Mormon Doctrine

They don't want to say that they were wrong, even though it's already been said by Bruce R. McConkie, who said that Brigham Young taught certain things that were incorrect and certain things that were correct.

Bruce R. McConkie is a former Quorum of the Twelve member and the author of Mormon Doctrine, which is probably the most infamous, um, compendium of Mormon doctrine, uh, that has ever been published by any church leader.

Do you have any other questions before we move on?

I appreciate you.

But, um, and you'll notice it's very widely marked in yellow and stuff like that.

Uh, this is one of the very first books that I read, uh, because the missionaries said, "This is what we believe." Uh, and of course, you know, Mormon Doctrine, Bruce R.

McConkie, an apostle of Jesus Christ.

Probably one of the least popular apostles of Jesus Christ in the modern period.

And that's what created our worldviews, right? It was.

Think about McConkie's Mormon Doctrine.

Now the spin on that is, ah, that was just something that was not really nobody.

No, that was Mormon doctrine.

Every Mormon had that on their bookshelf, multiple copies.

That was what you went to the encyclopedia of how to be a Mormon.

We also talked about issues of race and David O. McKay's handling of that.

And also we talked about David O. McKay's struggles in sort of reining in Bruce R. McConkie and the very, very pivotal and damaging book, Mormon Doctrine.

And, and Greg was able to respond and help me better understand some of the details behind each of these stories.

So today I want us to start, if we may, you brought up in our last episode, Greg, an individual who has become sort of one of my Mormon heroes.

You know, that's the rhetoric in the Book of Mormon that Joseph Smith wrote into it.

And then there was Bruce R. McConkie's book, Mormon Doctrine, where he literally said that the Catholic Church was the Church of the Devil.

Did, did you absorb the first around the Book of Mormon, and, and did you, um, ever hear anyone talk about the second? And then did you have to reconcile that with your more compassionate feelings towards the Catholic Church?

Yes, I, I did.

I encountered Mormon Doctrine on my mission.

Um, it was one of the books that would float around, and it felt like, oh, if you spend time and read that, it just equips you with all the tools you need to be the most gung ho, best missionary you can be.

And I do remember encountering that l- that thought and, and feeling like, "Okay, maybe that's true.

I will not watch any TV, nothing of the world." It was like absorb yourself 100% in church stuff.

And it was probably more Bruce R. McConkie.

He, he published a book in 1958 called Mormon Doctrine, that then got reprinted several times, and that was viewed as the book that was running the church in terms of its doctrine and theology for decades and decades.

If anyone wanted to know what the church thought or believed on something, they opened up Mormon Doctrine.

And, and Bruce R. McConkie was an apostle and, you know, he was very much loved, and his final testimony said that once he, he had cancer and, you know, once he died, um, and, and, and knelt at Jesus' feet and felt the nail prints in his hands, that he wouldn't know any more then than he knows, than he knew at the time he was giving that talk that, that Jesus lived.

So I mean, very strong convictions, very much an orthodox true believer, and, and viewed as the bastion of Mormon orthodoxy for decades.

Um, and the book on, on Mormon doctrine was Mormon Doctrine, until the church decommissioned it, uh, which is its own story.

But the, the one thing I'll just tell you is when I was, um, getting my PhD at Utah State University back in 2004, 2005, one of my, um, colleagues was Mark McConkie.

And I, I don't know if this guy's Mark's brother.

In fact, the early Mormon leader Orson Pratt said the devil founded the Catholic Church.

And the first edition of Bruce McConkie's book Mormon Doctrine says under the heading Church of the Devil that the Roman Catholic Church specifically is most abominable above all other churches.

And it is also to the Book of Mormon to which we turn for the plainest description of the Catholic Church as the great and abominable church.

Now to be clear, these were not official Mormon doctrines, and modern Mormon leaders reject this claim.

My point is just that some prominent Mormons did hold this view, and a fair number of people still hold this view today about Catholicism being demonic.

So here's the dilemma.

None of this makes sense.

To offer a comparison, I don't believe Mormonism is a Christian denomination, and anyone saved in Mormonism is saved in spite of their Mormon beliefs, not because of them.