So it's basically guru V cult then? Wonder who will eventually win.
Probably not the skeptics.
Mormons make some tall truth claims. They claim their top-tier leadership—referred to collectively and reverently as "the Brethren," capital B—is led directly by God. This goes all the way back to the founder Joseph Smith who claimed he had a literal face-to-face meeting with the Almighty out in the woods in New York. The only other organized church that comes close is Catholicism's claim that the Pope is infallible on matters of faith and doctrine when speaking
ex cathedra. Everyone else seems to be satisfied with some kind of Biblical inerrancy or the notion that their clergy is merely only inspired and might be wrong. But it's pretty in-your-face to claim that there exists a man in an office just a short walk from my house who literally talks to God. (Bzzzt! "Mr. Nelson, your one o'clock is here, and the parking garage is complaining that his chariot of fire is blistering the paint on the other cars.")
Most of the time the edicts from the Brethren align with fairly-right-of-center conservative political and social values. So if one is a good Mormon, one will generally also be a fairly-far-right conservative. But it's been hilarious to observe the few occasions when the Brethren (speaking directly for God, remember) prescribe something that contradicts far-right political or social movements.
During the Covid pandemic, it was first masks and then vaccines. The Brethren said to follow the civil authorities and wear masks, but the very far-right Mormons—citing their religious freedom—refused. When the Covid vaccines became available, the Brethren (speaking for God, remember) advised all church members to be vaccinated. Local TV news flashed pictures of Mormon speaker-directly-with-God-guy Russell Nelson getting his jab in the arm. But no, the Mormons who claimed to be ultra faithful still resisted on the basis of religious freedom. And then when vaccine mandates were proposed, the Utah legislature (with its Mormon supermajority) quickly made it illegal for employers to require employees to be vaccinated if they had a religious, medical, or moral reason. It was hilarious to watch those folks claim a religious exemption only to be told that the official position of their church was to be vaccinated!
Now we can generalize that into the hypothesis that
people are just conservative for whatever reason, and they cite to things like religion as a convenient excuse for when those values prompt them to behave annoyingly or unfairly. But that's really beyond the scope of this thread.
In a
poll reported on by the
Salt Lake Tribune, 18% of Mormons also identify as QAnon believers. This is slightly higher than the national average and considerably lower than the average for Republicans regardless of religious affiliation. There has been widespread praise of Tim Ballard in Mormon-oriented social media and in the city buzz I hear. Ballard's exploits and claims have been repeated in official Mormon church outlets, on official websites, and in church-operated media (e.g.,
The Deseret News newspaper and KSL-TV television).
So when it becomes necessary for the Mormon church officially to distance themselves from a QAnon darling, it's fascinating to see who follows QAnon and who sticks with the church. Keep in mind these are faithful Mormons who believed up until recently that they could have both. The conspiracy theories range from reasonable ones like the church's disavowal somehow not being official all the way up to claiming the church leadership has been infiltrated by QAnon pedophiles and their highly-recognizable people replaced with doppelgangers. Or that it's limited only to the church's PR branch and that QAnon are holding the real leaders hostage in the basement of the temple or some such thing.
It really is frightening how badly people
want to believe this objectively horrible nonsense. Keeping in mind how important a Mormon's faith is to family and daily life, for them to reject that and stick with QAnon is legitimately disturbing.
