MG wrote:You seemingly have a view of the world that allows you, of all people, to make pronouncements about others that are gospel truth.
Isn't that what religion is primarily about, and isn't that what you've been explaining -- that all churches have their place in God's plan, but Mormonism is special, because it is the only Church on the face of the earth with actual authority to act in God's name, making all other churches frauds, fundamentally, even if God puts up with them and tries to find the good in them? Sort of patronizing them? Of course, all churches believe the same thing about themselves, except they might make alliances here and there.
Marcus did quote an article on sojo.net explaining Manifest Destiny, and we can look around today to see how openly Christianity seeks to take over politics and oppress others. (I do give you credit for not falling into the worst of what's going on with that) But that is just a scholar's opinion somewhere. You could disagree with the paper and say "tough, Mormons are special, that's what I believe."
For some reason it seems you believe this scholar's opinion and are trying to make Mormonism work within that.
My opinion is that Mormonism isn't outright dominionist, which is good, and there is a culture to Mormonism that helps those with bare enlightenment escape owning the worst of right-wing politics for themselves (such as you have escaped and again I credit that to your account). But for the mainstream church it's less about relativism -- which is something the New MI Mormons are about, and you seem to want to go that route at times -- and more about a certain sales philosophy that I can pin back to Earl Nightingale, although I don't know if Earl was original himself. But Mormonism as a corporate initiative and broadly as a culture fully embraced the positive thinking approach to their religion.
When I was a missionary, we had a missionary guide we were to study, which was essentially a sales manual. It had examples outside of Mormonism which makes my point perfectly. It had the example of a car salesman. A customer walks to the lot from across the street, and you're supposed to identify the most effective approach with the customer. One approach is to say the car they'd just looked at was garbage and what you offer is so much better, while the "most effective" answer is something like, "You know, that is a good car the other dealer has, but why don't you come look at some of the cars we have, I think you'll like what you see!"
Under this sales philosophy, negativity is bad, bad, bad. Mormon culture has internalized this sales tactic in some cases to the point its hard to know what they actually believe. The vexing question is, does the salesman really believe that car in the other lot is total junk and is just shmoozing, while secretly making fun it it behind closed doors, or is the salesman fully baptized in positivity and doesn't necessarily think of the cars he sells as better?
We can't take farmers and take all their people and send them back because they don't have maybe what they're supposed to have. They get rid of some of the people who have been there for 25 years and they work great and then you throw them out and they're replaced by criminals.
It sounds like the extreme end of christianity, as described here:
