Word: mormons
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Ezra Taft Benson had not appeared in public for two years. Toward the end, he could not leave his apartment and had to be fed by nasal tube. Yet he remained "Prophet, Seer and Revelator," the supreme authority of the Mormon Church until his death last week at the age of 94. A group of dark-suited apostles called the Council of the Twelve will gather this week in the central Temple in Salt Lake City, Utah, to "set apart" a new prophet from among themselves. If tradition is a guide, they will select the chief of the council...
...remains vibrant. Its sedulous missionary work has made what seemed to be a quintessentially American faith extraordinarily successful both at home and overseas. The church has nearly 9 million members, up from 5.6 million in 1984. Though a slight majority (4.6 million) live in the U.S. and Canada, the Mormon Church's biggest success story of the past decade is Latin America, where it claims 2.7 million believers. "One of the major themes of 20th century Mormonism has been accommodation," says Richard Bushman, a professor of history at Columbia University and a practicing Mormon. And by doing...
That faith is an exotic mixture of innovative Americana and unconventional Christianity. Indeed, while Mormon teachers speak increasingly of "Mormon Christianity," most Christians would blanch at the actual theology. Mormon history states that Joseph Smith founded the church in Fayette, New York, in 1830 after being directed by the angel Moroni to unearth a set of inscribed golden plates. These provided him with revelations that ancient Hebrews migrated to North America around 600 B.C. Later Jesus Christ, after his ministry in the Middle East, came to preach to these lost tribes of Israel in America. The tribes eventually split into...
...calling is in the home, not in the marketplace." That kind of male chauvinism has been challenged by feminists in the church. "It's an organization that can't find balance between men and women or between formal authority and individual conscience," says Maxine Hanks, a fifth-generation Mormon whose book Women & Authority: Re-Emerging Mormon Feminism claims women exercised priesthood powers in the 19th century when church followers were struggling to establish themselves in the Utah desert. "Contemporary Mormon women should reclaim their lost authority," she says. For holding such views, however, Hanks and other women have been excommunicated...
Another serious challenge comes from historians. David Wright was fired from Brigham Young University, which is run by the church, for his unpublished opinion that Joseph Smith, not ancient authors, wrote The Book of Mormon, the church's original scripture. Wright, who still professes belief in Smith as a prophet, now teaches at Brandeis University. Meanwhile, D. Michael Quinn resigned under pressure from B.Y.U. for publishing Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, which detailed Smith's involvement with folk magic and the occult before becoming the church's first prophet. Quinn had earlier published an article indicating that despite...