Reader responses regarding "The Mormons" PBS series

0 Comments | Deseret News (Salt Lake City), May 3, 2007

Why is it that people always want to hear the bad things they hear abut the church, but do not want to listen to our missionaries or read the Book of Mormon, which is, in fact, a second witness of Christ. They changed the logo of the church mainly because people thought we were not Christians. They want to make sure people know that we are, but they think we are not like other Christian religions. We teach of Christ, we follow his teachings, and we worship him according to the dictates of our own conscience; and we allow all men to do the same. You don't hear us saying bad things about other churches, because we believe we should all worship the Lord the way we understand we should. Not only that, the reformation set the stage for the Restoration.

Someone mentioned Joseph Smith's experience with plural marriage, and made it sound like he was only doing it for sexual reasons; whereas, very few people were asked to be involved in plural marriage. It was instated partly because more women than men joined the church, and the needed to give temporal support to women who had no husbands. It was never meant to be for any of the reasons they tried to say it was.

When they interview the woman who had been excommunicated, she said she had to go in with 15 men alone, that no one could go in with her; and I know for a fact that is NOT true. I attended a church court in support of a friend. She made them all look bad when these me all serve in the church without being paid; and they always pray about what to do in each individual case. I think she made it sound much worse than it was because she knew that is what some people want to hear.

How can anyone say that anyone else is not a Christian? That is a personal thing. We know that we are, and it doesn't really matter what other people think. The Lord knows what is in our hearts, and they do not. The Lord looks at the heart and not what people appear to be.

I guess that's enough for now. -- Carol H. West Jordan, UT

I was pleased with the *historic* accuracy. That is, I didn't find myself thinking "oh, that's misinformation" very often. Truly, it appears that Mrs. Whitney spent countless hours getting the facts straight.

I was displeased with her efforts on the ensuing commentaries. It seemed that the vast majority of historians and other commentators were at best sympathetic and at worst antagonistic towards the church; there appeared only a glimmer of proponent comments or analysis. Perhaps she was concerned about "spiritual bias" entering into a secular view of the church's history; however, this is a flawed perspective since it will yield a "secular bias", preventing people from understanding "Mormons" and "Mormonism", heavily spiritual topics, even if they get better information regarding the jots and tittles. Without the spiritual element, what does any of this documentary or even our history matter?

A good resource for learning about "The History of the Mormon Church", but not for learning about "The LDS Faith". -- Josh Cummings, Utah, USA