Do you ever wonder what’s in the secret vaults of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints? Have you ever imagined what you’d do if you had access? Matthew Alcott was a humble archivist working for the church when some previously undisclosed documents caught his eye, including Joseph Smith’s…
Author: chanson
C. L. Hanson is the friendly Swiss-French-American ExMormon atheist mom living in Switzerland! Follow me on mastadon at @chanson@social.linux.pizza or see "letters from a broad" for further adventures!!
Sunday in Outer Blogness: Happy Thanksgivukkah Edition!
In a surprise move, the first day of Hanukkah fell on Thanksgiving this year! The Highchair Travelers provided some ideas on how to celebrate Hanukkah — and don’t forget to read the Hannukah story from the Bible! I assume you already all know how to celebrate Thanksgiving: You think about…
Sunday in Outer Blogness: Doctrinal Jello Edition!
I learned an interesting thing this past week in the comments of Reddit: Apparently the General Authorities of the CoJCoL-dS are discouraged from keeping journals. Why? Well maybe this tale of one of Joseph Smith’s revelations getting edited before canonization may shed some light on it. In other news of…
My Favorite Rules!
Ever since Donna Banta posted this old LDS Living article to facebook a few weeks ago, I’ve been thinking about all the rules that define the LDS lifestyle, and how they change. Specifically, the article is about how Mormon families should forbid their kids from sleeping over at friends’ houses….
Sunday in Outer Blogness: Mixed-messages edition!
What happens when you devote your life to following authority — and then that authority announces that your hard-lined authoritarian approach isn’t the right way to go? This is the sound of brains exploding. Of course only the Catholics have this problem — the CoJCoL-dS has found a clever way…
Sunday in Outer Blogness: More Equal Edition!
Now that Mormon presidential aspirations are a distant memory, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has rediscovered the fun of anti-gay-marriage political activism — this time in one of their old haunts: Hawaii! (see this timeline.) In other unsurprising news, criticism of their lame arguments is persecution —…
Sunday in Outer Blogness: Judging each other edition!!
This week hosted two big kerfluffles! First there was Joni Hilton’s piece in Meridian Magazine on “Liberal Mormons”! It was so offensive that Meridian Magazine actually took it down, but John Dehlin came to the rescue and posed a cached version so that you, too, can personally experience the outrage,…
The Watermelon Analogy
My father knew how to choose a good watermelon. First of all, he would put his thumbnail into the skin. If it went in easily it was ripe. Another test was to heft it. A heavy melon is usually a ripe melon. Then he would look at the light-colored patch…
Sunday in Outer Blogness: Scary stuff coming up edition!
With Halloween coming up this week, please enjoy the firs batch of tales of this holiday’s history including its tragic devolution into “Trunk-or-Treat”. Also, the missionary costume pictures have already started appearing — and I hope there’ll be plenty more of them between now and next week! (If anyone’s up…
Those Mysterious Murdering Mormons! Donna Banta’s “False Prophet”
What’s more valuable than life itself? Eternal life? Perhaps. What would drive a person to kill says a lot about what that person values. Following the trail of a murderer, Donna Banta takes you on a wild and scenic tour of the peculiar culture and values of Mormonism in her…