A strange story from our friends at Xinhua:
The LDS (Latter-day Saints) Foundation of the United States has agreed to investigate the “questionable” medical donations made to China following a request to do so by the All-China Federation of Charity, according to sources from the national charity organization.
“Most importantly, we want to know why there are problems with the donations,” the official from the federation was quoted as saying by the Beijing News.
Three containers of medical equipment reportedly donated to China by the Mormon Church or The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City in November were found to have contained stained bedding, used surgical clothes and expired medical equipment.
Local quarantine inspectors discovered the contents after they were sent to charity organizations in Beijing, Hebei and Anhui provinces.
Normally I wouldn’t post such a trivial story (only 100 percent gravitas here), but Jesus’ General’s response – a letter to the Hong Kong Church of Latter Day Saints – was too good to pass up.
Richard Hunter
Hong Kong Media Contact
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (The Mormons)Dear Mr. Hunter,
I’ll never understand why brown people are so ungrateful. We provide them with death squads, ayatollahs to write their constitutions, air fare to the finest interrogation centers in Syria, Egypt, and the Eastern Bloc, and at Gitmo, indefinite detention and pain slightly less than that which accompanies organ failure and they return our generosity by shooting at our troops (none of whom are College Republicans, thank God).
I see the Church is experiencing much the same thing in your part of the world. You sent the Chinese soiled bedding, used surgical scrubs, and outdated medical equipment and they bitched about it. What did they expect? Clean bedding, sterile scrubs, and modern medical equipment costs money. They’re in no position to complain. If God wanted them to have these things, he’d have made them American.
So a few people get infected by the items you sent them. What’s the worse that can happen? They could die? Well, that just gives us an opportunity to baptize, marry, and provide them with their endowments* by proxy. They’ll thank us when they’re ruling over their own universes in the Celestial Kingdom.
Heterosexually yours,
Gen. JC Christian, patriot
*Secret handshakes that will get you into heaven.
The General’s letter is filled with delicious links that I’m too tired to copy here; if you have issues with the Mormon cult, you’ll want to check it out.
1
By Ivan
The Mormon Cult: Women, Women everywhere, but not a drop to drink.
December 12, 2005 @ 7:21 pm | Comment
2
By Zhang Fei
Wouldn’t surprise me if some enterprising Chinese official swapped out the original contents, sold them on the open market and pointed the finger at those dastardly furriners. Now if he had said that foreign bi-/homo-sexuals introduced AIDS to China, he would have been on firmer ground.
December 12, 2005 @ 8:31 pm | Comment
3
By lirelou
Terming the mainstream LDS a cult is unfair, though the charge is often made by non-LDS who live in Utah. In that case, much of their beef is of the “my church is truer than your church” variety. I am not referring to the breakaway Mormon churches, most of which are cults by any standard. But the mainstream LDS, whatever its faults (and can we think of a single organized religion which does not possess numerous faults blatantly obvious to non-believers), does not deserve to be dismissed as a “cult”.
That said, Utah used to be termed the “White Collar Crime Capital of the U.S.”, so somebody billing the Foundation for medical items, and instead shipping hospital trash, would not surprise me.
December 13, 2005 @ 1:11 am | Comment
4
By Ivan
About “Jesus General’s” final paragraph, where he mentions “baptism (etc) by proxy”:
Most of you probably didn’t get it, since he mixed it with a joke about secret handshakes. But the Mormons really do baptise the dead, whether the dead like it or not:
Those ghouls actually baptised my great-great-great-great-grandfather, posthumously. (I found out a few years ago, never mind now.) Evidently I have one distant cousin (never met him) who became a Mormon, and as our known ancestry goes back a while, he was able to start baptising ALL of my forefathers as “Mormons”, starting from around 1810 backwards. (Yes BACKWARDS, before the Mormon Church started.) So, all of my known ancestors from over 200 years ago, are Mormons now, according to them.
Ghouls. I mean, really.
Thing is, my great-great-great-great-Grandfather was Church of England.
So, if they keep “baptising” people like him, soon Mormon heaven will be full of whisky-guzzling Tories who don’t give a damn about religion…..
🙂
December 13, 2005 @ 1:15 am | Comment
5
By richard
Thanks for the insights, Ivan. And Lirelou, I really do see it as a cult, having worked for a company in which I was the token non-Mormon for two years. These guys really scare me, way more than the Falun Gongers do.
December 13, 2005 @ 2:13 am | Comment
6
By Michael Turton
In what way is Mormonism not a cult? Only in that it has become accepted in the wider world, and in that it is far more effect at organizing itself than most cults, which generally dissipate after the death of the founder.
Michael
December 13, 2005 @ 2:32 am | Comment
7
By Ivan
Hm, AND the Mormons believe the American Indians are all Jewish, all descended from Jews who sailed to America.
Ah, so, is THAT why the Indian Chief in Mel Brooks’ “Blazing Saddles” speaks Yiddish?
“SCHVATZ-EHS!”
December 13, 2005 @ 3:10 am | Comment
8
By Ivan
And Tonto was Jewish too. “Keemosabee” really means,
“schnorrer”
December 13, 2005 @ 3:20 am | Comment
9
By Sam_S
Heh. They do have some mighty strange practices, special undergarments and all that. I’ve never worked for Mormons, so I can’t say about that. BUT….all of them I’ve known personally have been tremendously upstanding, warm, generous folks. The kind that would make good neighbors if you don’t think about what they’re doing behind the locked doors of the Temple.
But….upstanding….frightfully so. Makes me a little nervous.
December 13, 2005 @ 4:14 am | Comment
10
By Ivan
Hey, what’s so “strange” about “special undergarments”, HAH?
December 13, 2005 @ 4:16 am | Comment
11
By Ivan
I mean, SOME of us don’t subscribe to Victoria’s Secret just for the pictures, you know…
December 13, 2005 @ 4:17 am | Comment
12
By Zhang Fei
Funny how I’ve never heard you folks say Islam is a cult. Could it be because unlike Mormons and the Falungong, who are pretty harmless, offended Muslims have been known to get a little violent*?
* Understatement is my middle name.
December 13, 2005 @ 5:16 am | Comment
13
By Ivan
There are so many logical fallacies in that comment, I can’t be bothered to sort them out. Except to mention:
1. Violence is not a typical quality of cults, and
2. If the Mormons or FLG ever produce such transcendently, individualistically creative poets such as the Muslims (Hafiz, Rumi, Saadi, Rabiah, etc) THEN I might stop calling them cults.
To me a cult is a tightly organized, authoritarian belief system which is categorically hostile to any kind of independent, creative thinking. Kind of like the Communists. But the Muslims have demonstrated a lot of bad AND good in the past 1,400 years, and occasional burts of extraordinary creativity and REAL scientific discover (as opposed to the pseudoscience of the Communists) – which cannot be said for the Mormons or the FLG, or for the Communists for that matter.
December 13, 2005 @ 5:57 am | Comment
14
By Ivan
Wait, I must qualify my last comment. UNDER the Russian Communist regime, yes the natural sciences did flourish (for good practical reasons, because you can’t run a superpower’s Army on superstition) – but that’s entirely different from the superstitious “Scientific Marxism” of the Soviet Communists.
On the other hand, the natural sciences in China were virtually destroyed under Mao. Chinese Communism has been far more superstitious than the Russian variety.
But Islam AS a religion, contributed immensely to the natural sciences, back when mainstream Islam tended to conceive of God as “Truth”. One nice example: We Westerners learned the number “zero” (an Arabic word) from the Muslim mathematicians. It took a long time for us to accept it, because the Medieval Catholic Church taught (for a while) that a number “zero” cannot exist and therefore represents Satan.
Thus, without the assistance of the (back then) more enlightened Muslims, we would not be using computers today….
December 13, 2005 @ 6:03 am | Comment
15
By Ivan
Other Arabic scientific/mathematical words, from the Golden Age of Muslim Science – off the top of my head:
Algebra, azimuth, alcohol, virtually any term with the prefix “al”, also the word “troubadour” (Tarab-a-dor)….AND a considerable part of the code of Chivalry was taught to the West by the Saracen Turks….which is entirely different from “offended Muslims tend to get a bit violent”….
December 13, 2005 @ 6:12 am | Comment
16
By Other Lisa
‘sides, should a guy whose handle is “Zhang Fei” really be accusing others of bad temper? 😉
December 13, 2005 @ 11:14 am | Comment
17
By richard
Zhang Fei, you’re way off base on this. Whoever said a cult is defined by violence? I condemn fundamentalist Islam (and fundamentalist Chrisitanity for that matter) all the time, but the religions of Islam and Christianity are not cults.
December 13, 2005 @ 5:04 pm | Comment
18
By richard
And Ivan, great comments, here and in other threads.
December 13, 2005 @ 5:04 pm | Comment
19
By GWBH
PLease don’t refer to LDS as a cult, that debases cults everywhere.
Jack Mormons are good old fashioned partiers. I remember a great night at the Star Bar in San Diego being on the losing end of a religious discussion with Jack the whiskey swilling, chain smoking elder in the Mormon Church.
December 13, 2005 @ 9:00 pm | Comment
20
By Other Lisa
Hey, GW, have you seen that Mormon Temple they built in North County San Diego? We call it “the Rocket to God.” And it’s an example of the Separation of Church and Interstate…
December 13, 2005 @ 9:51 pm | Comment
21
By Ivan
Children, children, please remember to practice Safe Sects.
(chortle…..snicker….)
December 14, 2005 @ 2:06 am | Comment
22
By Keir
The problem I have with the Mormons is the second ‘M’ in their name.
December 15, 2005 @ 1:05 am | Comment