Jerald and Sandra Tanner

The Tanners, once practicing Mormons and now born-again Christians, run the Utah Lighthouse Ministry, whose mission is to "document problems with the claims of Mormonism and compare LDS doctrines with Christianity." They have done this by reprinting original versions of early Mormon writings and scripture, and highlighting doctrinal changes, such as the rejection of Brigham Young's "Adam-God theory."

Documents that they have published include:

• Mormonism: Shadow or Reality, a long, densely-written work full of reproductions of early Mormon documents accompanied by commentary written by the Tanners. This has subsequently been revised and is the basis for their more readable later book, titled The Changing World of Mormonism.
• The original version of the Book of Mormon, in which the Tanners highlight numerous changes in spelling, punctuation and wording. Many of these changes have been defended by supporters of Mormonism as trivial typographical alterations rather than substantive emendations. A few changes, however, have doctrinal significance. Until recently, for example, the Book of Mormon referred frequently to righteous people as "white and delightsome," a phrase whose racial implications were interpreted by many Mormons as support for its practice of denying the priesthood to African-Americans. After this so-called "Negro doctrine" was abandoned in 1979, the phrase "white and delightsome" was revised to "pure and delightsome. (This same change was made by Joseph Smith in early edited editions of the Book of Mormon, and appears in some pre-publication manuscripts, but had not been adopted for published version). Therefore, now A Brief Explanation About the Book of Mormon in the beginning of the Book of Mormon states: "Some minor errors in the text have been perpetuated in past editions of the Book of Mormon. This edition contains corrections that seem appropriate to bring the material into conformity with prepublication manuscripts and early editions edited by the Prophet Joseph Smith."
• Changing versions of the LDS Church's temple ceremony, which originally contained language and rituals that some people found lurid and offensive, including an episode featuring a Christian minister and penalties for revealing secret code words and signs. From the point of LDS members, however, the most offensive aspect of the Tanners' decision to publish the ceremony is that it exposes to public scrutiny practices that members consider sacred and private.

The Tanners are not professional scholars, and their foes sometimes characterize their works as tendentious and polemical, while their supporters see historical insight and intellectual integrity in the same works. The Tanners were among the first public skeptics, for example, of the Salamander Letter, a notorious hoax against Mormonism perpetrated by one of its own members, Mark Hofmann. Based on their familiarity with early anti-Mormon literature, the Tanners stated that they thought Hofmann's Salamander letter was a hoax at a time when many authorities regarded it as genuine. (The LDS Church itself purchased the document for its historical archives thinking it was genuine). The Tanners have also debunked false claims circulated by a Christian evangelist filmmaker who claimed that LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinckley had engaged in sex with prostitutes and young boys. [1] [2]. The Tanners have also criticized Ed Decker's The Godmakers for its misrepresentation of the LDS Church.

Related articles

External links

• The Utah Lighthouse Ministry maintains archives of their newsletter, the Salt Lake City Messenger, as well as a collection of online books, including the following:
  • Jerald and Sandra Tanner, The Changing World of Mormonism (Moody Press, 1981) is the most thorough exposition available of their critique of the LDS religion.
  • Jerald Tanner, Tracking the White Salamander (Salt Lake City, Utah: Utah Lighthouse Ministry, 1987), gives Tanner's description of his encounters with Mark Hofmann and the reasons for his conclusion that Hofmann's "discoveries" were fraudulent.

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