Additions to the Post-Mo Lexicon

A couple of conversations I’ve been in lately have yielded terms I think people on this blog will find useful.

the first was coined a month or so ago by Chino Blanco and defined by me:

Joe-ha-dist n. An excessively ardent and bellicose defender of Joseph Smith: Joehadists rarely have much sympathy for Emma.

I coined this one today:

priest-splain v. to mansplain, as when a man presumes to educate a woman on a topic she already understands, with the additional characteristic of being done by male clergy or priesthood holders on topics related to religion and gender; not merely condescending and sexist, but holier-than-thou and morally judgmental.

I like this term because it applies to a variety of religions, as in

A problem in the LDS church is that in any conversation about gender, the male leaders tend to priestsplain to the sisters, or The Vatican sent some dudes to priestsplain to those uppity US nuns that they’d been thinking far too much about poor people and not enough about stuff like abortion.

I posted this on facebook, and a friend offered this synonym: “clergysplain. Related terminology: Pastorswifesplain. See also: Bettysplain.”

In a related conversation on a friend’s fb page, someone who agreed to be identified as “Katie Sweet Spirit” coined “preachsplain,” my favorite of the terms and the one I think will be most useful here:

preach-splain v. To sanctimoniously lecture someone on a religious topic they understand every bit as well as you, but disagree with you about the meaning of, because you are a devout believer and they, in your mind at least, are not: Yeah, I know the basic doctrine. You don’t need to preachsplain it to me.

I look forward to using these terms here.

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8 Responses

  1. Katie Sweet Spirit says:

    Well done, well done.

  2. Holly says:

    @1: Glad you approve! thanks for stopping by.

  3. chanson says:

    Wait a minute… Are you suggesting that sometimes non-believers sometimes know the doctrine as well as the believers? But I thought that failure to understand the plain and precious truths of the gospel is the only reason for not believing…

  4. leftofcentre says:

    How about ‘Lattertudes’ – attitudes proffered by LDS members when engaging with the outside world, consisting mainly of a mixture of platitudes and anecdotes regurgitated from General Conferences and back issues of Ensign (or the ‘Friend’, for the younger members) with regional idioms from Utah. These come up as parlance in everyday conversations, too, contributing to an overall ‘Mormonspeak’, which easily identifies one Mormon to another, but bewilders and bemuses (or annoys) the rest of the people in any conversation taking place outside of Utah.

    ‘Oh my heck!’
    ‘What a special spirit!’
    etc…

  5. Holly says:

    @3—I know it’s wacky, but yeah, I am suggesting that! We’ll see if the terms help convey the overall sense of ennui non-believers feel when subjected to a mini sunday school lesson about stuff we already know.

    @4–nice. I hope it catches on.

  6. Julia says:

    Thanks. I think that this attitude goes perfectly with members who stay but don’t think about religion like “Utah Mormons.” I know an over generalization, but still a lot of truth.

  7. Ren says:

    Awesome. Joehadist. LMAO

    To #4, totally know what you mean. Related, after “pernicious” appeared in an Ensign article, I started hearing it used regularly in church meetings after having read it like once in a book in the first 30 years of my life. Also, after a stake president told us to “redouble our efforts” on fast offerings, “redouble” was a popular stake term. I ID’d LDS I didn’t know just by them using these words in corporate settings.

    After meeting, “Hi, are you by chance LDS?”
    “Yes, how did you know?”
    “Only a Mormon would refer to malware as ‘pernicious’ and recommend we redouble our efforts to enhance our security.”

  8. Holly says:

    thought of another one:

    canon balls: the audacity involved in using scripture as projectile weapons against anyone who falls outside your view of orthodoxy.

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