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Polygamist Raid is PR Nightmare for Mormons
By joshuah | June 30, 2008
I don’t know about you, but I have never equated the FLDS with the LDS. Regardless, there are many who seem to be unable to grasp the distinction, and so the LDS church has taken to waging a PR campaign of considerable size, including their biggest weapon: Harry Reid, highest-ranking Mormon elected to office in U.S. history.
Mormons want the world to know this: They’re not polygamists. And the FLDS polygamists in Texas are not Mormons.A recent poll commissioned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — that’s the Mormon Church — found that 91 percent of those surveyed had heard about the April raid on the Texas ranch owned by the polygamist group known as the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, or FLDS. Thirty percent of respondents believed the FLDS were Mormons, and 36 percent said the “religious compound in Texas” is associated with the Mormon faith.
This frustrates Mormon leaders, who have been trying to distance the modern practice of their faith from its polygamist roots. They note that a Mormon prophet officially dispensed with polygamy in 1890.
“Mormons have nothing whatsoever to do with this polygamous sect in Texas,” says Quentin Cook, an “apostle” in the Mormon Church’s top, 15-man leadership. “[Polygamy] is a significant part of our distant past, not of our present.”
A new Mormon public relations campaign emphasizes the distinctions between Mormons and FLDS polygamists and underscores the fact that polygamy is not tolerated among Mormons today — it triggers excommunication.
Topics: FLDS, LDS, polygamous sects |