I’ve received a number of (sometimes very foul) email, Facebook, and other challenges over the past few days — the Church’s semiannual general conference seems to enrage certain folks, judging from the fact that I’ve experienced similar spikes over past conference weekends, as well — calling me to account for the horrific evils that Mormonism regularly inflicts upon innocent people, who would be far better off if the religion, and perhaps indeed any religion, would just disappear.
I find such accusations genuinely puzzling, since, although I recognize that Latter-day Saints are as human as others are, my considerable experience with the Mormon community over many decades now and on all inhabited continents has convinced me that (even viewed apart from its supernatural claims) it’s a good community and, overwhelmingly, a force for good.
Here’s a horrific story — sadly, it’s from here in Utah, and, as if it could be any more terrible than it is, from Easter Sunday — in which . . . well, it seems to me, in which an excess of Mormonism wasn’t precisely the problem. Surely, the adults directly involved in this sad, sad episode might have behaved better (they couldn’t easily have behaved worse) had they been more under the influence of Church teachings:
There are genuine horrors in this world, and genuine causes for indignation. On the whole, it seems obvious to me, Mormonism can’t plausibly be ranked very high among them.
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