Challenging Salt Lake: Is the Mormon Church losing its battle with the internet?

“Some things that are true are not very useful.” So spoke Boyd K. Packer, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, in 1981.

Today Mr Packer, now President of the Quorum and next in line to the leadership of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, may be regretting his words.

An article on the front page of the New York Times on July 20^th featured the story of Hans Mattson, until recently an Area Authority, a national leader, in the Swedish LDS (also known as ‘Mormon’) community.

Mr Mattson was born into the church, served a mission as a teenager and worked his way up the leadership ladder.

However it was dealing with the questions of church members that led to his having doubts about the religion he was devoted to.

Topics included the controversial banning of the Mormon priesthood for black men until 1978 and issues surrounding the founder of Mormonism, Joseph Smith Jr.

Smith, who Mormons believe to be a prophet, claimed to have discovered a lost history of Jewish peoples in America which he published as the Book of Mormon.

Latter-day Saints also say Smith translated a text now recognised as an Ancient Egyptian funerary text, saying it was the original writings of the biblical patriarch Abraham.

Joseph also instituted the practice of polygamy, marrying girls as young as 14 and even the wives of fellow leaders in his organisation.

Mr Mattson, speaking to the New York Times, admits that all this issues are worrying, calling the final on in particular, “kind of shocking.”

Reportedly a senior apostle, who Mr Mattson refuses to identify, came to Sweden to talk to those with concerns.

After that meeting, two senior church historians, Elders Marlin K. Jensen and Richard E. Turley Jr, tried to deal with the questions raised by Swedish members.

Now, with the leaking of the manuscript of that meeting onto the internet, along with Mr Mattson’s recent recording of a podcast with the Mormon Stories website, the media is showing a renewed interest in the history of the church.

Critics allege that the version of history presented to the world by the church is sanitised or changed to suit the leadership in Salt Lake City, Utah, the home of the largest denomination of the LDS religion.

Richard Lyman Bushman, author of “Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling”, says that as a result many members simply aren’t aware of the polygamy issue.

Mr Bushman said: “You would be amazed at the number of Mormons who don’t think Joseph Smith practiced polygamy. It just wasn’t talked about. It was never mentioned in church periodicals. That was policy.”

Such awareness is now growing with members increasingly using the internet to research their history on non-church-approved websites.

Chatrooms on sites such as exmormon.org and postmormon.org allow current and former members to discuss topics of interest, such as the historical issues Mr Mattson encountered.

Such sites, along with mormonstories.org, which hosts scores of recorded interviews with current and former Mormons and run by John Dehlin, an active church member, allow information to come out and inform debate on topics that many members wouldn’t discuss face to face.

Mr Packer and his fellow apostles may fear the free flow of information now more than ever.

However, with the arrival of the internet, it is vital for the senior leadership to recognise that church members are discovering “not very useful” truths.

Without addressing the issues raised, they risk becoming increasingly separated from regular LDS church members.

Debate warmly encouraged

Make this boy sweat, make this boy gleam - the joys of the London Underground

The weather in London for the past few days has been incredible, especially for a blond-haired blue-eyed boy whose skin is essentially transparent. My Viking blood is good for ice, cold winds and the standard weather of the British summer - rain.

Two days ago the high was 30°C, yesterday it was 28°C.

Today it is expected to again be 28°C, with (oh joy!) a return to 30°C expected on Wednesday.

Oh dear.

It isn't just the heat though that makes a day tough. The busyness and humidity of the city, plus the general heavy fug you get in a city, means that it has been a real hard ask just to to get around. I've taken several breaks in air conditioned Starbucks' over the past few days!

All of which brings me to this morning, and the joy of negotiating the Tube with bags of possessions and the incredible warmth created by herding busy worker ants underground.

I started at Hornsey, a station that isn't part of the Tube network. The awning there is angled so as to ensure it provides no shade for anyone actually standing on the platform. If I had been a bee perched in the rafters I would have been fine, and no doubt Boris often checks the Hymenoptera opinion polls. However, as a human being in a suit I was forced to cower in a corner and grab any respite from the sun that I could.

The train arrived to take me to Finsbury Park, so, grabbing my possessions (a large bag, a rucksack and a suit bag), I leaped from my slither of shade and onto the waiting carriage. The journey began.

What bliss I felt as my sweaty discomfort was eased by the fresh air coming through the windows. The stop at Harringey was interminable, the lack of movement meaning my source of cold air was removed, but then we were off again, a father next to me quizzing his kids about their friends, the vast array of commuters buried in their iPads and books, looks of steely disinterest across many faces.

We reached Finsbury Park, the site of my transfer to the Victoria line and on to Victoria Station. Joining the scrum I escaped the train and bundled my way to the Oyster card touch pad, juggling my luggage around to make my way through and down the stairs.

TfL now requires passengers to touch in and out between all changes, so I carried out the same movements again 20 yards down the grimy corridor. Bag handle from right to left hand, hold the suit bag, put my ridiculously uncomfortable rucksack on the left shoulder and then reach into my back pocket for the blue wallet containing my Oyster. Its almost like a little dance.

Finsbury Park only has steps, so I lifted the large bag by the handle and wandered down and round the spiral staircase and on to the platform. A three minute wait and I was on the train that would get me to Victoria.

Tight doesn't describe it. Forced at Finsbury Park to lift my bag up, I got into the end of a carriage and found the immovable frame of an NHS IT man (it was sown into his shirt). He refused to budge, so I stood by the door and maneuvered my stuff towards him. I could really have done with the gap he was in, even if it was next to a door which carried a rather ominous sign - 'use during transit may result in death'.

Each stop was interminable, the flow of air again stopping as people cram in, desperate for some reason to join our sweaty and frustrated Victorian gang. Slowly we made our way under London, but only after a few extra stops the driver added in between platforms to ensure the tourists on board got the complete Tube experience. 

By now the IT guy was really sweating, drops falling off his cheek and on to the handle of my bag. I could have moved my stuff, but that would have sacrificed breathing, so I decided not to, only allowing my hand to find cover in my pocket. Glimmering bead joined glimmering bead as they dripped onto the black plastic, forming the strangest way of measuring time imaginable.

We continued on our journey and eventually the IT man left, giving me room to both move my bags and get a hit of the precious fresh air that flies through the window that makes up part of the door of death. 

Unfortunately for me the air was dry. As in DRY. Basically dust flying at you. Pretty much immediately my mouth did an impersonation of the Gobi Desert and I started coughing. Not wanting to appear rude I covered my mouth, thereby walloping myself in the face with the suit bag, but the coughing wouldn't stop. No doubt assuming I was a plague carrier, my fellow passengers moved away and suddenly I was blessed with a large amount of space.  New trick - fake plague at every possible opportunity.

We arrived at Victoria to discover a mass ruck. Normal rules of Tube life mean passengers are allowed off trains before others take their place. Evidently this requirement had been removed and replaced with Queensbury rules as we had to wrestle our way through to the steps. More steps. Steps at Hornsey, steps at Finsbury Park, now steps at Victoria. All with bags and surrounded by people rushing and sweating in every possible direction.

Finally I found an escalator, performed the Oyster card boogey one more time and was loose in Victoria Station. My reward? To walk out into hot and sweaty London. The Tube had been cramped and boiling, with IT man sweat falling on my stuff and dry air filling my lungs. Now, reaching the surface, things didn't get much better. Loud traffic added fumes to the hot and heavy air whilst pushy crowds wound their way around me and escaped into the metropolis. I trudged to the office, put my tie and jacket on and walked in. What a start to the day.

Now I freely admit that I sweat a lot. It is one of my (many) less attractive qualities. However, the Tube today was incredibly unpleasant. A smelly mess of people trudged their way to work without a smile but with faces glistening, all knowing that they had to spend the day in their damp clothes and all too aware that their journey home wouldn't be much different.

I have four more days in the capital and it doesn't look like the weather will be changing. I suspect most of my time will be spent sweating.

P.S. Do you understand the title of this post? I'm quite pleased with it (arrogant swagger)

Obama and the IRS ‘scandal’ you probably haven't heard of

Back in mid-May a story broke in the US that barely made ripples over here. It was soon pasted over by the exploits and revelations of Ed Snowden but it keeps coming back to the front page in the US every so often.

The revelation that broke was that the IRS (Internal Revenue Service, the US tax collectors) had been secretly targeting the tax-exempt status of several right-wing groups. With no evidence that they did the same to liberal groups, many conservative groups had to wait 13 months or more for their tax-exempt papers to be processed.

From March 2010 the IRS had been investigating the tax status of organisations which supported the so-called Tea Party movement, groups which considered themselves 'patriots' and who supported right-wing speakers such as Glenn Beck, a Fox News pundit who likes chalkboards.

Come late-2011 and the rumours about this reached Congress, with a Louisiana Congressman called Boustany asking questions and requesting info from the IRS Commissioner, Douglas Schulman.

By June 2012 various Congressional hearings had taken place where IRS officials denied the agency targeted conservative groups. Meanwhile behind the scenes guidelines were changed to widen the tax brackets under investigation to ease suspicions.

The entire process appears to have begun in Cincinnati in 2010 but become more widespread over the next year, perhaps due to concerns over the groups tax issues (the Democrat argument) or because of fears to do with the challenges these groups posed to Obama and co (the GOP's point of view).

Several other hiccups have sprung up on the way, especially over the issue of how many times the IRS Commissioner visited Obama (the difference between ‘visiting’ and ‘signing in’ became apparent). However most appear satisfied that the delays weren’t politically motivated and so the issue now seems to have gone away. Only Fox News, the bulwark of conservative America, still covers the story to any real extent and in turn fuels GOP attempts to discover something non-existently ominous in the IRS decision.

The issue has now past, and any suggestion that the President ordered a Federal agency to interfere with political opponents seems baseless. Obama must be relieved but still has many other problems to deal with, the major one again being Snowden’s leaks and the effect they are having on the US standing in the world (another blog post on that coming soon).

Imagine though if it had been true. We would be looking at a scandal similar to Watergate going on whilst the President had to deal with national security issues. Whilst not wishing ill-will on anyone, it would have been fascinating to see what would have happened as Obama enters the notorious ‘lame-duck’ period of a two-term Presidency.