Mormon Manuscript Claims: Another Look

Three California researchers have suffered some setbacks in their attempt to prove that the Book of Mormon has an origin other than the one taught by the 3.8-million-member Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In June, they released the notarized statements of three handwriting analysts who had concluded from studies of photocopied material that twelve pages of the Book of Mormon manuscript were written by a minister-novelist who died in 1816 (see July 8 issue, page 32). Since this was eleven years before Mormon founder Joseph Smith claimed he dug up golden plates in New York containing the Book of Mormon in an ancient Egyptian language, the researchers reasoned that Smith was a fraud and that Mormonism’s foundations are spurious.

However, the handwriting experts qualified their conclusions, saying their findings could be made positive only after study of the original documents. In July, following national press exposure of their preliminary findings, the analysts were able to examine the originals, thanks to officials at Oberlin (Ohio) College and to Mormon leaders in Salt Lake City. The Mormons maintained that their holy book could withstand any challenge hurled at it.

Subsequently, analyst Henry Silver, 86, dropped out of the case without offering a final opinion. He had examined the Mormon manuscript but withdrew without seeing the novel manuscript at Oberlin. Obviously disturbed by all the controversy surrounding the case, Silver claimed he had been misrepresented in initial press accounts, that he had not been told at the outset that the Book of Mormon authorship was involved, and that Walter Martin—the person who had financed the research—had “a vendetta” against the Mormon church. (Martin, a teacher at Melodyland School of Theology in Anaheim, California, lectures and writes about non-Christian cults. He recently filed a defamation suit against the Mormon church.)

Silver is involved in another handwriting case involving the Mormon church. He is one of several analysts who have ruled that the so-called Mormon will of Howard E. Hughes was indeed written by Hughes.

Several other experts disagree with Silver on the will. One of them is William Kaye, the second of the three analysts hired by Martin and the three researchers. Kaye studied handwriting samples of the minister-novelist—Solomon Spalding (also Spaulding)—at Oberlin and the twelve Book of Mormon manuscript pages of First Nephi attributed by Mormon archivists to “an unidentified scribe.” Early last month he reported that the comparison he made “shows unquestionably” that the written materials “have all been executed by the same person.”

Two weeks later, the third expert, Howard C. Doulder, arrived at an opposite conclusion. The pages of the novel at Oberlin and the pages of the Book of Mormon manuscript were written, he said, by “different authors.” The highly respected analyst attributed similarities “to the writing style of that century.” The “unexplainable” writing and letter dissimilarities he found led him to conclude that Spalding “is not the author” of the disputed Book of Mormon pages, he said.

The researchers—Wayne L. Cowdrey, 31, Howard A. Davis, 33, and Donald R. Scales, 27—have written a book, Who Really Wrote the Book of Mormon? It was due off the press this month. Scales said it would include Doulder’s final opinion as well as his preliminary one based on study of the photocopies. It would also include everything the other two analysts had reported, he added. He pointed out that he and his colleagues had concluded that Spalding was “the true author of the majority of the Book of Mormon fully two years before we had any handwriting evidence, and our case is neither made nor broken on the basis of the handwriting question.”

Martin, who has worked closely with the three researchers, has maintained for years that much of the Book of Mormon is taken from Spalding’s writings.

Meanwhile, Mormon archivists have assembled a large amount of evidence—some of it impressive—to rebut the Spalding theory. They scored a coup of sorts when they discovered that a manuscript page from another Mormon book, Doctrine and Covenants, is apparently in the same handwriting as that of the “unidentified scribe” in the Book of Mormon manuscript. It is dated June, 1831—fifteen years after Spalding’s death.

The Mormons also published side-by-side photo reproductions showing words and letters from the various manuscript sources. The average layman can readily note the striking dissimilarities between Spalding’s specimens and the others.

The Spalding theory of the origin of the Book of Mormon arose in Joseph Smith’s lifetime. Its chief advocate was Philastus Hurlbut, who was excommunicated from the Mormon church in 1833. (Smith was shot to death by a mob in Illinois in 1844.) Hurlbut’s views were contained in a book published by Ohio newspaper editor Eber D. Howe in 1834. The book contained affidavits signed by eight persons, including Spalding’s wife and brother, suggesting that Smith had plagiarized Spalding’s work. The affidavits were similar in content and wording. This fact and other aspects, including the lack of hard evidence, have led a number of scholarly critics of Mormonism over the years to disavow the Spalding theory. At the same time, they reject Smith’s explanation of beginnings.

Mormons often point out that although many of Smith’s early colleagues either left the church in a huff or were excommunicated, none ever differed with his account of how the Book of Mormon was produced. (Smith dictated to associates his translation of the golden plates with the aid of “seer” stones in front of his eyes, according to church teaching.)

Among Mormonism’s critics are Jerald and Sandra Tanner, ex-Mormons who now operate a Salt Lake City publishing firm that specializes in anti-Mormon research. Tanner made a fresh study of the Spalding theory after the researchers’ claims were publicized, managed to accompany Kaye to the Mormon archives to examine manuscript pages and produced a book, Did Spalding write the Book of Mormon? The volume’s answer: no. Adding insult to injury, it contains some of the same photocopy reproductions of handwriting samples as the Cowdrey-Davis-Scales book to make its point, and it came on the market earlier.

Why do handwriting experts differ among themselves? And why do they sometimes reach conclusions that are contrary to what seems obvious to an ordinary person? Observers point out that “experts” can be found on both sides in most important court cases involving handwriting analysis. Often it is a case of one analyst emphasizing similarities and the other pointing out dissimilarities. And then one lawyer, looking on the dim side, suggests that the fee may sometimes be a factor: “You are told what you pay to hear.” Most analysts would deny such a suggestion as a vicious smear.

Whatever, everyone seems to agree that handwriting analysis is not an exact science.

Flood Relief

Clean-up efforts were still going on this month in the Kansas City, Missouri, area following the mid-September deluge that dumped fourteen inches of rain on the city in less than twenty-four hours. At least two dozen persons, including a Presbyterian minister were drowned, 1,200 were left homeless, and an estimated $30 million worth of damage was inflicted.

A number of churches suffered damage. Apparently hardest hit were Second Presbyterian Church and Village Presbyterian Church in suburban Prairie Mission, one of the largest Presbyterian churches in the country. Second sustained about $270,000 worth of damage, and Village pegged its losses at $60,000. Central United Methodist Church and several other churches suffered moderate damage. Leaders say most of the churches carried no flood insurance or reserve funds to cope with such a disaster. Volunteers are trying to salvage what they can, and flood relief drives have been launched.

Pastor Harold A. Thomas of Linwood United Church and his wife Joanne were returning home late on the night the flood struck. A wall of water disabled their car. Mrs. Thomas was saved by clinging to a tree but Thomas was swept away in the swirling water and mud. He was a leader in the local presbytery, which is affiliated with both the United and Southern Presbyterian denominations.

Nearly 400 persons were at a stewardship banquet at Alameda Plaza Hotel that was sponsored by First Nazarene Church when the storm hit. Guest speaker Earl Lee, pastor of First Nazarene Church in Pasadena, California, finished speaking, and a choir began its final number. Water from flooding Brush Creek suddenly swished into the ballroom, and hotel employees instructed everyone to go upstairs to the lobby. All got out safely, but some had to wade in waist-deep water to get to a stalled escalator and stairways, and dozens lost their autos to the flood. The depth later reached eight feet in the ballroom.

The Nazarene denominational headquarters also suffered flood damage, including the loss of some stored materials.

The Salvation Army fielded nine officers and some fifty volunteers, many of them Nazarene college students, to aid disaster workers and victims of the flood. Thousands of meals were served and temporary housing was provided for some victims.

Meanwhile, a report was released late last month summarizing church relief campaigns to aid the victims of the devastating flood that struck Johnstown, Pennsylvania, earlier this year. The report shows that nearly $1 million was raised by various churches and denominational agencies for the flood victims. The largest single gift—$283,000—came from the Roman Catholic diocese of Pittsburgh. A regional unit of the United Methodist Church gave $224,000. Major operations were mounted by the Salvation Army, Catholics, United Methodists, and other groups. Thousands of boxes of clothing and food were distributed, and the equivalent of about 3,500 days were donated by church volunteers in clean-up work.

Dismissed

In an important action that may or may not set a precedent, the U.S. Supreme Court last month let stand a ruling by a court in the state of Washington that teachers can be dismissed for being homosexuals. The high court declined to review the case of James Gaylord, 39, a social-studies teacher who taught at Tacoma high school for nearly thirteen years. A former student at the school told authorities in 1972 that Gaylord was a homosexual, and when a school official asked the teacher about it, he acknowledged that he was and was promptly fired. Officials explained that he was a “publicly known homosexual” and that he was therefore in violation of a school-board rule barring teachers who are “immoral.” Gaylord presently works for the American Federation of Teachers.

The Supreme Court’s action amounts to a refusal to become involved in the controversy over homosexual teachers, at least for now. It does not necessarily mean that the justices favor the firing of teachers because of their sexual orientation. But it does mean that public-school administrators do not have to worry about such dismissals until the court takes a more definitive role.

The action has evoked enraged outcries from gay-rights advocates, civil libertarians, and others. But it brought praise from singer Anita Bryant, an evangelical who has crusaded nationally against allowing homosexuals to teach. Said she: “Now I have greater hope that God has given America a space to repent and that this will slow down the forces that are attempting to destroy the foundation of this country—the family unit.” Rights of homosexual teachers have been upheld in recent court decisions in California, Maryland, Oregon, and Delaware, says a spokesman for the National Gay Task Force, a New York-based group. And several cities—including New York—have active professional organizations of homosexual teachers, according to press reports.

Here’s Life Update

Founder-president Bill Bright of Campus Crusade for Christ hopes to see the world reached for Christ by 1980. To help achieve that goal, he launched Here’s Life America in 1974, using Atlanta as a test city. Since that time, nearly 250,000 volunteer workers from about 15,000 churches have had a part in Here’s Life, according to a Campus Crusade spokesman. These workers reported contacts with almost eight million people through mid-June, of whom more than 532,000 made decisions for Christ, said the source. The campaign has been carried out in nearly 200 metropolitan areas in the United States so far, and efforts are now under way overseas, with 100 major cities targeted for a Here’s Life campaign by the end of this year. A follow-up phase on discipleship is meanwhile being pursued.

Here’s Life employs a media blitz to catch people’s attention. Millions of Americans are familiar with the “I Found It” slogan associated with the campaign. The slogan was coined by Bob Screen of the Russ Reid company of Pasadena, California, which handles Campus Crusade’s media strategy. Screen told religion writer Russell Chandler of the Los Angeles Times that the slogan popped into his mind while shaving one morning.

Bible bookstores say the demand for “I Found It” bumper stickers is still high. Some of Screen’s friends meanwhile have made him a special bumper sticker, but he told Chandler he hasn’t got the nerve to paste it on his car. It says: “I Thought Of It.”

World Outlook

A 1980 consultation on world evangelization was authorized at last month’s meeting of the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization (LCWE) in Montreal. David M. Howard, an executive with Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship and a former missionary in Latin America, was chosen to direct the event. The ten-day consultation is expected to bring together about 450 Christian leaders from all parts of the world, according to LCWE chairman Leighton Ford. It will be held in a Third World city, he said, mentioning Singapore and Nairobi, Kenya, as possible sites. Participants will evaluate what has happened since the 1974 evangelization congress in Lausanne, and they will set post-1980 priorities and strategy, stated Ford.

An LCWE subcommittee reported on plans for a worldwide day of prayer on Pentecost Sunday, May 14, 1978. Other reports indicated an ongoing explosive growth in evangelization around the world. Quebec, Indonesia, South Korea, the Solomon Islands, and Uganda were among the areas highlighted.

Expelled

A footnote of sorts was added last month to the unpleasant chapter of church history involving the recent schism in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS). John Tietjen (pronounced teejen), 48, one of the principals in the doctrinal controversy and power struggle that led to the schism, was expelled from the LCMS clergy roster and thus from membership in the denomination.

Tietjen had been president of Concordia Seminary in St. Louis for three years when conservatives, led by LCMS president J. A. O. Preus, launched a drive in 1972 to rid the school of alleged theological liberalism. This led to a showdown that was won by conservatives at the 1973 LCMS biennial convention in New Orleans. False teachings had indeed infiltrated Concordia, the delegates decided. A committee was appointed to deal with Tietjen and the faculty majority, who maintained they were being treated unfairly in the face of false charges. In 1974, Tietjen was suspended as president, charged with tolerating false doctrine in faculty ranks. In the uproar that ensued the majority of faculty members and students walked off campus in protest. They set up a “seminary in exile” and called it Seminex, a school that later became part of the breakaway movement and that now has Tietjen as president (current enrollment: 284).

Meanwhile, two LCMS clergymen had lodged a formal charge against Tietjen following the 1973 convention. They accused him of teaching false doctrine and of sheltering teachers who taught error. In 1975, Vice President Oscar Gerken of the Missouri District of the LCMS, who was responsible for deciding the case, ruled that Tietjen was not guilty of teaching false doctrine. Gerkens was less clear about other aspects, however. This opened the way for Tietjen’s fate to be placed directly in Preus’s hands.

Preus, wishing to avoid conflict-of-interest implications, appointed an LCMS vice president, Theodore Nickel, to handle the matter. Nickel suggested to Tietjen that he could be cleared if he would “withdraw or modify” certain statements deemed out of line with Scripture and the Lutheran Confessions. Tietjen rejected the charges of false doctrine but declined to discuss the issues. He explained that he had decided “not to participate further in the proceedings against me because they were a charade whose outcome of removing me from office and from the Synod had been predetermined by the president of the Synod.”

Nickel called Tietjen’s decision to refrain from discussion “regrettable.” In the absence of “written withdrawals or modifications of your challenged statements, there is no recourse except to sustain the charge made by your accusers,” stated Nickel. He held out a final offer: if Tietjen would appeal the ruling, his expulsion would become only a suspension, and the case would be handed to the LCMS court system. Again Tietjen declined to defend himself, and the expulsion order stood.

Campus Crunch

An eight-month-old controversy over whether religious teaching and worship should be allowed on the campus of the University of Missouri at Kansas City came to a head this month when attorney James M. Smart filed suit against the university’s prohibitions.

Smart represents members of Cornerstone, an independent Christian campus church. It has been an official campus organization since 1971 and met on campus without incident until it was denied use of university facilities last February, according to Clint Hall, an elder of the group.

At about the same time two other interdenominational Christian groups—Campus Crusade for Christ and Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship International (FGBMFI)—also were denied the right to continue meeting there.

The evictions were based on a policy made by the Board of Curators in 1972. It states: “No university buildings or grounds (except chapels as herein provided) may be used for purposes of religious worship or religious teaching by either student or non-student groups.… No regulations shall be interpreted to forbid the offering of prayer or other appropriate recognition of religion at public functions held on university facilities.” The policy also states that “regular chapels” on campus may be used for religious services “but not for regular recurring services of any groups.”

Bob Bond, who was Campus Crusade’s local university coordinator during the spring semester, said it was mostly due to the ban on their meetings that the decision was made to withdraw Crusade’s staff and suspend activities on the campus this fall.

Bob Bury, another Cornerstone elder, said at the beginning of the current semester that his group requested but was denied permission to meet on the university’s lawn in lieu of a building.

James Webb, president of the Kansas City Chapter of the FGBMFI, said his group does not plan to take legal action. He said members were annoyed by the inconvenience of having to relocate on short notice. “We were booked there all year,” he said, adding that they were given only five days notice last March to stop holding meetings on campus.

Gary Widmar, dean of students, said that prohibition of religious worship and teaching on campus was a “long-standing regulation” of the university in line with the doctrine of separation of church and state. The reason the offending groups were not suspended until early this year is that it was not known what was happening in their meetings, he said. “Once the content of their meetings was adjudged to be what any reasonable person would define as worship—reading the Scriptures and praying and that kind of stuff—at that point we had no choice but to say, ‘You are in violation of university regulations,’ ” he stated.

The Cornerstone suit charges that the university regulations violate the freedom of expression provision of the First Amendment. It asserts that the regulations are “unconstitutionally vague” because they permit prayer, which is generally considered to be a form of worship, but do not allow “an atmosphere of worship.” Other instances of alleged vagueness are also cited. Lawyer Smart says the rules go beyond separation of church and state requirements because they “deal with the question of what private individuals may do among themselves.”

The suit requests a permanent injunction to be issued to restrain anyone affiliated with the university from enforcing the regulations.

Similar regulations are being introduced or implemented at other campuses around the country, so the case is being followed with more than usual interest by school administrators and religious leaders outside of Kansas City.

MARY ALLISON

Teen-Age Faith

A whopping 95 per cent of American teen-agers believe in God or a universal spirit, according to the latest Gallup Youth Survey. And three out of four teen-agers believe in a “personal” God—one who observes an individual’s actions and rewards or punishes, the survey found.

Nearly 90 per cent of the teens surveyed said they pray, and 39 per cent said they pray “frequently.” (More than half of the older girls—ages 16, 17, and 18—reported they prayed frequently.) About half of the teen-agers polled said they give thanks to God aloud before meals.

The survey results were based on a sample of 1,035 teen-agers.

An earlier survey showed that about 70 per cent of American adults believe in a personal God.

Moon Trek: Many Enterprises

Although the Reverend Sun Myung Moon established his Unification Church in the United States in the mid-1960s, he and the church did not really “go public” in this country until 1974. By then the small group had accumulated a lot of money and holdings, and it had built up an impressive cash flow. The cash flow came largely from an army of members hustling donations door-to-door and on the streets. Hundreds of the young fund-raisers were Japanese who later left the country under the pressure of deportation proceedings but not before thousands of Americans were recruited to keep the money coming in (former “Moonies” say the average solicitor raises about $125 per day). They sell tea, a church newspaper, and fish. Much of the money has been used to increase the church’s holdings and to promote “Master” Moon and his doctrine of a latter-day, Korean-born messiah who will achieve political power over the entire world.

In the years since 1974, Moon and the church have attracted widespread press attention, the ire of many parents who “lost” their children to the unorthodox sect, and the keen interest of a congressional committee that is investigating among other things South Korean influence on American politics. There is speculation that Moon’s funding and strategy have come in part from the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA), but no hard evidence has been introduced to back up the charges. One top church official, Dan Fefferman, has been threatened with a contempt-of-Congress citation for refusing to answer questions about KCIA links with the church.

These developments hit the press last month:

• The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charged that the Diplomat National Bank in Washington, D.C., was secretly and fraudulently controlled from its beginning in 1975 by accused South Korean agent Tongson Park and Moon’s closest aide, Bo Hi Pak, a former Korean military attache based in Washington. No individual was to own more than 5 per cent of the bank’s shares, but the SEC alleges that Pak bought about 43 per cent of the bank’s stock through eighteen nominees for about $1.1 million. (Park, under indictment for conspiracy and bribery, bought 10 per cent, asserts the SEC.) The Unification Church accounted for 45 per cent of the bank’s checking-account deposits of $5.7 million and nearly one-fourth of the bank’s total deposits, says the SEC complaint. Reports of irregularities at the bank first surfaced more than a year ago, and the bank apparently has been undergoing reorganization to get things straightened out. Columnist Jack Anderson, one of the bank’s founding directors, was among those who resigned, and much of Pak’s stock was turned over to the bank for resale.

• Reporter Richard Halloran of the New York Times obtained a copy of the minutes of a 1973 meeting of top-level Unification Church officers who were planning a drive intended to prevent impeachment of then President Nixon. Moon was not at the meeting, according to Halloran’s story on the minutes, but church president Neil A. Salonen is quoted as telling the other fourteen participants that “Project Watergate” was a “direct priority from Master.” Church members later rallied publicly in support of Nixon in a well-publicized campaign. Halloran said the minutes do not show that orders for the drive came from the KCIA. Earlier, the House Subcommittee on International Organizations cited “reliable information” linking the KCIA to the drive, a charge denied by church officials. The minutes do show, however, that Moon hoped “to give an address to a joint session of Congress.”

• The Boston Globe reported that the church’s financial records show “many apparent discrepancies” and a lack of “satisfactory recordkeeping.” A church lawyer denies improprieties.

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