President Thomas S Monson – Summonsed to British Court for Fraud

Just  last night the Mormon Facebook world has gone crazy with the Mormon Think website releasing an article saying that Thomas S Monson President and Prophet of the LDS Church has been summonsed to British Courts on the allegations of fraud on the 14th of March this year, here are the summons letters. The Mormon Think article is well worth a look, particularly regarding some of the financial information it shares.

Stephen Bloor and Chris Ralph  are both British ex Mormons who have very publically left the Mormon Church in the last few years. Tom Phillips (still an LDS member) who seems to be organizing this also runs the Mormon Think website and is well known for his interview with John Dehlin where he disclosed many details about a secret Mormon Temple ritual, called the second anointing.

Just this morning I saw that the USA Today Website has an article on this as well, quashing some claims that this is just a Mormon Think creation. Understandably many people are saying that this will not go far, a well thought out comment on my facebook page said this:

Can’t see this reaching a real court. Magistrate Courts deal with low-end proceedings and legal matters. The order has been signed and passed on to a higher court where it will probably be thrown out, it may even get as high as Crown Court but I think a Judge will dismiss it.

Not that it wouldn’t please me to see this play-out in court but I think it is unlikely to happen. I agree with most of the points, but it will not be aired.

There are other laws protecting freedom of religion enshrined at European level. I think the Mormon Church will have plenty of grounds to use those to defend themselves. The cases against Scientology are different as they have not managed to convince all European juristrictions they are even a religion (think in Germany they are classed as a corporation). Mormonism is better protected in these regards.

The precedence set would mean a lot of Evangelical churches could face similar claims based on Science v Church Teaching. It would open the floodgates to hundreds of speculative cases against religious groups of all flavours by ex-members and secularist groups.

Whilst the case against the Mormon Church is bigger in the sense they teach things which totally historically and scientifically incorrect. The precedence set would mean other things which are dubious or difficult to defend in other religious groups would face public trial.

This will not happen.

Even if this ends up being the case, I still think this is going to be a very interesting situation to watch, its interesting how just recently LDS.org has had various articles dealing with many aspects of Mormon History and Belief. Some of which suggesting do not necessarily believe that the earth is 6000 years old, right before this summons came. As ever the LDS Church is excellent at public affairs, however it will be interesting to see how it responds to even more of its troubling history such as the Book of Abraham issue, being told to the public, even if nothing else that may be a good thing that comes from this.

More on this as it comes.

Expulsion from Mormonism: a journey of loyal dissent ~ by Chris Ralph

(Loyal, that is, to truth, truth being the fundamental of the gospel we once thought we had embraced as converts to the LDS church.)

Shortly before Easter I received a written invitation to meet with the local LDS Bishop and Stake President on Wednesday 25th April. I had not been attending church for three and a half years, and during that time had had just three fairly superficial exchanges with the bishop. Bishop Wiltshire is a caring, self-effacing man with little desire, I sense, to occupy that particular position of responsibility; he freely admits that he finds it challenging to deal with what he terms “intellectual matters”. By this he means the hard-to-explain anomalies in real LDS church history, which have caused me to re-evaluate my commitment to the church.

During the first of those visits Bishop Wiltshire rather apologetically explained that he was not prepared to discuss my concerns about LDS history, and felt he should warn me that if I shared whatever I had discovered with anyone outside of my immediate family, then I would likely be considered in apostasy, and might face church discipline. The second visit was really to interview my daughter, after which he briefly repeated his previous message to me. The third occasion followed our son’s tragic death in September 2010, when, as bishop, he dutifully dropped in to express his condolences. That period was a complete blur, and I only recall that he sat with us for a few minutes, not really knowing what to say.

So why, after so long, and so many missed opportunities to support us emotionally through our challenges and grief, did the local leadership now want me to go to see them? When I posed that question to them, I was answered that the purpose of the meeting would be to discuss “personal thoughts and feelings about… testimony, the Church and its teachings”. It appears that I had rattled a few cages by recently posting a Public Apology for having followed the LDS church’s racist teachings when I was a new convert to Mormonism.

I had been baptised in 1971, at the age of 18, but was not made aware of LDS racist issues until some while later. At that period of LDS history men of African descent were still denied the privileges of priesthood and of being sealed to their families in the Mormon temple, as members of all other races were. This was because Africans/”negroes” were depicted in LDS theology as bearing the mark of Cain, which indicated that they had been less valiant in the pre-existence, and were therefore spiritually inferior.

I had two black Zimbabwean friends, and when I enthusiastically tried to introduce them to the LDS missionaries in 1972 I was taken to one side by the Mission President, and advised that it would be better if they were not entertained as prospective converts, as they could never share in the eternal blessings that were mine to claim as a white man. For the first six or so years of my membership I accepted with unease this deeply racist stance, believing it must have a divine purpose of some sort. Then, in June 1978, the priesthood ban was removed by the church, to my relief, and the relief of most LDS members; however, the insidious dogma of spiritual inferiority took many more years for me to eradicate from my understanding. It was for this reason that earlier this year I drafted and signed my Public Apology to people of Black African descent. Others added their signature to mine, and sought to give it publicity among LDS and ex-LDS friends.

In a short time the Public Apology came to the attention of certain members of my local LDS congregation, in Yeovil, who were very critical of my actions, not, I believe, because they had any intention of justifying racism, but because the Apology inferred that the LDS church had been at fault, and that past church leaders had been uninspired. Their criticisms were accurate, if unwarranted, for I do indeed hold past leadership responsible for this abomination, and unequivocally declare that these were never God’s intended teachings.

So complaints having been made, it appears that at the meeting on 25th April, I shall be asked to say sorry for having said sorry! And, my intention is to tell Bishop Wiltshire, and Stake President Crew, “sorry, but I’m not going to say sorry for feeling as I do, or for expressing those feelings publicly as is my right”.

And then we shall encounter an impasse, and I anticipate that my LDS membership will be placed on the line. It seems likely, and perhaps inevitable that I shall be asked to appear before a disciplinary council, (church court), in due course, and will lose my LDS membership if I am not prepared to relent. Such a decision, if taken by President Crew, would, according to LDS theology, be extremely serious. It would spell the end of my eternal marriage contract to my wife of 32 years, Diana, (a faithful member since she joined in 1977), and would sever any eternal relationship I might enjoy with my children and my parents, and extended family members. The “sin” occasioning such extreme theological consequences would be that of exercising freedom of conscience and freedom of speech, which had reflected badly, though entirely honestly, on the LDS church’s historical position.

This, I think sets the scene for what may well become something of a saga over the coming weeks and months. I shall report further as the story develops.