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Romney's lost race is headliner
Apologists worry about fallout
Like their counterparts at Sunstone Symposium, LDS defenders will discuss the Mormon fallout from Mitt Romney's failed presidential bid. The vehement opposition to Romney's religion may have surprised some people, FAIR President Scott Gordon said, but "apologists know that anti-Mormon sentiment is alive and well." Mormon apologists also know the historic and contemporary questions thrown at Romney continue to trouble other members and potential members. Romney frequently was queried about polygamy, the LDS Church's ban on black men holding the priesthood prior to 1978 and the historical claims of church founder Joseph Smith. "Since most members don't have all the answers at their fingertips, critical claims can be unsettling or create doubt," FAIR author Michael Ash writes in a new book, "Shaken Faith Syndrome." "Members who develop more mature ideologies about the nature of religion, prophetic leaders, the scriptures, and the limitations of human knowledge are less likely to be troubled by potentially sticky issues." Ash will discuss his book at the conference. FAIR began in 1997 as an Internet conversation about how best to defend the LDS Church from its critics and is now a national nonprofit organization of Mormon apologists. A handful of participants, each with expertise in a different aspect of Mormonism, found on a another on message boards that dealt with controversial aspects of LDS philosophy and history including polygamy, the role of women in the church, homosexuality and problems with the historicity of the Book of Mormon. Writers in various states found themselves answering the same questions and criticisms repeatedly and thus pooled their resources to create a Web site. Since then, the group has added conferences and book publishing. FAIR is not sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and takes full responsibility for its authors' positions and perspectives.
pstack@sltrib.com
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