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 ...
I’m a “Recovering Methodist”. All we used to do, way back when I went to Church, was sing hymns and pass collection plates.
Yep! And I even have my excommunication letter from the latters to prove it! :)
Anybody know what “reformed Egyptian characters” are?
= = =
It sounds like ‘running a brand.’
The LDS routinely engages in knowing, fraudulent behavior, such as removing from their websites claims about the Book of Abraham that get debunked. The LDS even teaches missionaries how to lie, which they call giving people milk before meat. Hiding their doctrines and misleading people is part of their culture.
This isn’t like challenging the Baptists to prove child baptism isn’t valid. The LDS is actually a Church of fraudsters.
It appears the suit is because millions of dollars have been tithed with the expectation of directing it to the needy, when it is alleged to have actually been directed to propping up Mormon businesses. If true, I hope the church pays bigtime!
The mormons have deep pockets. This lawsuit will last longer than a decade.
+1
There was many books written covering “troubling” topics of Mormonism long before the internet existed. Once the internet became popular, there has been “anti-Mormon” sites and discussion forums along with orthodox counterparts and apologetic sites in abundance. Anyone who is just now shocked or dismayed failed in their due diligence a long time ago.
She tithed willingly.
Salvation Army will not give back the money I dropped in their kettles over the years nor would I ask.
You want to stop doing it fine. But no take backsees
And the lawyers get rich!
Yup—.gov run by the Democrats owes us a full refund of all taxes paid.
They swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the US.
They lied.
That may be true but I still don’t see any meaningful differences. I am not talking about doctrine here just the practice of tithing and where the money goes. The RCC has massive overhead and business interests itself. Some tithes go to the needed, some redirected. Unaffiliated or loosely affiliated houses of worship of most faiths often have leaders that are paid, sometimes modestly sometimes quite well, but whom also have full time work. And they all have some kind of overhead expenses. Even if you went to a Buddhist monastery they would have a collection plate (though probably not a lot of peer pressure to donate).
I have no doubt that some LDS church members put enormous social pressure on others to tithe the “proper amount”. So does Scientology in their own way.
As it happens I watched Murder Among the Mormons last night on Netflix. Interesting story how and why it all went down, some of it tangentially related to the LDS church buying and then stashing away various documents related to the origin of their sect.
I have wondered about the lying allegation you make. I had a friend say to me some years ago that LDS children grow up being promised that when our Constitution is “hanging by a thread” the Church will save it.
Well I have talked about the psychological coping mechanism of cognitive dissonance and this is an example of it. The Church’s actions speak louder than those words.
The bible does make reference to the issue of milk and meat but absolutely does not equate milk with lies. Rather the milk refers to foundational scripture which does not require deep thinking to understand. For “babies” in other words. Imho.
Speaking of “touchy” Scientologists, either the news/activism moderator is a little touchy about exposing the LDS Church or simply has a bad day sometimes. I have posted 2-3 times about various questionable bits of news, policy coming from the Church and the moderator just threatened me if I didn’t “stop abusing the news/activism sidebar”.
I am a relative newbie and am now considering leaving this site. The moderator’s use of the word “abuse” is a little leftistspeak - sounding to me.
But the Catholic Church is
LDS is as false as Scientology. Big difference between provable false religions and Christianity.
Mormonism is a “pay as you go” religion. You don’t pay, you don’t go.
Worth noting that the name of the angel “Moroni” matches the name of the obscure capital city of the Comoros Islands, a fact which was also true in 1823 and a word that Joseph Smith would have read in his home encyclopedia. Some of the other names of Mormon prophets sound transferred from other sources too.
My take is that the LDS started out from a con job by a man who was either a con artist or perhaps a well-meaning religious reformer who needed a story and invented that one.
Either way, through some mysterious process, the Mormon faith matured into something perhaps a bit better than what it could have become, and has created a social structure that is (say what you want) better than most in today’s crazy demonic world. The state of Utah is probably one of the most livable states in America (helps of course to have a nice climate and superb scenery).
Maybe God looked down on the LDS and said, “let’s give these guys an A for effort and overlook the odd theology.” If they ever came to these conclusions themselves they might just gradually re-merge into the mainstream of evangelical Christianity, which is probably where they belong. I sometimes get the feeling that these conclusions have been reached by many in the LDS but they don’t come right out and say so. But the trend historically has been to move away from divisive theological dogma such as their former practice of polygamy and having an Apostle Prophet descended from Joseph Smith, something that was phased out in the 1960s and 1970s.
In our fight for freedom and a God-centered society, we need all the allies we can get, and the Mormons are basically on our side (and conversely, we are on their side). I wouldn’t let a-holes like Romney and Reid distort this basic fact.
I read somewhere that Joseph Smith actually laughed to see that he was leading so many people astray at the end of his life!
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