Peterson's parents, left alone because they weren't 'LDS'

[Marcus]

Peterson, in his efforts to brag about Mormon wards, let slip some horrifying information about how he [viewed] treated his (apparently non-LDS member) parents in their final years.

By contrast, my parents spent their last three decades in an upscale California neighborhood where there was seldom any contact of any kind with the people who lived on either side of them or across the street. They were all past the age when they had kids in school and ran into each other at PTA meetings, so they had virtually nothing in common, nothing to bring them together. They sometimes waved at each other across the street, but that was essentially it. When my parents died, nobody from their neighborhood attended the services. I doubt that any of the neighbors even knew.
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeters ... hurch.html

His parent's neighbors weren't even aware they died? I'm sensing a lot of shame and dismissal of parents who apparently didn't fit his requirement of 'active-LDS-ness.'

That's horrifying. To abandon elderly parents because they don't fit his definition of LDS-ness is abominable. Peterson likes to brag about his father's military efforts, but he apparently didn't admire him enough to make sure his final years were cared for. Instead, he apparently chalked his parents' situation up to non-LDS inactivity, and left them alone and lonely. That's shameful.

[edited to change 'treated' to 'viewed' in the first paragraph. Explained here.

[IHAQ]

I disagree with your portrayal of what Peterson is saying. There’s nothing there that suggests to me he was ashamed or embarrassed about his parents. The point I think he is trying to make, and using the example of his parents to do so, is that there is a vacuum of community outside of religion. He is saying that one of the benefits of being religious is that of coming together with like-minded people with a shred belief and the sense of community and associated benefits that brings. He is saying that you cannot find such community closeness outside of religion, not even with residential neighbours.

I disagree with him. He’s showing a wilful lack of awareness of the world outside of his type of belief. It’s a cheap rhetorical point, badly made and poorly considered, but which the few blog followers that he has will swallow it whole.

[Dr. Shades]

I think you’re misinterpreting his post. He’s saying their NEIGHBORS didn’t interact with his parents much. Nowhere is he saying that HE didn’t interact with his parents very much.

[Chap]

I think you’re misinterpreting his post. He’s saying their NEIGHBORS didn’t interact with his parents much. Nowhere is he saying that HE didn’t interact with his parents very much.

I agree completely. I think it would be nice if the OP decided to delete their post without delay. DCP may be accused of many things, but it is really nasty to start accusing him of neglecting his elderly parents without justification.

Or shift this thread to somewhere out of sight ASAP.

[Dr Exiled]

I think community is the only thing that is positive about local LDS wards. The LDS church's authority claims are clearly not sustainable. Joseph Smith guessed at a lot of stuff and then falsely called it "revelation." However, my elderly parents at least have a community and friends they see at least once a week. I don't attend but my LDS neighbors are good people for the most part even though delusional about some things. I don't have an objection to my kids attending a Christian church with my ex and her husband precisely for the community. Jesus has a lot of myth that was built up around him over the years but his myth still is a source for groups to get together and socialize.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

I think you’re misinterpreting his post. He’s saying their NEIGHBORS didn’t interact with his parents much. Nowhere is he saying that HE didn’t interact with his parents very much.

I agree completely. I think it would be nice if the OP decided to delete their post without delay. DCP may be accused of many things, but it is really nasty to start accusing him of neglecting his elderly parents without justification.

Or shift this thread to somewhere out of sight ASAP.

I disagree with hiding this thread. If Marcus hadn’t created it and added their thoughts I wouldn’t have read Mr. Peterson’s thoughts on what, for him, makes an LDS community worth sitting through endless crap meetings, and paying out the ass for the right to have people attend one’s funeral.

From his blog post:

Do you have anything to add? (Confession: I’m more interested in comments from believing Latter-day Saints here than I am in hearing from sneering and alienated former believers. I already know pretty much what they think. That’s what led me to write this.)

Boy, if that wasn’t a case of projection I don’t know what is. He opens his post with this shot across the bow:

Not infrequently, I read comments from purportedly liberated ex-Latter-day Saints about the glories of churchless Sundays. Instead of attending mind-numbingly dull and repetitious meetings, they seemingly claim to spend most of their Sundays skiing, golfing, biking, reading classic literature, listening to superb music, perfecting their highly toned bodies through exercise, enjoying the beach, and sipping fine imported wines.

The sneering tone of describing ex-Mormons “purportedly” doing things that he himself enjoys doing sets the stage for Peterson to make his case why larping as chuchrchgoers is totes better than leading the feckless and nihilistic life of an ex-Mormon (people attend your funeral, man!).

Whatever the case may be, if someone enjoys wearing crappy business attire, singing the same songs over and over again, listening to correlated material that numbs the mind, and cleaning the chapel for free while the $100B+ corporation takes their hard earned money for this privilege, then more power to them. I’ll gladly take my Sundays back over the “upside” of dozens of people attending a funeral and then quietly disappearing back i to their lives.

- Doc

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

Again, I appreciate Marcus bringing this topic up for thought and discussion. Peterson unknowingly presents a deeply philosophical question to the front through his blog post. Are we acting in good faith or bad faith by bending the knee to a total system that prescribes for the actor a way of thinking, ritualistic behaviors, duties, and routines? And for what? Let’s break down his list of upsides to participating in this total system.

I would lose a great deal of social contact, and other types of socializing probably wouldn’t fully (or even significantly) compensate me for that loss. I think of people who lack the kind of close society that the Church provides ...

I’d call his “close society” a ‘closed society’. If you cloister yourself away into this closed society you’ll never expose yourself to the richness of a diversity of thought, even if you superficially interact with them because ‘you’re in the world, but not of the world’. You’re cutting yourself off from the richness of a global community because your total system judges them as the Other. How can you ever learn the nuggets of truth that others can provide when you’re being prescribed the truth by men who claim to speak for your god? You shut yourself off mentally and spiritually from the 99.99% of humanity who don’t share with you a strict system of belief and behavior.

... and not merely of young people who need to cruise singles bars in the hopes of picking somebody up with whom they can have a long-term (or even short-term) relationship. I’ve often noticed boastful entries on a couple of message boards where apostates want to know what everybody else on their board is doing that Sunday morning instead of attending Latter-day Saint services; the obvious answer, at least during the time that those people are writing there, is that they’re sitting alone in front of their computers, typing comments into cyberspace that are directed to strangers, to people whom, overwhelmingly, they’ve never met and probably won’t ever meet.

Absurdity at its finest. This is an object lesson in what being cloistered away does to a person’s ability to relate to others. The laughable assertion people have to go to a bar to find a mate is so trope’ish it’s hard to address. There’s a million ways people can find mates. I found or girlfriends found me at work, at gatherings, during hobbies, or even online through message board/forums. My wife literally just called me out of the blue one evening, stated that she liked me, and wanted to visit. The rest was history. “Cruising bars.” What a dope.

Also, was he crafting his missive to the ether while surrounded by friends and family? I’m making this post with my wife nearby, and we discussed the topic in detail. The insult and scare tactic that ex-Mormons are alone pounding away on a keyboard is not only a reflection on him and how he goes about his business, but it’s so typically adversarial that I have to wonder what he truly feels about his own existence - is he alone even when surrounded by others?

I’ll come back to this thread in a minute, I’m going to go do a thing that requires my wife’s company and we’re going to a *gasp* community center where *gasp* other people are doing things.

- Doc

eta: an example from Reddit of a woman not “cruising bars” for love:

I (36F) was fortunate to have a long and loving marriage to a wonderful man for 12 years. Sadly, he passed away in a car accident two years ago just before the beginning of the pandemic. Between grieving and the pandemic I did not date at all for about a year and a half, but decided to try to get out and meet some people this past summer once it was after. Online dating was kind of a bust, but in the fall I connected with "Joe" (37M), who works at the same large company as me but in a completely different department (we are not in the same chain of command and our paths do not cross at all in terms of work - we met at the employee gym). We had lunch a few times and ultimately decided to start spending time together outside of work, evolving to a relationship we agreed to describe as "committed casual" (as in, monogamous, but just having fun and not planning for a future together).

[Chap]

DCP is certainly not an admirable character, nor is he scrupulous in matters of scholarship relating to the truth claims of the church to which he belongs. But I doubt that he neglected his parents, and the passage cited in the OP gives no justification for supposing that he ever did. We ought not to accuse him of things for which there is no evidence.

So, since I thought this was supposed to be the board for people with higher standards than Mormon apologists, I stick to what I said:

DCP may be accused of many things, but it is really nasty to start accusing him of neglecting his elderly parents without justification.

[Gadianton]

I don't think he's implying in any way that he neglected his parents. Even if he visited a few times a year, it would still be true that for the most part they lived lonely lives. Of course, it's very possible that this is what they wanted. Peterson lives in a college town. Ritzy communities aren't super neighborly, even in Utah. Wealthy relatives in Mormon-and-rich Utah areas didn't know their neighbors very well. Sure, maybe their ward, but not their neighbors per se.

My parents lived in middle-class Utah until the end, and they refused to move closer to family because they had so many friends where they were, including on the street where they lived. Sure, they had support from the ward. But some of their best support came from neighbors, and none of them were Mormon or particularly religious.

The idea that you need religion for social cohesion is pitifully lame. It may be true that religion, as once the only game in town, dominated people socially, and now as people escape from the grasp of their wicked priests they don't have that built-in social reality. That will change. In today's world, he himself being example #1, many if not most people have found their real communities online.

A few weeks ago I was talking to a right-wing Mormon dude while on the walk, and we talked quite a bit about the Church for the first time, and he expressed frustration about the large numbers of people who weren't coming to church anymore since Covid. He said he Covid is just an excuse because these same people have no problem going to Walmart. Behold, the social fabric that is Mormonism, what would people do without the Church.

I'm sure in his Mormon college town it really is true that neighbors borrow tools and say Merry Christmas more often than in upscale Lo Jolla. But he needs that social fabric so much that he spends 9/10ths of his life on vacation and battling critics on the Internet.

[canpakes]

I’m not seeing that Peterson’s comments imply that he treated his (apparently non-LDS member) parents badly in their final years for their lack of belief/church involvement. But - absent more information about the nature of his parents passing and how that was advertised after-the-fact, he may be making some uncalled-for assumptions in that passage about the neighbors.

Another thing that he’s not addressing is the role of personality types. Perhaps his parents were more introverted, tending to keep to themselves because that’s what suited them. There’s certainly a large enough portion of the population who isn’t necessarily energized by daily interactions with neighbors, or who find their needs better met in other, more personal pursuits and a limited number of closer relationships. Those are also the same sorts of folks who may find the social routines and time demands of the Church to be exhausting and oppressive. That’s how some personality types roll. Peterson’s complaint, and the attitude of the Church in general, seemingly wants to invalidate that reality.