Fantasy Mormon Church

[_RockSlider]

Kishkumen,

So you are still a theist?

[_SteelHead]

In my fantasy Mormon church all clergy is professionally trained and paid.

[_Wonhyo]

In my Fantasy Mormon Church, things like teaching people how to engage in meaningful service would be important. Missionary work would be about personal growth, getting out of one's comfort zone in service of others, not being driven by an ulterior motive to convert. Missionary work should be personally rewarding.

Amen, Water Dog!

[_Wonhyo]

In my fantasy Mormon Church, there would be few, if any, utterances of the misused words “worthy” and “worthiness”.

Also, the three-hour meeting block on Sunday would be pared down.

And we’d cool it with the cultural practice (which manifests itself even in Church curicula) of leader veneration.

[_Kishkumen]

Because salvation is a state of being, it's about becoming a certain type of person, a kind of jedi knight, not about getting to a certain destination. And this is where the works come in. It's not about arbitrary busy work, checking off silly boxes, but work in the sense of personal change. We don't buy our way into heaven with busy work. We can't buy our way into heaven at all, it's not a place. We either become a godly, Christ-like person, conquer the natural man and become masters of this human condition, or we don't.

Framed in this way, the atonement, and revelation, is spiritual empowerment. Whether Christ and the Spirit are literally real, with ESP-like data transfers, or these are just concepts which represent the idea of inter-generational transfers of human knowledge, I don't think that distinction necessarily matters. Whatever a prophet is or has ever been, the idea is for everybody to be a prophet. The goal should be to attain a kind of spiritual competence. Confidence in one's own ability to obtain answers, possess objective truth, etc. My fantasy church would delve into these topics, and consider spirituality from many aspects, including other religions and classical philosophy. I think we can and should learn from others.

In my Fantasy Mormon Church, things like teaching people how to engage in meaningful service would be important. Missionary work would be about personal growth, getting out of one's comfort zone in service of others, not being driven by an ulterior motive to convert. Missionary work should be personally rewarding.

Great thoughts, Water Dog! I like these ideas a lot. More things for me to pilfer for my own Fantasy Mormon Church.

[_Kishkumen]

Kishkumen,

So you are still a theist?

I would call myself more of a pantheist.

[_Kishkumen]

In my fantasy Mormon church all clergy is professionally trained and paid.

Hehehe.

Well, that certainly cuts down on the bad sermons, ideally!

[_Kishkumen]

In my fantasy Mormon Church, there would be few, if any, utterances of the misused words “worthy” and “worthiness”.

Also, the three-hour meeting block on Sunday would be pared down.

And we’d cool it with the cultural practice (which manifests itself even in Church curicula) of leader veneration.

Amen on all those ideas, Wonhyo.

[_RockSlider]

I don't know what this is or would be, but I'd focus on secular humanism/morality

[_Kishkumen]

I don't know what this is or would be, but I'd focus on secular humanism/morality

Humanism and morality are great things to focus on!