Mormon Scholar May Face Excommunication?

Now, Religion in the News. A report and comment on religious trends and events being covered by the media. This week’s item is from the Associated Press, November 29, 2002, with the headline: “Mormon scholar may face excommunication,” dateline Salt Lake City. A graduate student with Mormon family roots says he will probably be excommunicated next week for articles he has written questioning the validity of the Book of Mormon. Thomas W. Murphy, 35, published an article in the May Signature Books Anthology American Apocrypha, uses genetic data to discredit the Book of Mormon claim that American Indians are heathen descendants of ancient Israel. The conclusion also is the thesis of his doctoral dissertation at the University of Washington.“We’re told to tell the truth but not if the truth contradicts church doctrine. I would prefer to tell the truth,” Murphy said. Murphy, Chairman of the Anthropology Department of Edmonds Community College in Linwood, Washington, will face a Church Disciplinary Council December 8. There he will be allowed to make a statement and council members may try to change his mind about the Book of Mormon. Lavina Fielding Anderson, a historian who was excommunicated in 1993, said Murphy is one of at least 3 scholars threatened with expulsion or excommunication in the past 3 months, raising concerns about renewed efforts to purge dissident church members. Anderson was excommunicated after she presented a history of troubles between church leaders, scholars, and feminists at a 1992 conference. Murphy said he has made of his quest to expose racism in the Scriptures starting with the teaching that American Indians are descendents of Middle Easterners known as Lamanites, the heathen antagonist in the Book of Mormon. Mormons believe the Book of Mormon is a history of the Americas beginning in 600 B.C. Scripture teaches that a group of Lamanites, who decided to forego violence and war, became Christians and white. “That’s racist,” Murphy said. He also objects to church teachings that dark skin is a curse from God. Murphy said he also questioned the lack of minority representation in church leadership, the church’s political campaigns against women’s and homosexual rights and excommunicating scholars, who honestly confront problems with church history and doctrines.

Tom:

Dave, to quote you, you talk about a level playing field. If a book, whether it’s the Bible, the Bhagavad Gita, the Quran, Book of Mormon, Doctrine of Covenants, Pearls of Great Price, whatever it might be, shouldn’t—if these books claim to be true—shouldn’t anyone who has a problem with them and he is honest and he feels the problem is legitimate, shouldn’t people like that be able to come forth and say, Hey, what about this?

Dave:

Well, unless you want to hide your head in the sand and continue in a delusion. Look, if you can show me that the Bible is not true, I’ll throw it out. Why would I want to continue to believe a book that isn’t true and why would I want to run and hide if someone has a complaint about the Bible? You have a scientific complaint, you’ve got a historical or geographical or some complaint of some kind and you think you can prove the Bible is not true, why would I then—No, I don’t want to hear it, I don’t want you to say that, you might destroy my faith. Wait a minute! If my faith isn’t valid, if it is based upon a book that isn’t true, then I don’t want to continue in this delusion, that’s point number one. Point number two is, why would they have to be excommunicated? That’s astonishing, to me. I mean, if you can prove that this is a fraud, why wouldn’t you leave that church? Why would you wait until they excommunicated you? That I don’t understand, but you know, in Mormonism it’s a good family religion and you’ve got family members who are involved in this and you don’t want to lose your association and so forth. But the issue is greater than that. The issue involves eternity. Why would I want to just continue on—it’s like Catholics, Tom, as you know. I find Catholics who say, Well, I really believe in Jesus and I really don’t believe in the Mass and I don’t think that that’s the body of Jesus and so forth.

Tom:

Or purgatory, the don’t believe in.

Dave:

Yeah, but I keep going because, you know—wait a minute! How can you participate in something that isn’t true, and how can you continue to give your endorsement to something that isn’t true, and aren’t you leading family members astray if you continue to participate in that?

Tom:

Yeah. And Dave, the temporal aspects, they may find comfort in, they may find things that they appreciate and so on, but what about the eternal ramifications of what they’re doing?

Dave:

Absolutely, absolutely. So this man, apparently, has found genetic evidence, which there certainly would be, that American Indians do not have any genes that could possibly link them with Israelites. They just simply don’t. There is no connection. But we’ve got other things; 600 BC, they are speaking in King James English, including the italics, which obviously, Joseph Smith copied out of the Bible. Come on! There is so much fraudulent information in there, things that do not exist, you can’t even find a pin, you can’t find a mountain, a bay or anything, there’s no evidence for it.

Tom:

Linguists say these people did not have a language that they could trace back to Israel.

Dave:

Absolutely.

Tom:

Dave, what about—these were, supposedly, Hebrews that migrated from the Middle East through South America. Go through the Book of Mormon, try and find—again, you said 600BC? That was one of the journeys, another one preceded that at the time of Babel, supposedly, according to the Book of Mormon. But why don’t we find in the Book of Mormon, if these were Hebrews, why don’t we find anything related to Leviticus, to the priesthood, to all those things, to the Passover, you don’t find any of that. If these were Hebrew people and so on. And what about the racist part, the Lamanites? Because they opted to rebel against God, their skins changed from white to black and then if they come back to living a godly life, according to the dictates of Mormonism, they become, each generation becomes whiter and whiter. Is that racist?

Dave:

And blacks were excluded from Mormon church, until they got a new revelation because of pressure. This was no new revelation, why do you have to have a new revelation? Truth doesn’t change. Tom, it is just so pitiful, it is so tragic that so many people are deluded—well, I don’t know if they are deluded, they are made captive by the pressure from family and friends and here we have pressure—oh you question this? Out you go!We’re not going to allow any questioning. Well, that’s where we began, Tom. If you can show me that the Bible isn’t true—of course, that’s part of what this book, In Defense of the Faith, is about. I’ve taken, I have files, thick files and I’ve mentioned before, when I was in University I read everything I could find. I went into the stacks at UCLA and I read everything I could find that the critics, the skeptics, the atheists had said. I wanted to know, what do they say about the Bible. If there is something about it that isn’t true, I want to know that, but I haven’t found anybody that can point that out. It is true. But the Book of Mormon, it’s a fraud.