Dr Paul Allen

Salt Lake Temple in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. Taken by myself with a Canon 10D and 17-40mm f/4 L lens. This is a 3 segment panorama. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Christians often wonder why Mormons believe such an incredible system: golden tablets translated with “magic glasses,” an advanced society of ancient American Indian Israelites who left behind no archaeological evidence at all, a “revelation” of polygamy that was reversed when Utah needed to do so for statehood, a “revelation” barring black Mormons from the priesthood that was reversed after the triumph of the civil rights movement, an eternity of godhood producing spirit babies, and special protective underwear. What we must understand is that Latter-day Saints (LDS) believe these things for the same reason that people everywhere believe the things they do: they want to believe them. Very few Mormon converts become convinced by rational arguments of the prophetic office of Joseph Smith . Indeed, Mormon missionaries don...

Joseph Smith Joseph Smith was born on December 23, 1805 in Sharon, Vermont . When he was a child his family moved to Palmyra in western New York where there was a lot of revivalism and religious fervor due to the Second Great Awakening . The wild enthusiasm and the many denominations present confused Smith and he was uncertain of what to believe and how to worship. As he writes in  The Pearl of Great Price : “In process of time my mind became somewhat partial to the Methodist sect, and I felt some desire to be united with them; but so great were the confusion and strife among the different denominations, that it was impossible for a person young as I was, and so unacquainted with men and things, to come to any certain conclusion who was right and who was wrong.” In 1820, in this time of confusion, Smith read James 1:5 which instructs those who lack wisdom to request it from God. He immediately withdrew to a wooded area near his home to pray for wisdom and it was at...

Français : Bible Chouraqui. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) American Bible Society (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) The good news about the Good Book is that it's still the No. 1 seller of all time, with an estimated 6 billion copies sold. The not-so-good news though, according to a new survey by The American Bible Society , is that it's lost a bit of its prominence in affecting people's lives. The "State of the Bible 2012" looked at the trends surrounding the most influential book of Western civilization. The survey found that while 82 percent of Americans revere the Bible as sacred literature, that number is down slightly from a year ago when 86 percent thought so. And when asked whether The Bible contains "everything a person needs to know to live a meaningful life," 69 percent agreed either strongly or somewhat. That number was down also from the previous year, when 75 percent responded the same way. The ABS sees opportunity rather than disappointment ...

Image by paparutzi via Flickr Predictably, Mormonism is in the news again. The presence of two members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints among contenders for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination ensured that it was only a matter of time before Evangelicals, along with other Americans, began to talk openly about what this means for the nation, the church, and the stewardship of political responsibility in the voting booth. There are numerous ways to frame these questions wrongly. Our responsibility as evangelical Christians is to think seriously and biblically about these issues. The first temptation is to reduce all of these issues to one question. We must address the question of Mormonism as a worldview and judge it by the Bible and historic Christian doctrine . But this doe Image by paparutzi via Flickr s not automatically determine the second question — asking how Mormon identity should inform our political decisions. Nevertheless, for evangelical Chri...

Image via Wikipedia Are Mormons " Christians " as defined by traditional  Christian  orthodoxy? The answer to that question is easy and straightforward, and it is "no." Nevertheless, even as the question is clear, the answer requires some explanation. We are not talking here about the postmodern conception of Christianity that minimizes truth. We are not talking about Christianity as a mood or as a sociological movement.  We are not talking about liberal Christianity that minimizes doctrine, nor about sectarian Christianity which defines the faith in terms of eccentric doctrines. We are talking about historic, traditional, Christian orthodoxy. Once that is made clear, the answer is inevitable. Furthermore, the answer is made easy, not only by the structure of Christian orthodoxy (a structure Mormonism denies), but by the central argument of Mormonism itself - that the true faith was restored through Joseph Smith in the nineteenth century in America and that the...