I have a question for you believing Mormons out there (there are some of you who read this, right??? I hope). First, some exposition: With one (brilliant) exception (me), my immediate family members are all active Mormons. They are, however, split pretty much down the middle: my mother and sisters…
Hellmut’s Deconversion
I have been miserable at Church ever since my mission. I still couldn’t get out because I had to act on my testimony even though I experienced Church as toxic every Sunday. To me, the mission experience was dehumanizing and sacrilegious reducing converts to trophies and missionaries to tools. Any…
Power and Morality
The Jesuit magazine America features an essay by Cathleen Kaveny, which discusses the concept of inherent evil and it’s political implications. This passage caught my attention: Some Catholic commentators have claimed that the certainty we have about the wrongfulness of intrinsically evil acts means that we should give their prevention…
The Divine Institution of Marriage: A Rebuttal
On August 13, 2008, the Mormon church released a statement titled The Divine Institution of Marriage, explaining the reasons for its support of Proposition 8. The church’s statement is well-written and comprehensive, and it seems to invite open, rational discussion on the issue. However, many of its arguments are flawed….
We Are a Minority
If you happen to live outside of Deseret and the colonies, a certain degree of social isolation is unavoidable for Mormons. Our Mormon experience sets us apart from our peers and our families. Mormons all over the world are members of a tiny minority that has to rely on the…
“Why do you need to talk about ‘problems in the church’ with your spouse?”
Hellmut asked me to post this. It’s from a recent thread on FLAK, on the topic of marriage. I wrote: I attribute my divorce squarely to the church. Simply because the church forbade us from talking about the one topic we needed to talk about (problems in the church). If…
Sunday in Outer Blogness: Prop. 8 Edition!
My apologies to those who are annoyed that Mormon-interest blogspace has turned into an “All proposition 8, all the time” zone. Don’t worry — the election will be over soon. (Hüffenhardt is already ready to celebrate.) Yet, between now and then, I’ll probably write one more article about it. Yes,…
Sartre’s Spirit World
Wry Catcher’s question whether the notion of spirit world addiction reminded me of Jean Paul Sartre’s Les Jeux Sont Faits, which is particularly interesting to Mormons because Sartre’s description of the afterlife happens to coincide with commonly held notions of the spirit world. Les Jeux Sont Faits is a wonderful…
Forever family freak-show (conclusion of TW)
On Sunday morning, Rex and I went out to brunch with those people who weren’t going to church. Mom and Richard had been planning to visit the various local Christian churches that had LDS outreach ministries, but at the last minute the adorable baby motivated them to change their plans…
Sunday Around Outer Blogness
We really need to set up a “sideblog” around here to highlight interesting posts around our blogroll… For example, if we had a sideblog, here are a few posts I might highlight: Check out John R.’s Church Visit, in which he Is Taught to Show Love for Gays by Denying…