…when he discovered credible evidence that the church’s founder, Joseph Smith, was a polygamist and that the Book of Mormon and other scriptures were rife with historical anomalies, Mr. Mattsson said he felt that the foundation on which he had built his life began to crumble.

Around the world and in the United States, where the faith was founded, the Mormon Church is grappling with a wave of doubt and disillusionment among members who encountered information on the Internet that sabotaged what they were taught about their faith, according to interviews with dozens of Mormons and those who study the church.

“I felt like I had an earthquake under my feet,” said Mr. Mattsson, now an emeritus area authority. “Everything I’d been taught, everything I’d been proud to preach about and witness about just crumbled under my feet. It was such a terrible psychological and nearly physical disturbance.”

Read it all.

Mormonism is a new religion, less than 200 years old, which means many of its claims can be easily confirmed or denied by modern science. For example, even most Mormon scholars agree there’s no archaeological evidence that Jews came to America in 600 B.C., as Joseph Smith claimed, or that the Garden of Eden was in Jackson County, Mo.

Faced with those evidentiary challenges, some Mormons have felt betrayed and left the faith. Many others, like Joanna Brooks, are trying to reconcile their religion with the science. Brooks, who’s a professor at San Diego State University and author of The Book of Mormon Girl, says she focuses on the fundamentals, such as a belief in God, and in Jesus’ role as savior.

“Other sort of fine points of doctrine, I deal with privately,” says Brooks. “And that’s not uncommon in Mormonism.”

Read or listen to it all.

It has been quite a year for Mormonism in America. Outside the faith, the presidential candidacy of Mitt Romney sparked unprecedented levels of interest and attention. Meanwhile, church leaders have transformed how young Mormons start their adulthood, affecting everything from education to dating and marriage.

Though you might not know it from Broadway’s “The Book of Mormon,” 12% of Mormon missionaries are women””a number that is about to skyrocket thanks to an unexpected change in official Latter-day Saint policy. The church announced last month that Mormon women are now eligible to begin serving missions at age 19 instead of 21, and that Mormon men may serve at 18 instead of 19.

The response was immediate. Within two weeks, the number of missionary applications jumped an astonishing 471%, from the usual 700 per week to more than 4,000. Slightly more than half of these applicants were women.

Read it all.

“Mitt Romney has opened doors. He has made Mormonism much more respectable,” says Charles Dunn, a professor at Regent University, and author of numerous books on politics and religion.

“He came out of this campaign as an honourable person, and that bodes well. He is the best missionary Mormons could have.”

At the headquarters of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the official name of the Mormon Church) in Salt Lake City, Utah, there appears to be a similar mood of optimism. Although they have not given figures on whether membership numbers are up, enquiries certainly are. Mormons make up about 2% of Americans, but numbers are rising steadily.

Read it all.

Mormonism is something we cannot escape right now. We are in a “Mormon Moment,” thanks to the candidacy of Governor Mitt Romney. Christians need to address this moment with truth and grace.

Right now, many are discussing what to call members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Is it a denomination, a cult, or another religion? How should we discuss such things in the moment?

Read it all.

n a surprising move that promises to transform Mormon social and spiritual dynamics, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on Saturday (Oct. 6) announced that it is lowering the age of full-time missionary service to age 18 for men (down from 19) and 19 for women (down from 21).

“The Lord is hastening this work,” LDS apostle Jeffrey R. Holland said at a news conference, “and he needs more and more willing missionaries.”

The church is counting on this change to dramatically increase the ranks of its full-time missionaries, currently more than 58,000 worldwide.

Read it all.

On Sept. 23 in Brigham City, Utah, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints dedicated its 139th temple. One might think the completion of a temple in Utah, the state’s 14th, would be a routine affair. But during a six-week open house, some 400,000 people flooded into tiny Brigham City (population 18,000), for an early look inside the new structure.

Perhaps the candidacy of Mitt Romney, who would be our nation’s first Mormon president, has piqued the interest of believers and nonbelievers alike. In any event, temple open houses provide a welcome chance to dispel a few of the myths surrounding the Church of Latter-day Saints and to better understand the faith and rituals of its more than 14 million members.

Read it all.

“Pastors continue to preach that we’re a cult. This stuff just grows in people’s minds,” said [Nathan] Hale, a Mount Pleasant father and business owner whose ancestry reaches back to the church’s pioneers. “It hasn’t changed.”

Even as the Charleston Stake, or group of churches, celebrates its 40th anniversary amid tremendous growth and on the eve of an election with a Mormon presidential candidate, Mormons remain an oddity to some and a sacrilegious sect to others ”” even among their Christian brethren.

Read it all.

Read it all.

Mitt Romney is getting too easy a ride over his Mormonism….[but there are hard questions to be asked].

The first is about the sheer weirdness of the founding beliefs and the sense in which he really embraces them. The second is the Church’s long history of racism and sexism, as well as its censorious ideas about the terms on which poor people qualify for community help. The third, with the most immediate implications, is whether the Church’s conviction that its members are direct descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and are now “members of the House of Israel” ”” as well as its belief that when a Mormon saviour one day arrives it may be in Washington ”” would make him more likely to attack Iran over its nuclear programme.

Read it all (requires subscription).

David Silverman, president of New Jersey-based American Atheists, atheists.org, unveiled the organization’s newest billboard campaign, which mocks religion in the political landscape. The billboards feature perceived aspects of Christianity and Mormonism that, according to American Atheists, have no place in politics.

In the billboard on Christianity, for instance, God is called “sadistic” and Jesus a “useless saviour.” Christianity is said to promote hate but call it “love.” In the billboard on Mormonism, God is called a “space alien” and the faith is accused of baptizing dead people.

Read it all.

One challenge, [Conor] Dwyer and others said, is that abstinent singles can struggle to find close friends who empathize with their situation.

“When my friends found out I was planning on waiting until I was married, I got laughed at quite a bit,” said Miki Reaume, a Christian and former Rockette at Radio City Music Hall who lived in New York for nine years before marrying in 2010.

When she dated non-Christians, Reaume said, the topic would usually arise on the third date.

“And then the relationship ended,” she said.

Read it all.

Since the presumptive Republican nominee for president is a Mormon, St. Jude the Apostle Episcopal Church in Cupertino sees that as a hot topic among both liberal and conservative voters this election year.

In an effort to educate the community on the subject, The Rev. Maly Carswell Hughes is hosting a forum on Aug. 26 to discuss Christianity and Mormonism as part of its adult education series. Church organizers already see an intense interest in Mitt Romney’s religion. The interest is drawing comparison to John F. Kennedy, a Roman Catholic, and his election in 1960.

Hughes is looking to talk with church members and guests about Mormonism and discuss the religion’s similarities to, and differences from, Christianity. The forum will not be a critique of either religion nor will it be political, but instead focus on the many similarities and differences between the two faiths.

Read it all.

Each summer for the past several years I have spent some time witnessing to Mormons. This necessarily involves some apologetics, which is not a part I particularly relish. These days I am content being a teacher, not a debater. But I am still just as passionate for truth.

I was reflecting this evening that while there is abundant external corroboration for the authors of the Biblical books, especially the New Testament, being historical persons, there is absolutely no external evidence for the existence of any of the authors of the various books contained in the Book of Mormon. Mormons will counter that these “prophets” lived in the ancient Americas, not the Greco-Roman world, but that does not eliminate the problem that, unlike the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, there is no documentation anywhere outside the pages of the Book of Mormon that the figures contained in it (and the purported authors of its various books), as well as the church and civilization in which they supposedly lived, ever existed.

In contrast, the writers of the New Testament were known by and attested to by numerous witnesses.

Read it all.

The main reason I find the Mormon War of 1838 of considerable interest, though, is because Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican candidate for President, is a Mormon. Given the persecution of the Mormons in their early years and the fact that they were completely driven out of Missouri in 1839, it is remarkable that a practicing Mormon could possibly be elected President of the United States this year.

Read it all.

Every year in mid-July, Jesus descends from the heavens onto a hillside in bucolic western New York. Should they witness the nighttime scene, evangelical Protestants driving along U.S. Route 21 might worry that they have missed the rapture.

Instead, what they have missed is a uniquely American religious festival, concluding its 75th anniversary this weekend. In the Hill Cumorah Pageant, nearly a thousand members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints bring to life the sacred history of their faith. The pageant takes place near Palmyra, the small town in which Joseph Smith Jr. published the Book of Mormon in 1830.

The Hill Cumorah Pageant is a very different sort of production from Broadway’s “The Book of Mormon.” The songs are not as snappy, and it’s not a comedy. On the other hand, the pageant is free, the seating is ample, and those who attend will learn a great deal more about the Mormon religion and culture.

Read it all.

If Mitt Romney wins the presidential election this fall, he’ll have Harry Reid partly to thank.

The Republican presidential nominee and the Senate Democratic leader don’t have much in common politically. But they’re both members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints ”” that is, they’re both Mormons.

So whenever officials of the LDS church are asked about the once-common concern that a Mormon president might take orders from Salt Lake City, they have a ready answer: Just look at Harry Reid. Only last month, Reid endorsed President Obama’s decision to support gay marriage, a position that conflicts with the church’s views.

Read it all.

This is the so-called Mormon Moment: a strange convergence of developments offering Mormons hope that the Christian nation that persecuted, banished or killed them in the 19th century will finally love them as fellow Christians.

I want to be on record about this. I’m about as genuine a Mormon as you’ll find ”” a templegoer with a Utah pedigree and an administrative position in a congregation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I am also emphatically not a Christian.

For the curious, the dispute can be reduced to Jesus….

Read it all.

Southern Baptist researcher Ed Stetzer defines Mormonism as a “theological cult,” not the classic “sociological cult.” His research shows that a full 75 percent of Protestant pastors believe that Mormonism is either a cult or simply a different religion.

Stetzer says he’d be concerned if the significant theological distinctions between Mormons and mainstream Christianity are blurred or overlooked in the name of political expediency.

“I think it is more helpful to call Mormons another religion, distinct from biblical or historic Christianity, as just about everyone from Catholics to Methodists to Baptists have clearly stated,” Stetzer notes. “It’s a different religion that uses the same words to describe very different things.”

Read it all.

Mockery of Mormonism comes easily for many Americans. Commentators have offered many reasons, but even they have found it difficult to turn their gaze from Mormon peculiarities. As a result, they have missed a critical function of American anti-Mormonism: the faith has been oddly reassuring to Americans. As a recent example, the Broadway hit “The Book of Mormon” lampoons the religion’s naïveté on racial issues, which is striking given that the most biting criticisms have focused on the show’s representations of Africans and blackness.

As a Mormon and a scholar of religious history, I am unsurprised by the juxtaposition of Mormon mocking and racial insensitivity. Anti-Mormonism has long masked America’s contradictions and soothed American self-doubt. In the 19th century, antagonists charged that Mormon men were tyrannical patriarchs, that Mormon women were virtual slaves and that Mormons diabolically blurred church and state. These accusations all contained some truth, though the selfsame accusers denied women the vote, bolstered racist patriarchy and enthroned mainstream Protestantism as something of a state religion.

Read it all.

…whether they want to call attention to it or not, Romney’s achievement is historic. Nearly 200 years after the founding of Mormonism by Joseph Smith, who himself ran for president to call attention to his flock’s persecution, Romney’s nomination signals how far his faith, and the country’s acceptance of it, has come.

“If you look at it in a historical perspective, it’s absolutely incredible,” said Richard Lyman Bushman, a leading Mormon scholar and longtime acquaintance of Romney’s. “A century-and-a-half ago, Mormons were detested as a people as well as a religion. They were thought to be primitive and crude. And now to have someone overcome all the lingering prejudice, that’s a milestone.”

Read it all.

On the final exam for an American religion class I taught this spring, I asked my Boston University students to offer Mitt Romney some unsolicited advice on how to talk to the American public about his Mormon faith.

He needs it. In many respects, Mormons have become quintessentially American, yet “gentiles” (as Mormons call the rest of us) remain wary. Evangelicals often view the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as an unchristian “cult,” and many liberals are at least as uncomfortable with the idea of a Mormon president. What to do?

Most of my students told me that the former Massachusetts governor could not sidestep “TMT,” as his 2008 presidential team referred to “That Mormon Thing.” He should discuss his faith in a heartfelt manner. But he should steer clear of its controversial history and unusual beliefs and rituals. What is to be gained from addressing Mormons’ rejection of the Trinity, their baptisms of dead Holocaust victims, or their founder Joseph Smith (who also ran for president)? Romney should emphasize morality instead, my students said, underscoring the convergence of Mormonism and Christianity on “family values.”

Read it all.

When Mitt Romney embarked on his first political race in 1994, he also slipped into a humble new role in the Mormon congregation he once led. On Sunday mornings, he stood in the sunlit chapel here teaching Bible classes for adults.

Leading students through stories about Jesus and the Nephite and Lamanite tribes, who Mormons believe once populated the Americas, and tossing out peanut butter cups as rewards, Mr. Romney always returned to the same question: how could students apply the lessons of Mormon scripture in their daily lives?

Now, as the presumptive Republican nominee for president, Mr. Romney speaks so sparingly about his faith ”” he and his aides frequently stipulate that he does not impose his beliefs on others ”” that its influence on him can be difficult to detect….

Read it all.

Too often, ….[says Mouw in his new book], Evangelicals pick up little-taught LDS beliefs ”” such as humans becoming gods or having their own planets ”” and put them at the center of Mormon theology, rather than at the periphery.

“If in our attempts to defeat them we play fast and loose with the truth by attributing to them things they don’t in fact teach,” Mouw writes, “then we have become false teachers: teachers of untruths.”

Mouw spells out the doctrinal differences between The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and historical Christian faiths: the nature of God and Jesus, the nature of the Trinity, nonbiblical Mormon scriptures and the rejection of the creeds. He rejects these positions.

Read it all.

If you suspected the newly released U.S. Religion Census overstated the LDS Church’s growth rate, you were right. That’s because, this time around, the Utah-based faith changed the way it reported its membership to the researchers….

Read it all.

Mormonism and Islam are among the fastest growing religions in America, while just over half of all Americans are unaffiliated with any denomination, according to a major census of the country’s religious congregations published Wednesday.

The decennial census, released by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies in Chicago, found that the U.S. Muslim community had increased 160 percent from approximately 1 million in 2000 to 2.6 million in 2010.

There are 6.1 million U.S. members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, more commonly known as the Mormons, up 45 percent for the same period….

Read it all.

The new storehouse, which opened in January, is the centerpiece of the LDS Church’s intricate network for taking care of its members and lending a hand to others in times of natural disasters, putting scriptural encouragements into action in the aftermath of hardship, hurricanes, floods, fires and earthquakes across the nation and around the world.

“As I walk through, I [don’t] think, ‘What a beautiful building’ but how the Lord must truly love the poor to provide this building to take care of their needs,” [Richard] Humpherys said during a tour of the facility, built with members’ donations.

Read it all.

For a glimpse of how Mormons see themselves….it’s worth visiting the Church History Museum of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints here. Created by believers, for believers, the museum shows how close to the center of American life Mormons consider themselves to be.

The gap is enormous between that perspective and the one embedded in the wider culture. The hit Broadway musical “The Book of Mormon” riotously mocks the church’s doctrine. The high-toned HBO soap “Big Love,” which ended last year, relished the complications of polygamy (once endorsed by the church and long since renounced). Reports of posthumous Mormon baptisms of Holocaust victims have fueled outrage. Accusations of extremism and murder appear in thrillers reaching back to Sherlock Holmes’s first case in “A Study in Scarlet.”

Read it all.

Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith has hovered over his 20-year political career like a thick layer of incense at Easter Mass. Negative perceptions of the religion so worried his 2008 presidential team that the dilemma had its own acronym in campaign power point presentations: TMT (That Mormon Thing).

Worries persisted this year as skeptical evangelical Christians flocked to other candidates””any other candidate it seemed ”” causing Romney to avoid all things Mormon in public….

Read it all. Also, Jacques Berlinerblau has further thoughts on this in “How Romney should talk about religion”.

Not the least of the church’s problems now is the growing number of highly educated, formerly prominent Mormons who have left the LDS and are only too ready to tell the world exactly why.

As a molecular biologist studying forest trees in Brisbane, Australia, Simon Southerton was in many ways a Mormon role model. He was 10 years old when his parents joined the church and he was baptised into the faith in 1970. He rose steadily through the ranks and became a bishop to his flock. Over the years he was vaguely aware that some of the historical events described by the Book of Mormon did not match the archeological or scientific record. “But I hadn’t dwelt on it,” he said. He loved his church for its emphasis on families and the sense of community it fostered.
Yet there was one key aspect of church doctrine that began to trouble him. The Book of Mormon describes a migration of Israelite clans across the Atlantic to America long before Columbus. The notion of a New Jerusalem, founded on American soil by the ancient forefathers of Mormonism, is one of the faith’s key tenets. Yet Southerton, familiar with the use of DNA to chart early human migrations, began to worry about the sheer weight of scientific evidence undermining the Book of Mormon’s account.

“Once I started looking at it seriously, it didn’t take me very long at all to realise that the Book of Mormon wasn’t real history,” he said. According to Mormon doctrine, Native Americans are descended from one of the Israelite clans. “But there’s been no serious mainstream belief in anything other than Asian origin for Native Americans for much of the last century,” Southerton added.

Read it all (requires subscription).