The Truth About 'the God Makers'

Anyone who has read Decker and Hunt's atrocious book or have seen their film, "The God Makers," have been given a view of Mormonism that is as representative of Real Mormonism, as Lewis Carroll's Alice experiences in Wonderland are to real life. Each work is written by highly imaginative writers, although one was written by an esteemed scholar, and the other was written by a lapsed Mormon who spent 20 years as a faithful Mormon and, therefore, knows that what he has produced in The God-Makers is a tissue of lies. The book sold 'well,' 30,000 copies, but close behind it came a book that unmasks the sheep's clothing in which Decker and Hunt clothed their ravening wolf. Mormon schoolteacher Gilbert Scharffs wrote a cogent and well researched rebuttal to it that removed it once and for all from the shelves of honest scholarship and demoted it to the stacks nearest to the coke furnaces, in recognition of what it merited should be its fate. The National Conference of Christian and Jews' "Advisory Report to the Religious Executives of Arizona" declared: "We offer these opinions based on our viewing of the film, research and reflection. "The film [The Godmakers] does not - in our opinion - fairly portray the Mormon Church, Mormon history, or Mormon belief. It makes extensive use of "half-truth," faulty generalizations, erroneous interpretations, and sensationalism. It is not reflective of the genuine spirit of the Mormon faith. "We find particularly offensive the emphasis in the film that Mormonism is some sort of subversive plot - a danger to the community, a threat to the institution of marriage, and is destructive to the mental health of teenagers. All of our experience with our Mormon neighbours provides eloquent refutation of these charges. "We are of the opinion that "THE GODMAKERS" relies heavily on appeals to fear, prejudice, and other less worthy human emotions. We believe that continued use of this film poses genuine danger to the climate of goodwill and harmony which currently exists between Valley neighbours of differing faiths. It appears to us to be a basically unfair and untruthful presentation of what Mormons really believe and practice... " In Scharffs' cogent rebuttal, he records there is hardly a single page in Decker/Hunt's book that does not contain at least one error, and identifies the following gross errors in "The God Makers": * Statements that are not true; * . unwarranted conclusions based on known facts; * . misinterpreted statements; * . exaggerated statements; * . broad generalisations; * . significant quotes without documentation; * . significant charges without documentation; * . historical material quoted out of context which altered the meaning; * . Mormon scriptures quoted out of context which alter the meaning; * . Mormon scriptures paraphrased incorrectly which alter the meaning. Anti-Mormon writers ply their exaggerations, denials of truth, and misrepresentation of Latter-day Saint history, doctrine, a

For anyone interested in how anti-Mormons attack the LDS church in general, or in evaluatiing the attack on the church made by Ed Decker, this is an invaluable reference tool and a good read. Gil Scharffs has prodcued a masterful work and this book is a "must-have" for anyone seriously interested in the subject.

I have read "The God Makers", and "The Truth About the God Makers". When I read "The God Makers", I felt that the book containted a lot more unsubstantiated opinion rather than fact, and it just didn't seem to have a very "Christian" atmosphere to it. "The Truth About 'the God Makers'" reinforced that feeling with its very well documented exposure of the errors found in "The God Makers". In addition, this book contains a lot of information about Mormonism in general. It is very well worth reading. If you have read, or even considered reading, "The God Makers", then you owe it to yourself to read this book also.