I hope all of you in Florida and Texas and other disaster-stricken regions are safe today! It is time to take climate change seriously. Runtu’s daughter and son-in-law’s home was flooded by Hurricane Harvey and they didn’t have flood insurance — he has set up a fund for them here….
A Mormon Liar’s Wild Ride: “Through His Eyes and Lies” by C. L. Jackson
Through His Eyes and Lies is not an ex-Mormon novel or an anti-Mormon novel. It’s kind of a Mormon-adjacent novel. Though the majority of the book’s events take place in Provo, Utah and religion does play a role in the story that unfolds, Mormonism itself is more the setting than…
Sunday in Outer Blogness: Intolerance edition!
You may have noticed that there have been some racial tensions in the United States lately. Also the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has traditionally had some problems with racism (see this helpful infographic). And, yes, there’s racism in the Book of Mormon: This scripture is important because…
What the CoJCoL-dS Offers: Retro Morals
In the second episode of this series, I claimed that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints offers a lot of nothing — but then in the most recent installment I mentioned a substantial selling point: And the church will be right there to constantly pat you on the…
Trump and the Rise of the Uninformed Expert
I got some hate mail last Thursday. It was a voicemail, actually, from an old friend. He said he’s cutting his ties to us because of my husband Mark’s recent suggestion that Syrian refugees be admitted into our country. Boasting an extensive knowledge of Islam (he owns a Quran), this…
Sunday in Outer Blogness: **edited: forgot to add a title edition, lol
I guess it’s not Mormon news, but various Mormons had a lot to say about the recent racist violence in Charlottesville — and about racism within Mormonism. Good for the CoJCoL-dS for specifically calling out racism — something Trump couldn’t bring himself to do. I wish the atheist movement were…
My most bizarre interfaith interaction
This is something that happened to me when I was about 11 years old, and it has stuck with me all these years because it was just so dang weird. As you can tell from the title, I do not mean to imply that this is at all typical of…
Strategies of the CoJCoL-dS: The whys and hows of polarization
Any path that bills itself as the one true path for everyone is bound to lead to judgement. Naturally the path will be better suited to some people than to others, and — if it’s what everyone is supposed to be doing — that leads to the conclusion that those…
The Mormon Way to Get Rich
Thanks to some of my believing Mormon friends, the blog post, “Will Your Child be Rich or Poor? 15 Poverty Habits Parents Teach their Children,” has been hovering on my radar, popping up repeatedly in my Facebook feed and even landing in my inbox via mass email. When I finally…
Sunday in Outer Blogness: Extreme Parenting Edition!
By now you’ve probably heard the story about the Mormon family who dumped their son in Bryce Canyon when he didn’t want to serve a mission — and about the BYUI professor who got fired for posting pro-LGBT remarks on Facebook. By Common Consent’s new publishing house looks like it’s…