What do Mormons and Scientologists have in common?
David May 14th, 2008
Ars Technica has documented the efforts of various organizations to remove confidential documents from Wikileaks.org, including both the LDS Church and the Church of Scientology. Apparently Wikileaks.org has posted a copy of the LDS Handbook of Instruction, which is not available to general church membership rather only to Bishops and Stake Presidents in the Church.
The Mormons clearly "get" the Internet in some sense (you can chat online with a missionary, for instance), but they appear determined to follow in the footsteps of groups like Bank Julius Baer that have managed to draw widespread attention to confidential documents without managing to have them removed from Wikileaks.
Wikipedia.org entries related to LDS Church doctrine or history are often the target of anti-Mormon commentary, but LDS members and the general public have been good about removing such inaccuracies. Hopefully there will be some options available for similar action with Wikileaks.
The church handbook of instructions presents an accurate synopsis of LDS beliefts. It answers a lot of questions that both members and investigators have about the church. Why remove it?
Shouldn’t the church should be declaring to the world its position on all key subjects listed therein?
@Roland
I haven’t looked at this book myself, but I know that there is a lot of sensitive topics mentioned for the purposes of ecclesiastical leaders to counsel members who approach them for help. There is a difference between current Church policy regarding a certain topic and Church doctrine which is based on scripture. I believe that the Church would rather focus on promoting and defending its doctrines than to have to review and defend internal policies on a public stage.
David has a great point - the Handbook has a lot of administrative policy/advice/guidance that is not doctrine and is subject to change. Those policies are based off the doctrine of the Church (which is available on the Internet from a wealth of sources), but the Church would much rather have the doctrine focused on. Additionally the Church’s had to go after wikileaks to protect the Church’s copyright. If someone can blatantly skirt copyright laws like that - posting the Church’s documents - what stops them from changing them and then misrepresenting the Church’s position? That happens enough as it is out on the Internet without someone having what appears to be a Church sanctioned manual to do it.