Mormon: A Cult Makes Popcorn & Carrot Sticks Sinister

I've told you I know a Mormon who thinks America's slavery of blacks is still in effect.

Once, after mentioning I didn't "seem like the kind of guy who could be made into a slave," he told me - if that ever happened - to let him know because he'll be "plenty P-Ohed."

Since I understand cultists are cut off from the world, in some way, I didn't take offense as my friends recommended, but thanked him for his concern and assured him - if I get my one phone call - it'll be right to him.

I flashed on that incident while reading this New York Times article on Mormons becoming doubters:

In the last 10 or 15 years, he said, “the church has come to realize that transparency and candor and historical accuracy are really the only way to go.” The church has released seven volumes of the papers of Joseph Smith and published an essay on one of the most shameful events in church history, the Mountain Meadows massacre, in which church leaders plotted the slaughter of people in a wagon train in 1857. 

But the church has not actively disseminated most of these documents, so when members come across them on Web sites or in books, Mr. Bushman said, “it’s just excruciating.” 

“Sometimes people are furious because they feel they haven’t been told the truth growing up,” he said. “They feel like they were tricked or betrayed.” 

Mr. Mattsson said that when he started sharing what he had learned with other Mormons in Sweden, the stake president (who oversees a cluster of congregations) told him not to talk about it to any members, even his wife and children. He did not obey: “I said to them, why are you afraid for the truth?”

Because, if they tell the truth, there's no point in having a "church" when "the church was born in America only 183 years ago, and its founder and prophet, Joseph Smith, and his disciples left behind reams of papers that still exist, documenting their work, exposing their warts and sometimes contradicting one another." That's what made it so much fun to toy with the manipulative missionaries who came to visit, but alas, I hear that, too, is ending:

When The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints fully implements its new online missionary program, it will - if nothing else - at least minimize the occasions in which a firearm is brandished to ward off a pair of Mormons. 

Elder Joshua Limb and Elder Beaver Ho Ching have some experience with that. Both missionaries, who have served Southeast Texas and Southwest Louisiana for the past two years, have looked down the barrel of a shotgun while out spreading the word about the Mormon church. But those days may soon be over. 

Officials with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints announced late last month that the practice of sending its young missionaries door-to-door should come to an end.

Fudge.

I looked forward to the way they'd look at each other when they realized I owned more religious books than they did.

Oh well, Mormons are just slowly following the much-younger Scientology's trajectory:

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