After the recent comments in chanson’s thread, I decided to copy this post from FLAK.

I am interested in finding out what it is about the raid that people are so passionate about. I will state my theories below my proposal.

And - as chanson did in one of her recent posts (on her blog;), I’d like to quote the Indigo Girls’ song “Hammer and Nail”:

Gotta get out of bed get a hammer and a nail
Learn how to use my hands, not just my head
I think myself into jail
Now I know a refuge never grows
From a chin in a hand in a thoughtful pose
Gotta tend the earth if you want a rose.

This is going to sound like an LDS Sacrament meeting talk - I hope everyone will forgive the analogy and not immediately ignore it (LDS and non LDS). Read the rest of this entry »

I caught this story in an Idaho paper about the Catholic Church banning Mormons from getting a hold of their registries. Apparently they aren’t too keen of Mormons baptizing them posthumously either. Maybe it’s time for the LDS religion to give up on this completely inane practice and put their membership to use doing more useful things - like feeding the hungry.

I was talking to a couple of students last night about a project we are working on together when the idea of baptisms for the dead came up. Both students are very secular and were basically dumbfounded by the description I gave of the practice. They asked all the right questions:

• So, they are getting baptized for people to get them out of spirit prison, right? Yep.
• How do they know if they accepted it? They don’t.
• So, they get baptized for everyone who ever lived? Yep.
• Including Holocaust victims? Yep.
• What about all the people who they can’t find geneologically? They claim it will be revealed to them one day, but that’s kind of funny since it would just make more sense to wait for the revelations and just dunk people then.
• Will they baptize me when I’m gone? Yep.
• Who wouldn’t accept a baptism in spirit prison when it’s obvious that you’re being visited by Mormon missionaries? I have no idea.
• Bizarre. (not a question, but I still answered) Yep.

I say turn the temples into homeless shelters!

Have you ever heard people say “your body is a temple, not a visitors’ center”? Well now there’s a new blog for Mormons that asks the question “can’t it be both?”

It’s called The Visitors’ Center!!! Stop by and have a look at my post Unrealistic Expectations? which will be the first in my mildly titillating series on sexy Mormon vampires.

As one of those ex-Mormons who has adopted the label Son of Perdition (SofP), I’d just like to toy with this a bit (continuing the discussion here). I think this label is a bit loser than some think. Here’s an intriguing post on BCC about those who would be considered SofPs by Joseph Smith, which includes a rather extensive list.

What is required to be a SofP? According to the Encyclopedia of Mormonism: “Those who sin against the Holy Ghost commit the unpardonable sin and will suffer the fulness of the second death.” Some Mormons seem to think this sin is denying a “knowledge” of the truthfulness of Mormonism received through the holy ghost. Considering the fact that many Mormons believe the “emotional” confirmation they received from the holy ghost is “knowledge” (an epistemological issue we should debate), this would mean any Mormon with a testimony would be a potential candidate if they deny their “knowledge” at a later date. By this definition, I’m definitely a Son of Perdition! Read the rest of this entry »

In disfellowshipping or excommunicating scholars (like Michael Quinn, Grant Palmer, and others) Church leaders create a theological paradox. Assuming that such actions are eternally binding implies that, regardless of researchers’ choices, it becomes impossible for them to obtain the benefits of the Savior’s atonement.
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I had to go to the UK to find it, but apparently Rocky Anderson signed an executive order allowing homosexual civil unions and marriages in Salt Lake City. I had no idea! I can only imagine what this is doing to the leadership of the LDS religion… (begin dream sequence)

Boyd K. Packer is sitting in his office in the Church Office Building when an assistant pokes her head in and hands him a copy of Rocky Anderson’s executive order. Veins in Packer’s neck and temples bulge; blood pools in his head. Since it’s my dream, I see cartoonish flames burst out of the top of his head. “This is an abomination and must be stopped! Of all the places to have those same-sex attracted deviants getting married, Salt Lake City is not going to be one of them as long as I’m alive!”

In a mad dash he runs out of his office and heads to Thomas Monson’s office, bursting through the doors. Monson is playing soothing music and is talking with several representatives of Affirmation. Packer pauses, looks around, recognizes the leaders of Affirmation, looks at Monson, then looks back at the leaders of Affirmation. Stunned into silence, he stares, frozen, at the Prophet. Seconds pass; time is frozen… Then it hits him: Monson is gay! Oh… my… god!

For the first time in his life, Boyd K. Packer is experiencing the same level of cognitive dissonance that is regularly experienced by the many followers of the religion he helps lead. The thought. The taste. The smell. The touch. The dissonance is overwhelming. He shakes, he sways, and… Boom! He explodes in a final act of defiance and contradiction.

Monson, calmly wiping the grime from his face, turns back to the leaders of Affirmation and says, without missing a beat, “Well, that’s the final barrier. You’re in!”

(I’m being mean, of course, and have no basis for claiming Boyd K. Packer is an impediment preventing full acceptance of homosexuals in the Mormon fold. But it’s a cool dream!)

In light of the sensationalist press coverage of Mormon fundamentalism, the LDS Church is eager to disassociate itself from more traditional forms of Mormonism.

Whatever the historical and theological relationship between mainstream and fundamentalist Mormonism may be, there is, of course, a big difference between the LDS and the FLDS churches: The LDS Church submits to the sovereignty of the American people.
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I caught this op-ed in a local paper from a Mormon claiming to set the record straight on Mormonism. It’s a beauty because it illustrates how and what the average Mormon believes. Errors or ommissions include:

• no discussion of the limited geography model; assumes a hemispheric model of the BofM
• claims the moniker Mormon originated in 1930 (though this is probably a typo)
• no discussion of the complexity behind the term “Christian”; just assumes that if someone calls themselves Christian they are
• considers the prophet equivalent to the pope (infallibility anyone?)
• claims LDS stopped polygamy in 1890 (they said they would in 1890, but didn’t until about 1905)
• claims the RLDS (now Community of Christ) are the ones practicing polygamy; they never did and deplored the practice

I enjoy debating apologists online, but it does get on my nerves when I generalize about Mormon beliefs and they insist that average Mormons don’t believe some of the things they obviously do (e.g., apologists don’t think average Mormons think of the prophet as being infallible; apologists claim average Mormons think about the BofM as they do - a limited geography model or even metaphorical, etc.). IMO, the average Mormon is about where this guy is in his thinking.

My first reaction on hearing about the Texas raid was “Finally, the authorities have stopped ignoring the abuses committed by the polygamists!” Yet the more I hear about this story, the more reservations I have about it.

The state took several hundred children away from their parents and put them in foster care on the strength of one anonymous phone call? Now I know you’re thinking “Chanson, everybody knows these guys are forcing underage girls to marry creepy old geezers.” True, but “everybody knows” isn’t evidence. Michael Carr makes the following point:

Now you tell me, if you took a two block area in a rough area of an inner city, wouldn’t you find that the children living in that area would probably be suffering all sorts of abuse, addictions, and neglect? Yet you couldn’t simply take them away en masse and distribute them to foster care. You’d have to make this decision on a case by case basis and the mass raid itself would be illegal. How is that different than this case? Read the rest of this entry »

In Profxm’s recent post about inactivity rates among single women of the LDS church, some comments referred to the experience of being a single Mormon woman and why it is painful. I too was a longtime single Mormon woman and found it intensely painful, far too often. When I would talk about my experience, I would find some people who were very sympathetic and having similar experiences, though it was often hard to get people to talk openly about it. I had a very good friend who would often cry quietly throughout church every week, so painful was it for her. I didn’t show it as much or as often, but I found that especially General Conferences were almost literally excruciating. Perhaps it’s the kind of pain, for the kind of reasons, that you can only understand if you’ve been there?
Read the rest of this entry »