Tag: church of jesus christ of latter day saints

The suspected gunman in the fatal shooting of a Mormon church official in Central California was mentally ill and believed the church had wronged him when he was a member in the 1980s, family members said Monday.

Kenneth James Ward, 47, would go through delusional spells when he blamed the Mormon church for his troubles, according to his younger brother, Mike Ward.

“When my brother had one of his episodes, he conjured up in his mind that he thought that the Mormons were sending him to hell. He would tell me that,” Mike Ward, 44, said in a phone interview from his home in Bakersfield.

Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, has spent time on and off for the last seven years building a defense of the Book of Mormon, one of the key tomes of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Religion News Service reports.

The three-term senator — A former missionary and bishop and the grandson of a past president of the church — has now delved into a different debate: whether the book Mormons believe was revealed by an angel to their founder Joseph Smith in the 1820s is authentic.

Thousands of issues of Brigham Young University’s student newspaper were pulled from newsstands because a front-page photo caption misidentified leaders of the Mormon church as apostates instead of apostles.

An apostate is someone who abandons a previous loyalty – such as to faith, political party or a cause.

While protesters outside the LDS Conference Center in downtown Salt Lake City condemned Mormonism as non-Christian, nearly every speaker inside the giant building Sunday morning emphasized the conviction that Jesus Christ is at the center of Mormon faith, theologically, personally and intimately.

More than 20,000 members listened in the Conference Center during a morning and afternoon session, while millions more watched the proceedings via satellite in LDS chapels across the world.

Colorado-based Focus on the Family has pulled an online interview with conservative television host Glenn Beck after concerns were raised about Beck’s Mormon faith.

Gary Schneeberger, vice president of media and public relations for Focus on the Family Action, said that “differences in the Mormon faith and the historical evangelical faith are not inconsequential.”

From the possibility of a Mormon in the White House to a stream of Latter-day Saints on reality television, from being attacked as belonging to a cult (or mistaken for a polygamous sect in Texas) to participating in California’s bitter battle for traditional marriage, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints would see their faith in the nation’s mirror. To many, such scrutiny was unlike any they had seen in their lifetime.

Historians have long criticized the Mormon church for glossing over the unflattering parts of its history and censoring materials of interest to scholars.

Publishing Smith’s papers marks a brave departure from that past, said Jan Shipps, a professor of religious history and a Mormon expert at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis.

“It’s saying our story is there for anybody to see,” said Shipps. “They are becoming a full-fledged religious tradition and they are not trying to hide the details.”