{"id":50455,"date":"2025-06-19T05:02:18","date_gmt":"2025-06-19T11:02:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=50455"},"modified":"2025-06-19T07:32:21","modified_gmt":"2025-06-19T13:32:21","slug":"many-do-stumble-not-embracing-our-fuller-truth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2025\/06\/many-do-stumble-not-embracing-our-fuller-truth\/","title":{"rendered":"“Many Do Stumble”: Not Embracing Our Fuller Truth"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recent events have looked rather apocalyptic to me, both Israel\u2019s wars and the US\u2019s treatment of Latinos.<\/a> Huge events seem to happen so quickly that I worry any attempt to blog about them will be old news by the time this post goes up.<\/p>\n

Trump has quite staunch support among conservative evangelicals, and I\u2019ve seen lots of quotes, pictures, and art portraying Trump as some kind of divine tool to work for evangelicals\u2019 agendas. Mike Huckbee’s recent text<\/a> strikes me as particularly extreme.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Religious support for Trump is no doubt a very big topic with all different kinds of views, and I\u2019m happy that the polls generally show Mormon support for Trump being lower than evangelicals. Prominent Mormon politicians like Mitt Romney and Jeff Flake were some of the leading Republicans against Trump, and Mike Lee even did some of that in 2016.<\/p>\n

Yet Mormon support for Trump still strikes me as problematically too high, and evoking Mormon tropes for Trump like Lee calling him like Captain Moroni<\/a> really hits me as a kind of fundamental misunderstanding of the Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon clearly warns against people like Trump with figures like Amalikiah, and I see pretty much no significant similarities between Trump and Moroni.<\/p>\n

Indeed, I worry that as Mormons merge politically with the American religious right, they take on the religious politics of that movement in ways that overlook important warnings in Mormon scripture. Warnings of Amalickiah\u2019s behavior is one of them, but as I noted in my last post<\/a> that the Book of Mormon has some pretty dire warning about how white people treat Americans with Native ancestry.<\/p>\n

Considering that Trump\u2019s campaign and policies were highly anti-immigrant with a focus on Latinos suggests to me that Mormon support for Trump is really overlooking quite a bit of the Book of Mormon.<\/p>\n

1 Nephi 13:26 declares, \u201cBecause of these things [the plain and precious truth removed from the Bible] which are taken away out of the gospel of the Lamb, an exceedingly great many do stumble, yea, insomuch that Satan hath great power over them.\u201d<\/p>\n

No doubt that scripture can refer to a lot of things, but I can\u2019t help but view Trump\u2019s very strong support among evangelicals as \u201cstumbl[ing].\u201d The same chapter says that the Book of Mormon (and other forthcoming scriptures) will restore that lost truth, but I worry that as Mormons unite with the American religious right, they take on \u201cthat awful state of blindness, which [Nephi saw the Gentiles were] in, because of the plain and most precious parts of the gospel of the Lamb which have been kept back\u201d (32).<\/p>\n

I really see the Book of Mormon warning against Trump, both his demagoguery and his attacks on those with Native ancestry. This John Stewart clip<\/a> on Lee (minute 25) has Lee complaining about the Latino \u201cinvasion,\u201d and Lee\u2019s unhinged tweets about the Minnesota killings have looked particularly extreme. Considering that Lee made a bit of a principled stand against Trump in 2016, I can\u2019t help but view Lee\u2019s decent into this \u201cawful state of blindness\u201d as what can happen when one makes political compromises against the fundamentals of the Book of Mormon\u2019s teachings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recent events have looked rather apocalyptic to me, both Israel\u2019s wars and the US\u2019s treatment of Latinos. Huge events seem to happen so quickly that I worry any attempt to blog about them will be old news by the time this post goes up. Trump has quite staunch support among conservative evangelicals, and I\u2019ve seen lots of quotes, pictures, and art portraying Trump as some kind of divine tool to work for evangelicals\u2019 agendas. Mike Huckbee’s recent text strikes me as particularly extreme.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10406,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latter-day-saint-thought"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10406"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50455"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50455\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50491,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50455\/revisions\/50491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}