I've been showing source after source the entire time I've been posting on this site.
And may of those sources, BTW, are
non-Mormon entities.
For example, consider the
Mosser-Owen Report from the 1997 Evangelical Theological Society Far West Annual Meeting. Mosser and Owen did a survey of pro- and anti-LDS literature that was available at the time, and found themselves gobsmacked by what they saw. To quote them:
We hope by this point we have convinced some of our readers that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is currently producing a robust apologetic for their beliefs. Their scholars are qualified, ambitious, and prolific. What are we doing in response? The silence has become deafening. And it is getting louder. The only two significant attempts (apart from the Tanners) are one article by James White and a recent book by Dr. John Ankerberg and Dr. John Weldon.
White's work is ripped apart for being full of straw arguments, while the Ankerberg & Weldon work
"is among the ugliest, most unchristian, and misleading polemics in print." M&O ultimately concluded that unless mainline Christianity got off its lazy backside and started using actual research in the place of hate speech and strawmen, we were eventually going to win.
Wow, that was horrendous. Who are Mosser and Owen? What is the Evangelical Theological Society of the Far West? After reading that I'm convinced that Mosser and Owen are shills, if not LDS themselves. Their criticisms are limited to ad homs and they provide no valid examples of the case they try to make. The couple of "examples" they provide are not rational unless one blindly accepts their assertions (which they don't back up) that LDS apologetics are more scholarly than non-LDS. It's ironic and funny (and pathetic) that they accuse Ankerberg of ugly and misleading polemics while doing exactly that towards him.
Or we have the University of Missouri - Kansas City's profiles on such ignoble individuals as
Ed Decker and
Walter Martin, both of whom are pretty clearly exposed as liars and con artists... and both of whom are still regarded as prominent members of the Christian counter-cult movement and still hailed as being in good standing and proud examples of what a "good Christian" should be.
Martha Beck?
Writer's Digest compared her to James Frey and Frank McCourt.
Bill Schnobelen?
Masonic Info tried - and failed - to reconcile his personal history, the failure stemming from the fact that he himself never gives the same timeline of events twice.
Alberto Rivera?
Another liar. He says he fled his native Spain because the Vatican was trying to kill him, but in reality he was fleeing outstanding arrest warrants for fraud and other crimes.
Jack Chick?
I'll let his own words condemn him. The tract I linked you to, "Lisa", got so much heat even from his own followers that Chick Publications was forced to throw this one down the memory hole.
Then we have the countless rank-and-file individuals who make God weep every time they open their mouths for all the lies they tell and all the hate they spew in his name.
Without getting into the actual foibles or strengths of the "counter cult" people you mention, your references don't back up your point. The references are extremely weak at best (e.g. umkc site seems to be one student's opinion/work and not the opinion of the institution). Other sources are just, I don't even know what to say - irrelevant? MasonicInfo.com - why am I going to trust the secretive occult religion that Mormonism is based on? Writers Digest? WD is a group that helps people get published and you referenced the story of someone who was not talking about countercult people and in fact favorably associated Beck with Frey - but it doesn't matter, considering she's just some random woman who paid WD to subscribe and got one of her anecdotes published. An anecdote, not a scholarly or academic work, but an essay and not a terribly good one at that.
But regardless of all of that, the real issue is that you are taking a handful of people that you don't like and holding them up as some great "movement" that persecutes you and mormons. You also link them to all of Christianity by saying these are the "good Christians". Who calls them "good Christians"? I don't see any of them even saying that about themselves, let alone others saying it about them. And who says they're not "good Christians"?? Christians - "good" or "bad" (and it's weird to even say that considering that most Christians rarely, if ever, use terms like that to describe themselves or others) are humans and can make mistakes.
Whatever these people are, though, they are not the representation of all of "mainline Christianity" that you make them out to be. Like any other Christian (or person) they have freedom of speech and what they say can be right or can be wrong. Whatever they say that is right is not offset by what they say that is wrong, and vice versa. But that's all there is to it. How they are representative of every other Christian in the world is a giant leap you make with nothing behind it.
For example, consider
these photos taken outside the 2003 Mesa, Arizona Easter pageant.
Yeah - that was an actual banner some "Good Christian" had on display.
Really? Since you know that it was "some Good Christian" then who was it? You must have a name or otherwise be able to identify him (her?) because you know he/she is "some Good Christian" and not a non-Christian of any kind. So who is the person who put that banner up? (by the way, even the website you got this from is not claiming that the person is a "Christian" of any sort - so how do you know something that the website you're referencing doesn't even know?)
Or then we have these individuals, who dressed up as LDS missionaries in order to deceive passers-by:
If you guys have so much dirt on us, then why resort to lying to people?
I don't see anyone lying to anyone. I see people trying to get attention of passersby. I doubt they are trying to "deceive" them into thinking they are mormon missionaries because as soon as they start talking they're going to speak against mormonism. There are a lot of tactics that people use when demonstrating at those mormon pageants and festivities. Some may be more offensive than others but sometimes what's offensive to the mormons is only so because the truth hurts. Like the Joseph's Wives people who have women dressed up with informational placards describing each of Joseph Smith's wives. The mormons hate this and find it offensive but the truth is the truth.
And these aren't isolated bits, either.
Author Allen Wyatt has several image galleries of "Good Christians" at work protesting outside of LDS facilities, including
one infamous video in which a street preacher is shown throwing a Book of Mormon around and daring people to come get it from him.
And people
wonder why so many folks are getting so disgusted with mainline Christianity...
Quite frankly - so what? For one thing, that guy does not represent all of "mainline Christianity". But more than that I have to wonder why you and the mormons in the video are so afraid of this man?
I'm imagining a reverse scene - a Mormon (or another non-Christian) demonstrating in front of my Church like this, dragging a Bible on a string and daring people in a threatening manner to try to stop him. I am 100% sure that this would be seen by many in my Church (by the clergy at LEAST) as a great opportunity to reach out to someone who is lost and is crying out for God's love. Such a person would have someone talking with him in an instant. And not fighting with him, but talking with him. Even if he went on ranting, someone would be talking calmly and lovingly with him. And if that man did get physically violent with a Christian who was trying to talk nicely with him, it would be chalked up to the normal kind of persecution that Christians are to expect.
Christians are persecuted all the time but the difference between Christians and mormons is that Christians expect persecution and accept it. Mormons feel persecution is unfair and ought to be stopped. Mormons become angry with those who disagree and treat them as enemies; Christians generally want to show love to those people and see these events as an opportunity to minister to them.
I think the mormon church/religion likes to use the "anti-mormon" narrative as a way to say, "Look, this is proof we are the truth! They hate us! We must fight against the apostates and defend ourselves! Do not waste your time with these apostates and anti's!" On the other hand, the Christian approach is to minister to the mormons and others who need to know Christ and to understand that the persecution we may receive in return is what Christ promised us and is for us to accept (as much as we may hate it at the time) and to not return evil for their persecution but to return love. Not every Christian does this every time, because no Christian is perfect. But to hold some of the actions of some Christians and then indict the whole of "mainline Christianity" (or really to even indict those few people as complete liars or frauds) based only on mistakes and wrongdoings of a few is wrong because it's not rational.
But it does help the "anti-mormon" narrative of the mormon religion, which is one of their favorite narratives because they use it to summarlly dismiss almost all disagreement. When their arguments fail based on logic and reason (as they almost always inevitably do) they fall back on the "anti-mormon" narrative and dismiss those they are arguing with. It's not an intellectually valid tactic but it's one that helps them to excuse themselves from difficult situations while appearing (to themselves anyway) to save face.
