Tackling the Mormon Myth about Alice Cooper

Mormon HereticBickertonites, book of mormon, Folklore, history, media, Mormon, Mormons, music 54 Comments

Alice Cooper at the 2007 Scream Awards

If you’re Mormon, you’ve probably heard the myth that Alice Cooper was a Mormon.  Most of you have probably dismissed the myth as complete hogwash.  Well, it turns out there is an element of truth to the myth.  For example, his father’s middle name is Moroni and his grandfather was an apostle!  Yes it is true!

Alice Cooper was born with the name Vincent Damon Furnier in Detroit, Michigan.  His  father was a preacher by the name of Ether Moroni Furnier for The Church of Jesus Christ, based in Monongahela, Pennsylvania.  Cooper’s grandfather Thurman Sylvester Furnier served as an apostle for the church.  The church is also known as the Bickertonite church, and has roots with Sidney Rigdon.  According to Cooper’s biography, he was active in the church until the age of 11 or 12.  His family moved to Phoenix, Arizona when he was about 16 years old.

So, I thought it might be nice to give some information about his church.  As you may remember, just prior to Joseph Smith’s death, he was running for President of the United States.  His Vice Presidential candidate was Sidney Rigdon.  The US Constitution prohibits the President and Vice President from residing in the same state, so Joseph sent Sidney on a mission to his home state of Pennsylvania to establish residency.  Rigdon settled near Pittsburgh (the place of his birth) when he received the news of Joseph’s death.  Rigdon was there just a few weeks.

Rigdon returned to Nauvoo with the rest of the apostles.  There was a special meeting on August 8, 1844.  According to Richard Van Wagonner, Sidney Rigdon’s biographer, on page 338, Van Wagoner documents Rigdon telling Jedidiah  Grant

‘that he felt prepared to claim “the Prophetic mantle” and that he would “now take his place at the head of the church, in spite of men or devils, at the risk of his life.’  Rigdon seems to have underestimated Brigham Young, who had succession ideas as well.

…From page 339,

Hyde reported that Rigdon was just “about to ask for an expression of the people by vote; when lo! to his grief and mortification, [Brigham Young] stepped upon the stand… and with a word stayed all the proceedings of Mr. Rigdon.  Young, who later recalled the event in 1860, stated:  “[W]hen I went to meet Sidney  Rigdon on the ground I went alone, and was ready along to face and drive the dogs from the flock.”

Anyway, most of you know that Rigdon and Young excommunicated each other.  Rigdon went back to Pittsburgh and started his own church.  In the appendix is a reference to the Bickertonites on page 473.

Sidney’s Rigdon’s Church of Jesus Christ of the Children of Zion disintegrated within a decade after his death.  …  But the Church of Jesus Christ, a small sect organized in 1862 by William Bickerton, still venerates Rigdon.

Bickerton, an 1845 convert to Sidney Rigdon’s Church of Christ, found himself adrift after Rigdon’s failures in Pittsburgh and the Cumberland Valley.  For a brief period in the early 1850s Bickerton affiliated with a branch of the Utah Mormons at West Elizabeth, Pennsylvania, although he personally declared that “his testimony… is that the blessing he received came thru obedience to the restored Gospel in 1845 with Rigdon’s people.”

After the Utah church publicly announced its long-term practice of polygamy in 1852, Bickerton left that organization.  In 1854 he held a successful conference in West Elizabeth at which several persons were baptized.  By 1858 he had attained a following of nearly 100 persons and had organized them into branches in Wheeling, West Virginia; Pine Run, Allegheny; and Greenock, Pennsylvania.

In an 1859 conference Bickerton was acknowledged as a prophet by his followers.  Two years later he was sustained a “Prophet and President of the Church” with counselors Charles Brown and Beorge Barnes.  During a July 1862 conference at Greenock twelve apostles and a number of evangelists were ordained.  The church was officially organized during this conference although not legally incorporated until 10 June 1865.

The church, which maintains its world headquarters today in Monongahela, Pennsylvania, at last report numbered 10,000 members.  The current First Presidency is Dominic Thomas, Paul Palmieri, and Robert Watson.  The church is organized into seven districts in the U.S., and has missions in Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, Kenya, Nigeria, India, England, Italy, Holland, and Germany.

The Bickertonite Church is the 3rd largest Mormon sect, behind the LDS Church and RLDS Church (known now as the Community of Christ.)  Alice Cooper’s grandfather was an apostle of this church.  I think it’s pretty safe to say that Cooper was raised with a pretty firm knowledge of the Book of Mormon.

I’ve heard Cooper attends a Methodist Church, and an Assembly of God Church.  I don’t know if either of these rumors are true.  He has been interviewed and said,

Cooper has confirmed in interviews that he is in fact a born again Christian.  [World Net Daily article in which Cooper speaks of his wish to shun so called celebrity Christianity] He has avoided so called “celebrity Christianity” because, as Cooper states himself: “It’s really easy to focus on Alice Cooper and not on Christ. I’m a rock singer. I’m nothing more than that. I’m not a philosopher. I consider myself low on the totem pole of knowledgeable Christians.[Interview with Radio Talk Show HostDrew Marshall] So, don’t look for answers from me”.[Cooper speaking in a a World Net Daily article]

When asked by the British Sunday Times newspaper in 2001 how a rebellious shock-rocker could be a Christian, Cooper is credited with providing this response “Drinking beer is easy. Trashing your hotel room is easy. But being a Christian, that’s a tough call. That’s real rebellion!”[Cooper’s response to The Sunday Times is quoted in an online Good News magazine article dealing with well known rock musicians who have a Christian faith]

So, what do you make of the Bickertonite’s most famous member?  I don’t believe Bickertonites like to call themselves “Mormons”, but they firmly believe in the Book of Mormon, so I think the label could apply in this case.  So no, Alice Cooper is not technically a Mormon, but I bet the rumors hold a bit more truth than you ever believed.  Am I right?

Comments 54

  1. There’s a few famous or infamous Mormons, I forget which one of the pair of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was a Mormon, So was Rosean Barr. Anyone can call themselves a Mormon, I think what the real test is weather they are practicing is the difference. And quite frankly even that is suspect because everyone judges just how Mormon you are(I.E) How many rules do you follow, do you drink Coke, etc.

    1. Sundance I believe , there’s an LDS chapel in a town next to Sundance Wyoming , the town is called Hell , and the chapel is right there next to the HWY

  2. Rosanne wasn’t actually baptized in the church, thank goodness. Quite frankly, I don’t get the euphoria, I’d prefer most Hollywood types stay as far away from the church as possible. It would be an embarrassment to have them call themselves Mormon. Like it is an embarrassment to have Harry Reid or the Udall brothers call themselves Mormon.

    1. What kind of person are you to be happy that certain people aren’t members?
      We are not a discriminatory club or something. I hope you get a testimony.

  3. Everyone has a right to find their own redemption however they can. Even those ‘Hollywood types’. They are every bit as welcome and as loved by the Lord as anyone. Their cross to bear is that the more high profile you are, the more your fall from grace gets publicised. I’d hate to be in that position. I trip and stumble all the time.

    I always heard the rumour of the Alice Cooper connection to the Mormon church but dismissed it. Thanks for the background info on the Bickertonites and Alice’s ties.

  4. Butch Cassidy (Robert LeRoy Parker) was indeed a Mormon, at least by birth. By the time he became an infamous outlaw, I can’t imagine he could regularly attend church and keep his life. Perhaps there was some bit of mormonism in him that endured throughout his life, though I don’t know that anyone has any solid basis for an argument either way.

  5. I grew up in Mesa, Arizona and one of my best friends was an active member of the Church of Jesus Christ. He is still an active member to this day and has served as some kind of Area Authority for the church. My understanding is that one of the church’s stronger enclaves is in the Phoenix area.

    I remember being very surprised to see the Book of Mormon on his shelf as a teen, because I knew he wasn’t “mormon”. When we talked about it, I seem to recall him saying they believed Joseph Smith was a prophet, but they didn’t accept the D&C. I seem to remember him saying they believed he was a fallen prophet. He also pronounced the names from the BoM differently. LDS friends were always sending the missionaries to his house, which drove his dad insane.

    1. I was raised in that very Church but in the southeast. My mother’s family goes all the way back to the early 1900s attending that church in the Detroit area. But yeah it’s funny you mention it because when I had LDS missionaries come to my house as a kid they were fascinated by the fact that we read the book. My mom had to chase them away because I kept on trying to bring the doctrine and covenants to the house and apparently my mother’s Church vehemently doesn’t believe in that.

  6. st

    What gives anyone the right to say who is and isn’t a good enough person to be a member. You only know Roseanne public persona, you don’t know her privately nice judgment that’s what gives Mormons a bad name.

    I remember reading some horrible things people were Saying about Marie Osmond son committing suicide. Hopefully. people don’t judge you so harshly.

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  8. The constitution doesn’t prohibit presidential and vice presidential candidates from being from the same state, it prohibits members of the electoral college from voting for both a presidential and vice presidential candidate from their home state. In other words, if both Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon had stayed in Illinois, the electors from Illinois couldn’t vote for both of them.

    As for Alice Cooper, I had always heard lots of bizarre things about him and mormonism, and read up about him some time ago. I remember some other missionaries (not myself) on my mission running into some folks from that church, they used the Book of Mormon and talked about Joseph Smith. They other missionaries relayed a story they told about Sidney Rigdon being commanded to form a church, or else he would be thrown into an infernal pit. I think there’s a member of the CoC in congress, went to Limhi college, or whatever it’s called.

  9. Here is a link to my website about Famous Mormons http://www.famousmormons.net Alice Cooper is mentioned on the rumored page. I mention Butch Cassidy and say he is a probable Mormon because his information in FamilySearch.org does not show him baptized until after he was dead, even if you use the 1097 death dead some believe.

  10. So I guess the rumor I heard of Alice Cooper singing on stage with a pair of garments on painted black isn’t true? You hear the craziest stuff, but hey we Mormons have to keep ourselves entertained somehow. 🙂

  11. bickertionites don’t have temple ceremonies, so they don’t have garments. at the recent mormon history association meetings, I believe john hamer said that only cutlerites have an endowment ceremony (and theirs is probably closer to the nauvoo ceremony than the mormon ceremony.) i’ve heard the garment myth too, but I don’t give it much creedence. then again, I didn’t think the other alice cooper rumors had any truth either, so what do I know?

  12. Dblock,

    My comment was not directed at a person; rather a lifestyle. In large part the Hollywood lifestyle is not in line with the gospel of Jesus Christ. There are exceptions, of course. There are a few people in my Ward that struggle with the challanges associated with the Hollywood crowd.

    One of my best friends from high school still hangs around the Hollywood crowd and as a result has fallen away from the church. He has the nice home and boat in Newport, but his marriage has fallen apart and his kids no longer live with him.

    This is sad because he was extremely active. In fact he was called into the Bishopric right out of college.

    1. I know for a fact that some Hollywood types are or were active members of the LDS church. Gordon Jump was very active till his death. Shawn King(Larry King’s wife), Michael Flynn, and a few others were active last I heard. AJ Cook, from Criminal Minds is LDS.
      It’s not easy to maintain LDS standards and still find reasonable success in Hollywood.
      When a role requires us to compromise our standards its not easy. Marie Osmond turned down the role of Sandy in grease because of the cigarette in the end of the film.

  13. In 1982 or 1983, (April — that convention was always the same day as the Kentucky Derby) I attended a Seminary Convention in Billings, Montana, where the invited speaker claimed to have been Vince Furnier’s seminary teacher in the Phoenix area. He spoke about Vince getting involved in music, and starting to do the more theatrical and outrageous things Alice Cooper is known for, and how he had warned Vince to not do those things, but Vince told him that that was just a show, and that it wasn’t really him. He told this story as an illustration of the point that what we “act as if” is what we become, for good and for bad. He did speak of Vince’s background as being Rigdonite, but that his family had become involved in the Church and that Vince was just the normal Mormon kid.

    I don’t recall his name, and can think of no way of finding it. I could probably find a person who was also there to hear the talk.

  14. ST

    Again I say to you. Since you don’t really know what is going on inside someone’s marriage, you don’t get to judge. in hollywood, people often have two persona’s they have two. You don’t know what goes on in a persons private life and to be so harsh when you know so little makes me a little bit angry. We as a church tend to do this

  15. I can’t imagine the pressure that LDS celebrities have to face. If they refuse to say certain words or wear certain clothing, then they lose work. If they don’t work, they lose membership in screen actor’s guild and lose insurance benefits.

    If they play a character that uses colorful language or wears revealing clothing, then they face backlash by their LDS community. It becomes, unfortunately, easier for them to stop participating in the ward then face outspoken criticism.

    If they simply say, “I no longer practice Mormonism” then a multitude of career doors open wide for them. It can’t be easy every day for someone to face a career drought when those 5 little words seem like such a simple alternative.

  16. Do the Bickertonites have Mormon seminary? If so, was this an interfaith convention or did CES at one time collaborate with the Bickertonite religious education system? If not, I would put this story into the not true file.

    dblock:

    I sense that you haven’t yet recovered from the last conversation, but need to win at least one argument. I’d like to help you with this, so I am going to say something horrendous – and you can feel free to express your most fierce righteous indignation:

    Statement: “Small children should be subjected to hard labor, without pay”

    The floor is now yours, criticize away.

  17. Dblock,

    Please take this as an observation and not criticism – you are easily offended. Lighten up, it’s just a discussion. If you disagree, fine, express your disagreement. With that said, I read what I said and realize it was horribly worded. Let me start over.

    If Rosanne would have been converted AND been baptized that would have been fantastic. This would have meant a sharp turn away from the Hollywood Crowd (Babylon, mammon or any other euphuism to describe worldliness). Hollywood, by their admission, is worldliness. However, we don’t need an un-converted Mormon following the norms of the world to be the face of the church. This is the problem I have with the “did you hear so and so is LDS”. We should not be in this to be accepted or popular with the world. We should turn away from the world and its influences, not embrace them.
    The sign of the true church is that it will reach out to the honest in heart; and, in the process, as our Savior testified; separate the wheat from the tares. It will be embraced by some; while it will look intolerant and offensive to others. It will unify those that accept the message, but push others away. The best and most recent example of this is Prop 8 in California. The Lord and his church held firm, while some were offended and turned off by the Church’s stand. Remember, they put Our Savior on the cross not because he was tolerant, accepting or kind (which he was); they hung him on a cross because he stood for what he believed and did not stand down.

    With respect to my Friend’s marriage, let me first say you misuse and mis-understand the term ‘judging others’. The Savior asked us to ‘Judge not unrighteously, but make (a directive) righteous judgments’. This means we need to look at the facts and make a decision or judgment. My friend, by his own admission, admits to getting caught up the world and attributes this to the collapse of his marriage. With this said, it is a fair to make the judgment that I did.

  18. 17 — The story as it was told was that Vince’s family had left the Ridgdonites (Bickertonites were not mentioned, but I don’t know that the CES guy who was speaking would know the difference) and joined the Church, so he was just going to the plain old release time seminary. I am not giving this as proof that what he said was correct — I don’t know one way or the other. I’m giving this as evidence that the story was told as I’ve said it. It could be that that aspect of the story was made up as a FPR — I simply don’t know.

    On the more general point, I find it annoying when I see another celebrity saying they were “raised Mormon,” because it’s become such the thing to say. Julliane and Derek Hough, Eliza Dushku, Katherine Heigl, etc. It’s one of the things I appreciated about the Osmonds — they weren’t perfect, but they understood that they were representing the Mormon people. I can even forgive Crazy Horses for that. It just looks so much like they get into the limelight and give up their standards like they are nothing and that’s just disappointing.

  19. People were offended by Prop 8 because its’ offensive piece of church legislation. The church is justifying us being bias and judging gay, lesbian and transgenders individuals and then used the Bible and the BOM to do it. This was a bad day to bring up Prop 8 my friend, especially since there was another young gay man in utah who committed suicide as a result of that proclamation.. The third in three weeks.

    Why not embrace them? We are all entitled to be in the seat of our fathers house with out judgment. I think we are all going to be surprised when we get to heaven.

    Again, while the Hollywood machine may be as you put it empty, we don’t know that the people are not. We do not know these people. We do not have the right to sit in judgment. We like to build people up, only to tear them down just for sport of it, because it makes us feel better about our own lives .

    I don’t think I mis understand or mis use the word judgment. I think your trying to split hairs.

  20. Dblock,
    Sentence by sentence response:

    Yes, prop 8 was offensive to some, but most LDS accept it as defending the sanctity of marriage and not gay bashing. The Lord and his Church are making a stand on a moral issue and will not back down on this issue. Again, as the Savior testified his church will separate the wheat from the tares. It will offend some, but unite others.

    I am sad to hear someone would take their own life over this or any issue.

    “Why not embrace them?”; because the Savior asked us not to embrace the world.

    “We are all entitled to be in the seat of our father’s house without judgment”. Let me re-word this so it is scripturally correct. We will all sit at the judgment seat and some will go to our father’s house.

    “I think we are all going to be surprised when we get to heaven”. If you change heaven to spirit world, I would agree with that statement.

    “We do not have the right to sit in judgment”. I agree, the Savior will. We need to “make righteous judgment”. We need to make decisions. We need to take a stand. We need to condemn evil. We need to stand for what is right.

    “We like to build people up, only to tear them down just for sport of it, because it makes us feel better about our own lives” If that make you feel better that is your business, but too me it is wrong.

    Mis-use or mis-understand the scriptures. I quoted the scripture verbatim and I think it is pretty clear. I stand by my statement.

  21. To be a famous Mormon celebrity, you have to be recognized as such by a General Authority:
    Peter Vidmar spoke in conference
    Steve Young wrote the preface to Pres. Hinckley’s book
    Pres. Monson came to the funeral of Marie Osmond’s son
    Marriott and Young have appeared in official church videos.

    Is this decided by the corrolation committee?

  22. dblock and st1305, this is not a prop 8 discussion. it is about the bickertionites and mormon myths. please keep on track with the discussion, and leave the petty bickering to another thread about judging righteous judgment and prop 8.

    The reason I have never blogged about prop 8 and never will is because it always devolves into bickering. this is supposed to be a fun, light, educational post. let’s keep it that way.

  23. I’m going to step out of Mormon Matters for a while…I have spent way too much time here in the past few weeks, and I need to refocus on work. I’m self-employed, and while my participation is up to me, it has been getting in the way of my work.

    dblock – Again you have me speechless and feeling completely unapologetic. I about fell out of my chair laughing when I saw your response, and yet I regret that you feel so insulted. Even so, I’m absolutely blown away by your stubborness. Good luck to you.

    brjones – if your out there, I hope we both find our way back here at some point – it’s always a pleasure to mingle (even just virtually) with a likeminded, yet levelheaded friend.

  24. Embarrassed that Harry Reid is a Mormon? He is a faithful endowed member of the Church. This is evil speaking of the Lord’s anointed, in my view.

  25. I’ll note that the L.A. Times had a guy go on tour with Alice Cooper. I remember his final article. On the one hand, Alice Cooper came across as a normal guy doing strange things to keep and service really strange fans, and not happy with that part of his life. On the other hand, the writer said that given how much money he was making, it was hard to feel sorry for him.

    Finally, Cooper has an amazing voice, something that would be easy to miss. He released “Only Women Bleed” just to show it off when someone was claiming he did what he did only because he couldn’t sing.

  26. Happy trails, Cowboy. I do the same thing from time to time. I’m sure we’ll bump into each other in the future.

  27. Good luck Cowboy

    geb,

    Harry Reid is a disgrace. When the prophet Joseph Smith prophesied the constitution would be hanging by a thread I hardly thought one of the main architects would be a member of the church.

    Since taking over as the majority leader of the senate he has presided over 5 trillion dollars in debt. To put this in perspective, with 5 trillion you could pay every single person in Nevada, Utah and Wyoming one million dollars in cash. You could buy 25 million homes at $200,000 piece. we acquired more debt in the past 4 years than we did in the first 200 years of the republic.

    True he did not propose these budgets, but as the majority he could and should have tried to stop this madness. He, along with Bush, Obama and Pelosi have bankrupted this country. That, too me is a disgrace. I am embarrassed this person is a member of thus church. A President Monson said, the power to lead is the power to mis- lead; and, the power to mislead is the power to destroy. Harry Reid has helped destroy the greatest economic power the world has known. Thus is before accounting for a slu of new entitlements pushed by Obama, Reid and Pelosi. A disgrace.

  28. “When the prophet Joseph Smith prophesied the constitution would be hanging by a thread”

    He didn’t, he said something like this, “The time will come when the destiny of this nation will hang upon a single thread.”

  29. Re#25,28, 29 (Threadjack warning: this has nothing to do with Alice Cooper.) While no one has found written evidence that J.Smith said the Constitution would hang by a thread (as Mr. Spector has mentioned) it has been quoted by so many other apostles and prophets that it would be ridiculous to disregard it. Here’s a sampling:

    The second quote in #29 is from Brigham Young (JD 7:15). But B. Young also said, “when the Constitution of the United States hangs, as it were, upon a single thread, they will have to call for the Mormon Elders to save it from utter destruction.” (JD 2:182)

    Orson Hyde added, referring to the original Joseph Smith quote, “I believe he said something like this–that the time would come when the Constitution and the country would be in danger of overthrow; and, said he, if the COnstitution be saved at all, it will be by the Elders of the Church.” (JD 6:152)

    John Taylor: “When the people shall have torn to shreds the Constitution…” (JD 21:8)

    And of course ETBenson “The Lord told his prophet there would be an attempt to overthrow the country by destroying the Constitution. Joseph Smith predicted that the time would come when the Constitution would hang, as it were, by a thread, and at that time this people will step forth and save it from destruction…” Gen Conf, Oct. 7, 1961.

    Note that the constitution isn’t destroyed by the leaders, but “the people.” In this country, we get the leadership we deserve. If you think we deserve better, then DO something about it.

    Finally, while I appreciate that our Church is broad enough to encompass a wide range of political views, calling any politician one of the “Lord’s Anointed” is a bit of a stretch. To quote O. Hyde again: “The COnstitution is one thing; corrupt politicians are another. One may be bright as the sun at noonday, the other as corrupt as hell itself.”

  30. MH & Clark,

    You are trying to enforce the unenforceable. There is not a blog thread on earth with more than a few comments that does not stay on topic. They branch off in a 100 different directions and spawn new treads. This is why it is called a thread named after the multi-threaded socket server prevalent in the computer industry. This topic branched off a comment about famous Mormons, which describes Harry Reid. My suspicion is your objections are more about philosophical differences than keeping the topic on task.

    Clark,

    I may have quoted Joesph Smith wrong but I have read it somewhere in Mormon literature. I think it was in a book called the Charter of Liberty, by William O. Nelson. With that said, I would agree with your statement it is the people, but would add a reference to Helaman 5:2. “For as their laws and their governments were established by the voice of the people, and they who chose evil were more numerous than they who chose good, therefore they were ripening for destruction, for the laws had become corrupted” If this is not a perfect description of the current political environs I don’t know what is.

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    I have a political post in the works. but I think sometimes we all need to take a chill from arguing and my post about alice cooper was an attempt to add a bit of levity to some of the more serious topics we have here, as well as to provide some info about sidney rigdon and the bickertionites. unfortunately it has morphed into politics. there is nothing wrong with politics, but this post is apolitical, so I am a bit disappointed that some people want to pick fights on a topic that was purposely designed to avoid fights.

    st1305, you don’t know my political views. I don’t discuss politics very often. I don’t appreciate you making judgment about my motives on sparse information. I think I agree with you on some things and I disagree on others, same as everyone else. we all don’t think the same, and I like to hear diverse points of view. I would rather save the discussion of politics to a political post. I hadn’t planned on one for at least a month from now, but I can bump it up in the schedule if you would like.

    fyi, I am not a harry reid fan either, but I am more charitable in my criticism of him than you are.

  32. Rosanne Barr was from Salt Lake City. That, alone, does not make her a Mormon. To my knowledge, she was a member of another church.

  33. Thanks Blain, Here’s the reference: http://www.ldsfilm.com/actors/Roseanne.html

    Roseanne was born to a Jewish family in Salt Lake City, Utah. From the age of 6 until she was 16 years old she was also active as a Latter-day Saint. Her autobiography offers a glimpse into this period of her life. The account Roseanne provides in her autobiography is relatively short, and crafted to a certain degree as a humorous story with a punchline. Roseanne’s sister’s biography about her (My Sister Roseanne: The True Story of Roseanne Barr Arnold, by Geraldine Barr and Ted Schwarz, Carol Publishing Corporation, 1994) includes two chapters about Roseanne’s time as a Latter-day Saint and their relationship with the Church. This biography provides a significantly more in-depth account about the depth of committment Roseanne and her mother exhibited to the Church.

    It was not uncommon for Roseanne to refer to her combined Jewish/Latter-day Saint background earlier in her comedy career. In later years she spoke less frequently about her childhood as a Latter-day Saint and also became more committed to Judaism. She came to speak of her childhood in revisionist terms, describing “growing up Jewish among Mormons.”]

    There’s a lot more information on the website.

  34. dmac:

    “Everyone has a right to find their own redemption however they can. Even those ‘Ho”

    Yeah, good luck with that. As I understand it, there is really only one redemption, and that is the one that is offered to us by Jesus Christ, which He offers on conditions of repentance. I don’t see a lot of “Hollywood types” meeting those conditions.

    “Even those ‘Hollywood types’. They are every bit as welcome and as loved by the Lord as anyone.”

    Do you mean that He loves them as much as He loved the Lamanites?

    “But behold my brethren, the aLamanites hath he hated because their deeds have been evil continually.” (Hel. 15:4)

    I don’t know where people get the idea that God loves everyone equally comes from, but it certainly doesn’t come from their careful study of the scriptures.

  35. Ok i need to clear things up here. In the beginning there was one church of jesus christ that joseph smith founded but there were contension within the church and some of the member decided to leave and form there own version of the church. There are many churches out there that originate from joseph smith and even a church called the church of jesus christ of latter day saints that has 300 members and there is the church of jesus christ that has over 12,000 members and then you have the church of jesus christ of latter day saints that everyone knows about. The one with over 15 million members. Alice cooper grandfather was not a part of the now 15 million member lds. He probably originate from the 12,000 version. There was no apostle in the history of my church (the 15 million members version) that had his name, also in my church we dont have preachers. We have bishops and also its not apostle but the twelve apostle. I wish alice cooper was a member but i am afraid he was not a member of the better known lds.

  36. The big church and its members like to claim singular ownership of the name but guess what? Every single one of Joseph’s followers can claim the title of “mormon” if they want to. So was Alice Cooper a mormon? Yes he was. Are the FLDS mormons? Yes they are.

    1. Wow I just stumbled across this page I know the link is old but if you are active you will see this. I belong to The Church Of Jesus Christ which copyrighted the name and font before the Salt Lake City Mormons. Alice Cooper and his family belonged to our organization. WE ARE NOT MORMONS. We are a restoration Church. Alice Cooper was never a mormon as he was part of our Church. What makes us very much NOT MORMONS is that we do not believe Joseph Smith was a prophet. He was an instrument God used for His purpose. We do not accept any additions to the original Nephite Record/ The Book Of Mormon like what the Mormons added, the Pearl of Great Price nor their Docturine and Covenants. That’s the difference which makes them Mormons.
      We accept the unadulterated book which is an accompaniment to the Bible and a history of the natives upon this land of America. Therefore again Alice Cooper is Not a Mormon.

      1. I am also a member there and yes we are NOT Mormons, Our beliefs are very different then them. We are in line with the Bible.The Book of Mormon does not contradict the Bible at all. All the “different”items/ideas are from other Mormon books.

  37. The Monongahela-based church does recognize Joseph Smith as a prophet but hedges when asked if he was a fallen prophet. It is hard to cast answers by one restoration organization in terms that map into another branch’s understanding and traditions. The Church of Jesus Christ may not be very well known, but their faithful members dedicate time, resources and themselves to their version of the restored gospel with as much enthusiasm as faithful LDS. While they don’t accept the D&C as a BOOK, they DO accept the majority of the revelations as found in the Utah D&C and/or the Book of Commandments. The view is the prophesies speak of a second written witness, not a third or fourth.

    Anyway, this was told to me by one of their current apostles about 10 years ago in a doctrinal discussion. Paul Palimeri (? on spelling) was the apostle.

    The term “Bickerton Organization” is often applied to them but did not originate with them. Nicer than “Bicketonites”, butn they do not cringe at that term. I think the author of “Denominations in the United States”, Frank Mead, erroneously (and with no malice) accepted the term Bickerton Organization back when he was alive and the writer of that volume. The author who took over later editions of the book has done a lousy job on the Later Day Saints section and has dropped most entries other than he LDS and Community of Christ for the most part.

    They are STRONG believers in the Book of Mormon as are LDS. Whereas the Community of Christ has retreated largely from the BOM, the Bickerton folk have charged ahead with it!

  38. This is very interesting. I’m a Protestant Christian, and more specifically Reformed. (So, from that wing of the Reformation tradition rather than the Restoration tradition.) There have been rumors that Alice Cooper had become a Reformed Christian because apparently he attended an RC Sproul conference when he was coming back to considering the Christian faith. (And, I think that in God’s Providence, while attending the conference, he ended up meeting RC Sproul on the golf course and playing golf with him.) I heard that Cooper was a Sunday school teacher at a big seeker-sensitive type church in Arizona. At any rate, I’m really happy that he professes faith in Jesus for his forgiveness. Thank you!

  39. I come from the church that Alice Copper was in. It is not the Community of Christ. It is the Church of Jesus Christ. It was the church Bickerton started . We are NOT Mormons but we acknowledge the Book Of Mormon as additional scripture.

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