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{{FAIRAnalysisHeader
|title=''Mormon America: The Power and the Promise''
|author=Richard N. Ostling and Joan K. Ostling
|noauthor=
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|notes={{AuthorsDisclaimer}}
}}


=About this work=
==Quick navigation==
*[[/Index|Index of claims]]


==About this work==
{{To learn more box:responses to: Richard and Joan Ostling}}
{{H1
|L=Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Mormon America: The Power and the Promise
|H=Response to ''Mormon America: The Power and the Promise''
|T=''Mormon America: The Power and the Promise''
|A=Richard N. Ostling and Joan K. Ostling
|<=
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<onlyinclude>
{{H2
|L=Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Mormon America: The Power and the Promise
|H=Response to ''Mormon America: The Power and the Promise'', a work by Richard N. Ostling and Joan K. Ostling
|S=
|L1=Response to claims made in Mormon America: "Introduction: A New World Faith"
|L2=Response to claims made in Mormon America "Chapter 1: Sealed with Blood"
|L3=Response to claims made in Mormon America "Chapter 2: Beginnings: A Very American Gospel"
|L4=Response to claims made in Mormon America "Chapter 3: The American Exodus"
|L5=Response to claims made in Mormon America "Chapter 4: Polygamy Then and Now"
|L6=Response to claims made in Mormon America "Chapter 5: Redefining the Kingdom of God"
|L7=Response to claims made in Mormon America "Chapter 6: Almost Mainstream"
|L8=Response to claims made in Mormon America "Chapter 7: Mormons, Inc."
|L9=Response to claims made in Mormon America "Chapter 8: Some Latter-day Stars"
|L10=Response to claims made in Mormon America "Chapter 9: The Power Pyramid"
|L11=Response to claims made in Mormon America "Chapter 10: Families Forever"
|L12=Response to claims made in Mormon America "Chapter 11: A Peculiar People"
|L13=Response to claims made in Mormon America "Chapter 12: Rituals Sacred and Secret"
|L14=Response to claims made in Mormon America "Chapter 13: Two by Two"
|L15=Response to claims made in Mormon America "Chapter 14: Saintly Indoctrination"
|L16=Response to claims made in Mormon America "Chapter 15: Faithful History"
|L17=Response to claims made in Mormon America "Chapter 16: The Gold Bible"
|L18=Response to claims made in Mormon America "Chapter 17: Discovering 'Plain and Precious Things'"
|L19=Response to claims made in Mormon America "Chapter 18: 'How God Came to Be God'"
|L20=Response to claims made in Mormon America "Chapter 19: Are Mormons Christians? Are Non-Mormons Christians?"
|L21=Response to claims made in Mormon America "Chapter 20: Rivals and Antagonists"
|L22=Response to claims made in Mormon American "Chapter 21: Dissenters and Exiles"
|L23=Response to claims made in Mormon America "Chapter 22: Mormonism in the Twenty-first Century"
|L24=Quote mining, misrepresentation and manipulation in Mormon America: The Power and the Promise
}}
</onlyinclude>


:''Should non-Mormons write a book about Mormonism? The coauthors, are, admittedly, conventional Protestants...the outsiders will find some fascinating information and want to learn even more. And the insiders will see themselves portrayed fairly while learning some things they would not have known otherwise.''
{{:Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Mormon America: The Power and the Promise/Introduction}}
:&mdash;Preface, ''Mormon America: The Power and the Promise''
{{:Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Mormon America: The Power and the Promise/Chapter 1}}
{{:Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Mormon America: The Power and the Promise/Chapter 2}}
{{:Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Mormon America: The Power and the Promise/Chapter 3}}
{{:Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Mormon America: The Power and the Promise/Chapter 4}}
{{:Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Mormon America: The Power and the Promise/Chapter 5}}
{{:Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Mormon America: The Power and the Promise/Chapter 6}}
{{:Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Mormon America: The Power and the Promise/Chapter 7}}
{{:Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Mormon America: The Power and the Promise/Chapter 8}}
{{:Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Mormon America: The Power and the Promise/Chapter 9}}
{{:Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Mormon America: The Power and the Promise/Chapter 10}}
{{:Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Mormon America: The Power and the Promise/Chapter 11}}
{{:Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Mormon America: The Power and the Promise/Chapter 12}}
{{:Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Mormon America: The Power and the Promise/Chapter 13}}
{{:Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Mormon America: The Power and the Promise/Chapter 14}}
{{:Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Mormon America: The Power and the Promise/Chapter 15}}
{{:Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Mormon America: The Power and the Promise/Chapter 16}}
{{:Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Mormon America: The Power and the Promise/Chapter 17}}
{{:Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Mormon America: The Power and the Promise/Chapter 18}}
{{:Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Mormon America: The Power and the Promise/Chapter 19}}
{{:Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Mormon America: The Power and the Promise/Chapter 20}}
{{:Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Mormon America: The Power and the Promise/Chapter 21}}
{{:Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Mormon America: The Power and the Promise/Chapter 22}}
{{:Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Mormon America: The Power and the Promise/Quote mining}}


:''Mormon America is very much like two books in one. The first depicts individual Latter-day Saints "as a model minority, a hardworking people with more education than the American average, deeply committed to church and family" (p. xxiv)...Yet in the second part, when the Ostlings begin to discuss the church's doctrines, its history, and its leaders, they paint a landscape that, to a knowledgeable Latter-day Saint, is selective with a bias toward the sensational.
:&mdash;Raymond Takashi Swenson, ''Faith without Caricature?'', 2001


:''[T]he Ostlings do not want to seem openly or stridently hostile toward the Saints. They are, instead, condescending in ways that are analogous to the way virtually every community of believers gets treated by journalists, including evangelicals and their allies. But at times the Ostlings drop the guise of balanced, objective reporters.
==About this work==
:&mdash;Louis Midgley, ''Faulty Topography'', 2002


==Claims made in this work==
{{Epigraph|Should non-Mormons write a book about Mormonism? The coauthors, are, admittedly, conventional Protestants...the outsiders will find some fascinating information and want to learn even more. And the insiders will see themselves portrayed fairly while learning some things they would not have known otherwise.<br>&mdash;Preface, ''Mormon America: The Power and the Promise''}}
*[[Mormon America: The Power and the Promise/Index|Index to claims made in ''Mormon America: The Power and the Promise'']].


==Quote mining, selective quotation and distortion==
{{Epigraph|''Mormon America is very much like two books in one. The first depicts individual Latter-day Saints "as a model minority, a hardworking people with more education than the American average, deeply committed to church and family" (p. xxiv)...Yet in the second part, when the Ostlings begin to discuss the church's doctrines, its history, and its leaders, they paint a landscape that, to a knowledgeable Latter-day Saint, is selective with a bias toward the sensational.<br>&mdash;Raymond Takashi Swenson, ''Faith without Caricature?'', 2001}}
{{QuoteDisclaimer}}


===Council of Fifty behind the destruction of the ''Nauvoo Expositor''?===
{{Epigraph|''[T]he Ostlings do not want to seem openly or stridently hostile toward the Saints. They are, instead, condescending in ways that are analogous to the way virtually every community of believers gets treated by journalists, including evangelicals and their allies. But at times the Ostlings drop the guise of balanced, objective reporters.<br>&mdash;Louis Midgley, ''Faulty Topography'', 2002}}
{| valign="top" border="1" style="width:100%; font-size:85%"
!width="5%"|Reference
!width="35%"|Author's claim...
!width="35%"|The rest of the story...
!width="25%"|[[Use of sources]]
|-
|p. 16
|Smith knew that someone from the '''Council of Fifty''', despite the secrecy oaths, had betrayed him by giving information to Foster and Law, According to Quinn, "He could not allow the ''Expositor'' to publish the secret international negotiations masterminded by Mormonism's earthly king." But Joseph, as mayor of Nauvoo, declared action was essential because the ''Expositor'' faction would "destroy the peace of the city" and foment a "mob spirit." '''With the backing of his Council''', Smith ordered that the new press be smashed and all possible copies of the press run destroyed. {{ea}}||The way that the paragraph is constructed, it is clear that the authors wish the reader to believe that the Council of Fifty was backing Joseph in the destruction of the ''Nauvoo Expositor''.
||D. Michael Quinn
|}
'''Commentary'''
* It was the Nauvoo ''city council'' that ordered the destruction of the ''Nauvoo Expositor'', ''not'' the Council of Fifty. Note how the authors have capitalized the word "Council," which, when read with the preceding reference to the "Council of Fifty," makes it appear as if the "secret" Council of Fifty was behind the destruction of the Expositor. The correct information is buried in an unreferenced endnote on page 402, which states "Nauvoo city council activities related to the ''Expositor''" were taken from D. Michael Quinn's ''The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power''. One wonders why the authors chose not to clarify this information in the main body of the text. The endnote shows that the authors knew that this was the city council. Instead, the author's decided to throw in Quinn's own ''speculation'' and then constructed the paragraph in a way which made the matter appear much more sinister.
{{parabreak}}


===A description of Central American ruins in ''View of the Hebrews''?===
==Reviews of the Work==
{| valign="top" border="1" style="width:100%; font-size:85%"
{{MaxwellInstituteBar
!width="5%"|Reference
|link=https://publications.mi.byu.edu/fullscreen/?pub=1455&index=10
!width="35%"|Author's claim...
|title=Faulty Topography
!width="35%"|The rest of the story...
|author=Louis Midgley
!width="25%"|[[Use of sources]]
|publication=FARMS Review of Books
|-
|vol=14
|29||One book Joseph Smith likely knew was Ethan Smith's ''View of the Hebrews'', published in Vermont in 1825 and containing considerable material on the subject, as well as a description of ancient Central American Indian ruins.||Joseph first learned of Central American ruins in 1841 when John L. Stephens, ''Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan'' was published, over 16 years after Ethan Smith's book was published.
|num=1/2
|}
|date=2002
'''Commentary'''
|summary=The Ostlings recognize that "the Book of Mormon was controversial from the outset" (p. 261). They also realize that, "from the beginning to this day, the reaction of Book of Mormon readers has been divided between those committed to it as ancient literature and those who consider it a product of the nineteenth century" (p. 261). They argue that these "older polemical traditions" also "split on two sides of a simple prophet/fraud dichotomy: either Joseph Smith was everything he claimed to be, a true prophet entrusted with a new scripture from authentic ancient golden plates, or he was a charismatic fraud" (p. 261). They exploit the fact that recently a few authors operating on the fringes of the Mormon academic community, while denying that Joseph Smith was a genuine prophet and the Book of Mormon an authentic ancient text, have striven to avoid directly charging him with being a conscious fraud. The Ostlings are correct in claiming that some of these writers recognize that a "simple prophet/fraud dichotomy" does not exhaust all possible explanations (p. 261). They then indicate that "some participants in [the] current discussion" over the historical authenticity of the Book of Mormon, while rejecting its authenticity, "would like to carve out a middle path" (p. 261) somewhere between its being read as an authentic ancient text and as a nineteenth-century sham. This effort by a few cultural Mormons, dissidents, and former Latter-day Saints is then turned by the Ostlings into a main component of their campaign against the Book of Mormon.
*The authors were not very careful in their research. Ethan Smith's book describes artifacts (not cities) found in ''North America'', not Central America.
}}
{{parabreak}}
 
===Joseph was "hoping one last time" to use his seer stone to produce treasure in 1836?===
{| valign="top" border="1" style="width:100%; font-size:85%"
!width="5%"|Reference
!width="35%"|Author's claim...
!width="35%"|The rest of the story...
!width="25%"|[[Use of sources]]
|-
|31||Smith left his financially troubled church for Salem, Massachusetts, at summer's end in 1836, '''hoping one last time that the use of his seer stone might produce treasure that he had been told lay under a house''' (D&C 111). The seer stone failed again, and his money-digging was no more successful than before. {{ea}}||D&C makes no mention of the use of a seer stone. None of the published accounts of this story mention the use of a seer stone.||{{s||DC|111|}}
|}
'''Commentary'''
*The authors outdo themselves this time by showing their willingness to synthesize and fabricate new elements for this story. Note that they provide D&C 111 as a reference, which describes the [[Joseph Smith's "treasure hunting" trip to Salem|Salem "treasure hunting" trip]]. When one reads {{s||DC|111|}}, it is plain to see that this section does not mention the use of a seer stone. By 1836, Joseph had not used a seer stone for years, having given his stone to Oliver Cowdery soon after translation of the Book of Mormon was completed.
*See also [[Joseph Smith and seer stones]]
{{parabreak}}
 
===The nature of Helen Mar Kimball's marriage?===
{| valign="top" border="1" style="width:100%; font-size:85%"
!width="5%"|Reference
!width="35%"|Author's claim...
!width="35%"|The rest of the story...
!width="25%"|[[Use of sources]]
|-
|61||[Joseph's] youngest bride, '''in some ways typical''', was fourteen-year-old Helen Mar Kimball. {{ea}}||The most conservative estimates indicate that Joseph entered into plural marriages with 29–33 women, 7 of whom were under the age of 18. The youngest was Helen Mar Kimball, daughter of LDS apostle Heber C. Kimball, who was 14. The rest were 16 (two) or 17 (three). One wife (Maria Winchester) about which virtually nothing is known, was either 14 or 15.||
*Todd Compton, [[In Sacred Loneliness|''In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith'']], p. 486-534
|-
|62||[Helen's] own writings and other evidence indicate that she felt rebellious at times, and that it was possible she had not grasped before the ceremony that '''the marriage in time would eventually have a sexual component'''. {{ea}}||
*The prophet's marriage to [Helen] seems to have been largely dynastic&mdash;a union arranged by Joseph and Heber to seal the Kimball family to a seer, church president, and presiding patriarchal figure at the dispensation of the fullness of times.
*So '''apparently''' Helen had expected her marriage to Joseph to be for eternity only, then discovered that it included time also.
*[Helen] was '''apparently''' coming to realize that her secret marriage to Joseph entailed time as well as eternity.
||
*Todd Compton, [[In Sacred Loneliness|''In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith'']],  p. 487, 500, 502. {{ea}}
|}
'''Commentary'''
*The authors speculate that the marriage to Helen Mar Kimball was "in some ways typical," although they do not clarify this statement.
*The authors take speculative statements from their source (note Compton's use of the word "apparently" in each case) and extrapolate them even further by adding the term "sexual component." Note that the source never mentions a "sexual component," and that the authors interpret this data in ways that the source never intended. Todd Compton said the following when Jerald and Sandra Tanner attempted to use his material to "prove" that sexual relations were involved:  
:''The Tanners made great mileage out of Joseph Smith's marriage to his youngest wife, Helen Mar Kimball. However, they failed to mention that I wrote that there is absolutely no evidence that there was any sexuality in the marriage, and I suggest that, following later practice in Utah, there may have been no sexuality. (p. 638) All the evidence points to this marriage as a primarily dynastic marriage.''{{ref|compton1}}
*See also [[Joseph Smith and polygamy/Marriages to young women]]
{{parabreak}}
 
===The "Mormon Jesus"===
{| valign="top" border="1" style="width:100%; font-size:85%"
!width="5%"|Reference
!width="35%"|Author's claim...
!width="35%"|The rest of the story...
!width="25%"|[[Use of sources]]
|-
|320||The same process of apostasy was repeated among the believers in the New World who were visited by '''the Mormon Jesus'''.||Consider this excerpt from the 1982 anti-Mormon film ''The God Makers'':
 
"Mormon apostle Orson Pratt taught that after Jesus Christ grew to manhood, he took at least three wives: Mary, Martha and Mary Magdeline. Through these wives the '''Mormon Jesus''', through whom Joseph Smith claimed direct descent, supposedly fathered a number of children before he was crucified. According to the Book of Mormon, after his resurrection, Jesus came to the Americas to preach to the Indians, who the Mormons believe are really Israelites. Thus, '''the Jesus of Mormonism''' established his church in the Americas as he had in Palestine."
||Source not provided by the authors.
|}
'''Commentary'''
*The term "Mormon Jesus," as used by the authors here, came from ''somewhere''. A search of the endnotes for Chapter 19 did not turn up any references to ''The God Makers''...yet it was this film, well known to Evangelical Christians, that promoted the term "the Mormon Jesus." This pejorative term is used by evangelicals to distinguish the "Mormon Jesus" from the "true Jesus" in order to support the claim that Latter-day Saints are not "Christians." Its use by the authors in the main text of their narrative is simply insulting to Latter-day Saints.
{{parabreak}}
 
===Mormonism operates more like a small cult?===
{| valign="top" border="1" style="width:100%; font-size:85%"
!width="5%"|Reference
!width="35%"|Author's claim...
!width="35%"|The rest of the story...
!width="25%"|[[Use of sources]]
|-
|354||The files are only one aspect of a meticulous system of internal discipline through which contemporary '''Mormonism operates more like a small cult''' than a major denomination.||Church disciplinary procedures linked to the word "cult?"||Authors' opinion
|}
'''Commentary'''
*Apparently the authors cannot resist the opportunity to use the word "cult" in association with the church.
{{parabreak}}
 
===Evidence of magical activities "too well documented for Mormons to deny?"===
 
{| valign="top" border="1" style="width:100%; font-size:85%"
!width="5%"|Reference
!width="35%"|Author's claim...
!width="35%"|The rest of the story...
!width="25%"|[[Use of sources]]
|-
|403||'''Evidence of Smith family magic activities too well documented for Mormons to deny''': Richard L. Bushman, "Treasure-seeking Then and Now," ''Sunstone'', II, no. 5 (1987): 5.||Richard L. Bushman, of course, is a believing and active Latter-day Saint scholar.||Richard L. Bushman, "Treasure-seeking Then and Now," ''Sunstone'', II, no. 5 (1987): 5
|}
'''Commentary'''
*The authors' mask of alleged impartiality and objectiveness slips as they flatly imply in the endnotes that the Church would attempt to hide any evidence of magical activity on the part of the Smith family unless forced to acknowledge it. They then have the gall to support their claim by using the published work of one of the most well-known, active ''LDS scholars''. Attempting to promote their bias in the endnotes is apparently acceptable journalistic practice.
{{parabreak}}
 
==Endnotes==
#{{note|compton1}}Todd M. Compton,  Response to Tanners, post to LDS Bookshelf mailing list, no date. It should be mentioned that many reviewers of Compton's work do not agree with all of his conclusions, even though he has collected much useful data; see the reviews of ''In Sacred Loneliness,'' linked below.
 
==Reviews of this work==
*{{FR-14-1-10}} <!-- Midgley -->
*{{FR-13-2-9}} <!-- Swenson -->
 
==Further reading==
{{FAIRAnalysisWiki}}

Latest revision as of 04:45, 12 May 2024


To learn more about responses to: Richard and Joan Ostling
Wiki links
Online
  • Louis Midgley, "Faulty Topography (Review of Mormon America: The Power and the Promise / And the Saints Go Marching On)," FARMS Review 14/1 (2002). [139–192] link
  • Raymond Takashi Swenson, "Faith without Caricature? (Review of Mormon America: The Power and the Promise)," FARMS Review 13/2 (2001). [65–77] link
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Response to Mormon America: The Power and the Promise



A FAIR Analysis of: 'Mormon America: The Power and the Promise', a work by author: Richard N. Ostling and Joan K. Ostling

Response to Mormon America: The Power and the Promise, a work by Richard N. Ostling and Joan K. Ostling


Jump to details:


Response to claims made in Mormon America: "Introduction: A New World Faith"


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Response to claims made in Mormon America "Chapter 1: Sealed with Blood"


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Response to claims made in Mormon America "Chapter 2: Beginnings: A Very American Gospel"


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Response to claims made in Mormon America "Chapter 3: The American Exodus"


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Response to claims made in Mormon America "Chapter 4: Polygamy Then and Now"


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Response to claims made in Mormon America "Chapter 5: Redefining the Kingdom of God"



There are currently no claims addressed in this chapter.


Response to claims made in Mormon America "Chapter 6: Almost Mainstream"



There are currently no claims addressed in this chapter.


Response to claims made in Mormon America "Chapter 7: Mormons, Inc."


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Response to claims made in Mormon America "Chapter 8: Some Latter-day Stars"



There are currently no claims addressed in this chapter.


Response to claims made in Mormon America "Chapter 9: The Power Pyramid"



There are currently no claims addressed in this chapter.


Response to claims made in Mormon America "Chapter 10: Families Forever"


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Response to claims made in Mormon America "Chapter 11: A Peculiar People"



There are currently no claims addressed in this chapter.


Response to claims made in Mormon America "Chapter 12: Rituals Sacred and Secret"



There are currently no claims addressed in this chapter.


Response to claims made in Mormon America "Chapter 13: Two by Two"



There are currently no claims addressed in this chapter.


Response to claims made in Mormon America "Chapter 14: Saintly Indoctrination"



There are currently no claims addressed in this chapter.


Response to claims made in Mormon America "Chapter 15: Faithful History"



There are currently no claims addressed in this chapter.


Response to claims made in Mormon America "Chapter 16: The Gold Bible"



There are currently no claims addressed in this chapter.


Response to claims made in Mormon America "Chapter 17: Discovering 'Plain and Precious Things'"



There are currently no claims addressed in this chapter.


Response to claims made in Mormon America "Chapter 18: 'How God Came to Be God'"



There are currently no claims addressed in this chapter.


Response to claims made in Mormon America "Chapter 19: Are Mormons Christians? Are Non-Mormons Christians?"


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Response to claims made in Mormon America "Chapter 20: Rivals and Antagonists"



There are currently no claims addressed in this chapter.


Response to claims made in Mormon American "Chapter 21: Dissenters and Exiles"


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Response to claims made in Mormon America "Chapter 22: Mormonism in the Twenty-first Century"



There are currently no claims addressed in this chapter.


Quote mining, misrepresentation and manipulation in Mormon America: The Power and the Promise


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About this work

Should non-Mormons write a book about Mormonism? The coauthors, are, admittedly, conventional Protestants...the outsiders will find some fascinating information and want to learn even more. And the insiders will see themselves portrayed fairly while learning some things they would not have known otherwise.
—Preface, Mormon America: The Power and the Promise

Mormon America is very much like two books in one. The first depicts individual Latter-day Saints "as a model minority, a hardworking people with more education than the American average, deeply committed to church and family" (p. xxiv)...Yet in the second part, when the Ostlings begin to discuss the church's doctrines, its history, and its leaders, they paint a landscape that, to a knowledgeable Latter-day Saint, is selective with a bias toward the sensational.
—Raymond Takashi Swenson, Faith without Caricature?, 2001

[T]he Ostlings do not want to seem openly or stridently hostile toward the Saints. They are, instead, condescending in ways that are analogous to the way virtually every community of believers gets treated by journalists, including evangelicals and their allies. But at times the Ostlings drop the guise of balanced, objective reporters.
—Louis Midgley, Faulty Topography, 2002

Reviews of the Work

Louis Midgley, "Faulty Topography"

Louis Midgley,  FARMS Review of Books, (2002)

The Ostlings recognize that "the Book of Mormon was controversial from the outset" (p. 261). They also realize that, "from the beginning to this day, the reaction of Book of Mormon readers has been divided between those committed to it as ancient literature and those who consider it a product of the nineteenth century" (p. 261). They argue that these "older polemical traditions" also "split on two sides of a simple prophet/fraud dichotomy: either Joseph Smith was everything he claimed to be, a true prophet entrusted with a new scripture from authentic ancient golden plates, or he was a charismatic fraud" (p. 261). They exploit the fact that recently a few authors operating on the fringes of the Mormon academic community, while denying that Joseph Smith was a genuine prophet and the Book of Mormon an authentic ancient text, have striven to avoid directly charging him with being a conscious fraud. The Ostlings are correct in claiming that some of these writers recognize that a "simple prophet/fraud dichotomy" does not exhaust all possible explanations (p. 261). They then indicate that "some participants in [the] current discussion" over the historical authenticity of the Book of Mormon, while rejecting its authenticity, "would like to carve out a middle path" (p. 261) somewhere between its being read as an authentic ancient text and as a nineteenth-century sham. This effort by a few cultural Mormons, dissidents, and former Latter-day Saints is then turned by the Ostlings into a main component of their campaign against the Book of Mormon.

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