#Mormon Truth Claims

[wasmormon]

Are Nephites or Lamanites The Principal or Among Ancestors of Native Americans? DNA Answers

[mormonmouse]

Mormon Mouse Memes - r/exmormon reddit 5 Pack

A collection of memes posted to r/exmormon reddit in April, which have not been posted here yet. I may return to write about these at some point, although the Harold B. Lee one goes with my 02/23/2023 post “The Hand on the Head of Harold B. Lee,”: which can be read here, and the one with Jesus, Joseph, and Oliver goes with my 12/14/2023 post “D&C 124 and the Mask of the Lord,” which you can read…

[randomfoggytiger]

Hoping against hope that DD reads "The House of My Mother: A Daughter's Quest for Freedom" and brings Shari Franke on his podcast to discuss the dangers and horrendous, soulless incentive of family vlogging.

[mindfulldsliving]

Responding to Michelle Grimes: A Latter-day Saint Perspective on Moroni 8:12

Michelle Grimes’ criticisms of Moroni 8:12 strike at the heart of core Latter-day Saint beliefs. Her claims raise questions that deserve thoughtful, well-grounded responses rooted in scripture and faith. In this post, I’ll address her points directly, providing clarity and context for those exploring or questioning these teachings. Whether you’re seeking answers as an investigator, a critic, or…

[making-mormonism]

I think I get where you’re coming from, but I also think this is a misreading of the situation, especially as it exists today.

To start with statues and the like, Mormons are actually rather aniconic. While artistic depictions of religious scenes are certainly not banned (and indeed films and paintings have always been important instructional tools in the Church in lieu of anything like an official catechism), not only do images and objects play virtually no role in Mormon worship, but Mormons even avoid devotional items like crosses and prayer beads, which even many Protestants would feel goes a bit too far. Church meetinghouses are almost all, in a word, austere: sure there are various paintings scattered around the hallways and offices (the works of John Scott, Harry Anderson, and Del Parson are especially popular), but the walls are all whitewashed and the wood panelling plain, and the chapels themselves are required to be devoid of almost any decoration whatsoever, save maybe an American flag in the corner.

Only in temples does art play an actually important role in ritual, and even then, the murals painted onto the walls of ordinance rooms and the films shown in them are far more atmospheric, symbolic, and instructional than anything particularly akin to the iconodulia of Catholic and Orthodox traditions. Same with the bull statues that hold up the Brazen Sea fonts (where Mormons perform baptisms by proxy for the dead), and the sun-, moon-, and starstones that decorate temple doors and pilasters. The only other statue that plays a key role in the Church is the Angel Moroni blowing his trumpet, which in lieu of the cross has long been the main symbol of the Church on steeples and gravestones, but even then I think conceptualizing the Angel Moroni as an icon is misunderstanding its role. (I guess there’s also beehives? Choose the Right rings? Nothing particularly iconophilic though, I don’t think, at least no more so than Stars of David or WWJD bracelets are. Though I will come back to this.)

The Christus statue was only adopted in the early 1960s, at a time when the Church was desperately attempting to leave behind its associations with weirdness and paganism and join the American Protestant milieu of the Fourth Great Awakening, and was chosen specifically and explicitly as an outward-facing symbol—in order to project an image of Christianity towards non-Members (again, in lieu of the cross, which Mormons don’t use)—not an inward-facing one for Mormon devotion. In turn, the Christus has always only ever been erected in places intended for non-Members to learn about the Church, like temple Visitors Centers and the occasional Mormon Pavilion at a World’s Fair (most notably in 1964), and is never (so far as I have ever heard) present in temples or meetinghouses themselves.

The Christus was actually only adopted as the symbol of the wider Church in 2020, as part of President Nelson’s efforts to roll back Monson-era “I’m a Mormon” pride and again emphasize the Church’s fundamentally Christian nature to outsiders (this is the same reason the Church’s website is now churchofjesuschrist.org instead of the much more useful lds.org). I think there is something to be said about “Mormon leaders were drawn to Protestant art made in a Neoclassical style”, but I think that something is less “Mormons are drawn to Catholic imagery in particular” and is instead more “American conservatives like the aesthetics of Ancient Rome”.

I also wouldn’t read too much into the role of the Quorum of the Twelve in selecting the President; that’s more a byproduct of the largest body of the post-Martyrdom Church gaining its legitimacy by uniting around the Quorum and its president Brigham Young than anything particular to JS’s visions for the future of the Church. (Though I can’t seem to find the other post this is referencing where you make the “Americanized remake” argument, so I don’t know if you’re arguing that it’s just an interesting parallel or if it was actively intended.) For what it’s worth, it’s actually more likely that JS had intended for the presidency to be passed down through the male line to his son Joseph Smith III, with the Quorum or his brother Hyrum acting as a regent until JS3’s majority (the practice adopted by the RLDS when they reorganized after the collapse of the Strangite Church), or had otherwise intended for revealed candidates to stand in semi-democratic elections held by the Mormon people (possibly mediated by an electoral college like the successors of the Council of Fifty).

I also think it’s important to note that the Mormon Restoration of prophecy predates the First Vatican Council—where papal ex cathedra declarations were rendered infallible—by some fifty years, and that Mormons have always framed prophecy and revelation in terms of the Old Testament nevi’im, whereas papal infallibility is more like how you can’t appeal a Supreme Court decision. (Check out D&C 28:2-3 (1830), where, after another early Mormon named Hiram Page claimed to have received a revelation about the true location of Zion and the proper organization of the Church, JS sets him straight and establishes himself as the sole prophet of the Church by likening his relationship to God and Oliver Cowdery to that of Moses to God and Aaron.)

I do think there is a useful comparison here though, which I think you’re getting at: where the young Catholic Church adopted the administrative trappings of the Roman State, organizing itself into ecclesiastical dioceses and prefectures parallel to the civil ones and turning its Holy Orders into a kind of progressive cursus honorum justified through popular acclamation and imperial-papal consent, so too did the young Church of Christ look to the United States with its presidents and committees and councils and quorums and appointments confirmed by common consent. It’s no coincidence that the smallest unit of the LDS Church shares its name with the local electoral wards they were once coterminous with in Ohio and Illinois.

That said, I also think most of the organizational parallels between the LDS Church and the Catholic Church are simply down to the Catholic Church being, like, the prototypical hierarchical organization. The Watch Tower Society railed against Catholic organizational hierarchy in its early years, and yet as the Jehovah’s Witnesses movement began to grow and spread across the country, they too started to create bodies that paralleled their Catholic counterparts, with a president selected by a central all-male and infallible Governing Body overseeing branches which oversee local congregations.

Plus, the actual meat on the Mormon hierarchical skeleton is very different from basically any other Christian organization, let alone the Catholic one. Sure there are deacons and elders and priests and bishops, but any Pauline organization would have those, while they most certainly are not liable to organize them into a Levitical Order and a Holy Priesthood after the Order of the Son of God, or to create parallel women’s and youth organizations like the Relief Society and Young Men’s and Young Women’s. And while LDS bishops do provide pastoral care (at least to some degree) to congregants, I think to equivocate them with a Catholic priest or even a Protestant pastor is missing important parts of the Mormon experience. Sure bishops may “preside” over sacrament meetings, but they play virtually no role in the actual rituals: they don’t lead a Mass (a kind of liturgy which doesn’t exist in the LDS tradition), they don’t consecrate or distribute Communion (which is instead done by deacons, teachers, and priests, most of whom have been teenagers since the late 1800s), they don’t even give sermons! (It seems to be relatively unknown outside of the Church that the most part of an LDS Sunday service consists of two or three “talks” given by laymen to the congregation. While the bishopric does choose who gets invited to speak and usually gives them a fairly broad topic to speak about, the bishopric has little to no oversight over their actual contents. The only exception is talks given to the whole Church during General Conference, which are vetted for doctrinal accuracy by the Apostles first.)

Anyways, on to relics.

Basically, in line with what @hybridzizi said, relics in the Catholic sense play no role whatsoever in the LDS Church today, and their role historically has been rather marginal—certainly nothing akin to the well-developed cult of the saints in early Christianity. Mormons don’t make pilgrimages to see relics (or if they do, they do so out of historical curiosity, rather than religious obligation), and they don’t build or consecrate reliquaries, temples, churches, or altars (insofar as altars even exist in the LDS tradition) to house them. And certainly today they don’t believe that relics have any particular miraculous powers to heal or encourage saintly intercession on their behalf, and they wouldn’t give a relic any kind of special devotion outside of its historical and spiritual significance as a symbol of their faith. I can totally imagine a Mormon bringing their pioneer ancestor’s shoe to a sacrament meeting and talking about how, when they look at the shoe, they remember the importance of perseverance and self-sacrifice and think about the faith their ancestor must have had to follow the Church to Utah and how that all strengthens their own Testimony that the Church is True, but they wouldn’t, like, kiss it or use it as a vehicle for prayer. It’s just a shoe. A special one, sure, but not a sacred one.

What you’re seeing instead in Murder Among the Mormons (I haven’t seen this either, but I’m well familiar with Hofmann and the Church politics surrounding his work) is an episode in the Church’s long quest for legitimacy. While it might help strengthen their Testimony in some way, Mormon laymen don’t actually particularly care if the Church gets its hands on some old papyrus or some Smith family heirloom. But for the Brighamite Church in Salt Lake City, every old artefact, every heirloom, every plot of land and historic building site in Independence and Adam-ondi-Ahman and Nauvoo, anything that belongs to the CoC or the Fundamentalists or the Bickertonites and not to them is a chip in their claim to be the One True Heir of Joseph Smith. The Church rarely even displays these items when they get them: they just store them with the Church History Department or the Presiding Bishopric in some vault in SLC, or maybe give them to a Church museum or BYU if they’re particularly interesting—certainly not the kind of behaviour you’d expect in a relic-oriented church.

There is, however, a historical example of this quest for legitimacy that I think is more similar to what you’re thinking of with the relics comparison. JS had a way of making the world around early Mormons feel magical, of making their faith in him and his work come alive, and one of the ways he did this was by regaling Mormons with the tales associated with the artefacts he collected, the accoutrements he carried, and the many places they travelled to.

Sticks, staffs, and stones were conduits for divine revelation, tools for discerning meaning in the mystical world. Those little bits of papyrus touring the US with Michael Chandler in 1835 weren’t just random scrolls, they were written by the very hand of the patriarchs Abraham and Joseph, and revealed hitherto unknown secrets about the nature of God and Creation! Chandler’s mummies weren’t just random mummies, they were the Pharaoh Onitas and his family, they were the daughters who saved baby Moses from the river, they were the royal entourage of Joseph himself! When the Zion’s Camp military expedition set off to reclaim some land that had been taken from some Mormon settlers in Missouri in 1834, that land became a prophesied holy site, the location of one of the future capitals of God’s millennial kingdom on Earth, and JS became like Moses and Joshua, a prophet ready to conquer the Promised Land with outstretched hand. And when on the way they passed by a Hopewell mound in western Illinois, it wasn’t just an ancient Indian burial ground, it was the tomb of the mighty white Lamanite warrior Zelph, who bravely served under the prophet Onondagus and fought a great battle against the infidels, against all odds, to defend what he knew to be True.

Stories like these abound in early Mormonism, and while again I feel that the comparison with Catholic saints’ relics is missing some important differences (as well as some important context about the role of ritual objects and folk magic across early American Protestantism), the objects they were attached to were certainly highly significant to early Mormons. It’s no coincidence that one of the first things James Strang did, in a bid to bolster his legitimacy in the post-Martyrdom Church, was to discover a set of brass plates containing the veritable Record of Rajah Manchou of Vorito. And when recent Mormon converts Wilbur Fugate and Robert Wiley wanted to play a prank on their local congregation in Kinderhook, to “prove the prophecy by way of a joke,” the proof they turned to was, fittingly, “discovering” and exhibiting in the town hall a collection of small copper plates, only to find that they were of interest to none other than JS himself.

Probably the most properly relic-like of these early objects were the coffin canes, a set of walking sticks made from the bloodstained oak coffins that were used to move JS and Hyrum from the Carthage Jail to their first burial plots and distributed among several early Mormon leaders and Smith family and friends. Some accounts even have their ivory knobs filled with locks of JS’s hair, or their handles made from the refashioned glass of the clear coffins JS and Hyrum were stored in until they were buried permanently. Brigham Young used his coffin cane for the rest of his life, and likened it to JS’s own serpent staff and the rod of Aaron as a symbol of his rightful authority and succession as leader of the Church. Many Mormons even believed, beyond their role as symbols of the Martyrdom and conduits for revelation (and in classic reliquary fashion), that the canes had the ability to heal ailments at a touch, and they remained in use as thaumaturgical instruments until as late the presidency of Wilford Woodruff (r. 1889–1898).

While likely few were converted by encountering these relics and artefacts alone, as holy objects they made Mormonism feel real. They were the faith made physical. They connected Mormons and their Scriptures to the land they lived on, made prophecy and history visible in their everyday lives, made them feel the blood of Abraham and Manasseh flowing through their veins.

And they also just kind of stopped happening?

Brigham Young, for all he modelled himself after JS, never found any plates or notable artefacts in Utah (in fact, he believed himself to not be a “natural seer”, and didn’t believe he was capable of using seer stones and translating as Smith had), and despite his cane he never took any great pains to work Mormon reverence towards JS and himself into a material cult. Because while the Martyrdom may have given Mormons the impetus and the materials to make relics of JS, the Exodus changed Mormonism. While Utah Mormons were of course still interested in Egyptians and the ancient history of the Americas (indeed, some Mormons were convinced of the prophecies of the Paiute leader Wovoka as late as 1892), and likewise in the life and works of Joseph Smith, the journey to the Far West had separated them from all but a few of their remains, and the trials of travel and building Zion shifted the spiritual focus of the Saints away from holy relics and seer stones and towards what I think can best be understood as a kind of national commitment to the righteous cause of the Mormon people. (That’s not to say that nationalism, especially of the American variety, isn’t in some way inherently religious, but the distinction I think matters when discussing the ideological and ritual implications of devotional objects like these.)

Even as early as the Mormon Reformation, a religious revival movement in the mid-1850s, you didn’t see an explosion of relics or pilgrimages to holy sites or even visions or speaking in tongues in Mormon communities, as might have been expected just ten or fifteen years earlier. The faith of people was instead evident in their perseverance and frugality, and was displayed not through dulia or the maintenance of the cult of Joseph Smith, but through impassioned personal speeches at Thursday fast meetings, through repeated rebaptism for the remission of the sins of yourself and all your ancestors, and through a with-all-your-heart-soul-mind-and-strength kind of commitment to building up the economic and demographic strength and unity of the people of Zion.

Save a short period in the 1880s and 1890s when the LDS Church happily testifies against the RLDS Church in the Kirtland Temple Suits and the Temple Lot Case (the LDS Church, then being disincorporated by the Federal Government and having its own property put under federal management by the Edmunds–Tucker Act of 1887, was really in no place to claim legal legitimacy for itself), it’s only really after the 1950s, in a period when the LDS Church is finally starting to gain the political and cultural respect as an All-American Christian Institution™ that it had long craved (and a period when the Church finally had the economic resources and nationwide political connections to mobilize towards those ends—Deseret Ranches in Florida, for example, was only founded in 1949), that you see the Church move to collect relics and holy sites again, in a bid to materially delegitimize the other heirs of the Latter Day Saint movement. To some extent this was easy, as a lot of these movements were moribund, had had their property appropriated by the government or bought by private owners, or were going through crises of faith of their own as the Fourth Great Awakening wracked the old religious status quo. LDS businessman Wilford Wood had actually started buying back historic properties for the Church as early as 1937, though his goal of purchasing the Nauvoo temple lot was only completed in 1962, and his propositions to buy the Independence Temple Lot were all rejected out of hand by the RLDS and Hendrickites.

The RLDS Church, for what it’s worth, also sought to secure its legitimacy in this period, finally completing its Temple Lot Auditorium in 1958 and beginning its plans to preserve and rededicate the Kirtland Temple in 1952, not to mention its keen defence of Smith family real and personal property in Nauvoo and its unwillingness to work with Dean Jessee’s LDS-sponsored project to collect and transcribe JS’s personal papers in the 1970s. (This is indeed why the Joseph Smith Papers are only being collected and published now, after a trial run on the JST in 1997 showed that the two Churches could work together in good faith.)

To finish this up, I think there’s also something to be said for this being part of a general postwar trend towards historical preservation and collection, and part of a boom in the entire historical profession. Outside of the battle for material legitimacy, historians, archivists, and other academics throughout the Latter Day Saint movement would spend the period coordinating and organizing with each other to produce some of the earliest proper scholarship on Mormon history and culture (many other American Christian groups had begun to do so in the midst of the Third Great Awakening, the relationship of the Latter Day Saint movement to which is another essay entirely). The Mormon History Association was founded in 1965 and its journal in 1974, the CoC-aligned John Whitmer Historical Association was founded in 1972, the Association for Mormon Letters in 1976. Even the now-defunct FARMS, bastion of Mormon pseudohistorical apologetics, was first organized only in 1979.

It’s no coincidence that Hofmann, with his ready-made media sensations, appears only a year later.

I think that’s enough of that. For those interested in further reading on Mormon visual and material culture and its history, I think two very good starting points are D. Michael Quinn, Early Mormonism and the Magic World View (Revised and Expanded ed., Signature Books, 1998), and especially Terry L. Givens, People of Paradox: A History of Mormon Culture (Oxford UP, 2007).

Can you explain the Mormonism/Catholicism comparison? I think I missed that one, and I never want to miss a chance to shit on the church of LDS

Key part in the post is the “Americanized remake” part but when I watched Murder Among the Mormons I was struck at how Mormons have a culture about relics and finding obscure paraphernalia relating to important figures so they can bring it to the church and this kind of veneration of relics is something you hardly ever see in other post-Reformation sects of Christianity

Plus the whole structured centralized hierarchy with the Americanized part being adding some nods towards republicanism. Like the spiritual head is picked in an election amongst senior clergyman who always elect one of their own and this spiritual head has the ability to say things and claim they came directly from God (granted papal infallibility hasn’t yet been used for a sudden 180 in teachings but it potentially can be used that way). Mormons call their guy “president” rather than using titles which come from the Roman Empire but this reflects the wider political context of the state they emerged in.

Also there’s an old stereotype of Catholics always having large families that is kinda outdated now in the US but that’s def an overlap

[2pen2wildfire]

While I'm on the topic, can we talk about how bullshit bishop's interviews are? Like specifically for temple recommends.

Consider: you do something that, in the eyes of the church, is a sin. Say, you share a gay kiss with someone or read smut on your iPad in the dark. Now you're in the bishop's office being interviewed for your recommend. You need this recommend, because if you don't have it, your parents are going to want to know why, and under no circumstances can you tell them what you did to make yourself unworthy.

So you lie. You've been a model Mormon child. You have no interest in homosexuality or pornography or masturbation or fornication, you're sexually pure. And the bishop says Okay and gives you your recommend. Yay! You're safe!

Now I can't help but ask: if the church were true, how would this be possible? Isn't the bishop meant to have a connection to God? Shouldn't he know that I'm lying? I mean, this is the TEMPLE we're talking about! God's special holy place! I feel like he'd be a little more concerned with keeping unworthy people out of it, don't you think? I baptised sooooooooo many dead people before going home and fucking my partner, wouldn't that render all those baptisms invalid? Wouldn't they want to avoid that?

Of course! But what they use to avoid that outcome isn't any sort of genuine divine intervention, it's just plain old-fashioned guilt tripping. They make you feel bad, for sinning and lying about it and falsely baptising all those poor souls in spirit prison. Hopefully if you feel bad enough about it, you'll come clean, and they'll claim that the Holy Spirit must have impressed upon you to tell the truth.

It's all just bullshit.

[specialagentartemis]

We talk a lot about reading comprehension and misinformation on this website, but learning how to slow down, assess sources, and fact-check is a skill. A skill a lot of us have not been called on to demonstrate since high school, but a skill that's vitally important in the modern world.

I'm in graduate school for the social sciences (anthropology) - critically assessing sources is part of the skillset we are taught. I've had people ask on my post about historical misinformation, "How can I only reblog things that are true? How can I tell?" And it's a good and important question!

A couple core questions to ask, about history, science, or current events, are:

Who is saying this?

Where are you seeing this information? Is it a legal scholar, a historian with a PhD, a museum curator, an on-the-ground activist, a rando twitter poster, a Mormon conspiracy theorist? For scholarly questions, look for people with PhDs and published articles; for questions of current events, look for what people who are actually there are saying and showing.

Who agrees with them?

Can you find articles from other sources corroborating this, or is it just one guy who is saying this? Conversely, do you see anyone disagreeing and correcting this information? Who?

Does this person have an ideological bias that might cause them to discount conflicting information?

Everyone has biases, of course, but some are obvious. A lot of revisionist American history is put out by Mormon groups to try to prove the literal truth of the Book of Mormon; ditto for history that seeks to prove various things in the Bible. It may be easy for us to laugh at that, but a lot of tumblr revisionist history involves inventing gay historical figures out of flimsy sources because we want it to be true. Is there a reason that the person making this claim might want this to be true? This doesn't necessarily make it false, but it does mean you have to require more robust claims.

What sources do they cite?

Do they cite well-documented research or well-provenienced archaeology? Do they have photographs of what they're claiming happened? Or do their claims rely on nameless, dateless, "I can't show you my sources yet" or "I swear I heard about a guy..." Do they cite any sources or is it "just trust me bro"? Are those sources that they do cite reliable, or are they circular? Do the sources they cite actually say what this person is claiming they say? Are they cutting out half of a quote, or ignoring conflicting evidence presented in the same source?

Is this conspiracy theory thinking?

Is this making claims that an individual or a group is secretly hiding information from the general public? Is it blaming one individual or group for widespread societal problems? Is it claiming that the only reason this isn't common knowledge is because Somebody is suppressing it? Is it claiming that the solution to a complicated political problem is actually simple and everybody knows it but people just don't want to do it for nefarious reasons? That's conspiracy thinking, and it's almost never as clean or easy as the claimant wants you to believe.

Just because someone is saying something confidently doesn't necessarily make it true, but also, just because you don't like something doesn't necessarily make it false. Ask these questions when you see a claim that makes you feel angry - or makes you feel righteous. Look for journalists, scientists, historians, legal scholars, who present their credentials and their sources. Look for multiple independently verified news reports or scientific articles. Determining The One Truth about things is not always easy and sometimes not possible, but asking these questions helps you assess what you're reading critically and evaluate claims.

[nottskyler]

Dear President Russell M Nelson,

Congratulations on making it to 100. I know it was a significant goal for you and you worked hard both physically and spiritually to make it this far. I know there are a lot of things outside our control to having a long life, but it also takes work.

Thank you for the challenge to read the Book of Mormon before the year was out back in 2018. My life has been irrevocably changed for the better for following that counsel. I learned much about myself and the world and Gd’s plan for me and began a path of repentance that has brought me closer to Christ and brought joy into a life that was characterized by despair before.

And that is simply a personal way that I know you are called of Gd to be our prophet. It is very clear how you were prepared to lead the Church at this time, especially with how your responses to revelation prepared the Church for the pandemic. A pandemic following a change in policy that barred me from sharing the joy that I found by following your counsel. It is sometimes hard to reconcile the exclusionary policy that you have permitted to be put in place under your leadership with my testimony that you are a prophet of Gd because following your counsel led me to Christ and the good things that come from repentance.

It is the same juxtaposition of you having a medical degree and then claiming that life (when the spirit enters the body) begins at conception because a unique genetic code was created. Conception comes before the medical definition of pregnancy which is before the latest point identical twins can be formed. Identical twins are clearly two different spirits with the same genetic code. The truth we learn from science is giving a different truth than the one that you claimed in your press conference on the reversal of roe v wade.

Not to harp on something you said one time not even during General Conference, but I was finally pregnant after years of infertility and it seemed to mock my pain of late periods and failed fertility treatments. I came to the conclusion that you were wrong and speaking your personal opinion and not the thoughts and feelings of Heavenly Father or our Savior Jesus Christ. A conclusion that many would think contradicts my previous statement about believing that you are a prophet of Gd.

But to believe that the prophets can do no wrong is idolatry. To claim that the truth is only what prophets have confirmed first is priestcraft. This is not the Lord’s way who said: “If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself.” (John 7:17); “Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.” (Matthew 7:20). Or even Moroni closing his addition to the Book of Mormon “And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things.” (Moroni 10:5) and “For behold, my brethren, it is given unto you to judge, that ye may know good from evil; and the way to judge is as plain, that ye may know with a perfect knowledge, as the daylight is from the dark night.” (Moroni 7:15).

Besides, how can we be fit for the Celestial Kingdom if we, as individuals of the Church, are to surrender our agency to you and never learn how to discern truth for ourselves. You set yourself up as the king of the Church when you say you are the only source of truth. Then all the sins of those who follow you without question become stains on your garments.

It is a difficult task to reconcile these types of mistakes with someone upholding a high calling that presumably has direct access to Gd, but then I realized that the traditions of our fathers was what made me ignore Gd telling me to repent much earlier than the 2018 Book of Mormon reading challenge. False traditions drain true intent and curiosity when you ask Gd because you feel confident that you know the answer and so you study with bias to confirm your worldview and you don’t have intent to do anything different if the answer isn’t what you expect. False traditions frame revelation so that you ignore key pieces because your mind fills in the default expectation instead of what actually exists in the revelation. In the end, I’m glad that I’m a nobody who only has to deal with the consequences of my own actions instead of being in your shoes where my same mistakes would’ve cause much more damage and would’ve been much harder to change direction when I learned I was wrong.

So I pray that your mind will be open to look past the false traditions of our fathers, to be open to the testimony of those othered by the Church organization. I pray that you realize that what you are doing is priestcraft so that you will swiftly repent and put effort into making sure you aren’t standing between us and Christ. I pray that you will repent in this life so you can share our joy.

Sincerely,

nottskyler

[creature-wizard]

"All goddesses are aspects of the Goddess" is one of those takes that, at best, reflects a shallow understanding of polytheistic spiritualities, and a failure to understand the worldviews from which they came. (It definitely doesn't account for animist spiritualities.)

When applied politically, it's a tool of colonialism. Because once you declare that all goddesses are aspects of the Goddess, and that you know who this goddess is and what she wants, you're putting yourself in a position to tell people that their views on their goddesses are wrong, and to tell them that they need to change their politics and lifestyles to match your ideas.

This is essentially what @/elderravenfire has been doing. He has claimed that all pagans and witches are essentially children of the Goddess, and that we have certain "duties" to fulfill, which includes becoming "warriors against the evil." He's made it clear that his idea of "the evil" is pretty much Christianity. Not any actual specific Christian institutions or movements, mind. Not just the Catholic Church, not American Evangelicalism, not Mormonism. Just Christianity. He's made it clear that he thinks the whole thing is a monolith, and believes that the average American liberal Christian wants to kill pagans. He doesn't distinguish between Black churches and neonazi churches. In his view, if we witches and pagans don't fight all of the Christians ever, we're "letting the goddess down." He doesn't merely claim that European goddesses are all manifestations of the Goddess, but that all goddesses, including Native American ones, are. Indirectly, he is proposing that in order to be true to their own cultures and heritages, Native Americans would have to follow his ideas and politics. In his eyes, anyone who tells him to fuck right off with his nonsense is "denying the truth."

Not all Great Goddess stuff takes this exact form, of course. It very often takes a radfem or TERFy angle. Sometimes it's got a New Age spin, where all goddesses supposedly represent the "Divine Feminine," which also just so happens to be the embodiment of Victorian gender stereotypes. Sometimes it's got a dark twist, where the Great Goddess is a dark mother archetype who doesn't empower women so much as fulfill men's BDSM fantasies.

But all of it, at the end of the day, serves some rotten colonialist agenda.

[sgiandubh]

Siento pasarte la pelota @sgiandubh🤣

El traductor traduce algo muy raro y como el anon, claramente tiene ganas de fastidiar y de recibir su correspondiente bofetón, te dejo a ti el dialéctico y yo me reservo para el gif 😂

Querida @bat-cat-reader,

Atentamente a su servicio, como siempre. 😘

(Dear @bat-cat-reader, Sincerely at your service, as always. 😘)

You wrote:

I think I'm going to pass this ball to you, @sgiandubh.

The translator is very weird with this one and as this Anon clearly just wants to be annoying and receive his slap, I am leaving the dialectics to you and will reserve my verdict to the gif.

Dear Never Were Anon,

Once upon a time, on a hill named Cumorah, in the godforsaken little township of Palmyra, somewhere deep on the Western side of the state of New York, a man called Joseph Smith had a vision. Following this particular episode, he claimed an angel called Moroni entrusted him with some golden plates written in 'reformed Egyptian' (whatever that might mean, btw), he then promptly proceeded to translate into English.

Only eight human beings of the Palmyrian like-minded community confirmed to have seen those plates. In order to translate them, Smith purportedly dangled a chocolate colored seer stone in a hat. Or used special (Biblical!) spectacles. Really, whichever rocks your boat, Anon: stories like this one are seldom clear, I suspect. The text, he was the only one to see, appeared at the bottom of the hat and was promptly dictated to someone nearby. The completed compilation was called The Book of Mormon and once it was all done, Moroni popped in again and took back his plates.

Maybe the same thing happened to you, Anon. Maybe an angel caught up with you at Starbucks, gave you a coupon and instructed you to use a seer stone to peer to the bottom of your plastic cup of latte. Otherwise I can't explain how do you know (in no particular order): what is S doing in the BOMB project, what is C doing at this particular moment in time, how much does S drink and how low can he go, what crosses my mind as I am writing this answer to you, what will I probably never need to say, how angry I am and of course, above all (lest we NEVER forget), THE TRUTH about the whole affair.

However, unlike Joseph Smith, your angel lost an 'i' en route to you. And that is a real problem, I know. Not even sorry, pumpkin.

Bat will take care of the gif.

[sweatersexual]

I'm not really liking Sazed's faith crisis storyline so far. It's just so . . . culturally Christian atheist bro-ish. Like, the Keepers are basically historical ethnographers, right? They preserved all these dead cultures in the wake of the Final Empire. They analyzed all the old religions for their cultural values, and they should be aware that because all these religions are dead, they're not able to see the interplay between doctrine and regular practice that you can in living religions.

So for Sazed to dismiss all those cultural values and complexities just because they don't meet up with some arbitrary standard of "truth" just . . . puts a bad taste in my mouth. You would think that a guy who helped overthrow a theocratic empire would be less invested in the idea of there being a "one true religion" that you can prove with #factsandlogic

And then there's what brought this all on. I'm sorry, but Sazed has seen death and brutality. He's watched people he loved die before. He really never cared about what happened to their souls just because he didn't have romantic feelings for them? Really?

I'm willing to see where Branderson is going with this, but idk man idk. Is Sazed going to found a new, totally logical alpha religion? I'm not sure how I feel about that. Because it could be cool, I imagine he would draw on the best stuff from all the religions he's studied, and it's neat to watch religious syncretism happen in real time. But idk if I'll like how Branderson handles it. We Mormons can get real weird about truth claims . . . I know he's a progressive Mormon now but I don't know where his head was at in 2008

[squeakintothevoid]

Imagine Dragons lyrics that stand out to me as an exmormon

If you didn't know, Dan Reynolds, the lead singer, was raised Mormon.

And by my own volition I've been a saint, I've been the truth, I've been the lie

I took a photograph of me When I was only nineteen I looked a little lost at sea I keep trying to find me So pray for me, brother, I need redemption I'm just a man, a man on a mission

Dan was an LDS missionary.

And the saints we see are all made of gold

The LDS church has amassed over $200 billion.

This is my kingdom come, this is my kingdom come

This line just reminded me of the Mormon stress about which kingdom you're gonna end up in when you die.

Everybody waiting for the fall of man

Mormons believe in the second coming of Jesus, which would happen after the world has fallen deeply into sin.

Looking at my years like a martyrdom

"Martyrdom" just stood out to me because Mormons always go on about how the founder Joseph Smith was martyred along with other figures that got killed for their faith.

Never be enough, I'm the prodigal son

This bible story is told frequently at Mormon church.

Pray it away, I swear I'll never be a saint, no way

"Pray the gay away", Mormons believe any gay "behaviors" are a major sin.

Will somebody Let me see the light within the dark trees shadowing?

Reminds me of the story of the "first vision" of Joseph Smith, the founder of the religion.

Does happiness lie in a diamond ring?

Marriage in an LDS temple is basically required to be happy and go to the best level of heaven.

Packing my bags and giving the academy a rain check

Dan got kicked out of the Mormon college, Brigham Young University, because he broke a huge LDS rule.

Oh, it's a crooked old tradition By a masterful magician

The founder Joseph Smith claimed to use magic rocks to find treasure and translate the Book of Mormon.

I've been told just what to do Where to look and point my view

Mormons have lots of rules. Mormons get regularly interviewed by their bishop starting as young as age 7 to make sure they're keeping all the arbitrary rules.

We are afflicted by fiction, by fiction Buildin' a case for eviction, eviction, circlin' Guarding a tower of ancients, of ancients

Mormons are big on genealogy. Part of having a Mormon faith crisis is freaking out about disappointing all your ancestors and rejecting your family's traditions.

Since I was young, my ancestry Was marching martyrdom across the Radadada dumbla plains of Utah

Lots of Mormons have pioneer ancestors. And lots of them died.

Have a seat in the foyer, take a number

Okay, this lyric is here just because I feel like nobody but Mormons use the word "foyer", it's just a lobby to everyone else. Here's a foyer to an LDS church. It's the stuff of nightmares, I know. (no joke, I actually did get nightmares about these halls and I'm not alone)

So yeah, maybe I'm reading into some of them, but those lyrics always stand out a bit when I'm listening. Hope this was interesting to some of you.

[mormonmouse]

Mormon Mouse Memes - SURE THING

[august-undergrounds]

Mormon Doctrine of Blood Atonement and the Law of Vengance

Blood Atonement: This part of Mormon doctrine has now been denied by church leaders and practitioners, and denounced as a lie spread by detractors of the church. However, many official church texts, mainly those created during Brigham Young's presidency, state this belief explicitly. It refers to the idea that, although Jesus Christ's blood has atoned for the sins of the world, there are certain crimes against God that not even Christ can redeem. In this instance, that person must have their blood shed upon the earth so that they may not be subject to eternal suffering in outer darkness as a son of perdition.

"... Brigham Young, taught that in a complete theocracy the Lord could require the voluntary shedding of a murder's blood - presumably by capital punishment - as part of the process for atonement of such grevious sin." (Encyclopedia of Mormonism, Daniel H Ludlow, Brigham Young University)

While this quote states that the sinner's blood must be shed voluntarily, it does not appear to be a requirement, as seen in the execution of John D. Lee folowing the Mountain Meadows Massacre, of which Brigham Young was quoted as saying during an interview:

[Correspondednt - "Do you belive in blood atonement?"

Brigham Young - "I do, and I belive that Lee has not half atoned for his great crime. The Saviour died for all the sins of the world by shedding his blood, and then I belive that he who sheds the blood of man wilfully, by man shall his blood be shed. In other words capital punishment of roffenses deserving death, according to the laws of the land"] (An Interview With Brigham Young, from Deseret News vol. 26 no. 16)

Other crimes against God that may call for blood atonement are apostasy (denying the church's truth), theft, and fornication, although sodomy and adultery are not included. It is important to note that this practice was intended to be instituted in a state run by the Mormon acting as the head of the government. Brigham Young was once close to this theocracy during the early days of the Mormon church in the Utah Territory. The pre-existing church heirarchy and leadership quickly assumed positions of power, with Brigham Young serving as the Utah Territory's first govenor, where he exerted incredibly influence over the people. In Young's ideal world, he could govern his church and prosecute those deserving of capital punishment through the arm of the law, thus implementing blood atonement.

Examples of this include the diary of John Doyle Lee, who was present for meetings between Brigham Young and The Council of Fifty (a group of religious leaders in a legislative body), as they drafted a plan for the State of Deseret (the proposed name for the modern day state of Utah). On March 3rd, 1849, Young was quoted as saying "...Suffering infernals, thieves, Murderers, Whoremongers & every other wicked curst to [exist?], through mercy to live amoung us, adding sin to sin, crime to crime, currupting the morals of the People when their Blood ought to floow [sic] to atone for their crimes. I want their cursed heads to be cut off that they may atone for their Sins, that mercy may have her claims upon them in the day of redemption."

Additionally, Brigham Young promoted decapitation to atone for the supposed sin of White Mormon men intermingling with Black people. He said, "If a man in an unguarded moment should commit such a transgression, if he would walk up and say cut off my head, and kill man woman and child it would do a great deal towards atoning for the sin. Would this be to curse them? no it would be a blessing to them. — it would do them good that they might be saved with their Bren. A man would shudder should they here us take about killing folk, but it is one of the greatest blessings to some to kill them, although the true principles of it are not understood" (Speech by Gov. Young in Joint Session of the Legislature, Feb 5th, 1852)

Both of these quotes mentioned above paint a clear picture of what Brigham Young was intending to do with the Utah territory. There are records of him doing so along with the Council of Fifty, which are recorded in John Doyle Lee's diary as discussing decapitating a man and how to "dispose of him privately". Although they eventually let this man live, decapitiation as a method of execution was instituted in Utah until 1888.

Another important part of the doctrine of blood atonement is it's relationship to the murder of Joseph Smith Jr, the first prophet and leader of the Mormon church, and his brother Hiram Smith, at Carthage Jail, Illinois. This assasination occured both because of political strife (Josph Smith was running for United States President, among lesser state-centric conflicts with authorities, mostly about polygamy) and a rejection of Mormonism by the people of Illinois. Following his death, Brigham Young was instated as the new prophet of the church, upon which he began teaching the idea that Joseph and Hiram's blood cried out against God for vengance. This sparked the institution of the oath of vengance, as part of the endowment ritual (one of the highest ceremonies preformed in Mormon temples, meant to give all members the key words, signs, tokens, and ordinances needed to return to God's kingdom).

Oath of Vengance: This was an addition to the Nauvoo endowment during a time where many church members yearned to avenge the murder of their most beloved leader and prophet. The original oath reads as follows: "You and each of you do covenant and promise that you will pray and never cease to pray to Almighty God to avenge the blood of the prophets upon this nation, and that you will teach the same to your children and to your children's children unto the third and fourth generation." While some members interpereted this as a prompt for prayer alone, others took it to mean a personal responsibility to kill those involved in the martyrdom, should the situation arise. This part of the endowment ceremony was taken out in 1927 during the intitiution of the church's Good Neighbor Policy. These are not to be confused with penalty oaths, which describe the participants agreement to being slit ear to ear, disemboweled, detounged, and have their hearts split open if they revealed the secrets of the church and their endowed vows to others. (may make an infopost on this one too)

Other notable supporters of blood atonement include Jedidiah M Grant, who wrote the statement below in the Deseret News on March 12 1854.

["It is their right to baptize a sinner to save him, and it is also their right to kill a sinner to save him, when he commits those crimes that can only be atoned for by shedding his blood. If the Lord God forgives sins by baptism, and there is another law that certain sins cannot be atoned for by baptism, but by the shedding of the blood of the sinner, query, whether the people of God be overreaching the mark, if they should execute the law to save such. They could do it sucinctly. We would not kill a man, of course, unless we killed to save him."] (Deseret News, vol. 4 no. 20)

It is important to mention that, although there is clear evidence of the doctrine being preached, the Mormon church made a firm stance that it had not actually practiced this doctrine yet, although it would do so soon towards covenant breakers. They also preached that current sinners who would likely need to atone by their own blood should repent as much as they could while alive, so that eventually their sins would not be so greivious as to require their deaths. Blood atonement was framed as an act of both mercy and love, rather than a deliberatly violent act. Two notable reported victims of blood atonement are Thomas Coleman, a Black man who was murderd by Mormons for his relationship with a white woman, and Rosmos Anderson, a Danish Mormon and willing participant who was sentenced for adultery. (I will make a seperate post about these individuals and other people killed).

Jedidiah M Grant was also quoted as saying the below quote during a sermon titled Rebuking Iniquity on September 21, 1856

["I say, that there are men and women that I would advise to go to the President immediately, and ask him to appoint a committee to attend to their case; and then let a place be selected, and let that committee shed their blood. We have those amongst us that are full of all manner of abominations, those who need to have thier blood shed, for water will not do, their sins are of too deep a dye."]

This doctrine continued to be defended by later prophets, such as John Taylor and Charles W Penrose. However, in a statement issued in 1889 by prophet Wilford Woodruf, the church denied their promotion of blood atonement, saying "We denounce as entirely untrue the allegation which has been made, that our church favors or believes in the killing of persons who leave the church or apostatize from its doctrines." (Manisfesto of the Presidency and Apostles, December 12, 1889) This denial was later restated by church figures like Bruce R McConkie, stating "If by blood atonement is meant the shedding of the blood of men to atone in some way for their own sins, the answer is No. We do not believe that it is necessary for men in this day to shed their own blood to receive a remission of sins." (Letter from Bruce R McConkie to Thomas B. McAfee)

Blood atonement continues to be denied by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, although it is still practiced by some splinter groups today. One final note is that the system for capital punishment in Utah involved the option for either death by hanging or death by firing squad. While hanging did not spill the sinner's blood upon the earth, therefore keeping the sinner from experiencing blood atonement, death by firing squad would, and as such, was presented as a valid option for those sentenced to death in Utah. However, it appears firing squads were less favored then decapitation, which would spill more blood. Death by firing squad was removed from Utah prison systems in 2004, and has now been replaced by lethal intravenous injection. This law was not applied retroactively however, allowing Ronnie Lee Gardener to choose death by firing squad in 2010, the last exectuion of its kind in both Utah and the United States. He cited his Mormon roots for this decision.

[tanadrin]

i've kind of gotten sucked into the back catalogue of the podcast Mormon Stories, specifically the episodes where they have like honest-to-god egyptologists and archeologists and such on and they take apart mormon apologia piece by piece. because it would be fairly easy (and fairly accurate) to simply ignore this particular subgenre of apologism--not only are the foundational myths of mormonism patently absurd to almost everybody who grew up outside the faith, mormon apologists specifically have only the tiniest little wisps or shreds of reassurance to offer their fellow believers.

like, mainstream christian apologism has been working for two thousand years to produce a parallel body of knowledge--hell, it didn't even used to be "parallel," it was simply the default assumption in most of christendom for most of that period--and can not only draw on a much longer history, but does so in the defensive interpretation of what are (in part) much older events. and the debunked mythology of abrahamic religions accreted gradually, heavily steeped in a local geographic context. there actually were persians and egyptians and babylonians and stuff! nobody got basic facts about what food crops were available in the region wrong, because the people who wrote this stuff had lived there for centuries! you can't dig a posthole in the middle east without turning up artifacts suggestive of that history, because that history is (while false) authentically local.

the book of mormon isn't like that. the book of mormon is insane. it's what you get talking to a guy you met in a bar at 2 am who wants to tell you about the stuff he half-remembers from history channel ancient aliens specials he saw ten years ago, because that guy occupies approximately the same social niche joseph smith did, and also people knew even less about archeology (to say nothing of the archeology of the americas) back in the 1830s. and yet these guys like hugh nibley and kerry muhlestein get up and try to defend this account, writing stuff that makes your average christian fundamentalist apologist look like a paragon of scientific integrity.

what baffles me isn't the rank and file mormons raised in the religion who might know little else. what baffles me are the people who are thoughtful enough to engage with real archeology, to understand the nuances of just how completely nonsensical the mormon version of ancient history is and how indistinguishable recent mormon history is from, like, scientology-level cult shenanigans, and yet who still consider themselves mormons and affiliate with the religion. like i get that religion isn't all about truth claims. there's social and cultural and emotional and all kinds of other elements that bind members of a religious community together. but "mormon" isn't an ethnic group. so far as mormons have a unique culture outside the religion itself it is, as far as i can tell, 1) the shared misery of the mission experience, 2) giving your kids slightly goofy names, 3) getting married really young, and 4) not drinking or smoking. and clearly you care to a certain extent about the truth claims, or you wouldn't have these (very interesting!) discussions on your podcast with archeologists about those claims.

anyway, it's a very weird phenomenon!

[alliluyevas]

book recommendations on mormon history?

oooh worm. very excited. I'm going to focus for now on what I would consider the best introduction books to Mormon history (of the ones I have read).

the number one book I would recommend for people who know little to nothing about Mormon history is American Zion: A New History of Mormonism by Benjamin Park. I think it is an excellent new entry to help fit a much-needed niche of "overview broad-brushstrokes history of Mormonism that is not written from an explicitly faithful perspective." (The author is LDS, but it's definitely written to appeal to secular audiences in a way that the other existing overview books which are mostly church-produced are not.) It goes from Joseph Smith all the way up until Mitt Romney, essentially.

If you want something that goes a little bit deeper and doesn't cover quite as much time, I actually would also recommend Dr. Park's other book, Kingdom of Nauvoo, which covers the period of Mormon settlement in Illinois from 1838-1846, including the advent of polygamy and Joseph Smith's assassination. The Nauvoo era is really interesting and arguably the most crucial period in very early (pre-Utah) Mormonism.

For a narrower focus within the Nauvoo era, American Crucifixion: The Murder of Joseph Smith and the Fate of the Mormon Church is also pretty good and is a very accessible read. Joseph Smith for President: The Prophet, The Assassins, and the Fight for American Religious Freedom covers a lot of the same ground. I would still recommend these books for Mormon history "beginners" because Joseph Smith's life and death is so pivotal.

In terms of reading more about Joseph Smith, I would recommend Fawn Brodie's biography No Man Knows My History, with some caveats. I think this is a beautifully written book and a lot of the scholarship does hold up, but a) it was written in the 1940s b) it was written by someone who was in the process of leaving Mormonism and definitely takes the position pretty stridently that He Made It All Up and it's controversial within Mormon history as a field because of that. There have been other biographies of JS written since Brodie: Dan Vogel's is good but extremely dense, and Richard Bushman's I have not read so I don't feel like I can recommend it. (Side note: I think it is very difficult to write biography about Joseph Smith because the question of whether or not the author believes he was a prophet and the subsequent question of whether or not the author believes he believed he was a prophet is really omnipresent. I don't think you can really evaluate his life and work without also evaluating the truth claims of Mormonism as a religion in a way that is not quite as true for subsequent church leaders.)

Speaking of subsequent church leaders, I would really strongly recommend Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet by my former professor John Turner, who is really getting gassed up on this blog today, lol. Great bio of the man who shaped Mormonism more than anyone except Joseph Smith (and, arguably, just as much as Joseph Smith.) I actually think this would work fantastically as an overview too because Brigham Young joined the church very early so you basically get a front row seat from origins well into the Utah period.

I wish I had more intro recs about the Utah period or about Mormon women's history/polygamy, but a lot of what I've read on that is either really niche in focus or really dense, so I'm not sure it is a great place to start. That being said, if you want a female perspective on early Mormonism, you should read Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith which is a biography of Joseph Smith's legal wife. It's a great book and was a really ground-breaking classic in Mormon history that imo totally changed the mainstream LDS narrative about Emma.