Of the sessions I attended at Sunstone earlier this month, the most illuminating was on the Latter-day women’s magazine, the Exponent II.* Katie Ludlow Rich and Heather Sundahl, authors of Fifty Years of Exponent II, described how the unofficial, unsanctioned Mormon feminist magazine launched and, more importantly, continued until this…
Author: @Monya_PostMo
Raised Mormon in the American South. Grateful to have left the Church, grateful for many things it taught me
Temple
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Temples to Conformity
Donna’s recent post about a new temple nestled amidst casinos left me thinking about Russell M. Nelson’s temple-building spree. According to the Salt Lake Tribune, some 350 temples are planned, operational, or under development as of April’s General Conference, with roughly half announced since Nelson became president of the Church…
Testimony
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A Broken Shelf of Symbolic Beliefs
Thirty years ago, long before the CES letter (heck, long before Facebook), I sat beside my brainy boyfriend* as he asked probing questions of two earnest nineteen-year-olds from Utah. He’d been reading the Book of Mormon but not feeling its spirit. How could there be elephants in America, he wanted…
Testimony
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#ThinkRespectful: the Talk I Wish Had Been at General Conference
Sometimes inconvenience bring insight. Earlier this week, the San Francisco Public transit system made my best option for getting from Point A to Point B a 40-minute walk, almost enough time to listen to a podcast episode titled “What do I do if listening to Conference hurts?” It was the…
Testimony
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How Mormonism goads fiction writing
Sometimes, for family home evening, we brainstormed about the end of the world. That’s the first thing I thought when I saw an article in the New York Times on why Mormons have such a prominent place in YA fantasy fiction. Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series and Orson Scott Card’s…
Testimony
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Leaving the Mormon machine, I struggled to find community without conformity
Years ago, on a cross country road trip, an LDS friend of mine broke an axle in the middle of Nebraska. He found a payphone, called his father in Utah, got the phone number of the region’s stake president, and called the man, a stranger. Then the Mormon machine…
Jews
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The Impossible Things a Mormon Can See at a Bat Mitzvah
There’s no clear Mormon equivalent of a bat mitzvah. When I turned twelve in the 1980s, I stopped going to the Merrie Miss class in Primary and became a Beehive in Young Women’s. I traded the shouty chorus of “We are a Happy Family” and the mock-Indian gestures of “Book…
Testimony
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What Crafting-as-Ministering Can Miss
There’s a joke among Mormons about shoving a cookie through another Mormon’s mail slot on the last day of the month. Actually, I’m not entirely sure it’s a joke. I grew up with my family getting regular visits from ‘home teachers,’ men assigned to my family to check in monthly…
Deconversion
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Breaking Mormonism’s self-blame cycle
To faithful Saints, Moroni’s promise (Moroni 10:4-5) is a source of comfort and confidence. It guarantees that if you go to God with faith in Christ, a sincere heart, and real intent you will know the “truth of all things” (aka that the Mormon gospel is true.) The scripture is…
Testimony
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Dallin Oaks’s Christmas warning
**Remember to nominate candidates for the X-Mormon of the year.** Raise your hand if anyone’s ever said this to you: “Mormons are just so nice!” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard it, and very often it’s true. Outright deznat sneering may be on the rise, but it…