DiscussMormonism.com

The Mormon Church, the Republican Party at prayer, wants to run with the fox and bay with the hounds.

The Mormon Church of the 19th century had a tradition of Christian socialism and a pioneering spirit that created much of the best that can still be seen in the Great Basin of the American West. These and many more traditions were obliterated by persecution, indeed the United States declared war on Mormon culture and the feds won.

I have benefited personally by the ministrations of church leaders, truly Christian acts that went far beyond what I had any right to expect. But long ago, Fawn Mckay Brodie, arguably the most famous Mormon historian, noted just prior to her death, that the Mormon Church would begin to draw to its banner a hugely disproportionate number of radical conservatives.

She said that even when she spoke, in the early 1980s, "birds of a feather" were indeed f l ocking together. Now, the story is complete. The Mormon Church is the most retrograde ecclesiastical body in the United States -- 100 years dated on civil rights for African-Americans (indeed, worldwide), staunchly opposed to First Amendment freedoms of speech and the press (see, e.g., Main Street Plaza, with all its plastic and plaster of paris). The Mormon Church led the powerful opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment that would have allowed women the full civic participation they obviously deserve and opposed the ordination of women to the clergy, since obviously only men can talk to God. Scores of members were excommunicated for writing true history, not the party line, a good example of inverse Darwinism, the survival of the least fit. And now Mormons have largely led and financed a war to deny marriage between gay and lesbian brothers and sisters. For me, this is not the last straw. Indeed, it is the two-by-four. My spine, devastated by surgeries, can take no more.

You have broken my heart.

Ed Firmage is the Samuel D. Thurman Professor of Law, emeritus, at the University of Utah College of Law.

Sethbag wrote:I wouldn't agree that the Mormon church is the most retrograde. I mean, come on, there's the Westboro Baptist Church, for example. And there are some born-again Christian churches that are probably even more rabid than the Mormons when it comes to gays and whatnot.

Ever heard of "Hell Houses"? You won't see a Mormon-staged Hell House.

Ray A wrote:staunchly opposed to First Amendment freedoms of speech and the press (see, e.g., Main Street Plaza, with all its plastic and plaster of paris).

Ray A wrote:According to Ed Firmage:

The Mormon Church, the Republican Party at prayer, wants to run with the fox and bay with the hounds.

The Mormon Church of the 19th century had a tradition of Christian socialism and a pioneering spirit that created much of the best that can still be seen in the Great Basin of the American West. These and many more traditions were obliterated by persecution, indeed the United States declared war on Mormon culture and the feds won.

I have benefited personally by the ministrations of church leaders, truly Christian acts that went far beyond what I had any right to expect. But long ago, Fawn Mckay Brodie, arguably the most famous Mormon historian, noted just prior to her death, that the Mormon Church would begin to draw to its banner a hugely disproportionate number of radical conservatives.

She said that even when she spoke, in the early 1980s, "birds of a feather" were indeed f l ocking together. Now, the story is complete. The Mormon Church is the most retrograde ecclesiastical body in the United States -- 100 years dated on civil rights for African-Americans (indeed, worldwide), staunchly opposed to First Amendment freedoms of speech and the press (see, e.g., Main Street Plaza, with all its plastic and plaster of paris). The Mormon Church led the powerful opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment that would have allowed women the full civic participation they obviously deserve and opposed the ordination of women to the clergy, since obviously only men can talk to God. Scores of members were excommunicated for writing true history, not the party line, a good example of inverse Darwinism, the survival of the least fit. And now Mormons have largely led and financed a war to deny marriage between gay and lesbian brothers and sisters. For me, this is not the last straw. Indeed, it is the two-by-four. My spine, devastated by surgeries, can take no more.

You have broken my heart.

Ed Firmage is the Samuel D. Thurman Professor of Law, emeritus, at the University of Utah College of Law.

Ray A wrote:According to Ed Firmage:

The Mormon Church, the Republican Party at prayer, wants to run with the fox and bay with the hounds.

The Mormon Church of the 19th century had a tradition of Christian socialism and a pioneering spirit that created much of the best that can still be seen in the Great Basin of the American West. These and many more traditions were obliterated by persecution, indeed the United States declared war on Mormon culture and the feds won.

But long ago, Fawn Mckay Brodie, arguably the most famous Mormon historian, noted just prior to her death, that the Mormon Church would begin to draw to its banner a hugely disproportionate number of radical conservatives.

She said that even when she spoke, in the early 1980s, "birds of a feather" were indeed f l ocking together. Now, the story is complete. The Mormon Church is the most retrograde ecclesiastical body in the United States -- 100 years dated on civil rights for African-Americans (indeed, worldwide), staunchly opposed to First Amendment freedoms of speech and the press (see, e.g., Main Street Plaza, with all its plastic and plaster of paris). The Mormon Church led the powerful opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment that would have allowed women the full civic participation they obviously deserve and opposed the ordination of women to the clergy, since obviously only men can talk to God. Scores of members were excommunicated for writing true history, not the party line, a good example of inverse Darwinism, the survival of the least fit. And now Mormons have largely led and financed a war to deny marriage between gay and lesbian brothers and sisters.

For me, this is not the last straw. Indeed, it is the two-by-four. My spine, devastated by surgeries, can take no more.

You have broken my heart.

And if the time comes that the voice of the people doth choose iniquity, then is the time that the judgments of God will come upon you; yea, then is the time he will visit you with great destruction even as he has hitherto visited this land.

Wheat wrote: And thank goodness there is still at least one group of stalwarts in America willing to take a courageous stand against officially normalized immorality.

You can take the people out of Mormonism, but you can't take Mormonism out of the people. Or so say 18 "inactive" Mormons profiled here, who grew up in the church and left it during adulthood yet still wrestle with their Mormon heritage. Interviewer and editor Ure, an inactive Mormon himself, negotiates his own place outside the tradition during the course of these engaging conversations. A three-time Utah governor admits his difficulties in accepting the Book of Mormon as literally true, while a divorced woman speaking on condition of anonymity traces her defection to her realization that the Mormon theology of eternal families left little room for the divorced. Some of those interviewed gradually, and almost painlessly, drifted away, while others tried mightily to conform to the religion's expectations (one gay man recounts enduring electroshock therapy to "cure" his sexual orientation in the early 1970s, a procedure that is no longer recommended by the LDS Church). While some of the defectors' complaints involve specifically Mormon issues, such as the veracity of the Joseph Smith story, many outside the Mormon tradition will be able to identify with more general laments, such as the strict religion's exclusivity and insularity and the guilt that many feel when they fall short of their culture's expectations.