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posted by martyb on Tuesday October 04 2016, @12:04PM   Printer-friendly
from the I-see-what-they-did-there dept.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) is notoriously secretive about the inner workings of its ruling hierarchy, the First Presidency and Quorum of Twelve Apostles. With an estimated annual income in the billions and assets in the tens of billions, the church does not release financial statements to its members or the general public. The meetings and decision-making processes of the Mormon leaders are similarly undisclosed.

That changed Sunday when a group called Mormon Leaks posted more than a dozen videos to YouTube, containing briefing sessions with the hierarchy. The briefings were apparently recorded "live" and include candid comments and discussion from the apostles in attendance. The leak appeared to be timed to coincide with the church's semi-annual conference that took place over the weekend.

Ironically, one of the briefings discusses WikiLeaks and the possibility of a similar leak targeting the church, but the apostles shown in the video appear to more concerned about Chelsea (nee Bradley) Manning's sexuality than they are about threats to their own secrets.

One briefing that is particularly troubling was given by a former U.S. senator from Oregon, Gordon H. Smith. Smith, a member of the church, admits that he values obedience to the hierarchy and loyalty to the church more than he does his office. He also describes using his office and staff to gain political favors for the church, and justifies the Iraq War by claiming that it will allow Mormon missionaries access to Middle Eastern nations. At one point (around the 26 minute mark), Smith possibly reveals classified information to the group, or at least his willingness to do so.

The videos appear to come from the same whistle blower who leaked a trove of church documents on-line about a week ago. Those documents are here and the leaker has announced that many more are coming.


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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday October 04 2016, @10:28PM

    by bzipitidoo (4388) on Tuesday October 04 2016, @10:28PM (#410377) Journal

    I've spent most of my life in the Bible Belt, where I've seen a lot of that sort of hypocrisy first hand. Perhaps the Bible Belt is another planet.

    Do you not get out much? Check out the Prosperity Gospel. Maybe you've never heard of it. The basic idea is really worship of money, in Christian clothing. They preach that prosperity is a sign of divine favor. God loves you and will bless you with prosperity if you are virtuous enough. You can earn virtue through charitable donations. They boil it down to a real simple chant, which I've seen preached, "give and you shall receive". Give money and it will be given back to you and more, at some unspecified future date. Sound like karma with money. That this line of preaching can so easily be totally self-serving for the preachers somehow goes unmentioned. Naturally, the preachers not only aren't poor, they are expected to flaunt their prosperity, to show that God has smiled upon them. Just have to flaunt it delicately. Instead if it being crass and greedy to drive around in an expensive luxury automobile purchased on the backs of poverty stricken followers, they've managed to pervert such acts into virtues. It's brilliantly evil. One of the biggest names in this is Joel Osteen. I don't know about his car, but his home is a $10.5 million mansion. I've watched a few of his sermons. The guy is all charm and smarm.

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  • (Score: 1) by lcall on Tuesday October 04 2016, @11:11PM

    by lcall (4611) on Tuesday October 04 2016, @11:11PM (#410392)

    Hmm. I wouldn't dare claim that what every religionist does is always good. I don't want to slam others. But I can say what I've seen and experienced in the Christianity that I am regularly taught (a very unofficial name; remembering that out of almost 17 million there are going to be oddballs, and we all are humans, have faults and should keep trying to improve), not to worship leaders of course, but seen & experienced enough that I want to learn to live the teachings better every day, because of peace in this life and eternal life in the world to come. I've got health problems. Family challenges. Financial uncertainties. But I'm learning, going forward, and it will be OK and life is good. I'm not giving up, because I'm happy and I believe it and I see real progress in the things that matter most to me, and will keep working on all of it.

    I understand that others in other churches have seen or heard things that turn them off. But Christ is not an individual flawed person, nor a God of confusion. We believe he has restored the authority that was lost when the original apostles died, to act in His name, and that He directs His Church today, in preparation for His 2nd coming, and that it will not fail. There's the "stone cut out of the mountain" metaphor in Daniel that eventually filled the whole earth, which represents His kingdom in the last days. Small now, and there will be challenges, but I'm really glad, because things are good. Hard sometimes, but good.

    • (Score: 1) by lcall on Tuesday October 04 2016, @11:19PM

      by lcall (4611) on Tuesday October 04 2016, @11:19PM (#410398)

      (oops: I had used the word Mormonism which is what I meant by "unofficial name", but then edited it out.)

      • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 05 2016, @12:13AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 05 2016, @12:13AM (#410409)

        the Christianity that I am regularly taught

        Sorry, but if you are Mormon, none of what you are taught is really Christianity. It actually is a custom fork of the Temple of the Golden Dawn religion that Joe Smith dabbled in when he was young. The Jesus stuff was crufted on in a failed attempt to get people to stop hating mormons so much.

        • (Score: 1) by lcall on Wednesday October 05 2016, @12:24AM

          by lcall (4611) on Wednesday October 05 2016, @12:24AM (#410412)

          We believe in following Jesus Christ, according to the teachings of the Bible, Book of Mormon, and authoritative living prophets. But not the Nicene creed. From there, people disagree on terminology. Sometimes others say that to be Christian you have to agree with the Nicene creed etc., but we think the creed disagrees with biblical Christianity. We believe that ancient prophets brought teachings very specific to their times (like Isaiah advising the king about alliances, or Noah telling the people to board the ark), and that the living ones similarly bring counsel specific to our times, which counsel we very much need, just as the ancients did.

  • (Score: 1) by lcall on Wednesday October 05 2016, @05:12PM

    by lcall (4611) on Wednesday October 05 2016, @05:12PM (#410716)

    Fwiw I finally tried to answer this a little better as far as Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' businesses go, might not be adequate for you but is in 4 bullets at this part of the discussion:
    https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=15830&threshold=0&commentsort=0&mode=improvedthreaded&pid=410465#410618 [soylentnews.org]

    • (Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday October 06 2016, @05:49PM

      by bzipitidoo (4388) on Thursday October 06 2016, @05:49PM (#411175) Journal

      Trust not in princes. Psalm 146:3.

      Organized religions can have a great deal of power and influence. What do they do with it? Some of their activities are self-perpetuation, and that's okay. Some of it is good charitable work, and some is wasted on corruption of course. And then there is activity performed out of sincerely meant but wrong ideas and beliefs. Those range from the morals and ethics being doubtful and murky, possibly not wrong after all, to things we have hard science to tell us are definitely wrong. We know the Earth is far older than 10,000 years. We know Climate Change is real, caused by our CO2 emissions, and bad for everyone. We know the Earth is not flat nor the center of the solar system, galaxy, or the universe.

      Of shameful and telling episodes in Church history, the persecution of Galileo is one of the most prominent. That they were such fools as to want to try force to make the universe conform to their preconceived preferences that turned out to be utterly unimportant as well as wrong, stooping to censorship to muzzle all dissent, speaks very badly not just of the occupants of the church hierarchy at that time, but the whole idea of how the church operates. They were members of an organization that professed to know the ultimate truth, had such faith in their interpretations of writings they insisted were the Word of God, and no tradition of the sort of tolerance in the principle of Freedom of Speech, that it would have taken some extraordinary leaders to buck their ingrained tendencies and not persecute Galileo.

      Keep on asking whether the good that organization does outweighs the bad. We need some means of deciding what to do. Churches can provide guidance. However, it should be plain that they could benefit from guidance themselves, from listening better to outsiders. They're arrogant. They give guidance but won't take it. They ought to stop fighting Evolution and science. I've listened to Mormon missionaries heatedly tell me that we are not descended from monkeys. What does that matter to Jesus' messages of love, tolerance, charity, and humility? It doesn't, yet they got so wrapped up in that side issue. Clearly, they need better education and training. They made utter fools of themselves, and it was a sad sight. (I eventually realized that Evolution is not the whole of Creationists' problem, it's science itself.) Stop trying to cherry pick the science they like while dismissing the science they don't like. If they don't stop making asses of themselves, they may kill off their religion. Certainly Christianity is in decline, and I don't doubt that hard ass dogma is behind a lot of it, driving people away. One of the most baffling moves they've made is adopting climate change denial, pinning their religious belief on denying that we can affect the climate, insisting that it is in God's hands.

      Trust not in princes. Especially do not trust self-appointed princes like Jim Jones and David Koresh of Branch Davidian infamy. You can't ever check your critical thinking at the door.

      • (Score: 1) by lcall on Friday October 07 2016, @01:09PM

        by lcall (4611) on Friday October 07 2016, @01:09PM (#411465)

        You said: "You can't ever check your critical thinking at the door."
        We agree on that and much more.