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