The Kevin and Bean Show on KROQ recently had a featured called “Ask a Mormon”. Interesting what they decided to discuss. Their guest is an ex-Mormon, but by no means a raving lunatic.
It’s at the 14 minute mark if you want to fast forward. The Kevin and Bean show is a long running morning program on a popular rock station in Los Angeles, so you can expect to get everything that might come along with that. Sadly for us Evangelicals, I think they handled the subject matter much more respectfully than many of our own radio host would have.
Click here to download.
Yes, it’s wise to fast-forward to the start of the interview.
Although it would have made more sense to have a member of the church interviewed, there are certainly worse ex-Mormons they could have had explaining the church. And considering the nature of the show and the statiion, I thought it was a reasonably fair presentation.
That said, I must say I resent the implication, which seems to be a common belief among critics who think they know what they’re talking about, that we have all sorts of “secret” doctrines that nonmembers aren’t privy to. In facat, the LDS church is one of the most open denominations about its beliefs: You can go to the church’s web site and download all the church’s scriptures, plenty of church-produced study aids, all the Sunday school teaching manuals, church magazines, General Conference talks and so on. I think it’s fair to say that if you can’t find it on the church’s web site, it’s not taught by the church.
The only exception, of course, would be the endowment ceremony, but whatever doctrine is exclusively taught there is highly symbolic and, as far as I know, doesn’t touch on those areas that critics call heresy. (It’s also no secret if you’re capable of using a search engine).
I’ve been a member of the church for a decade, and I’m not sure I know anything more about its teachings than what a diligent nonmember would be able to find out.
thanks for the mention.
we spoke with several current mormons in preparation for the feature but they were more interested in spreading propaganda about their religion than sharing facts to help educate non-mormons.
having said that, there is no one, repeat no one, that we could have chosen that would have satisfied every listener and we did the best we could.
thanks again,
bean
“kevin and bean show”
KROQ
“spreading propaganda about their religion than sharing facts to help educate non-mormons.”
That only proves two things. ONE: You really weren’t interested in learning about Mormons, but propagating your own ideas of what constitute “facts.” Second, and most importantly, that you obviously didn’t talk with or know many actual Mormons. If what you said is true, perhaps you should have invited both a Mormon and this “ex-Mormon” so that one could offset the other if you so thought there was going to be propaganda, and still come away having the listeners actually . . . hear from an actual participating member of the LDS Church!
If the “kevin and bean show” has any sense of decency, considering it is a radio show I highly doubt that, they should have another program with an active Mormon. If they don’t believe they are telling the truth or are propagandizing, then maybe you can ask some challenging questions. However, I believe ulitimately you just didn’t ask enough Mormons or have a big enough pool to pick from. That is charitable for myself. What I personally believe is that the radio show just doesn’t like Mormons or want to honestly understand Mormonism.
I don’t know, there’s a definite difference between “teaching people your religion” and “teaching people about your religion.” It doesn’t strike me as unlikely at all that they might have found mostly Mormons interested in the former (even if they claimed they were interested in the latter- or even if they genuinely believed that’s what they wanted to do).
Jettboy, easy there. Haven’t heard the show yet, but the mere fact they interviewed an ex-Mormon doesn’t automatically mean he’s going to come out sounding like a re-hash of exmormon.org.
That said, yeah, the choice to go to an ex-member for the inside scoop does seem questionable to me.