Salt Lake City, USA - How can a Mormon parent hang on to her faith when her children lose theirs? What should a Latter-day Saint say when a neighbor insists that the church still practices polygamy?
These and other topics will be addressed at next week's 11th Annual Mormon Apologetics Conference in Sandy.
The two-day gathering at the South Towne Exposition Center, sponsored by the Foundation for Apologetic Information & Research (FAIR), also will feature presentations on "Joseph the Seer, or Why Joseph Translated With a Rock in His Hat," "How Reliable Is the Mormon History Produced by the LDS Church?" and "The Temple as a Place of Ascent to God."
For his speech titled, "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Plural Marriage -- But Were Afraid to Ask," Greg Smith will hand out cards and invite participants to pose their toughest polygamy questions.
FAIR began in 1997 as an Internet conversation about how best to defend the LDS Church from its critics and now is a national nonprofit organization of Mormon apologists. A handful of participants, each with expertise in a different aspect of Mormonism, connected on message boards that dealt with controversial aspects of LDS philosophy and history, including polygamy, the role of women in the church, homosexuality and the historicity of The Book of Mormon. Writers in various states found themselves repeatedly answering the same questions and criticisms and thus pooled their resources to create a Web site.
The group, which is not an official arm of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, sponsors conferences and book publishing. Last year's annual get-together attracted some 300 attendees from across the nation. This year's registration already has exceeded that.
In the past few years, the world of apologetics has become more sophisticated, says FAIR President Scott Gordon. "It used to be just questions about LDS teachings on faith and works and whether we believe in the Trinity. But now, with the Internet, we are getting more questions about church history."
Most of FAIR's users are LDS, and it is important for them to have good resources with accurate information, says Gordon, dean of business, technology, family and consumer sciences at Shasta College in Redding, Calif. "We try to provide the sources so people can follow along our train of thought and feel comfortable with what they're reading."