When my husband went through a faith transition, in the Mormon church we were each raised in, we lost friends and a sense of community. Many of the people we had developed close relationships with pulled back from us. Some of our family members struggled to navigate this unexpected change…
A Desire to Help
I have heard hundreds of members of the LDS Church, when they encounter someone who has left the church who is now critical of the church, say, “You can leave the Church, but you can’t leave it alone” or, more confrontationally, “Why can’t you leave the Church and just leave…
Jesus Repositioned
In the 1970’s for reasons yet unexplained the Mormon Church suddenly found itself under scrutiny by mainline Protestant denominations. The basic charge was that the Mormon religion is a non-Christian cult. The Mormon’s response was to reposition Jesus in the Mormon display case. There emerged a Jesus consciousness that was…
Sunday in Outer Blogness: Summer Fun Edition!
This past week we’ve celebrated two of the most favorite holidays on the exmo calendar: Pie–N-Beer Day (a.k.a. Pioneer Day) and Mass Resignation Day!! Regarding all the resignations: don’t worry, the CoJCoL-dS has an awesome plan: When asked how they planned to cope with the fact that as many as…
Sunday in Outer Blogness: Mormon activists edition!
What do those Mormon progressives want? Actually, it’s not all that surprising. Kate Kelly has stopped encouraging women to keep banging their heads against the church door (surprise: it actually feels a lot better when you stop). Sorry to discourage all the women who care about dragging the CoJCoL-dS into…
Sunday in Outer Blogness: Double-standards edition!
To the surprise of probably no one, we learned this past week that a male Mormon celebrity can pose clad more scantily than a female Mormon celebrity — without getting the same modesty-shaming. But there was an even more unpleasant display of how different types of Mormons get to follow…
Sunday in Outer Blogness: Gay marriage persecution edition!
It’s been more than a week since gay marriage has been the law of the land in the US, and all of the old rifts have been opening up and pouring all over the Interwebs: But it really struck me when members of my own family start making posts about…
Sunday in Outer Blogness: Love Wins edition!
Probably a lot of you had this experience the other day: I know I did. Yes, the SCOTUS has ruled that the United States of America has joined the list of countries where marriage equality is the law of the land. And there was much rejoicing!! Also on social media,…
Sunday in Outer Blogness: More race edition!!
The discussion of the pool party incident wasn’t even done when another racism horror story arrived on the scene. The recent tragedy in Charleston isn’t about Mormonism, but… Mormonism has such a strong historical connection with American racism that naturally we’ve been talking about it this past week. In other…
Obligatory Violence and the Book of Mormon
Like so many people, I have spent the past two days convulsed with grief and horror at the events in Charleston. Also shame: America’s latest accused mass murderer claimed he had to kill black people because they “rape our women,” and it’s as repugnant to me that anyone would murder…