In my opinion, Mormonism is an interesting religion that is relatively harmless. My wife was a Mormon for several years and, in fact, married her first husband in the Temple. (Her subsequent divorce from said husband got her personally kicked out of the church by the Bishop himself.)

Some years back I worked for a company with the home office in Salt Lake City that was staffed, for the most part, with Mormons of one type or another. Surprisingly enough, one would have to ask to know their belief. Unless you noticed their refusal of a cup of coffee or a Coke.

On the other hand, I was baptized a Baptist at age 15 and was quite surprised when, upon enlisting in the Navy at eighteen, discovered there was no category for “Baptist.” Indeed, we were all classified as “Protestant, Catholic or Jewish.” (Maybe Mormon. I don’t know.)

But, no matter. The thing about the three (or four) different religions is that while there are differences in protocol, customs, and some beliefs, the shape of the cross is pretty much the same in all. The Commandments, in various form, live in all three, (or four).  The Bible, for example, both Old and New, was written by men. Men who likely had little knowledge beyond the village or town they lived in. And they wrote their interpretations of events as they knew them in a complex cuneiform language decipherable by only a few scholars. The translations of these texts through the centuries were flavored with the prejudices and beliefs of the translators who were no doubt influenced by many political and religious pressures of the times.

The red print in the New Testament likely is not a verbatim quote from Jesus but that shouldn’t detract from the points being made. Again, most of it seems to be condensed into “The Ten Commandments.”  And whether one’s personal religion involves snake handling, speaking in tongues or believing God once walked the earth as a human being, as long as the emphasis is on a righteous life, it shouldn’t make any real difference.

Incidentally, the focus of the New Testament is that Jesus, Son of God, was born into a body of flesh and bone. We Baptists don’t seem to have a problem with that. The only thing with the Bible is that it should be viewed same as a set-down dinner. Partake of the whole thing. Not as a buffet, where you pick and choose the parts you like and ignore the rest.

I listened to Beck’s speech. I didn’t hear him preaching Mormonism. I heard him speaking of “Love of God, love of Country, love of fellow man, we’re all one under God’s Love.” I heard him saying that this nation cannot exist as a secular nation. That by removing God we are losing our collective soul as a country.

I believe this with all my heart, as maybe the hundreds of thousands who took the time and paid the expenses to be part of this, do also. It appears petty and self-serving to denigrate these Americans for their desire to return this country to its former greatness by restoring the Spirit under which it was founded.

Your reference to Beck’s God (not capitalized in your column, signaling your disrespect for his beliefs,) is unseemly at best. It appears an attempt to marginalize him, the event, the multitudes who attended and what transpired in their hearts.

But now, Islam. That’s another story. I refer to “A Brief History of Islam” compiled by the Quilliam Foundation, a counter-extremism think tank headquartered in London, www.quilliamfoundation.org.

I don’t think this kind of “religion” should be spoken in the same breath as Mormonism.  No matter what we might think of Mormonism, they don’t advocate the  overthrow of governments, the be-heading of “infidels,” or the stoning to death of their own wives and daughters who have “disgraced the family” by being raped.

Sharia law is enforced by the worst kinds of torture, including an eye for an eye, cutting off of the hands of thieves, maiming of robbers and, of course, the beheading of suspected “infidels.”

For a country that proclaims such compassion for our fellow man that the executing of murderers tears at our collective hearts, it’s difficult to understand the tolerance of Islam by this country’s highest representatives while any reference of Christianity is forbidden in our nation’s schools and public places.

This is what Glenn Beck was speaking of in Washington.

Respectfully

Wendell Carvan

Oakland