"The Mormons" on PBS
Well, imagine:
We actually plugged in the TV that has been gathering dust for a number of years now to watch that PBS production, and made it through about 25 minutes of it before we switched it off... A collection of opinions doesn't make for an objective picture, but is just that, a collection of opinions.
We noticed that the focus of the presentation was on the historical phenomenon "Mormonism" and its birth, while theological questions were absent, even in the comments made by church officials. Many aspects of a theological nature were mentioned, yet never elaborated on, such as Smith's attitude towards witchcraft, or why he never turned to the bible to test the spirits he saw in his visions. Granted, the vision that told him that all the churches have it wrong sounds pretty accurate to us, nowadays as it has been in Smith's time, but if he wanted to return to the foundations of Christianity, why did he not return to the bible in the first place ?
Anyway, it was nothing new to us, and the presentation at times even outright wrong and in many ways astonishingly friendly compared to other publications about Smith we have read. So most probably, we will not tune in again tonight, unless....
We wouldn't have switched on our TV in the first place had not the LDS church expressed such interest in this blog yesterday, so we will wait and see what will be going on today, and maybe we will feel compelled to watch another 25 minutes of public disinformation tonight.
Technorati Tags: Mormons, PBS, TV, Smith, polygamy, plural marriage, Joshuah's House
We actually plugged in the TV that has been gathering dust for a number of years now to watch that PBS production, and made it through about 25 minutes of it before we switched it off... A collection of opinions doesn't make for an objective picture, but is just that, a collection of opinions.
We noticed that the focus of the presentation was on the historical phenomenon "Mormonism" and its birth, while theological questions were absent, even in the comments made by church officials. Many aspects of a theological nature were mentioned, yet never elaborated on, such as Smith's attitude towards witchcraft, or why he never turned to the bible to test the spirits he saw in his visions. Granted, the vision that told him that all the churches have it wrong sounds pretty accurate to us, nowadays as it has been in Smith's time, but if he wanted to return to the foundations of Christianity, why did he not return to the bible in the first place ?
Anyway, it was nothing new to us, and the presentation at times even outright wrong and in many ways astonishingly friendly compared to other publications about Smith we have read. So most probably, we will not tune in again tonight, unless....
We wouldn't have switched on our TV in the first place had not the LDS church expressed such interest in this blog yesterday, so we will wait and see what will be going on today, and maybe we will feel compelled to watch another 25 minutes of public disinformation tonight.
Technorati Tags: Mormons, PBS, TV, Smith, polygamy, plural marriage, Joshuah's House
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