Posted on 04/28/2008 7:31:24 PM PDT by ricks_place
Under shower of questions sparked by FLDS raid, LDS members set differences, explain faith
SAN ANGELO, Texas - The Bishop of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' Second Ward here, Jeffrey Bushman, is used to the quizzical looks and sometimes ludicrous questions directed at people of the Mormon faith.
As a missionary in New York 40 years ago, Bushman once was asked if he had devil's horns. He responded by offering to display the place on his head where he had had them sawed off.
“The only thing they knew about us were horns, polygamy and the Tabernacle Choir,” he said.
So when the Fundamental Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints' Yearning for Zion Ranch was raided April 3, sparking a national media frenzy, he and other church members were prepared to field the inevitable questions that would arise.
Do they practice polygamy? Are their children sexually abused?
“I've had a lot of my neighbors come up” and make inquiries, said Bishop Bushman's First Counselor Jared Seegmiller, who explains to them that the FLDS splintered off from the mainstream LDS Church after the latter renounced polygamy and threatened to excommunicate practitioners of plural marriage.
“And that's really the only explanation I've had to give them,” he said. “And they say, 'OK, that makes sense.' ”
Even some of the newest members of the church have approached Bushman to get clear on whether polygamy is still practiced by the LDS.
“We've had to deal just a little bit with trying to make sure some of our members don't think we're part of the same [FLDS] church,” he said.
Texas officials have played a role in the confusion. Even while acknowledging the two religions are separate, Judge Barbara Walther, of the 51st District Court, asked FLDS attorneys on April 21 to find members of local LDS congregations to supervise the FLDS women and children while they prayed.
Bushman was among those who got a call to do it.
“I said, 'No thank you, that's not quite our job,' ” he said. “I would feel a little awkward. . . . I don't want to be a party to something that may or may not be right.”
While some members are upset by the media's lack of distinction between the two churches, most see it as an opportunity for a discussion about the true doctrine underlying their faith.
“Most of them, I think, believe that it has opened up the lines of communication about the church, probably more than anything else that has happened,” Bushman said. “Their friends and their neighbors ask questions.”
While the LDS don't condone polygamy or child abuse, the bishop said, the raid has in some ways forged a small connection between the two religions. The LDS, historically a persecuted group of people, can sympathize with a church under siege.
“Watching them [Texas Rangers] go into the temple down there, going through it, made me think of the Nauvoo era: just run them out and do what they want to with the building,” Bushman said. “Obviously we understand that a little bit. That's in the back of our heads.”
The FLDS, meanwhile, have turned to some LDS for support. One member, a San Angelo medical professional who asked that his name not be printed, said an FLDS client called him shortly after the raid.
The distressed woman didn't ask for help, he said. “[She just] wanted to know someone on the outside cared about them.”
I sometimes like to stir the pot.
My mom was from Halls Tennessee, how about you?
Isaiah 4
1And in that day seven women shall take hold of one man, saying, We will eat our own bread, and wear our own apparel: only let us be called by thy name, to take away our reproach.
Too much coffee.
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Too much something...
and I know where the verse is from and where you got your erroneous misuse of the scripture..
http://www.biblicalpolygamy.com/exegesis/seven-women-shall-take-hold-of-one-man/
My mom was from Halls Tennessee, how about you?
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No, I’m not your Mom...
Informal polygamy is already here.
So the government is providing the pedophiles with children to abuse.
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No, the govt did not...
Thoisd is not the govt’s fault...
The TX govt rescued these sexually abused and brain-washed children...
And of course the rape apologists will try to make it all be about religion, discarding the young victims in the process.
They hid them in the second sentence :).
Agreed. That’s why I think the LDS should also be investigated. They’re all members of Joseph Smith’s cult.
“I don’t know why anyone would want more than one wife either...”
FLDS guys figured out a scam with the government, to make their gals into ATMs.
One of the reasons Muslims blow themselves up, I reckon, is because death would be preferable to life with FOUR wives.
That's twice I've seen you make this asinine statement. On what basis do you think the LDS Church should be investigated? You want to bring the power of the state to bear upon an upstanding Christian organization, full of patriots and strong MONOGAMOUS families (the vast majority of whom are law-abiding, conservative Republicans, mind you). And you would have the LDS Church investigated for what? On what charges? Please explain who will conduct this investigation and what they are looking for, and how they will explain to the media and the country why the Mormons are being investigated.
I'm really curious. This should be good.
The Baptists also seem soft on Polygamy.
Some of the early Baptists in Germany were polygamist.
Also, in Africa, the Baptists originally allowed their converts to retain their polygamy.
“As must be evident by now, before their missionaries came, one of the major attractions to the BaptistChurch was initial toleration of polygamist. It appeared also that initially the Baptists did not firmly take as negative an attitude to ancestor veneration as did the C.M.S. But according to Agbaluwa, a Baptist minister, the practice was never approved of “but people being so used to it mixed it up a little”.[12] Thus, many who enlisted in that church were at first able not only to keep their harems of wives but also to pay some homage to their departed parents[13] both of which practices were not allowed by the C.M.S. As the Baptist were to change their attitude towards polygamy later, this attraction belonged only to the first phase.”
thanks sandra - but I didnt mention polygamy
Does the Vatican still rack and torture non believers to get them to confess to devil possession?
Isn’t it true the Protestants in Massachusetts and Connecticut still burn witches, and dunk them in ponds seven times until they confess to worshiping Satan?
Just curious.
Perhaps the entire Roman Catholic church should be investigated for kiddy porn, due to the homo priests. Where there's smoke, there's fire, I always say.
psyche/
Nope, the ones with four wives do just fine - it's the large numbers of "excess" men who live in rage that are the problem.
Mormon cults dump teenage boys on city streets to join the homeless while Muslim cultures live in endless states of war to kill them off...
Yeah, it's charming...
For a minute there, I thought you were referring to the government providing tax breaks to people who send their kids to Catholic schools which have homosexual priests.
psyche/
Who put you on a pedestal to bash those who oppose the system of Mormon-ism? You make it very plain you opposing "bashing"--at least of Mormons. But then you turn right around and bash away.
So which is it? You mean it's not OK for these folks to oppose falsehood, but it's somehow OK for you. (What special dispensation did you give yourself to violate your own personal standard?)
How about being consistent, then, to your own personal standard. If you don't like what YOU PERCEIVE as "bashing," then don't start engaging in it. (Otherwise, it just becomes endless "escalation")
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