I get the feeling like this is in response to PR, if this is the intention they had all along, then why not say that to begin with? This is obviously information they'd not dared comment on before. I was just fighting with TBM I know on Facebook about it, and he used it to gaslight me, which is to make me feel like the church had never hidden this information before and it was my fault if I didn't know about it.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/12/2014 02:14PM by colddodger.
Plan B is now in effect, now that the essays are publicly out there. (Aka damage control)
Plan A was - quietly add the essays on lds dot org on the down low hoping that no one notices, but if TSCC is ever challenged, then the boys would be able to say 'we ain't hiding nothin', check out the essays on our own website'.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/12/2014 02:01PM by csuprovograd.
So the rest of us just weren't diligent. And when we learned these things, we were accused of reading anti-mormon literature. Or studying ourselves out of the church.
The church has 3 hours on Sunday, to teach whatever they want, plus seminary and institute classes. How is it that most members don't know this stuff?
Why didn't lesson manuals that spent a whole year on JS mention the wives other than Emma?
Dude, read some of the responses on other threads. Apparently people have been getting the response from TBMs that they'd always known this stuff, some even saying it's no big deal or that it's always been available. i can't believe it. Just like that, one of the biggest gaslights in recent Mormon history worked just like that. I have to assume that's why the essays were anonymous and without posting dates; this was their intent all along.
There has to be a way of finding out what dates each essay was posted. Otherwise the CULT will say that they've always been there even before the internet was invented.
Just like JS practiced polygamy BEFORE the angel "forced" it on him because he was such a great seer.
These people are full of shit. If they've known this stuff all along have they been teaching it to their primary classes? Have they been pointing out the misinformation in the church's own lesson manuals and artwork? I don't think so. If they've know if all along, then they're lying sacks of shit just like the top leadership.
I graduated from seminary and attended BYU. I took multiple church history classes. My D&C 2 class didn't make it to D&C 132. We just "ran out of time"...on purpose, I'm assuming. I should have been more diligent and read that garbage on my own. Susan Easton Black discussed the posthumous sealings to Joe and other details, but she never mentioned that Joe even had a second "wife".
If 99% of the membership don't know about these things, it's not that the members haven't been diligent in their study. They've been obedient to leadership that has told them to stick to the lesson manuals, etc... They've been studying the same half-truths and lies that the church has been pumping out OVER and OVER and OVER... Just because a few nutjobs studied this crap on their own and felt good about Joe being a creep, doesn't mean the church's history has always been an open book.
You're right... attending three hours of meetings for 30 years doesn't give you 30 years of doctrinal knowledge. It gives you one year of specific doctrinal information repeated 30 times!
Gaslighting or gas-lighting is a form of mental abuse in which false information is presented with the intent of making victims doubt their own memory, perception, and sanity.Instances may range simply from the denial by an abuser that previous abusive incidents ever occurred, up to the staging of bizarre events by the abuser with the intention of disorienting the victim.
The term owes its origin to the play Gas Light and its film adaptations, after which it was coined popularly.
"The fact that Joseph Smith had plural marriage relationships is not new, of course. Indeed, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints publicly asserted Joseph Smith's practice of polygamy—over a century and a half ago, especially in debate with other faith groups who traced their origin to Joseph Smith and who asserted that he did not practice plural marriage. But although polygamy was practiced among early Church leaders and members, its practice was officially discontinued more than 100 years ago." -
SOMEONE NEEDS TO ADDRESS WHY GORDO DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT THE POLYGAMY ON THE LARRY KING SHOW.
This goes to the comment on this post "So the rest of us just weren't diligent." - GORDO WASN'T DILIGENT OR HE WOULD HAVE KNOWN.
ANYBODY WHO KNOWS SOMEONE IN THE NEWS BUSINESS, Please have the CULT address this issue. Gordo's lack of knowledge as THE PROPHET!
As I recently posted in a separate thread, I think the whole effort is to put the material out there in a non-threatening, but apparent way. Members will have to buy and it and accept it or move on. Once they've bought it, they can't claim they were tricked.
Long term, it is more about turning the church into less of a church (99.99% theology free!) and more a lifestyle/mind set choice.
Mark is right. The Mormons already got rid of Christ, a long time ago.
Brigham Young has been phased out, and now maybe Joseph-and-Emma will disappear. The Mormons want to put their own spin on things, leaving out the most damaging details, or burying the facts in a heap of irrelevant factoids.
The Mormons remind me of a psychopath child (my brother) , confessing: "Billy and I like to play baseball, and sometimes I beat him up with the bat when we play, just because I want to, but I don't hit him very much, and lots of kids play baseball, especially after school, and we play until dinner time, but tonight Billy will be late for dinner because he is lying on the ground with blood on his face, but I'm washed and wearing clean clothes and on time for dinner, and I'm hungry and hope we are having hamburgers, cause that's my favorite, and maybe I'll help you with the dishes, I love you.
Billy: "If you call me a bully, I will consider that offensive."
"Plural marriage"? Why don't they call it "Polygamy." Why don't they call the MMM "mass-murder"? Why don't more people call Mormonism a CULT? It seems that everything is being glossed-over.
Yes, Hinckley is documented (on video) proof that a Mormon Prophet can be a slick liar! Not just JS and BY and the lying polygamous prophets--but a modern-day Prophet-of-God, in this dispensation!
Agreed, I believe in calling it as it is. JS was a child rapist, a regular rapist, and a complete slimy con man criminal. No reason to say otherwise.
If I was like the 15 I'd be saying things like: "He never murdered anyone at all. It wasn't his fault that other people (mostly young girls that he had screwed) murdered people for him. He was innocent." "He was just trying to be a rock star. Nobody understood him." "He acted like a racist some of the time but it was cause he thought black people were trying to rule the world. He called it Helter Skelter." Just think about it - had Charles Manson had this troop of people making his actions look OK, he would not be in prison now. I hope the point is made.
And for the record, YES I AM SAYING THAT JS IS AS BAD AS CHARLES MANSON! Slimy BUNCH OF F*CKERS. And YES Charles Manson thought he was GOD too. JS, Warren Jeffs, and Charles Manson are triplets IMO.
Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 11/12/2014 04:37PM by verilyverily.
It is true that a great deal of information on Joseph Smith's polygamy has been available to researchers for quite some time. However, the Church has been very careful to conceal this "meat" in its correlated materials since the last vestiges of polygamy were stamped out during the early 20th Century. Moreover, they have gone so far as to publish "carefully worded denials", like the example below.
William E. Berrett's "The Restored Church", was reviewed/approved by the Church Reading Committee and several apostles, and used in seminary classes during the 1960s/70s. My wife's copy was from 1973, and includes the following claim on page 181 that contradicts the Church's recent admission that monogamy was the ONLY legal form of marriage in Joseph Smith's day:
"For years after learning of the doctrine, through revelation from God, Joseph could not bring himself to practice it or to teach others to do so. The whole Anglo-Saxon training of the Church was opposed to Plural Marriage, although it had never been forbidden by either the State or Federal Constitution."
Another gem from "The Restored Church" that contradicts the Church's essay on the BoA, from page 99 in the chapter titled "The Glory of God is Intelligence":
"His most notable achievement was the development at Kirtland of a grammar for the Egyptian hieroglyphic form of writing. This was used by him, as well as divine aid, in translating ancient writings of the Patriarch Abraham, now published as the Book of Abraham in the Pearl of Great Price. This grammar was never published, and was perhaps never used by any one [sic] other than the Prophet. It was, however, the first Egyptian grammar in America and was developed entirely independent of Champollion's Egyptian Grammar. The latter, which is the basis for all modern scholarship on the subject, made its appearance in 1836, the result of thirty years of European study."
Thank you for your tidbits. Moving forward im gonna have to remind people that one year ago, they would have had me stoned for bringing up these issues in detail. Now, everyone knows we've always been at war with "East Asia." I can't believe the power the church has on the general psyche of the members. I'd never considered it until I stopped my regular doses of indoctrination.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/12/2014 04:46PM by colddodger.
I think that there is a bit of gaslighting going on here. If the church were being completely forthcoming, then they would admit that there had been some confusion and some incorrect statements in the past about Joseph Smith's polygamy. They would admit to claiming that it didn't happen, or downplaying it.
Instead of that, they are claiming that they have always taught that Joseph Smith had multiple wives and that we are weird for questioning it.
I think this was solely due to the launch of www.mormonessays.com.
One convenient place for all the essays that was being hosted by someone other than the church was a huge threat. They knew that for convenience sake many members would go to mormonessays.com to find all the essays in one place. They also know that mormonessays.com is going to track all changes to the essays moving forward. They also know that mormonessays.com has the ability to say whatever they want to say and that members will read it simply because they are going there out of convenience. They also knew that this gave them an opportunity to include language on the website that stated that this information has been available for a long time.
I hadn't thought about them editing the essays. I don't think the church ever would have bothered with the essays if they weren't hemorrhaging membership over it. The essays can be viewed as an admission of that. God, I just want my family to wake up and get out.