LDS II: The Mormons

[JayUtah]

I stumbled across a YT channel by Alyssa Grenfell telling her story of when she was Mormon. The cultiness of it from someone that lived it and the mental manipulation they do to recruit new members.
Plain speech and clear, even if she did still smooth over some known bad areas herself.

The Mormon response to that sort of thing is, "It's okay if they want to leave the church, but why can't they just leave us alone?" This weekend is the seminannual Mormon conference, so navigating my city's downtown is impossible. They reserve the right to aggressively proselytize and tell everyone within earshot their wonderful stories. But apparently people who had a different experience are expected to just keep quiet about it. "I did not have a good experience as a Mormon, and here's why," is an equally valid viewpoint and is equally deserving of attention and airtime. When you suppress thoughtful criticism, you just come across as that much more culty.

 

[8enotto]

The magic protective underwear and the coffee ban should be revealed early on in recruiting. That's a step beyond the " accepted " narratives of Smith. Once it becomes a lifestyle choice it's well beyond cool fanciful stories.

 

[JayUtah]

The magic protective underwear and the coffee ban should be revealed early on in recruiting.

They just scaled back the underwear. Women get to wear sleeveless dresses now. Younger Mormons drink coffee-based drinks all the time. That part is softening.

That's a step beyond the " accepted " narratives of Smith. Once it becomes a lifestyle choice it's well beyond cool fanciful stories.

The "Smith narrative" is starting to become acute as the extent of his sexual behavior becomes more historically substantiated and therefore harder to ignore. The church is stepping away from "Weird 19th century American cult" and trying to look more like mainstream Christianity. For example, they've started celebrating more of Holy Week, which they initially disregarded as apostate sectarian nonsense.

 

[dudalb]

They just scaled back the underwear. Women get to wear sleeveless dresses now. Younger Mormons drink coffee-based drinks all the time. That part is softening.


The "Smith narrative" is starting to become acute as the extent of his sexual behavior becomes more historically substantiated and therefore harder to ignore. The church is stepping away from "Weird 19th century American cult" and trying to look more like mainstream Christianity. For example, they've started celebrating more of Holy Week, which they initially disregarded as apostate sectarian nonsense.

Interesting to compare the LDS with the Catholic Church, as far as backing down on some of it's less popular rules go. The Mormon softening on some aspects of the Word of Wisdom remings me of the Catholic Church abadoning the No Meat On Friday rule.
As for the stepping away from "Weird 19th century American cult" and trying to look more like mainstream Christianity the LDS has been doing that for a long time....The 1890 abandoning of Polygamy is a good example.
I also think the church is starting to soften..at least a little...it hard core stand on Homosexuality because most American Society has moved in that direction.
I also note that the CHurch has 'Modified" it's views of pre Columbus American;Instead of saying that Native Americans were purely descedned from the Laminites (basically Jews who migrated to the Americas circa 600 BC) they say the Laminties were part of the groups that were the ancestors of Native Americans.

 

[JayUtah]

Interesting to compare the LDS with the Catholic Church, as far as backing down on some of it's less popular rules go. The Mormon softening on some aspects of the Word of Wisdom remings me of the Catholic Church abadoning the No Meat On Friday rule.

A year or so ago I had the chance to sit down with an actual historian and talk about how the Word of Wisdom (the health code) has been interpreted over the years. It's quite a lot different than how it's taught to members, as you can guess. Up until Prohibition, Mormons were pretty enthusiastic drinkers.

As for the stepping away from "Weird 19th century American cult" and trying to look more like mainstream Christianity the LDS has been doing that for a long time....The 1890 abandoning of Polygamy is a good example.

And letting non-Whites be ordained and hold office. Oddly, I know some actual polygamists. Not the weird Quaker-like ones you see on TV or the Warren Jeffs child abusers. (I've written here on the subject of the Mormon Lost Boys, which I find to be a particularly irreligious phenomenon.) But there are quiet practitioners here and there. They aren't welcome in the mainstream church, but they go about just like normal people.

I also think the church is starting to soften..at least a little...it hard core stand on Homosexuality because most American Society has moved in that direction.

We'll see. The newly-installed president is a notorious hard-liner on that subject.

I also note that the CHurch has 'Modified" it's views of pre Columbus American;Instead of saying that Native Americans were purely descedned from the Laminites (basically Jews who migrated to the Americas circa 600 BC) they say the Laminties were part of the groups that were the ancestors of Native Americans.

The old-timers here say that Mormons used to call indigenous people here "Lamanites." (I love how that got auto-corrected to "laminates.") They stopped that in the 1970s or so, I guess. Lots of Mormon truth claims regarding geography and genetics have had to be revised, since science has had a pesky but steady habit of telling a different story.

There's actually a well-developed Mormon intellectual community. They pay attention to the science and take a skeptical approach to the doctrine, which they joke keeps them out of the temple (i.e., they're borderline apostates). But the church leadership per se doesn't really pay attention to them.

 

[8enotto]

The list of reasons a convert may never be invited to the Temple hasn't softened if the outward racism and such has. Alyssa said a negro or Latino is welcome in the community to pray and tithe but may never see the inside of a temple. But white skinned folk have less problems getting in.

It's not a classless religion. A multiigeneration family is elite, a new convert or minority is looked down upon.
Not like happy clappy christian churches that take anyone and forgive all without questions.

 

[JayUtah]

That may be more of a problem with U.S. institutional racism. Due to aggressive proselyting in Spanish-speaking countries, quite a large percentage of the church membership lives in Mexico, Central America, and South America. And there are quite a number of temples in those countries. It may be true that lingering racism makes it hard for non-Whites to get permission to go to the temple in majority White areas. But If you're a Mexican Mormon living in Mexico, you should be able to go to a temple in Mexico without any additional qualifications or suspicion.

I've seen evidence of classism, especially where I live and people brag about being nth-generation members or that their ancestor came West with Brigham Young. (I came west in a borrowed Ford Pinto.)

The various times I've attended Mormon services, it's like all heads turned to look at the stranger. That doesn't generally happen when I attend services in other Christian churches.

 

[Dad_SB_83]

The church is stepping away from "Weird 19th century American cult" and trying to look more like mainstream Christianity.

They've been pushing "We're not Mormon, we're Latter-Day Saints" pretty hard for a while now.

Alyssa said a negro or Latino is welcome in the community to pray and tithe but may never see the inside of a temple. But white skinned folk have less problems getting in.

This used to be true but it is not currently. There are no race restrictions regarding going through the temple. Unless I'm misunderstanding what you're saying or taking something out of context (in which case, please forgive me).

I've lived most of my life in Utah (and still do) and I'm ex-Mormon. My leaving the church was quite a ride, over 20 years ago. I might share my story somewhere here if anyone would be interested? Is this "Religion and Philosophy" the place to do that?

 

[bruto]

They've been pushing "We're not Mormon, we're Latter-Day Saints" pretty hard for a while now.



This used to be true but it is not currently. There are no race restrictions regarding going through the temple. Unless I'm misunderstanding what you're saying or taking something out of context (in which case, please forgive me).

I've lived most of my life in Utah (and still do) and I'm ex-Mormon. My leaving the church was quite a ride, over 20 years ago. I might share my story somewhere here if anyone would be interested? Is this "Religion and Philosophy" the place to do that?

Yes, I would say religion and philosophy is just the place. In theory, if your dispute was more about management than faith, one might consider it more secular and more appropriate to the "social issues" forum, but unless you're still an LDS believer whose beef is with the leadership, I would expect it here.

 

[Puppycow]

They've been pushing "We're not Mormon, we're Latter-Day Saints" pretty hard for a while now.

Do they consider Mormon an insult or a pejorative?
Does calling themselves "Latter-Day Saints" mean that they think every single one of them is a saint?

 

[Dad_SB_83]

Do they consider Mormon an insult or a pejorative?

Nearly... they started rebranding again ~10 years ago or so and have been trying heavily to shift the focus onto the full name of the church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints) because they have been trying to put more emphasis on the "Jesus Christ" part. They don't like it when people disagree with their claim to be a Christian religion.

Does calling themselves "Latter-Day Saints" mean that they think every single one of them is a saint?

That is correct, however when they say "saint" they're not using it in the common/traditional way, their meaning is essentially just "someone that is Christian."

 

[JayUtah]

I've lived most of my life in Utah (and still do) and I'm ex-Mormon. My leaving the church was quite a ride, over 20 years ago. I might share my story somewhere here if anyone would be interested? Is this "Religion and Philosophy" the place to do that?

I'd be interested in hearing about how well you're treated as an ex-Mormon in the Utah community. I have only a few complaints about living in Utah as a non-Mormon. But I understand ex-Mormons get treated rather harshly.

 

[Dad_SB_83]

I'd be interested in hearing about how well you're treated as an ex-Mormon in the Utah community. I have only a few complaints about living in Utah as a non-Mormon. But I understand ex-Mormons get treated rather harshly.

When I first lost interest and began to stop attending, they mostly just wouldn't leave me alone. I was 16 at the time, living in Utah. The youth leaders and bishopric were always randomly showing up at the house trying to guilt me into going to church or attending youth functions. My bishop told me I'd never see my mother again if I didn't "get it together and figure it out" (she died about 5 years prior). I moved to another town in Utah with my girlfriend when I was 18 and they were always sending missionaries or local church members to our apartment, sometimes leaving pamphlets on our door when we weren't home.

There's a lot of story here I'm skipping here -- for example, I carefully studied the King James Bible cover-to-cover along with mountains of Mormon doctrine and writings -- but when I was a bit closer to 20, though I was still trying to figure things out for myself, I'd at least reached the point where I was certain that this church wasn't one I wanted to be a part of. Never mind the complete lack of archaeological evidence to support the Book of Mormon stories that were supposed to have taken place in the Americas, overall church history is quite disturbing and their founders along with many leaders and so-called "prophets" over the years were frequently disgusting people.

To get back to the point, the Mormon church keeps very detailed records of all its members and I wanted mine removed. After some online searching, I learned I had to send a letter to their HQ's membership records office requesting my membership records be destroyed, stating that I was willingly "resigning" from membership. This brought even more harassment: regular visits from missionaries, local church leadership, more pamphlets, and I received a response telling me that I'd be voiding my baptism if I went through with it, and that I was sacrificing the chance to spend eternity with my family.

I was frustrated so I was venting about it in an online "debate" forum I was a regular in, and a someone who was a civil rights attorney happened to read my posts and reached out to me. They drafted a very strongly worded letter template for me, I filled it out with my info, signed it, and sent it off. I soon received confirmation that my membership had been removed and records destroyed. The visits and harassment stopped, but also people that I thought were my friends, some even for several years, completely stopped talking to me. Some years later, thanks to social media I reconnected with a friend I hadn't seen in several years. We were chatting online and assuming I was still a member, asked me where I "served a mission" and he immediately blocked me when I told him I didn't because I'd left the church.

At this point in my 40s, though I once again live in Utah, it's a non-issue. If anyone ever has a reason to ask me about it I just tell them I'm not a member.

 

[JayUtah]

Thanks for sharing your story in such detail. It sounds familiar. I think ex-Mormons get treated more harshly (understandably so) when they are vocal in public about it. That doesn't seem to be your story.

In Salt Lake a number of attorney firms have a boilerplate form letter you can download that fills in all the right language so that the church can't somehow decide you weren't serious. (My spouse is a lawyer, but not involved in that.) It's just amazing that a church will be so legalistic about your membership. I feel that you should just be able to say, "I don't want to be a member of your church anymore," and that this should have enough legal force to stop further harassment. If you have to go right up to the doorstep of a protective order in order to keep them away, that doesn't sound very Christ-like to me.

 

[dudalb]

A year or so ago I had the chance to sit down with an actual historian and talk about how the Word of Wisdom (the health code) has been interpreted over the years. It's quite a lot different than how it's taught to members, as you can guess. Up until Prohibition, Mormons were pretty enthusiastic drinkers.


And letting non-Whites be ordained and hold office. Oddly, I know some actual polygamists. Not the weird Quaker-like ones you see on TV or the Warren Jeffs child abusers. (I've written here on the subject of the Mormon Lost Boys, which I find to be a particularly irreligious phenomenon.) But there are quiet practitioners here and there. They aren't welcome in the mainstream church, but they go about just like normal people.


We'll see. The newly-installed president is a notorious hard-liner on that subject.


The old-timers here say that Mormons used to call indigenous people here "Lamanites." (I love how that got auto-corrected to "laminates.") They stopped that in the 1970s or so, I guess. Lots of Mormon truth claims regarding geography and genetics have had to be revised, since science has had a pesky but steady habit of telling a different story.

There's actually a well-developed Mormon intellectual community. They pay attention to the science and take a skeptical approach to the doctrine, which they joke keeps them out of the temple (i.e., they're borderline apostates). But the church leadership per se doesn't really pay attention to them.

From the history I have read, the emphasis on the Word Of Wisdom began after the end of officially sanctioned Polygamy, as a way of maintaining the Mormons as a people distinct from gentiles.
And as far as Native Americans goes, the Mormon church has modified it position from they are all descending from Jews to the Jewish immigrants in the Book Of Mormon were one among many peoples who are ancestors of current Native Americans.
And the search for a usable term for what used ot be Indians continues. I sort of like the Canadian First Nations myself.

 

[bruto]

Interesting story, It is odd how tightly they seem to try to keep the community. The old New England church I started out with and gave up has always been pretty laid back about coming and going, and who stays in touch with whom. I think they always hope you'll come around. But I have known some Jehovah's Witnesses, and that idea of "disfellowshipping" seems quite odd and cultish, suggesting that they know once you've lost the magic charm, you'll never come back, because the faith involved does not come down to intellectual arguments about being and the meaning of life.

Anyway, I'm glad to see that Dad_SB_83 has found a way to disengage without too great a toll.

Tossing in an added response to Dudalb: I like "first nations" too, in part because it serves as a reminder that they weren't just random stragglers on undiscovered land. And even if you're all in favor of how that land was taken, or dispute the accounts, or just figure it's water over the dam, the fact remains that they once had a country, even if it wasn't named in a European Atlas.

 

[JayUtah]

From the history I have read, the emphasis on the Word Of Wisdom began after the end of officially sanctioned Polygamy, as a way of maintaining the Mormons as a people distinct from gentiles.

I've heard that one too, especially from Mormons who do independent historical research. It's hard for me to know how much the professional historians I've been talking to are standing on solid evidence. The hospitality company Bourbon Group has really tried to recapture the old Salt Lake drinking scene from the late 1800s; they have uncovered a lot that many of us previously didn't know.

And as far as Native Americans goes, the Mormon church has modified it position from they are all descending from Jews to the Jewish immigrants in the Book Of Mormon were one among many peoples who are ancestors of current Native Americans.

Yes, as I said this seems to have faded out in the 1970s. The people who told me that were really, really old. I have a 1961 "Moroni and blue sky" Book of Mormon that has a lot of front matter suggesting the old archaeological claims.

And the search for a usable term for what used ot be Indians continues. I sort of like the Canadian First Nations myself.

I like to think that Canada is more willing to recognize indigenous people than the U.S. In American thought, white European settlers were the First Nation, and those pesky native had the gall to be on their land before they got there.

I use the names the tribes/nations use for themselves. So I ask someone whether they're, say, Goshute or Paiute (or Navajo in the south part of the state). But yes, how to respectfully refer to all the nations combined...

Back to Mormonism, the points I raise bring the question up of what's really doctrine. Now they say it was wrong to think of modern indigenous people as Lamanites, and that it was never doctrine. But it seems to have been widely taught. It's hard for religions to say, "We can't compromise our eternal, revealed principles," when, in fact, they can and do, citing the notion that it wasn't really eternal, revealed truth.

 

[JayUtah]

But I have known some Jehovah's Witnesses, and that idea of "disfellowshipping" seems quite odd and cultish, suggesting that they know once you've lost the magic charm, you'll never come back, because the faith involved does not come down to intellectual arguments about being and the meaning of life.

The foreman of my manual-labor team for my rental properties is an escaped Jehovah's Witness. You might just as well have been describing him.

Anyway, I'm glad to see that Dad_SB_83 has found a way to disengage without too great a toll.

Agreed; I was steeling myself for one of the horror stories I've heard.

Tossing in an added response to Dudalb: I like "first nations" too, in part because it serves as a reminder that they weren't just random stragglers on undiscovered land.

Hm, that really does ring true.

 

[Gulliver Foyle]

Thanks for sharing your story in such detail. It sounds familiar. I think ex-Mormons get treated more harshly (understandably so) when they are vocal in public about it. That doesn't seem to be your story.

In Salt Lake a number of attorney firms have a boilerplate form letter you can download that fills in all the right language so that the church can't somehow decide you weren't serious. (My spouse is a lawyer, but not involved in that.) It's just amazing that a church will be so legalistic about your membership. I feel that you should just be able to say, "I don't want to be a member of your church anymore," and that this should have enough legal force to stop further harassment. If you have to go right up to the doorstep of a protective order in order to keep them away, that doesn't sound very Christ-like to me.

In catholicism, once you're baptised there's no way for you to get the church to admit you've left it.

There used to be away up to about 15 years ago, but when it was advertised online and the church in Ireland lost c. 15,000 members in six months as a result, they removed all avenues to officially leave from canon law.

So I don't find @Dad_SB_83 story unlikely. Most western churches are cults grown too big to allow the leader to know who you are.

 

[Lukraak_Sisser]

Thanks for sharing your story in such detail. It sounds familiar. I think ex-Mormons get treated more harshly (understandably so) when they are vocal in public about it. That doesn't seem to be your story.

In Salt Lake a number of attorney firms have a boilerplate form letter you can download that fills in all the right language so that the church can't somehow decide you weren't serious. (My spouse is a lawyer, but not involved in that.) It's just amazing that a church will be so legalistic about your membership. I feel that you should just be able to say, "I don't want to be a member of your church anymore," and that this should have enough legal force to stop further harassment. If you have to go right up to the doorstep of a protective order in order to keep them away, that doesn't sound very Christ-like to me.

Not Mormon, and with nowhere near the level of harassment, but still.

My parents had to fight to get married, as my mum was raised Catholic and my dad Protestant and even in the 70's in the Netherlands that was an issue. They wanted to marry in a church and had to work hard to get a priest and pastor willing to cooperate, but that came with the promise that any children would be inducted in both faiths.
By the time I was old enough to care they'd both lapsed and the only reason I did some Catholic things was because I was enrolled in a Catholic school as a child (pre-highschool).

When I was an adult I moved cities and when I arrived in the new city I suddenly got all sorts of pamphlets from both the local Catholic church and Protestant one. It turns out they checked when people moved with citizen registration. I decided I did not want that, so inquired as to how to stop it.
The protestant one was easy, I just had to write in I was no longer religious and they stopped. But the Catholic church happily informed me that since I was baptized I could not stop being a member of the church, that would need an excommunication. They stopped bothering me though.