just what was going to happen when I went through for my own endowment. When I finally went through, before my mission, I was greatly relieved (or maybe disappointed? hehe) that there were no bizarre endowment sex rituals. There was just the kooky masonic death oaths and secret handshakes. But compared to what I'd seen written in that tabloid newspaper, those were pretty tame. The relief came because the article was wrong.

Fast forward a year or two later, I'm on my mission, and a couple of recently-baptised young sisters almost leave the church over anti-Mormon stuff. First one of them was exposed to it when she tried handing out a Book of Mormon to someone she met who happened to be a local EV pastor. He took her to his church and went into his office and had a whole library of anti-Mormon materials. She said he showed her films (musta been the Godmakers, I never found out specifically what she saw), books, information pamphlets, etc. She was shaken to the core, and wouldn't go to church for a couple of weeks, and wouldn't talk to us missionaries.

But her sister would. Her sister told us that quite frankly she was worried, and that she was considering seeing what the antis had shown her sister. We dutifully advised her against it, but when she decided to do it, made her promise to come talk to us afterward. Well she went and saw all the anti-mormon stuff, and was shocked to the core. She barely agreed to come talk to us again. I and the local ward GML (ward mission leader), who was a married RM in his 30s or so, sat down with this young sister in his home and discussed with her The Truth about the anti-Mormon stuff she'd seen.

It was tough going, but we eventually satisfied her concerns and she ended up not leaving the church, and got her sister to come back and such. A victory for the Lord, or so it would seem. I believe both of these girls eventually married RMs, and I have no idea where they are now or what they're up to. As an aside, I actually had a crush on both of them, and told the mission president about it, and that I'd kind of given myself away so that they knew I liked them, and got myself transferred.

Here's the thing though. The anti-Mormon stuff she'd seen, at least the things she brought up with us, were all really false. It was actually pretty easy to counter a lot of it. She told us how she'd been shown how Mormons actually worship Satan in the temple, and how the markings on the garments were actually symbols of Satan. Every one of us non-believers and exmos who were endowed knows that the endowment is stupid, perhaps cultish, and just plain useless crap. But it's certainly not the worship of Satan. The markings on the garment may have been ripped off from Masonry, but the meanings ascribed to them in the endowment are harmless enough, and they certainly are not marks that belong to Satan worship.

And so it went with many of the other concerns she had after seeing the EV anti-Mormon stash. It was cartoonish, paranoid, and simply untrue. I was able to honestly, and firmly, answer back that this was a load of garbage, and I was for the most part right. What intrigues me now is to wonder how much actual true stuff was hidden in that midden heap of raving Evangelical Christian religious paranoia about Mormonism. How much about Joseph Smith inventing the Book of Mormon was hidden in there with all the stuff about Mormons promoting Satan's work? How much information about Joseph's adultery with the wives of so many of his lieutenants (his polyandry) was actually there in that material, next to the Satanic and conspiratorial crap? I don't know.

I was so focused on the obviously wrong Satanic stuff that I simply didn't notice. Nor would I have believed it, because I'd never learned that stuff from the Church, and throwing it in with the obviously false stuff would have caused me to have assumed it was just as invented.

I came away from that experience thinking that I had a good idea what anti-Mormon stuff was all about, and trusting that it was all wrong, filled with lies, deceptions, and just plain paranoia. When the criticisms weren't about Mormonism and Satan, it was things like Bible bashing, where the EVs slammed Mormon beliefs with verses from the Bible, verses about whose meaning we obviously would disagree. I honestly think now that the experience probably set me back at least a few years in terms of when I was able to approach "anti-Mormon" materials on things like the Book of Abraham and Joseph's womanizing, and not just assume it was all a pack of lies being pushed by raving, conspiratorial lunatics.

There are some very, very good reasons to be skeptical about Mormonism. The Evangelical Christian pastor who tried to deconvert these two young sisters on my mission, however, wouldn't know the good reasons from the utter dog crap, and had thus poisoned the well, as it were.

Anyone else have an experience like this?

[_richardMdBorn]

Hi Seth,

If my memory is correct, some Evs were critical about the God makers type of approach. Would you include the Tanners, Wesley Walters, etc. in the group of Evs that your criticizing?

Richard

[_Sethbag]

Hi Seth,

If my memory is correct, some Evs were critical about the God makers type of approach. Would you include the Tanners, Wesley Walters, etc. in the group of Evs that your criticizing?

Richard

I don't know. What I related in the previous post was simply something I experienced, and not a generalized condemnation of all EV anti-Mormon material.

I have no idea who was the ultimate source of the anti-Mormon material that had so much stupid crap in it on my mission. If I knew I would tell you, but I was exposed to this particular set of material only 2nd hand through the telling by these two young sisters. I don't know much about Wesley Walters, but I know the Tanners have brought a lot of true material to light, and I know that, for example, "By His Own Hand" by Charles Larson was reprinted by the IRR, and has a lot of good information in it about the Book of Abraham. So I'm not saying that all EV anti-Mormon material is crap.

But a lot of it is, certainly. Any material, such as what the two sisters in my story were exposed to, which explains LDS temple worship as Satan worship, is simply stupid crap. No endowed LDS member, even exmos who leave the church because they no longer believe the doctrines, are going to agree with that, except perhaps some lunatic fringe. The endowment may be farcical, but it's certainly not Satan worship.

And likewise with the Bible-based criticisms. LDS members simply aren't going to take seriously attacks on the LDS church on the basis of them "not being Christian", or on the basis of disagreement over the meaning of various Bible verses.

Holding placards out on the street at General Conference time telling Mormons that they're going to hell is just stupid, and it's not going to work. The daily lives of most true-believing Mormons simply don't justify a condemnation to Hell, even if Hell actually existed.

This is the kind of stuff I was exposed to previously, and it was this stuff which basically turned me away from pretty much any anti-Mormon stuff for a good long time. Even if, with all the stupid stuff, I'd been exposed to more about the Book of Abraham or Joseph Smith, I probably wouldn't have thought it was any more reliable. I would have been unable to tell the signal from the noise.

[_Mercury]

Exactly Seth. Most of the EV's approach was based in the same irrational logic as Mormons. I'll post a better response if I can break away from work for 5 minutes.

[_Gadianton]

Seth, you and I are truly brothers. I had exactly the same experiences. I encountered anti-Lit for the first time, slightly before my mission. At a temp job I ran into a young guy with long hair who walked and talked as if he were Jesus. He would bring up salvation with everyone. In my case, he was greatly interested in conversing given I was going on a mission. We hung out one day. We read the book of Galatians together, and he called upon me to accept Jesus as my savior. I had no idea what he was talking about. It was friendly, but weird, and he left me with some Decker pamphlet and "The Visitors". It made me laugh and get angry at the same time. I had also become a die-hard Nibley fan, so between that "reborn" experience and "Tinkling Symbols and Sounding Brass" I became convinced that the church was true evermore. Nibley's other books just strengthened that belief given how "scholarly" he was in contrast to his detractors. My mission strengthened me in that respect even more, I ran into countless stadium EV's who spoke in tounges, distributed Chick tracts, and overall were just plain nutty. I felt Mormonism was by far superior, and a day in the temple is nothing shock-wise compared to a hard-core charismatic service where there is speaking in tongues, "laughing in the spirit", and "slain in the spirit". It was a circus. And then there were the Bible bashes. Given more frequent contact with EV anti-Mormonism, I read a few anti-Books in a library to prepare. I had my Bible marked up with a special tab system and readied. I relished the attacks. One time, I was invited to a Bible study from your standard fake-loving EV anti. I knew exactly what I was walking into, though of course I played dumb. I had everything ready and walked into the trap. The host of the meeting had hundreds of photo-copied pages and hit me with their worst. I can honestly say that I trounced him in front of 14 people and made him look like a fool. He sat back quiet the rest of the evening. Only one or two other cautious questions. My ego was soaring, as was my belief in the logic of Mormonism. Now mind you, I had my doubts about many Mormon things, but I had honestly come to the conclusion that intellectually, anything else looked foolish compared to Mormonism.

And then I ran into a couple guys who were a member of a church similar to JW's. They were far more sincere and thoughtful, and were quite up on their Bible. The set of points we were debating ended up touching on the work of Dr. Dee Jay Nelson who I already knew was a fraud. So I scored my big point against them. But they were gracious about it and continued on with other points. I could begin to see I was out-classed on the whole, so I decided to take the points with me to a local university library. I then began reading "real" Bible commentaries and...and...and... I uh, never read another word of Nibley's again for one. It was a frightening shift in perspective. I went back and told those guys I had a couple ideas to back up my points but that I couldn't say mine were better than theirs. But it wasn't merely the discovery of "equally good points" I found elsewhere, or contradictions to things I thought were facts as it was the whole way the scholars I had read reasoned and made their cases which convinced me that Mormonism could never be as intellectually fulfilling as I thought it could. So that was the beginning of the end, which came about 3 years later.

[_Blixa]

So, what happened to tongue-speaking, anyway? Those sisters in "In Sacred Loneliness" are having some wicked fun slumber parties, sounds like.

[_moksha]

The vitriol being spewed forth by one group can easily engender sympathy for the recipient target group, in people with a good conscience.

[_beastie]

Yes, I had a similar experience. When I was investigating the church as a nineteen year old college student in a small private college in the mission field, far from Utah, I went to our library to look up Mormonism (you know, back in the dark ages before the internet). I only found two small booklets, and they were both written by EVs and were extreme. It was so obvious to me that the Mormons I'd met weren't worshiping Satan and whatnot that instead of making me question my involvement, it made me even more open to Mormonism. (and, by the way, I was being open to Born-againism, too, talked to born again friends and attended a prayer service)

Many years later, when I was trying to learn more about Mormon history, I started using some EV sources again. Aside from the worrying over Mormons going to hell, a position I simply cannot respect in anyway, I did discover that MOST of these sources actually included well documented claims - claims that I was able to later verify, and that the MAD apologists would concede (but spin). So I learned to ignore the religious parts of these books and focused instead on the information they offered. (as an aside, of course if these people genuinely believe Mormons will go to hell they have a moral responsibility to try to save them, I've just never understood worshiping a god who would send sincere believers who just happened to be wrong to hell - or, for that matter, forcibly divorce them from their families)

And yes, Ed Decker typified the trash. He* once tried to join the early exmormon email group, and was roundly criticized by almost every member of our group. He does exmormonism more harm than good.

*or at least someone who claimed to be Decker, who knows if it really was or not

When I was on my mission, I occasionally met up with EVs who wanted to bash (not often, because EVs are not populous in France). I'll never forget one experience. We knocked on the door of this big farmhouse, and it turned out to be a sort of commune of born agains. The leader was this charismatic guy, who kept strumming the guitar. He acted genuinely interested in us and asked about our experiences. I shared my testimony, and told him about God answering my Book of Mormon prayer. His eyes and voice suddenly switched from the charismatic, soothing tones to an ice cold tone. If God answered my prayer, he said, then I had no business being a Mormon. I was actually shocked by how unfriendly his tone was, and we left shortly thereafter. Of course, that strengthened our testimonies.

The only time I ever debated with anyone and was left feeling weaker instead of stronger is when I argued with atheists. I guess that was an omen. ;)

[Anonymous]

Well of course Mormonism seems more logical when compared to traditional Christianity...hell what about a band of Jews sailing to America is crazy when compared to a global flood in which all the animals of the world (not to mention the future of the Human race, all 8 of them) survive on a rickity boat crafted of gopher wood? I mean the Love Boat maybe...but an Ark?

[_dartagnan]

Martin, Decker, Baer and other Evangelical blowhards, are nothing more than opportunists.

But Mormonism has benefited greatly from them. That is the irony.

Since real scholars have taken Mormon scholarship more seriously (i.e. The Mormon Challenge) it has been interesting to see the response.

It seems Mormons miss the glory days when they could cry persecution over what some nimrod preacher had said at some backwoods chapel. They love to use these idiots as primary examples to generalize the entire world that is critical of Mormon theology. It resonates well with the LDS paradigm that insists the world is divided into two realms. The spirit of God and the spirit of the devil. Anything criticsl of the Church must be of the devil. No matter how sweet these guys come across in their exchanges, the general LDS vibe is that the critic - whether it be Decker or Blomberg -is following a Satanic spirit.

But the fact is real Evangelical scholars are probably just as likely to dismiss these idiots as are LDS scholars.

And I think it drives FAIR and FARMS nuts because it makes it more difficult to dismiss all criticism under that huge umbrella of "anti-Mormonism."

I mean look at Pahoran recently. He started up threads trying tor elive the days when Walter Martin was in the spotlight.

He isn't. He's dead. Nobody cares if he lied about his ordination. Nobody cares if he died on the toilet.

I wish FARMS and FAIR would spend more of their time trying to address legitimate criticisms. For example, JP Holding's book. Everyone seemed to agree it presented new arguments worth addressing because they were actually based on legitimate Evangelical scholarship. But nobody wanted to do it. It was a pain in their apologetic butts. I could almost hear them whine, "why couldn't Holding be a liar like Martin and Decker"? It makes it so easy to "deal" with the critics when they're a bunch of liars. This is why they like to keep throwing Baer, Decker and Martin into the spotlight.

I had to start my own campaign and recruit apologists to tackle Holding's book because FARMS fumbled the ball by lett Pahoran do a "review" of it. He addressed not a single argument and dwelled on the fact that Holding was using a pseudonym.

What crap.