May 9, 2018 Show with Latayne C. Scott on “Leaving Mormonism: Why Four Scholars Changed Their Minds” AND “A Conspiracy of Breath”

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio on Mormonism, Conversion, and the First Hour Interview

Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century Gospel Minister George Norcross in downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors, Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions. Now here's our host, Chris Arnson.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth. We're listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnson, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this ninth day of May 2018, and I'm glad that the technical difficulties we were experiencing that looked like they were going to prevent us from going on the air today were finally resolved by the grace and mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ, and thanks also to the prayer of my guest, Dr. Latane C. Scott.

I'm so delighted to have back on the program Dr. Scott. She is a Mormon convert to Christianity, the author of over 16 published books, including her classic work, The Mormon Mirage. A former member looks at the Mormon church today.

She is a recipient of the Distinguished Christian Service Award by Pepperdine University and award-winning poet, and she's going to be addressing her latest book, co-authored with several other former Mormons, Leaving Mormonism, Why Four Scholars Changed Their Minds, and in our second hour today, we're going to be discussing her new novel, A Conspiracy of Breath, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr. Latane C. Scott.

Thank you. I am thrilled to be here.

I am thrilled to have you back, and if anybody would like to join us on the air, the first hour with a question on Mormonism, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N-G-M-A-I-L .com.

Please give us at least your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA, and please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

Let's say you are a Mormon, and you have, you're starting to question your faith, and you don't want to draw attention to your identity. I can understand that. Something similar to that, if it's a personal and private matter, then please feel free to write in anonymously, but other than that, please at least give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence, and Latane, you have been on this program a number of times, but for those of our listeners who have never heard you on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio before, if you could give a summary of your conversion to Mormonism, and then your leaving Mormonism, to embrace the true Jesus Christ and the true gospel of Holy Scripture.

Well, Chris, I became a Mormon in the way that many people become Mormons. My dad had met some missionaries, and he invited them to our home, and they presented the missionary lessons. Elder Cronin and Elder, I can't even remember the name of the other elder, but they very patiently went through what they had at that time was a flip chart, and I thought this was just the greatest thing ever, because I was troubled by the thought that people who had never heard the gospel would be given a second chance after death.

That was great. I was very interested in Native Americans, so finding out that the Book of Mormon was supposed to be a record of the ancient Americans, that was right up my alley. And plus, I had a very tumultuous home life, violence, mental illness, a lot of other things going on, so the Mormon Church was like a rescue to me.

And I became a Mormon at age 11 and attended, and loved Mormon doctrine, loved the Mormon lifestyle, and I had been a writer my whole life, and I won writing scholarships to Brigham Young University, and attended BYU on scholarship, and worked for Trump.

Just a gloriously happy, contented, fulfilled Mormon. And I came back to Albuquerque, New Mexico, my hometown, for work during the summer between my junior and senior years at BYU. And my mom, who had never been a Mormon, was working at a place, and there was a young man who worked there also, and she wanted to introduce me to him, and I was not, at least not interested because he wasn't Mormon.

I was actually waiting for a Mormon missionary who was on his mission to Germany, and this Mormon missionary, Bruce Porter, later became a General Authority of the Mormon Church, which is the highest echelon of leadership in the world.

But anyway, I was waiting for him, so I wasn't interested in this young man my mother wanted me to meet, but we kind of accidentally met and agreed that we'd just go out for fun for the summer. But he began to challenge my Mormon beliefs in a way that I thought I could certainly rise to the occasion because I had been a resident assistant in a dorm at BYU, had had non-Mormon girls in my dorm that I had taught or helped teach, and they had become Mormon.

I had no doubt that I could convert this young man to Mormonism, and then when my missionary came back, I'd get married in the temple and have the Mormon life that my patriarchal blessing promised me that I would have.

And this conflict of ideas during that summer of 1973 was horrific. It made me sick, physically ill. To contemplate the possibility that this lifestyle that I love so much, this heritage, this beautiful way of life, and complete access to information through living prophets, all of that, that might not be true, was just more than I could.

So I went back to BYU because I just lacked a few hours finishing my undergrad degree at BYU, and when I got back there, I thought nobody would notice that I was not the same enthusiastic Mormon I'd been before.

Of course, that didn't last very long. I only stayed there when I came back to Albuquerque. I made a commitment to the Lord Jesus Christ, the true and living Lord Jesus Christ, in September of 1975. That was as much a capitulation to me as it was...

I tell people, once you've been burned by a religion, it is very good to be a deity again. Once you've found out the God you've served for most of your conscious life does not exist, you're not anxious to get in a relationship with another God.

And of course, the God of Mormonism and the God of the Bible are very, very different. They have points of... but they're not the same. And this was as much a... on my part, as it was with another group.

And I was weird. I admit it. I was weird. The church that I became affiliated with is the same church that I attend today, 45 years later. And the people have been loving, understanding, and welcoming to me when I was just played weird.

Well, join the club. And I wouldn't categorize myself in the past tense that way.

Well, there you go.

Now, were you Dr. Latene C. Scott while you were still a Mormon, or did your doctorate come about after you had left Mormonism?

Oh, no. I didn't get my doctorate until I was in my late 40s, early 50s. I got a master's degree in Biblical Studies, and my PhD is in Biblical Studies from Trinity Southwest University here in Albuquerque, which is very well known for Dr. Stephen Collins, who is the man who is currently Jordan, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, the site of the...

He and I wrote a book together, Howard, Simon Schuster, about... But it's through his institution that I gained my master's degree, PhD. And I'm very proud to be affiliated with that time, that educational entity.

Yes, I've, as you know, interviewed Dr. Collins at least two times, and it was fascinating to have him on the program. I was utterly amazed recently to be speaking with someone in his late 20s who had no idea what Sodom and Gomorrah was.

I was taken aback by that, and the reason why it even came up in conversation is I went with this person, this friend of mine, and his family to see the new Avengers movie, and one of the heroes in this movie, a female character, is named Gomorrah.

You have to wonder why they would choose a name like that for a hero in the movie. But when I said, I find it strange that they would name that character Gomorrah, and he said, why? I said, well, haven't you ever heard of Sodom and Gomorrah?

And he said, no. So I had an opportunity to explain what Sodom and Gomorrah was. But as far as being a Mormon, and specifically the book, Leaving Mormonism, Why Four Scholars Changed Their Minds, what would be some of those areas of Mormonism that once one becomes more literate in the Bible, and perhaps even history, and perhaps even archaeology, speaking of Dr. Stephen Collins, what would be the major things that should make a person say to themselves, this church, this Mormon church cannot be true Christianity, and it in fact has clearly made up things where its leaders, especially from the past, like Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, have actually invented things that are historically not even real, not even true.

If you could give us some of those things.

I can answer that in a one-word sentence. Ready? Yep. In fact, I document in the Mormon Mirage how the Mormon Church in Japan was a fairly well-established, stable ward or congregation in Japan. And once the Japanese people gained access to the internet and started reading documentation of things that are so contrary to what the Mormon Church has taught about itself.

For instance, up until just recently, the Mormon Church has insisted that Joseph Smith was married to his wife Emma, and Emma only. While everybody that has done anything in history knows that he was married multiple times, many times to underage women, and many times to women who were currently married to living men.

And so, once these poor, bewildered people in Japan saw things like that, and that's just in the, that are easily accessed on the internet, which were not available, you know, widely available in the past, the Mormon Church suffered great losses in Japan, and I think that access to documentation and information on the internet has been probably, in my opinion, the single most damaging or debilitating element.

And, well, if you could, I know that, for instance, some of the claims of Mormonism that delve into archaeology, well, I should say, that delve into an ancient history of the Americas, that when one delves into the archaeology, there is clearly not any evidence that some of these peoples and lands and tribes and so on ever existed on the North American.

Continent. Well, there are, you know, I spent my youth, my dad was an engineer on the Santa Fe Railroad, and we traveled all over Mexico, and I've climbed every major pyramid in Mexico, thinking, oh, these are my Lamanite brethren that built this, you know.

But in order for something, an archaeological find in the Americas to fit the Book of Mormon narrative, they would have to, by archaeological standards, they would have to fit in the time frame of the Book of Mormon, and that's 2200 B .C. to A .D. 425.

Most of them don't, most of them happened after that. If artwork would have to, you'd have to find some indication that it's not totally pagan, and all the artwork that I know of, you know, is that of fantastic monsters, you know, that sort of thing.

Not that, of course, I'm not saying that, because the Jews were not known for their artwork, and the, and Christians, early Christians were not known for their artwork. That, a culture shouldn't be dominated by pagan artwork if it is a Christian cult.

They must have had at least a few metal coins, and because the Book of Mormon mentions a piece, and that's in Alma chapter 11, you'd think that during the time of Alma, which was A .D. 2 B .C. or so, find evidence of reformed Egyptian, in which part of the Book of Mormon was red sheep, cattle, horses, domesticated animals, chariots that are mentioned in there, smelted iron, not meteoric iron, but smelted Book of Mormon, or anything that reflected a Jewish-based culture, which the Book of Mormon claims that some of them had.

And what are the odds of, having worked with Dr. Stephen Collins, an archaeologist, what are the odds of nothing being found from civilizations that have been claimed to have thrived for so long, right here on the North American continent?

Well, you know, you can go over to Israel or Jordan, as I have, and find, you know, thousands of artifacts that have been certified by the Israeli government, or the Jordanian government, for sale, that fit descriptions in the Bible.

For instance, oil lamps, like the small lamps that the 10 virgins have that didn't hold very much oil. I actually own one of those, because I, an ordinary citizen, could buy one of those, because there's so many of them.

Nothing extraordinary about that, they're everywhere. Whereas these things that are coming out of the dirt in the United States, and in Mexico, Central America, South America, these things, the things that are coming out of there, do not reflect anything in the Book of Mormon.

And so, and believe me, Mormon archaeologists have been looking real hard to try to find that, and there's just no evidence of the kind of culture. It just doesn't, it's just not here. Now, I'm willing to concede that perhaps it's still hidden, and might underlie things that might seem to support the Book of Mormon, but to this point, Mormons and I would agree that there is nothing anywhere close.

Now, we've also, as you know, reached an age in modern medicine that involves DNA and things like that, and I have heard that there have been some, or at least one for certain, former Mormon who was a scientist, and one of the things that caused him to question seriously the authenticity and integrity of his religion was the fact that the claim that the Native Americans were really among the lost tribes of Israel, and the DNA for Semitic people from Israel, there's nothing in common with Native Americans.

Am I right on this?

You're speaking of the research of Simon Southerton, Dr. Simon Southerton.

Yeah.

And he was a Mormon when he started his research, and the Book of Mormon depicts three separate migration, a singing group at BYU made up of Native American singers, they were called the Lamanite Generation.

The Lamanite was one of the modern Mormon churches, actually, that was my understanding, and the understanding of every Mormon I knew in my childhood.

We have Brandon from Franklinton, North Carolina. He says, I will be doing a presentation on Mormonism at two churches in my area later this summer. I've just finished quite a bit of study on the Mormon doctrine of life after death.

I'm amazed by some of the things I'm learning. I want to be sure my presentation has practical application for the listeners and their interactions with Mormons. Could you ask Dr. Scott to give me the one thing I need to be sure to include and emphasize in the presentation?

What's the one thing my listeners will need to take home with them?

I am assuming that his audience is going to be Christians and not Mormons, and so I'm going to answer the question on that assumption. What is the one thing that a Christian would need to know about the Mormon doctrine of what happens to someone after death that they need to know?

And that is that Mormons treasure the thought of an afterlife. People who have not heard the Mormon gospel, accept it or reject it, Mormons expect and joyfully look for a part of a three-tiered heaven where they themselves, this is in the Doctrine and Covenants, this is straight doctrine, this is nothing strange in the Doctrine and Covenants, and it's also in all of the temples.

Thank you, Brandon. And I hope that your presentations are quite successful in enlightening your audience and equipping them to lead Mormons out of their false religion. And please make sure that we have your full mailing address there in Franklinton, North Carolina, so that CVBBS .com, Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, can ship you out a free copy of Leaving Mormonism, Why Four Scholars Changed Their Minds.

And now I am going to say something that I don't think I've ever said to a listener submitting a question. There is no way, no how, I will ever, ever, ever send you a free copy of the book we are discussing.

The reason why I'm saying this is that it's one of the co-authors of the book. It's Dr. Lynn K. Wilder, and she obviously has a copy of the book, that's why I made that little joke there. But Dr. Lynn K. Wilder, who I've had on this program, and I look forward to having her back on, and having her husband back on, and having the folks from Adams Road, the musical group on the program.

I know her son, at least one of her sons, one of her children is a part of that group. But Lynn, she says, submitted a number of questions, actually. I have loved using Latane's book, The Hinge of Your History, Phases of Faith, to mentor college age believers in Jesus.

Can you tell us about these phases of faith you delineate in this book, and which phase do you see your own faith, and in which phase do you see your own faith, and why?

Oh, well, what a wonderful affirmation of that book. And I appreciate that so much. The Hinge of Your History is a book that delineates that biblical faith happens in three phases. The first phase one is a promise or a commandment from God, and inevitably follows a period of contradiction, in which it seems impossible that that promise could be fulfilled, or that the commandment can be followed.

And then God himself brings a resolution. And I just mentioned to Chris, as we were trying to get this program set up, his recording equipment, his technical equipment in the studio would not work. And he says, I don't know why this has happened.

It's never happened before. And I told him, people I love around me for the last two weeks have been under satanic attack. And it didn't surprise me at all that he thought he might have to cancel this program, because God gives us promises, and he gives us commandments, but then things happen that seem to make it impossible.

We can follow through on what God wants us to do. So, Lynn, thank you so much for that affirmation of that book, which has helped so many people. I really appreciate it.

And by the way, Latane, can you mention anything? I mean, obviously, you don't have to share any details you don't want to share. But can you tell us why you think this is happening, this satanic attack?

I've puzzled about that, because I personally, things in my personal life, for me, are going about as well as they've gone in quite a long time. I've had some health issues. They're resolving. I am secure and happy where I live.

My ministry is going great guns. I am just at the cusp of signing a contract for a new book with a major publisher. But all around me, everybody that's close to me is under some sort of attack, just crazy things.

The studio equipment suddenly stops working. So that comforts me to know that if I can be faithful, and if anyone who is in a period of contradiction right now, and you have promises from God, that he has called you to a ministry, whatever it is, natural, all these promises from God, and yet, and if he makes promises, if he gives callings, like in the call of Jeremiah, he says, it does not matter what you do.

I want to, I know there's somebody, I mean, this is a condition common to men and women. I know that there must be somebody who needed to hear that lesson today, God himself.

Great.

And we are going to our first break right now. And we do have a couple of more questions from Dr. Lynn K. Wilder that actually are related to our discussion on Leaving Mormonism. And then we will also, later on in our second hour, ask her question on A Conspiracy of Breath, your novel.

But we do also have other listeners waiting for their questions to be asked and answered as well. So, if you'd like to join them and get in line, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. Chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Please give us your first name, at least, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA. Don't go away, God willing, we'll be right back with Dr. Latane C. Scott, right after these messages with more of Leaving Mormonism, Why Four Scholars Changed Their Minds.

Mormonism, the Internet, and Archaeological and DNA Challenges

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Welcome back. This is Chris Arns. And if you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours with about 90 minutes to go is Dr. Latane C. Scott, a Mormon convert to Christianity, author of over 16 published books, including her classic work, The Mormon Mirage, a former member of LOOKS at the Mormon Church Today.

She's also a recipient of the Distinguished Christian Service Award by Pepperdine University. She's an award-winning poet, and she's addressing, during this first hour, her latest book, co-authored with several other former Mormons, Leaving Mormonism, Why Four Scholars Changed Their Minds.

During the second hour, we will be addressing her new novel, A Conspiracy of Breath. And going back to Dr. Lynn K. Wilder, who co-authored Leaving Mormonism with you, she asks, in the book Leaving Mormonism, you address the topic of your dissertation.

What are the basics of representational research?

I would like to kind of give some background about the other authors. Dr. Wilder was a tenured professor at Brigham Young University at the time that her son, Micah, who founded the group Adams Road, was on his mission and began reading the Bible like a child, began seeing that what he was teaching on his Mormon mission could not possibly sync with the teachings of the New Testament.

And he contacted his parents, who were horrified. His dad was a high priest. His mom's a professor at BYU. And he, Micah, contacts them and says, I am coming home from my mission. He stood up in front of all of his missionary colleagues and said, you know, I can't do this or read the Bible.

His message to them was the Bible is enough, and Jesus is enough. Lynn and her husband began investigating. They knew about Mormonism and comparing it with biblical teachings. Lynn's at BYU. A very incisive look at social ramifications of the Mormon doctrine on people.

And her chapter is Social Consequences of Mormon Teachings, Finding Post-Mormon Mental Health. Another colleague in this book, Dr. Corey Miller, a lifetime Mormon, converted to Mormonism. He was a lifetime Mormon, and he found his way out and is now the organization called Racial Christy.

Believers on college campuses be able to defend their faith at an academic level. Eccles is a scientist, a research scientist, who came from, like Corey Miller, a very long heritage. I mean, a generations and generations church.

He and his wife became members of an evangelical church. And then he suffered his own crisis. And so we have unique in that. My dissertation is on representation. It has two main points. Representations of God, the mind of God, it is always in contrast to the natural inclinations of the human mind.

The Bible always has to be the agent that looks at the human mind as a patient, not the human mind analyzing the Bible. And its second incidences and teachings in the Bible can be used to generalize, to form generalizations that are timeless and applicable to any person, anytime, anywhere.

My colleague, Dr. Mike Strong, who I need to acknowledge, was the genius behind the hinge of your history. I did not think of the concept or give it that terminology. The foundational, I guess, he and Dr. John Allard, the foundational, he compares from the Bible.

You can formulate it and take it and put it in your pocket and take it out and use it when you need. The pie in the sky, the teachings of representation. To show the difference, a language or concepts have three elements.

To show the difference between a fiction, an error, a lie, and the truth.

Well, thank you, Lynn. We'll get back to your other question about A Conspiracy of Breath, God willing, in the second hour when we are talking about that novel by our guest, Dr. Latane C. Scott. Oh, wait a minute.

There's one more question that involves Mormonism here from Dr. Lynn K. Wilder. How does the Mormon concept of truth differ from the biblical concept of truth?

The Mormon concept of truth is constantly changing. It's always being amended. It can always be updated. For instance, I mentioned that the Mormon Church actually changed a word of its own scripture. If you go back to Joseph Smith's account of how he supposedly translated the Book of Mormon, he would write or recite a line of scripture from God, and then if it was not correct, he couldn't go on to the next one.

So every word was supposed to be vetted by God before it ever came out in the Book of Mormon. Also in my chapter in Leaving Mormonism, I give example after example of how the concept of truth is much more fluid in the Mormon Church than it is with the Bible, which has withstood the test of time for the thousands of years it's been out without having to be constantly amended or changed.

Another concept is shared by Catholicism. The Church itself is the guardian of truth. The Mormon Church is what's practical. For a Mormon, truth does not necessarily have to sink. It's a layered reality.

And probably the most important thing that your listeners need to know is that the bottom line of whether or not a Mormon says, I believe the Church is true, is physical confidence, and that really is the bottom line.

Yeah, what a bizarre and subjective experience that they have to be a litmus test for something being from God. Very strange indeed when a pizza could do that to you.

Well, yeah.

But thank you, Lynn, and we'll get back to your other question, God willing, during the second hour. We have Bobby in Hartsdale, New York, who says, I have heard that nothing could be farther from Christianity in the realm of religion than the Mormon Church, even though it uses much of the same vocabulary.

It has a different dictionary. What are the four most vital ways in which Mormonism disagrees with Biblical Christianity?

Well, I've never heard someone say that it is the furthest from. That's an interesting concept. I'm not really sure that I would be on board with that, because they do share concepts. But I think what your listener is getting to, and he's making a very, very good point, is that Mormons can use the same terminology as a Christian and mean something very different.

And the classic example I give of that was when I was a teenager, I was walking around at a fair here in Albuquerque, and there was a very earnest Christian that came up to me and said, are you saved?

And of course, to that Christian, that is the make it or break it, most important issue of the human soul, are you saved or not? And I was just so impatient with that person. I, in my little Mormon self, said, well, of course I'm saved.

Everybody's saved. Because in Mormon doctrine, salvation means whether or not you're going to get your body resurrected, and except for some very, very few exceptions, everybody's going to be resurrected.

So asking someone if you're saved is like asking, are you alive? To me, as a Mormon, was eternity and which level of heaven, the three levels of heaven. And so that was a nonsensical question that the Christian asked a Mormon.

So that's one example. Just the word Bible, I think, has a very different meaning. As a Mormon, I always believed that the other sources, the Book of Mormon, the Proliferate Christ, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the teachings of LDS prophets, could interpret the Bible.

So it was always subject to interpretation. Where a Christian would say, no, the Bible is the final word. It's the authority. It's what speaks to our minds. We don't go back and revise it. And I think your reader wanted four areas.

I think the issue of faith and works. For a Mormon, you become a Mormon, are washed away at that point. But from that point on, where you end up spending eternity is based on human effort. And an example of that is, if you want to be in the highest degree of heaven, you have to go to the Mormon temple.

To go to the Mormon temple, you have to go before a bishop, a traditional leader, and he will, in a private closed-door session, ask you questions about whether or not you attend meetings regularly, whether or not you support the leaders of the Mormon church, whether or not you keep the health laws of the Mormon church, not drinking, smoking, etc.

And so you cannot get to the highest degree of heaven without being in a temple. You can't get to a temple without a temple recommend, and you only get a temple recommend if you can answer behavior-based questions.

And there's an inordinate number of Mormon women to people, and it's a Mormon-Mormon issue.

Well, one of the reasons why I am very sympathetic towards Bobby's statement about there being nothing further from Christianity than Mormonism, that is, within the realm of a religion that professes Christ, is that there seems to be polar opposites in the most vital areas.

Christianity, one of the pillars of Christianity that would not, or should I say, if you remove the pillar, it would cease to exist as Christianity, is monotheism. And Mormonism believes in an infinite number of gods, that faithful Mormons may become gods.

And even that very concept of becoming a god of your own planet, and as you just mentioned, the works righteousness as opposed to being saved by grace, it seems that there is an opposite answer to the core questions on which eternal life hinges, that Mormonism gives you an opposite answer, not a similar answer.

It seems that the only thing that we very often have in common with our Mormon friends is not only some of the vocabulary that has different definitions according to them, but a basic belief in biblical morals, which even that is seemingly rapidly changing in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as they become increasingly accepting of homosexuality.

Could you comment on that before we run out of time for our first hour? It seems alarming and amazing that a church known for its very conservative points of view on issues of morality and on sex and gender are now becoming very soft and open to the area of homosexuality.

If you could comment.

The Mormon Church has a history of bowing to cultural pressures on sexual issues, and the best example of that is polygamy, which was said to be an eternal principle without which you could not be exalted to the highest level of heaven back in the 1800s, and then because it was illegal and considered immoral in American culture, it was supposedly abandoned, although I've known many, many, many people who consider themselves faithful Mormons who grew up in conclaves in Arizona or Mexico, who practiced, and do practice today, still practice polygamy.

So sexual issues, changing on sexual issues is not a new posture for the Mormon Church, and although I'm shocked to hear that they are becoming, that there are, it looks like there are movements toward increased acceptance by the official Mormon Church of homosexual practice.

They've already made a statement recently that they are accepting of people with homosexual inclinations, and can accept them as brothers and sisters. They've not gone, to my knowledge, over the point of saying that people who have homosexual practices are in full fellowship with the Mormon Church.

But I guess I shouldn't be surprised, because they have changed so many eternal ordinances.

In fact, I just want to wrap up the subject of Mormonism when we return from our break, and then we will enter into our new discussion on your novel, A Conspiracy of Breath. If anybody would like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Chrisarnson at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA, and only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

This is the segment of our program which is an elongated break, because Grace Life Radio 90 .1 FM in Lake City, Florida, requires a 12-minute break between our two major segments. So please be patient.