MORMON CIVIL WAR: THE CHRISTMAS TOSCANO DIALOGUES DAY 7 – JOSEPH SMITH: GOOD OR EVIL?

Mormon Civil War

Peter, Paul and Mormonism – The 12 Days of Christmas Toscano Dialogues

How do you solve a problem like Joseph Smith? Can a master manipulator, con artist, skilful storyteller, sexual predator, financial fraudster, and destroyer of printing presses also be a prophet of God? The Apologists for the LDS Church have had to concede enormous amounts of territory in recent decades to acknowledge his many flaws, but is their rather weak pleading to ‘give Brother Joseph a break’ by saying we cannot know his true motivations, and that ‘the past is a foreign country, they do things differently there’, really a good enough excuse? Surely God could have chosen someone much less conflicted and controversial than HIM for such an important job? Joseph was more successful than many religious founders, but he also sowed the landmines of Mormonism’s failure to become a world religion from the start. …BUT… he also gave us scriptures about change, accountability and democracy that could have neutralised a lot of that damage if his successors had applied them.

We grapple with it all… and we just about save ourselves from being blood-atoned by Magnificent Maven and the Feminist Mormon Housewives.