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Dear brother and/or sister
Posted: Tue Jul 29, 2025 3:27 pm
by drumdude
There’s something about the incredibly impersonal effect of the form letter that really exemplifies life in the LDS church.
Can you imagine an afterlife that is this similarly bureaucratic and dull?
I would wish I could kill myself to escape Mormon heaven.
Re: Dear brother and/or sister
Posted: Tue Jul 29, 2025 4:11 pm
by Moksha
drumdude wrote: ↑Tue Jul 29, 2025 3:27 pm
I would wish I could kill myself to escape Mormon heaven.
Perhaps a form letter might help.
Re: Dear brother and/or sister
Posted: Tue Jul 29, 2025 4:14 pm
by huckelberry
drumdude wrote: ↑Tue Jul 29, 2025 3:27 pm
There’s something about the incredibly impersonal effect of the form letter that really exemplifies life in the LDS church.
Can you imagine an afterlife that is this similarly bureaucratic and dull?
I would wish I could kill myself to escape Mormon heaven.
Are there some sort of communications being done this way? Sorry if I am not at all familiar with what you are referring to.
Hmm now I see your image and explanation Drumdude, it was somehow not visible when I first read your post.
Re: Dear brother and/or sister
Posted: Tue Jul 29, 2025 4:42 pm
by Doctor Steuss
There's something incredibly Mormon-coded about going through the trouble of adding unnecessary words to sentences and phrases, but not going through the trouble of spell-checking.
Re: Dear brother and/or sister
Posted: Tue Jul 29, 2025 4:58 pm
by I Have Questions
drumdude wrote: ↑Tue Jul 29, 2025 3:27 pm
There’s something about the incredibly impersonal effect of the form letter that really exemplifies life in the LDS church.
Can you imagine an afterlife that is this similarly bureaucratic and dull?
I would wish I could kill myself to escape Mormon heaven.
So the assumption is that you stopped attending Church because you chose to be offended by someone. Good grief. The ‘Dear Brother and/or Sister’ makes it completely impersonal. They do not know to whom they are writing. So how do they know that the recipients had smiling faces when they attended, and had a good knowledge of the gospel?
But the biggest problem is that the letter is only from the Bishopric and The Elders Quorum Presidency. It’s from the menfolk. The Relief Society Presidency are excluded.
Re: Dear brother and/or sister
Posted: Tue Jul 29, 2025 6:02 pm
by sock puppet
If you haven't been in 15 years, the current bishopric and elders' quorum presidency were not the issue. They weren't in those offices then. Even if the then bishopric and elders' quorum presidency did cause offense and that led to the inactivity, why are the current ones apologizing for themselves?
Re: Dear brother and/or sister
Posted: Tue Jul 29, 2025 10:41 pm
by Physics Guy
Doctor Steuss wrote: ↑Tue Jul 29, 2025 4:42 pm
There's something incredibly Mormon-coded about going through the trouble of adding unnecessary words to sentences and phrases, but not going through the trouble of spell-checking.
Yeah, “a guide with which we are to use”, confusing “council” and “counsel”, and worshipping “diety”. It’s all trying to sound formal, but not trying hard enough to succeed.
Maybe I’m just being snobbish, but I like to think I’d be less critical of a more down-to-earth letter. Is this letter’s style really typically Mormon? “I don’t need spellcheck because I’m a bishop”?
Re: Dear brother and/or sister
Posted: Tue Jul 29, 2025 11:26 pm
by Marcus
The op letter really goes overboard in bad grammar, but, I'd still have to say that yes, it's what a Mormon bishop might proffer.
I am telling on myself a bit with this, but my father was a bishop my entire youth, and also during that time, he completed his doctorate. Years later, he 'gifted' me the rough drafts and notes, I suppose for history's sake. I started looking through them, and realized that it was my mother, a SAHM who typed every word of his dissertation, who rendered his work presentable. I recall her spending hours daily typing (yes, on a typewriter, NOT a PC or even a word processor), and now I had the evidence showing how she took his execrable spelling, his abominable grammar, his inability to write a coherent paragraph let alone a meaningful sentence, combined with his utterly boring style, and turned it into an extremely well written dissertation, absolutely worthy of a Ph.D. She even cleaned up his data presentation somehow.
My mother deserved that Ph.D.. My mother, who didn't go to college because at the time, Mormon women married young, had many children, didn't work, and used their abilities and brains to make their husbands look good. Later in life, my mom stopped rewriting his stuff (maybe out of sheer exhaustion-I don't know for sure, she passed away decades ago), but he continued to think he wrote well! Go figure.
Clearly, the bishop who write the op didn't have the foresight to marry well enough that he could exploit a woman so that he didn't look like such an idiot. On a somewhat related note, my father has recently expressed his disappointment in me. Not that I didn't succeed academically and in my career (I am a professor at an Ivy League, for god's sake!!!), but because I no longer praise his work, his religion, nor his 'piousness' any more. He chalks it up to me succumbing to satan's influence and leaving his church, because he is positive he is still god's gift to this planet. No mere woman, not even the one with the brains her mother gave her, is going to shake his lds faith in that.
Re: Dear brother and/or sister
Posted: Tue Jul 29, 2025 11:30 pm
by msnobody
Shouldn’t that read counsel of the Prophets?
I suppose it could be seen as a nice gesture.
Re: Dear brother and/or sister
Posted: Wed Jul 30, 2025 10:06 am
by I Have Questions
Marcus wrote: ↑Tue Jul 29, 2025 11:26 pm
The op letter really goes overboard in bad grammar, but, I'd still have to say that yes, it's what a Mormon bishop might proffer.
I am telling on myself a bit with this, but my father was a bishop my entire youth, and also during that time, he completed his doctorate. Years later, he 'gifted' me the rough drafts and notes, I suppose for history's sake. I started looking through them, and realized that it was my mother, a SAHM who typed every word of his dissertation, who rendered his work presentable. I recall her spending hours daily typing (yes, on a typewriter, NOT a PC or even a word processor), and now I had the evidence showing how she took his execrable spelling, his abominable grammar, his inability to write a coherent paragraph let alone a meaningful sentence, combined with his utterly boring style, and turned it into an extremely well written dissertation, absolutely worthy of a Ph.D. She even cleaned up his data presentation somehow.
My mother deserved that Ph.D.. My mother, who didn't go to college because at the time, Mormon women married young, had many children, didn't work, and used their abilities and brains to make their husbands look good. Later in life, my mom stopped rewriting his stuff (maybe out of sheer exhaustion-I don't know for sure, she passed away decades ago), but he continued to think he wrote well! Go figure.
Clearly, the bishop who write the op didn't have the foresight to marry well enough that he could exploit a woman so that he didn't look like such an idiot. On a somewhat related note, my father has recently expressed his disappointment in me. Not that I didn't succeed academically and in my career (I am a professor at an Ivy League, for god's sake!!!), but because I no longer praise his work, his religion, nor his 'piousness' any more. He chalks it up to me succumbing to satan's influence and leaving his church, because he is positive he is still god's gift to this planet. No mere woman, not even the one with the brains her mother gave her, is going to shake his LDS faith in that.
The SLC LDS Church contains a higher concentration of male, misogynistic, pompous, arrogant, condescending, jerks than any other walk of life that I’ve come across. It certainly facilitates and rewards men who want to act that way.