Mormon Transhumanism is the idea that humanity should learn how to be compassionate creators. This idea is essential to Mormonism, which provides a religious framework consistent with naturalism and supportive of human transformation. Mormon Transhumanists are not limited to traditional or popular accounts of religion, and embrace opportunities and risks of technological evolution. Although usually considered secular, Transhumanism originates partly in religious Humanism and sometimes functions as religion. Accelerating change contextualizes Mormon Transhumanist narratives, which illustrate parallels between (...) Mormonism and Transhumanism. Mormon Transhumanists have produced secular arguments for faith in God and religious arguments for Transhumanism. This is a revision and update of “What Is Mormon Transhumanism?”. (shrink)

Introduction: Foundations of faith described -- Christian history : a brief overview -- The Apostolic Age (ca. A.D. 30-100 -- The Patristic Age (ca. A.D. 100-500) -- The Medieval Age (ca. A.D. 500-1500) -- The Reformation/counter-Reformation Age -- The Modern Age (ca. A.D. 1600-1950) -- The Postmodern Age (ca. A.D. 1950-present) -- Mormon and evangelical theology : a comparison -- Scripture and revelation -- God and humanity -- Church and temple -- Salvation and the afterlife -- Moral and social (...) standards -- Mormonism and Christianity -- Sociological foundations of faith -- Question 9: Who was or is the greatest influence on your religious beliefs? -- Question 10: What were the religious beliefs of your family when you were growing up? -- Question 13: How much do you associate with people that hold to other religious beliefs? -- Question 15: What would be the social consequences for you if you converted to another religion? -- Sociological foundations of faith : conclusion -- Spiritual foundations of faith -- Question 4: To what extent has spiritual or religious -- Question 6: Mormons and Evangelicals claim to have the witness of the Holy Ghost/Holy Spirit in their hearts confirming the Mormons and Evangelicals -- Truth of their faith : how do you know that the assurance you have in your heart is from God? -- Question 8: What do you think of the religious experiences of people outside your religion, especially those which seem to confirm their religious beliefs to them? -- Rational foundations of faith -- Question 16: To what extent do you have faith because you think that Mormonism/Evangelicalism is reasonable? -- Question 18: What do you consider to be the best proof or evidence for Mormonism/Evangelicalism? -- Question 19: Would you believe that Mormonism/Evangelicalism is true even if most of the evidence were against it? -- Question 20: How has your assurance changed over time? -- Question 21: What has caused your faith to become stronger or weaker over time? -- Question 22: To what extent do you ever doubt that Mormonism/Evangelicalism is true? -- Question 23: If you sometimes doubt that your beliefs are true, what causes you to doubt? -- Question 24: How do you respond to or deal -- Conversion stories -- Conclusion: Foundations of faith prescribed. (shrink)

In this essay I plan to meet the following four objectives: (i) Show that a commonly made inference by Christian apologists, namely inferring proposition (1) The Mormon Church is polytheistic, from proposition (2) The Mormon Church both appears to believe in the existence of numerous Gods and appears to worship numerous Gods, is an invalid inference; (ii) defend the truth of proposition (2); (iii) reject proposition (i); and (iv) given the cogency of my arguments, attempt as best I (...) can to situate Mormonism on the landscape of contemporary philosophical theology. Far from being polytheists, I shall conclude that in spite of initial appearances Mormons are, in fact, atheists. (shrink)

This essay examines the doctrine, the history, and the current institutions of the Mormon Church as they relate to business and economic activity. The Mormon tradition emphasizes cornmunitarian principles such as economic cooperation and equality; these which conflict with modern values of wealth acquisition, competition, and individualism. While Mormon businesspeople typically have adopted these values and become integrated quite comfortably into mainstream American business life, many have resolved the conflict by using their business skills to promote more (...) communitarian ideals throughout the world. (shrink)

This paper explores the ways in which women’s nature has been defined as different from men’s in Mormonism. Unlike many mainstream Christian traditions, Mormons have a positive view of the Fall and of Eve, do not embrace the doctrine of original sin, and reject dualities which assign women to lower bodily categories in opposition to men’s higher rational ones. However, women in Mormonism are subordinated to men. This subordination is due, not to a sense that men are superior to women, (...) but to a sense that man’s distinct role is to be leader in church and family. This sense of the propriety of role differentiation coexists with romantic notions of women’s greater natural spirituality and altruism. In the last section of the paper, I discuss the ways in which feminist Mormons have critiqued the notions of gender role differentiation and women’s greater spiritual capacities. (shrink)

This paper is a reply to A. A. Howsepian in "Religious Studies" 32 (1996), 357-70. Howsepian there argues that Mormons are atheists because they acknowledge no greatest conceivable being and fail to have a fitting object of worship. Howsepian accuses Mormons of crude polytheism and of conceiving of their divinities as capable of progression. In reply, it is pointed out that Howsepian frequently misrepresents Mormon theology. Once a distinction is made between divine persons (which may be multiple) and divinity (...) itself (which is one but may be manifest in a community of divine persons), Mormon theology can be seen to be theistic if orthodox trinitarian Christianity is theistic. Mormon beliefs do recognize potentiality and change in deity, but in this they are like other 20th century religious systems which have rejected Greek metaphysics as a basis for theism. (shrink)

This study examined the impact of birth order on religious behaviors among college students raised by two highly religious Mormon parents. It is argued that individuals raised in the same religious family might not be equally religious due to some differential childhood experiences based on their birth-order ranking. Self-administered questionnaires were completed by undergraduate students taking classes at a state university in Utah. Results of a multivariate analysis, based on participants coming from highly religious Mormon families, indicated that (...) earlier-borns showed a higher Mormon religiosity than later-borns. (shrink)

The Book of Mormon begins as missionaries Kevin Price and Arnold Cunningham eagerly await a location assignment for their two‐year mission. Religious fundamentalism is the real problem that The Book of Mormon and South Park usually have in mind when they tackle the topic of religion. Throughout this chapter, the author explains The Book of Mormon and South Park expose the way of believing for what it really is: a naive and arrogant approach to God, the world, (...) and what it means to be human. Fundamentalist thinkers have the luxury of living in a black and white world of cold absolutes. The rest of us, fortunately or unfortunately, don't. Rather, we have no choice but to live in the real world, a world of difficult questions and deep ambiguities. But the real world is also a fascinating place of brilliant color and real diversity. (shrink)

There is a puzzle about divine justice stemming from the fact that God seems required to judge on the basis of criteria that are vague. Justice is proportional, however, it seems God violates proportionality by sending those on the borderline of heaven to an eternity in hell. This is Ted Sider’s problem of Hell and Vagueness. On the face of things, this poses a challenge only to a narrow class of classical Christians, those that hold a retributive theory of divine (...) punishment. We show that this puzzle can be extended to the picture of divine judgement and the afterlife found in Mormon theology. This is significant because at first glance, the Mormon picture of the afterlife looks like it fails to co-operate with Sider’s puzzle. In Mormon theology, there are not two afterlife states, but three: a low, a middle, and a high kingdom. There is no afterlife state quite like Hell, and the states that function similarly to Hell aren’t places of eternal suffering. We argue that appearances are misleading. While it may be true that no place in the Mormon afterlife is bad in the sense that its inhabitants suffer eternal bodily harm, it is true that many of the places in the Mormon afterlife are bad in the sense that their inhabitants lack access to significant goods. This allows Sider’s puzzle to re-engage as a puzzle about distributive Justice. After setting out this alternative version of the puzzle, we argue that Mormon theology has sufficient resources to reject proportionality as a constraint on divine judgment by adopting a nuanced version of universalism called escapism. (shrink)

This book offers an in-depth study of the female experience in one Mormon polygynous community, the Apostolic United Brethren. Women in such rigid, patriarchal religious groups are commonly portrayed as the oppressed, powerless victims of male domination. Janet Bennion shows, however, that the reality is far more complex. Many women converts are attracted to this group, and they are much more likely than male converts to remain there. Often these women are seeking improved socio-economic status for themselves and their (...) children, as well as an escape from their marginalized status in the mainstream Mormon church. In the polygynous group women experience rapid assimilation, autonomy, and upward mobility. Bennion supports her study with narratives from the lives of women now living in the group--narratives that clearly reveal why many mainstream Mormon women are viewing polygyny as a viable alternative to the difficulties to single-motherhood, "spinsterhood," poverty, and emotional deprivation. (shrink)

This study describes the cultural, cognitive, social, and emotional work that once-devout members of the LDS Church must engage in to leave the church and divest themselves of Mormon culture. A Grounded Theory approach with a multi-modal memoing process showed that, for the devout, leaving the LDS Church and Mormon culture is not a singular event, but rather a process of gradual transformation that requires time and effort, passing through a series of punctuating events. Formerly devout ex-Mormons had (...) to confront various problems, including the LDS Church’s truth claims and ethical contradictions from within the particular Mormon framework that leavers believed in and followed, which in turn had shaped and constrained both their leaving process and their post-Mormon selves. Interview data revealed a necessary reconstruction of post-Mormon emotionalities. And devout women who left Mormonism bore an added burden of overcoming internalized misogyny. (shrink)

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints – the Mormon Church – upholds a cultural expectation for women of their community to remain unemployed outside the home and to dedicate their early adulthood to bearing and raising children. This paper reports on a phenomenological exploration, using Smith and Osborn’s model of interpretative phenomenological analysis, of the use, as a conflict-controlling strategy, of sanctification, or the sacred aspects of life, in the religious cultural navigation of 16 religious Mormon (...) women who maintain full-time professional careers in the fields of law, medicine, education, science, administration or engineering, and who simultaneously mother one or more children under the age of 12. The findings of this study document significant demographic, values-based and experiential differences between the study participants and their Latter-day Saints peers who live within the subculture’s norm. (shrink)

Religions today, actively participate in the daily life of most people on the planet, producing different relationships and conflicts too, from a reference to the transcendent existence, so the construction of their space of action - their territories - cut out ways different society, especially in big cities, where the clash of different world views imply different ways of living and feeling the city and others in this city. We propose here the discussion about territory and identity of the Church (...) of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, more popularly known as Mormons, in Belem, from the phenomenological method, highlighting the experience of church members as central to relational and hierarchical production that territory, so that it becomes a source of affirmation geo-symbolic group in the city and the world. Clarifying the designation of territorial identity and explaining their sacred ways of acting and conceiving the world contributed to deepen the debate in key categories to suit the social sciences in general: space and culture, and also debating and rethinking of the specific concepts geography in their culture perspective. (shrink)

Women's participation in traditional religions is often explained in terms of their victimization and/or their opportunities for empowerment. This paper seeks to use Mormon women as a framework in order to explore some of the consequences of this phenomenon and to advocate for the creation of multiple, complex spaces where traditional religious women may be understood beyond the paradigm of victim/empowerment. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, otherwise known as the LDS or Mormons, maintains a cosmology that (...) is based upon highly differentiated gendered practices. A belief in a female deity, Mother in Heaven, and a related belief that all pious Mormon men and women have the ability to become gods and goddesses in a post-mortal existence are central to the Mormon gendered cosmology. Despite these beliefs, Mormon women generally resist feminism because they perceive feminism to be at odds with motherhood and family. Ironically, their belief in a female divine and their potential divinity strengthens their commitment to interdependence through maternal practices and kinship. (shrink)

Henry Shue has led the charge among moral philosophers in arguing that harms stemming from anthropogenic climate change constitute violations of basic rights and are therefore prohibited by duties of justice. Because frameworks such as Shue’s argue that duties of justice are at stake, one could object that the special urgency of those duties threatens to overrun the normatively protected space in which an agent makes her life her own. We argue that an alternative conception of how moral reasons combine (...) to produce duties is required to respond to the demandingness objection, providing normatively protected space to pursue one’s projects while yielding numerous strict obligations of justice. (shrink)

Furthering our project of applying Plantinga’s epistemology to different world religions, we do a comparative study of Mormonism and Vaiśeṣika Hinduism and analyze whether they can utilize Plantinga’s epistemology in order to claim that their beliefs about God if true are probably warranted. Specifically, we argue that they cannot, as ultimately they are unable to account for the preconditions needed to make for an intelligible cognitive design plan, due to either affirming an infinite regress when it comes to the designers (...) of our cognitive faculties or affirming an infinite number of cosmological cycles in which our faculties are formed. (shrink)

This article examines how 20 female college students who identified as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints negotiated its gender ideology to legitimate their educational goals. The young LDS women creatively employed equality, professionalism, and essentialist discourses to craft a coherent identity as a “good LDS woman” that incorporated their pursuit of higher education. Beyond providing an in-depth look at how college-age LDS women “do gender,” the analysis informs our understanding of the persistence of women's participation (...) in patriarchal religious institutions, the process of women's resistance, and women's role in the negotiated process of hegemony. The authors argue that while women embrace the LDS gender ideology of womanhood, their pursuit of higher education is a form of resistance—embedded resistance—often neglected by scholars. The findings suggest the importance of nomos and meaning in understanding women's participation in and manipulation of patriarchal religious institutions. (shrink)

This article extends previous research on the impacts of life events on individuals’ religiosity and examines whether individuals’ reactions to life events are affected by childhood relationships with parents. Questionnaires were completed by undergraduate students at a state university in Utah. The results of a multivariate analysis, based on data from undergraduate students raised by two Mormon parents, show that those who had a secure relationship with their mothers were more likely to report the occurrence of positive life events (...) that drew them closer to God. Those who had a secure relationship with their fathers were less likely, than their counterparts, to report the occurrence of either positive or negative life events that took them away from God. In contrast, those with an anxious mother or avoidant father during childhood were more likely to report the occurrence of life events, both positive and negative, that took them away from God. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Liberty of Thought and Expression Autonomy and Individuality Autonomy, Individuality, and Community: The Case of Mormon Polygamy Further Reading.

The relations between territory, religion and geopolitics seem to assume a central role in the contemporary world. I try to contribute to debate here, from a survey in Belém of Pará on the territory and the identity of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Mormons. Instrumentalized by semi-structured interviews, field observation, research of official documents of religion trought an existential phenomenological interpretation, I conclude that: there is a geopolitical war in evidence nowadays; territorial Mormons follow a metropolitan (...) spatial pattern; the identity of Mormon remount its geohistory in fruitful and tense negotiation with new cultural groups in seeking territorial expansion; the expansion of the territory demands a insurmountable relationship between domain and ownership, to sustain the tense unity of the group. (shrink)

‘Generalists’ hold that conspiracy theories, as a class, have epistemic defects. Well confirmed theories that invoke conspiracies, such as the theory that the Nixon administration conspired to orchestrate the break in at the Democratic National Committee offices in the Watergate complex, on 17 June 1972, – the ‘Watergate theory’ – raise a problem for generalists as it’s hard to understand how such theories can have epistemic defects. The Watergate theory is often not considered a mere conspiracy theory, because it enjoys (...) ‘official theory’ status and in folk usage that means it is not a conspiracy theory. However, most people concede that the Watergate theory was a conspiracy theory before obtaining official status. So, appealing to folk usage does not make the problem go away. Recently however, several generalist scholars including, Cassam, Mandik, Thalman and Butter, have argued that theories invoking conspiracies that enjoy official status were never conspiracy theories. I’ll consider their reasoning and show where they go wrong. I’ll work with the examples of the Watergate theory and the ‘false flag’ theory of the Mountain Meadows massacre of 1857, which has it that this massacre of over 100 people was led by white Utahn Mormons disguised as Native Americans. (shrink)

Almost one-third of all U.S. Americans believe that Jesus Christ will return to Earth in the next 40 years, thereby signaling the end of the world. The prevalence of this end-times theology has meant that sustainability initiatives are often met with indifference, resistance, or even hostility from a significant portion of the American population. One of the ways that the scientific community can respond to this is by making scientific discourse, particularly as related to sustainability, more palatable to end-times believers. (...) In this paper, I apply a historical–ecological framework, which emphasizes the interdisciplinary study of landscapes to understand long-term human–environment interactions, to three millennial religious groups that formed communes in nineteenth century America. The Shakers, Inspirationalists, and Mormons all blended deep beliefs in end-times theology with agricultural practices that were arguably more sustainable than those in use in the mainstream, and their ability to reconcile eschatology with sustainability provides us with potential lessons. By examining the history, doctrines, and agroecology of these nineteenth century communes, I propose communication strategies based in autonomy, institutional support, multigenerational narratives, and anthropocentricism as potential pathways for a more productive dialogue between advocates of sustainability initiatives and end-times believers in the modern United States. (shrink)

Alcohol is a class 1 carcinogen, and its use, at any level, is not safe for health. Despite this, alcohol remains strongly mixed into medical culture and is often served free at medical‐community events. This presents numerous ethical concerns. First, the funding of alcohol‐centered events by the medical community reinforces alcohol consumption as a coping mechanism for stress, perpetuates the perceived need for alcohol for socialization, and falsely implies that it is a safe substance. Additionally, the medical community is increasingly (...) diverse, including Muslims, Mormons, those in recovery from substance use disorders, pregnant individuals, and individuals from homes and communities damaged by alcohol. Due to their moral or safety concerns, these individuals may miss opportunities to network and engage in professional development when alcohol is present. Therefore, alcohol acts as a barrier to diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts and can result in pernicious downstream effects for minority patient populations. (shrink)

Books have their origins in conversations and seek to extend and expand those conversations over time and with different audiences. The conversations that have culminated in this book were initially stimulated through a research project at The Hastings Center on the role of religious voices in the professional fields of bioethical inquiry. Those professional conversations have continued throughout my academic career as a member of various institutional ethics committees, organizational ethics task forces, and in local, state, and national public policy (...) settings. The professional context of bioethics conversations can sometimes miss the richness of conversations that occur in the classroom and with various communities, including family members, friends, and religious and civic communities. These conversations provide an experiential depth, a groundedness in the lives and stories of persons, which augments and corrects the professionalized perspectives. I have been particularly fortunate and appreciative of opportunities to bridge the academic and professional with the personalized and communal through conversations about the ethical commitments and moral culture cultivated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS or Mormon). I was invited to develop an overview essay on "Bioethics in Mormonism" for the professional reference work, Encyclopedia of Bioethics (3rd ed., 2004), and some years later received my first invitation to make a presentation on "LDS Ethics" in an academic setting at the University of Virginia. This book is the outgrowth of these many conversations and seeks to advance my communal bridging. My aim in this book is to begin bridging these various intersections between the LDS religious community and its moral culture, the professional fields of bioethics, and practical decision-making. This work seeks to be a catalyst for expanding discourse within the interdisciplinary field of Mormon studies to include ethics and bioethics. Ethics has not been a well-developed area in Mormon studies, in contrast to studies in LDS history, theology, or literature. To remedy this oversight, I present a substantive interpretation of the sources, theological background, and moral principles of LDS ethics. The historical narratives and conceptual intertwining I offer of both bioethics and of LDS moral culture is intended to complement and expand the realm of Mormon studies. A further objective is to create opportunities for reciprocal dialogues between the bioethics community and LDS scholarship. This conversation has yet to occur within academic disciplines, professional communities, or in public policy deliberations. My exposition, analysis, and critiques will intertwine and contextualize LDS moral values and health care practices within the ethical inquiry undertaken in the broader professional scholarship of bioethics. My arguments will disclose some points of common ground as well as areas of divergence towards the end of establishing the LDS faith tradition as a community of moral discourse for the bioethics field and the healing professions (medicine, nursing, pharmacy, etc.) it informs. My claim is that given its emerging cultural prominence, LDS ethical scholarship should engage in bioethical literacy and bioethics should be LDS-literate. I am also engaged in an effort to initiate more reflective dialogues regarding LDS ethics and moral culture among LDS scholars, LDS health care professionals, and the interested general LDS reader. The focus of the book on the interrelationship of religion, ethics, medicine, and health care should present for these various audiences new opportunities for mindful reflection and creative scholarship on the ethical implications of faith commitments, the responsibilities of the healing professions, and religious dimensions of public policy and public bioethics. A religious community that is formed through narratives and practices of covenantal commitments of love of neighbor needs to have a robust discourse about its ethical character. I have understood my scholarship in biomedical ethics and in religious ethics through a linking metaphor of my moral culture, of medicine, and the law, of bearing witness. The witness offers moral realities, moral truths about the way things are, vocalizes and embodies moral experience, and prophetically critiques the hypocrisies of the powerful and their oppression of the vulnerable by offering a new story, a re-storying, of tradition and conventional practice. (shrink)

In recent years, many studies have examined conservative Christian responses to shifting societal attitudes about sexuality. In this article we examine official discourse from the LDS Church found in General Conference talks and the official adult magazine of the Church, Ensign, to better understand how leaders of the religion have taught the members to abstain from the use of pornography. Using a grounded-theory approach, we noted a pattern to the lessons that included four elements: avoiding dangerous associations, taking personal responsibility, (...) maintaining inner purity, and seeking spiritual treatment. This study extends previous research by examining how Mormon leaders taught their followers to interpret and protect themselves from pornography. As such, our analysis demonstrates the elaboration of religious teachings that may facilitate the negative reactions to pornography researchers have observed in survey and outcome-based research on members of conservative religions. (shrink)

In January 1969, just before his inauguration as president, Richard M. Nixon attended a concert in his honor at Constitution Hall. The program consisted entirely of works by American composers, including Howard Hanson, then the director of the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester. Hanson's choral work “Song of Democracy,” a setting of two excerpts from poems by Walt Whitman, was the last number of the evening. Here isNew York Timesmusic critic Harold Schonberg's commentary on the event, (...) which featured the National Symphony Orchestra and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir:“Song of Democracy” is not a very original or strong piece, but it makes a big brave sound in its concluding measures, and the well-trained Mormon Tabernacle Choir had a lusty time with it... Mr. Nixon listened intently, but grinned his way between numbers. At the end of the Hanson work, he was determined to be the first to applaud. He brought his fist down in a great downbeat, anticipating the conductor's by a good half measure.Afterwards, Schonberg reported, Nixon left the presidential box to congratulate Hanson personally. (shrink)

Do the rich descriptions and narrative shapings of literature provide a valuable resource for readers, writers, philosophers, and everyday people to imagine and confront the ultimate questions of life? Do the human activities of storytelling and complex moral decision-making have a deep connection? What are the moral responsibilities of the artist, critic, and reader? What can religious perspectives—from Catholic to Protestant to Mormon—contribute to literary criticism? Thirty well known contributors reflect on these questions, including iterary theorists Marshall Gregory, James (...) Phelan, and Wayne Booth; philosophers Martha Nussbaum, Richard Hart, and Nina Rosenstand; and authors John Updike, Charles Johnson, Flannery O'Connor, and Bernard Malamud. Divided into four sections, with introductory matter and questions for discussion, this accessible anthology represents the most crucial work today exploring the interdisciplinary connections between literature, religion and philosophy. (shrink)

Workplace spirituality research has sidestepped religion by focusing on the function of belief rather than its substance. Although establishing a unified foundation for research, the functional approach cannot shed light on issues of workplace pluralism, individual or institutional faith-work integration, or the institutional roles of religion in economic activity. To remedy this, we revisit definitions of spirituality and argue for the place of a belief-based approach to workplace religion. Additionally, we describe the construction of a 15-item measure of workplace religion (...) informed by Judaism and Christianity – the Faith at Work Scale (FWS). A stratified random sample (n = 234) of managers and professionals assisted in refining the FWS which exhibits a single factor structure (Eigenvalue = 8.88; variance accounted for = 59.22%) that is internally consistent (Cronbach’s α = 0.77) and demonstrates convergent validity with the Faith Maturity Scale (r = 0.81, p > 0.0001). The scale shows lower skew and kurtosis with Mainline and Catholic adherents than with Mormons and Evangelicals. Validation of the scale among Jewish and diverse Christian adherants would extend research in workplace religion. (shrink)

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints affirms the existence of a divine woman, a Heavenly Mother as a companion to a Heavenly Father. Feminist philosophers of religion have argued for the importance of a divine feminine as a challenge to patriarchal religion, yet the Heavenly Mother tradition has not created an egalitarian religion in Mormonism. Mormon feminists have charged that relative silence about this teaching is a primary cause of this discrepancy. This paper explores the performative dynamics (...) of speech and silence and their relationship to presence and absence in a feminist analysis of power. (shrink)

Since the publication of South Park and Philosophy in 2007, Parker and Stone have made some additional forays into religious satire, poking fun at staunch supporters of the Catholic Church and “militant agnostics” among others. This chapter deals with the episodes 200 and 201 in which the “Cartoon Wars” controversy resurfaced, inspiring real‐life death threats aimed at Parker and Stone. Additionally, The Book of Mormon opened on Broadway. This musical comedy extends the obsession with Mormonism in several South Park (...) episodes, featuring a playful, biting, yet loving portrayal of its adherents. South Park is a show born in blasphemy. In “All About Mormons,” Gary, the little Mormon kid, voices the lesson that Parker and Stone frequently teach in their messed‐up way. This same loving yet mocking attitude is displayed in spades in The Book of Mormon, illustrating even more clearly their love of Mormons while ridiculing their religion. (shrink)