Sorry, Mormons, but this is nuts.

The Boston Globe: The Mormon image campaign

Times Square

And here’s my dozen reasons why:

Quorum of the Twelve

(Memo to the Mormon leadership: Diverse teams cause people not to revert to stereotyping.)

Plus one for a baker’s dozen.

Local Mormons weigh in: Im a Mormon and I am here in New York and I really wish the church would pick some other place to advertise.

But it’s not just Mormons. God’s Favorite Musical is driving evangelicals like John Mark Reynolds nuts, too.

All signs point to Mormonism becoming the first American religious movement to go supernova.

Chino Blanco

--- We are men of action, lies do not become us. ---

You may also like...

56 Responses

  1. aerin says:

    chanson, I agree. You don’t go to a company’s press releases for the only information about the company/corporation.

    But no one likes the hard sell, and they can see it a mile away. The person who is interested in you as long as you are interested in their mlm product, when you’re not, the friendship ends. Wasn’t this a part of the ex-mormon youth conf. chapter as well?

  2. chanson says:

    @51 — in Youth Conference? No, it was more a flirt-to-convert that worked. At least for the scope of the story.

    You dont go to a companys press releases for the only information about the company/corporation.

    Yes, and that’s what struck me when I was reading the description of Lawrence’s book.

    Actually, the first thing that came to mind was an online discussion I was in where a faithful Mormon girl was claiming that the FLDS aren’t Mormons, that Mormons haven’t practiced polygamy in a hundred years, period, end of story. She had a frustrated air of “How many times do I have to tell people this before they’ll stop asking about Mormons and polygamy??” I get the impression that the brethren (and people like Gary Lawrence) are setting up ordinary members for this sort of frustration by convincing them that the official LDS church talking points are the “facts” and that anything else is “distortion”.

  3. Monique says:

    Oh, who cares? They can plaster their ads all they want. It’s not like New Yorkers really notice this crap much except for the taggers. Can’t wait to see what the graffiti crews do to those ads. The picture of the dozen or so crusty old men probably wouldn’t work very well on those billboards. At first glance I thought it was some weird gathering of creeped out undertakers.

  4. Bibby says:

    Hey, The Mormons are just trying to correct the misconception that they are strange and naive as displayed by the recent broadway musical and many other mainstream representations of the Mormon faith. don’t hate, relate.They’re not all weirdos. The connotation of this article is just as misleading as the description of this link at the end “Local Mormons weigh in: Im a Mormon and I am here in New York and I really wish the church would pick some other place to advertise.”

  5. Chino Blanco says:

    You know, Bibby, you don’t even try to address the contrast between the diversity on display in the Times Square ads and the monoculture of the Mormon leadership. Don’t hate, debate, Bibby. I’m not calling you a weirdo. I’m trying to help your church out by informing Mormons that as long as your leadership looks and acts like the IKEA board of directors they’re gonna remain easy targets.

    Anyway, did you check out the recent post about the new Mormon Messages video talking about “sexual purity” … not only is the cast diverse, it’s not even Mormon. Know why? Because just like those Times Square ads, the new objective of official Mormon messaging is to convince you that you’re normal. End of story. If they fail in that objective, it’s pretty much lights out for the LDS church once the current generation of 18-34 year-olds finishes filling out their resignation letters.

  1. June 20, 2011

    […] Can the Book of Mormon musical really be just what the church needs to retain people and bring doubters back into the fold? Maybe the church’s efforts to bring the Mormon.org ads closer to Broadway weren’t the right op…? […]

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.