The Land of Make-Believe

For [D. W.] Winnicott, play is acknowledged as other than reality: children grant that they are must playing. Play grants itself the right to treat a spoon as a train, and a parent is barred from asking whether the spoon really is a train. But once play is over, the train is again a mere spoon. Still, play is more than fantasy or escapism. It is the construction of a reality with personal meaning. It takes something from the everyday world - a spoon - and transforms it into something more - a train.

Mormon Barbie's sacred garments.

In Winnicott's terms, play is a 'transitional' activity. It provides a transition form childhood to adulthood, from the inner world of fantasy to outer reality, and from the known outer world to the unknown one. Just as a child clings to a physical object - a teddy bear - to create a safe world that then enables the child to explore with confidence the outside world, so an adult clings to an internalized object - a hobby, an interest, a value, or, I suggest, a myth - that then enables the adult to deal with a much wider world. Just as the child knows that the teddy bear is not Mummy yet clings to it as if it were, so the adult recognizes that the myth is not reality yet adheres to it as if it were. Myth is 'make-believe'. (Robert Segal, Myth: A Very Short Introduction, pp. 138, 139)

Mormon-style robes of the Holy Priesthood.

That time of month

Dear brothers and sisters, I just want to remind you that it's the last day of the month, so if you haven't done your home teaching (brethren!) or visiting teaching (sisters!!) you'd better be sure to whip up a batch of cookies and take them over to your assigned families tonight!!!

We all know how much kids love cookies and how those cookies are the only thing keeping the neighbor kids from hating our guts totally and completely for interrupting their evening with an hour of boring parent talk, five minutes of awkward "tell us about school" talk, and the even more awkward ten minute "here's this month's lesson" talk. We all know how awful that is, right? These poor kids. What do we think we're doing for them by making them sit quietly while we adults blabber on and on about whatever the hell isn't interesting at all to anyone anywhere?

We might say it's not really for the kids, it's for us. We might, but I think we'd be lying to ourselves. Do we really need to have neighbors come over and read a few paragraphs from an article in a magazine we're already subscribed to? Oh yeah, and didn't we already read and study and pray about that very article in preparation to share our thoughts on it with about three other families already? And aren't these articles little more than a rehashing of yet another primary lesson? How is this supposed to be beneficial again? I'm not seeing the purpose of rehearsing this monthly farce we call "teaching".

Is it about our pride? Is it about making higher ups happy?

Surely it's not for us. Oops! There goes the timer on the oven! I'd better go pull the cookies out.

"You can leave the Church, but..."

You Can Leave the Church, But You Can't Leave it Alone. (Reposted from here.)

I had a conversation with a friend about people who wonder why post-mormons don't all quickly move on. I'm sure you've all heard the saying, "You can leave the Church, but you can't leave it alone." This is my response to that claim:

There's a huge double standard, as evidenced by the following:

1- I don't go knocking on my neighbor's doors to tell them about Agnosticism.

2- I don't text them saying, "I noticed you went to Church today. I sure missed you at not-Church. Hope to see you soon."

3- I don't bribe their kids with treats to stay home from Church.

4- When my Mormon neighbors move, I don't track them down and invite them to leave the Church in their new area.

5- When PBS has a show on about Charles Darwin I don't make fancy invitations and invite them to watch it with me.

6- I don't keep track of who's going to Church and who's not.

7- I don't fly across the country to Philadelphia at my own expense and spend two years trying to get Philadelphia Mormons to leave the Church.

8- I'm not constantly quoting Richard Dawkins or Carl Sagan on Facebook.

9- I don't put on a huge anti-Mormon pageant every year and invite all of my Mormon friends.

10- I don't secretly interrogate their children to find out why their parents are staying in Church.

11- When a Mormon neighbor makes the decision to stay in the Church, I don't write them a letter explaining the eternal consequences of their decision and telling them that before they make such an important decision they must sit down with me to discuss it.

12- I don't drive down to the Church on the night they're having youth activities and say, "Hey kids, we're on our way to the arcade. Do you want a ride?"

13- I never look at a Mormon and try to figure out what type of underwear they're wearing.

14- I never use funerals as an opportunity to teach the plan of natural selection to grieving Mormons.

15- I have never written my testimony inside a copy of No Man Knows My History and given it to a Mormon while explaining what the book means to me and how it has changed my life.

16- I have never bought a Mormon a gift subscription to a Secular Humanist magazine.

17- I have never told a Mormon how they should vote.

18- I have never criticized a Mormon for the clothes they are wearing.

19- I have never chastised a Mormon friend for posting something on Facebook that was too mormony.

20- I do not deny my Mormon friends and family the opportunity to attend weddings, even if they're not Agnostics in good standing.

21- I do not send Birthday cards to my Mormon Neighbor's Children with a note that says, "Darwin loves you and so do I. We sure miss you when you go to Church."

22- I don't tell my Mormon friends that they're going to hell because they don't believe in the Big Bang.

23- When my less-active Mormon neighbors decide to start going to Church more often, I don't visit them at a time when I know their spouse will be at work and tell them, "Now you know you don't have to go to Church just because your spouse wants to go. You're allowed to make up your own mind."

24- I don't disown my child if they decide to be Mormon.

25- I don't counsel anyone to divorce their spouse because they've decided that Atheism isn't true and that Mormonism makes more sense.

26- When I notice that a family in my neighborhood has attended Church for several weeks in a row, I don't leave delicious chocolate cupcakes on their doorstep with a note that I wish they would stop attending.

27- I don't get together with several of my Post-Mormon neighbors and say, "Hey, lets make a list of all the Mormons in the ward boundaries, and let's think about it and pray about it, and we'll narrow that list down to 5 names, and we'll focus all of our energy and attention on these five people or families, and we'll try to get them to leave the church."

When I was Elder's Quorum President, I was instructed to contact all the elders and potential elders every year, even if they had requested not to be contacted, because they could have changed their mind since last year.

So who's not leaving who alone?

Showing emotion

A recent Infants on Thrones episode got me thinking once again about my internal response to the tears of general authorities in General Conference and other venues. I WOULD CRINGE.

My response had nothing to do with masculine insecurities about crying in public or anything like that; instead, it had everything to do with the seeming lack of authentic emotion in the tears. In other words, IT FELT LIKE THEY WERE FAKING.

Only slightly less convincing than a general authority.

Even if my gut told me I should be suspicious of a leader sharing his tender side, my brain told me I should believe. I blamed myself for not feeling what the speaker was feeling (the Spirit, of course) and buried my skepticism. These men were on a higher plane than me. I needed to trust them. Why would they be faking it anyway? What would these men in high leadership positions, with hundreds, thousands, or millions of people following their every word, possibly have to lose?

Why ordain women?

 1. BECAUSE WOMEN ARE NOT SUBSERVIENT TO MEN.

2. Because LDS scripture, doctrine, and history all give room to ordaining women.

3. Because soon the Church will regret not doing it.

Ethics of Belief

If you are someone who is waiting for evidence to justify your beliefs in and practicing of Mormonism, take a few minutes with William Clifford's short essay "The Ethics of Belief". His beard is so prophetic!

Polygamy - Joanna's take

Here are a few things to consider from Joanna Brooks' recent blog post.

"[T]he new website on Joseph Smith’s polygamy does not say that Smith was wrong—not for marrying against the wishes of his first wife Emma, or marrying women already married to other men, or marrying girls as young as fourteen. It acknowledges that Smith’s polygamy demanded heartwrenching sacrifices of his first wife, but it sidesteps the crucial question of whether these sacrifices were founded in lasting principles of Mormon theology, or were they pains caused by the human excesses of our charismatic founder?

Is it the will of God that polygamy should persist in LDS Church theology and policies pertaining to LDS temple marriages, as it does to this day?"

Dear Tommy, would you and your buddies please let us know if LDS Mormons today are rightly dreading future (and eternal) polygamy?

Traditional marriage

It's nice to see the LDS Church recognized that the tradition of marriage is an ever-changing one:

For much of Western history, family “interest”—economic, political, and social considerations—dominated the choice of spouse. Parents had the power to arrange marriages or forestall unions of which they disapproved. By the late 1700s, romance and personal choice began to rival these traditional motives and practices. By Joseph Smith’s time, many couples insisted on marrying for love, as he and Emma did when they eloped against her parents’ wishes. (See here.)

It's a small admission, but it's a hell of a lot better than their usual homophobic bullshit about "traditional marriage" going back to Adam and Eve. Here the Church admits that women have long been considered property of a man (like in D&C 132:62) and an important trade commodity (think of the tradition of asking for a father's permission and his agreement to "give away the bride"). Kudos.

Let's do what we can to avoid reinstating that tradition where it has fallen out of use.

The "M" word

I have to admit I get annoyed whenever I see Mormons become defensive over the use of the word "Mormon". You see comments pop up like "That's not the name of the Church!" "Why don't you do your research!" or "It's just a nickname btw!" Getting the name of the Church wrong or referring to its members incorrectly means everything that uninformed individual said is incorrect and probably anti-Mormon. Never mind that latter-day saints do in fact refer to the Church as the "Mormon Church" and don't colloquially refer to members of the Church as saints. They only very rarely refer to members as saints and when they do it's typically heard in the expression "the early saints" which is kind of weird considering that those "early" folks were pretty sure they were all latter-day and shit.

Members of the LDS Church call themselves Mormons, I promise. We can say "Mormon" but everyone else had better mind the "M" word! But I have to admit that as an active member I definitely thought it was a smart move when the LDS Church started insisting more and more that people use its official name. (Although I also thought it would have made more sense had they  emphasized that they had wanted to be called the Church of Jesus Christ, not the LDS Church, but whatever.)

Who cares? What's the big deal? All groups have insider-outsider language, right?

Probably, yes. What I found (and still find) disturbing, however, is the way in which Mormons look for tiny mistakes in the things outsiders say in order to dismiss their arguments while going to great lengths to dismiss or ignore mistakes and inconsistencies made by their leaders. The tradition goes all the way back to Joseph Smith (but I don't believe Tom's had the same kind of slip ups as Gordon).

Jesus warned against this scenario (if you're into Jesus).

Why is this OK? Why do the prophets get a free pass on bad information while everyone else gets hosed for simple and often superficial mistakes?

Full trust

 
One very frustrating aspects of LDS culture is the tendency to fully trust someone based on whether or not he or she is an active, believing member of the LDS Church. At the same time Mormons first impulse is to distrust  non-members. Never mind that there is no clear dividing line keeping only awesome, trustworthy people in the Church. Never mind that the Church has no monopoly on trustworthy individuals. But many members, especially in areas with higher LDS populations, practice this type of judgment despite their better judgment. Why is that? How do you escape it? Is it just a matter of group recognition and solidarity or is it something more?

"Mindguards"

 
The last of Irving Janis' symptoms of groupthink is the existence of "self-appointed members who shield the group from dissenting information". In other words, people either hiding or spinning the information that's out there. 

The LDS Church has both self-appointed mindguards and officially appointed mindguards. On a very low level, consider all of the parents, bishops, and stake presidents who purposefully neglect they youth of a clear understanding of what goes on in the temple. On the opposite end of control, consider the documents hidden in the First Presidency vault. Why are are members kept from these things (and everything in between)? 

In the semi-self-appointed category we have the apologists produced and employed by BYU. In a way they're endorsed by the Church. They're paid by the Church and their work has been crucial for the writing of the recent "difficult issues" topics on the Church website. And yet the Church can turn its back on these people and their work whenever convenient. 

On the side of officially appointed mindguards we have the Church historians and the Public Relations department. 

How can the general membership be expected to have its own thoughts and opinions about Church history, doctrine, and policy when certain information is kept from them?

Direct pressure

 
When it comes to "direct pressure to conform", Mormons have an arsenal of pressures and a wide range of pressure points to work with. Members who question the Church will certainly feel it from believing family and they might get called in to talk with the bishop, who will likely send out a request that home and visiting teachers make a greater effort. Every word and every action gets evaluated constantly in order to understand one's strength of loyalty to the Work.

Nowadays every minute spend in church, every lesson-oriented visit, every Ensign article, every second of General Conference feels like direct pressure. 

Illusions of unanimity

 
Apparently the Ancient Romans used to say "Qui tacet consentire videtur, ubi loqui debuit ac potuit", which more or less means silence looks like consent, so you should speak up when you have the chance. 

When you're sitting in church listening to someone spout anti-science trash, racist spew, sexist bullshit, or any other nonsense that no one deserves to be subjected to, think about how your silence might be perceived as agreement. When you have a roomful of people who let shit slide it feels very much like a room full of coprophiliacs united heart and soul. Be aware that feeling like everyone but you is into it might contribute some pressure for you to conform. Don't stand for it.

Differences are okay. I think. At least I want them to be. Speak your mind. Let's see what happens.

 

Self-censorship

The third family of groupthink symptoms covers "Pressures toward uniformity". One of those pressures is the impulse to self-censor. "Ideas that deviate from the apparent group consensus" are kept to oneself.

In the Mormon world fear of expressing a dissenting opinion comes from a few places, I'm sure. A few might fear the wrath of God, some might fear Church discipline, most seem to fear confrontation within the ward or branch, and all probably fear disapproval from family members.

Mormons don't want to appear to be out of touch with the Spirit, they don't want to be contentious, and they don't want to take heat for stepping out of line. So what do we do? We keep our iffy thoughts to ourselves and toe the line. At least when people are watching.

Stereotyping

 
The other half of "Closed-mindedness" takes the form of "stereotyping those who are opposed to the group as weak, evil, biased, spiteful, impotent, or stupid".

This sounds a lot like the top 5 myths that circulate when someone leaves the LDS Church.

All of the standard assumptions about why someone would leave Mormonism denigrate the doubter's character. Being easily offended shows weakness of character. Desiring to sin means you're evil, or weak when faced with temptation. Accusing someone of never having a real testimony is like calling him a tenderfoot or a faker. Calling someone lazy is just another way of calling them weak. Pinning everything on anti-Mormon arguments suggests the person who decided to listen to those arguments was being stupid and succumbing to those arguments is evidence of one's powerlessness when it comes to controlling his or her thoughts. The general approach within Mormonism tends towards belittling the doubter.

Thank goodness John Dehlin and people like him have been making extensive efforts to dispel these styrotypes.

Illusions of invulnerability

One problem Mormons face on a regular basis (at least every 6 months) has to do with contemptible instructions handed down from prophets and apostles. What are we to do when our dear leaders screw up or say something awful? Our dear leader Dallin offers this bit of wisdom: 

 But no faithful member should even arrive at the point of criticizing leaders because once the prophet speaks the debate is over. I dare say that most members of the LDS Church never cross the line. Any confusion or frustration caused by the things they hear from our prophets, seers and revelators is put on the back burner, swept under the rug, put on the shelf, etc. In general Mormons readily conform to the thoughts and adopt the talking points laid out to them in General Conference and elsewhere.

This behavior fits nicely into the psycho-social phenomenon known as groupthink. This is where individuals of a given group will defer to leaders to make important decisions regardless of a given leaders competence or of any dissenting opinion an individual might have. Essentially, rational decision-making suffers for the sake of maintaining the status quo.

Irving Janis, the man known for first describing groupthink, created a list of symptoms we can check Mormonism up against. In the category of "Overestimations of the group — its power and morality" we have the first symptom: "illusions of invulnerability create excessive optimism and encouraging risk taking". When I see this I think of the Joseph Smith quote about "no unhallowed hand" being about to stop the Church.

I also think of the LDS Church's quest to dominate the entire world and prepare it for Jesus' millennial rule. How's that for excessive optimism? For a religious tribe that makes up a tiny fraction of the earth's population (about .2% if we're being as generous as we possibly can be) to believe it will save the world and rule it too is nothing short of excessively optimistic.

When it comes to encouraging risk taking the LDS Church is a little hit and miss. In the yes category we have Church teachings on tithing. Members are to take serious financial risks for the sake of paying tithing. On the other hand members are supposed to play it safe by avoiding debt and having food storage on hand. Then again avoiding debt and having food storage only feed the Mormon believe of being invulnerable.

Exclusively for singles

I always hated singles wards. To me they felt as though a couple of grandparents got together for a chat, realized that they all had grandchildren who were single and possibly having a hard time dating, and decided to find a way to coral all these grandchildren together in good faith that all penises would eventually meet a vagina. Seriously, get enough young single adults together in a chapel bumping into each other and sooner or later they'll want to move things to the bedroom. It's a foolproof plan. And naturally (because they're all such wonderful kids) they'll make sure to stop by the temple for a quick sealing before they run off and make babies.

These singles wards are a real hit. The kids are so bonkers about the whole thing that they even organize gigantic summer vacations together so they can have more opportunities to bump into each other, only this time without being dressed for church. It's like EFY only better.

The only problem is that Mormons aren't marrying as early as they used to (but probably not because they don't want to) which means a lot of the penises finding vaginas are doing so out of wedlock. And that's very bad.

In effort to catch people at the new marrying age, the Church has created some very popular singles wards for people over 30. How's it all working out?, you might ask. Not great. The problem: the men. They're not hanging around. Instead they're flocking to their computers to play games and jerk off.

The plus side to all of this is that now those few older men who are hanging around can go back to marrying a handful of lovely young maidens. Polygamy, your time for open practice has returned!

Quick Guide to Continued Belief

This comes from the Internet.

"[T]hose who have been led by the Letter to a CES Director to abandon their faith, should, in my view, reconsider those Mormon claims and the abundant historical support that’s available for them. They simply haven’t studied enough." -Daniel C. Peterson, fairmormon.org. 

Mormonism: a gospel "so simple even a child could understand" but so nuanced only a person with the equivalent of a PhD of study of church history could actually convince themselves was true. But what do I know? I'm just another apostate.

P.S. If you're not following Just Another Apostate on Facebook, you probably should.

Especially For Youth

I'm not sure why EFY had any negative effect on my relationship with the Church. I never went. Never cared to go until I realized how many girls my friends were meeting there. It simply didn't interest me. Maybe I'd had been to enough Scout camps in my life to know that I didn't want a summer camp with less hiking and more Church stuff. Maybe the thought of being surrounded by goody two-shoes Molly Mormons and Peter Priesthoods sounded too fake. Maybe I was too worldly in my music tastes. Maybe I was too focused on finding a summer job and working as much as I could. It's hard to say.

Either way, I find it a little strange that the very existence of EFY bothered me. It made me suspicious. I couldn't figure out who it was for. Loners? Testimony-less teens? Kids on drugs? In the end I couldn't help but conclude that more than anyone else, the Church needed EFY. EFY was an indoctrination camp. Like Primary. It had to be. The Church is desperate to convince the youth that the Church is the most important thing in their lives, even more so than their immediate family, and we all know how creepy that can get.

Or maybe not. But in the end EFY made me doubt.

Meeting Mormons

Everyone is so eager to meet the Mormons and the missionaries are so overbooked that the Church has decided to turn their "I'm a Mormon" campaign into a super-spiritual full-length feature film called "Meet the Mormons" (not to be confused with "Meet the Mormons," a documentary the Church would probably like to bury)! Be prepared to feel the Spirit. And brace yourselves for the flood of new converts.