Question for LDS re: non-LDS materials

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Fiat_Lux

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How exactly is the admonition against LDS reading certain material worded? I’ve had people tell me they shouldn’t/won’t read material critical of the LDS church (explicitly anti-Mormon material), and then I’ve had people tell me they should/will only read things that are faith-promoting.

I am wondering how far the admonition extends. Does it extend only to explicitly anti-Mormon material? Does it extend to pro-other-faith material as well, even if it doesn’t mention Mormonism?
 
Fiat Lux:
How exactly is the admonition against LDS reading certain material worded? I’ve had people tell me they shouldn’t/won’t read material critical of the LDS church (explicitly anti-Mormon material), and then I’ve had people tell me they should/will only read things that are faith-promoting.

I am wondering how far the admonition extends. Does it extend only to explicitly anti-Mormon material? Does it extend to pro-other-faith material as well, even if it doesn’t mention Mormonism?
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There is no “admonition” in the Church against LDS reading anti-Mormon or “other faith” books that I know of. The only “admonition” that exists is against reading pornography and other obviously perverse materials of this kind. LDS members make their own decisions on what to read and not to read.

amgid
 
amgid,

It appears that their are those in the LDS church that would disagree with you:

In 1996 (Ensign, Sept 1996, p.3), President Hinckley equated anti-Mormon literature with profanity, pornography, and sexual sin as things that Latter-day Saints should avoid.

“Ignore, if you can, the endless array of anti-Mormon literature and avoid cults like a plague. Conversion is not born of contention. He that hath the spirit of contention is not of God (Prov. 18:6; Rom. 2:7-8; 1 Cor. 11:16; James 3:16; 3 Ne. 11:29; D&C 10:63). Our divine commission is to declare glad tidings to the world, not to quarrel with others about the meaning of texts. There are, of course, answers to all of the false claims of those who array themselves against us—I do not believe the devil has had a new idea for a hundred years—but conversion is not found in the dens of debate. It comes rather to those who read the Book of Mormon in the way Moroni counseled. Most members of the Church would be better off if they simply ignored the specious claims of the professional anti-Mormons.” Bruce R. McConkie, Seminar for Regional Representatives, April 1981.

JohnnyR
 
Thank you, Johnny… I knew there was something, but wasn’t sure when/which prophet.

I don’t understand how someone can be certain he is properly forming his conscience, which is something I think we are obligated to do to the best of our ability, when he won’t examine criticism or other possibilities. I understand the concept of spiritual witness, but without examining criticism and engaging in some open-minded study of “the other side”, I don’t see a Mormon spiritual witness as being any different from a Muslim spiritual witness, or a Branch Davidian spiritual witness, or a Jonestown spiritual witness, or…

Any of them will tell you (or would have told you) that they know they have the truth, that there is no need to examine criticisms or look honestly at other possibilities.

It also raises the question, for me, of why I feel free, as a Catholic, to examine criticisms of Catholicism, and to study other possibilities (including LDS), and walk away with my faith intact. That such an admonition would be necessary makes the average Mormon testimony seem weak.
 
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JohnnyR:
It appears that their are those in the LDS church that would disagree with you:
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I wouldn’t be surprised. There are differences of opinion among LDS, as there are among people of other religions.
In 1996 (Ensign, Sept 1996, p.3), President Hinckley equated anti-Mormon literature with profanity, pornography, and sexual sin as things that Latter-day Saints should avoid.
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“Ignore, if you can, the endless array of anti-Mormon literature and avoid cults like a plague. Conversion is not born of contention. He that hath the spirit of contention is not of God (Prov. 18:6; Rom. 2:7-8; 1 Cor. 11:16; James 3:16; 3 Ne. 11:29; D&C 10:63). Our divine commission is to declare glad tidings to the world, not to quarrel with others about the meaning of texts. There are, of course, answers to all of the false claims of those who array themselves against us—I do not believe the devil has had a new idea for a hundred years—but conversion is not found in the dens of debate. It comes rather to those who read the Book of Mormon in the way Moroni counseled. Most members of the Church would be better off if they simply ignored the specious claims of the professional anti-Mormons.” Bruce R. McConkie, Seminar for Regional Representatives, April 1981.
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I have not yet been able to discover the source of this quote, and until I do I can’t comment on it. I need to read it in its context. But judging it as it is, I would say it sounds like good doctrine to me. Anti-Mormon literature is legion. I don’t thing it would be a terribly uplifting experience for any LDS to constantly preoccupy himself with anti-Mormon literature. There are more worthy and uplifting activities for LDS to preoccupy themselves with. But if an LDS member became curious about an anti-Mormon publication, and wanted to read it to find out what it says, I don’t thing it would do him any harm to examine it; and the above quote does not rule that out either.

And by the way, I didn’t see in that quote anything about “equating it with profanity, pornography, and sexual sin”. Would you mind telling me where you got that from?

amgid
 
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JohnnyR:
Hi amgid,

I got the quotes from the Mormon FAIR message board (see link below):

fairboards.org/index.php?showtopic=10783&hl=
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Thanks for the link, but it is no more helpful than your quote. I haven’t been able to locate it on the Church’s website; and until I do I can’t properly comment on it. The comment I gave is as far as I can go.

amgid
 
Fiat Lux:
Thank you, Johnny… I knew there was something, but wasn’t sure when/which prophet.

I don’t understand how someone can be certain he is properly forming his conscience, which is something I think we are obligated to do to the best of our ability, when he won’t examine criticism or other possibilities. I understand the concept of spiritual witness, but without examining criticism and engaging in some open-minded study of “the other side”, I don’t see a Mormon spiritual witness as being any different from a Muslim spiritual witness, or a Branch Davidian spiritual witness, or a Jonestown spiritual witness, or…

Any of them will tell you (or would have told you) that they know they have the truth, that there is no need to examine criticisms or look honestly at other possibilities.

It also raises the question, for me, of why I feel free, as a Catholic, to examine criticisms of Catholicism, and to study other possibilities (including LDS), and walk away with my faith intact. That such an admonition would be necessary makes the average Mormon testimony seem weak.
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While Mormons are cautioned against reading certain books harmful to faith or morals, so are Roman Catholics. In fact, the RCC published an Index of Prohibited Books, something long negelected in the contemporary RCC. And for years, many parish or diocesan newspapers published regular lists of currently-popular books which were rated according to their suitability or lack of suitability for reading. One is taught in the RCC that one may not read things which are clearly harmful to one’s own faith or morals. Mormons are advised similarly. I don’t see a great difference between the two faiths on this topic.
 
I like that quote. I don’t see why it’s such a bad thing to ignore the stuff. Unless I’m going to be critiquing minutely a certain argument that I am very familiar with, something I am expert on, for example, it’s just trying to guess who knows more about what they’re talking about. Whoever writes better and has more of a professional education in that subject generally gets more credibility, according to the average reader. So ‘study’ can only go so far.

The real problem is that some people get obsessed with it all, and it shows in their character. In Catholicism and Mormonism you can easily see how cynical some people get who make taking on the antis their hobby. It can be poisonous, and there are much more constructive things we can do with our time.

However, I believe that if a mature and righteous latter-day saint wishes to look into one or two issues, Pres. Hinckley would not object. Unfortunately many are not mature enough and when they are already confused spiritually it makes for a dangerous combination.
 
Chris J;

You make a good point. It is easy to become obsessed with the defense of one’s own religion to the point of losing sight of the real issue - the search for truth. And I also agree that a solid grounding in the basis for one’s own doctrines is important to prepare a person for responding to questions from another person’s perspective, and that in many cases that grounding is not present. Does the LDS church allow its members to take this latter step and engage in a critical dialogue? It seems, from the interaction I’ve seen at this forum, that such a give-and-take is definitely allowed. If it were not, I know of several upstanding LDS members that may be losing their temple-recommend cards. 🙂

-Peace
 
I think it really depends who you ask. This is not so much a question of what the official LDS doctrine is, but of which Church leader’s character we’re talking about. The author of “A Marvelous Work and a Wonder” was a mission president who wrote a kind of answer-sheet for his missionaries so that they could support the doctrine with the Bible; so the auhor, LeGrande Richards, seemed to be all for productive inter-faith discussion, and maybe even debate, and he was a GA. However, I think that most do not share that attitude. For a while that book was okay for missionaries to read, but has recently been removed from the list.

In my mission many missionaries were a little too into debating protestant ministers and Jehovah’s Witnesses, including myself, which is why our mission president looked down on that kind of thing; he would set the example and when someone would try to argue with him he’d just give his testimony and leave. Now, he was an incredibly smart man, and could have argued right back, but his point was to teach us that the Spirit is more important than trying to show someone you’re right.

There’s a delicate balance. I feel personally that I’m keeping it pretty well, but sometimes I still get too involved in the discussions here, as you know. I’m sure that many LDS leaders would think negatively of the discussions here, but I’m also sure that many would approve. In my opinion, as long as the spirit of contention stays out of it and we handle it all maturely then there’s no problem in getting your feet wet and exercising your cranium.

It should also be mentioned that the Church does support such institutions as FARMS, so to say that the LDS leadership is against research and dialogue is a bit of an exaggeration.
 
Perhaps it’s more accurate to say that the LDS church is against OBJECTIVE research and dialogue. I think Boyd Packer has made that clear. Rather than quote out of context here is his talk on this:

xmission.com/~country/reason/mantle.htm

Yes I know that’s an “anti” site but the talk itself is there in it’s entirety and the accuracy is easily verified.
 
I enjoyed that article, majick. I wonder why antis would see it as something negative. To me, it seems to coroborate the LDS position. 👍
 
imagine that…Boyd Packer corroborating the LDS position. :cool:

This makes it very clear that objective studies of LDS history shold not publish anything that isn’t faith promoting even if it’s true. I agree that’s the LDS position. I just think it’s wrong.
 
You can think it’s wrong, but I’m not sure why you think it’s wrong. Could you highlight some part of it and briefly explain what’s wrong about it?
 
There is a temptation for the writer or the teacher Of Church history to want to tell everything, whether it is worthy or faith promoting or not. Some things that are true are not very useful
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I think in the context of the LDS church, this statement is bothersome. Obviously, the glass-looking, polygamous side of the ‘prophet’ is going to be obscured by ‘missionaries’ and public relations folks. But the arrests and the polygamy are true.

The quote above reminds me of a typical sales tactic, lowballing, where you get the person to commit to something by basically lowering the bar to make such a committment easy–and once they’re ‘in’, you reveal the hidden costs, when it’s hard to back out. If you look at the Joseph Smith presented on the LDS website, it’s easy enough to admire and like him. Lowball.

That’s what the ‘milk before meat’ stuff seems like to me, anyway.
 
That stuff (for example, polygamy) is no secret in the Church, edmond, and it’s usually not to investigators; if they don’t know about it before getting baptized it’s no big deal. Most of the time, when they find out it is explained and they accept it readily. The idea is to not dwell on such things. For example, the crusades happened, and we all know about them, but I don’t imagine that the average Catholic would want to squander his time studying them for spiritual gain while ignoring the good parts of Catholic history that they can actually learn from. The danger is that some people do this, and it’s not very healthy. Maybe you’re different, I don’t know, but it’s hard for me to believe that that’s common in any religion.

The whole ‘low-balling’ dealie seems skewed to me. Is it a requirement for people to know thoroughly a religion before joining? It’s impossible; it takes a whole lifetime and more. The closest relation I can see here is that the LDS Church is not about proving things or about solving all doubts before one is allowed to enter; rather, the focus is spiritual and conversion the starting point. The question that should apply here is not whether one church uses unfair sales tactics, but what should be required for conversion for an individual.
 
The whole ‘low-balling’ dealie seems skewed to me. Is it a requirement for people to know thoroughly a religion before joining? It’s impossible; it takes a whole lifetime and more
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Do you think it’s fair to inform potential converts that there is no archaeologial support for the BOM, that the translation of the Book of Abraham is not what it purports to be, that the relation between Emma and JS is far more, ahhh, unusual than is depicted on the LDS website and so forth?? I’m not talking about knowing the whole religion, I’m talking about an obvious question that would naturally be raised in any potential convert’s mind-is JS trustworthy?

re: crusades-- There is no comparable analogy with Catholocism to the questions pertaining to the validity of JS because all of Catholocism doesn’t stand on the testimony of one individual.
 
Catholocism doesn’t stand on the testimony of one individual
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Aren’t we talking about the validity of a religion in general, not specific individuals unless they have direct bearing on that religion? When did this thread become focused on Joseph Smith?
Do you think it’s fair to inform…
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I don’t think it matters either way. If they do find out about tricky issues like anti-Mormon attacks then there should be someone present to help resolve such concerns. The problem, I feel, is that there sometimes is not.
 
tricky issues like anti-Mormon attacks
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Could someone please clarify for my benefit the difference between a tough question and an ‘anti-Mormon attack’?
 
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