Easy to be Entreated

There have been a lot of posts lately about believing spouses and how to deal with them. It has caused me to reflect on why my situation turned out so differently than the experience of so many others. I am not sharing this to make others envious or feel worse about their own situations. I am sharing this as a way of processing it and to help others who might have a spousal situation similar to mine. My disbelief did not take place gradually. I had always had an interest in church history, deep doctrines, and apologetics. So, I learned little by little the troubling aspects of Mormonism, along with the popular faith-saving mental gymnastics that maintained my orthodox beliefs. My wife knew that I knew a lot more about Mormonism than she did, and although we were both TBM, I might have been a little more uber-TBM than she was. Occasionally, she would overhear me reacting vocally to myself over something I read of Quinn's, and ask me what it was. I was often reluctant to share becaus...

(Note: This was originally posted by me on (http://latterdaymainstreet.com/ ) a new blog that aims to be an all-inclusive hub for all things Mormon. I wanted a copy of it for my own blog). One constant for me throughout my recent changes in religious belief has been an interest in genealogy, although even that has changed in its meaning and purpose. When I was Mormon, I participated in genealogy to extend the blessings of the restoration to my dead ancestors and because I was fascinated by the lives and experiences of those who went before me. My immediate and extended family is very small; I often felt like a “stranger in a strange land” and like I did not quite belong. That feeling was exacerbated when my mom, the emotional glue of our family, passed away when I was only 14. Getting to know who my ancestors were and a little about their lives helped me feel that I did have earthly kin and that I did belong here. And since, as a Mormon, I believed that these dead relatives of mine con...

The following posts were originally made on Newsweek's On Faith blog (http://tinyurl.com/2684fy ). So, some of the content might not make sense out of context. Hueffenhardt: I don't think you are going to get very far with Mormons arguing about Jesus' teachings on hell or the interplay of omniscience and free will. At least it did not work for me when I was a true believing Mormon. Even the stuff that I have mentioned thus far on this forum (failed prophecies, prejudice, discrimination against women and gays) would not have had any effect on my beliefs. I found a way to be ok with Joseph's hiding his plural marriages from Emma, marrying other men's wives and his own teenage foster daughters. I found a way to be ok with Joseph's involvement with magic, his repurposing Masonic signs and tokens into the endowment, his so-called lying for the Lord, his anger problems and physically assaulting and threatening others. I was ok with Joseph's evolving first vision ...

From time to time it is necessary for someone to send me a private message. It does not appear that this site offers a way for you to email me without showing my address. So, I have created a junk account that I probably will not check that often and will probably be hit hard with spam. But, you can contact me there and I will eventually get back to you: enochville (at) yahoo (dot) com

Dathon posted this recently on NOM, and I just had to repost it here so that I have it for future reference. It is beautiful. I only wish more LDS leaders would speak like this. The May/June 1979 issue of Sunstone [and reprinted in the May 2000 issue] featured a 193? General conference address given by Apostle Stephen L. Richards that had never been published because its topic angered Church President Heber J. Grant and the apostle refused to revise it. Sunstone titled it "Bringing Humanity to the Gospel" : "In application of this question, I must mention some delicate matters. I call them delicate because I run a great hazard of being misunderstood when I discuss them. Take smoking for instance. Is there more or less tolerance for the user of tobacco by the Church, as represented by its officials and the faithful membership, than there was twenty-five or fifty years ago? I cannot say. I have no way of knowing. We feel that it is wrong and we inveigh against it. Men ofte...

It seems like every time I post on the On Faith blog, I get an increase in visitors to my site. So, I figure this time I will have something for them to look at. Otterson, the Church's Public Relations guy, was appointed by the Church to respond to Newsweek's invitation to answer questions about contemporary issues with religion. Recently, Otterson made a post entitled, "Prejudice Can Be Unlearned" . He talks about how he was baffled at the prejudice against Catholics and how prejudice can be unlearned. I posted this: " I praise Pres. Hinckley for his April 2006 Priesthood session talk in which he encouraged the brethern to be kinder to those of other religions and races. This is a step in the right direction. John D. the First said: "Many current General Conference talks by President Hinckley highly stress tolerance of people with other points of view; they are probably largely directed at Mormonism's Utah/...

My wife and I grew up in active LDS families. I am now atheist and my wife is agnostic, yet we are still interested in experiencing transcendence and awe on a regular basis and raising our son to enjoy the same. We are now active in a Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, which supports us in our personal spiritual quests. But, we have also been trying to create new family traditions. Perhaps, I’ll post on some of those efforts later, but today I’d like relate what we have been doing with music. We would like to have some hymns to sing during family nights that convey our new values and beliefs. Singing of course creates unity, accelerates the learning process, and encourages emotional elevation. The problem is we don’t know any of the Humanist or UU hymns, yet. But, we do know an awful lot of LDS adult and children’s hymns. Unfortunately, the messages in many of those hymns are no longer consistent with our beliefs. So, we decided to do two things. First, go through the LDS hymnbook...

(None of the following ideas are original, but I believe they deserve greater publicity). There are a number of problems with the current system of selecting a new president of the United States. Due to the electoral college, only the votes in swing states matter, effectively disenfranchising voters from the rest of the country. States like Maine, Nebraska, and Colorado addressed this by splitting up their electoral delegates, but why have delegates at all. From Wikipedia, "The Electoral College dilutes the votes of population centers that might have different concerns from the rest of the country. The system is supposed to require presidential candidates to appeal to many different types of interests, rather than, say, the urban or rural voter only" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Electoral_College ). The problem is that in the current system the interests of non-swing state voters can be safely ignored (which happens to be most of the country). And due to the st...

At this point in my life I pretty much have an allergic reaction to the word "commandments". But, often as a believing Mormon, especially after learning a little more about how humans function psychologically, I began to be dissatisfied with the big Ten. With all the wisdom, insight, and understanding of human nature and our needs that God was supposed to have, the Ten Commandments seemed to be lacking in the instructions that would really be useful to humankind.There is no commandment against physical abuse. There is no commandment to work for social justice. It would have been nice if the message in the Beattitudes was in the big Ten. Now, I don't believe in god anymore. I realize that today many of the big Ten are ignored and violated, many times even by believers. But, for many, many years people tried to live by the big Ten and many still do today. So, if you could change history, what would you make the Ten Commandments, if you knew that many people would try to liv...

Are you a fan of men's college basketball? Do you enjoy March Madness? Would you like to compete against your friends from the DAMU in predicting who will win the championship? If so, I have a game for you! ESPN.com has a Men's Tournament Challenge that is free to enter! The brackets will be available after selections are announced on Sunday, March 11, but you can still create up to 5 entries and join our DAMU group. Pick the most games correctly and you could win $10,000 cash from ESPN. All entries in the game are eligible for the Runner-up Prize, a $5,000 Best Buy Gift Card (awarded after a random drawing). So beat the rush, and start planning how you'll cut down the nets! If one of your entries performs best in our group, you'll have bragging rights for a whole year. No money, sorry. It doesn't matter if you don't know anything about the teams, just come have fun with your buddies. You'll need to sign up for a free account with ESPN.com. Then create your ...