#mormon truth claims

[wasmormon]

Brian Was a Mormon, an Ex-Mormon Profile Spotlight

[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…

[the-sparrows-providence]

Idk about anyone else but the whole yakuza-owned made up sports team with ties to the Baltimore mob always heightened my suspension of disbelief through the series, especially when it came to anything that happened in the Nest. But taking an actual look at it, the “cult” aspect of the Ravens is actually probably the most believable part of the whole series.

Not to be a true crime stereotype but when comparing them to irl cults, they check nearly every box:

Single (unstable) figurehead as the ultimate source of truth and power? Check.

Complete control over every aspect of member’ lives? Check.

Constant surveillance to assert even more control, usually by forcing members to stay in one location? Check.

Additional surveillance by always being with at least one other member to keep each other in check and to prevent disobedience by threat of being reported (Mormonism)? Check.

Figurehead has hand-picked “inner circle”? The Perfect Court is a Check.

Causing extreme exhaustion via food-restriction and sleep deprivation (re: Jonestown & Scientology) making members even more susceptible to control? Check.

Public humiliation and punishment? Check.

Sowing doubt and mistrust among members to prevent solidarity forming against the figurehead and to encourage reporting other members via McCarthyism-esc system? Check.

Creating financial dependency so members aren’t able to even afford their own food & clothing? Check.

Isolating members from their friends and family to create a dependency on the cult as their sole support network and community? Check.

Devotion to the group causing members being willing to sacrifice themselves to the cause? Check.

Harassment intimidation and violence against members who manage to escape? Check.

Targeting vulnerable individuals? Yeah I’d consider 18-19 year old kids living away from home and family for the first time ever as pretty fkn vulnerable. Check.

Normalized sexual abuse? Check.

Using sexual abuse as another method of punishment and control? Check.

Usually a figurehead with internalized homophobia (Jim Jones claimed to be the only “truly straight man” while simultaneously sleeping with raping the male members of his inner circle)? I mean have you seen Riko? Check.

Another thing: unless they’re born into the cult, most members choose to join. Usually via manipulation, scare tactics, and lies and trying to escape later is another story, but joining is still a choice. And most Ravens choose to stay. Except for Jean and Kevin. They had no choice, literal property with no one to protect them and physically no way to leave.

Which is why I always found Abby’s “My Foxes chose to fight back.” to be insanely cruel.

Bc Jean couldn’t fight back. He was sold to a cult, which are extremely effective in breaking the willpower of even the people who chose to be there. Fighting back would have literally killed him.

Idk where I was trying to go with this but I think all of this is one of the reasons my heart breaks for Jean more than any other character.

[boycarofchilladelphia]

My friend, I can promise you the mormon church is far closer to most hate groups than it is to any standard religion. Both its formation and current rhetoric rely on the control of its members both in thought and action. The doctrine is based on the racist notion that it is the true history of the First Nations peoples of America and asserts that they were actually Jews escaping Jerusalem, a claim that only exists within the Book of Mormon and is refuted by dna evidence and ethnographic studies. The original text of the book of mormon (before the many rewrites) wrote that people would become white and delightsome (meaning of lighter skin) and that only those with white skin would be allowed into heaven. There have been passages describing the Nephites as white and Lamenites as darker skinned as they were blackened by the mark of cain. There are people who have been told that same thing and tried to pray away their dark skin. The entire rhetoric of the mormon church relies on people believing they are better than everyone else, that they alone know the secret truths that will get them into the celestial kingdom and become gods, that they alone look upon a world of filth and decay praying for the day that judgement finally dawns, that they alone know the true history of the native peoples of the Americas because they have simply "forgotten" the truth as they purged the only true believers from the land. You DO believe in a religion that thinks themselves higher than the world with sacred knowledge based on a lie of supposed great and lost people you are uniquely descended from. You play into this by ranking the supposed accuracy of claims against your church without even knowing the real history and formation of its conception. You uphold this same attitude as if other just are misinformed or just stupid while talking down to them like they're a child. You uphold this bastard churches ideals with your own hubris thinking its kindness. There is a reason as to why people view this church as a cult at best and breeding ground for fascist at worst. There is a reason why there was a cosplayer of Captain Moroni at the January Sixth Insurrection.

I know this will fall on deaf ears, I know that I shouldn't write this for my own mental health, but I also know what the mormon church did to me and many of my friends. I can't just let this slide. I owe it to myself to tell you what I wish someone would've told me. This church is nothing but a deeply racist, misogynist mess based in a fascist dream. I hope you will one day understand and find a better path. I would wish for nothing more than for you to read this out and internalize but I know better. I can only hope this softens your heart. I wish the best for you and your future, but not for your church. I hope one day you will take this for the olive branch that it is for your own sake.

Have a good life.

Before I dive into this ask, I gotta say, I was beginning to worry that I would never get anon hate on this site. Bless you for taking the time to brighten my day a little.

Anyway, in all seriousness, it's obvious that you and your friends have been deeply hurt by the Church. I can't apologize for the Church, but I can say that I'm personally so sorry that happened to you and your friends. I can only imagine how hard your life must have been to get to this point, and it says volumes about you that you're willing to try and prevent that harm in a stranger's life. I admire that dedication to kindness and truth, so thank you, truly, for the kind intentions you have.

There's a lot here, so I probably won't address it all piece by piece, but I'll mostly say that you're not wrong. I think my biggest clarification I would make here is that the doctrine is not "based" on the Book of Mormon (in all of its imperfections) at all; it's based on the Atonement of Jesus Christ and his Gospel and the desire for our Heavenly Father to have us all back in His loving arms.

But I promise I'm not cherry-picking one detail in order to throw out your entire argument! The modern Church, in many ways, does rely on control of thought and action of its members. Do they usually do it in the name of inspiration from God? Yup. Does that make it any better? Well, depends on whether you believe in that inspiration or not, but I digress. Moving on: the Book of Mormon being both subtly and bluntly racist, even with some of the kindest readings I've seen? Yeah, friend, I know. Its historicity being unsupported by literally all the current scholarly data we have? Yeah, I know that too. The Church actively teaching false racist lies for MANY years, and even today failing to altogether purge them from their members' teachings and hearts? I know about that, too. And yes, there are significant problems with the Church's attitude towards, history of, and rhetoric about native peoples; I'm not denying that. And we're not even gonna start into the mistreatment, mischaracterization, and downright falsities the Church holds onto when it comes to the LGBTQ+ communities; let's just say I am painfully aware, though I would never wish to be unaware of any of the truths you've mentioned.

Long story short, I'm not denying the very obvious problems that have arisen, and continue to arise, from the failures of men (and while I use that term for mankind, let's be honest; it's usually white men anyway) to teach accurately and correctly the doctrine of Christ. My own testimony is not based in blind submission, nor is it a parroting of rhetoric that I have heard. I have struggled with pretty much every single thing you've mentioned or alluded to on this list, and yet I managed, by the literal Grace of God, to come out on the other side with my faith intact; I do not reject the Church for its imperfections, but I refuse to ignore them as well. My faith does not mean I agree with the Church without reservation. My faith does not mean I obey without question. My faith does not mean that I accept, condone, or apologize for the sins of centuries of Christians regarding the role of faith in their lives. All it means is that I have received a witness through the Holy Spirit that, at least for now, this is the place I need to be. That's not based on physical evidence, a rewriting of ugly history/teachings(past and present), or any sort of dedication to imperfect people.

I'm sorry my ranking felt like I was dismissing your concerns or talking down to you; I never meant for either of this things to be true. It was meant to be a playful discussion more than a full refutation of misinformation, but it sounds like I may have failed in both goals simultaneously, and I take full responsibility for the hurt that it caused you.

That's pretty much everything I feel like I need to say in response to your ask, and I apologize again if my somewhat flippant intro put you off; one of my many flaws is that I try and inject levity into many serious situations. But, if you're interested in some critical thinking exercises, I will gladly hit you with a few thought questions:

If we believe in being better than everyone else because of our temple covenants, as you alluded to, why would we have those temple covenants as the goal for every person from all of history? Why would we actively bring others to the temple, both living and dead, in order to have those ordenances performed for as many of our brothers, sisters, and any others that have ever existed*?

If the Church is more of a hate group than "standard religions", why did the scriptural Jesus Christ never preach that hate? Could it be that the Church is a product of imperfection, racism, and misogyny folded together throughout the years, and that even in spite of those glaring problems, 17 million people globally have, at one time or another found a measure of peace and belonging in Christ's teachings from that very Church? That isn't to say that we should accept the Church without judgement; we can do so much better than just 17 million people, especially as soon as we shirk these dangerous ideals taught by the mouths of imperfect men.

Is it possible for good and evil to co-exist in a church, especially this Church? Is it possible that a perfect God can create an imperfect Church? We could go back and forth on relative good done versus relative evil, but that's more a matter of opinion than it is data. But is it at all possible that there are no simple, black-or-white answers? Might I gently suggest that you're falling victim to the same binary good-or-bad thinking that the Church taught you, just now on the side of "the Church is all bad and therefore cannot do good"?

None of these questions are here to say you're wrong; I cannot ultimately make that judgement because I don't know what the Spirit has or hasn't witnessed to you. It could be that you feel the Spirit has told you to completely abandon the Church because of all of its flaws; that's okay. It could be that you deny the very existence of the Spirit and think that I'm fooling myself into staying in a cult; that's okay, too. But you cannot outright deny the witness I have received based on your own witness, perception, or opinion. And generalizing that opinion/perception/witness to claim that I ignore the Church's faults or somehow am an apologetic for them or even that I'm ignorant of them? Well, that's an assumption you made based on your own reasoning, experiences, and thoughts; I can assure you that I have come face to face with many horrors and misdeeds attributed to and caused by the Church, including harmful doctrines and attitudes in my own life and behavior, and frankly I don't expect that I've encountered them all. And yet, for now, I believe.

*: Yeah, there's a very legitimate argument to be made that the temple doesn't let LGBTQ+ people access the same blessings as non-LGBTQ+ members; I totally agree that is a problem that NEEDS to be fixed for us to have any sort of claim of being followers of Christ at the judgement. I am speaking in idealized terms here, for sure, and I recognize that.

[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.

[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

[vicetrevni]

Angel from Clinical Trial isn’t a girl. They’re nonbinary. The creator of the game posted a comic taking place after the True End and it refers to Angel as “spouse”

Not to be rude or dismissive here.

But has the creator actually come out and said it's true one way or the other?

I haven't really seen Angel be referred to with gender neutral pronouns (I'll have to rewatch the game for this just to see), but I don't like seeing other people say such things are 'canon' without solid proof especially when the creator hasn't clearly verified it either way. So for now, please refrain from saying such things unless you can provide solid proof of your claims.

Obviously, context clues are important - for example, it's a smart idea for the creator to show Lee is Ex-Mormon by saying what SubReddits he'd frequent and one is the r/exmormons subreddit (I always thought he was Ex-Christian tbh so it's cool to know as a side little tidbit into his past without having to over-explain that in the story). And it's done in a way that gives more insight to him as a character without going into heavy detail or take away from the story, yes it is important but not so much to go into heavy detail.

But that is different from using gendered specific language.

Angel might just like being called 'spouse' without any other context, so to assume she is automatically non-binary for it is honestly very ignorant. And, in my own experiences, even if Angel is non-binary she seems fine with being referred to with female pronouns regardless (which is fine bc IRL I don't care about that much either so I can see it being the case here). So, again, unless the creator comes out and says 'yeah Angel is *insert gender pronouns here*' I'm holding off on believing this is 100% true.

I hope this makes sense, because I am honestly tired of people saying these things are 'canon' without any hard proof from the creator saying it either way (just fyi I don't have twitter and never will so I'm not always privy to what the creator has revealed about Angel or Lee over there). Headcanons are fine obviously, but if a character is not the typical 'cis straight' type you have to be very clear or it causes issues that lead to these sorts of unnecessary debates.

So next time, please just give a screenshot or link along with what you're saying. It'll really help me fact check whatever you're debating about (again I do not nor will ever have Twitter so if you are telling the truth just give me proof to find or I'm going to wait and see if the creator confirms/denies any of this).

[gecko-in-a-can]

#1 of the ask game!

#1. the character everyone gets wrong.

Ok I know I’m a Benny lover blog, so people would expect me to say him, but no. I have a much bigger grievance.

JOSHUA GRAHAM. I say this as a Native American (Choctaw), who’s had to deal with Mormon bulshittery before. now to preface: I think he’s an interesting character, but I have a few key points I want to make.

originally I had a massive rant lined up for this, but I’ll summarize it.

I don’t think he’s as redeemed as people claim he is. I don’t think he’s taken measures to make up for the deeds of his past. I think he would have stayed with the Legion if it weren’t for the suffering he went through at Caesar’s hand. He’s a missionary and a colonizer. He sees the tribes as uncivilized, and hides behind his religion to continue his pattern of indoctrination and violence with them. On top of that: I think what people really forget is a running theme for all of the DLCs:

central characters are unreliable narrators, whether that be on purpose or through mindsets.

Dean Domino obfuscates the truth for most of Dead Money. The Think Tank don’t know the extent of their own histories. Ulysses is driven by a past that still hurts him.

Joshua Graham portrays his suffering as a baptism, a forgiveness of all of his prior sins so he might start anew, but he’s still the same person at his core. He still indoctrinates, he is still in the mindset of solving problems with violence, and he still views tribes as beneath him. I think a lot more could have been done with him, and I like the concept of him more than his actual character.

[wasmormon]

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

[mormonmouse]

Mormon Mouse Memes - SURE THING

[urie]

Ok sorry for drama posting in your inbox but Dallon Weekes is apparently saying he hasn’t been Mormon for 15 years on Bluesky to which I am going ???????? For someone who apparently didn’t care you sure spent a lot of time defending the church and your missionary work on Twitter back in the day; like idk it’s just rubbing me the wrong way. Curious about your thoughts because you’re literally the only blog I trust to have a thoughtful response and not just stan Dallon

anon i am so beyond infuriated at this information its actually insane. i mean you are a saint and a scholar for bringing this to me dont get me wrong... but all i have to say to this is.... ME WHEN I FUCKING LIIIIIIIE

i decided to include those last two tweets even though dallon very cowardly deleted what lexi was responding to: he was arguing that the lds church is not homophobic (just because he himself was not homophobic) in response to people asking him his thoughts on homophobia in mormonism

dallon has been shilling for the mormon church on twitter for the entirety of the 15 years he claims he was not a part of it. he was tirelessly defending the church against 16 yr old queer children online for YEEEEARS

this interview is from 2021!

and this is the post in question on bluesky for anyone wondering:

even this post is incredibly telling and condescending lol

dallon is notorious for not being able to accept accountability and this is no different. in this post he is denouncing the idea that he could be a trump supporter by saying "i havent even been in the church for 15 years" while in the same breath chastising people for stereotyping him as a conservative just because he was mormon

1) i dont believe that he hasnt been in the church for 15 years. he was still talking about how the mormon religion was deeply important to him in interviews as recent as 4 years ago

2) if it IS true and he really hasnt been practicing for 15 years... why on earth was he constantly going out of his way to talk about being mormon and the importance of his faith and defending the church against any and all criticisms?

3) i also dont believe that he has never been conservative?? he has in the past talked about growing up in an ultra conservative household and has made posts about how "bad" he feels for all the bigotry he absorbed as a kid. why even lie about this, truly? it is far more believable to me that he was raised conservative and over time his morals and values won out over conservatism. why lie when the truth is far more believable? it isn't a crime to have been raised conservative. it isn't a crime to have been raised in the church. he can still be progressive now even if it wasn't how he started out, i have no idea why he even feels the need to say this

dallon painting himself as a bastion of progressive ideology who literally feels so bad about how conservative his upbringing was that he LOSES SLEEP OVER IT well into his late 30s......... in juxtaposition with dallon "i have never been conservative and im not even mormon anymore and its wrong to stereotype me" weekes

i can understand the concept of dallon struggling with his faith and its believable to me that he was probably not going to temple regularly for the past 15 years lol but the fact of the matter is he loudly and publicly defended the church and argued with people until he was blue in the face about his mormon faith

and now he is acting like its just "none of our business" whether or not hes mormon

it sure seemed like it was our business when you never shut up about it!!!!

[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.

[obsidianpen]

(Not offended if you don’t post this pen/and/or disagree, this can be just for you if you want) but PSA that Grey is posting on her Insta that the screenshots from The Document are lacking *context*, that of course this person didn’t include the version that made her look like an asshole, and that she has loads and loads of proof to the contrary.

Also, on her insta, Greyana shared an Ao3 comment someone left today on her story reading “Soo.. did you just download Blood and Gold & Altered State, put it into AI and come up with this bullshit? What the actual fuck.”

quick PSA that imho leaving hateful comments on Greyana’s work is not a great idea at all and imho further victimizes her and her mentality while this all gets sorted out.

the best thing we can discuss is share the Google document (truth) and the facts of what Greyana has done to mods of Reddit/Discord/Facebook to disallow what she’s done in Fandom spaces.

There will be people who inevitably like her work still. There are a lot of examples of people engaging with authors work even when authors are not good/doing bad things. there’s people who buy Addison Cain (a romance novelist who has immersed herself in lawsuits trying to lay claim to A/B/O), there’s people who loveeee Fourth Wing despite Rebecca Yarros’s Mormon mommy blog which is full of very interesting opinions. And, in our own fandom, many HP fans still purchase JKR’s works even with her anti trans activism. Plus all that’s coming out about Neil Gaiman! (To be clear these aren’t equivocal of Greyana, but pointing out many authors have a long and problematic history and we can and should discuss their bad behavior openly in the right spaces without harassing them personally and leaving cruel comments)

ObsidianPen doesn’t make money off of her amazing work and Greyana doesn’t either (right?). Don’t spread hate to our authors, spread facts in our community spaces.

Personally, I didn’t like Greyana’s story for style reasons. And this was long before I had learned of the discourse around her, but I’m not going to comment hateful things to her on her Ao3, her FB, her Insta, because that empowers her.

The best thing we can do is let the facts speak loud and proud in our communities, and let Grey fade into obscurity with whatever fans are loyal enough to remain. Or maybe change, which I think someone else here mentioned earlier. Although who the fuck knows lmao

tldr: as we have discourse, we can call out bad behavior in the right spaces but as a fandom, it’s best to avoid harassing Greyana

do with this what you will Pen, I respect the daylights out of you, and your work and contribution to the community. I will not be offended if you disagree, and if you disagree vehemently, this is your damn tumblr and you do as you please 👏

going to share this one because I completely agree with you (don’t talk to me about Neil gaiman rn I can’t, and I wasn’t even a huge fan to begin with but it still hurts!). This feels like a great post to leave this whole thing on, so I’ll respond and then I am, yet again, done with the Greyana shit (lord I hope, it’s so tiring.)

I don’t give a single shit what she posts on her Instagram stories or whatever tf (typing that sentence made me physically cringe; have I ever said anything more embarrassing? Surely not) and I will not be seeking it out (I cringed again). She knows where to find me if she wants to chat! ;) And I agree, I don’t think anyone should be sending her hateful comments. I also agree that we should stick to sharing her documented toxic behavior when appropriate, and that’s it. There will of course be people who still like her fics, as you said, and that’s their choice! I would have never batted an eye about her myself (I didn’t even know who she was until the whole AI thing was sent to me) if I hadnt sort of suddenly had many stories shared with me from many different people about their experiences being attacked and harassed (including myself, I learned!). It’s hard to not respond emotionally when you see such god awful behavior. But we shouldn’t.

I’m not going to respond to the rest of the asks I have in my inbox about this topic (for now, and hopefully forever, faaaaaahck I hate this), but know that I’ve seen them and appreciate them. I’m glad speaking up helped as many as it did. 💖💖💖💖

[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.

[gavilarkholin-deactivated116710]

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