Illustrating the fierce determination of some critics of Mormonism

Last updated on: April 19, 2016 at 11:01 pm by Dan Peterson

Illustrating the fierce determination of some critics of Mormonism 2016-04-19T23:01:01-06:00 Dan Peterson

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An artist’s rendering of the Durban South Africa Temple, now under construction (LDS.org)

On 9 April 2016, ground was broken for the new temple in Durban, South Africa. Elder Carl B. Cook, of the Seventy, presided at that groundbreaking, accompanied by his counselors in the presidency of the Africa Southeast Area, Elders Stanley Ellis and Kevin Hamilton.

The absence of any members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles from the Durban groundbreaking demonstrated, to at least some of the more vitriolic online critics of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, that Church leaders hold African members in contempt; that the Church believes African blacks to be under the curse of Cain; that the apostles regard them as unworthy and believe them to have been fence-sitters in the pre-mortal existence. The “odd” lack of an apostle at a temple groundbreaking was, as one critic summarized it, a “snub” to members of the Church in Africa.

However, the absence of an apostle in Durban was not “odd.”

A quick glance at the list of the sixteen temples currently under construction that’s given here readily shows that in the case of only half of them — eight out of the sixteen — was the ground broken by Church leaders who, at the time of the ceremony, held the office of apostle. Was the Church really sending a message of contemptuous disdain to its membership in Fort Collins, Colorado, and Star Valley, Wyoming, and Cedar City, Utah — to cite just three examples — when it sent members of the Seventy, rather than members of the Twelve, to preside over temple groundbreaking ceremonies in those towns?

And please note one of the recent temple groundbreakings in particular:

Forgotten amidst all of the delicious condemnation of the Church and its leaders for the absence of an apostle from Durban was the fact that, on 11 February 2016 — less than two months before the South African ceremony — Elder Neil Andersen of the Council of the Twelve presided at the groundbreaking for the new temple in Kinshasa, the capital city of the Democratic Republic of the Congo:

http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/ground-broken-first-kinshasa-temple

Of course, at the time of that now curiously forgotten event, some critics pronounced the groundbreaking itself shameful and exploitative. Why? Because building a temple in Kinshasa is simply a greedy and mean-spirited effort to extract tithes from the desperately poor people of the Congo. It illustrates — surprise! — the contempt in which Church leadership holds the people of black Africa.

If certain critics of the Church were somehow unable to be grotesquely unfair, they would probably have to give up talking and typing altogether.

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