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DNA TESTS CONTRADICT MORMON SCRIPTURE
What do you do when you have millions of religious adherents to a particular believe that is proven wrong? Does everyone immediately convert to another belief? Or do they just live with the truth that their beliefs were untrue? Or do they attack the messenger?
Such is the dilemma of the multi-million member Mormon Church.
According to the Los Angeles Times (see article below), DNA tests contradict the bedrock of Mormon teachings, including from the Book of Mormon that declares that American Indians are descendents of a lost tribe of Israel that reached the New World over 2,000 years ago.
Conducting interviews on this subject is author/scholar Art Vanick, who with co-authors Wayne Cowdrey and Howard Davis, has a new book release entitled, “Who Really Wrote the Book of Mormon? - The Spalding Enigma", published by Concordia Publishing House.
During your interview, Vanick offers what he and his co-authors firmly believe, based on their many years of extensive research, to be a more plausible explanation for the true origin of the Book of Mormon, namely that the Book of Mormon was in fact based on an unpublished manuscript written by a retired minister named Solomon Spalding.
THE FOLLOWING IS THE LOS ANGELES TIMES ARTICLE FOR SHOW PREP:
COLUMN ONE
Bedrock of a Faith Is Jolted
DNA tests contradict Mormon scripture.
The church says the studies are being twisted to attack its beliefs.
By William Lobdell, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
From the time he was a child in Peru, the Mormon Church instilled in Jose A. Loayza the conviction that he and millions of other Native Americans were descended from a lost tribe of Israel that reached the New World more than 2,000 years ago.
"We were taught all the blessings of that Hebrew lineage belonged to us and that we were special people," said Loayza, now a Salt Lake City attorney. "It not only made me feel special, but it gave me a sense of transcendental identity, an identity with God."
A few years ago, Loayza said, his faith was shaken and his identity stripped away by DNA evidence showing that the ancestors of American natives came from Asia, not the Middle East.
"I've gone through stages," he said. "Absolutely denial. Utter amazement and surprise. Anger and bitterness."
For Mormons, the lack of discernible Hebrew blood in Native Americans is no minor collision between faith and science. It burrows into the historical foundations of the Book of Mormon, a 175-year-old transcription that the church regards as literal and without error.
For those outside the faith, the depth of the church's dilemma can be explained this way: Imagine if DNA evidence revealed that the Pilgrims didn't sail from Europe to escape religious persecution but rather were part of a migration from Iceland — and that U.S. history books were wrong.
Critics want the church to admit its mistake and apologize to millions of Native Americans it converted. Church leaders have shown no inclination to do so. Indeed, they have dismissed as heresy any suggestion that Native American genetics undermine the Mormon creed.
Yet at the same time, the church has subtly promoted a fresh interpretation of the Book of Mormon intended to reconcile the DNA findings with the scriptures. This analysis is radically at odds with long-standing Mormon teachings.
Some longtime observers believe that ultimately, the vast majority of Mormons will disregard the genetic research as an unworthy distraction from their faith.
"This may look like the crushing blow to Mormonism from the outside," said Jan Shipps, a professor emeritus of religious studies at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, who has studied the church for 40 years. "But religion ultimately does not rest on scientific evidence, but on mystical experiences. There are different ways of looking at truth."
According to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, an angel named Moroni led Joseph Smith in 1827 to a divine set of golden plates buried in a hillside near his New York home.
God provided the 22-year-old Smith with a pair of glasses and seer stones that allowed him to translate the "Reformed Egyptian" writings on the golden plates into the "Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ."
Mormons believe these scriptures restored the church to God's original vision and left the rest of Christianity in a state of apostasy.
The book's narrative focuses on a tribe of Jews who sailed from Jerusalem to the New World in 600 BC and split into two main warring factions.
The God-fearing Nephites were "pure" (the word was officially changed from "white" in 1981) and "delightsome." The idol-worshiping Lamanites received the "curse of blackness," turning their skin dark.
According to the Book of Mormon, by 385 AD the dark-skinned Lamanites had wiped out other Hebrews. The Mormon church called the victors "the principal ancestors of the American Indians." If the Lamanites returned to the church, their skin could once again become white.
Over the years, church prophets — believed by Mormons to receive revelations from God — and missionaries have used the supposed ancestral link between the ancient Hebrews and Native Americans and later Polynesians as a prime conversion tool in Central and South America and the South Pacific.
"As I look into your faces, I think of Father Lehi [patriarch of the Lamanites], whose sons and daughters you are," church president and prophet Gordon B. Hinckley said in 1997 during a Mormon conference in Lima, Peru. "I think he must be shedding tears today, tears of love and gratitude…. This is but the beginning of the work in Peru."
In recent decades, Mormonism has flourished in those regions, which now have nearly 4 million members — about a third of Mormon membership worldwide, according to church figures.
"That was the big sell," said Damon Kali, an attorney who practices law in Sunnyvale, Calif., and is descended from Pacific Islanders. "And quite frankly, that was the big sell for me. I was a Lamanite. I was told the day of the Lamanite will come."
A few months into his two-year mission in Peru, Kali stopped trying to convert the locals. Scientific articles about ancient migration patterns had made him doubt that he or anyone else was a Lamanite.
"Once you do research and start getting other viewpoints, you're toast," said Kali, who said he was excommunicated in 1996 over issues unrelated to the Lamanite issue. "I could not do missionary work anymore."
Critics of the Book of Mormon have long cited anachronisms in its narrative to argue that it is not the work of God. For instance, the Mormon scriptures contain references to a seven-day week, domesticated horses, cows and sheep, silk, chariots and steel. None had been introduced in the Americas at the time of Christ.
In the 1990s, DNA studies gave Mormon detractors further ammunition and new allies such as Simon G. Southerton, a molecular biologist and former bishop in the church.
Southerton, a senior research scientist with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization in Australia, said genetic research allowed him to test his religious views against his scientific training.
Genetic testing of Jews throughout the world had already shown that they shared common strains of DNA from the Middle East. Southerton examined studies of DNA lineages among Polynesians and indigenous peoples in North, Central and South America. One mapped maternal DNA lines from 7,300 Native Americans from 175 tribes.
Southerton found no trace of Middle Eastern DNA in the genetic strands of today's American Indians and Pacific Islanders.
In "Losing a Lost Tribe," published in 2004, he concluded that Mormonism — his faith for 30 years — needed to be reevaluated in the face of these facts, even though it would shake the foundations of the faith.
The problem is that Mormon leaders cannot acknowledge any factual errors in the Book of Mormon because the prophet Joseph Smith proclaimed it the "most correct of any book on Earth," Southerton said in an interview.
"They can't admit that it's not historical," Southerton said. "They would feel that there would be a loss of members and loss in confidence in Joseph Smith as a prophet."
Officially, the Mormon Church says that nothing in the Mormon scriptures is incompatible with DNA evidence, and that the genetic studies are being twisted to attack the church.
"We would hope that church members would not simply buy into the latest DNA arguments being promulgated by those who oppose the church for some reason or other," said Michael Otterson, a Salt Lake City-based spokesman for the Mormon church.
"The truth is, the Book of Mormon will never be proved or disproved by science," he said.
Unofficially, church leaders have tacitly approved an alternative interpretation of the Book of Mormon by church apologists — a term used for scholars who defend the faith.
The apologists say Southerton and others are relying on a traditional reading of the Book of Mormon — that the Hebrews were the first and sole inhabitants of the New World and eventually populated the North and South American continents.
The latest scholarship, they argue, shows that the text should be interpreted differently. They say the events described in the Book of Mormon were confined to a small section of Central America, and that the Hebrew tribe was small enough that its DNA was swallowed up by the existing Native Americans.
"It would be a virtual certainly that their DNA would be swamped," said Daniel Peterson, a professor of Near Eastern studies at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, part of the worldwide Mormon educational system, and editor of a magazine devoted to Mormon apologetics. "And if that is the case, you couldn't tell who was a Lamanite descendant."
Southerton said the new interpretation was counter to both a plain reading of the text and the words of Mormon leaders.
"The apologists feel that they are almost above the prophets," Southerton said. "They have completely reinvented the narrative in a way that would be completely alien to members of the church and most of the prophets."
The church has not formally endorsed the apologists' views, but the official website of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — http://www.lds.org — cites their work and provides links to it.
"They haven't made any explicit public declarations," said Armand L. Mauss, a church member and retired Washington State University professor who recently published a book on Mormon race and lineage. "But operationally, that is the current church's position."
The DNA debate is largely limited to church leaders, academics and a relatively small circle of church critics. Most Mormons, taught that obedience is a key value, take the Book of Mormon as God's unerring word.
"It's not that Mormons are not curious," Mauss said. "They just don't see the need to reconsider what has already been decided."
Critics contend that Mormon leaders are quick to stifle dissent. In 2002, church officials began an excommunication proceeding against Thomas W. Murphy, an anthropology professor at Edmonds Community College in Washington state.
He was deemed a heretic for saying the Mormon scriptures should be considered inspired fiction in light of the DNA evidence. After the controversy attracted national media coverage, with Murphy's supporters calling him the Galileo of Mormonism, church leaders halted the trial.
Loayza, the Salt Lake City attorney, said the church should embrace the controversy.
"They should openly address it," he said. "Often, the tack they adopt is to just ignore or refrain from any opinion. We should have the courage of our convictions. This [Lamanite issue] is potentially destructive to the faith."
Otterson, the church spokesman, said Mormon leaders would remain neutral. "Whether Book of Mormon geography is extensive or limited or how much today's Native Americans reflect the genetic makeup of the Book of Mormon peoples has absolutely no bearing on its central message as a testament of Jesus Christ," he said.
Mauss said the DNA studies haven't shaken his faith. "There's not very much in life — not only in religion or any field of inquiry — where you can feel you have all the answers," he said.
"I'm willing to live in ambiguity. I don't get that bothered by things I can't resolve in a week."
For others, living with ambiguity has been more difficult. Phil Ormsby, a Polynesian who lives in Brisbane, Australia, grew up believing he was a Hebrew.
"I visualized myself among the fighting Lamanites and lived out the fantasies of the [Book of Mormon] as I read it," Ormsby said. "It gave me great mana [prestige] to know that these were my true ancestors."
The DNA studies have altered his feelings completely.
"Some days I am angry, and some days I feel pity," he said. "I feel pity for my people who have become obsessed with something that is nothing but a hoax."
THE FOLLOWING CBS NEWS BROADCAST MAY ALSO BE HELPFUL WITH SHOW PREP:
MORMONS IN AMERICA
Dec. 18, 2005
www.CBSNews.com
(CBS) Most of us probably know very little about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints -- the Mormon church -- other than the world famous Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Well, today, you may have a Mormon family living right down
the block.
The Democratic leader in the Senate, Harry Reid of Nevada, is Mormon as is Mitt Romney, the governor of Massachusetts and a possible presidential candidate. The Marriott family, who owns the hotel chain is also Mormon.
There are now almost six million members in the United States and an additional six million overseas. Temples can be found from Los Angeles to Boston to Washington, DC, reports Sunday Morning host Charles Osgood.
There is even a Mormon temple right here in midtown Manhattan across the street from Broadway and Lincoln Center. The Church is growing so fast in membership in this country, it now ranks behind Roman Catholics, Southern Baptists and United Methodists.
Susan and Matt Royall live in northern Virginia with her two daughters from a previous marriage. She is expecting a third child. Matt was raised Catholic, but the Royalls were looking for a new spiritual home.
"I grew up Episcopalian," Susan says. "I didn't know anything about Mormons. I really didn't.
"And when the missionaries walked through that door, it was like, 'Ah.' It was just like a breath of -- it was like the breath of life just came into me," Susan intimates.
The experience left an indelible imprint on Susan's life. She recalls of her first encounter with the Mormon missionaries, "I was like, 'O my gosh, it's like my skin is on fire.' That was the feeling I wanted from the other churches but never had."
Her husband, Matt, adds, "It was a feeling we had. It was so powerful."
Matt and Susan were baptized into the Church in April 2004.
"My religion now is the center of my life," Susan says.
The Royalls say what attracted them were the stories in the Book of Mormon, which the Church considers a companion to the Bible. Each summer the book comes to life in a pageant in upstate New York near where the Church was founded.
Roger Sorenson directed the pageant for seven years. Osgood observes Sorenson as he retells a Mormon story of a prophet in Jerusalem.
"The Lord appeared to me and told me to take my family into the wilderness," Sorenson says. He talks of the prophet building a boat and traveling to America and then enduring a civil war. Finally, Sorenson says, a "savior" from Jerusalem comes to America
"We see him come to this country after his resurrection. And teach his people. He organized his church here just like in the old country," Sorenson says.
In time, the story goes, a general named Mormon buried a record of these events written on golden plates. They remained hidden until an angel appeared to 14-year old Joseph Smith and directed him to the plates.
The young Smith lived on a farm near Palmyra, N.Y. Spiritually curious, it is said he rejected the teachings of other churches -- even at the tender age of
14. In 1820, Smith said God and his son, Jesus, appeared to him in the woods near his home. They told him all existing churches were an abomination. He had been chosen to reestablish the one true Christian church.
Richard Lyman Bushman, a Mormon, has written extensively on Smith as a professor of history at Columbia University in New York. If you think the Mormon story is far-fetched, he says, think about the roots of other religions.
"Certain kinds of religion have a broad appeal everywhere. And Mormonism brings this promise that God is speaking to his people," Bushman explains.
The professor adds, "All the great religions, or many of them, are founded on a revealed miracle. The resurrection, the parting of the Red Sea, the vision -- Mohammed's visit, vision of Gabriel. So, Joseph Smith from that point of view fits into a pattern that reaches a long way back."
Smith attracted a following -- and enemies. Local churches bristled at being labeled "an abomination" so Smith led his followers west. In 1843, Smith further enraged non-Mormons when he said God revealed to him that men should be allowed to marry more than one woman, as did "Abraham" and "other" prophets.
"It went against conventional Victorian morality, so it confirmed this view of Joseph Smith as a dangerous person," Bushman says.
As the Church's numbers grew, it took political control of towns and whole counties and also raised an army. Non-Mormons felt threatened and there was violence. The Mormons were forced out of New York, Ohio, Missouri and Illinois. Smith was killed by a mob in Carthage, Ill. when he was only 38. Then most of his followers fled to desolate Utah.
Of course, the story doesn't end there.
"There are two landmarks, I would say, in Mormon history that makes it central to the mainstream," says Richard Ostling, chief religion writer for the Associated Press.
"The first," Ostling says, "is the 1890 decision , under pressure from the federal government and the United States Supreme Court, to get rid of polygamy."
The second was in 1978 when the Church ended its refusal to allow blacks into full membership.
"Getting rid of those, I think, has really liberated the Church and has helped in its expansion," Ostling says.
Ostling, author of the book "Mormon American," says the Church's emphasis on strong families has also propelled it's success.
"I think there's a quest for stability and family roots," Ostling says.
This explains the success of Orthodox Judaism and Evangelical Protestants and many other groups. But, Mormons are certainly at the top of the list.
Mormons call their congregations "wards" not churches. That is where the Royalls and others worship and study scripture. On any given Sunday, the Royalls' ward is overflowing with families.
But, because Mormons also believe their religion extends back to ancient Israel, they also have temples.
Jan Shipps, considered the foremost non-Mormon scholar on the Church, explains that the temple is not like a church.
"People don't -- there's not an organized community worshipping together," Shipps says.
Only Mormons with permission from their leaders are allowed into temple. That is where sealing ceremonies are held -- marrying couples for eternity. Baptisms are also held in temples. Not just for the living, but also for ancestors who died without baptism.
"This is a very important part of Mormon understanding of connecting people now with people in the past," Scripps says.
>From the earliest age, Mormons are taught in verse and song that they have a duty to spread the faith.
Bushman says at all times, there are 50,000 missionaries scattered around the globe.
"It's expected of young men. And young women are invited," Bushman says.
To Shipps, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is not just another Christian denomination.
"Mormonism is a fully-realized tradition," Scripps says. "It has, it has it's scriptures. It has its rituals. It has its doctrine. It has its social patterns."
Ostling says while the Church has its roots in America, it's more than that.
"I think you could make the case that Mormonism, right now, is a new world religion," Ostling claims.
But to Matt and Susan Royall and millions of others, it is simply their
spiritual home.
"It has made my relationship with my children better. It has made my
relationship with my husband better," Susan says. "It has brought nothing but goodness into my life."
© MMV, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.
ART VANICK ON ART VANICK…
I was born in Chicago in 1951. My father was killed in a gas station explosion when I was about 15 months old, while he was cleaning what was called a "grease pit". My mother re-married when I was 6, and we moved to Central California, where we lived for about three years. While living in Fresno, my mother, a legal secretary, interviewed for a position with Melvin Belli, the famous trial lawyer, but she decided afterward that it wasn't going to be a good thing, so instead she then interviewed with a Los Angeles-based, entertainment law firm, for whom she worked approximately 32 years, until about two years before she died, from lung cancer. That job brought us to Hollywood, and we lived there until my mother once again married, which brought us to Manhattan Beach, then a sleepy little "bedroom" community whose only fame at the time was that it was briefly mentioned in a song about surfing.
My mother met many motion picture and music celebrities during her many years with the law firm, and counted John Wayne and Dean Jones among her close friends. The "Duke" would always greet my mother when he would pay the office a visit, and he always sent her wonderful Christmas presents every year. When I was severely injured after getting hit by a car in my senior year in high school, John Wayne sent me a huge basket of memorabilia, including a specially autographed picture of himself, various items from some of his movies, and an invitation to lunch sometime. I never met him but I did meet Dean Jones, even though we haven't seen each other for a few years. I also met Maureen O'Hara and actually introduced her to my mother at the premiere of "McClintock" many years ago.
I was in Chicago during the 1968 Democratic Convention and actually marched for Hubert Humphrey. My mother and I were downtown and happened into the Hilton Hotel which was the Humphrey campaign headquarters. As I was walking through the Humphrey "hospitality lounge", two of his campaign folks walked up to me and asked if I was interested in marching for him, so I said yes and went. We went to several locations and would cheer for him when he would arrive at each speech location. Finally at his last stop, I had the opportunity to meet Humphrey and shake his hand. He told me how much he appreciated me and the others coming along to support him and how important it was to him that the youth of this country get involved in politics. Even though I never voted for him, I admired his character. After we were done "marching", we were taken back to the Hilton, where we were photographed by a staff photographer for Time Magazine. I was treated by the Humphrey folks as almost a celebrity, because they found out that I was from California and were in doubt as to how California would vote. Some fun!
That following September, I had a life changing accident, which I mentioned earlier. While walking across a busy street on my way home from high school, I was hit by a car that was going at least 50 mph. After the doctors looked at my x-rays, they determined that I would never walk again, but God had other plans. I was first in a body cast for 6 weeks and then in two full leg casts for another 6 weeks, but miraculously on Christmas Eve, I walked into my home church, aided by two crutches and flanked by family on both sides, in case I fell. In spite of being out the whole first semester of my senior year, I graduated with my class in June, and immediately afterward had the first of two surgeries on my left knee. About two years later, I had a total reconstruction of my left knee, which restored most of the capability of my left knee. That second surgery also kept me out of military service, something which I regret not having experienced to this day, though I often in the past referred to my scars as my "war wounds".
I recovered well enough that I can do most everything that I did before my accident, except for snow skiing. One other thing, as a result of the accident, my knees are the world's best weather station! I "predicted" the weather so well during a church retreat one time that my friends gave me the nickname "prophet" afterwards. Fortunately, over time my prediction sensitivity has somewhat lessened, though it is still very accurate.
After a summer off, I went to a local junior college and studied a variety of subjects, even considering for awhile the ministry, but decided finally on foreign languages, studying French, Italian, Spanish, and German, though I wasn't sure at that time what I would do with them. Perhaps working for a multi-national corporation or even the consulate corps. After hearing about a government program where they were looking for people like me for the consulate corps, I attended a small language institute for about a year, then learned that the program had been cancelled. After returning to LA and going to school for about another year, with still no degree, matters at home took me out of school for good, even though I have the unit equivalent of a B.A. I would like to go back someday and finish. Maybe with my kids?
While in school, I also pursued several hobbies, including photography, which eventually led me to a 15 year career with a major aerospace company where I worked in a highly classified area, doing work which I can never discuss. I also greatly enjoyed astronomy, taking a few classes on the subject, and which culminated in a meeting with the famous astronomer, Dr. J. Allen Hynek, of Project Blue Book fame, and also originator of the UFO classifications which became so famous, resulting in the movie, "Close Encounters of the First Kind". While not an expert in astronomy, I enjoy "watching the stars" with my kids, and may have gotten my daughter started in the same hobby by buying her a telescope last Christmas.
I was also a bit of a rockhound, and my wife and I have gone to the mountains and desert several times to look for various crystals and minerals, and we are planning to take our children out sometime soon as well.
I'm also an avid camper and backpacker, having led several groups on week-long treks into the high country of Kings Canyon. There is nothing like getting out to areas where few people ever visit and experiencing God's creation! It is also sad to see the effects of man's "progress" on nature, and nature's resilience in resisting those harmful effects. My wife and I have been taking our children camping and hiking with us ever since they were toddlers, and as a result, they have grown to love nature and just about every kind of animal, as well as the desire to do everything they can to protect the environment.
My faith has always been very important in my life, and had it not been for the prayers of the many people, as well as my faith that God would bring me through the ordeal of my accident, I don't think I would have ever made it. God took that horrible accident and turned it into good, through providing me with a valuable witnessing tool which He helped me use while I was still in the hospital! One day a kid my same age was brought in, with a leg in traction because he had re-broken his leg before it had fully healed. My youth director had gotten permission to bring our youth Bible study to my room in the hospital, and after everyone left one night, my new roomate asked me if he could "sit in" at the next Bible study, which came as a total surprise to me. It came as a total shock to his parents the next day when he called them and asked for his Bible! So I said sure, and welcomed him into our group, and he participated in every Bible study we had for the entire time I was in the hospital. God has blessed me many times since then by helping people through telling them how God brought me through my accident, and continues to do so.
By the way, the doctors were totally amazed by my recovery, with one doctor claiming that when he saw the final x-rays, the only way he could tell that my legs had ever been broken was that the areas where the breaks had occurred were bigger in diameter than normal, but that otherwise, he couldn't tell. The orthopedic specialist said it a different way when he did his last post-operative examination. He said, "we sure did a great job, didn't we?". Sure, you and God. I did, however, have the best available physician at the time, and that was a further blessing.
My involvement in the church started early in life, with my being in youth choir, an acolyte, the high school youth group, and later a youth director and Sunday school teacher for about 10 years, and I remain active in my church to this day, by either helping my wife with the youth choir, doing voice work for the pastor, and participating from time to time musically with the worship team or with special music, like playing the guitar for the Easter sunrise service.
As far as research into the Book of Mormon goes, interest in that subject goes back to when I was about 12 or so, on a vacation that took me and my family through Salt Lake City. Nearly a decade later, I would meet Howard Davis and Wayne Cowdrey, who would tell me the tale of Solomon Spalding and how his manuscript formed the basis for the Book of Mormon. I was hooked, and the rest is history.
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