Just curious if anyone knew if more essays were expected to be published by the Church and if so, any inkling on what the topics might be.

I think that they were originally going to publish them and deal with the consequences, but the JS one had such a water hydrant response that I expect that they will be a bit gun shy.

With the backlash and the coverage from the JS one I think they are done. It seems like the plan was that they would quietly release the essays so that they could look like they were being honest but didn't plan on many reading them. That backfired.

I'm guessing by the "JS one" you are referring to the recent Nauvoo polygamy essay with the forty wives footnote and being "sealed" (if one may call it that) to other men's wives.

These 10 topics were on the original list to become essays with more potentially planned in the future:

•Multiple Accounts of the First Vision
•The Church's relationship with the larger Christian world
•Race and priesthood restriction
•Plural marriage, including Joseph Smith's involvement
•Book of Mormon translation
•Women's roles in the Church
•Allegations of violence in the 19th-century Church
•DNA studies and the Book of Mormon
•Deification in Church teachings
•Egyptology and the Book of Abraham

Looks like they sort of covered them except for the women's role.

They were probably saving the women's role one for last to distance it from the Kate Kelly controversy.

I don't expect the essay to say anything different to what they usually say about the issue in each General Conference though.

One would guess that the women's role essay will be the shortest one.

Bow your head and make me a sammich bitch, about covers it.

☺ ☺ ☺

Since I am female I prolly shouldn't laugh at that but it is so damn true and also funny. Redneck moron man speak.

out of curiosity what has been the effect of the essays on resignation levels or attendance levels in the Mormon heartland.
particularly the joseph smith polygamy essay (er, sorry, I mean the multiple marriages in Kirtland and Nauvoo essay) are people coming out of the denial phase yet.
I definitely got the impression that would be the one that went down the worst,or have all the TBMs known all along anyway.

We don't have the data to know the effect. The best we can do is ask other mormons what's happened in their wards and try and estimate the overall picture from a few samples.

Maybe after a few more General Conferences we can look at the membership figures they give, perhaps see if they're increasing slower than usual. The essays won't have an immediate effect either, it takes some people years to actually stop attending, so you'd probably have to wait until the end of the decade to get the best picture.

It will be difficult to see the true effect of the essays because the church isn't forthcoming with membership activity rates.

If they do any more essays, it'll be under very little fanfare!!

That's how they tried to do all of them by burying them unsigned among other "gospel topics". It's just that it backfired when the information was posted on the official LDS website. With tools like Google, it's impossible to "hide" anything on the internet. Google Joseph Smith's wives and the LDS essay appears as the fourth website location in the search results!

The Google search function is designed such that the more individuals go to a webpage the higher rank that webpage will appear in subsequent searches. I'm sure the old farts at the top have no idea how the internet really works. A "hidden" religion like Mormonism will not last long in the age of the internet.

Good to hear.
I keep revisting the page regularly on several different computers in the hopes that it will come up in the list of most regularly visited topics on their Gospel topics pages. To my great suprise (not) it has never appeared. would you adam and eve it.
Glad to see that at least i have been contributing to it's up the google charts, that's probably even more usefull.

Yes.

I have been commissioned, along with a few others who work near my cubicle at CH, to write another one of them.

On what topic? Spill it ...

I love these undercover church headquarter moles!

;o)

Please, please, please let it be the one on women's roles.


I'm hoping it will be the final straw for my daughters.

Have they done the Masonry one yet? I thought they were going to explain why the original temple ceremony was pretty much a total rip off of Scottish-rite Freemasonry, complete with symbols, signs, penalties, oaths, robes, hats, tokens, etc. And why JS's cohorts referred to it as "revealed masonry," or "celestial masonry." And why no one, that means no one, has found any evidence of it going back any further than 16th century at most, with the rites and rituals that most reflect mormon temple ceremonies traced back to the mid 1700s.

They can't get away with the BS that mormon temples have anything to do with Jewish temples, let alone Solomon's temple, anymore. The temples are the mormon money machine. Nothing more. But I guess it's just to sacred to do an essay about. That "sacred and not secret" shitt has been a lifesaver for them.

As a former temple attending TBM and an active 32 degree Scottish Rite Mason, I would like to respond. You are correct in stating that the temple ceremony was a total rip-off of Masonry. However, it never incorporated any portion of the Scottish Rite. Smith copied everything from "Blue Lodge" Masonry (the first three degrees). He never went further than the third (Master Mason) degree.

I can't be fully open here since I am an active Mason and am bound by an oath of secrecy. That said, I will state that there is no question in my mind that, except for the bible portions (Garden of Eden, Peter, James and John, True Order of Prayer, etc.), the Mormon Temple Rites came directly from Freemasonry as you have stated.

For a number of years, Utah Masons would not allow Mormons to join since Freemasons have always felt Joseph Smith violated his Masonic Oaths by revealing them to non-masons which he clearly did.

As far as the history of Freemasonry, I have read several books, some by independent non-Mason scholars, giving credible evidence that Masonry was really an offshoot of the Knights Templar. In fact, there is reasonable evidence that the handshakes and tokens were instituted to identify well wishers to Knights Templars on the run somewhat similar to the system used to protect slaves fleeing from the South in the 1800's.

The true history of Masonry may never be openly told, but it can be found if someone knows where to look and will take the time to investigate. I will state that it did not originate in guilds as is popularly believed. Beyond that, I best not say more.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/17/2014 03:36PM by Templar.

Masonry is young, only going back so far as the Middle Ages and part of a test of mason apprentices' progress to journeymen, and the journeyman's progress to master. It was the later guild process that took it to a new brotherhood level, and all the Knights Templar stuff was, at best, worked into it. It is just as likely that the whole connection between Freemasonry and Knights Templar was just invention and taking hold among Freemasons and assuming a life of its own, much as the demonstrably fabricated Book of Mormon took hold among the Mormons. I imagine that it is a hard thing for some Freemasons not to believe in the more legendary side of their cause.

Even today, the masonic (lower-case M) emblems are in full use among common masons and stone cutters in Europe, having no association whatever with Freemasonry. Any business card of a common grave stone monument maker will have the characteristic compass and square (lacking the G) of a Freemason.

I do support Freemasonry, however, particularly Scottish Rite and Shriners for all the good work they do. For the Freemasons who don't have a particular charitable work to pursue, they at least offer a circle of friends and feeling of brotherhood, much like some sort of generic community church. From my experience on the outside, most seem to sponsor some sort of charitable mission. There is no difference in my eyes between this and any church that does the same. I don't see any need for the secrecy involved, and for my money, the secrecy is the reason that people don't trust the organization and so say many rude things about it.

Incidentally, the LDS church used the term "secrecy" in the endowment up until their changes in 1990. And a good illustration of how the older endowment corresponded more to the Blue Lodge inductions is found here at this ex-Mason site (I think--I'd like to check it and make sure, but it's not opening for me right now):

http://www.ephesians5-11.org/masonicritual/

It shows all the signs and tokens and penalties we used to know in the old pre-1990 LDS temple endowment ceremony, clear up to the "5 points of fellowship" (previously used to bring people through the veil). The 5 points of fellowship, based on the raising of the beaten and murdered mythical figure Hiram Abiff, was proof-positive that the LDS endowment ceremony was bunk because of the glaring error of assigning religious meaning to something that was, in fact, not ancient and was based on a rite surrounding a person who did not exist.

cludgie Wrote:
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"From my experience on the outside"

It's always interesting that non-Masons are so knowledgeable about Freemasonry. They are much like non-MO's who think they know what Mormonism is really about.

I stand by what I wrote: "The true history of Masonry may never be openly told, but it can be found if someone knows where to look and will take the time to investigate. I will state that it did not originate in guilds as is popularly believed."

BTW It doesn't directly trace back to Solomon's Temple either.

But non-Mormons DO know more about Mormonism than active Mormons do. Besides, an outsider might have a clearer view, an insight that is not clogged up by dependency or ingrained belief. This is certainly true in Mormonism, and I maintain that it could be true of Freemasonry. Keep in mind that I am not criticizing Freemasonry in any way.

Your line ("The true history of Masonry may never be openly told,...") is true. I do not dispute that. But the evidence that it started with guilds is overwhelming. There are also plenty of Freemasons who know and teach that, as well. You doubtless know that not all Freemasons pursue the mystic, quasi-religious side of Masonry.

I never said or implied that you were "criticizing Freemasonry in any way" to use your words.

I will not debate the historic beginnings of Freemasonry. I do note that you clearly have accepted the "it all started with the guilds" theory. That's your privilege. I'm just saying, don't assume this is all there is to it and will leave it at that.

I see this in much in the same way as Mormons who belief strongly in the "public version" of Mormon church history which is constantly put forth as factual. Those of us who have put forth the time and effort to learn the truth know that Mormon history is much different. In the case of Freemasonry, much of the "public version" of our history, has been told by non-Masons. Unlike the Mormons, what is accepted as Freemason history by the public at large doesn't really matter all that much.

As you may be aware, Freemasonry does not respond to challenges or publish half-true essays. Formal responses would be impossible since there is no person or body that represents or "speaks for Masonry" anywhere in the world. Almost everything, other than being granted a valid charter, occurs at the lodge level by undisclosed vote of all present Master Masons.

Any changes in California Freemasonry can only instituted after majority approval by chosen representatives from each lodge. Even the Grand Master is only empowered to recommend changes. All proposed changes are published well in advance of formal consideration so members may make their feelings known to their lodge representatives before voting.

Templar, like you I am also a Mason. Active in my Blue Lodge and also a 32nd degree SRM. Most of our Masons are good Christian folk.

I do agree with everything you have said here to be correct.

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I just found out (from a journalist from The Salt Lake Tribune) that "The Proclamation on the Family" was actually written by a law professor at BYU. Hadn't heard that before.

If they are smart they will deep-six the idea of doing one on women's roles in the church. No matter what they say plenty of Mormons will be truly pissed. There is simply no way to touch that subject without either alienating the ultra-TBMs or coming across like the chauvinistic patriarchs that they are. They are in such a hole on women's issues that they really need to stop digging.