“I think that the Church not only should apologise… to a gay person whom it offended but it must also apologise to the poor as well, to the women who have been exploited, to children who have been exploited by [being forced to] work. It must apologise for having blessed so many weapons.”

BBC News has the full story.

These positions by the church confused and deeply upset many, who feel the preachings of the faith are contradictory, especially Mormon Kim Siever.

“The Mormon Church has taken a socially conservative stance. As a result, they’ve dismissed the community. To me, it would seem they should want to embrace the LGBTQ community who are interested in the faith,” Siever said.

Here’s the full article.

It’s frustrating to hear her speak of the reality of what it means to be a woman in this faith. I think it’s her intention to let other women know they aren’t alone in feeling like they belong to a man’s church but I’m curious what this audience thinks she is trying to say, and why do you think she’s saying it?

[youtube http://youtu.be/SSYTbvAyHuY]

The audio is compiled from episode 576 of the Mormon Stories podcast.

(Via Thoughts on Things and Stuff)

(Kids these days and their FaceSpace, amirite?)

From a Deseret news article about Elder Ballard’s talk:

“Drawing on the scriptures and the words of the prophets, [students] will learn how to act with faith in Christ to acquire spiritual knowledge and understanding of His gospel,” he said. “And they will have opportunities to learn how to apply the doctrine of Christ and gospel principles to the questions and challenges they hear and see every day among their peers and on social media.”

Applying the doctrine of Christ to questions of church doctrine makes sense. Is it true and is it helpful? Does it follow the golden rule?

Elder Ballard continued, comparing faithful interpretations of history to vaccinating the youth against topics that are “sometimes misunderstood” — a polite way of saying, negative toward the church.

You know, we give medical inoculations to our precious missionaries before sending them into the mission field, so they will be protected against disease that can harm and even kill them. In a similar fashion, please, before you send them into the world, inoculate your students by providing faithful, thoughtful and accurate interpretations of gospel doctrine, the scriptures and our history, and those topics that are sometimes misunderstood.

And in a praiseworthy show of transparency, Elder Ballard listed a few topics which in some circles (or at least in the not so distant past) would have been considered anti-mormon.

To name a few of such topics that are less-known or controversial, I’m talking about polygamy, and seer stones, different accounts of the first vision, the process of translation of the Book of Mormon [and] of the Book of Abraham, gender issues, race and the priesthood, or a Heavenly Mother. The efforts to inoculate our young people will often fall to you CES teachers.

Perhaps if I’d been further inoculated as a youth, I wouldn’t have found these topics so difficult to digest when I finally found them too hard to swallow. So roll up your sleeves while I share with you what I remember being taught about this list while at the same time you’re going to get inoculated.

Before you run off searching high and low looking for how far the rabbit hole goes, Elder Ballard warned of the dangers of access to too much information:

It was only a generation ago that our young people’s access to information about our history, doctrine and practices was basically limited to materials printed by the church. Few students came in contact with alternative interpretations. Mostly, our young people lived a sheltered life. Our curriculum at that time, though well-meaning, did not prepare students for today — a day when students have instant access to virtually everything about the church from every possible point of view. Today, what they see on their mobile devices is likely to be faith-challenging as much as faith-promoting. Many of our young people are more familiar with Google than they are with the gospel, more attuned to the Internet than to inspiration, and more involved with Facebook than with faith.

For the sake of Elder Ballard’s concern about Google, I’ll only use church approved sources for the inoculation and I’ll stay far away from Facebook.

…

In church I was taught that Brigham Young and the LDS population as a whole started practicing polygamy on their way west after Joseph Smith died. I was taught that Joseph Smith did not practice polygamy. I was specifically taught that The Nauvoo Expositor, a newspaper that published only one issue, on June 7, 1844, was printing anti-mormon lies about the Prophet Joseph Smith and that it needed to be shut down.

If only there was some way to look up the contents of that newspaper… Also, at church the word polyandry was never uttered, just the more generic term polygamy.

The church now teaches that Joseph practiced polygamy. It doesn’t bother with timeline details between when these marriages started and when the revelation on polygamy was given but it does point out that at least one of the lucky ladies was just few month shy of her fifteenth birthday. https://www.lds.org/topics/plural-marriage-in-kirtland-and-nauvoo?lang=eng. The church also admits that he practiced polyandry.

I was taught in church that Joseph mostly used his seer stone for money digging but that it was something he regretted. It was a part of his wayward youth; folk magic being part of the culture of the time; something he did before being called to restore the gospel. I was taught that Joseph translated the Book of Mormon from golden plates written in reformed Egyptian into English using some kind of, never that clear to me, looking-glass shaped device called the Urim and Thummim.

The church now teaches Joseph used the seer stone and other instruments to translate the Book of Mormon. The church teaches that Joseph didn’t look at the plates while translating, instead, “Joseph looked into the instruments, [and] the words of scripture appeared in English”: https://www.lds.org/topics/book-of-mormon-translation?lang=eng&_r=1

I was taught about the different accounts of the first vision in church but I was told there were only 2 or 3 different versions. I was taught that they were given to different people at different times and that the different details were because of different audiences and their different needs. I was told not to worry about it.

The church now teaches there are seven nine different accounts of the first vision story and the details within those various narratives isn’t exactly the same but that they all follow the same basic story. The details over number of visitors or their identities isn’t a sign of fraud because, “Joseph’s increasingly specific descriptions can thus be compellingly read as evidence of increasing insight, accumulating over time, based on experience.” https://www.lds.org/topics/first-vision-accounts?lang=eng&_r=1

What I was taught about the Book of Abraham at church: “A translation of some ancient records that have fallen into our hands from the catacombs of Egypt. The writings of Abraham while he was in Egypt, called the Book of Abraham, written by his own hand, upon papyrus.” It was on my mission that I learned the controversy of Ancient Egyptian translations not matching the Book of Abraham. I was suspicious of the antagonistic pastor telling me this, but all the same, I was very curious about the truth behind the Book of Abraham’s origins, and specifically why this guy figured he had a “silver bullet” against the church.

Now the church teaches that the phrase “by his own hand, upon papyrus” can be understood to mean that “Abraham is the author and not the literal copyist”. Also, the church teaches that while “the word translation typically assumes an expert knowledge of multiple languages”, but in this case, “[b]y the gift and power of God, Joseph received knowledge about the life and teachings of Abraham.” https://www.lds.org/topics/translation-and-historicity-of-the-book-of-abraham?lang=eng&_r=1

As for gender issues, I’m going to assume Elder Ballard is talking about lesbians and gays (though not strictly a “gender issue” at all).

I was taught that gays were bad and I openly talked about how being gay was wrong and probably said other horrible things that mercifully — for my own feelings of guilt — I can no longer recall. I remember that feeling of self-righteousness as a Mormon when I proudly declared my prejudice against gay people. I’m sorry for what I thought and said.

The church still doesn’t get it when it comes to the biological realities of same sex attraction nor to the impact that their stance has on so many members of the church. I specifically feel bad for the heartache that Kim and his family have been put through. The church still proudly rolls out The Family: A Proclamation to the World as a response to why being gay is sinful. https://www.lds.org/topics/family-proclamation?lang=eng&_r=1

The church’s stance with race and the priesthood was never something that bothered me until after I stopped going. Probably because growing up in Southern Alberta, I never encountered very many (any?) black people and I certainly felt that God knew what he was doing. I never thought about what it would mean to belong to a church that emphasized eternal marriage, families being together forever, and the importance of temple ordinances but then banning a certain group of people from said ordinances because of the way they looked. I read in Bruce R. McConkie’s book, Mormon Doctrine, that the reason for the ban was because they had been fence-sitters in the war-in-heaven and were now cursed to be descendants of the most wicked person on the face of the earth, Cain.

Today, the Church disavows the theories advanced in the past that black skin is a sign of divine disfavor or curse. https://www.lds.org/topics/race-and-the-priesthood?lang=eng&_r=1

Lastly on Elder Ballad’s list of topics to be inoculated against is Heavenly Mother. When I was in the church, I was taught that Heavenly Mother was also divine (a goddess not unlike God) but that we didn’t know her name and it was forbidden to pray to her. This sat just fine with me.

It was on my mission that another missionary pointed out to me that Jesus’ mother Mary, was in fact our Heavenly Mother. This didn’t sit well with me, especially when they pointed out what 1 Nephi 11:18 was getting at by saying, “Behold, the virgin whom thou seest is the mother of the Son of God, after the manner of the flesh.” You’ll have to imagine my shock when I realized what the manner of the flesh means. God did what with Mary?! And how exactly does that square with the biblical emphasis that she was a virgin?

The church still teaches that you shouldn’t pray to Heavenly Mother (perhaps a way of delineating themselves from churches that do pray to Mary). But, it’s pointed out that, “[t]he fact that we do not pray to our Mother in Heaven in no way belittles or denigrates her.” https://www.lds.org/topics/mother-in-heaven?lang=eng

I’m not sure inoculation against these topics that are sometimes misunderstood is really going to affect the youth in the way they expect. In fact I think it might have the opposite effect.

I’m reminded of the agonizing guilt Huckleberry Finn felt over his failure to turn in his raft-mate Jim. Jim, who was attempting to escape from slavery, is betrayed by someone else, and Huck has to face what he is doing. Realizing he is incapable even of praying because of his sinful compliance in a slave’s escape, Huck gives in to his conscience and writes a note to Jim’s rightful owner, revealing his whereabouts.

I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn’t do it straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking—thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell.

Unfortunately for Huck’s peace of mind, he kept on thinking. After recalling all the good times and misfortune they’d shared, and Jim’s gratitude for saving him from capture, he looked down, noticed the letter and made his decision.

It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:

“All right, then, I’ll GO to hell”—and tore it up.

It was awful thoughts and awful words, but they was said. And I let them stay said; and never thought no more about reforming. I shoved the whole thing out of my head, and said I would take up wickedness again, which was in my line, being brung up to it, and the other warn’t. And for a starter I would go to work and steal Jim out of slavery again; and if I could think up anything worse, I would do that, too; because as long as I was in, and in for good, I might as well go the whole hog.

I’m also in for good, and there’s no better way to say it: I’m going whole hog.

According to a report by KUTV, The Church has issued a statement responding to a bill on Utah’s Capitol Hill that would toughen penalties for hate crimes against “ancestry, disability, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, national origin, race, religion, or sexual orientation”. The church doesn’t want it to pass because it thinks it shifts the balance too far away from religious liberties in favour of gays:

“The Utah Legislature achieved something extraordinary last year in arriving at legislation that protected both religious liberty rights and LGBT rights,” said church spokesman Dale Jones in a statement Wednesday afternoon which was released in response to media inquiries. “Interests from both ends of the political spectrum are attempting to alter that balance. We believe that the careful balance achieved through being fair to all should be maintained.”

I’m trying not to have a knee-jerk reaction here, but the article points out that according to the Utah Department of Public Safety, the rates of reported hate crimes are staggeringly more likely to be based on religious intolerance rather than homophobic bigotry. I’d say this is a clear case of cutting off the nose to spite the face. I just don’t get it.

It never fails to surprise me, when the topic of my disillusionment with the church comes up, members (for the most-part) don’t seem to want to know why I’ve lost my faith. I think it’s because members of the church don’t like to acknowledge when someone leaves the faith because of tough questions. Recognizing that there are questions that have ugly answers says ugly things about themselves and the church.

The feelings I have about the church are certainly a mixed bag. One of the things that bothers me is my own fear of speaking up. I’ve been trained not to speak of my disillusionment for fear of church disciplinary action even though it’s just an honest search for truth that has brought me where I am today.

Having concerns about the church is not grounds for excommunication, however it’s in publishing those concerns that can get you in trouble. Is there trouble for publishing even this short blog post about my own disillusionment? Probably not, but the fact that I’m so worried about telling my story demonstrates the level of fear the church has instilled in me.

This morning I found a link to a press release about a member, Jeremy Runnells, facing excommunication because of his widely publicized questions about the church. To my knowledge, he’s never said anything that anyone can demonstrate is false — if he’s like me, he would LIKE to be shown that the church’s claims and history are what it claims it is. However, it’s disciplinary action like this that spreads fear. Instead of answering hard questions, the church takes punitive action against those that dare query.

From Jeremy Runnells’ press release:

Jeremy Runnells, author of the popular Letter to a CES Director faces excommunication from the LDS Church on charges of apostasy

American Fork, UT (February 9, 2016) – Jeremy Runnells, author of the popular Letter to a CES Director (also known as CES Letter), has been summoned to a disciplinary council by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on charges of apostasy. CES Letter represents Mr. Runnells’ sincere attempt to obtain answers to legitmate questions and doubts through proper church leadership channels. Instead of providing pastoral support to Mr. Runnells, the LDS Church has chosen to continue its recent trend of excommunicating members who openly question or doubt church teachings.

CES Letter began as a letter Mr. Runnells wrote to an LDS religious instructor (CES Director) outlining his questions, concerns, and doubts about LDS Church foundational truth claims (e.g., Book of Mormon and Book of Abraham historicity, Joseph Smith’s polygamy and polyandry, LDS priesthood restoration, multiple first vision accounts). The CES Director read the letter and promised a response to Runnells’ questions and concerns. No response ever came.

Upon its public release, CES Letter went viral and immediately became a Mormon internet phenomenon, providing validation and support to tens of thousands of questioning current and former LDS Church members. CES Letter has been downloaded an estimated 600,000 times to date, and over 12,000 LDS Church members have reached out to Runnells after reading the CES Letter.

Runnells reports that he met twice with his LDS Stake President, Mark Ivins, in the fall of 2014. During these discussions Runnells sought answers for questions posed in CES Letter and raised concerns about the LDS Church’s recent historical essays (http://lds.org/topics/essays). President Ivins assured Runnells that he wanted to help, and that he would obtain answers. Runnells did not hear back again from President Ivins until January 25, 2016 when Ivins telephoned Runnells to inform him of his intention to challenge Runnells’ LDS Church membership. Runnells requested a delay until March 15th, citing a close family member in hospice care, which was originally accepted by Ivins. On February 8, 2016 Ivins reversed his decision and informed Runnells of his disciplinary council scheduled for February 14, 2016.

A public press conference has been scheduled for Runnells on February 10th, 2016 at 7:00pm Mountain Time at 50 West Club & Cafe in downtown Salt Lake City (50 Broadway, Salt Lake City, UT). The venue is open for dinner prior to the press conference at 6:00pm. Parking is available in surrounding lots. All interested media, along with supporters of Runnells, are invited to attend and show support.

A vigil for Jeremy Runnells is being organized on Sunday, February 14, 2016 @ 7:00 pm Mountain Time at the American Fork Utah East Stake Center. Address is: 825 E 500 N, American Fork, Utah.

For more information and developments on this story, see http://cesletter.org.

The U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that a rare and valuable first edition copy of the Book of Mormon was eligible for bankruptcy exemption under a personal property exemption statute which allows “exemption for a bible”.

On February 25, 2013 Ms. Anna F. Robinson filed a Chapter 7 bankruptcy petition seeking to reprieve $23,834.00 in debt. Among her personal property, Ms. Robinson included an “old Morm[o]n bible” of unknown value which she acquired while cleaning a storage area at work and was given permission to keep any of the old books she found. From the Seventh Court’s ruling:

Ms. Robinson testified that, in 2003, while employed at the local public library, she made an agreement with the library director that, if she cleaned out a storage area, she could use the area as an office and keep any books she found. While cleaning, Ms. Robinson found the Book of Mormon and later had it authenticated as an 1830 first edition Book of Mormon, one of only 5,000 copies printed by Joseph Smith. At the time, it was valued at $10,000.00. Ms. Robinson explained that she stores the Book of Mormon in a Ziploc bag to preserve it. She does not use it regularly, but does take it out occasionally to show her children and fellow church members.

The bankruptcy court denied the exemption citing the fact that she had other copies of the Book of Mormon, but the district court reversed the ruling:

RIPPLE, Circuit Judge. Anna F. Robinson filed a Chapter 7 bankruptcy petition in the Southern District of Illinois seeking a discharge of unsecured debts. Ms. Robinson claimed an exemption for a rare, first edition Book of Mormon under the Illinois personal property exemption statute, 735 ILCS 5/12- 1001(a), which provides an exemption for a bible. The bankruptcy court denied the exemption, but the district court re- versed. Because we agree with the district court that the plain wording of the Illinois personal property exemption statute allows the exemption for Ms. Robinson’s Book of Mormon, we affirm the district court’s judgment.

The thought that expensive bibles (or in this case a rare Book of Mormon) can be used to disrupt bankruptcy laws made me wonder if it’s possible to skirt the law by running up debt, moving to Illinois, buying up tons of expensive bibles and then declaring bankruptcy.

Nope, at least not if it’s done less than 6 months before the filing, according to the Illinois Legislative Reference Bureau:

If a debtor owns property exempt under this Section and he or she purchased that property with the intent of converting nonexempt property into exempt property or in fraud of his or her creditors, that property shall not be exempt from judgment, attachment, or distress for rent. Property acquired within 6 months of the filing of the petition for bankruptcy shall be presumed to have been acquired in contemplation of bankruptcy.

The image above from wikimedia is a photograph of the 1841 First European (London) edition of the Book of Mormon, at the Springs Preserve museum, Las Vegas, Nevada.

(via)

From their list:

• 5. Keep your breath fresh. Don’t drink or smoke around him as he’ll find that unattractive.
• 6. Have fun with the old-fashioned courtesy. He’ll come to your door to pick you up, prepared to meet your parents. Wait for him to open all your doors for you. Stay in the car so he can come around and open the door. Let him pay for the entire evening’s activities.

I’m traditional, in that I like to open doors, but I’m not sure I’ve ever opened the door for a date when we’re already in the car and she’s ready to get out—that is just a bit much. Other than that, the list seems like fairly good advice.

Someone should write one on how to date ex-mormons.

link

From the LDS Church News:

…[T]here is no conflict between the facts and truths of science and those given to us by direct revelation. Rather than conflicting, the facts and truths in each area complement each other, each supplying answers to basic questions which we must know, eventually, if we are to fulfill our destiny as sons and daughters and co-partners with our Father in His eternal plan.

Apparent conflicts arise when the theories of science — which serve as a scaffolding erected to try to understand relationships among observed facts — are mistaken for the experimentally verified facts.

I can think of many examples where not just theories but experimentally verified facts conflict with religion. One need only a cursory review of the scientific method to realize that religion and science clash at every turn. Despite the numerous quotations from Church leaders that true science and religion are bedfellows, I see them as diametrical opposites and wonder how they can exist together when one consistently conflicts with the other.