Joseph Antley's Apostasy from the Church

[_LDSToronto]

I don't think I've ever met a Mormon who wasn't a cafeteria Mormon to some degree or other. Thus, I don't think it's insulting in the least to use that term. I think the church would like non-cafeteria Mormons to exist, but I don't believe they do.

I don't think that the term is inherently insulting, though I have encountered Mormons who use it that way. I just find it redundant.

One term that is popular amongst LDS in my area is Catholic Mormon, and it is meant to be derogatory.

H.

[_zeezrom]

Ant:

I feel bad for my earlier post on this thread. I'm very, very happy to see you post here. Please forgive my little snide remark, made during a time of celebration and light minded play.

I'll get a chance to read your blog after I finish making dinner, cleaning up messes, and do some more dancing with the kids.

Happy New Year,

Zee.

[_zeezrom]

Ant:

I read your blog post and admit that I really liked it. You asked some great questions at the end. Do you plan to follow up with more posts to address and/or explore your questions?

I have a question for you. Say a person believes the nature of God to be vastly different from the God described in Mormonism. Will this person find a place in the system? I suppose I know the answer: you have a place as long as you stay silent. Being quiet in the community is fine when you choose to be silent. But to stay silent because you are told you must, feels entirely different. It feels like your free agency has been removed, ya know?

[_moksha]

All Mormons are cafeteria Mormons.

Some are just more self-aware of this fact than others.

I suppose that's true, but probably more inclusive to all Christians, not just us Mormons.

Excellent point. Progressive Christians view both religion, and the world in general, in a different way than those holding to inerrant teachings of the Bible. The important thing for both set of believers is that their beliefs provide some satisfaction to them.

[_Darth J]

If the global flood did not happen, then the Book of Abraham is not true. (Abraham 1:21-27)

So what you're telling us Professor J, is that God went through this elaborate effort to coordinate passing down an ancient Egyptian papyri through the ages and into a 19th century circus so that a prophet would discover it, but not only was the Egyptian language a smokescreen for some kind of buried code, but the code purported events that never happened, a smokescreen for some other kind of message. We know from the Book of Moses that God can just give a vision of the text he wants and from the D&C that he can tell us straightforwardly what he wants us to know. So the Book of Abraham is not what you'd call getting a bang for your buck. I'm all for buying an onion and scrapping the first couple of layers but this is pushing the envelope.

I have to wonder, if we believe in God and all, what is more likely?

That God would know more than science and tell us what happened, or that God would take this epic detour to communicate, well, not even the prophet apparently knows what he communicated?

Dean Robbers,

I have created the following visual aid to help illustrate what God's purposes would be in the Mopologetic schema you have summarized above:

[_EAllusion]

I think the Noah's ark example is a good one because it illustrates the kind of unorthodoxy that can be accepted.

I'm not sure if "accepted" is the right word. Belief in a non-literal global flood probably more accurately is thought of as tolerated. You can do it without getting in trouble, tough you might be looked down on a little bit, but it also isn't quite on equal footing with the alternative. Belief in a Noahic flood is seen as more authentically faithful. It's comparble to avoiding caffiene vs. not caring about caffiene.

There also is a huge caveat to this that ties into one of the things that is not well-tolerated by the modern LDS Church. If you go around arguing against the global flood and tying belief in it to traditional Church teachings, you could get in trouble if you manage to draw enough attention to yourself. Making the Church or its leaders look bad = trouble for you.

[_Darth J]

All Mormons are cafeteria Mormons.

Some are just more self-aware of this fact than others.

Or they are all just Mormons as they were back in the day. The term cafeteria Mormon is a man-made label.

The term "Mormons" is also a man-made label. Every label is a man-made label.

I really wish Liz hadn't deleted her Cafeteria forum. I had a lengthy post there explaining why I reject the idea that there are "cafeteria Mormons" vs. "non-cafeteria Mormons."

Maybe I'll do my own thread on it tomorrow.

There are just Mormons. Why put labels on people?

Yes, like "Catholic taliban." Why, indeed, put labels on people?

I'll answer my own question: the reason to put labels on people is to identify a group that has common beliefs or practices. Whether or not a given label is accurate as a whole, or accurate as applied to a specific individual, is a separate issue.

In your case, however, the reason you are objecting to labels in this particular instance is your shameless double standard. You do not want labels applied to people whom you perceive as being on your "side." But your illustrious principles run away and hide under the bed when you are talking about "anti-Mormons" or "the Catholic taliban."

[_Darth J]

I don't think I've ever met a Mormon who wasn't a cafeteria Mormon to some degree or other. Thus, I don't think it's insulting in the least to use that term. I think the church would like non-cafeteria Mormons to exist, but I don't believe they do.

I don't think that the term is inherently insulting, though I have encountered Mormons who use it that way. I just find it redundant.

That's a result of the Pharisaical nature of the LDS Church. Having little or nothing of substance to offer in the way of revealing new truths or fresh insights, the Church compensates by providing an endless litany of arbitrary rules to micromanage the lives of its members. For example, how many believing Latter-day Saints do you know who are gardeners? Any who are not are disobeying the inspired counsel of the Bretheren. There is even a primary song about it.

In common usage, however, "cafeteria Mormon" does not refer to the reality that nobody can possibly keep up with the vast corpus of "inspired counsel" that the leaders of the modern LDS Church have promulgated. "Cafeteria Mormon" means members who deliberately practice selective apostasy but still insist they "sustain the Bretheren"---whatever that means (since it apparently doesn't mean believing what they teach or doing what they say).

[_Darth J]

In my personal study, when I think that I can feel the Spirit, I do something very similar that.

But this doesn’t line up with your blog post.

I think it lines up perfectly with my blog post. My knowledge of history and science, my rational mind, the teachings of the prophets, and the inspiration from the Spirit seem to be the perfect combination for deducing personal truth while reading the scriptures.

It's funny how the Spirit seems to confirm that you are free to reject what your rational mind has already determined to be mythology. The problem is that you provide no consistent standard for when to stop applying that analysis to the truth claims of the Church. The only standard you suggest is your self-defined list of what you have decided is "required" to be able to retain the title of a believing Latter-day Saint.

However, your attempt to treat myths taught as fact by the Church as if they are merely deleted scenes on a DVD creates additional theological problems. The Church is supposed to be led by living prophets and apostles who have priesthood keys to be inspired about what to teach. The First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve have to approve what the Correlation Committee publishes, as we are told in the famous Anonymous Press Release. That means that the Lord wants the Church to teach what it is teaching.

By claiming that "the Spirit" is telling you that certain doctrines of the Church are not true, one of the following must be true:

(1) the Bretheren are not inspired in some of the things they teach but are acting as if they are, making them false prophets;
(2) you are receiving personal revelation that supersedes that of the Bretheren, meaning that the whole concept of priesthood keys is wrong;
(3) the Bretheren cannot tell the difference between their own interpretations/ideas and inspiration;
(4) the Church is right and you are receiving false personal revelation;
(5) the Church teaches things that are false, but you are actively choosing to avoid seeing how deep that rabbit hole goes.

As I already mentioned, arbitrarily rejecting some stories because they are contrary to evidence (but claiming to retain a belief in the Book of Mormon and Pearl of Great Price!) also creates substantive doctrinal problems. The whole LDS concept of the identity of the human race is intertwined with the Plan of Salvation. These in turn are intertwined with the teaching that the whole human race began with the literally true story of the Fall of Adam and Eve, and then a reset button was pushed with the literally true story of Noah's ark. Excising certain events from the origins of humanity is simply inventing your own theology, rather than following the LDS one. By definition, your blog is advocating heresy. That is why Mormon apologetics tends to lead people away from belief in the Church. In order to defend the Church, Mopologists reject what it teaches. This is somewhat like visiting a whorehouse so that other girls will not lose their virginity.

And there is not a single story in the Bible that the Church does not teach to have been actual history. If you allow that the Church habitually, consistently gets it wrong with stories you are just too sophisticated to believe, like the talking donkey, when the Church supposedly is led by continuing revelation and inspiration, then you beg the bigger question of what it even means to say that "the Church is true."

[_MsJack]

In common usage, however, "cafeteria Mormon" does not refer to the reality that nobody can possibly keep up with the vast corpus of "inspired counsel" that the leaders of the modern LDS Church have promulgated. "Cafeteria Mormon" means members who deliberately practice selective apostasy but still insist they "sustain the Bretheren"---whatever that means (since it apparently doesn't mean believing what they teach or doing what they say).

Ah, but you see Darth, as a never-Mormon I don't even believe in "apostasy"---at least, not in the sense that Mormons usually mean it. They're all just Mormons of varying beliefs to me, and a person isn't really an ex-Mormon until s/he begins to identify as such.

What I'm getting at though is this: the LDS church has taught such a diversity and breadth of doctrine to the extent that it's impossible for any Mormon to believe in and practice it all, or even just the "official" stuff (whatever that is). Sometimes the leaders even contradict themselves in the same breath, and I don't just mean on fringe issues.

The Family Proclamation is a good example of this. One part teaches that "fathers are to preside over their families." Two sentences later, the Proclamation reverses itself and states that "fathers and mothers are obligated to help one another as equal partners." It's logically contradictory. You can't have an equal partner who presides any more than you can have a bird-amphibian or a round square. As soon as one partner begins presiding over the other, it stops being a partnership of equals and starts being a hierarchy.

Because of this, there are essentially three ways that Mormon couples interpret and implement the Proclamation in their lives:

(1) The "preside" part is in force and they redefine the "equal partners" part as to render it meaningless. Dad is recognized as the head of the family, he calls on people to pray at family meetings, he has ultimate veto power in family decisions, etc. Let's just label this position TBM*-Patriarchy.

(2) The "equal partners" part is in effect and the "preside" part is robbed of its force or redefined to mean something that bears no resemblance to the actual definition of "preside." Cross-reference any one of dozens of Bloggernacle posts where Mormon intellectuals agonize over what the church really means when it says "preside," giving it non-hierarchical definitions like "provide guidance," etc. Let's label this TBM-Egalitarianism.

(3) The Mormon acknowledges that the Proclamation contradicts itself. The "preside" stuff is regarded as the relic of a patriarchal past and openly disregarded. The couple practices equality because that's what they're comfortable with or because that's what they believe God wants them to practice. Let's label this the NOM position.

(There could theoretically be such a thing as a couple that acknowledges that the Proclamation contradicts itself and then practices patriarchy, but I've never met such a couple.)

So, who is disregarding what the leaders are teaching? Is it the TBM-Patriarchy people, the TBM-Egalitarianism people, or the NOMs? Who has "apostatized" from the teachings of the leaders?

The answer is, all three. The only difference is that the NOMs acknowledge that this is what they are doing, while the two TBM camps will try to insist that they're still practicing both the "preside" and the "equal partners" part. But they aren't.

That's why I say that all Mormons are cafeteria Mormons. The folks who are actually called "cafeteria Mormons" just happen to be self-aware of what they are doing.

----

*I'm using TBM as a term of convenience just as I'm using NOM. I mean no disrespect by these words; I simply can't think of better words for it. I would say "believing Mormon," but I consider folks like Mike Quinn to be "believing Mormons" every bit as much as Jeffrey Holland is. Yet I don't think very many people would call Quinn a "TBM."