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Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Mormon America: The Power and the Promise
Response to Mormon America: The Power and the Promise
A FAIR Analysis of: 'Mormon America: The Power and the Promise' A work by author: Richard N. Ostling and Joan K. Ostling
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About this work
Sub-articles
Index of claims
Summary: Responses to specific critical or unsupported claims made in Mormon America: The Power and the Promise indexed by page number.Quote mining
Summary: Some critics mine their sources by extracting quotes from their context in order to make the statement imply something other that what it was originally intended to mean. We examine instances of such "quote mining" in Mormon America: The Power and the Promise.About this work
Should non-Mormons write a book about Mormonism? The coauthors, are, admittedly, conventional Protestants...the outsiders will find some fascinating information and want to learn even more. And the insiders will see themselves portrayed fairly while learning some things they would not have known otherwise.
—Preface, Mormon America: The Power and the Promise
—Preface, Mormon America: The Power and the Promise
Mormon America is very much like two books in one. The first depicts individual Latter-day Saints "as a model minority, a hardworking people with more education than the American average, deeply committed to church and family" (p. xxiv)...Yet in the second part, when the Ostlings begin to discuss the church's doctrines, its history, and its leaders, they paint a landscape that, to a knowledgeable Latter-day Saint, is selective with a bias toward the sensational.
—Raymond Takashi Swenson, Faith without Caricature?, 2001
—Raymond Takashi Swenson, Faith without Caricature?, 2001
[T]he Ostlings do not want to seem openly or stridently hostile toward the Saints. They are, instead, condescending in ways that are analogous to the way virtually every community of believers gets treated by journalists, including evangelicals and their allies. But at times the Ostlings drop the guise of balanced, objective reporters.
—Louis Midgley, Faulty Topography, 2002
—Louis Midgley, Faulty Topography, 2002