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American Religion: Pomo Mormons

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Ex-Mormon Kenneth Anderson has some pointed things to say about Mormons in the December 24 issue of the Weekly Standard. He left the Mormons because “I found I could not continue to say I believed in a religion rash enough to make many historical claims, the testability of which was not safely back in the mists of time in the way that protects Christian belief and worldly reason from meeting up to implode like matter and antimatter.” That’s an odd statement: When Christianity began, after all, its historical claims were current news, with eyewitnesses running excitedly around the Mediterranean world.

Anderson has this insightful thought about Mormons, though: “The usual thing for a Mormon intellectual under such circumstances is to discover the beauty of postmodernism and its flexibility about rationality and empirical truth.” He adds that he prefers “regular old modernity and the Enlightenment even if they don’t grant me complete freedom to believe seemingly contradictory things.”

Anderson is furious that evangelicals would refuse to vote for Romney solely on the basis of his faith, and aims some blistering curses against them, literal curses. I’d have to check, but I believe it’s the first time I’ve seen imprecations in a news magazine.

posted by Peter J. Leithart on Wednesday, December 26, 2007 at 8:19 am

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American Religion: Pomo Mormons

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