Excellent Take on Joanna Brooks and "Universalist" Mormonism

[_Droopy]

I was just reading Professor Hancock's analysis of Brook's book at Meridian and, while reading the blog responses, found a very prescient and insightful commentary on Brooks and the "Internet Mormon" movement that has coalesced around a "progressive," secularizing, doctrinally nebulous "cafeteria" Mormonism diffident toward or hostile to the idea of direct revelation through the Holy Ghost and unwilling to support the teachings of the Church across a plethora of selected social and political issues.

The analysis is an excellent and perceptive boring directly into the core of "Internet Mormonism" and its psychological, ideological, and social foundations. Great stuff.

I speak from experience having watched this movement on the Internet now since 2005. Please pay attention to what I have to say. Individuals reading this should be warned that there is a whole movement of disaffected or questioning people, some still in the closet, on the internet that think similarly to Joanna Brooks, coalescing in the so-called "bloggernacle" and in places like Mormon Stories and Mormon Expression. Joanna is not so much the leader of this phenomenon, as much as a man named John Dehlin who runs Mormon Stories. These people are all genuine in their desire to find a middle way where they can feel Mormon without having to be "correlated" by correlation, as far as I can tell. But be warned that this philosophy is becoming more and more pervasive in the liberal parts of the church as people that are intellectually leaning become more and more connected to these "Internet Mormons." These people seek to form online communities that get together with each other that are "mixed belief" communities, where apostates and believers rub shoulders and have "story meetings" which is their type of "testimony meetings." Through the telling of their stories, they seek to bear one anothe'Relief Society burdens in their mutual loss of faith once they have bitten the forbidden fruit of the historical problems of the Church. But the common theme throughout this movement is that compassion should outweigh concerns such as mingling with those who are critical of the brethren and who are bitter against the Church. And also a pervasive denial of the gift of the Holy Ghost is evident in their descriptions of their newly found and newly "framed" spirituality "on their own terms." This is a new and very deceptive and pervasive form of apostasy that people need to look out for. Bishops and Stake Presidents need to familiarize themselves with this movement, and pay particular attention to it. More and more members as time goes on will be succumbing to these philosophies. It is a new Universalist movement in the Church of generalized spirituality and denial of the Holy Ghost in the sense that they are more into being Mormon for the social aspect, because there isn't any better spiritual path for them, rather than being truly converted.

[_RayAgostini]

I speak from experience having watched this movement on the Internet now since 2005. Please pay attention to what I have to say. Individuals reading this should be warned that there is a whole movement of disaffected or questioning people, some still in the closet, on the internet that think similarly to Joanna Brooks, coalescing in the so-called "bloggernacle" and in places like Mormon Stories and Mormon Expression. Joanna is not so much the leader of this phenomenon, as much as a man named John Dehlin who runs Mormon Stories. These people are all genuine in their desire to find a middle way where they can feel Mormon without having to be "correlated" by correlation, as far as I can tell. But be warned that this philosophy is becoming more and more pervasive in the liberal parts of the church as people that are intellectually leaning become more and more connected to these "Internet Mormons." These people seek to form online communities that get together with each other that are "mixed belief" communities, where apostates and believers rub shoulders and have "story meetings" which is their type of "testimony meetings." Through the telling of their stories, they seek to bear one anothe'Relief Society burdens in their mutual loss of faith once they have bitten the forbidden fruit of the historical problems of the Church. But the common theme throughout this movement is that compassion should outweigh concerns such as mingling with those who are critical of the brethren and who are bitter against the Church. And also a pervasive denial of the gift of the Holy Ghost is evident in their descriptions of their newly found and newly "framed" spirituality "on their own terms." This is a new and very deceptive and pervasive form of apostasy that people need to look out for. Bishops and Stake Presidents need to familiarize themselves with this movement, and pay particular attention to it. More and more members as time goes on will be succumbing to these philosophies. It is a new Universalist movement in the Church of generalized spirituality and denial of the Holy Ghost in the sense that they are more into being Mormon for the social aspect, because there isn't any better spiritual path for them, rather than being truly converted.

(Emphasis added)

It's a wonder he even allowed Professor Peterson on Mormon Stories Podcast. But wait, there's worse to come, like Terryl Givens. And Brant Gardner.

I think the real problem is that Meridian is somewhat "out of the loop", and doesn't have a clue in these matters.

They'd like everything in black and white, so they can know which "enemy" to trounce, denigrate, and lose credibility with "TBMs".

And, yeah, John (Dehlin) is just so evil. Such a "faith-destroyer". He's not interested in dialogue at all. The truth is that having these "apologists" on Mormon Stories, is a bit like Steve Benson giving Jeffrey Holland air time.

Meridian needs to do some more homework, rather than separating everyone into the "sheep" and "goat" categories, and worst of all, defaming the character of people like Joanna Brooks and John Dehlin, on mere supposition.

[_Dr. Shades]

[MODERATOR NOTE: Droopy, please memorize Universal Rule #6, the one that specifically requires you to post a link to whatever website you copy-and-paste from. This is the second time I've had to make this request of you.

To everyone else, the link to Droopy's quoted material is: http://www.ldsmag.com/component/zine/ar ... mitstart=2 . Look in the comments section; it's one of the first several.]

[_Buffalo]

I'm always bummed out when Droopy gets banned from MDD. We get dozens of threads like this shortly thereafter.

[_MsJack]

. . . there is a whole movement of disaffected or questioning people, some still in the closet, on the internet that think similarly to Joanna Brooks, coalescing in the so-called "bloggernacle" and in places like Mormon Stories and Mormon Expression. Joanna is not so much the leader of this phenomenon, as much as a man named John Dehlin who runs Mormon Stories.

John Dehlin as the leader of the Bloggernacle.

Wonder how folks like Steve Evans and Ardis Parshall feel about that. Sends me into giggles just thinking about it.