Fighting Mormonism in Utah

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A divorce, death threats, and dogged persistence.

The Great Salt Lake is dead. From the air, it appears green and stagnant; no trees grow on its saline shores. But only miles away from the lake, life is thriving. There, on the north side of Salt Lake City, Utah, stands the headquarters of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints—the Mormons.

It is one of the wealthiest churches in the nation, with estimates of an annual income of up to $1.2 billion. (That estimate was made by the Associated Press in 1976. The church will neither release such figures nor comment on the AP estimate.) It owns radio and television stations, a computer firm, department stores, clothing mills, and insurance companies.

Of the major U.S. churches, the Mormon church is easily the fastest growing. In 1980 it baptized people at almost twice the rate of the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

The Mormons now have some 30,000 missionaries in 83 countries. The missionary impetus has helped the church blossom into a religious power. It began the twentieth century with only 250,000 members, gaining a million by 1950, doubling to 2 million by 1964, and more than doubling again to reach today’s 5 million. Another measure of the startling growth is the building of temples, special edifices in which important Mormon rituals (above and beyond ordinary church services) are enacted. It took the church 150 years to establish 20 temples. In 1981, 6 more were under construction and plans were announced to build another 15.

The history of Mormonism is a history of pioneering. Early Mormons were persecuted in three states before Brigham Young led them into a desert valley surrounded by the Rocky Mountains and uttered his now famous words: “This is the place.” Salt Lake City is today a comfortable community of about 600,000. Utah is three-quarters Mormon.

Twentieth-century Utah has pioneers of a different sort. They are ex-Mormons—evangelical Christians who consider Mormon doctrine heretical and who have dedicated their lives to winning Mormons away from the religious faith that defines the culture of the entire state.

Some of the anti-Mormonism crusaders keep a low profile. One is Jim Rogers, a 26-year-old who worked as a guard in the Utah State Prison until May. Converted to Mormonism at 16, Rogers turned to evangelical Christianity in late 1980. His wife, on the advice of a Mormon bishop, immediately divorced him. He has not seen her or his two children since January 1981. Rogers does not, in fact, know where his children and former wife are. He lost his prison job after he was transferred to a Mormon supervisor. Rogers, a quiet man who insists he is not bitter toward the church, offers four-day seminars on Mormonism. He may become an Assembly of God pastor.

Others on the stump against Mormonism are more visible and controversial. Ed Decker, the outspoken leader of Ex-Mormons for Jesus, has received numerous death threats. There was one attempt: two shots fired through Decker’s bedroom window. Decker’s group has grown consistently until more than 200 persons gathered in May for a conference. They encouraged and instructed one another in a task Christian churches often consider negativistic and unnecessary.

Still other ex-Mormons offer a charming, if eccentric, witness to Mormons. Thelma Geer dubs herself Granny Geer and—clad in an ankle-length skirt and pioneer’s sun bonnet—spreads tracts in Mormon country supermarkets. She has been seen at airports dropping tracts on suitcases as they circulate on the baggage conveyor. Indefatigable even at 66, Geer once lectured 37 times in 16 days. Her 72-year-old husband makes their livelihood on a 10-acre watermelon and canteloupe farm while she travels 240 days out of the year. Granny Geer admits she gets homesick for her “cute guy.” But, she reasons, “Better for us to be homesick for each other than Mormons to be homesick for heaven.” Jerald and Sandra Tanner are easily the most respected (and, to the Mormon church, the most threatening) ex-Mormons. They live in Salt Lake City, only miles away from the Mormon citadel. Sandra is the great-great-granddaughter of Brigham Young, the nineteenth-century Mormon leader second in importance only to founder Joseph Smith.

Jerald’s family heritage is also thoroughly Mormon. The Tanners met, married, and turned away from the church of their childhood in the late 1950s. Starting with a modest mimeographed effort to convince their families Mormonism was a fraud, the Tanners have written 30 books alleging flaws in Mormon history, archaeology, and Scripture. Their masterwork is the 600-page behemoth Mormonism—Shadow or Reality? which has the bulk of a metropolitan telephone book.

The Tanners not only write, but also print, bind, and distribute their books. The sheer size and unrelenting detail of the books have prevented major publishers from publishing them (Moody Press has published a condensed version of Shadow or Reality). Thus the Tanners’ work—appearing between cardboard and plastic covers—hardly looks professional or slick. But even critics within Mormonism agree the Tanners have succeeded in accomplishing what they set out to do. “We wanted to build the ultimate case against Mormonism,” said Mrs. Tanner.

It is difficult to imagine a case being nearer “ultimate.” Shadow or Reality includes 38 chapters touching on almost every facet of the Mormon faith. It explores the practice of polygamy, temple ceremonies, and Mormon prophecy. Six pages are devoted to a meticulous listing of parallels between the King James Bible and Joseph Smith’s “new revelation,” the Book of Mormon. Sources are not only quoted, but the original documents are photocopied so the Mormon reader can see discrepancies for himself. The book pokes point after point into every nook and cranny of Mormon history the church ever wanted to forget.

Mormon critics do not believe the Tanners have come up with historical evidence that indisputably derails the church. Max Parkin, a Mormon historian, says the Tanners’ history is “pretty good—they have done their research.” Interpretation of history, however, is subjective, Parkin adds. He thinks the Tanner interpretation is “not nearly as reliable as their history.”

Parkin, in fact, is unafraid to share the Tanners’ work with Mormon students. “Ignorance hurts more than information,” he said. And Mormon students need not be threatened by alleged historical contradictions when they understand that Mormon theology is “progressive and developmental,” said Parkin.

The Tanners work and live in their home. Harassment, according to Mrs. Tanner, has been light. A silver cross was painted on the side of their home. There have been the predictable angry letters and phone calls. And somehow, the Federal Bureau of Investigation ended up with a file on the Tanners. The Tanners have gone to court to get an unexpurgated copy of the files. All they have learned thus far is that someone accused them of being communists. To that Mrs. Tanner replies, “We’re about as nonpolitical as you can get.”

Neither of the Tanners is a trained historian. They learned research by raw experience, a venture taken out of necessity. “When we first started studying Mormonism, we were dissatisfied with the quality of material on it,” Mrs. Tanner explains. Much of it was poorly researched and inaccurate. One book started a criticism of the Book of Mormon by presenting the book’s stories out of order. “That’s like starting a criticism of the Bible by saying it begins with Exodus,” she said.

The Tanners often get suppressed documents from administrators and educators who have lost their faith in Mormonism but do not leave it because of family and business ties. One disbeliever who has talked with the Tanners 18 years is a bishop. Another is on the church payroll and so fearful of being found associating with the Tanners that after six years, they still only know him as “Mr. X.” Some of the disenchanted Mormons feel guilt for staying in a church they do not believe in, Mrs. Tanner believes, and do their “silent missionary part” by letting the Tanners view suppressed documents.

Significant documents that have been “leaked” to the Tanners include diaries of founder Joseph Smith. The diaries feature apparently differing accounts of Smith’s first vision, a mystical encounter after which Smith considered himself a prophet of God. The Tanners also disclosed Smith’s 1831 “polygamy revelation,” a controversial document which suggested Mormon men marry Indian women to make their offspring “white and delightsome.”

Such lengths make critics feel the Tanners must either be bitter or making a great deal of money. The Tanners’ tax return for 1981 showed a net of $16,000. Mrs. Tanner can understand how someone might consider them angry: “You might think we’d have to be bitter to write about Mormonism for 23 years.” Yet she insists that she and her husband love Mormons. “If you really believed someone was going to hell, you couldn’t love them and let them continue on the wrong road,” she said. The couple has, in fact, thought about quitting and becoming missionaries in Africa. They have, instead, remained missionaries in Salt Lake City.

Missionaries to Africa are seeing that continent rapidly become Christianized. Although Mormonism is too financially entrenched ever to fall completely, Mrs. Tanner believes it is possible to lower the Mormon conversion rate to zero. To that end, the Tanners—and other concerned ex-Mormons—continue an unusual missionary endeavor on the Mormon “continent” of Utah.

RODNEY CLAPP in Alta, Utah

Mormons And Christ

How Christian are the Mormons? According to the early Mormons, not very. In Joseph Smith’s account of his first vision, all the “sects” of Christendom before Mormonism were misguided and their creeds an abomination in God’s sight. It was on a “beautiful clear day” in 1820 that the divine appeared to Smith in a “pillar of light” and told the young prophet not to join any of the established Christian churches. So Smith established his own.

Sorting out Mormon doctrine is no easy task: in addition to the Bible, Mormons look to the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and The Pearl of Great Price for doctrinal and ethical guidance.

Also, authoritative revelations continue to the present day (the most famous recent one being the 1978 revelation that blacks can become priests).

But a March 2 sermon by one of the church’s highest officials makes clear the current Mormon position on the central creedal matters of the Trinity, Christ’s deity, and man’s nature. Bruce McConkie, one of the church’s 12 apostles, delivered his sermon at Brigham Young University (BYU) in response to a student movement to develop a “personal relationship” with Jesus Christ.

McConkie told the BYU students that the Mormon church is “the Lord’s church, and it is led by the spirit of inspiration, and the practice of the church constitutes the interpretation of the Scripture.” He denounced the “creeds of Christendom” (the Apostles’ and Nicene creeds) as perfectly illustrating “what Lucifer wants so-called Christian people to believe about deity in order to be damned.”

McConkie attacked the teachings that God is spirit and triune, calling them “lies about God” that summarize the “chief and greatest heresy of Christendom.” He insisted that God the Father has a body of flesh and bones “and that he ordained the laws whereby we might advance and become like him.”

Jesus Christ is not to be worshipped, McConkie warned the students. “We worship the Father and him only and no one else,” he emphasized. Christ worships God the Father and seeks—like man—to become like the Father. In fact, Christ “worked out his own salvation by worshipping the Father.”

In McConkie’s view, seeking a “personal relationship with Christ … is both improper and perilous. I say perilous because this course, particularly in the lives of some who are spiritually immature, is a gospel hobby which creates an unwholesome holier-than-thou attitude.”

McConkie concludes by referring not only to the authority of the church, but by boasting that “it just may be that I have preached more sermons, taught more doctrine, and written more words about the Lord Jesus Christ than any man now living.”

The apostle’s sermon illustrates the continued cleaveage between orthodox Christianity and Mormonism. An overview of three primary Mormon beliefs:

• The Bible. Due to repeated translations, the Mormon church teaches, the Bible is inaccurate. It is sacred revelation, but is hindered by errors and improved on by the more recent holy books listed above.

• The Godhead. God the Father, Christ, and the Holy Spirit are three separate entities. God the Father is actually a man glorified. All Mormons will become gods (though men take precedence over women). An oft-quoted Mormon aphorism is: “As man now is, God once was; as God now is, man may become.” Christ was sexually born of God the Father and a heavenly mother, as was his brother who went astray, Satan.

• Christ’s atonement. Christ’s death on the cross was partially effective in saving the sinner. Good works are yet necessary. Article Three of the Mormon Articles of Faith says: “We believe that through the atonement of Christ, all mankind may be saved, by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the gospel.”

Conservative Presbyterian Groups Unite

What had never before been done, and what larger Presbyterian denominations have been trying to do for about four decades, was done in two years by two conservative Presbyterian bodies.

United in ceremonies at Grand Rapids, Michigan, last month were the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) and the Reformed Presbyterian Church-Evangelical Synod (RPCES). Their merger was described as the first straightforward mending of the division between Presbyterians of North and South since the Civil War year of 1861.

The more liberal branches of Presbyterianism were also nearing a merger agreement. The southern-based Presbyterian Church in the United States voted to join the northern United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A in mid-June. The latter group was to take up the matter at its convention in Hartford, Connecticut, late last month.

The PCA, founded in 1973 by former southern Presbyterians, in 1980 invited into its membership the entire membership of the RPCES, a denomination with a northern background. The final vote ratifying the unprecedented proposal came at the RPCES general synod two days before the PCA general assembly convened. The enlarged communion has more than 115,000 communicants in more than 700 congregations. It will be called the Presbyterian Church in America.

Before the week’s business began in the augmented assembly, commissioners (delegates) listened to a keynote address by the best-known minister in their denomination, Francis A. Schaeffer, who is a former moderator of one of the predecessor bodies of RPCES. Schaeffer called on the augmented body to take advantage of the “tremendous opportunity” that it now has to “help the whole … church” combat the slide in values around the world.

Another former moderator in the RPCES tradition, R. Laird Harris, was elected to preside over the PCA’S tenth general assembly. Harris was professor of Old Testament at the denomination’s Covenant Theological Seminary in Saint Louis for 25 years until his retirement last year. He is chairman of the translation committee for the New International Version of the Bible. Presenting the gavel to Harris was the retiring PCA moderator, layman Kenneth L. Ryskamp. The Miami lawyer and chairman of the board of Westminster Theological Seminary told the assembly it was a joy to welcome the RPCES with its leadership and its longer denominational history.

In addition to naming the moderator from the ranks of RPCES, the assembly also elected more than a dozen former RPCES men to begin service immediately on the committees governing PCA national agencies. In addition to these full members on the various denominational panels, there will also be advisory subcommittees of former RPCES members for the major PCA agencies during a transition period.

Getting the largest number of former RPCES members was PCA’S overseas arm, Mission to the World (MTW). Men serving on the board of World Presbyterian Missions, the RPCES overseas arm, were put in five of the seven Mission to the World slots to be filled this year.

Foreign missions has been a top priority in the programs of both uniting denominations. More than two-thirds of the 1983 budget of $11.5 million for national agencies is earmarked for overseas work. The total overseas missionary force of the enlarged church already numbers more than 325 and is expected to total 350 by the end of the year.

“Our combined ‘mission to the world’ represents the world’s largest agency for Presbyterian missionaries serving overseas,” MTW coordinator Paul McKaughan told the assembly. He explained that the nation’s two largest Presbyterian denominations now have about 300 missionaries each (down from a combined total of nearly 2,000 in “the golden era of Presbyterian missions” 30 years ago). The PCA executive noted that while those larger bodies experienced “accelerated atrophy,” the smaller conservative denominations were part of an almost unnoticed “quiet revolution” in missions.

Thousands Of Charismatic Christians Celebrate Pentecost

Pentecost at the end of May functions for most Europeans as Memorial Day does for Americans; it provides a three-day weekend to usher in summer. But this year nearly 20,000 Europeans converged on Strasbourg, France, to celebrate—Pentecost. They were charismatics from Roman Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox backgrounds, and from both Western and Eastern Europe.

Half of the participants were from France, but West Germany, Belgium, and Switzerland sent contingents of more than 1,000 each. The Finnish group of 230 travelled three days and nights by bus to attend.

“Pentecost over Europe” was a spectacular event, taxing the capacity of this city at Europe’s crossroads. (It is the capital of Alsace, which was German territory for a period before World War I and has the largest Protestant minority of any French city.) A third of the participants were lodged in hundreds of homes in adjacent parts of France and Germany (and the transportation system sometimes left conferees stranded in the countryside late at night). Some 30,000 gathered to hear Cardinal Leo Suenens at the closing rally in the soccer stadium. Strasbourg mayor Pierre Pflimlin declared it the largest crowd to gather in his city for any event.

The idea of such a broadly representative gathering was suggested in 1978 at a Brussels consultation of charismatic leaders by Welsh evangelist Thomas Roberts. Broached in the major church groupings, it won the approval of the Catholic bishop of Strasbourg, Leon-Arthur Elchinger, and of the presidents of the Lutheran and Reformed churches of Alsace. A planning committee was formed in 1980.

“Pentecost over Europe” was billed as European, charismatic, and ecumenical. It lived up to its promise in all three respects.

British Anglican pastor Michael Harper reminded the assembly that in 1900 two-thirds of all Christians lived in Europe, whereas today 7,600 Western Europeans leave the church every day. “People say that Europe is finished, that its days of decline will continue,” he said. “But I believe God is opening Europe.”

A Polish conferee told the gathering that the renewal does not stop at the West German border. He reported how Poles have discovered a spiritual freedom (in contrast to personal freedom) perhaps greater than that of their brothers in the West.

The event was charismatic with a flavor both European and Catholic. European formality assured that there were no Kathryn Kuhlman-style healing sessions nor thunderous prophecies characteristic of some U.S. conferences. Two-thirds of the participants and most of the organizers and speakers were Roman Catholics.

French Catholic monk Daniel Ange declared, “The charismatic movement is the first popular revival since the thirteenth century that has the full approval of the Catholic hierarchy.” On the other hand, it is being carefully monitored. At a press conference, a reporter asked Jesuit priest Bertrand Lepesant why so many French Jesuits are interested in the charismatic movement. Lepesant replied, “One of our gifts is that of discernment. We seek to determine what is of God.”

Thomas Roberts gave voice to the enthusiastic ecumenicity of the participants: “I was saved in the Welsh revival; I received a prophetic word to come to France; I was a Reformed pastor in Paris; then I served a Lutheran church; now I work with Catholics. I don’t know what church I belong to [deafening applause]!… Isn’t it wonderful?”

Bishop Elchinger called the charismatic renewal a “magnificent spiritual current,” but said it was only one current and that it needed solid doctrinal grounding to protect its followers from subjectivism and pride. He said he appreciated their obvious concern for the unity of the church. But, he cautioned, “That task of reconciliation is beyond your capabilities. For this is a charismatic conference, not a theological one.”

He then quoted Pope John Paul II: “The true ecumenical effort must not seek to evade the difficult tasks such as a convergence of doctrine and hastily try to create a sort of church of the Spirit, autonomous and separate from the visible church of Christ.”

Pentecost ’82 may have been the most ecumenical gathering since the Reformation. But barriers to ecumenicity remained. Planners had explored the feasibility of a single Communion service for all attenders. But Roman Catholic and Orthodox prohibitions prevented intercommunion, and separate services were celebrated at the same hour “in sorrow.”

German Roman Catholic theologian Heribert Muhlen led the assembly in praying for an “inner healing” of bitter memories, both individual and corporate, that are the fruit of European post-Reformation church history. The Strasbourg conference gave strong evidence that that process has begun.

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