The latest Jesus and Mo strip, called “Ta da!”, came with this caption, “Ta da! It’s a new J&M on an old theme.”
Wikipedia in fact has a whole article on “Criminal charges against Joseph Smith”. Here’s a summary:
Joseph Smith, the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, was the subject of approximately twenty-one documented criminal cases between 1826 and 1844 across New York, Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois.
In New York, Smith was repeatedly charged with being a “disorderly person”, a misdemeanor related to his activities as “seer”. These cases resulted in one disputed outcome followed by two acquittals.
Charges in Ohio included assault, battery, and conspiracy to murder. Smith was acquitted of the assault charge, while the conspiracy charge was dismissed in a preliminary hearing.
Following the 1838 Mormon War in Missouri, Smith was indicted for treason, a capital offense. He was incarcerated in Liberty Jail for several months before escaping custody during a transfer to a different county. Smith successfully used the writ of habeas corpus to quash multiple extradition attempts to Missouri from Illinois.
In 1844, he was charged with adultery for his practice of polygamy. After Smith ordered the destruction of a critical newspaper, he was charged with inciting a riot. Rather than submit to arrest, Smith declared martial law and mobilized the Nauvoo Legion. In response, the Governor mobilized the state militia. Smith surrendered to authorities, expecting to be released on bail. Instead, Smith was charged with treason against Illinois for calling out the Legion. Because treason was a capital crime, Smith was held without bail in Carthage Jail, where he was killed by a mob on June 27, 1844, leaving several indictments legally unresolved.
Oy! What a record, and not all the charges were connected with the religion he founded! Would you embrace a religion founded by this guy after peering at the so-called golden tablets using a “peepstone” in his hat? Well, there are nearly 18 million Mormons in the world, and I guess most of them believe this stuff.
At any rate, in this strip, Mo is hoist with his own petard:
Eighteen million Mormons – and nearly all in the US, presumably? Still, there are 11 handwritten witness testimonies to the veracity to the origins of the Book of Mormon, which makes it more reliable (!) than its rivals in the sky fairy business.
It seems that most people have brains which accept any old bullshit. They have no ‘baloney detectors’.
And when challenged, many of them have a remarkable capacity for responding with an astonishing mix of evasion and misdirection, intentional misrepresentation, willful misunderstanding, non-sequiturs, self-righteousness, ignorance, and pure delusion.
Probably most are in the US, but there are a surprising number in New Zealand – former prime minister Jacinda Ardern was raised a Mormon, for example. There’s a Mormon village called Temple View just outside the city of Hamilton, and a huge new temple has recently gone up beside the motorway in South Auckland. There are also many Mormons scattered through the Pacific Islands due to missionary activity – there was a temple and associated school that was very prominent when we visited Tonga back in the 1990s.
How did that happen? IIRC there is a Mormon presence in Hawaii, but NZ is very much further from Utah.
Also, did the NZ PM display any overt Mormonistic practices or ideas during her premiership? Did the Mormons advertise the connection? AIUI there is a wide swath of colonial CMS religious tradition in the Pacific Islands. How did LDS outcompete that?
I had a long time boss that I really liked and was a Mormon. He was very smart and worldly wise so I never understood why he kept it up. He even drank diet coke, which may Mormons consider a gateway drug to coffee!!!
P.S. I’d highly recommend the Broadway play “The Book of Mormon.” It’s irreverent and the Mormons took out a large ad in the playbill when I saw it which proves some of them must have a sense of humor. Hasa Diga Eebowai!
https://youtu.be/_qSkOnu6pBY
Gee, I wonder when a similarly irreverent play or musical called “The Koran and Hadiths” will come out. Or a “Life of Mohammad” comedy movie in the vein of Life of Brian.
Sadly, some people can’t handle it when they leave Mormonism; so maybe your boss knew his limits. I had a good friend who was an ex-Mormon and he seemed ok, but after a few years he suicided. He wife, also an ex-Mormon, was devastated. There were no apparent warning signs, and he didn’t leave a note.
This is probably why, even decades later, I harp on about socially irresponsible aspects of suicide. At least leave a note.
Books have been written on bread and wine being truly body and blood?