'Perfect storm' sobering for LDS, historian says

Bushman quoted Harvard Law School professor Noah Feldman, who said Mormons are not more radical, they are just more recent.

Claudia Bushman is the best person he knows to cope with criticism of this sort. When someone asked her how she can believe in gold plates, she said: "If you come to church with me next Sunday, I'll introduce you to a lot of people who believe the same way."

Bushman said that may seem like a coy or clever answer, but actually it is powerful influence on one's mind to see how many people believe a certain way. It's all about familiarity, he said.

"Like having someone believe that a dead man rose from the dead and ascended to the heaven," Bushman said.

The fabulous nature of the Mormon belief is not as critical a problem as many Mormons think, Bushman said, and "it will solve itself with time."

Bushman said that there is a sense among evangelicals and intellectuals that "Mormonism is not only incredible, but it's dangerous."

Philip Jenkins, Pennsylvania State University professor of history and religious studies, said this is always true of sects and cults — they are feared to be fanatics.

"It is true that we are in a sense secret," Bushman said. "It will be difficult to remove the suspicions when there is a certain fact to it."

Bushman said he doesn't like when Mormons say the temple is not secret, that it is sacred.

"It is secret," he said. But he appreciates how excellent Mormons are at creating sacred spaces.

"Those temple spaces are just different from the rest of the world," Bushman said after watching people walk silently with arms folded through the Manhattan Temple before it was dedicated. The process to be able to go into a Mormon temple evolves around keeping it sacred and at the same time, secret.

"Important as anything," Bushman said, "is you don't speak about the temple, even to those who go to the temple."

But, the LDS Church is speaking out on some issues.

"We are now officially as a church coming completely clean on the Mountain Meadows Massacre," Bushman said. "We don't try to hide it, we tell it in all its bloody gory truth. And we don't say it was someone else's fault. It was our fault."

Bushman said piece by piece, these charges against Mormonism can be coped with, and rationally dissipated.

During World War II, Bushman would brag that the G.I. dog tags Mormons wore were neither Protestant nor Catholic.

"We were proud of the fact that we had to have a tag of our own," Bushman said. He said Mormons pride themselves in being separate from the world. However, when the world tells them they are not Christian, "they get all upset and start complaining."

"That's a mistake," Bushman said. "We have not provided a useful label for people to use."