To be honest I am very skeptical of most material written about the LDS. I have found most presentations to be hostile and slanted in their interpretations of the facts in the author's zeal to disprove mormonism.

For example in your book you cite that mormons have a higher divorce rate than the national average. The statistic is for Utah not mormons. Truth is that for dedicated LDS people married in the temple it is about 6% which is far below the average. For all mormons the number is about 24% which is consistent with the national average. For non-denominational Christians it rises to over 30% with Baptists at about 28%. Knowing these numbers and reading the statistics in writings by christians about mormons makes me think of the smear campaigns of political rivals. I believe this to be a wrong approach to both educating the laity about mormonism and engaging the mormon population in discussions of truth.

Remember that Utah's population is highly influenced by a religious system. As such the morals and taboos of that religious system are reflected in a larger part upon those not of the system. As such I would expect a higher number of people to be married who are not LDS simply because of the pressure of the mormon society. I believe that the people who marry under these circumstances are the ones skewing the numbers in Utah. I am still investigating to prove this out but this is the direction the evidence seems to be pointing thus far.

hope to talk soon.

In Christ,

Mark

P.S. Please do not read this wrong I do appreciate your book as far as I have read it.; But as I said before I am a bit of a skeptic when it comes to books on mormonism. When I read a book on Mormonism I try to see it as an objectiveMormon would if they were reading it with an open mind. Most books I have read on the subject would close the mind of such a person rather quickly.

Of course, people like me are not writing to convinced Mormons. That is an impossible sell. We are writing to the unwary--who do not know about the consistent deception of Mormonism--and to the weary--those Mormons who have been beat up badly enough to swim upstream against the disapproval of family and friends.

I have been out of the Church long enough to realize that the very nice people who are victimized by it cannot be aided by failing to point out the system's wholesale depravity and deception. Having led hundreds of Mormons to Christ, I can only say that the popular "wisdom" that says "perception is everything," fails when it comes to preaching the Gospel. As Jesus confronted the religious hypocrites in His day, and as Paul confronted the religious leaders at Athens, Corinth, and Ephesus, so should blood-washed preachers confront Mormonism. Not with arrogance nor hatred, but with a clear-eyed declaration that Joseph Smith was awash with the occult, the Book of Mormon is a clear fraud, and Mormon theology is _backwards_ to biblical theology.

Some people can be awakened by sharp truth. Others cannot. My effectiveness comes from accurately representing the Gospel of Christ in the face of Occultic, Cultic, and Secular challenges. Am I always successful? Hardly! Seldom. But sometimes. I believe winning Mormons is like digging gold nuggets from a rock wall: It is hard work, and you don't get many. But each one is worth the hard work.

Jim