That in it's self is deceptive, because the Jesus Christ of mainstream Christianity has no apostle named Joseph Smith.
If the title would have said Joseph Smith: An Apostle of (the Mormon) Jesus Christ I doubt there would have been a problem.
There is a great divide between the Mormon jesus and the Christian Jesus Christ.
I understand why Christians don’t believe the title is true; it is a statement of mormon belief, one that is well-known to anybody who knows something about the LDS religion. In their belief system, Jesus appeared to Joseph Smith. Most Christian denominations do not believe this happened.
I even understand the reason some people believe that this difference of opinion is more important than other differences of opinion that show up in Caucus thread titles. First, those differences are of a different degree than this difference, and second, it is actually rare for the title of a caucus thread to contain enough information to call out a disagreement.
The mormons aren’t the only faith which feels put upon either. There is a perception of anti-catholic postings, which lead to a caucus thread titled “Catholic Apologetics Thread”, which discussed how to handle such attacks, and had an interesting set of ideas of how religion could be handled more charitably in these forums, in a more protective manner to avoid people being abused or feeling attacked for their questions and discussions.
I’d like to see a more charitable application; however, I understand that this is at cross-purposes with those who feel part of the use of Free REpublic is to save souls, to proselytize, to convert. Obviously there are those who believe that is the LDS poster’s purpose. More clearly, that is the stated purpose of the anti-mormon posters, to convert mormons to christianity.
As to this thread, it could easily have been handled by reposting the original article as open, and letting christians have a go at arguing the point. There was in fact very little arguing the points made in the article.
I also found it funny that a lot of the first 100 posts were attacks on the original poster for “failing” to post as caucus, for thinking his thread deserved breaking news, and for forcing it down people’s throats. It wasn’t until the news spread that this was not the poster’s fault that people stopped attacking, and instead praised the move.