The Youthful Elders

The Morons lived right next door to us! The Natal headquarters of the insidious infiltration of our lovely corner of Africa called KwaZulu by that cult cheekily calling themselves “Latter Day Saints” – saints! – lived next door to us in Windsor Avenue! Them who believe Christ appeared in America about one thousand eight hundred years after his death and resurrection, appearing with his father God in a little dorp called Palmyra in upstate New York to a dodgy character called Joe Smith junior to restore ‘the true faith’.
Right! Lucky Joe!
Joe Smith junior went on to ‘find out’ that the Garden of Eden was actually located in North America. How much time and effort had been wasted searching for it in the Middle East! Also that the New Jerusalem would be built in Missouri. Both places of course, conveniently located near to where old dodgy Joe happened to be.
I would see their minibus full of 19yr-old ‘elders’ depart in the mornings, and in Montclair I’d see their gangly young yank boy-men – always only boy-men, women are a lower rank – walking around in black trousers, white shirts and black tie with a black name tag with ELDER on it, busily proselytising, mainly among the young people of Umlazi. Did these ‘elders’ ever tell their prey the church was seriously anti black people, I wonder, I doubt. They would tell them, I’m sure, of Smith’s ‘First Vision’, in which God the Father and God the Son appeared to him in 1820 when he was about 14 years old.
This ‘vision’ is regarded by some Mormons as the most important event in human history. Excuse me if I snort at that. Later they changed that to “after the birth, ministry, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.” Modest Joe himself thought the First Vision the most important though: “I have more to boast of than ever any man had. I am the only man that has ever been able to keep a whole church together since the days of Adam…Neither Paul, John, nor Jesus ever did it. I boast that no man ever did such a work as I. The followers of Jesus ran away from Him; but the Latter-day Saints never ran away from me yet.” That’s bashful Holy Joe speaking, mightier than Jesus and modelled on Muhammad.
Mormons will tell you they are no longer anti black people. And that, actually, they do worship Jesus. Yeah. They changed cos they had to. They will tell you they regard Jesus now to be a higher authority than Joe. They changed cos they had to. They will tell you they no longer practice polygamy. They changed cos they had to. They still however, don’t condemn Holy Joe’s thirty-plus wives, some only fourteen years old, some taken from other men. In fact, the Mormon position on women has changed little since the early 1800’s, when the official view was that ‘woman’s primary place is in the home, where she is to rear children and abide by the righteous counsel of her husband’ (McConkie 844). This attitude, coupled with the doctrine of polygamy and the absolute power claimed by the men of the church, created a legacy of profound sexism which modern Mormonism has been unable to escape.
Did they tell the people of Umlazi of the holy magic underpants, I wonder? Of the multiple wives? How you can only get to heaven through Joseph Smith? Hopefully a lot of their target audience at this point say bullDUST and keep their money and their independence in their pockets! That ANYONE converts to mormonism in this day of easy access to knowledge is astounding. And sad.

See Christopher Hitchens exposé of the weird and sinister beliefs of Mormons.
See the New York Times story on the conversations Mormon leaders have when they think no-one – including Jesus, presumably – is listening; and their story on how the Mormons threaten their members if they go online and question things the church does or says.
Personally, I’d love it if the Mormons got the hell out of Africa and went back to Palmyra.
Here’s what’s gonna happen when they ring the bell at the pearly gates:

thanks cartoonstock
Don’t get me started on the Jehovahs!
And – worst? The Scientologists!