FOXNews.com compiled a list of 21 questions (Feb, 2008) about Mormonism and submitted them to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for an official response. Mormonism became a ‘news’ item because Romney (a Mormon) was running for President in 2008.
CONCLUSIONS: My conclusions are no different then what I already stated in the first article on the ‘21 Questions’:
I found the whole exercise to be disappointing at best.
First of all, the FoxNews questions themselves were substantially lacking. On the most part they didn’t really deal with important doctrinal issues that separate Mormonism from orthodox Christianity. In some cases, they actually seem to be merely trying to embarrass the LDS –or at least make them look somewhat weird or strange. One wonders where they got some of the questions in the first place.
In fact, the LDS Church officials objected to some of them claiming that they misrepresent the basic tenets of the Mormon religion:
“Many of these questions are typically found on anti-Mormon blogs or Web sites which aim to misrepresent or distort Mormon doctrines. Several of these questions do not represent … any serious attempt to depict the core values and beliefs of its members.”
Secondly, the responses of the LDS Church to the questions were incomplete at best. It is a shame that the LDS didn’t take this opportunity to clarify their understanding of the issues addressed, but instead responded halfheartedly in some cases and really not at all in others.
Rather than treating the questions seriously and answering each one, in some cases they merely repeated the same trite formula answer for several of the more important questions. It really doesn’t reflect well upon the Church and it probably would have been better if they had not participated at all since they came across as rather ‘smart aleck’ rather than forthright.