Mormon Heretic

I really miss my book club, but I am participating in the Stay LDS Book Club.  The first book that we have decided to read is Left to Tell by Immaculee Ilibagiza.  It is her story of the Rwandan Genocide.  I previously discussed the movie Hotel Rwanda, describing the events from Paul Russebagina’s point of view.  Immaculee has an incredibly inspiring story as well.  The book is intensely moving.

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I don’t ever think I’ve done 2 posts in one day before, but I want to address this other issue that we have been discussing in the Strangite post.  I’d like to discuss both Biblical and Book of Mormon archaeology.  Most people believe the Bible is on solid archaeological footing, but that isn’t actually true.  Many books have questionable authorship, and many places remain unidentified.  In a previous post, I discussed Questions about the Exodus: there isn’t a shred of evidence that it actually happened.  During Passover celebrations in 2001, Rabbi David Wolpe created international headlines in Israel by proclaiming to his Jewish congregation in Los Angeles, “the way the Bible describes the Exodus is not the way it happened, if it happened at all.”

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Bishop Rick has mentioned a few times that he believes the apostle Paul invented Christianity, so I thought I’d create a post to address this specific issue.  In my previous post on the Strangite Church, he said in a few comments,

I believe Paul invented Christianity, not Jesus. There are only a couple of last minute, thrown-in scriptures that Christians use to claim Jesus intended to start a new church, but the overwhelming evidence points to Jesus merely trying to reform Judaism.

He went on to say, Read more…

Ok, I know people like to promote blogs on Facebook.  I like my relative anonymity, so I created a Facebook page, and sent out a bunch or invitations.  For some reason, it didn’t like my name, so I originally set it up as “Mo Her”, and then changed it to “Mo Heretc”.  So, I’ll friend anybody there if you would like to friend me on Facebook.  If you have any pointers for promoting on Facebook, I’m all ears.

As I mentioned previously, I really enjoyed the Strangite session of the Mormon History Association meetings a few weeks ago.  Vickie Speek, John Hamer, and Mike Karpowicz gave some fascinating presentations on this little known group.  Following the session, they answered additional questions, and I thought it would be interesting to provide a transcript of the Q&A session.  But before I get into the transcript, I should tell you a brief history of the Strangite Church.

James Strang, prophet of the Strangite Church

James Strang was baptized into the church just a few months before Joseph Smith was killed in 1844.  He said he had a letter from Joseph proclaiming that Strang was to lead the church.  The letter is currently owned by Yale University; in the past few decades, they have declared Joseph Smith’s signature on the letter a forgery.

Evidently Strang was a dynamic leader.   Read more…

I received a surprising resurgence of activity from one of my oldest posts, Book of Mormon Geography.  In the latest discussion, Bishop Rick asked, “Why would HF send a revelation that would not be understood?”  Then he clarified it further stating, “Why would HF send a revelation to HIS “Prophet” (as opposed to any “prophet”) that would not be understood by HIS “Prophet”?”

This seems to be a common theme in the Bloggernacle–but not just here.  Other religions have similar questions, and even agnostics/atheists ask similar questions.  In the book Powerful Prayers, Larry King asks Rabbi Irwin Katsof, “Why can’t God speak English?”  Let me quote from the book for a moment.  From page 163, Read more…

One of my big passions is sports, though I don’t talk about it much on this blog.  John Wooden died Friday night at the age of 99.  He was an amazing coach and an amazing man.  One person said Wooden was “more like a Methodist minister than a basketball coach.”  ESPN put together a tribute of former players, coaches, and announcers who know him well.

Wooden led UCLA to 7 straight National Championships, an 88 game winning streak, 38 straight NCAA tournament wins, and 10 NCAA championships in 12 years, before retiring in 1975.  He was known as the Wizard of Westwood (a nickname he didn’t like.)  Here are some excerpts from from that piece.  (I’m not sure everyone that was interviewed, so if you know, please tell me and I’ll update the post.) Read more…