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Guest opinion: Will Utah Latter-day Saints cast their votes for Korihor?

By Warner Woodworth - | Nov 5, 2024

The 2024 presidential election among Latter-day Saint members is heavily energized in Utah, and the contrast between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris is clear. In a few recent speeches to LDS groups, I compared Mr. Trump to a Book of Mormon personality, Korihor. He was a source of deception back around 74 B.C. among the ancient children of God. Are there similarities to Trump today? I see several parallels.

Some of my Utah Valley friends pretend to be dismayed by Trump’s policies, foul language and corruption but still plan to vote for him. Unhappy warriors, they support him because they “imagine” he fits LDS values. They are easily manipulated by this Mar-a-Lago Korihor as he deceptively now asserts he’s a “real” Christian.

In my view, the white supremacist Trump holds few values consistent with Christian beliefs and is closely akin to the Mormon figure Korihor, an opponent of faith who swayed many believers two millennia ago. LDS scripture records that Korihor emphasized only what is visible and tangible, like money, sex and power. He had neither ethics nor character. Trump and his co-religionist, Korihor, both think that decent moral values are psychological abnormalities, products of “derangement” and a “frenzied mind” (Alma 30:16) that lead Christians “into a belief of things which are not so.”

Claiming there is no God, and that religion is a farce, Korihor and his “descendant,” Trump, argue that humans may live as they please without fear of heavenly consequences. Korihor argued that “ye cannot know of things which ye do not see” (Alma 30:15). Thus, there’s no real shame unless one is caught. And when caught, one needs merely to deny — always the Trump model.

In this view, there’s neither crime nor sin, unfairness nor fairness, and no eternal consequence for one’s actions. The powerful, i.e., the billionaire class, should “enjoy their rights and privileges” and “make use of that which is their own” (Alma 30:17) as they take wealth from the masses. This has always been Trump’s agenda in his personal and business career.

Korihor was accused of what is also Trump’s great sin: being “possessed with a lying spirit” (Alma 30:42), as revealed in Trump’s 44,200 independently documented lies since 2020. Rejecting honesty, he values falsehoods and a huge ego.

We also read in Alma 30:17 that Korihor declared, “every man fared in this life according to the management of the creature; therefore, every man prospered according to his genius, and that every man conquered according to his strength; and whatsoever a man did was no crime.” Eventually, after being caught for his offenses, prophets tell Korihor that the devil had power over him (Alma 30:42). I believe this is why, in Trump’s case, expert analyses by hundreds of professional psychologists have diagnosed his mental suffering as narcissistic personality disorder.

In 2016, I declared that Trump would do anything to win, whether it was holding a Bible wrong-side up for a photo op or declaring he had converted to belief in evangelical faith. I’m no prophet, but this has clearly happened.

To top off his manipulative 2024 campaign for LDS votes, Trump and some Mormons recently formed a weird “Latter-day Saints for Trump” group with a website paid by his campaign.

Then in October, Trump participated in a deceptive virtual Mormon “fireside” with a call to Arizonans seeking to show the “shared” values between MAGA (“Make America Great Again”) believers and LDS faithful. His speech claimed, falsely, that 90% of Mormons support him. He emphasized his own phony family values when he argued that every committed Latter-day Saint should “share the same ideas with God-fearing American patriots.”

It was a sharp contradiction. He spouted the falsehood that Kamala Harris hates religion and that her avowed Marxism would confiscate American guns. He declared he stands as a beacon of patriotism and religious faith, while she is neither. Such claims were supported at this “fireside” by two rabid Mormon “Trumpistas”: Glenn Beck and Mike Lee. Readers may recall four years ago when Lee claimed Trump to be a modern Captain Moroni, a righteous Book of Mormon prophet. Yet, compared with Moroni, Trump stands in stark with his massive corruption record, 34 felony convictions, sexual assaults and more.

The “Profit” Donald has successfully manipulated many Christian preachers with their “laying of hands” on the hypocritical “anointed one.” Another example is that of Trump hawking $60 Bibles, not to preach Jesus, but to enrich his coffers. Today, the modern power-hungry Korihor descendant longs to fulfill his life’s dream of ruling America as king forever.

Professor Warner Woodworth’s context for the views above is that of his being a committed member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, having served in seven bishoprics and high councils, taught LDS seminary full time for years, been an Institute director full time at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and been a missionary in his youth in Brazil. He adds that he’s been a registered Republican and a professor at Brigham Young University’s Marriott School of Business in Provo for 40-plus years. He’s still an active, passionate LDS member.