Jerald and Sandra Tanner
Jerald and Sandra Tanner have lived in the state of Utah, USA for a long time and are among the best-known critics of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons). They are sometimes referred to as professional anti-Mormons. The Tanners were born into and grew up within the Church accordingly. Her ancestors have been members of the Church for several generations. Sandra Tanner is a descendant of Brigham Young .
In their teens, before they even knew each other, they both began to investigate the origins of the Church. When they got together later, they continued this work together. One result of this investigation was that they both left the Church and (in their own words) "converted to Christianity".
The Tanners founded the company Modern Microfilm Co. , converted into a non-profit organization called the Utah Lighthouse Ministry in 1983 , whose task they see it to be to point out inconsistencies in the doctrine of Mormonism and to compare Mormon theology with that of conventional Christianity. Sandra Tanner has run the company alone since Jerald fell ill and died. The Tanners are recognized as the greatest achievement by scholars within Latter-day Saints and by outsiders for publicizing numerous difficult-to-access documents from the Church's early days. For this purpose, her company has brought numerous reprints and photographic reproductions to the market.
For example, as early as 1966, they were the first to publish copies of Joseph Smith's "Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar." These are known today as Joseph Smith's Egyptian Papers . By the time the Tanners published these documents, only a small fraction of Latter-day Saints knew that these documents existed, much less that they were being discussed within the Mormon Church. The publications by the Tanner couple has now sparked a discussion among Mormons as well.
Other valuable photomechanical reproductions include full editions of early LDS publications or magazine collections such as Messenger and Advocate , Times and Seasons, and The Millennial Star . Also of note is the reproduction of the 1825 edition of A View of the Hebrews by Ethan Smith and Elder BH Roberts, which was previously critically considered a source for the Book of Mormon .
In the anti-Mormon scene, the Tanner Book of Mormonism - Shadow or Reality is a standard work and is often quoted there. From a Mormon point of view, numerous well-founded reviews of this particular work have been written. The book's critics accuse the authors of taking quotations out of context and often turning the meaning of quotations into their opposite through omissions. They are also accused of presenting statements by church leaders who were private opinions as official, canonized church teaching. Changes made by the church in the canonical scriptures are understood by the Tanners as essential changes in the doctrine, but by apologists as mostly marginal formal or grammatical variants.