ExMormon

I'm surprised I haven't seen it in other exmo circles. This film verifiably shows the handshakes in the LDS temple endowment too, unlike the newnamenoah recording. Can't believe this one's not on YouTube.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/30918089

Definitely not undercover Fundies either. :-)

My non-mormon friend said that was one of the weirdest parts, that everyday mormon men can just cure someone's sickness, just like that. He asked, why don't they just go to hospitals and fix everyone? I had to stop myself from regurgitating the chant "it doesn't work like that!" I said, "you're exactly right. Somehow they convince everyone that although they have this power, it only works if people have the faith to be healed, AND God wills it."

"That is batshit crazy."

He's right, we were taught to believe that we have magic powers, but even in the missionary handbook it says that we are discouraged from walking around hospitals offering blessings.

Oh, and women don't get this power. But technically they do, they just have to pray really hard.

cross-posted from: https://pawb.social/post/25638189

Bednar... huh where have I heard that name before??

This is from 1988 if there are any fun changes to look for.

I have a 1962 edition of Widstoe’s Priesthood and Church Government and a full set of church history from around the same time too.

Not an ExMo, but have a little bit of a hyperfixation. I’ve always kinda wanted someone to knock so I can talk to them about the Salamander letter and the Book of Abraham.

https://www.mormonstories.org/happiness-letter-lds-disc/

His name was Zelph. The curse was taken from him, or at least in part; one of his thigh bones was broken, by a stone flung from a sling while in battle years before his death.

— John Taylor

In case the title doesn't make sense: it's a mix of "carefully-worded denial" (from the gospel topics essays) and "word salad" (a more accurate description).

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/26515919

Summary

Nearly 100 childhood sexual abuse allegations have emerged against the Mormon church (LDS) in California under a three-year legal window for adult survivors.

Multiple plaintiffs claim church leaders sexually abused them and that officials protected abusers rather than victims, handling cases as "matters of sin" without reporting to police.

Lawsuits allege an LDS "help line" suppressed abuse reports rather than aiding victims.

The church denies allegations, citing "discrepancies" in claims while asserting it takes abuse seriously and has prevention protocols in place.

Brother Brigham. Blood Atonement for fun and profit!

Family Reunion. "You got the Mormons and the drinkers and the Mormons who drink..."

Sorry that I'm flooding this community with memes lol

This conversation I had with my mom a few weeks ago is a real gem:

"Did you hear the news?"

"About the exploding cybertruck?"

"No, they found out that alcohol causes cancer! Good thing we already know that thanks to the word of wisdom. They'll catch up eventually."

"Uh... yeah."

I was itching to mention the temperance movement and whatnot, but my parents are a lost cause when it comes to anything church-related. 🤦

So my sister moved to a new city, wanted to make friends, and started a hiking club. It got kinda big and a local reporter wrote a newspaper article on it. In the article they talked about community and such. They went a bit into how my sister was raised Mormon but left the church and how now she's into a bunch of other weird spiritual things like witchcraft, astrology, reiki, card readings, etc. It was a pretty fun article - but apparently my mom latched onto just the church part.

A couple months later and my family is gathered at my mom's for Christmas. And of course my mom brings the article up and says, "you just spent the whole interview dissing the church." It was a bit funny cause 80% of the article was about hiking. But my mom wasn't to be reasoned with. There was some back and forth, and I threw in that if my sister had a bad time with the church, she was well within her rights to talk about those experiences.

My mom reached her limit with that and kind of exploded, saying no one has the right to talk bad about any religion because it might affect others' faith. Crazy idea, but my siblings and I kind of just rolled our eyes and dropped it - there is no way a productive conversation will happen after she starts yelling. But we did tease her quite a bit over the next few hours by using the word "dis" a lot - "Hey, don't dis cranberry sauce." "All you do is dis astrology." - I could tell she was a bit embarrassed that she was the only one who ended up yelling (which honestly is progress with only that).

Anyway, Christmas day we get a video call from my youngest brother, who is serving a mission in Italy. It was nice, he said they were super busy and baptizing a lot of people which surprised me. I guess there are a bunch of refugees and asylum seekers there - which made more sense. I think he was a bit embarrassed to admit that they weren't having any luck with the actual Italians and that he was kinda only there to proselytize the immigrants. Anyway, after that he told some insane stories about people fleeing their homes for different reasons.

One story was about a Muslim (one of the more violent sects, I don't know which) who started investigating Christianity and was kicked out of his home and moved in with his brother. Then I guess his brother and him were jumped by angry Muslims specifically because they betrayed their faith. They were given the option to go back to the Muslim faith or be killed. The brother was killed, and the refugee was stabbed in the stomach but lived. Hence him fleeing to Italy (I don't wanna be insensitive to this horrific story, but in the moment, I definitely was and this is how it went down - sorry about that).

We were all pretty shocked by the stories, but me being a smart-mouth, said, "you should probably tell that investigator not to talk so badly about his old faith, because it might affect other Muslims' faith." I saw rage in my mom's eyes and I got a bit worried - but then I think I saw something click in my her head and she explained to my younger brother that I was just teasing her over something she said earlier.

I don't know that my mom actually now believes that criticism of a religion is okay, or if it's only okay for non-Mormon religions; but either way I see it as a step in the right direction. Obviously some religions, especially violent ones, deserve criticism, and it was a crazy coincidence to get to point that out to my mom with an insanely extreme example.

But yeah, I think the LDS church deserves plenty of criticism and that it's not our job to be sensitive to the current members when we talk about it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Harris_(Latter_Day_Saints)#Strangite,_Whitmerite,_Gladdenite,_Williamite,_Shaker

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/2018/12/young-adults/a-still-small-voice-among-big-decisions?lang=eng&id=p21-p22#p21

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/22151827

Even Del Parson white Jesus is like, "WTF fellas?!"