Mormons tackling tough questions in their history | SLTrib

[Guest]

For your consideration:

Mormons tackling tough questions in their history | The Salt Lake Tribune

See also: Causes and Costs of Mormon Faith Crises by John Dehlin | WhyMormonsLeave.com

[_Buffalo]

I like this quote from Terryl Givens:

“I definitely get the sense that this is a real crisis,” said Mormon scholar and writer Terryl Givens. “It is an epidemic.”

There is a “discrepancy between a church history that has been selectively rendered through the Church Education System and Sunday school manuals, and a less-flattering version universally accessible on the Internet,” Givens wrote in an email from Virginia. “The problem is not so much the discovery of particular details that are deal breakers for the faithful; the problem is a loss of faith and trust in an institution that was less that forthcoming to begin with.”

[_DarkHelmet]

Interesting article:

“Never before have we had this information age, with social networking and bloggers publishing unvetted points of view,” Jensen said in an interview Monday.

Unvetted points of view? Gone are the days when the church gets to approve everything that gets published about it.

Chapters are written by various authors — most of them professors at church-owned Brigham Young University — and tackle tough topics, including the Mormon view of God; the differing accounts of founder Joseph Smith’s “First Vision”; Smith’s money-digging activities and plural marriage to teenage girls; the lengthy quoting of biblical passages in the Book of Mormon; and new questions surrounding the faith’s signature scripture from DNA analysis.

The contributors stress that there are sound answers to these sticky questions.

Sticky questions? According to the apologists, these are old anti-mormon lies that were resolved long ago, and are easily explained. It's a mystery why people still think these issues are problematic.

“I have heard that our overall activity, especially in the United States, is as good as it’s ever been,” he said. “To say we are experiencing some Titanic-like wave of apostasy is inaccurate.”

He has heard? He doesn't have the actual numbers to know for sure? I think the church is fine right now, but they should be concerned about the trend. Growth has slowed, and the people who are leaving are the youth. That's not a demographic you want to lose.