997: Kathleen Melonakos - How the Mormon Church Came to Be Pt. 4
Mormon Stories Podcast
Dr. John Dehlin
4.5 • 5.7K Ratings
🗓️ 11 October 2018
⏱️ 75 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today's release is the first in a new series devoted to interviewing prominent historians to gather their evidence-based take on the question, "How did the Mormon Church come to be?"
Kathleen Melonakos's book Secret Combinations: Evidence of Early Mormon Counterfeiting 1800-1847 has created buzz in many online Mormon communities and we are excited to launch our series with Kathleen's expertise and careful research. Her book chronicles the evidence that early Mormon leaders, starting with Joseph Smith Sr., dealt in counterfeit money beginning in Vermont, and continuing throughout Joseph and Hyrum's careers. It places the Smith brothers in the early American context where counterfeiting networks and some of their CEO-like bosses posed as preachers. It is the only book of its kind that uncovers the problems counterfeiters caused in early America and what really happened before, during and after the Book of Mormon appeared on the scene. Her book is both fact-based and fast moving, supported by more than 1400 footnotes and over 100 photos and illustrations. It is also based on nearly 10 years of research, conducted in Vermont, New York, Illinois, Missouri, and Utah.
In this interview, Kathleen attempts to provide the historical context for the life of the Smith family and the founding of the LDS Church. In particular, we focus on the counterfeiting culture of the time period (Part 1), treasure digging as a practice (Part 2), the origins of the Book of Mormon (Part 3), and finally we delve into how her research and work influences Kathleen's personal beliefs (Part 4).
Transcript
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| 1:22.0 | Music |
| 1:26.0 | So here's the last thing I want to talk about. It's you and your beliefs. One of the crazy |
| 1:33.0 | things about Michael Quinn, about Sandra Tanner, and about Grant Palmer, and I'm sure there |
| 1:41.2 | are others that I'm forgetting, is that there's a chunk of our listeners where because they |
| 1:51.4 | feel betrayed by the church because they feel misled, because they feel deceived, and the |
| 1:56.4 | dominoes start falling. It's like Joseph Smith in the Book of Mormon fall, Book of Abraham |
| 2:01.4 | Falls, Dr. and Covenants Falls, and then Modern Day Profits Fall and then the Mormon Church |
| 2:07.4 | Falls. Those dominoes quickly go to the Bible, Old Testament New Testament, to Christianity, |
| 2:13.4 | to Jesus, to the resurrection, to the Atonement, and I'd say over half of my listeners just |
| 2:19.4 | because you know, atheists are agnostics, right? And that's, you know, that's most, I'd |
| 2:26.4 | say most of my listeners. But then I bring on people like you and Grant Palmer and Michael |
| 2:34.4 | Quinn and Sandra Tanner where they take us on this multi-hour ride of like this deep understanding |
| 2:43.4 | of our history and in expose and helping us uncover, you know, all the problems with |
| 2:50.4 | the religion and our history. And we want to think, well then they're going to end up right |
... |
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