Molly recently left a comment here that, I think, expresses a question on a lot of people minds:

Must admit to having trouble understanding why Joanna Brooks is taken so seriously. Her work is very softball, and frequently skirts meaty issues or downplays legitimate problems completely.

This was largely in response to the fact that Brooks won the Mormon Alumni Association’s prestigious “William Law X-Mormon of the Year” Award, however, I think that the attention she gets from the other side of the aisle is even more mysterious. Specifically, why does the CoJCoL-dS have its media outlets continuously taking pot-shots at her?

I think Ralph Hancock gives us a bit of a hint in his latest piece on Professor Brooks:

Brooks has a political agenda — or, to be more precise, a political-religious agenda, since her outlook on what is true and good is profoundly conditioned by a progressive-liberal-feminist political project, a project that requires a fundamental re-interpretation of the religion her parents taught her.

It sounds like the problem isn’t so much that she has a political-religious agenda — rather the problem is that she has the wrong one. The CoJCoL-dS occasionally claims that it’s apolitical, but who gets to speak from a given platform (and who doesn’t) is itself a political decision.

Have a look at The Narrator’s recently rejected mormon.org profile:

Unlike most Mormons, I don’t necessarily believe in a life after death. However our scriptures teach that eternal life is more than living forever, but is something that can and should be achieved now in the present. Eternal life is to live and love others as God does. Too often I think we are confused in thinking that eternal life is something we must wait for, or that it is something that can only be found in another life after this. Rather, it is by following Christ’s example and learning to love as He did that we can find ourselves with eternal life in the present.

Andrew S explains in his response that the church wants to showcase some types of diversity and not others. For example, they want people to know that you can be black and be a Mormon, or you can be a woman who works outside the home and be a Mormon (y’know, as long as you don’t try to publish your ideas about Mormonism), however, not everybody can have the mormon.org True Mormon seal of approval:

At the conference last week, the mormon.org monitor in attendance justified the practice using the example of someone who might say that he is a gay parent and a Mormon. The obvious problem with this rationale is that there are, in fact, gay Mormon parents.

Personally, I think the CoJCoL-dS is really shooting itself in the foot on this one. As “A Mormon in the Cheap Seats” explains, it alienates the whole range of people who see Mormonism in shades of gray. (On the positive side, Deseret News is helping feminist Mormons raise money.) It looks like the PR department doesn’t get that making a good impression and obsessively controlling who gets to hold the microphone may be incompatible goals.

p.s. I hope you’re going to Sunstone 2012 — to discuss the politics of Mormon discourse with me as well as other Mormon-political questions!!

The following is an article I wrote for the October / November 2011 issue of Free Inquiry (the magazine of the Council for Secular Humanism), reposted here with permission from the editors. The Oct/Nov issue is a special issue on Mormonism, and one other MSP regular also contributed to it.

I am an atheist, but I grew up Mormon. My children have asked their grandparents and others about religious belief, about how it works, to try to understand it. But for all of their interest and curiosity, I doubt they’ll truly understand what it’s like to be a part of a religious community, and to truly believe in it. I wouldn’t recommend raising children in religion just so they’ll have the experience, but as for myself, I wouldn’t trade in my experiences for a non-religious background even if I could.

One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is that a single claim can seem either obviously crazy or perfectly reasonable depending on how you’re exposed to it. Consider the Mormon belief that God was once a human and that humans can become Gods. As a teenager, it was an epiphany for me to encounter Christians who scorned and ridiculed this belief — not for being a deadly heresy, but for being obviously absurd. Meanwhile these same Christians believed in an omnipotent three-in-one God with no beginning who loves His human children, and promises them an eternity of unchanging subservience (best case scenario) or an eternity of torture. I’d been exposed (as least tangentially) to mainstream Christian beliefs my whole life, so their theology didn’t really shock me. But I was shocked by their crazy belief that Mormon theology was somehow objectively more crazy than their own theology.

This is a lesson that I’ve carried with me. For example, one time some colleagues invited me to a Hindu Diwali celebration, and I was surprised to see people pouring milk and honey and orange juice over statues of their gods, apparently to please them. “Wow, that’s crazy!” I thought, and then I stopped myself. Crazier than symbolically eating your God? Or than putting olive oil on someone’s head to perform a faith healing?

So much of what seems normal and reasonable depends on the beliefs you’re brought up with and on the things the people around you believe. Other trappings can influence your perception as well, such as homeopathic medicines that are packaged up like real medicine and sold in an ordinary pharmacy. One thing I’ve learned is that the natural “That’s crazy!” reaction doesn’t always lead to a rational exchange of ideas. If a person thinks that claim X is reasonable, and you say it’s obviously crazy, then in that person’s eyes you may be the one who looks like a raving lunatic. A lot of times you need to start by understanding why belief X seems reasonable to the other person before you begin to discuss it.

Spending my formative years in a minority religion has shaped my perspective and has helped shape who I am. Note that I wasn’t raised in some sort of isolated community of believers who fear and shun all contact with the outside. I went to an ordinary suburban High School that had only a handful of Mormon students, so most of my friends were not Mormon. On the other hand, Mormonism is a time-consuming religion that requires a lot of socializing with other believers, so it was as though I had one foot in one community and one foot in another. Thus I observed how minorities are judged (and misjudged). And I learned that being different is more than OK — it’s something to be proud of.

Now that I’m an atheist, I have additional perspective. I haven’t forgotten my past, so it’s a little like being bilingual. I can translate between two communities. On the Internet, I can correct errors and mis-impressions on one side or the other. On the Mormon side, you naturally see people who believe in the usual stereotypes about atheists: that they’re miserable, amoral nihilists, or whatever. Sometimes on the Bloggernacle (the network of faithful Mormon blogs) people write posts using those stereotypes as basic “everybody knows”-type background assumptions about atheists. I’m one of the ex-Mormon atheists that help to challenge the stereotypes not only by posting comments directly on posts that misrepresent atheists, but also by maintaining a long-term personal blog about my ordinary life as a mild-mannered mom.

On the other side, I can correct erroneous claims people make about Mormons and Mormon doctrine. In particular, there’s a lot of confusion about polygamy — mostly due to the publicity wing of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints broadcasting misleading half-truths like “We have not had any connection with polygamy for over a hundred years; we have no connection with any modern polygamist groups; the modern polygamist groups are not Mormon; end of story, stop asking us about it.” In reality, the modern Mormon polygamist groups are branches of the same tradition, they have as much right as any other branch of Mormonism to self-identify as “Mormon”, and while the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the branch with the pairs of missionaries with suits and bikes and little name-tags) renounced the modern practice of polygamy, it hasn’t renounced it as an eternal doctrine — notably their “eternal families” include polygamous families.

My Mormon past puts me in a unique position to provide constructive criticism to the Mormon community. When I encounter Mormons talking amongst themselves, I know the lingo, and what’s more, I grok what they’re talking about because I’ve lived it. We have shared experiences. When the Mormons were working to get Proposition 8 passed in California, I could talk to them about what’s wrong with that, without having them immediately dismiss me as someone who hates/misunderstands Mormons. I can approach them — not as someone who thinks Mormons are crazy cultists — but as a family member who just wants to see my own people do the right thing. I currently write for the group blog Main Street Plaza, and we discuss politics with the faithful all the time. The leaders and the publicity arm of the CoJCoL-dS constantly spread memes like “Gay marriage is a threat to our freedom of religion,” and “people who criticize the Mormon involvement in Proposition 8 are hypocrites because they’re bigoted against Mormons,” etc. As a member of the family, I can discuss with faithful Mormons what’s wrong with those messages in a calm and constructive manner.

As an aside, I want to make it clear that — while I’m interested in engaging thoughtful believers in constructive, civil dialog — I’m not denouncing other approaches. No matter how nice and well-meaning I may be, “apostates” are viewed with suspicion in Mormonism and in many other religions. That’s why I don’t want to disparage the outspoken “new atheists” who are highly critical of religion. They’re the ones who open up the middle ground where “nice” tactful atheism can occur — by moving the poles of the debate. You’re misunderstanding the dynamics of the debate if you think that angry atheists harm the position of the bridge-building atheists. Really it’s the opposite. The only reason religious people see you as a nice atheist — as opposed to seeing you as a servant of Satan who should have no place in the discussion — is because there’s someone else out there who’s less “nice”, providing contrast. If any atheists are advocating crime or violence or taking away religious people’s civil rights, then I’ll denounce them for it. But if they’re offending people by challenging the wrong-headed notion that religion has a monopoly on morals and ethics, I’ll thank them for putting those points on the table of discussion.

Actually, the alliance between the Mormons and the rest of the Religious Right is one of my favorite topics to discuss with believing Mormons. Naturally, I think that Mormons — being a minority religion, like the Jews — need to understand the importance of protecting the rights of minorities. The problem is not merely the fact that the Evangelical Christians think that Mormonism is a dangerous cult. It’s possible to make political alliances with people that you don’t like personally. But as I (and even many faithful Mormons have pointed out), it’s not in the Mormons’ interest to promote laws allowing majority religions to impose their beliefs on minorities — such as encouraging a precedent where a 51% majority can enshrine religious-based discrimination in the California constitution. When Mitt Romney gave his famous speech describing American political discourse as a “tapestry of faith,” many of the Mormon blogs fawned all over this one-ended bridge towards the Christian Right’s private club. And I was right there on Main Street Plaza to present the view that the speech was more about exclusion than inclusion, and to direct people to articulate articles explaining the following: “In a speech Romney was forced to give because he feared unfair discrimination, Romney did not stand against intolerance. Instead, he simply asked that it not be directed against him, a man of faith. You can be intolerant, but do it to them, over there. They’re even more different,” and “Romney opposes bigotry in self-defense, not in defense of others, which is to say that he does not really oppose it at all.”

Another central part of my online work is to help build a community for former Mormon bloggers and encourage harmony and understanding within mixed-belief families. For years I’ve been gathering up former-Mormon bloggers into a huge blogroll called Outer Blogness, and I do a weekly link roundup (Sunday in Outer Blogness) to encourage people to visit each other’s blogs. Faithful Mormons naturally have a community of people to share their faith experiences with (at church), but losing belief can be incredibly isolating because in real life there’s very little context for sharing your experience with others. Family members and people at church typically find a loss of faith very threatening, and often react with fear and hostility rather than understanding. As soon as people get online, they’re usually pleasantly surprised to discover a whole world of others who have gone through similar experiences. And they can share strategies, including ideas on making the transition smoothly and on maintaining loving ties with family members who still believe. That was also the theme of my novel ExMormon: the grand comedy of growing up Mormon, caring about your Mormon community and identity, but then losing belief and reconstructing your expectations and your relationships. Believers have found the novel to be a fun and non-threatening starting point for understanding their non-believer friends and family members better.

Atheists who were raised in other religions can form the same sorts of bridges with their own communities. I encourage them to do so. It makes sense that — within the atheist community — secular Jews should take the lead when discussing Israel, and people raised Muslim should take the lead in discussions about problems in Muslim countries, for example. They have added perspective on the subject, plus they can be trusted not to be biased by racism against their group nor by believing that their group is doing God’s will. Being raised in religion isn’t better or worse than being raised without it. But I believe that those of us who were raised in religious communities have a special role to play, and we should step up and play it.

Troy tried to buck me up after my latest mini-meltdown over l’affaire Lyman and it reminded me that I need to remember to catch Tabloid (91% “Fresh”!) at my earliest convenience. Here’s Troy riffin’ at Sunstone (go show their Youtube channel some love) on his role in the Errol Morris documentary and his thoughts on the Broadway Book of Mormon:

Enjoy.

1) Local Memphis TV news report mocks Mitt Romney’s Mormon beliefs (and ace reporter* Ben Ferguson reminds viewers why some folks prefer to avoid the Bible Belt). The cringe begins at 03:21:

2) Local musical director (and LDS church member) Steve Danielson offers his opinion of the Tony-winning Broadway musical.

3) 89-year old Church of Christ apostle, William Sheldon, explains the origins of the Mormon religion.

4) Meet a pair of Memphis area Mormon missionaries.

*CORRECTION: From comments at Politico:

Benjamin “Ben” Ferguson (born 1981) is an American radio host, conservative political commentator, and author. Ferguson was homeschooled by his mother through the tenth grade.

He was a local talk-radio host throughout his teens. Ferguson was selected by the Bush White House to join President Bush and Ben Stein for a town hall meeting in an effort to educate the public on the issue of social security reform. Ferguson also spends several weeks a year on the road speaking at youth leadership conferences, high schools and college camp uses nationwide. Ferguson addressed the 2004 Republican National Convention. [emphasis mine]

While Ferguson’s anti-Mormon antics may be annoying, that last sentence is downright frightening.

FRIENDLY HEADS UP: In future, anyone looking to poke some fun at Mormons might consider popping round here first and asking MSP for tips on the latest fair target. For example, this qualifies (Sister Kristen M. Oaks touting “The Testimony Glove” for Deseret Book):

Use the glove, feel the Spirit™

Blech! You’d think that the wife of Apostle® Dallin H. Oaks would be anxiously engaged in something other than helping DB promote their goofy faith promoting inventions (h/t r/exmormon).

Or, if you’re specifically looking to find a reason to get nervous about electing Mormons to public office, this quote from leading Mormon apologist Dan Peterson’s latest op piece in the Deseret News ought to do the trick:

“You may not like what comes from the authority of the church,” said President Harold B. Lee, serving at the time as a counselor to President Joseph Fielding Smith. “It may conflict with your political views. It may contradict your social views. It may interfere with some of your social life. … Your safety and ours depends upon whether or not we follow. … Let’s keep our eye on the president of the church.”

HIT LIST:
Mediaite: Great Moments In Journalism: Local News Segment Mocks Romney’s Mormon Faith
The Commercial Appeal: Fox 13, Ben Ferguson take heat for segment on Romney, Mormons
Commentary: Unbelievable: TV Reporter Mocks Romney’s Mormonism
The American Prospect: The Mormonism Question, Going Nowhere
Deseret News: Fox affiliate ‘making fun of Mormons’
Mediaverse: On The Book of Mormon (Ben Ferguson)
Mother Jones: Mitt Romney’s Evangelical Problem
ABC4: Memphis reporter mocks Mormon beliefs
Politico: Making fun of Mormons in Memphis

BONUS REDDIT HEADLINE CONTEST:
r/politics: Memphis reporter sets out to prove how weird Mitt and Mormons are … Pot. Kettle. Black.
r/reddit: Wake-up, Mormons: Broadway & teh gays are much nicer to you than so-called Christians.
r/religion: Local Memphis TV news “report” plumbs depths of Bible Belt anti-Mormon bigotry
r/exmormon: Local Memphis TV news report mocks Mitt Romney’s Mormon beliefs. *Cringe*
r/lds: Mitt Romney ought to step up and put these hillbillies in their place.
r/offbeat: What’s weirder: Memphis or Mormons? It’s a toss-up, apparently.
r/Christianity: Do Christians think it’s OK to mock Mormon beliefs?

To recap recent discussions, ProfXM says:

To me it seems like it might be a good idea, but it also requires that religions not be exclusive, which, of course, many are. So, rather than being a good idea, it seems more like a futile idea. And I say that as someone who fully embraces the idea of working with and seeing liberal religious groups as allies against the fundamentalists. But it just seems, well, silly to think that religious people can give up being… RIGHT!

Andrew H. (a liberal Christian happy to join with anyone to contribute to our community and world) adds:

he is just painting a rosier face on his fundamentalism… which will lead to the same end. He is condemning other faiths, just not to their face…. and people will see through it.

Daniel cites a relevant Jesus and Mo, and Chino — referring to the LDS/Evangelical Religious Right alliance — calls it “co-belligerence,” while Alan accuses the atheists of the “the exact same behavior.”

These are very tricky questions that can’t be dismissed with simple answers. We humans have major points of common interest and major disagreements with, well, basically all of the other humans on the planet. What to do???? Luckily, the Internets this week have stepped up to the plate to offer insights on these very questions!

Let’s start with all the real-world examples of conflict-laden dialog. Like Neil deGrass Tyson at BYU, Boyd K. Packer and an atheist, an exmo with her visiting teacher, an atheist with various Christians, exmos with other exmos, Christians with “real Christians”, Mormon housewives with *ditto*, McCarthy and playmates, a kid with the stake president, another kid instructed not to say “evolution”, South Park guys and the Mormons, Mormons and intriguing bumper-stickers, a sexist guy and his colleagues, Rick Santorum and google, a feminist polygamist at Sunstone, parents and teenagers, etc. Ah, Internets — so full of contrasts!! Sometimes, the contrast of worldviews can be summed up in a koan. To help, a reddit exmo recommends Non-Violent Communication. And for some great communication, don’t forget to attend Sunstone!!!

Now, as much as I’d love to keep chatting all day about how funny it is that we’re all so different and all so the same, there have been some serious developments on the political scene. Attacks on freedom like photograph a cow, go to jail (WTF Florida?), religious discrimination preventing HS kids from forming clubs, an inmate is disciplined for religious-based grooming standards, girls can make it to state but don’t get to compete… Also, be very careful if you’re a woman or a doctor. OTOH, in a grand victory for the Constitution and states’ rights, the US government stopped defending DOMA (beware of marauding gay hordes), and even Fox News broke out of its reality-repelling bunker to cover it! And, in even bigger news, the situation in Wisconsin and Egypt is getting serious — we’re breaking out the big words: fascism and (Mormon) Socialism! Looks like the root is economic (but the sexism is kind of biting us on the nose…). It’s hard to think what to do, but you can perhaps start here.

Good week, and good luck!

Back in October 2008, I posted a public response to an email that a Mormon friend of mine received and then forwarded on to me for comment: Enough with the Emails from Mormon McVeigh Wannabes.

An excerpt from my message to the Mormon author of that email rant:

I’m very concerned, Brian, by the lack of daylight between what you’ve written above and the words Timothy McVeigh used to describe the “why” behind his hatred of our country.

And my plea to the LDS leadership:

Many members have become increasingly disturbed by the tone and rhetoric that’s being adopted in Mormon email forwards like the one above, but so many members feel so browbeaten at this point that few bother to mount a challenge.

I believe it has become your responsibility to address the problem of paranoid and bellicose email forwards like Brian’s that are now in such heavy circulation among your members.

Admittedly, I’m under no illusion that anyone of importance at LDS HQ actually bothered to notice my 2008 request, but here’s a fresh 2011 request that I sincerely hope might have some chance of being taken seriously by the muckety-mucks of both the Mormon and ex-Mormon blogospheres: Please stop providing a platform for this pest.

I suppose the above (redacted) screen grabs speak for themselves, but just in case:

Memo to Mormon Expression: enough with the wink and nod routine, let this guy find his own platform for spreading his poison and be done.

In other news: Giffords’ husband releases first statement since shooting

Acknowledgments (for prompting my choice of title):

Russell Arben Fox, Great Work, You Over-Hyped Violence-Infatuated Morons

It’s been almost a year since we last discussed civil discourse and our goals at Main Street Plaza. As our community grows and evolves, we need to discuss whether/how our goals and policies should evolve.

As you probably know, Hellmut and Solistics started this blog in March of 2007 with the idea of providing a platform where the DAMU could communicate with the Bloggernacle on equal footing. At that point, I’d already been gathering up exmo blogs into “Outer Blogness” for more than a year from my own blog, so I immediately signed on here to help turn Main Street Plaza into a central gathering for all of the LDS-interest blogs: pro, anti, faithful, ex, post, liberal, borderland, other, etc. Sitting in this niche, it seemed only natural that MSP should be a place where we can challenge and criticize one another (as we discuss LDS-interest issues and current events), but where our criticism stays civil and constructive. A place where we recognize that — despite all of the labels — we’re all people, we have common interests, and we have an interest in talking to each other sometimes, not just at/past each other.

I’m a big believer in “to everything there is a season,” especially on the Internet. I don’t think that every site should be shooting for civil dialog. Quite the opposite, I think there are times and places where civil dialog is not not appropriate, and the Internet would be a poorer tool if everyone were trying to do the same thing.

That said, I like civil dialog, and I think that here at MSP we don’t do too badly at it, considering how passionately we sometimes disagree and considering the level of hurt that is sometimes found in mixed-faith families. And, as I said in last year’s post, in an exchange of ideas, fair play favors the side that’s right. Hurling insults, making wild speculations about other people’s motives, and “answering the question they should have asked” (instead of staying on topic) are tactics to obscure the issue when you know your case is weak. So if you think you’re right (about any given subject), you have no reason to fear a reasonable dialog with people whose ideas on the subject are different than your own. Worst (or best?) case scenario, someone else gives you some food for thought that perhaps makes you refine or reconsider your position on an issue.

Regarding how we treat faithful Mormons who come here to talk to us: Being civil isn’t about coddling them or about making them feel all warm and snuggly inside. It’s not really about the Mormons per se. We don’t have a specific policy about how we should treat faithful Mormons any more than we have a special policy for the Evangelical Christians or the Buddhists or the atheists or the agnostics or the Muslims or the Hellenistic Pantheists or whomever. It’s that if we’re keeping the dialog civil, we’re keeping it civil period. If we want to ask others to make a good faith effort to keep it civil, then we start by doing it ourselves. And if we have to make separate rules for different groups, then it starts to look like we’re afraid to play on a level playing field.

I know some people aren’t here for the dialog; they’re here for the news or to share stories with others who’ve had similar experiences. That’s fantastic, and I don’t think a civil dialog policy really stifles any of that. We’re generally pretty laid-back here, but if you feel like our discussion style is hindering you from expressing yourself, well, then, that’s another reason why I love the diversity of the former-Mormon community on the Internet! Any kind of site you want, you’ve got it! For example, the exmo Reddit is a fantastic place to swap stories and share news without having the slightest qualm about TBM readers. Similarly, FLAK, Post-Mo, and Life after Mormonism are all fantastic for discussions and socializing with fellow-former-Mormon friends. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg — there are plenty more. I love that we have so many sites, all with slightly different styles (and overlapping communities) to meet all different needs and tastes.

Also, don’t forget that you’re free to set whatever tone you like on your own site. And I’m not being facetious to say that. To make a thriving site, all it takes is one person or a group of friends and a good idea. For example, I’m not sure the exmo Reddit even existed a year ago, and now it’s one of the most popular exmo sites on the Internet, if not the most popular.

So, anyway, that’s my case for why I think MSP should keep its commenting policy of “make a good-faith effort to keep your comments civil and constructive.”

As far as the details of what it means to be civil and constructive, that’s an open question that we can be constantly discussing. I don’t think there’s a magic formula for which comment is OK and which is out-of-bounds. The closest I’ve found is to ask yourself whether you’re sincerely trying to be civil and understand the perspective of others. But as for how that translates into action at the post level — after nearly four years of moderating, I’m still guessing a lot of the time.

That is why, of course, we have a policy of not deleting out-of-bounds posts. Because we don’t have any omniscient moderators, we’ve learned (especially recently) that it’s better to keep the (allegedly) out-of-bounds comment up so that readers can make up their own minds about it.

So, what say you? Like it? Hate it? Anything where we’re failing? Anything that needs to be refined or overhauled?

If you have to ban somebody over religious differences, it is probably a good idea to wait until the debate about what constitutes a bad religion is over.

When you argue that religion provides a special path to the truth, you are not helping yourself by prohibiting your rhetorical opponent’s speech. You see, people who have a measure of truth can defend their position on the merit of the argument.

So when you shut them up with prohibitions, you demonstrate your ignorance more conclusively than any advocate ever could.

I appreciate your frustration. When Ronan dangled the carrot of “reasonable” religious “truth” in front of you, you got all excited at the prospect of an intellectual justification of religious truth claims. It is unfortunate this expectation had to be disappointed because Ronan misinterpreted the work of Peter Vardy, which rests on Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. I was the proverbial bearer of bad news who assumed that his Christian friends were tougher.

I regret that you banned me because I like those of you that I know and it pains me that you would embarrass yourselves and our community in that way.

It is doubly unfortunate since I found out about your ban when I posted the following comment that now languishes in your moderation cue:

The Book of Mormon is actually a lot stronger than the Vardy of this post.

One can reasonably argue that something like the light of Christ empowers our imagination to capture the noumenon but that is something quite different from experience.

The light of Christ would be a rational asset that makes properly sense of our observations.

Mormonism has considerable resources to be a force for good. We don’t need to misread Peter Vardis to find them.

For my part, I will continue to consider you friends, although I must admit that that would be easier if your actions would not contradict your words quite so obviously.

I knew we had faithful Mormons reading this blog, but ProfXM’s thread on “feeling the Spirit” really brought them out of lurking!! So, today, I’d like to open a new thread where the faithful can introduce themselves and the rest of us can welcome them!

I want to reiterate that Main Street Plaza is a place where we can all have a reasonable, civil discussion — despite differences in belief. We are absolutely open to constructive criticism. Organizations (like the CoJCoL-dS or the Mormon Alumni Association) can only improve by recognizing and addressing problems. I would just like to ask you first to be sure you’ve read our welcome page and our FAQ (on why we write about Mormonism) so that we don’t waste our time, yours, and precious electrons on repeating ourselves (eg. “you guys are all a bunch of ant-Mormons and I’m sure that you hate me,” etc.). Your feedback on specific posts or policies, however, is welcome!

I think that Kevin Barney was sincerely interested in finding answers when he first posed the question. The trouble is that when you ask a question on the Internet, there’s a danger that you’ll get responses from people who have actual, first-hand experience. Then the double-trouble is that it’s hard to answer that question in a reasonable way without, y’know, pointing out things that might possibly be wrong with the CoJCoL-dS. Which, in Mormonland, is not kosher. Those are the kinds of truths that aren’t useful — unless you want to actually address and solve the problems. But that would require acknowledging that the CoJCoL-dS may not be already perfect exactly the way it is. Just imagining such a thing makes some believers respond with la-la-la-I-can’t-hear-you-anymore-because-I’m-bearing-my-testimony-at-you-now (which Chino argues may be the root of the problem).

But, to be fair, the responses that Andrew calls “cringe-worthy” (about how obviously bad and wrong the church is) don’t really answer the question either. We’ve hardly scratched the surface of the main mysteries:

• Why now? Why was the LDS church growing a few decades ago and now heading into decline? (If it’s not true now, it’s not as though it was more true thirty years ago…)
• Why is religion in general losing ground throughout the industrialized world? Are Mormonism’s problems just a part of that trend, or is there something more going on in Zion?
• Why is it that the more liberal/laid-back religions seem to be losing ground faster than the more extreme/all-consuming religions? (Is that actually the case, and is Mormonism a counter-example?)

Now, I have my own theory about this, but please formulate your own theory before reading it.

Ready?

OK, remember how they used to teach us in Sunday School that nobody knows when the exact time of the Second coming will be, not even Heavenly Father? Well, naturally that causes some coordination and planning problems. HF had saved up a whole bunch of choice, valiant spirits for the last days — but He used them all up a generation ago, and now in the latter-latter days, He’s left scraping the bottom of the spirit barrel. Meanwhile, Jesus is still in the bathroom doing his hair for His return in clouds of glory.

But, seriously, any ideas?