FAQ Archive
When Mitt Romney released his taxes, it showed large donations to charity, including to his church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Members of this church are sometimes called Mormons. Three million dollars was donated to charity, with about 1.5 million dollars going to his church.
Mormons follow the Biblical commandment to tithe, so Romney, as a practicing and believing Mormon, pays at least ten percent of his income in tithing. The word tithe means a tenth, and so, to be fully practicing the law of tithing, a person who believes in and follows the Bible must pay a full tenth of his or her income. In addition, the Bible requires believers to pay offerings.
“Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings.
“Ye are cursed with a curse: for ye have robbed me, even this whole nation.
Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of... Read the rest of this entry »
By Amy Choate-Nielsen
Deseret News
Published: Sunday, Jan. 15, 2012 7:00 p.m. MST
David Letterman knows how to get a laugh.Like most comics, he riffs on the day’s news, deadpans the camera and revels in audacity.”Oh, did you hear about this?” the host of CBS’ Late Show with David Letterman asked his audience recently. “A campaign staffer on the Newt Gingrich campaign was fired because he was making negative comments about Mormons. I thought, now, wait a minute — isn’t Newt in favor of multiple wives?”
Laughter rumbled from the audience followed by applause. The polygamy punch line is a familiar one when it comes to poking fun at Mormons — as though Mormons and polygamy are synonymous in mainstream media. Ironically, the practice that’s most linked to Mormons is a practice most Mormons oppose, according to a groundbreaking new study of Mormons in America released Thursday by the Pew Research Center‘s Forum on Religion and... Read the rest of this entry »
The Pew Foundation survey of Mormons released this past week confirms that U.S. Mormons are more conservative (66 percent) compared to the general public (37 percent), and on most issues, they closely track white evangelicals. But immigration is one issue that sets Mormons apart from their evangelical counterparts.
Asked whether immigrants are a strength or a burden, 59 percent of white evangelicals said they were a burden, while only 41 percent of Mormons felt the same, compared to 44 percent of the general public. The result is surprising given how staunchly conservative Mormons are on nearly every measure. Interestingly, 50 percent of white mainline Protestants and 49 percent of white Catholics also tilt against immigration, though neither group is as uniformly conservative as evangelicals or Mormons on other measures.
Dan Cox, Research Director at the Public Religion Research Institute in Washington, D.C. sees several reasons for the surprising result. He points first to demographics... Read the rest of this entry »
When people struggle to know whether or not God and Jesus Christ are real, they often ask in frustration, “Why doesn’t God just show Himself?” It sometimes seems to them that if He wants them to believe in Him, that would be the simplest way.
Why doesn’t God just show Himself? To understand the answer to this question, we first have to examine why we came to earth. For members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, whose members are sometimes called Mormons, the explanation of life’s purpose begins even before birth. What happened to us before we were born explains why God seldom shows Himself today.
Mormon beliefs tell of a time before the world was created. God created our spirits. This is one reason Mormons consider God to be literally their Heavenly Father. Our spirits weren’t housed in bodies yet, although they had that form, but we did have our personalities, talents, and interests. In other words, we were uniquely ourselves. We lived with God during that... Read the rest of this entry »
In the Book of John, we learn, “All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.” (See John 1:3.)
It is clear, then, that anything that exists was created by God, and so God made Satan. However, he wasn’t Satan at his creation and he was not created evil. The prophet Isaiah helps us to understand what turned Lucifer into Satan and demonstrates that he is not the being God created him to be: “How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!” (See Isaiah 14:12.)
In other words, Satan, as created, was not evil. God does not create anything that is evil. The creation accounts in Genesis consistently remind us that everything God creates is good. How did Satan go from being a good creation of God to being the source of evil?
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, whose members are sometimes called Mormons, teach that agency was an essential part of God’s... Read the rest of this entry »
Mormons (a nickname for members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) believe that God knows everything and sees the future. Mormons also believe we have free will—the right to choose for ourselves. To some people, these seem to be contradictory ideas. If God knows everything that will happen, doesn’t that mean it is all predestined and out of our control?
To understand how we can have free will and still have a God who knows the future, we need to have a clear understanding of our relationship with God. Let’s begin with what Mormonism teaches about our life as God’s children and then learn why He gave us free will.
Mormon beliefs tell us that God created our spirits and we lived with Him before our births. We didn’t have bodies, but we were ourselves. We spent time with God, getting to know Him. He also got to know us and this is important to understanding the answer to the question.
When it was time to come to earth, God promised we would still have the free will... Read the rest of this entry »
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, whose members are sometimes referred to as Mormons, does not consider homosexuality a sin. Rather, it is the practice of homosexuality that is considered sinful, and this is an important difference.
A gay Mormon who does not act on his tempations is a member in full standing.The Mormons take no stand on what causes homosexuality because that is an issue for science, not religion. Religion focuses on the moral issues of life, not the scientific ones. A Mormon who has homosexual temptations can be a member in full standing because being or feeling tempted is not a sin. Jesus Christ was tempted by Satan, but was not at fault because He chose not to act on those temptations. In the same way, a Mormon with homosexual feelings will not be held back in any way from church membership or opportunities unless he acts on them.
This is not a “punishment” for people with same-sex attraction. Everyone who has ever lived has struggled with some type... Read the rest of this entry »
There have been black Mormons since the 1830s. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the true name of the church commonly called the Mormon Church) accepted black people as members and did not segregate their congregations. They were officially opposed to slavery, which upset Missouri when they lived there. The newspapers published complaints that Mormons had a plan to convert and bring to Missouri free blacks at a time Missouri was trying to enter the United States as a slave state. Missouri, which beat free blacks entering the state, saw the Mormon plan to increase the black population as justification for increased persecution of Mormons.
There have been black Mormons since the earliest days of Mormonism.
The Mormon Church was organized in 1830 and the first black Mormon was baptized in 1832. His name was Elijah Abel. He would also receive the priesthood and become a seventy, a high-ranking church leader. Abel is believed to have escaped slavery through the underground railroad.... Read the rest of this entry »
When people talk about Mormonism, they often focus in on small things that are not important, aren’t taught currently, aren’t even practiced today. By doing so they miss an opportunity to understand Mormonism as it lives today and even as it was originally taught.
To understand Mormonism, you must focus on core doctrines, those things which are canonized as official doctrine and taught consistently. While church practices sometimes change, truth does not.
There are a few guidelines that can help you evaluate whether or not a teaching is a core doctrine—or even a true doctrine of Mormonism.
First, it is important to understand that every word spoken by a prophet is not necessarily doctrine, particularly in the earliest days of the church. In the beginnings, the church was run much more informally. People talked among themselves and sometimes others took notes and published those conversations or informal speculations of church leaders.
The Journal of Discourses is the usual source... Read the rest of this entry »
Brigham Young University, also called BYU, is a university in Provo, Utah. It is sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, whose members are also known as Mormons.
BYU Honor Code helps students live a Christ-like life.
Although a student does not have to be Mormon to attend BYU, most students are LDS (Mormon.) Any student, whether or not they are Mormon, must sign the honor code and then live what it says. For BYU, unlike some universities, the honor code is not a PR tool or a suggestion, but a serious way of life. Students know about the honor code before agreeing to come to the university and they have given their word to live it. Not doing so results in suspension. The university puts this code above all other considerations and will enforce it even when the person who violates it is the star of a sports team. Some newspapers have noted that most schools who suspend a student for violating an honor code or even for breaking a law will do so during exhibition games... Read the rest of this entry »
