Sounds like just the man we need as president… if we decide to become a totalitarian regime.

I am also familiar with Quinn, and have drawn different conclusions. I also employ logic and critical thinking. I have to say that the intellectual carelessness you’ve displayed fails to convince me of your rigor.

You can resign after excommunication. The mechanisms are completely different, and have divergent goals. And of course I am clear that you left rather than being excommunicated (since I read carefully).

The Smithmas Google search is a joke — 8 relevant results in the first 60? All of them childish in their critiques? One small display in one building at BYU in 1996 suddenly invalidates massive, church-wide traditional Nativities, and the ones in most homes? This is your idea of rigor?

I’m suddenly clear on why I’d never heard the term — it is only current among those who divert themselves with anti-Mormon bigotry. The concept is almost unrecognizable to practicing LDS members.

I suppose it’s unacceptable that the President of the Church should give a talk on Joseph Smith’s birthday (Dec. 23) about his contributions. Once.

Unimpressive.

By the way — Ability’s attack would have been ad hominem if and only if it linked the validity of your statement to your personal characteristics. Ability (inappropriately) simply attacked you.

Leaving the thread. Heat > light here, and I need to stop ignoring this room full of PhDs.

For clarification for those who believe the only reason people leave the Mormon Church is because of excommunication (read Prufrock and Ability) over 100,000 Mormons resign for a variety of reasons each year. Mine was because of the discovery that Joseph Smith believed he was a medium as reported in his mother’s writings. He also believed he was a necromancer and he, and his family believed in a wide variety of folk magic including magic tokens, rocks, and instruments. Much of Mormon doctrine is based on folk magic and gnosticism. This is all very well documented if you are willing to dig into the history. I am a logical, critical thinker and am basically embarrassed that I did not see through Mormonism sooner. I wanted nothing to do with a belief system based on these things. You cannot resign from Mormonism if you have been excommunicated. That should have been clear to the obvious Mormons who are attempting to discredit my posts. I was a member in good standing as was my wife and children until my resignation.

Since my departure my entire immediate family has left Mormonism. My wife and four adult children want nothing to do with Mormonism. One brother and three sisters want nothing to do with Mormonism. I sent a letter of resignation to Greg Dodge who manages resignations with his staff of 11 people (as of 2005). I did support my mother on a senior Mormon mission, because that is what she wanted to do and will die a Mormon. You can’t win them all. I know a former temple president, two former mission presidents, a former MTC president, a number of former stake presidents, former Bishops and other leaders who have come to the same conclusion as I have for similar reasons. I am not an isolated case.

As far as Smithmas, the BYU campus replaced the standard nativity scenes displayed on campus in 2005 with cabin scenes of the birth of Joseph Smith. It was his 200 birthday December 23, 2005. I personally felt it was disgusting. A simple Google will give you ample articles and citations of Smithmas.

This is a presumptuous statement, in every sense. There are indeed a number of people who do such things, but assuming that jhuston is one of them is not appropriate. @jhuston — it’s not ad hominem, in the strictest sense, but rather a personal attack (not designed to discredit your points tangentially by attacking you).

I prefer to discredit your points directly, and assume that you are a man of goodwill, guilty only of careless scholarship and overgeneralizations, and assign the deeply impolite use of material from the temple ceremony to anger at @Ability’s impertinence.

Also (to the audience) — this is the first time I have ever heard the term “Smithmas”. Just to be clear — Mormons don’t celebrate any such thing. The reverence we have for a prophet (of which there have been many) is quite different from the reverence we have for the Savior.

Many of you may not have a visceral understanding of this concept, since very little is sacred in our culture. It is, however, the privilege of all polite people to respect, if not revere, things that others consider holy.

“There exists no such oath in the LDS liturgy.”, meaning no oath that requires LDS members to put “his religion over everything else in the world.”

One covenants to bear any individual, personal sacrifice. Now, if LDS theology demanded that political leaders render strict obedience to ecclesiastical leaders, or that LDS doctrine superseded civil law, or that it was an LDS duty to stamp out other faiths, or to pass government funds to religious leaders… there’d be a problem. Good thing the inverse is true, right?

Your disaffection with the LDS church, it seems to me, is preventing you from thinking clearly about this topic. Just be aware of it — it’s a natural thing. Take the sanity test — do you really look upon Harry Reid, or Bill Marriott, or Jon Huntsman (who have all taken this same oath) as being potential traitors to other obligations they carry? Automatons in the hands of charismatic leaders?

I should bring your quote back in, here — you state, above, that you “question the loyalty of a president who has taken an oath to put his religion over everything else in the world.”

The oath you cite has no such implication, and its application is strictly personal. There exists no such oath in the LDS liturgy.

Prufrok, you are correct. It has been a number of years since I went through that. While both speeches were inflammatory, the Salt Sermon was delivered in June. Both were widely publicized.

The oath take by Romney took is as follows:
You and each of you covenant and promise before God, angels, and these witnesses at this altar, that you do accept the Law of Consecration as contained in, (The Officiator holds up a copy of the Doctrine and Covenants again.), the Doctrine and Covenants, in that you do consecrate yourselves, your time, talents, and everything with which the Lord has blessed you, or with which he may bless you, to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, for the building up of the Kingdom of God on the earth and for the establishment of Zion.

This is a little more than a simple promise.

Just curious. What sexual transgression did you commit in order to be excommunicated?