This might prove both interesting and entertaining:

Mormon LDS Church President Summoned to UK Court on Fraud Charges

In short, it appears that since the LDS Church makes kind of a big deal about tithing being important, that sets them up to be put under legal scrutiny. The relatively recent British law ” Fraud Act of 2006″ prohibits lies for the purpose of getting someones money… false advertising and such, I’d imagine. Well, the Mormon Church has, as an religion does, various tenets, and since they want your money… those tenets had better not be lies.

Below is the legal paperwork laying out the tenets. Some of those are pretty legally questionable, I think… I believe the LDS church does not take a particularly hard&fast position on the Earth being only 6000 years old, for instance. But others, like the Book of Abraham being an accurate translation from Egyptian sources, have long since been proven to be false.

I have some difficulty in imagining that this legal action will actually get anywhere. It seems pretty loopy to me. But then, this is the British legal system. If it actually makes it to court, and the court finds that the LDS is committing fraud by teaching that Joseph Smith found and translated plates of gold… well, other religions had better watch out. Any religion that rakes in lots of cash from its believers (coughcoughcatholicismcoughcough) will probably be on the hook to prove their faith to be fact.

Granted, the LDS is *almost* in a unique position here. Most religions are old enough that the source documents are gone, that the evidence has been destroyed, that the claims made are now so lost in the fuzz of time that *everything* comes down to faith. But the Mormon church is a modern creation, and Smith made a number of claims that can in fact be proven wrong (such as Amerindians being a lost tribe of Israel). The LDS church is *not*, however, truly unique. There is another religion I can think of that would seem to fit into this legal action even better. A religion created within living memory, which seems to be *all* about raking in the cash, and which has made lots of nonsensical claims about aliens and volcanos and superpowers and whatnot.

In order for the British court system to get its hands on Monson, he would either have to go their on his own or be extradited by the US government. And even with the current administration, I can’t imagine the US extraditing a feller for professing what his religion teaches.