Posted on 01/24/2010 4:54:22 PM PST by Colofornian
When the Mormon pioneers headed West under duress in 1847, they had reason to feel bitter at their treatment by the world's foremost liberal democracy. For years, Americans had chased, robbed, beaten and killed them.
Joseph Smith, seeking redress for his people, earlier had gone to Washington, D.C. The towering statesmen of the day who received him acted like, well, Washington politicians.
According to Smith, the legendary Henry Clay said, "You had better go to Oregon." The revered John C. Calhoun counseled, "It is a nice question, a critical question, but it will not do to agitate it." And the ultimate inside-the-beltway waffling came from President Martin Van Buren: "Your cause is just, but I can do nothing for you."
Following Smith's death, and encouraged by belligerent neighbors with guns, the Saints turned their wagons west. They might have turned their backs forever on the United States of Hypocrisy. Instead, they considered themselves the last Real Americans, the legitimate heirs of the pilgrims and Founding Fathers.
And, they believed, the very survival of the Constitution depended on the Saints. From Smith on, LDS leaders prophesied the Constitution would one day hang by a thread, only to be saved by Mormons.
When (LDS) U.S. Sen. Hatch recently went on (LDS) talk radio host Glenn Beck's show and said the Constitution is hanging by a thread (threatened, one supposes, by President Barack Obama's "socialist agenda" like it never had been by slavery, the Civil War, the Great Depression, McCarthyism, or a president forced to resign for criminal conduct), Hatch was speaking "code" to those in the know. To others it still made for a rollicking right-wing, red meat sound bite.
If the rest of the country was going to hell, then the Saints would protect its sacred heart in their mountain fastness. Brigham Young famously said he loved the Constitution, but did not love "the damn rascals who administer the government."
This love/hate would define Mormon relations with America for a generation.
Polygamy was publicly acknowledged in 1852 and Mormons threw themselves into becoming experts on the Constitution, especially on the religious freedom bits. They were that era's civil libertarians. Curiously, their arguments defending non-traditional marriage are being echoed by gay marriage advocates this very week in a California courtroom. No matter. Moral outrage was fierce toward Mormons and polygamy.
Young plaintively observed, "There is not a territory in the Union that is looked upon with so suspicious an eye as is Utah, and yet it is the only part of the nation that cares anything about the Constitution."
America wasn't buying it. It was tautological nonsense to say one loved the Constitution but hated its government and laws. The United States wanted more than lip service to its institutions -- it demanded loyalty. The screws were applied and laws stripped The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints of its property and turned its leadership into fugitives. To avoid destruction, the church finally cried, "Uncle Sam!"
The Manifesto, issued in 1890 by Wilford Woodruff, ended the practice of polygamy and paved the way for Utah's admission to the Union. Ever after, Woodruff took pains to connect the dots between love of the Constitution and fealty to its government. "We live in a government raised up by the God of heaven."
And if anyone missed the point, Woodruff prayed at the dedication of the Salt Lake Temple, "Confer abundant favors upon the president, his Cabinet and Congress ... Show them that we are their friends, that we love liberty ... and give unto us and our children an increased disposition to always be loyal."
However, old habits die hard. Recent polling found Mormons to be the most conservative of the conservative; the strictest of the strict constructionists. Inflexible in their devotion to the Constitution, apt to quote Young's hate of "the damn rascals who administer the government."
Another Young quote:
"The signers of the Declaration of Independence and the framers of the Constitution were inspired from on high to do that work. But was that which was given to them perfect, not admitting of any addition whatever? No; for if men know anything, they must know that the Almighty has never yet found a man in mortality that was capable, at the first intimation, at the first impulse, to receive anything in a state of entire perfection. They laid the foundation, and it was for after generations to rear the superstructure upon it. It is a progressive -- a gradual work."
Pat Bagley is The Salt Lake Tribune's political cartoonist.
The Strong survived and the weak died or stayed home. Not only Mormons, think Kali in ‘48.
Many Catholics, agnostics, Presbyterians,____________(fill in the blank) think so, too.
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Yeah, but to the Catholics, agnostics, Presbyterians,____________(fill in the blank) dream of establishing a theocracy like the LDS?
Shawn is awesome. Great ministry and having great success, praise God!
...as Nana said there is so much more horror about this religion.
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And the more you study it, the more horrific and more blasphemous it becomes. And the more sadness you feel for those trapped in it.
I thank God every day that He brought me out from the bondage of the LDS Church and into the arms of Christ.
And Mitt Romney. Sometimes. :O)
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Bashing Mitt Romney is fine by me.
Were you bit by a rabid Mormon dog ia your youth,
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As amusing as that image is, that is not the reason.
Although several of us here (colofornian, colorcountry; me and Szonian as well as others) were at one time Mormons, we have been freed from bondage through faith in Jesus Christ. We are now Christians.
We understand better than most, and in a very real way, the darkness under the facade of virtue that the Mormon Church presents, we understand their doctrines, their history and how they lie and manipulate their members.
And we all believe that it is our duty to warn others of the truth of Mormonism and their claims. IOW, the Mormon church is not the “harmless, lovable, little fuzzball” it pretends to be.
Oh snap!
Thank you God, many blessings to you. I do have a heart for the Mormon’s, one of my bests friends is an ex-Mormon. I’ve heard a couple of different people saying they believe that the Mormon’s will come to know the true Jesus, that the bondage they are under will be broken. I pray they are right. I keep thinking and praying for Glenn Beck and his family. If he ever study his religions history, he would know.
Amen to that one!!! Shawn is awesome, he really digs deeply, not only in the bible, but, Mormon history as well. They have done a lot of covering up. I don’t blame the Mormon people, it’s the leadership that’s doing the covering up. My gf lives in Utah, she sees how they cover things up all the time. Rewriting there history to fit. If you don’t dig and don’t ask questions you’d never know.
Since you are a fan of odd off shoot sects and cults, here is my favorite:
http://www.yahwehbenyahweh.com/
It is interesting that they claim to follow ‘the Law’ as they write in Hebrew for the name of their idol, but the web site must be in the phonetic alphabet.
Thanks for the link. Particularly interesting is the series of article on, (verbatim) “Can White People be Saved?”
Their “savior” was a convicted felon and his “crucifixion” was being put in the federal pen...
And for years, mormons have claimed to be innocent victims of persecution who never, ever, no way, no how did ANYTHING to bring on any kind of strife.
For a glaringly biased example of the present-day attitude of "persecution" as described by mormons,
The Mormons under JS in Nauvoo had a military almost the size of the US military at the time .... when a newspaper printed articles condemning JS’s practices of intimidation JS and his gang tore the place up. He was then called to answer for his crime at Carthage, Il, where he went out in a blaze of gunfire ... so much for his martyr image .... (this story was related to me when on a tour of his home in Nauvoo)
Only after he 'ran away' again to escape the law. He returned thinking he'd be helped to escape again by his Nauvoo forces.
You know, you keep posting the same link, and my anti-virus/anti-spyware blocks it.
As to the site in general, what is your point?? They are no more Christians than Mormons are, IMO.
If you have something to say, just say it!
For the LURKERS, Some people, like BM, only posts links to a site, rather than defend their faith...
If the link goes to a known infected site, then the poster is attempting to have the computers infected. I don't think FR allows for such actions on the part of it membership. Mr. BlueMoose, you've got some explaining to do - are you purposefully trying to get people's computers infected?
As much as I would love it, I do not expect the LDS church as a whole to accept Christ of the Bible and turn from their heresies (like Armstrong’s Worldwide Church of God did), but individual LDS members are leaving the LDS church in DROVES and many are coming to know Christ.
I pray for Beck too, as well as all those in Mormonism. I know the bondage they are under and I know the blindness they have. Only God can make them see and break those chains.
Part of what led me out was I had decided to be an LDS apologist and prove those “horrible anti-mormons” wrong about the LDS church lying to it’s members.
What I discovered was that the “antis” were right and the LDS leadership did/does/will lie to the members and whitewash history.
There are some who know the problems with the doctrine/history yet STILL stay in the LDS church b/c they think it is “the best thing going”. They do not know Christ (or they would leave), rather they are “active” Church going Atheists/agnostics who see the church as a social club. Shawn was that way for many years.
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