Tell-tale signals of Mormonism seem to be fading faster than the label President Nelson rejects. In a 2022-2023 survey, fewer than half of Church members born after 1965 said they were actually wearing their garments on the day they answered the question. A 2016 survey found that only 45% of…
Author: @Monya_PostMo
Raised Mormon in the American South. Grateful to have left the Church, grateful for many things it taught me
Mormons
Continue Reading
The lapsed who dare to call themselves Mormon
After I was asked to co-host an AMA on Reddit’s forum about Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, I mentioned to a casual acquaintance that one big question the community had about the show’s stars was whether—with their boozing, coffee-drinking, garment-eschewing, sex-outside-marriage ways—they were really Mormon. “Well OF COURSE…
Authority
Continue Reading
A Tale of Two Lyfts, and thoughts on Free Agency
Of all the talks and convos at last month’s Sunstone conference, one odd experience stands out. Historian Connell O’ Donovan always makes me laugh and learn, so I was excited he agreed to have coffee with me the morning before the conference started. All I had to do was pick…
Women
Continue Reading
Community, Exponent II’s Secret to Endurance
Of the sessions I attended at Sunstone earlier this month, the most illuminating was on the Latter-day women’s magazine, the Exponent II.* Katie Ludlow Rich and Heather Sundahl, authors of Fifty Years of Exponent II, described how the unofficial, unsanctioned Mormon feminist magazine launched and, more importantly, continued until this…
Temple
Continue Reading
Temples to Conformity
Donna’s recent post about a new temple nestled amidst casinos left me thinking about Russell M. Nelson’s temple-building spree. According to the Salt Lake Tribune, some 350 temples are planned, operational, or under development as of April’s General Conference, with roughly half announced since Nelson became president of the Church…
Testimony
Continue Reading
A Broken Shelf of Symbolic Beliefs
Thirty years ago, long before the CES letter (heck, long before Facebook), I sat beside my brainy boyfriend* as he asked probing questions of two earnest nineteen-year-olds from Utah. He’d been reading the Book of Mormon but not feeling its spirit. How could there be elephants in America, he wanted…
Testimony
Continue Reading
#ThinkRespectful: the Talk I Wish Had Been at General Conference
Sometimes inconvenience bring insight. Earlier this week, the San Francisco Public transit system made my best option for getting from Point A to Point B a 40-minute walk, almost enough time to listen to a podcast episode titled “What do I do if listening to Conference hurts?” It was the…
Testimony
Continue Reading
How Mormonism goads fiction writing
Sometimes, for family home evening, we brainstormed about the end of the world. That’s the first thing I thought when I saw an article in the New York Times on why Mormons have such a prominent place in YA fantasy fiction. Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series and Orson Scott Card’s…
Testimony
Continue Reading
Leaving the Mormon machine, I struggled to find community without conformity
Years ago, on a cross country road trip, an LDS friend of mine broke an axle in the middle of Nebraska. He found a payphone, called his father in Utah, got the phone number of the region’s stake president, and called the man, a stranger. Then the Mormon machine…
Jews
Continue Reading
The Impossible Things a Mormon Can See at a Bat Mitzvah
There’s no clear Mormon equivalent of a bat mitzvah. When I turned twelve in the 1980s, I stopped going to the Merrie Miss class in Primary and became a Beehive in Young Women’s. I traded the shouty chorus of “We are a Happy Family” and the mock-Indian gestures of “Book…