Today the First Presidency announced that the Saturday evening sessions to the semi-annual general conferences will be discontinued. Traditionally, a Saturday evening session was held for priesthood holders in April and then women in October. Also traditionally, the priesthood session featured a lineup of male speakers, while the women’s session…
A Silver Lining Behind Tad Callister’s No-Good, Heartless, Horrible Church News Article
Just in time for Pride Month, a General Authority emeritus has published an article in The Church News declaiming the social safety nets because governments must ensure wickedness never was happiness. Well, not in so many words, but it has all the unloving, racist, outdated implications you’d expect. Tad Callister…
Nobody expects the excommunication of Natasha Helfer!
No, I have to admit, I was actually surprised when I heard that the CoJCoL-dS excommunicated Natasha Helfer. And then I was immediately surprised that I was surprised. She fits the triple-criteria-set that is a guaranteed path to excommunication: She has a large following, She publicly corrects the wrong statements…
Perfectionists Against Self-Improvement
“Why are you so mean all the time?” I asked one of the religious conservatives in my life, this one Mormon. “When am I ever mean?” This particular family member had just posted on social media urging everyone to be Christlike. Immediately afterward, he posted his view that the very…
Send Me No Carnations
In the Spring of 2003, I was working as the minister’s assistant at the First Unitarian Church of Dallas. One particular morning that Spring, in the Reverend Daniel Kanter’s office, I was alternating between sipping my coffee and offering up my opinion, both pleasures I never enjoyed while Mormon. Seven…
The Brodie Awards and X-Mormon of the Year
Main Street Plaza has hosted the Brodie Awards and William Law X-Mormon of the Year for a full ten years. It all started in 2009 when exmos were explicitly excluded from the Bloggernacle’s “Niblets” — a set of awards that fizzled out a few years later. Check the sidebar for…
Mormon Communists with Temple Recommends
by Johnny Townsend Many Mormons in Utah see Mitt Romney as a traitor, a lefty radical, because he won’t support Trump’s most egregious acts of oppression. Mormons need to start separating their religious convictions from the Republican party line. “Valeria” was one my favorite missionaries when I served in the…
Mormons Should Make Jesus Semitic Again
by Johnny Townsend Mormons have a long, troubled history of racism, well documented in Joanna Brooks’ Mormonism and White Supremacy. Feeble attempts at addressing the problem consisted mostly of changing the wording in a few Book of Mormon passages from “white and delightsome” to “pure and delightsome.” Numerous systemic problems…
Politics as Religious Conviction
by Johnny Townsend The religious right is ramping up for a modern-day crusade. That’s not a metaphor. Racially motivated killings are in the news every day. Homophobic and transphobic murders are committed regularly. Poor men and women are forced to work in conditions that will kill a significant portion of…
HEY APOLOGISTS! This is how you resurrect a parrot!
by Farraday Apologists, we have to face facts. The Mormon Church is a dead parrot. Everything the critics say is basically true. Your excuses do not work. But what can you do? Your family is in the church, so you can’t leave. And you are an idealist: you really want…