Fantasy Mormon Church

[_Kishkumen]

My Fantasy Mormon Church would bring back things like Road Shows and intra-stake sports competitions. It would encourage the individuality of wards.

I would do away with the horrible carbon copy ward and stake house architecture we have and encourage different areas to build churches that reflected both Mormonism and the local culture. No carpeting would be allowed on any wall.

White shirts and ties would be the only forbidden clothing.

Only one meeting on Sunday, which would start with a variety of different Sunday School classes one could attend and end with a quick general meeting for announcements and sacrament.

The culture would be so accepting of diversity that one could get up and say "I don't really agree with most of what we believe but I like hanging out with you people" and he/she would get a standing ovation for the comment.

All missions would be service oriented.

Women would be eligible to any office that men held.

I think I am going to steal these great ideas for my Fantasy Mormon Church, Fence Sitter!

[_Kishkumen]

Wisdom From The Best Books

In my Fantasy Mormon Church, the best books are the best books, without some silly restriction to LDS books approved by some committee. The world is full of great literature from many cultures, in many languages, and covering every conceivable subject.

If I can read a book that teaches me how to improve my intimacy with my spouse, is that not a valuable book?

If I can read a Buddhist book that helps me be a better person, is that not a great book?

My Fantasy Mormon Church fully embraces the idea of human progress, not in dogmatically insisting that we represent the realization of progress, or in explaining in minute detail what that progress will be according to our own faulty vision, but as an aspiration to make ourselves better people so that we both experience joy and contribute to the joy of others. Or at the very least, make life more bearable for ourselves and others.

Knowledge really helps in that quest, I think. And the kind of person who defines the best books narrowly does not really believe in human progress. Rather, that person is arguably insuring that there will be no progress.

[_Kishkumen]

Tithing

The LDS Church once had and then abandoned the right idea. One tenth of one's increase. Not one tenth of one's overall income. Of course, the LDS Church came up in a different age, when having lots of property to house huge congregations was important. The LDS Church developed a huge bureaucracy that had to be supported.

My Fantasy Mormon Church does not have massive properties, giant buildings, and a large bureaucracy. We meet where we can until, over time, we can afford a small, tasteful, and to borrow one of Fence Sitter's great ideas, non-cookie-cutter building.

A full tithe of my Fantasy Mormon Church's funds will go to humanitarian aid to non-members. Other funds will go to help members. The rest of the money will go to the barebones necessities of running a very spare organization. One of the most important expenditures will be to hire OUTSIDE BOOKKEEPERS who will PUBLISH THE FULL FINANCES OF THE CHURCH FOR EVERY MEMBER.

We will truly be able to say that there is no paid ministry, because my Fantasy Mormon Church will not be governed by a priesthood hierarchy in which some people are really important and need to be given big salaries. If my Fantasy Mormon Church were to be run like any kind of corporation, it would probably be an EMPLOYEE OWNED CORPORATION.

[_Kishkumen]

Authority and Families

In my Fantasy Mormon Church, there are no worthiness interviews, i.e. chances for people to lie about wanking or how much tithing they pay in order to get into the temple. And, there certainly won't be private interviews of children by adult males. My Fantasy Mormon Church is truly family based in that religious activities up to and including baptism and confirmation take place according to the decision of the family. Children are neither interviewed nor given the priesthood until they reach the age of 18.

In my Fantasy Mormon Church there are two important priesthoods: one belongs to the family, and one belongs to the community. In the family, the parents co-preside and do whatever they feel they need to do for the family within the family. They can bless as they like, dedicate as they like, bless and pass the sacrament as they like, etc. The congregational priesthood involves rituals that impact or occur within the community as a whole. Parents prepare their children to be baptized, and then baptism and confirmation are witnessed in the congregation, for the child to join the congregation.

Because the focus of church meetings is worship, discussion, and socializing, there is no need for certain people to devote so much time to the congregation that they leave their families to be 20-hour-a-week or more church workers.

[Guest]

Science

My Fantasy Mormon Church embraces science. Anyone who is not comfortable with the methodology of science and has to be vociferous and cantankerous about it better make their own Fantasy Mormon Church to attend because mine fully embraces the methodology of science.

Now, some may ask, "How can you have a church that worships God and uses all of these old-fashioned silly scriptures and rituals if you really embrace science?"

Well, I am pretty damn flexible. I am not a real bearded man in the clouds God believer, so I don't see what all the hubbub is about. I am also one of those people who believes that human beings cannot avoid being irrational altogether. At best they should seek decent, aspirational irrationality (true love, selflessness, etc.) and reject harmful irrationality (racial hierarchies, God punishing gays, etc.).

In my Fantasy Mormon Church you will never be asked to affirm your belief that so-and-so is a prophet, that the Book of Mormon is the word of God, or that God has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man's. My Fantasy Mormon Church is most definitely not about going around to proclaim testimonies about things we don't really know. There will be no testimony meetings in which we get up and drone about the "church" being "true" or so and so being a "prophet of God."

In my view, the problem is not that one might believe those things so much as the ritualized repetition of simplistic statements having a stultifying effect on the human mind and spirit.

[Guest]

Seriously Spiritual?

Now, with all of this loosey-gooseyness, you might ask yourself, "Why have a Fantasy Mormon Church at all, Kishkumen?" Why not just have a nice social club and charge set dues? You can't expect this to be at all spiritual, so what's the point?

I disagree with such a view. My Fantasy Mormon Church holds that there is something cool in Mormonism that is worth perpetuating. Sure, it has lots of bad ideas too, and many things have gone wrong in the Mormon community, but I do not agree that Mormonism has played no role in helping to forge some people into really fine individuals of great character. You might say that they were always just great people anyway, or that they didn't really know what Mormonism was "really" about, but I would partly disagree.

So, yes, the LDS Church sanitized its history. It did so because its leader class had to create a deified history for a deified prophet who never actually existed, but upon whose crafted memory the leader class relied to exercise power. But many of the good things Mormons were doing were not necessarily dependent on those misrepresentations. Mormons believed in being honest, true, benevolent, and all of these other excellent things, and it does not really matter whether Joseph Smith lived up to them or not.

In some ways the blind illusions of Mormonism served its members well. Now people have to see that the good parts of what they were being encouraged to embrace and practice were awesome whether Joseph Smith was a decent person or not. Letting go of Joseph Smith as a divine figure is to let go of the lies, and yet to choose to re-embrace the good things about the Mormon tradition.

One of the most marvelous things about Mormonism, particularly if you went to the temple, is that it enjoined upon you the task of seeking out truth, wherever you could find it. So many of us went out on that hunt for truth. Sure, maybe we were just curious to begin with, but it can also be the case that we were pushed a little more because we thought there was a real purpose to gaining that truth. That purpose was to realize our great potential.

Now, Mormonism is not alone in these possessing these qualities. Sure, a person can always go to other fine traditions to discover great things. On the other hand, if Mormonism is your tradition, but you don't care for the LDS Church, it might be worth considering your freedom to be a Mormon in the way you valued it outside of the LDS Church. This might actually be a good thing, and it will not require you to believe Joe Smith is mingling with gods to plan for his brethren or to buy all of his whoppers like gold plates in the hill.

So, making your own Fantasy Mormon Church can be a great exercise. I hope that someday people start actually realizing such plans and making the Mormon tradition their own. I think one reason people get stuck in ex-Mormon mode is that they are still in a sense very Mormon but they don't know exactly what to do with that. Knowing all of Joseph Smith's problems and fixating on all of the bad parts of the LDS experience makes it all the more difficult. Many of us regularly admit that there were all of these cool things about being Mormon, and we might still be if it were not for x, y, or z.

What would happen if people were to say, "To hell with Joseph Smith, I am a better Mormon than he ever was"? What if people were to say, "I want to worship in a Mormon way, but I am done with the LDS Church, so I will do as I like with like minded Mormons"? Some people are already doing it in following Denver Snuffer's movement. I am imagining my Fantasy Mormon Church because I don't want to replace a divine Joseph Smith with charismatic leadership a la Smith in Denver Snuffer. In my Fantasy Mormon Church there would be no charismatic leaders of such a kind.

It is at the very least fun to muse about this.

[_Kishkumen]

Yes, Seriously Spiritual

Having jettisoned the strictures of a priesthood hierarchy that tells you where to stand and when to laugh, you and your fellow Fantasy Mormons will have a lot more freedom to think about what makes you a spiritual person and how you will exercise those muscles. Will you meditate? Will you do the Jesus Prayer? Will you commune with nature one sunny Sunday morning on a mountainside instead of going to church? Will you contemplate an important scientific discovery or the beauty of a complex mathematical formula?

So much about being spiritual is the reverence you bring to an activity. Just because you are not repeating the wrote activities the Brethren prescribe does not mean that what you are doing is not serious, worthwhile, and salutary. Your Fantasy Mormon Church could do the things you and your fellow congregants find uplifting. That may not include standing up one Sunday a month to say, "I know the Church is true. I know that Joseph Smith was a prophet. I know that President Monson is a living prophet." On the other hand, it may include doing some of the usual Mormon rituals, but with a new attitude and understanding.

The choices would be yours, made in conjunction with others of like mind.

But my point here is that you can and probably would be well served to leave behind the old LDS disdain for other religious groups and practices that came along with the only true church idea. Part of the casual cultural training in "Only True Churchism" was "Other Church Stupidism" or "Other Spiritual Practice Dumbism." That can make it tough to take other things seriously, even after you have set LDS Mormonism aside. It can also be the case that people feel that setting aside LDS Mormonism, because it is not, after all, the Only True Church, includes setting aside Mormonism altogether as an irredeemably terrible thing in every possible way.

I respect everyone making the best choices for themselves, of course. But it is not absolutely necessary, I don't think, for everyone to make the same "superior" choice of rejecting Mormonism altogether. And I think it would be a good idea for a number of people, if they found healthier ways of being Mormon outside of the LDS Church.

[_Kishkumen]

Word of Wisdom

Be healthy. Eat good food. Exercise wisdom and moderation in all things. You will realize the benefits of those good choices and enjoy a comparatively better life. If you abuse yourself, you will suffer for it. This is the Word of Wisdom of my Fantasy Mormon Church. It is based on D&C 89, but it does not carry the obligation to follow outdated health advice or saddle you with the old baggage of dead abstinence movements.

[_Kishkumen]

History and Memory

One of the reasons I advocate your own Fantasy Mormon Church instead of other things, which are also perfectly wonderful, is that, if you are or were a member of the LDS Church, you have a strong bond to that. Do with it as you will, but it can be something that you continue consciously to maintain as a part of your life. I think here of the example of Tom Kimball. Recently Tom volunteered as a worker in the Kirtland Temple. Tom is an atheist (I believe). He was before he left the LDS Church. He would teach Elders' Quorum as an known atheist. He did not hide his views from his leaders.

When I read Tom's accounts of his experiences in the Kirtland Temple, it is obvious that this was a kind of spiritual experience for him, and it was very moving material to read.

Like Tom, I have deep Mormon roots, and they mean a heck of a lot to me. For me being Mormon is not about President Monson as much as it is about my own memories, my family stories, and my own thoughts and experiences. We all have the freedom, within certain inevitable limits, to think as we please, to cherish what we like. For those who hold on to the good things about their Mormonism, it is possible, I think, to make peace with it and grow with it. In the future some people may choose to get together with other, similar Mormons, and form communities. Mormon communities. As Mormon communities, these groups will continue to commemorate and discuss Mormon history and to follow Mormon traditions.

The difference is that they will not be constrained in how they do this by orders coming from the COB.

[Guest]