{"id":2588,"date":"2010-12-14T10:38:09","date_gmt":"2010-12-14T16:38:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tonyjones\/?p=2588"},"modified":"2015-03-13T16:58:50","modified_gmt":"2015-03-13T21:58:50","slug":"do-you-hate-mormons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tonyjones\/2010\/12\/14\/do-you-hate-mormons\/","title":{"rendered":"Do You Hate Mormons?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Jana Riess<\/strong> tips us off to an interesting finding in the much-discussed tome, American Grace.\u00a0 She tells us that Mormons<\/a> are the third-most-hated religious group in America<\/a>.\u00a0 She sums up the findings: \u201cMormons like everyone else, while almost everyone else dislikes Mormons.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Jana doesn\u2019t stop there.\u00a0 She goes on to chide her co-religionists to change.\u00a0 For one thing, she has already asked the church to change its stance on homosexuality.\u00a0 Now she goes further:<\/p>\n

\n
it would help if we stopped regarding ourselves as the finest people on the planet. We ought to take a long, hard look at the fact that we voted our own group tops in this research. It\u2019s one thing to be proud of our religious group and its teachings, but it\u2019s another thing entirely to communicate, as many Mormons seem to, that we feel we have a monopoly on religious truth and strong families. A dose of humility is in order here.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
I\u2019ve been in communication with Jana recently over my own discomfort at Mormon history<\/a> and teaching, prodded by my recent reading of Jon Krakauer\u2019s Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith<\/em><\/a>, about the religious murder of a mother and child in 1984 by Dan and Ron Lafferty.\u00a0 It\u2019s a compelling and disturbing book, and I imagine it\u2019s all the more so to a member of the LDS Church<\/a>.\u00a0 It is also controversial, as Jana and others have told me.<\/div>\n
I\u2019ve read three Krakauer books this year, and I honestly think this is the weakest of the three \u2014 though it\u2019s a great read.\u00a0 It\u2019s simply too convenient of a connection to make from a violent, fundamentalist sect of a religion to the adherents of the mainstream religion.\u00a0 It\u2019s like saying that the Westboro Baptist Church idiots are representative of 2.1 billion Christians.\u00a0 Here\u2019s the New York Times<\/em><\/a> hesitation,<\/div>\n
\n
However valid Krakauer\u2019s linkage of past and present, it steepens an already formidable storytelling challenge. The contemporary parts of the book -skipping from the Lafferty case to sketches of two fundamentalist towns to a late-breaking chapter on Elizabeth Smart \u2014 can themselves disorient the reader with disparate detail. (From a strictly literary standpoint, polygamy\u2019s main downside is its creation of lots of characters with the same last name.) With long historical sections mixed in, the momentum dissipates further. Almost every section of the book is fascinating in its own right, and together the chapters make a rich picture, but there is little narrative synergy among them.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
In fact, this is the very thing that Terry Eagleton, the atheist-Marxist philosopher, accused \u201cDitchkins\u201d of doing in his excellent book, Reason, Faith, and Religion: Reflections on the God Debate<\/em><\/a> \u2014 I\u2019m currently listening to the lectures on which that book was based, available on iTunes U<\/a>.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

However, my strange discomfort with Mormonism continues.\u00a0 So Jana and I have talked about a blogalogue in the second half of 2011.\u00a0 Watch this space for more details\u2026<\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jana Riess tips us off to an interesting finding in the much-discussed tome, American Grace.\u00a0 She tells us that Mormons are the third-most-hated religious group in America.\u00a0 She sums up the findings: \u201cMormons like everyone else, while almost everyone else dislikes Mormons.\u201d But Jana doesn\u2019t stop there.\u00a0 She goes on to chide her co-religionists to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[323,350,445],"class_list":["post-2588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-christianity-in-america","tag-jana-riess","tag-jon-krakauer","tag-mormonism"],"yoast_head":"\nDo You Hate Mormons?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Jana Riess tips us off to an interesting finding in the much-discussed tome, American Grace.\u00a0 She tells us that 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