(originally posted by Steve Benson, RfM, 6 April 2013)

How my former stake president--now as a General Authority--tried to bring me back into the fold . . . from Nigeria.

My last stake president (before I chose to bolt the cult) warned me prior to me resigning my membership that I was under the influence of Satan and would eventually be abandoned like Korihor. He continued his attempts to bring me back to the Mormon pack by contacting me even after I had left the Mormon Cult.

He was by that time a General Authority, assigned as a Seventy to Africa, when he emailed and phoned me out of the blue, expressing a desire that we to get together over the holidays and have a friendly chat.

He suggested we meet at his home when he was stateside, for a closed-door visit in his office. When I told him I didn't want to meet in his home office, he suggested that he come over to my home. I wasn't keen on that idea, either. Nonetheless, I was polite but found the whole invitation pretty damn weird.

These Mormons never let up.

The fellow's name was Craig Cardon. Not only had he been my stake president, he had before that stint been my brother's mission president in Rome, Italy, where Mike served as one of his mission assistants.

Here's the announcement of his hierarchal appointment: http://www.lds.org/church/leader/craig-a-cardon?lang=eng


By way of background on the pattern and manner of his intrusive and abusive tactics designed to both "recover" and rein me in for the Lord, when Cardon was my stake president I had privately expressed to him that I was having increasing personal difficulties in accepting the purported truthfulness of the doctrines of Mormonism.

He subsequently invited me to his home where, during the course of our one-on-one conversations in his persoal office spanning a total period of several hours, I informed him that I had lost my faith in Mormonism. I still, however, was "active" in the LDS Church, attending my meetings with due diligence, hoping against hope that my testimony could somehow be revived--despite the mounting evidence I was accumlating through my own persistent research and study that the Mormon Cult was factually fraudulent and morally bankrupt.

As my confidence in Mormonism was steadily crumbling, I had become publicly critical in my editorial cartoons of the LDS Cult's denial of the priesthood to women. Cardon had seen my commentary and wrote me telling me to desist in such criticism. He ended up combining that directive with a veiled threat to "out" me as a non-believer, reminding me that while I had privately confided to him that I had lost my testimony, I was still describing myself as being "active" (which was true; I was actively going through the motions but my faith was in shambles, a situation not uncommon among those who are in the personal and private throes of dealing with the dissolution of their religious belief).

I felt the heavy-handed and clumsy pressure mounting from Cardon. My suspicions of his efforts to bring me to heel were heightened one evening, in particular, when I attended a local stake priesthood meeting.

I entered the building, where I was confronted with flyers that were being passed out prior to the opening of the meeting identifying me by name as being in opposition to the Mormon Church and, as proof, citing scripture from the D&C to back up the charge. I later asked Cardon if he was aware of these flyers being distributed and if he had approved of their distribution. He vehemently denied any personal knowledge or support of that activity and seemed quite offended by the suggestion that he had been involved in any way.

I was, however, increasingly concluding that I needed to up my guard against him.

Scroll forward. I wouldn't be surprised if by contacting me years later, Cardon may have subconsciously felt guilty about wasting his life in Mormonism and therefore wanted to "bring me around" so that he could feel better about himself. (I mean, for gawds sake, he called me from Nigeria). If it wasn't that, he may simply have been suffering from the basic delusionary notion that Mormonism is "true" and about my need, therefore, to re-embrace it for my own mortal happiness and eternal well-being.

After exchanges by both email and phone, the contact was over--given that I apparently didn't give him hope for "closing the sale."

I do recall, though, how he said he enjoyed the tribal costumes and the culture of Nigeria.

As I said, it bordered on the bizarre.

I later saw Cardon at a family event in Utah to which he had been invited. He was smiling and pleasant enough during our brief interaction but it was like talking to a Ken doll who you felt you couldn't trust (stiff and plastic with no real light in the eyes).

Cardon was also a ZL in my mission. I had to do splits with him a few times. He was tall and good-looking, and because of his family's money, could afford the best Italian suits. So he looked like a million bucks, and the girls were interested. It was fun to hang with him for all the girls that flocked around.

Conversely, one of his cousins was there, too, and there was nothing good-looking about him. Back home in Central Washington, seemingly half the dentists, podiatrists, and internists are Cardons. It seems that Craig et al. all became things like mission presidents and 70s. Are they all that powerful?

(We had Malans on our mission, too, the other family of former Waldensians who converted to Mormonism in the 1800s and had settled in Utah. They used to send the Cardons and Malans all to northern Italy, where they'd often meet extended family members.)

Wow. Can you imagine entering a church to find flyers being distributed that were anti-YOU? That is BIZARRE!

This story and Bruce's remind me of arranged marriages that merge two wealthy families. Yeah, they don't expect you to be in love and you can even be unfaithful, but DON'T DO IT PUBLICLY or the family business's stocks will fall.