I’ll probably not be updating this blog any more, as I’ve set up my own blog at blog.mormonanswers.com while I work on my new information archiving project. I invite you to check it out and in the rare case you are subscribed to my RSS feed, make sure to update your feed URL to one of the links on the footer at the new site.

Okay, I just bought a few new domains tonight. You may not see the results of said purchases for a while, but let’s just say I have something very big in mind. Let’s just say it involves mormonism. Let’s just say I now own the dot com version of a domain whose dot org version points to mormon.org. And let’s just say that when I do a website, I do it right.

If all goes according to plan, I’ll start work on said site in the coming months, and hopefully make a debut before the end of the year. I may post about it in this blog, but I have a feeling that if I do it right, you’ll know when it has arrived. And also, if I haven’t submitted my formal resignation by then, I’ll probably get ex’d. Well, one way or another, I guess I have to draw a line in the sand sometime.

And thank your favourite deity for Private Domain registrations…

Saul is working in his store when he hears a booming voice from above:

“Saul, sell your business.”

He ignores it. It goes on for days.

“Saul, sell your business for $3 million.”

After weeks of this, he relents, sells his store. The voice says “Saul, go to Las Vegas.” He asks why.

“Saul, take the $3 million to Las Vegas.”

He obeys, goes to a casino. Voice says, “Saul , go to the blackjack table and put it down all on one hand.” He hesitates but knows he must. He’s dealt an 18. The dealer has a six showing.

“Saul, take a card.”

What? The dealer has—

“Take a card!”

He tells the dealer to hit him. Saul gets an ace. Nineteen. He breathes easy.

“Saul, take another card.”

What?!

“TAKE ANOTHER CARD!”

He asks for another card. It’s another ace. He has twenty.

“Saul, take another card,” the voice commands. I have twenty! Saul shouts.

“TAKE ANOTHER CARD!!” booms the voice. Hit me, Saul says. He gets another ace.

Twenty one.

The booming voice goes: “un-fucking-believable!”

I won’t get really in depth here (I’ve got too many festivities to attend to), but I read an article on The Mormon Curtian about some project to “create a business plan to help LDS church” involving fundraising and using spammy SEO techniques to overwhelm the “anti” mormon search results. Read the MC article for more insight on the shenanigans, especially how the content was quickly replaced once the exmormon community got hold of it.
Ah, but once something is online, it’s very hard to get it offline. Case in point: The author of the MC article said content was replaced. That got my mind cranking… judging by the relatively new nature of the content, it wouldn’t likely be in the Internet Archive (it wasn’t); However, it is cached by Google. Yet another reason I love Google:

Read the original article in all its glory

I wrote recently about the tendency toward rote prayer in Mormon society, and the roots of such tendencies. This got me thinking about how the average Mormon’s choices in speech can be bizarre, ignorant, and painful to others.

I recently received a holiday note from an old church leader of mine, who—unaware of my current beliefs—wrote to me as though I were still a believing Mormon. I was amazed when he started quoting scriptural passages (not that surprising, given the season), but never once quoted the biblical account of Jesus Christ. Every quote was from the Book of Mormon or a recent LDS Church leader. What’s more, the tone shifted quickly from the birth of Jesus and the wonderful example he set to Jesus died for you, so you we’d better feel bad about that and do our best to make it up to him! What started out as a nice message quickly turned into a generic Christian guilt-trip. It felt like someone called up, said “Hey, Happy Birthday, let me buy you a drink!” and then once at the bar, they belittled you and said “This is what you get for walking on my lawn!” before they punched you in the stomach. Okay, that may be a bit extreme, but hopefully you get the idea.

It’s amazing to me how often things like this happen in conversation with active mormons. I’ve mentioned conversations with my sister-in-law before, and I reflect back to the days when I would sit in sacrament meetings and cringe at the things people would say. For example: Church and politics. I would be made to feel out of place in the days surrounding an election because, while I wasn’t a democrat, I most certainly was not a republican. Hearing not only fellow church members but teachers and speakers mock candidates and those who would vote for them would send chills down my spine and cause me to clench my fists. Here are two examples (one is mine, another a friend of mine who is trapped in mormonism by family obligations):

I was sitting in church on the sunday after elections, when an older gentleman approached the pulpit to give the closing prayer to end the meeting. Democrats had just taken the House and the Senate in the recent vote, and the largely Republican percentage of the church seemed none to happy about it. The gentleman expressed this disheartened feeling in his prayer, asking the Lord to “bless this country, despite recent misguided choices and misguided individuals recently chosen to help lead it.”

—Anonymous friend

The quote might not be dead on to what he said, but my friend informed me that it was very evident that he was talking about the recent elections and that dark force that is the Democratic Party.

Now, that may resemble hearsay to you, so how about another example, ripped from the pages of my life?

I was helping my mother throw a party at her house a few years ago. She’d recently divorced my father, and was trying to regain her social life after over a year of legal battles. She’d invited her close friends and a few couples in the neighbourhood. I was there for support and because it meant free food. Plus, I’d known these people all my life, so I figured things wouldn’t be too bad.

I was wrong.

Once the party dwindled down to about 4 main couples, sitting on the patio, eating pie, the conversation turned from the usual chit chat to the dreaded upcoming elections. The usual overarching Republican tone took control, and I started feeling rather uncomfortable, so I went inside to have some more pie and to get away from the conversation. After I didn’t return, someone asked where I’d gone and my mother, knowing my liberal political leanings, realised that I might have felt uncomfortable, and in true style, mentioned this to everyone by stating “Oh, he’s not a real big fan of the president.” They continued their conversation for a bit, then she came inside and invited me back out, saying the conversation has shifted gears. I came back out and slowly, but surely, the talk turned back to politics. One person mentioned a Democratic candidate for some position, and how the man had “spent several year in Europe,” as though such a thing would be degrading to one’s character. I started getting fidgety again. A few more ignorant remarks were made before the grand coup de grâce came.

“Well, I think that anyone who votes for a Democrat shouldn’t be allowed a temple recommend.”

I was floored. I immediately stood up and went back inside, and waited for everyone to leave before I exploded. For those of you who aren’t familiar, a temple recommend is a slip of paper given by the mormon church that states that the bearer has been deemed worthy to enter the mormon temples and perform the ordinances therein. But more so, a temple recommend is very much a status symbol in mormonism. To put it bluntly, if you don’t have a temple recommend (and assuming you are of the right age and situation to have one), you are presumed to be some sort of sinner, deviant or to be “struggling.” Essentially, you’re looked down upon and thought of as something of an outcast, unless of course you change your ways and “make it back” and get a temple recommend, at which point the people who were looking down upon you pat themselves on the back for a job well done in “activating you.” Now, generally speaking, the main reasons for someone not having a recommend are either tithing related (you aren’t paying up!), sexual in nature (are you touching yourself again, brother? are you touching her again, sister?), or food related (are you drinking again while smoking and… DRINKING COFFEE!!?!!). Now, for someone to say that they think all mormon democrats should be outcast members of the fold, for being a democrat in a church that states publicly that church members should make up their own minds about politics and candidates (despite the fact that they rarely do)… well, that’s like stating that black people are somehow inferior to whites and should thus be denied access to the temple. OH. WAIT.

Back to the story, I exploded after they all left. I nearly screamed when I pondered how insane the women who made the comment must be. After calming me down, my mother said “Well, yes, she can be very bold in her opinions, but she doesn’t mean any harm by them…” Wow. Talk about giving someone the benefit of the doubt. She had just essentially said that I shouldn’t be allowed to enter what was considered the holiest place in mormondom, and that I was a deviant on par with sex offenders and alcoholics. And my own mother was taking her side. Now, I love my mother absolutely, but it is clear that in this instance, she’d rather side with a nutball republican church member than her own son who just happened to be voting for a democrat.

The social expectations of mormonism are staggering. If you are not perfectly in line with the unspoken undercurrent of social mormonism, expect to feel abjection from the words of people you are supposed to respect. You are expected to feel bad if you miss church, you are obviously misunderstanding the doctrine if you have problems with mormon scripture, you must be subversive if you believe in evolution, and you MUST be a deviant if you vote for anyone but a Republican.

Each of us has to face the matter—either the Church is true, or it is a fraud. There is no middle ground. It is the Church and kingdom of God, or it is nothing.

—President Gordon B. Hinckley. “Loyalty,” April Conference, 2003.

Good words to keep in mind as you read about things like the Book of Abraham, etc.

Mormons ‘baptize’ Simon Wiesenthal

The Simon Wiesenthal Center called on the Mormon Church to remove its Nazi hunter namesake from the church’s online database of posthumous baptisms.
Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Wiesenthal Center, made the urgent request after being informed by Salt Lake City researcher Helen Radkey that Wiesenthal’s name had been added about a week ago to the Mormons’ International Genealogical Index.

“We are astounded and dismayed that after assurances and promises by the Mormon Church, Mr. Wiesenthal’s life and memory, along with so many other Jews, would be trampled and disregarded,” Hier said.

Wiesenthal “proudly lived as a Jew, died as a Jew, demanded justice for the millions of the victims of the Holocaust and, at his request, was buried in the State of Israel,” he said.

“It is sacrilegious for the Mormon faith to desecrate his memory by suggesting that Jews on their own are not worthy enough to receive God’s eternal blessing.”

Hier also urged the Utah-based Church to remove the names of all other Holocaust victims from the list.

Many Jews, including Holocaust victims, have been found on the index.

Mormon officials promised in 1995 to stop the practice of posthumously baptizing Jews, but did not. They reiterated the pledge in 2000.

Perhaps people should start posthumously entering Brigham Young and Joseph Smith into the jewish faith… only fair…

I plan much more in-depth commentary on Mormon missions and the mission program in future posts, but for now, I want to share a quote that perfectly encapsulates what being a Mormon missionary feels like:

Here Elder Simeon, Let’s put the weight of the world on your shoulders. Forget about the Savior fixing things, you’re a Savior on Mt. Zion to these people. If you don’t baptize, it’s your fault. You’re just not working hard enough. And, If you feel that you are working hard but still are not baptizing, you must not be teaching effectively. And, If you are teaching effectively and still not baptizing, you must not be following all of the Mission Rules like you should be. The Lord blesses us according to our faithfulness and exactness in following the commandments. Forget about the individuals you are teaching, they have nothing to do with this. Just because they are Godless and happy in their Godless state doesn’t mean a thing. If you fail to baptize these Godless sinners, It’s your salvation that’s on the line.

—Simeon’s Peepstone

More on this later.

It’s worth noting that the guy pitching the video is an avowed atheist who has made quite a few films about mormons, including an infamous one where he flies from Australia to Salt Lake City to go door knocking for atheism. Pretty spot on.

I spent thanksgiving at a massive get-together, and before we dug in to a really rather delightful meal, my uncle gave a blessing on the food. I’m generally respectful of my family during prayers and try to bow my head and close my eyes for them. However, I was stifling a laugh when the prayer came to this point:

We are so thankful to be members of thy church…

It was a good thing I was in the very corner of the room and no one heard me. I laughed at how silly it sounded. Then I started to get a little ticked off. There were several of people there who were not members of the mormon church. Yet he still said that. Did that mean those who weren’t mormon would soon be, or that he just wasn’t including those who chose to worship at a different altar? It seemed kind of arrogant, but I know my uncle, and more appropriately, I know what mormon prayer is.

From an early age, mormons are taught to say their prayers in a very specific way: by repeating what their parents say. When very small, it is literally a case of “repeat after me,” not only when praying but when “baring testimony” (which is when a mormon explains their feelings about the church in a church meeting, usually on the first sunday of the month). As the child grows, the parent doesn’t need to prompt them: they’ve pretty much memorised the gist of those initial prayers. Keep in mind, this isn’t supposed to be rote, recited prayer, like you may find in other religions. In fact, mormon doctrine is strongly against rote prayers (with a few exceptions, such as blessing the sacrament of the lord’s supper), but people tend to (at least in public prayers) say nearly identical prayers. There is a reason: language.
Mormon’s use the King James translation of the Bible, and the Book of Mormon follows largely the same style (since modern english translations weren’t really around when J.Smith started hawking copies of his book). Thus, it is a mormon teaching (I’m not just implying that… it really is a teaching in the lessons missionaries give) that when you pray, you need to use the flowery, archaic prose of the KJV bible. Thus giving a prayer turns from expressing your thoughts to your maker into something akin to writing a paper for your really grammatically-strict english teacher. People get confused over thy/thou/thine (I was always rather good at it, but I’m quite obviously an english nerd), and tend to fall back on the phrases and words they are used to hearing. You hear a lot about being grateful for “thy church” and “all our many blessings” and asking that everyone may “travel home in safety, that no harm or accident my befall us.” And pretty much any meal will be blessed so that “it will be nourishing and strengthening for our bodies, and do us the good we need.” I used to challenge my brother to not say that phrase when he’d pray before a meal, and he’d try so hard that you could hear him catching himself and searching for a different word. Those prayers generally ended in all of us laughing.

But my family is like that. The thought of us all trying to control our laughter during a prayer gives me hope that one day, the remaining half of my family that is mormon will wise up and get out. Cross your fingers.