Jesus/Joseph Smith DVD critiques

Here are some critiques of the Jesus vs. Joseph Smith DVD that was officially released yesterday by an Evangelical ministry to the Mormon community.

This one by FAIR: http://en.fairmormon.org/index.php/Search_for_the_Truth_DVD

And this one by an Evangelical Christian: http://johnwmorehead.blogspot.com/2007/02/jesus-christjoseph-smith-video_10.html

5. In terms of the apologetic orientation of the video, this involves the same types of arguments that evangelicals have been using for years. Australian scholar and former Mormon John Bracht made two observations relevant to this in his masters thesis on Mormonism in the 1980s reflecting on The Godmakers film. He stated in the introduction that evangelical apologetic critiques of Mormonism tend to “simply draw attention to Mormon theology in the most simplistic and sensationalist terms.” He went further and noted that even though The Godmakers was one of the most widely distributed apologetic critiques of Mormonism, worldwide membership in the LDS Church continued to grow, and despite widespread evangelical apologetics against Mormonism, “Mormon proselytizing efforts have not been appreciably affected.” While I have no doubt that some Mormons have been persuaded by apologetic approaches such as that exemplified by Jesus Christ/Joseph Smith, the numbers have not been great, and despite a long history of apologetic interaction with Mormon culture the effects have been minimal. Thus, it would seem that this new project promises little more than what has been offered apologetically for many years by evangelicals, and while it may make evangelicals feel better in they have defined and defended the boundaries of traditional Christian orthodoxy, among the Mormon people it does little and amounts more to an exercise in preaching to the evangelical choir.

As I’ve expressed before I think this video and its distribution is largely a waste of money. It will only cause faithful LDS to see themselves as being attacked and persecuted by Evangelicals and further retreat from open discussion.

Here too is the official link to the video http://goodnewsforlds.org/ for those interested in seeing it.