Mormanity Does Not Believe What He Preaches

Created: 13 September 2009
Last Updated: 13 September 2009

Being half apologist, half reformist, Mormanity often kills two birds with one stone. For example, he actively disavows the LDS religion ever claimed anything similar to the doctrine of infallibility. This serves the dual purpose of defending the religion and moderating it at the same time. Very effective.

That is why I was little surprised when I first read Mormanity’s treat of the Hofmann episode years ago. I half expected him to say that he did not kown whether the church leadership handle the whole affair on the up and up, but that it did not matter. After all the leadership is made up of fallible human beings just as Peter denied the Christ and Moses committed manslaughter. Mormanity’s resistance to take the episode at face value and insist that everything was done in good faith suggests that he may be uncomfortable with his own logical universe.

Mormanity preaches the reality that prophetic persons are as human as you and I. It is against our human nature to accept this, hence Mormanity emphasizes it. Why the diversion from his normal apologetic technique with regards to the Hofmann episode? My first hypothesis was that Mormanity was lacking in the details of the episode. After further communication and the latest update to his FQA, it is apparent that this is not the case.

Mormanity plays a game where he pretends the facts in this case are interpretable [add link]. This not so and the facts are very simple. Hinckley secretly purchased the Stowell Forgery and told no one (NO ONE) about it until Hofmann broke the secrecy. This is the very definition of suppression, case closed. I could go on with how Hinckley denied even knowing Hofmann and Christensen at a press conference, all of which Turley defends in his book Victims. One of the more interesting ones is when Turley admits that police investigations of phone records indicated that Hofmann had called Hinckley’s private line, but there is no prove that he actually talked to Hinckley.

In the end Mormanity admits that he lacked objectivity [add link], but justifies it by claiming no one is objective and implies that I sifted out Turley’s facts from my analysis. To his frustration I was able to prove this was not the case [add link]. Mormanity frequently preaches that all religious leaders (except for Christ) are falliable, but by insisting that LDS leaders acted in good faith during the Hofmann episode he demonstrates an inconsistency. He shows that he feels that it might be unacceptable for the LDS leadership to have acted in less than a good faith manner with regards to the Hofmann episode. Why if all relgious leaders are falliable? Does he no believe what he preaches?