Religion
DNA results challenge core Mormon beliefs

By PATTY HENETZ
The Associated Press

Southerton says American Indians and Polynesians could not have descended from a single Israelite.

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For author Simon Southerton, who has his own scientific background as a plant geneticist, the discovery made it impossible to continue in the faith. His "Losing a Lost Tribe: Native Americans, DNA and the Mormon Church," published by Signature Books, is in stores this month.

The book introduces readers to a small group of Brigham Young University scholars who, with apparent blessing of church leadership, are contradicting church teachings about the origins of American Indians and Polynesians. The church attests that American and Polynesian peoples descended from a single Israelite, which is now called into question by science and the so-called apologist scholars.

"You've got Mormon apologists in their own publications rejecting what prophets have been saying for decades," Southerton said. "This becomes very troubling for ordinary members of the church."

While the work of the BYU scholars is confined mostly to intellectual circles, some church members who have always identified themselves with Mormon teachings on the people known as Lamanites are suffering crises.

"It's very difficult. It is almost traumatizing," said Jose Aloayza, a Midvale, Utah, attorney and Peruvian native who likened facing this new reality to staring into a spiritual abyss. "It's that serious, that real. I'm almost here feeling I need an apology. Our prophets should have known better. That's the feeling I get."

Southerton, now a senior researcher with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization in Australia, has concluded along with many other scientists studying DNA lines that American Indians and Polynesians are of Asian extraction.

On the Net Signature Books: signaturebooks.com The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: lds.org Church statement on DNA: www.lds.org/newsroom/mistakes/0,15331,3885-1-18078,00.html Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies: farms.byu.edu/

For a century or so, scientists have theorized Asians migrated to the Americas at least 14,000 years ago. But Mormons have been taught to believe the Book of Mormon is a literal record of God's dealings with the ancient inhabitants of the Americas who descended from the Israelite patriarch Lehi, who sailed to the New World around 600 B.C. The church teaches that Joseph Smith translated this record from gold plates found on a hillside in upstate New York in 1820, when he was 14. The Book of Mormon, first published in 1830, says Lamanites one day will be restored to greatness through the fullness of the gospel.

Southerton's book details how these teachings have helped Latter-day Saints' efforts to convert new members, especially among Indians in Latin America and Maoris in New Zealand. The final third of the book examines the work of LDS scholars at the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, or FARMS, established 25 years ago and housed at BYU.

Southerton said FARMS findings are "completely at loggerheads with what the church leaders are teaching."

Church spokesman Dale Bills said the church teaches only that the events recorded in the Book of Mormon took place somewhere in the Americas. "Faithful Latter-day Saint scholars may provide insight, understanding and perspective, but they do not speak for the church," he said.

On its Web site, the church says, "Recent attacks on the veracity of the Book of Mormon based on DNA evidence are ill considered. Nothing in the Book of Mormon precludes migration into the Americas by peoples of Asiatic origin. The scientific issues relating to DNA, however, are numerous and complex."

The site then offers Web links to five articles, four of which were published last year in the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, a FARMS publication.

Noel Reynolds, BYU political-science professor and FARMS director, said FARMS research and writings are not aimed at proving or disproving the Book of Mormon. "We understand the difficulties of that. We get dragged into these discussions repeatedly because of books like Southerton's or ordinary anti-Mormon questions," he said.

The work of FARMS shouldn't be considered counter to church doctrine because the geography of the Book of Mormon has "never been a matter of official church pronouncement," Reynolds said.

Added John Welch, FARMS founder and BYU law professor: "These are our opinions, and we hope they're helpful."

Southerton, who no longer is a member of the church, said church leaders ought to own up to the problems that continued literal teachings about the Book of Mormon present for American Indians and Polynesians.

"They should come out and say, 'There's no evidence to support your Israelite ancestry,' " Southerton said. "I don't have any problem with anyone believing what's in the Book of Mormon. Just don't make it look like science is backing it all up."

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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