Should Mopologists "listen carefully to those who leave the Church"?
Posted: Tue Jun 09, 2026 5:24 pm
Quite an astonishing post appeared recently on "SeN." Depending on how you want to read it, it's either the most disingenuous thing that the Afore has ever written, or it is a colossal watershed moment in the history of Mopologetics. The impetus for the post appears to be a book that virtually none of them has actually read--it's called Torn: Why People We Love are Leaving the Church and What We Can Learn from Them. The book has already garnered negative reviews at the "Interpreter" blog and from Ralph "The Doink" Hancock, which is unsurprising, because the book (apparently--full disclosure: I haven't read it either) is sympathetic towards the views of people who leave the LDS Church.
What's peculiar, though, is this remark from the Afore:
And some of the remarks from Allen Wyatt and "The Doink" are instructive:
Meanwhile, Hancock adopts a more arrogant stance:
In a sense, though, this is a massive victory for enemies of the Church. The more the Mopologists and those like them continue to dig in their heels, the more they will alienate people and thus accelerate the exit of more people from the Church's ranks. It's yet another case of stubbornness coming back to bite them on the ass.
In the end, then, I'm going to have to vote for "disingenuousness" on this one, and not a watershed moment after all. Perhaps a moment of retrenchment, though, and yet another opportunity for the Mopologists to drop the mask of "niceness" and show their true colors.
What's peculiar, though, is this remark from the Afore:
So, obviously, the seriousness is undermined at the outset thanks to the lengthy, passive-aggressive disclaimer, but the final bit of this is, frankly, shocking and very hard to believe. To clarify: I *do* believe that the Mopologists genuinely think that it's worthwhile to "listen carefully to those who leave the Church," but there is no way that they would do this in the spirit of "kindness" or "charity." That seems to be either an outright falsehood or Fantasyland-style wishful thinking. Instead, the Mopologists want to "listen carefully to those who leave the Church" so that they can go into Attack Mode: showing the whole world how utterly wrong the leave-takers' views are, how evil they are, how stupid/incompetent/ugly/unclean/amoral/etc. they are. There is not one iota of evidence that the Mopologists have ever, in half a century, lifted a single finger in the spirit of treating apostates "kindly and with charity." (They can feel free to supply just *ONE* example, if this is what they believe.)So that I’m not misunderstood — though, realistically, not being misunderstood is an Impossible Dream for me, since I’m obsessively monitored and critiqued by a small and anonymous online cabal for whom misunderstanding me daily appears to be a duty modeled on George Orwell’s Two Minutes Hate — I want to state, explicitly, that I believe that we should listen carefully to those who leave the Church, and that we should treat them kindly and with charity.
And some of the remarks from Allen Wyatt and "The Doink" are instructive:
So, is there some kind of competition here? Wyatt's entire response frames the issue in terms of hostility--as if granting any credence to the leave-takers will automatically mean that loyal LDS testimonies have less "value." And what does that even mean, anyway--for a testimony to have comparative "value"? ("My testimony is better than yours!") Is this the 4th grade or something? And Wyatt's last point, about "change," is telling as well. His attitude appears to be one of intransigence: "I'll *NEVER* change! Because you're WRONG!!"Allen Wyatt wrote:Years ago, in the distant past when John Dehlin was still a member of the Church, I was at a forum held at UVU. John was one of the forum participants, and was advocating the same kinder, gentler Church that is reflected in Ralph Hancock's comment in the OP.
Eventually the floor was opened to questions, and my question was simple: "Why should the testimony of those who leave be assumed to be of higher value than the testimony of those who stay?" John was not able to provide an answer at that point, nor do I think one could be provided now.
I have not read Torn, but I have read about Torn. To the extent that Jeff Strong suggests that the testimony of those who leave is of more value than the testimony of those who stay, I would find that a fatal flaw in any suggestions of change based on unequal valuation of those testimonies.
Meanwhile, Hancock adopts a more arrogant stance:
The Mopologists have always been "gate-keepers," and have, of course, even gone after faithful Latter-day Saints (such as the Heartlanders and the Transhumanists). Despite what the Afore says, they *don't* seem to see every exit from the Church as a real "tragedy." Instead, they gleefully target those they think should be kicked out.Young’s (and Strong’s) premise is that we must consider those leaving the church to be in the right so that we can learn from them. Any consideration of the possibility that dissidents might be in the wrong and not always necessarily the best judges of their own choices is dismissed at the outset. The dissident or estranged is always perfectly innocent and even wise. Meanwhile, any members who would question the soundness or the rightness of decisions to leave are quickly classified as “country club” false-Christians who are obsessed with “gate-keeping.” Any attempt to understand falling away that fails absolutely to respect the “unique journey” of every individual is dismissed as “transactional” thinking, that is, to a style of belief that links eternal rewards with obedience to law, to meaningful standards of moral agency, and to eternal standards of exalted character.
In a sense, though, this is a massive victory for enemies of the Church. The more the Mopologists and those like them continue to dig in their heels, the more they will alienate people and thus accelerate the exit of more people from the Church's ranks. It's yet another case of stubbornness coming back to bite them on the ass.
In the end, then, I'm going to have to vote for "disingenuousness" on this one, and not a watershed moment after all. Perhaps a moment of retrenchment, though, and yet another opportunity for the Mopologists to drop the mask of "niceness" and show their true colors.
