Whenever I talk with my father, I get a rush of feelings. I feel somewhat embarrassed because of his unorthodox beliefs and exploits. At the same time, I feel somewhat grateful that he’s not orthodox (I can’t say I would prefer him to be a standard ho-hum Mormon instead of…
The True Meaning of Christmas…
After reading the news this morning, it dawned on me that I should really write a short blog post about “The True Meaning of Christmas.” While other people have put similar ideas on paper before, I wanted something I could refer back to easily for future reference. I also wanted…
Human Rights Campaign
In case you haven’t yet received an email inviting you to sign the Human Rights Campaign’s petition to Thomas Monson, here’s your chance to tell Mormon leaders to prove that they aren’t “anti-gay”: http://www.hrcactioncenter.org/campaign/ldsletter
Wishing you well…
I was reading somewhere on the internets (not linked to protect the innocent) where someone wrote that they were surprised to find out recently how happy some former mormon friends of theirs are. They were a little shocked (and embarassed of themselves) for realizing that former mormons’ lives aren’t that…
Sunday in Outer Blogness: Where we’re going edition!
In honor of Andrew’s question, this week I’ve decided to gather up just those posts where the good folks of Outer Blogness discuss a bit about where they’re at in their religious journeys this holiday season… Many are still dealing with the stress of living in a mixed-faith family. MoHoHawaii…
Where are you going?
Everyone’s talked about this idea of people leaving the church but not leaving it alone. And you can see, depending on which end of faith you stand, different outlooks at the issue. Some might think that it’s petty for people who no longer believe (or who never believed) to put…
Overlapping Cultural Mormon Perspectives
Faithful Mormons often imagine that those commenting on Mormonism from outside their circle form one monolithic block of “antis”. Mormon culture encourages this view, so people are often surprised when they read the discussion on the Internet and find that the people who disbelieve Mormonism occasionally agree with the Mormons…
Sidney Rigdon wrote the Book of Mormon?
So says a new computer-assisted authorship study out of Stanford: Jockers, Matthew L., Daniela M. Witten, and Craig S. Criddle. 2008. “Reassessing authorship of the Book of Mormon using delta and nearest shrunken centroid classification.†Literary and Linguistic Computing fqn040. I caught this as part of my HighWire Press…
Scripture Fights and Bible Bashing
One of the fun things about watching people try to argue religion *from an outside perspective* is that you can see the low blows people will make without feeling personally hurt anymore. Non-Mormon Christians will often point to the doubtful historicity of the Book of Mormon and then say, “Aha!”…
Self-expression in a society
Andrew pointed out the irony of Gary Lawrence’s advice to “just be yourself” (reported here): Gary’s son being himself (gay) + Gary being himself (raging homophobe) = family catastophe. As backwards as it is to call Proposition 8 “pro-family,” Lynnette explains that it’s disingenuous to pretend that gay marriage has…