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Posted on 05/08/2008 5:04:47 PM PDT by Grig
I am posting this on behalf of many LDS freepers. They will post their own 'signature' to this in the comments below. --- Some of you have noticed lately a lot of LDS (ie: Mormon) threads here on FR. I'm going to tell you why.
For many years there have been several active LDS freepers here. We post to all the forums on relevant issues, and were happy to have a site where conservative values were so openly welcomed.
Those conservative values include faith in God, and freedom of religion. We fully respect the rights of all posters to express their opinions and views on religious matters, even when people choose to use those rights to express criticism of our own faith. We also support the ideas embodied in FR rules against religion bashing. There is no need for hostility and there should be no room for bigotry on FR. Every religion has it's miracles and mysteries. Every faith has things in it that are not or can not be proven, and things that run contrary to what secular science would have us believe. Someone mature and confident in their own faith generally doesn't feel the need to belittle the faith of others.
We have, to the best of our ability, conducted ourselves with civility and dignity. We do not feel that that respect has been returned by some posters (putting it mildly).
When Mormon missionaries were murdered, the moderators were kept busy pulling jubilant posts off the thread. When Elizabeth Smart was abducted from her home, we contended for months with posters who appeared to be motivated by religious bigotry doing all they could to smear the family and accuse the father. Several posters openly admitted their religious motivation in opposing Mitt Romney and confessed that no matter how conservative any Mormon was, they would never vote for one for President of the USA. When the Pope died, I don't think any Mormon poster posted anything unkind, yet the thread about the passing of our President recently needed many comments removed.
Nearly every thread having any connection with Mormons, or Utah winds up being hijacked by anti-Mormon activists who copy and paste the same false accusations over and over even when it has been clearly and factually pointed out to them on multiple occasions that they are bearing false witness against our faith. Everything possible is done by these activists to make FR a hostile place for Mormons, and for at least some of them, bashing Mormonism is all they do here. Their most recent project is trying to blur the fact that the polygamous FLDS is a separate and distinct religion from ours, just as Lutherans are a separate and distinct religion from Catholicism.
In our opinion, such poster do a great disservice to FR and to their fellow freepers by spreading disinformation and promoting hostility towards a people known for walking the walk of conservative values.
Why the moderators here don't see the behavior of these anti-Mormon activists as religion bashing is a mystery to us, but it is the moderators call to make and we respect their right to do so. That doesn't mean we have to be passive however. We have all spent many hours refuting the accusations leveled at our faith, but these wind up buried deep in a flood of comments, effectively shouting us down.
Recently some of us have decided to take a more proactive approach. Rather than try to wrestle the pig into taking a bath, we are just going to hose it down. We will actively define our faith here rather than just respond to accusations.
So expect to see lots of Mormon threads, now and for as long as we see fit to keep posting them (although probably not as many as there are Catholic threads). They will be about our basic doctrines and responses to common accusations. If you want to know what our faith is about, read the articles we post. We will post them as open threads and I encourage you to compare the difference in tone and spirit between what we post and what our critics say.
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Everbody....look at me!!!!!!
My mom, dad (previously Presbyterian), and sister all belong to the restorationist Stone/Cambellite Church of Christ in southwest Virginia, and although I was never a member (I was our church's pianist for a number of years, playing such old time favorites as Bringing in the Sheaves, Give Me that Old Time Religion, and Are You Washed in the Blood, among others), I grew up in it and know its teachings and practices quite well.
You are correct in that it does reject post-apostolic, but it operates pretty much like a Baptist church (with full immersion and fire-and-brinstone sermons), but with Presbyterian structure and formality.
It's a good church, but I did reject its tenements that everyone who did not belong to it were necessarily hellbound in the afterlife, sentiments shared by all the local Old Regular Baptist and Pentacostal Holiness chruch as well.
Not to the tune of 2+ million / year.
I am quite sure that the church employs many web developers to keep it's web site running too, so? the prohibition was on those who were to teach the Gospel, but of course with your degrees and such, you knew that, right?
The only way you can prove that is to show that their only expendature is on the internet. And that is a big difference from hiring professionals (undefined). Again, you should be embarrassed, shameless bending of the truth is or should be beneath a man of God.
Yep, you know all about shameless bending of truth
For free...
Right……so you say
How much does Jim spend annually to run FR? I'll bet you'd be surprised. BTW, he's a non profit organization, by your logic, he's a front for some church...
No need to insult Jim in that fashion. It is less than $20 million /yr. BTW, check the FR main – donations are not tax deductable – hence FR is for profit. Free Republic operates on an approximate $260,000 annual budget.
they are now part of BYU, so they can take advantage of all the free labor undergrads will give them to get published, sounds smart to me, so?
Free (slave) labor, their own NewAvent.
Apparently one mans obfuscation is another man's clarification, I will admit that you seem to know far more about obfuscation than I do...
It they clarify, then the air is clear in LA
It's a collage, most colleges are multi million dollar operations, some times multi million just describes the football team. they often don't pay students if they don't have to, that's the point of having undergraduates, people who teach the classes for the professors, write their papers, do their research, for next to nothing if not nothing, and the professors are out looking for grants to justify more free labor to make them more money, college is a scam, trust me on this.
Not talking football teams, talking paid professionals to post their bile in the pay of lds incorporated.
I thought you had said earlier that you were a professional theologian, and this was part of your work, pardon me if I got that wrong, are you or are you not a professional religionist?
You are the one who has made that accusation on me. What I did say in the past is if that makes you feel better to think that, it was fine by me.
Clever.
I wonder how many actual "paid theologians" there are at FR, and why DU seems to be so frightened of what he claims is one? BUT....of course he says receives his information "direct from God".
I think you got a wrong number a couple of times, DU...better check the connections.
ROTFL.....have you Inmans seen THIS?
:o])
Yes, we can.
It’s nice to know that people form healthy relationships based on love and devotion, and that teasing is a part of that love. Keep up the good work!
After a few minutes, it became clear that he thought I was somehow affiliated with the FLDS group. I felt like an anthropology specimen. The questions were friendly and good natured, but imbedded in them was the notion that there was really no difference between the LDS Church and the FLDS group, they were simply all Mormons to him.
Given the enormous national and international attention focused on the Texas raid, it has been abundantly clear that while many people understand the difference between the LDS Church and this polygamous group, unfortunately there is still substantial confusion between the two.
Much of this confusion comes from misapplying the name Mormon, as in "fundamentalist Mormon" or "Mormon polygamist." The LDS Church has gone to great lengths to protect the name Mormon (note video of Elder Quentin L. Cook on YouTube, www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUtjsdtDOkQ). However, much misidentification simply results from the confusion between the terms LDS and FLDS.
While not strictly speaking identity theft, the adoption of FLDS by this group at best is confusing and at worst undermines the credibility of the Latter-day Saints and tarnishes the LDS "brand." Sometimes damage to a brand or a trademark has been called attempted identity theft at the corporate level.
I am not making a narrow legal argument about trademark law issues here. Rather, my discussion is more broadly about brand identification and injury to a brand name.
While the terms LDS and Mormon are not brands in the commercial sense, these terms reflect the identity, reputation and teachings of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The LDS Church has the right and expectation that the use of these terms will convey certain impressions to those who become aware of them. This is known in the business world as brand equity and in the words of NetMBA.com it "is an intangible asset that depends on associations made by the consumer."
An illustration from the business world might give us some insight. Suppose several engineers at General Electric invented an electric motor and decided that their product was superior to other similar products produced by the company. This group of engineers decides then to break away from General Electric and form a new company called Fundamental General Electric or FGE for short. How would General Electric react to this? Would it feel that its brand equity was being diminished or stolen? Of course they would. And they would be right.
Similarly, this group which claims to be a break-off of the LDS Church is, as noted, utterly different in its beliefs and practices. In an April 19 story in our paper, Brian Hales, a Layton physician and historian, notes, for example, that "brain-washing is a legitimate description of what occurs within the FLDS Church 'because they don't allow any outside information inside and vice versa.' On the other hand, the Salt Lake-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — which many continue to mistakenly associate with the polygamous sect — sends missionaries around the globe preaching a gospel message centered in Jesus Christ, Hales said. The opposite is true of the FLDS Church, which is insular, secretive and has no desire to share a message of salvation with others ... That's their world, and it's the direct opposite of what Joseph Smith and Brigham Young promoted."
The group that became known as the FLDS Church didn't begin until 1929. More significantly this group did not even adopt the name FLDS until nearly a century after the LDS Church abandoned polygamy.
Whatever their motivation, the consequence of this group's adoption of the name FLDS has damaged the LDS Church's identity, brand name and reputation.
Consider the following people in the sample who are workers in the religion industry in Utah in 2000:
- A 80 year old male (in 2000) with “Clergy” occupation classification who made $310,000 in salaried/wage income.
- A 47 year old male with “Accountant or Auditor” occupation classification who made $158,000 in salaried/wage income.
- A 73 year old male with a “Directors, Religious Activities and Education” occupational classification who made $133,900 in non-earned income (i.e. income other than from a salary or wages)
Note: Before you make any inferences, these people could live ANYWHERE in Utah and may be of ANY religion (religion is not an available variable, oh well). Due to privacy concerns, I don’t want to attempt to download family variables or other identifiers and make inferences. But consider this: what religion in Utah has an 80 year old clergyman on the payroll making $310,000 or have a $158,000 salaried auditor/accountant or a religious director who makes $134,000 from investments?
Brought to you by the 2000 US Census...
What is the wage of your Prophet and his Counselors?
deny deny deny
Nobody Knows: The Untold Story of Black Mormons. is a documentary about African American Latter-day Saints, now in post-production. The project is headed by Margaret Young and Darius Gray, authors of several award-winning books and articles about Black Mormons, and by Danor Gerald, a promising new filmmaker.
Few people, Mormon and non-Mormon, are aware that there has been an African American presence in the LDS Church from its earliest days, that the vanguard company of Mormon pioneers included three “colored servants” who were baptized Mormons, and whose descendants remained active in the Church for several generations.
This documentary talks about that little-known legacy, and confronts the hard issues which surfaced in the most turbulent years of the Civil Rights Movement, when the Church restricted its priesthood from those of African descent. It discusses how that restriction was lifted and what the lives and challenges of the modern Black Mormon pioneers are.
Besides never-released footage shot in 1968 and many rare archival photographs, the documentary includes interviews with renowned scholars, historians, Black Mormons, with Martin Luther King III, and with Dr. Cecil “Chip” Murray, retired pastor of the First AME Church of Los Angeles, which was founded by a former slave of Mormon pioneers.
About the Author? or is this another Joe Cannon?:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Adrian_Cannon
Joseph Angus Cannon (commonly known as Joe Cannon) was Chairman of the Utah Republican Party from 2002 to 2006. Cannon was a candidate for the U.S. Senate in 1992 (defeated by current Senator Robert F. Bennett) and served as an assistant administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from 1983 - 1985. He was named editor of the Deseret Morning News on December 8, 2006.
Cannon was born in 1949.[1] Cannon served a mission in Ireland, and also for a time served on the Isle of Man the ancestral homeland of the Cannons.[2] Cannon received a degree in political science, and, in 1977, a law degree, from Brigham Young University.
Cannon played a pivotal role in the purchase of Geneva Steel from U.S. Steel in 1987. Subsequent to that transaction, he became Chairman of Geneva Steel.
Other items to be found on the internet:
Joseph Cannon was a member of the Board of Trustees of the Salt Lake Olympic Organizing Committee. You remember the organizing committee. They were accused of bribing Olympic officials with cash and female escorts. But, most were cleared by fellow Utahns on the “Cannonized” Salt Lake Olympic Committee ethics panel. http://www.cnn.com/US/9902/11/olympics.01/?eref=yahoo
....was also embroiled in a controversy over his company, Geneva Steel’s, mysterious moving water shares. Cannon chose to not disclose the $85 million in water shares to the Federal Pension Guarantee Corp, who bailed out the Geneva Pension Fund (which was only 10% funded). Sometimes its nice to have a brother in Congress.
Mr. Cannon is a partner in the Law Firm, Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP. Prior to rejoining the firm, he was the Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of Geneva Steel from 1987 to 2001. He played the leading role in the purchase of Geneva Steel from USX Corporation and the re-opening of the plant in September of 1987. Mr. Cannon is a former member of the Board of Directors of the American and International Iron and Steel Institutes. He serves in the firm’s Environment, Land Use & Natural Resources practice and is also Co-Leader of its Public Policy & Political Law practice. He formerly served as Assistant Administrator for Air and Radiation, and Associate Administrator for Policy and Resource Management, at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Mr. Cannon has also served numerous organizations in the following capacities: member of the Board of Trustees of the American Enterprise Institute; member ofthe Administrative Conference of the United States; member of the Board of Trustees of the Salt Lake Olympic Organizing Committee; Chairman of the American Bar Association, Natural Resources Law Section, Air Quality Committee; Vice Chairman of the Committee of Interagency Radiation Research and Policy Coordination; United States Representative to the Environment Committee, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development; and member of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council and capital campaign committee. Mr. Cannon is an active member of the Republican Party, currently serves as Chairman of the Utah State Republican Party Finance Committee, and is a member of the Republican National Committee.
From the picture Here it could be the same man, however this guy looks quite young for 59.
My guess is they are related, LOL.
Same guy. Brother to Utah Congressman, Chris Cannon.
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