Cultishness...

[_Kishkumen]

Ask a Buddhist what s/he learns in meditation. It does not always need to be something that is easily articulated.

There are other ways of thinking about the symbols you guys profane. I get the fact that it looks weird to you, that you really hate it, etc., but it is possible to see other things in the symbols that are not "stupid" or "goofy."

I do find our MDB rituals of deconversion fascinating though. We have left the tribe and now we laugh about its rites of passage and how stupid they were. It's captivating anthropological viewing.

Someone needs to do a dissertation on this.

[_Drifting]

Ask a Buddhist what s/he learns in meditation. It does not always need to be something that is easily articulated.

There are other ways of thinking about the symbols you guys profane. I get the fact that it looks weird to you, that you really hate it, etc., but it is possible to see other things in the symbols that are not "stupid" or "goofy."

I do find our MDB rituals of deconversion fascinating though. We have left the tribe and now we laugh about its rites of passage and how stupid they were. It's captivating anthropological viewing.

Someone needs to do a dissertation on this.

Kish, do you believe that you will need a series of handshakes and code words to facilitate your entry into the Celestial Kingdom (regardless of your worthiness)?

[_Kishkumen]

Kish, do you believe that you will need a series of handshakes and code words to facilitate your entry into the Celestial Kingdom (regardless of your worthiness)?

Most definitely. I believe exactly that. Anyone with half a brain would read my post and conclude that. So, congratulations.

[_Drifting]

Kish, do you believe that you will need a series of handshakes and code words to facilitate your entry into the Celestial Kingdom (regardless of your worthiness)?

Most definitely. I believe exactly that. Anyone with half a brain would read my post and conclude that. So, congratulations.

I asked a genuine question, why so snarky?

[_Kishkumen]

I asked a genuine question, why so snarky?

Really?

Are you being sincere here, Drifting?

I mean, I have a hard time connecting your questions to my statement about anthropology, symbolism, etc., so you'll have to forgive me.

In the lingo of the Brits, it looked to me like you were "taking a piss."

I think the point of symbols is that they are not literal, so your question about whether I literally believe those things seems a little "daft."

[_Drifting]

I asked a genuine question, why so snarky?

Really?

Are you being sincere here, Drifting?

I mean, I have a hard time connecting your questions to my statement about anthropology, symbolism, etc., so you'll have to forgive me.

In the lingo of the Brits, it looked to me like you were "taking a piss."


I think the point of symbols is that they are not literal, so your question about whether I literally believe those things seems a little "daft."

You mean "taking the piss" which is a colloquialism for pulling ones leg.
(I don't blame you for assuming my post fitted into this category, as...let's be honest, they usually do. But not with you methinks).

I asked the question because I do not see any figurative benefit to a handshake or a code word. Certainly when I was taught about these things it was articulated that they were meant to be taken literally.

Literal secret handshakes and code words (or figurative) within a group would seem to be markers of a cult or at least a secret combination. Both of which seem to be at odds with the attributes one would expect from a Church led by Christ.

[_Kishkumen]

You mean "taking the piss" which is a colloquialism for pulling ones leg.

Precisely.

I asked the question because I do not see any figurative benefit to a handshake or a code word. Certainly when I was taught about these things it was articulated that they were meant to be taken literally.

Literal secret handshakes and code words (or figurative) within a group would seem to be markers of a cult or at least a secret combination. Both of which seem to be at odds with the attributes one would expect from a Church led by Christ.

Yeah, well, I have so many problems with this way of looking at it that it is hard to know where to begin. And at the same time, I completely understand how you get there. Your viewpoint is a disaster of the LDS Church's own making. If you cultivate illiteracy and two-dimensional reading, then BINGO! This is what you get.

The LDS temple endowment is a metaphor of spiritual enlightenment that was intended to make the initiate a "seer" in the mold of Joseph Smith himself. It is written in the symbolic and ritual language of Hermeticism and Freemasonry. The whole thing is about the purification of the spirit through increased levels of commitment to God, increased sacrifice, and increased union with Deity, until one can enter into the presence of Deity.

Unfortunately, Joseph Smith was killed, Brigham Young was preoccupied with seizing control of the Kingdom and establishing it in the West, and those initiated into the endowment mysteries had no frame of reference beyond the literal. Like my ancestors who were initiated in Nauvoo, they were largely illiterate people. We can forgive them, and most everyone thereafter with getting the whole thing completely wrong on one level.

[_zeezrom]

A wish for the temple:

If they could just let the members use a little imagination. Maybe if they let the local temple members act out their versions of the scenes and create their own versions of the outfits. They could make it fun and experimental.

[_Kishkumen]

A wish for the temple:

If they could just let the members use a little imagination. Maybe if they let the local temple members act out their versions of the scenes and create their own versions of the outfits. They could make it fun and experimental.

Zeez,

It is a fabulous wish that will not likely happen. You can always find an esoteric Masonic order to join, though.

[_maklelan]

Well, they probably wouldn't use that terminology. Plus, you can probably see how someone coming out of, say, the FLDS compounds would benefit from counseling.

"Deprogramming" and "exit counseling" refer to a specific kind of anti-cult counseling, not just broadly to mental health counseling. They have been shown to be harmful methods.

Sorry, Mak, but I'm just not all that impressed by this. It would be like polling people at RfM and getting a list of apostates from the SCMC. Of course these people are going to be pissed off. Of course they're going to fit the researcher's expectations.

How much of the paper did you actually read, Scratch? It showed people with positive, negative, and ambivalent perspectives regarding their former groups. It was not just a list of people who were angry. The whole reason it could show correlation was because there were a bunch of people who were not angry and who had not been exposed to anti-cult socialization.

No... The intro on p. 5 says, "The way that disputed exits are organized and the narratives that are constructed about the process...is a function of the social location of the organization" (emphasis mine). He goes on to classify the organizations in descending levels of "legitimacy": allegiant, contestant, and subversive.

Yes, legitimacy in the perception of other social groups. Nowhere does he state that any group in any category objectively has X amount of empirical legitimacy. This is why on p. 23 he states, "their existence and functioning are regarded as inherently subversive to the goals and functioning of other 'legitimate' organizations." He's talking about their legitimacy in the eyes of opposing groups and secondarily, society at large, not about some empirical and objective level of legitimacy. I'm not saying these groups are all legitimate from an organizational point of view, I'm just saying you're going beyond what the scholarship actually states.

In the next paragraph he clarifies and says that he's using "subversive" here as something that is said specifically by the apostates. That doesn't mean, however, that other groups and/or individuals in the larger society don't also view the organization as "subversive" or illegitimate.

But it's something the scholarship isn't saying. It's something you're saying.

On pg. 12 he refers to "legitimacy" again when discussing the chapter on Christian Scientists, and again it's clear that he's talking about "legitimacy" in the eyes of the larger society, and not just apostates.

What he's talking about is apostates influencing the larger social perspective.

The Politics of Religious ApostasyOn pg. 6: "The Mormon case is an unusually instructive one since Mormonism was deemed subversive in the last century and has moved toward an allegiant position in recent decades, but continues to occupy a contestant position in some social locations."

Do you really think that he's only talking about "apostates" in "the last century," and that the movement he's describing is applicable only in the eyes of apostates? It's pretty clear that he's not. These categories--contestant, allegiant--refer to the organization's status vis-à-vis the larger, hegemonic society.[/quote]

If he were describing the status of the group within the larger, hegemonic society, he wouldn't be describing conflicting categorization by different "social locations." What do you think he means by "some social locations"? Do you not think he refers to specific ideological groups that can be labelled "opponents"?

Well, no. I'm extrapolating based on the theoretical framework he lays out in the intro.

Without the data, though. You're just arbitrarily assigning a position to Mormonism based on his framework and your rhetoric desires. I've already shown multiple times that your perception of Mormonism and your rhetorical capacities are transparent and deficient.

Yes: that is the focus, but in setting up the premises of the book, he also has something interesting to say about the relationship between the organizations and the larger society or "environment."

And he does it from an empirically informed and non-biased position. You're just deciding you like the way his model fits your own personal feelings about Mormonism.