Internet Mormon Phase = Finished - Well, Mostly

I had a wonderful time over the weekend. Susan and I got to go down to Southern Virginia University for the Mormon Scholars in the Humanities conference. 

Got to meet old friends, make some new ones, and have a great time talking about lots of different things. It stands out in stark contrast to some of the other Mormon things that are going on in my life these days. In short, about a month ago because of some of Facebook's new features I got added to a few new Facebook groups by some well-meaning friends, namely Mormon Stories, Mo 2.0, and Feminist Mormon Housewives. 

After a few weeks, I decided to keep track of exactly what I had ended up discussing in those groups. Here's the list: 

1. Defending purchase of church historical sites. (We should be spending the money on the poor only!)

2. Blaming bad friends, clearly, not the kid who is acting out as a teenager. (Because the kid doesn't choose his friends.) 

3. Church still believes that gays choose to be that way. (It doesn't. Please update your preconceived notions of what the church teaches concerning homosexuality.)

4. Ignoring the institutional church is great and liberating. You get to make your own stuff up! (I, Carl, hate liberal protestants. I hate liberal protestant Mormons even more.)

5. The Book of Mormon teaches modalism. (..... Um. No. 1 Nephi 11 alone axes that idea.)

6. Mormons are an ethnicity. (Yes, because someone who just joined the church in Chile is clearly the same ethnicity as someone who is an 8th generation Mormon and has never set foot outside of Utah.) 

7. Joseph Smith had a manuscript he was reading from during the BoM translation. (Can you find a source for that?) 

8. Joseph didn't translate the current text of the Book of Mormon in 100 working days. (Can you find a source for that also? Can I make up my own sources for history too?!?)

9. Spaulding manuscript. (Really?) 

10. Compared Joseph Smith to John Edwards. (Right, because that's a fair comparison.)

11. Joseph Smith got the plates from a cave. (This one is sort of forgivable. According to some second hand reports decades after the fact Joseph and Oliver returned the plates to the Hill Cumorah when it opened up to admit them to a secret room. However, I don't think that means that Mormons think you could dig the hill up and find the secret room with all the records seen in the vision.) 

12. Defending Jon Krakauer as an actual historian. (He's not.)

13. The confusion over whether or not prophets always are 100% infallible. (Ugh. They're not infallible. Get over it.)

14. It is inappropriate for Roman Catholic priests to call out nuns on their "weapons-grade crazy" teachings. (The only person in the Feminist Mormon Housewives facebook group who would even dialogue about this issue was a lesbian episcopalian, who I'm pretty sure isn't as invested in Mormon issues as I am because, well, I'm actually a Mormon!) 

15. In order to be a feminist, you must be pro-gay marriage. (*sigh* I wasn't aware that was part of feminist orthodoxy.)
16. My love for non-members increased when I left the church! (Mormonism: You're doing it wrong.)
17. DNA disproves the Book of Mormon. (Only if you assume the hemispheric model, which the text itself does not support.)

In contrast, this weekend was incredible. Wonderful people. Intelligent conversation. Well-informed opinions. And people who had actually done their homework on Mormonism, Mormon history, and Mormon doctrine. I never had to resist the urge to tear my hair out. Here's another participant's blog post on it. 

I think the Mormon Stories/Feminist Mormon Housewives/Mo 2.0/etc. thing was a good phase for me. I've learned many things, and think I will be a better, more kind, more aware Mormon because I've spent time watching these people struggle with certain aspects of the church. A few weeks ago I was talking with a sister in my stake and I said something along the lines of "I feel that we, as an institution, have failed when people don't understand the gospel." Her response was something like, "I don't. Everybody has a responsibility to learn the gospel for themselves. It's not my fault they didn't do so." That overly callous response to some of these issues in the church jarred me, and though I agreed with most of what she said (after all we do have a personal responsibility to study the gospel) I vehemently disagree with the tone in which she said it (overly flippant and dismissive of people's real experiences and pain). 

So because I've been playing around in these different out-groups of Mormonism, I'm more careful about how I phrase things. I'm more sympathetic to those who leave the church (even though I clearly don't agree with them). I'm aware of how the culture around women's bodies and sexuality is quite unhealthy, etc. However, I think I've derived about all the light and truth that I can from these groups. It's negatively affecting my use of time (so much easier to argue on facebook than study French or write real papers), and I find it more often than not it leaves me more frustrated and angry than I ought to be on a daily basis because it's so much an echo chamber in there where the church can do no good, and believers like me are constantly marginalized or poked fun at. I looked through the entirety of the Mormon Stories and FMH Facebook groups and there wasn't a single positive thread on their first pages. Also, I've noticed that my comments have devolved into some pretty snarky and sarcastic one-liners. I'm not helping the situation either.

So I'm done. I'll probably occasionally look back at Feminist Mormon Housewives because some of their posts are pretty interesting (their series about marginalized people in the LDS culture, divorcees, children of single parents, etc., was fascinating and heartbreaking at the same time), and I'll probably still listen to the occasional Mormon Stories Podcast on my runs if there's an interview with someone I'm interested in listening to (a penguin could interview Teryl Givens and it would still be worth listening to), but I'm pretty much done with this phase, I think. This last month has just made that more apparent to me, and the contrast with this last weekend just sealed the deal. I'll stick to guest posting on the more academic and believing Mormon blogs, but that'll be about it. 

One of my friends from this weekend talked about how she thinks she will amount to not much in the church, because she's divorced. That's probably true, and it shouldn't be. Made me want to give her a hug. 

So all is not well in Zion. (It won't be all well until Jesus comes back, in my opinion.) 

But it's not as bad as most of these internet Mormons have made it out to be. 

And it's still Zion. 

P.S. Oh, and I'm now the gospel doctrine teacher in my ward. So I can now do a bit more to make sure the LDS Cult of False Expectations continues to die. That, more than anything else, will help these out-groups of Mormons by cutting off a good chunk of their membership before they even get to that stage. Because you shouldn't have to go to the internet to find people who will listen to you . . . you should be able to go to your local ward.