Educate me on mormonism Veeky Forums. From what little I know of their history and beliefs they seem pretty cool

Except for that last weird part about gay stuff, it was pretty much true. I don't know if I'd use some of the language that he used, though.

A lot of Americans were eager to join a "restored" Christian church. That alone explains much of Smith's appeal, and the hypothesis that Native Americans were the descendants of Israelites was actually a respectable belief back then, so that part of his theology would have turned few people away. And, yes, Joseph Smith did exert a fair amount of personal charisma.

The book of abraham is the smoking gun that reveals Smith was a fraud. It was like finding jesus' body. The mental gymnastics that Mormons go through to defend their "translation" is genuinely impressive and worthy of study.

>First off, how the hell did Joesph Smith gain a following

Smith was basically "yet another great awakening heresy" when he started out.

During that time period, in upstate new york, you had a general movement of circuit riding restorationists, who for a time, got extremely popular. Lots of the more crazy wesleyan denominations (crazy holiness groups, many of which are extinct today, like the oneida and such) got their start here too, as did the adventists (well, millerites at that time).

So basically, joe smith was just another heretic in a region where being a heretic was trendy at the time. Being able to bone multiple women, and a doctrine of becoming your own god, + a bunch of elements that addressed america-specific cultural issues (i.e. what does god think of niggers and injuns) lead to a rather popular cult gaining even more popularity.

The rest of their history is essentially "and they slowly moved westward, one step at a time, as joe smith's radical wife-collection grew larger and larger, pissing off locals from ohio to missouri, resulting in the persecution of these damn fools".

Smith eventually got his ass killed in missouri, and Brigham Young took over as mormon pope or whatever. A seperatist group broke off, and young's fuckers moved to utah, where the mormons established their own semi-functional theocracy, often running into issues with the government.

Fearing conquest and extermination, they eventually assented to relinquishing their theocracy and becoming a state so long as the US would give them legal protection from shit like extermination orders, etc.

...and now you're basically in modern history.

The last two big steps for them were the dropping of polygamy, which resulted in the founding of the fundamentalist LDS groups (which are all tiny and suffer genetic disorders on account of having small gene pools), and the allowance of blacks into the priesthood (came about in the 70s for evangelizing brazil).

It's heresy.

>forced conversions of dead jews into a fringe proddie denomination
wow

Those mormon facilities are actually a good place to research your genealogy. So long as you don't mind your dead relatives being converted, harmless enough I guess. But I agree that baptizing victims of the holocaust might be in poor taste.

look up the letter to a CES director. pretty much debunks the entire thing

How charismatic do you have to be convince people of this shit and build your very own harem of cuties?

Insane.

youtube.com/watch?v=46PXaJxzuDE