An oddity of Mormonism is that, although the official name of the Mormon Church is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Or LDS) is that there seems very little real emphasis on Jesus Christ, himself.
In fact, there is often more emphasis on Joseph Smith the founder of the LDS Church than on Jesus Christ.
Several years ago BYU had a sort of weird Joseph Smith Nativity Scene instead of a traditional Jesus Christ Nativity Scene. And yet Mormons still cannot understand why other Christians can look at them and wonder exactly how Christian the Mormons are.
The writings of Joseph Smith seem to indicate that he thought he was not equal to Jesus but even better than him. Blasphemous? Joseph Smith? Well, you read what's on this link and then see how people might think it so...
http://www.mormoncurtain.com/topic_josephsmithworship.html
Combine THAT with the "Amway, Noni Juice, Nu Skin, Mary Kay, Nature’s Sunshine Products, Herbalife, Nutra-Smart, XanGo, Living Scriptures, 4Life Research, NSA, Pharmanex, Quixtar, Shaklee, Kirby, etc., etc., etc" Multi Level Marketing aspects of Mormonism and see why many people in the world shake their heads and wonder if, perhaps, Mormonism is more a money making pseudo cult rather than being a 'straight' religious cult?
By the way, some of those MLM firms have roots in Utah and were, in at least one or two cases, founded by faithful Mormons...
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My mom's best friend, who was Mormon at the time, remembers that the NEW ERA ran a 1-page article in its December issue sometime in the late 70's about the importance of not overlooking Joseph Smith's birthdaay amidst all the festivities surrounding Christmas. She remembers thinking the article was stupid when she read ir, amd that was in her brainwashed days of extreme LDSism when she usually read the entire magazine cover to cover the first day it arrived in the mail. Then her Bishop read the emtire article verbatim from the pulpit.
To Be Continued
Part 2
Regarding MLMs, Mormons tend to carry their "one-true-church" state of mind and extend the "one-truth" mentality to other areas of their personal and working lives. My mom is an educational psychologist and school administrator, and she remembers that back in the days when a remedial reading program known as "Reading Recovery" was widespread, it was touted (if unofficially and only among adherents) as the "one true way" to teach reading, even though its premise was that a child already had to have not necessarily failed at learning to read, but needed at the very least to be significantly behind where he or she should be, in order even to be considered for placement in the program. The program, which was not wholly without merit and promoted many sound teaching practices, got its start in New Zealand, which boasted at the time a larger-per-capita percentage of LDS than did the U. S. as a whole. As far as whether or not Marie Clay, its founder, or at least the person popularly given credit for having started it, was LDS, my mom has no idea. (My mom was never LDS. She just happened to marry an ex-Mo.) Interessting about the Reading Recovery method or movement, or at least about its proponents in the regions where my mom worked, was that many of its practitioners were LDS. They approached it with the same level of fervor as they did their religion. Individuals involved in it often judged a school or district to be good or bad based solely on its presence or lack of a Reading Recovery program. The MLM mindset extends itself most easily to business, but will worm its way into any field dominated, or at least moderately populated, by Mormons.
For the record, according to my mom, who is not without bias with regard to the subject, the Reading Recovery program, while flawed, was not without merit. Amomg its flaws, which were overriding, were that it was labor-intensive per child. Its typical set-up involved one credentialed teacher intructing four students, each for hald an hour, one at a time. A daily half hour's worth of preparation time was also required for each of the teacher's four Reading Recovery students. (The teacher usually taught a standard first-grade class for the remainder of his or her workday.) Depending upon teacher salary in a given area, the cost, then, of implementing this program ranged from simply costly to distirct-bankrupting.
Part 3 Another drawback of the program, which wasn't inherently a flaw a but as often as not presented as such, was that the program, while not actually scripted, as are some remedial reading programs, was rigid in terms of what aspects of literacy skills [though the word "skills," which was akin to a profane word at the time, would not have been used] would be targeted for specifically designated ratios of each allotted half-hour. The false premise of the program was that all struggling readers were equally deficient in the identical sub-skills of literacy.
Another factor determining the program's likelihood of success or failure was a given school's overall percentage of struggling readers among its student body as a whole. If the rate were to be determined with the use of objective measures, amd the percentage of struggling readers was found to be relatively low, as in below 10 percent of the school's first grade student population, the program was viable at that particular school. If, on the other hand, the objectively determined percentage was closer to twenty-five, a school or district either lacked the resources to implement the program or implemented it anyway at the expense of other equally or more essential programs.
Finally, if subjective measures were used to determine students' eligibility for the program (such as "the bottom ten percent of first-graders in each particpating school"), either under- or over-reporting and enrollment in the program invariably occurred. This resulted in students receiving the intense and expensive one-to-one tutoring when it wasn't needed, or, in more cases in the United States, resulted in huge blocks of students with gaping reading deficiencies receiving no instructional interventions whatsoever, or vastly inadequate remedial services.
NOTE TO MATT: ABSOLUTELY NO ONE I KNOW CARES TO DISCUSS THIS TOPIC WITH ME. FOR THAT NATTER, NOT MANY OF YOUR READERS ARE ALL THAT INTERESTED. STILL, THEY AT LEAST HAVE THE OPTION OF SKIMMING OR SKIPPING OVER IT. MY ACQUAINTANCES WOULD HAVE BEEN BORED COMATOSE. THANKS FOR THE OPPORTUNITY FOR DISCUSSION!
Alexis, this reminds me of the failed experiment that was the Initial Teaching Alphabet system in the UK in the 1960s.
It ruined the teaching of a whole generation of children in the UK
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1523708.stm
It was utterly bonkers!
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