Category: Mormonism
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On David Alexander, Evangelical Convert to Mormonism
David Alexander claims to have found true spiritual authority in the LDS Church after years of seeking it within evangelicalism, but his views on authority, the Bible, and faith reveal a fundamental misunderstanding of Christian doctrine.
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Mormonism’s “We’re Not Weird” Campaign
Once upon a time The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints freely identified itself as being different. In 1976, the man who became the church’s 15th president wrote, “Suffice it to say that [the LDS church’s] theology, its organization, and its practices are in many respects entirely unique among today’s Christian denominations” (Gordon B. Hinckley, What of…
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New LDS Easter Video Means To Offer Hope, but It Doesn’t Deliver.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints released a new Easter video last week. Titled “Rise,” the 1-minute 43-second video is described in a church news release as portraying “some of the challenges of life and the hope and help that Jesus Christ brings to those who follow Him” (“New Easter Video from Church…
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Revised LDS Temple Endowment Ceremony Now Includes More Pictures of Jesus
21 February 2023 I love to see the temple.I’ll go inside someday.I’ll cov’nant with my Father;I’ll promise to obey. “I love to See the Temple” is a popular Primary song in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Kids as young as three years old sing about preparing themselves to attend an LDS temple…
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The “Completely False” Rationale for Mormonism’s Restoration
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints struggles to explain past teachings about a universal Christian apostasy.
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LDS Church Corrects Perceived Improprieties in Classical Religious Art
2 January 2023 Just shy of 400 years ago, in the 1650s, Italian artist Carlo Maratta painted “The Holy Night,” a tender, nighttime depiction of Madonna and Child. In the painting, said to have been inspired by Correggio’s “Nativity,” the young Virgin Mary looks with adoration at her newborn babe from whom light seems to…
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Statue of Joseph Smith Joins 54 Other “Messiahs of Peace” at India’s World Peace Dome
In Pune, India stands the World Peace Dome, the “world’s largest dome” described as “an epitome of architectural magnificence.” Beneath the dome is the World Peace Prayer Hall, where up to 3,000 people may gather for “meditation and introspection” while surrounded by “the statues of the world’s greatest philosophers and scientists,” called “Messiahs of Peace.”…
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Mormonism? Who Cares?
14 November 2022 A new national survey related to Mormonism has recently been released to the public and has been in the news. The 2022 B.H. Roberts Foundation National Latter-day Saint Survey asked 1,157 Americans “about attitudes, knowledge, and beliefs about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” What they discovered is that Mormonism…
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The Clever Joseph Smith
Note: The following was originally printed in the May/June 2022 edition of Mormonism Researched. To request a free subscription, please visit here. The best of con men try their best to come up with stories that are difficult to falsify. In this area I give credit to Joseph Smith. Have you ever noticed how Smith was able…
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Considering LDS General Conference ‘Dream Headlines’
The Salt Lake Tribune’s “Mormon Land” newsletter is having a contest. On September 1st readers were asked to submit their General Conference “dream headlines”; that is, headlines readers “would like to see emerge from next month’s General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” The 340 submitted headlines are now being published,…
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Joseph Smith vs. Joseph Smith
by Sharon Lindbloom 1 September 2022 Steven Harper is a professor of Church History and Doctrine at Brigham Young University, a school owned and operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Last week (23 August 2022) Dr. Harper published an article in the online edition of LDS Living Magazine titled, “Starting right—how…
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The LDS Church Is Just Trying to Blend In
In July (2022), LDS author Jana Riess made an interesting observation: “During the last four years, the president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has introduced a host of changes that have made the church a little more mainstream, a little less weird.” In her article, Dr. Riess notes some of these…
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‘Uncomfortable’ and ‘Weird’ LDS Temple Ceremony
Hulu, the online streaming service, released a miniseries in April (2022) based on the real-life 1984 Utah murders of a mother and her toddler daughter. The miniseries, “Under the Banner of Heaven,” follows Jon Krakauer’s 2003 bestselling book of the same name as it explores Mormon fundamentalism and Mormonism’s sometimes violent history. I’ve been seeing…
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The Crucial Question Related to Mormonism’s Dependence on Personal Revelation
7 June 2022 In an opinion piece about personal revelation published on May 28th (2022), The Salt Lake Tribune columnist Gordon Monson asks some interesting questions. He begins with a hypothetical one: “Is there a slipperier foundational concept in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints than the one that centers on being guided…
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What Dallas Jenkins—Producer of the Chosen—Misses
The Chosen is a crowdfunded television/video series about the life of Jesus. It has proven to be wildly successful in raising money in order to produce two seasons worth of videos that provide a unique look at the Gospels while especially focusing on the interactions between Jesus and His disciples. The producer of the series…
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Review of “Relief Society President Toshiko Yanagida” (March 2022, Liahona)
By Mike Rabus Posted 5/17/2022 What blessings should a member of the LDS Church expect to receive from tithing? In the March 2022 issue of the Liahona magazine, a short article was written about Relief Society President Toshiko Yanagida from Nagoya, Japan in 1950. The article is an excerpt from volume 3 of Saints, which is…