Posted on 04/04/2021 12:21:04 PM PDT by BenLurkin
Laura Gaddy, who grew up as a devout Latter-day Saint in North Carolina, says she felt her surety in church principles begin to unravel in 2015, when leaders pulled Joseph Smith’s “seer stone” from a vault and showed it to the media.
For her, according to court documents, the event signaled that the faith’s founding prophet had not translated the Book of Mormon, the church’s signature scripture, directly from gold plates inscribed with reformed Egyptian characters, but instead had dictated the narrative “from a stone with his head in a hat.”
Gaddy came to be deeply troubled by what she saw as similar dismaying misrepresentations, according to her lawsuit, over the church’s translated Book of Abraham and over Smith’s own character, leading to a crisis in her faith.
That crisis brought her to a Utah federal court in August 2019. Her initial lawsuit accused church leaders of “misrepresenting its foundational facts and continuing conduct of concealing access to those facts” as part of perpetuating an alleged fraud to ensure, among other things, that members’ tithing contributions would continue.
“It is the height of hypocrisy, and abuse, encompassing not only a pious, but an ongoing pervasive secular fraud,” Gaddy argued, saying those actions damaged her and thousands of other former Latter-day Saints like her “at an existential level.”
That suit alleges mail and wire fraud, breach of fiduciary duties, fraudulent concealment and civil racketeering under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, also known as RICO.
(Excerpt) Read more at sltrib.com ...
Frivolous. So she had a crisis of faith and blames organized religion for it. Next, they’ll come after the Roman Church. They got a whole city full of secrets!
Joseph Smith was a fraud, Jesus was not.
It doesn’t matter if it’s the LDS or the Catholics or Baptist. Common sense says No Refunds.
Caveat emptor
Lots of whack-a-doodle and often fanatical cults sprang up in upstate New York in the latter part of the 19th century. They used to call it the "burnt over district". Mormonism is just one of those that has somehow managed to survive.
Anybody know what "reformed Egyptian characters" are?
Joel Cairo?
.
I know this thread will be full of anti-Mormon comments, and while I certainly don’t agree with the Mormons on many things, my advice to conservatives is to think twice before you go backing these suits in general just because you disagree with Mormonism. Yes, there are allegations of misleading people with regards to appropriation, but there’s also a lot of disagreements over the accuracy of religious statements and church history mixed in, and suing over tithing is a slippery slope that can involve ANY religion given the views of secular authorities and institutions when it comes to history and the accuracy of religion.
As for the Huntsman involvement, of course it would be someone from that family doing this. I note he says that if he wins he will give the money to LGBT and racial charities. That’s code for leftist charities.
Gaddy came to be deeply troubled by what she saw as similar dismaying misrepresentations, according to her lawsuit, over the church’s translated Book of Abraham and over Smith’s own character, leading to a crisis in her faith.
Then find a new faith. Islam has some openings for suckers as dumb as she is!
Similar in a way. One lone crackpot authoring a “holy” book. But Mad Mo was a MUCH worse person than Joseph Smith.
I’m not a Mormon and I don’t believe Joseph Smith was for real, but if you seriously expected that the seer stone would work for you probably missed the point of your religion.
Consider your Mormon tithes as “sunk costs”. Then investigate the Orthodox Church, including visiting a local parish (probably after covid restrictions go away).
You may be pleasantly surprised!!!!
I was just wondering if King Tut had his own John Calvin.
When can I sue the Fed government for my existential crisis being forced to pay into a contractual system which no longer respects its core teaching and values of liberty and justice for all?
It would seem that if it could be proven that the “church” uses coercion to extract funds from their members they might stand a chance of prevailing. With Mormons, as with so many of the cults, your only hope to getting the ultimate prize is in giving major bucks to the organization - so, they use fear to threaten them with their very salvation (which they likely do not have at any rate unless they were led to the Lord earlier by a soul-winning, Bible-believing church where they were sealed for all eternity by the Holy Spirit. Yes, that is once saved-always saved.
This seems like a real long shot type of lawsuit.
All religions are based in faith in theology, faith in holy writings, faith in founders of a religion, etc.
If you have a crisis of faith, how does that become a matter for a lawsuit?
Amen and congratulations on your exit and eternal life.
But for me, even as a trad Catholic, the culture shock is great. But other things very attractive about Orthodoxy.
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