LDS Indoctrination and Retentive Socialization

LDS Indoc­tri­na­tion and Reten­tive Social­iza­tion Intro­duc­tion In A Mes­sage To The Most Ardent Crit­ic Of The Mor­mon Church, Ben Arkell quotes a name­less mem­ber of the church who had recent­ly dropped off their daugh­ter and son at the Mis­sion­ary Train­ing Cen­ter (MTC) of the Church of Jesus Christ of Lat­ter-day Saints (empha­sis added): “I wish I…

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Questions to Ask

Intro­duc­tion These ques­tions are designed to probe var­i­ous aspects of the LDS Church’s his­to­ry and truth-claims.1 The list was made for 1) inves­ti­ga­tors to ask the mis­sion­ar­ies, 2) active mem­bers to ask them­selves, or 3) those expe­ri­enc­ing a faith tran­si­tion to ask their par­ents or eccle­si­as­ti­cal lead­ers. The major­i­ty of links pro­vid­ed are to LDS…

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Problem Summaries: resources discussing LDS-truth claims

Prob­lems with LDS truth-claims Before read­ing about the prob­lems, you may want to first con­sid­er the pros and cons of inves­ti­gat­ing the truth-claim data. Very short sum­maries Five Key Facts (~ 1 page) 50 Prob­lems with the Mor­mon Church (~10 minute youtube video) More sig­nif­i­cant sum­maries Mor­mon Primer (mul­ti­ple per­spec­tives: main­stream, crit­i­cal, apolo­getic, and pro­gres­sive) Let­ter For…

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Joseph Smith’s Polygamy Denials

Joseph Smith’s Polygamy Denials Intro­duc­tion Joseph Smith denied the prac­tice of polygamy1 on sev­er­al occa­sions. He was also respon­si­ble for the pub­li­ca­tion or dis­tri­b­u­tion of sev­er­al addi­tion­al denials. A com­plete list­ing of ear­ly Church leader polygamy denials up to 1850 is avail­able here. A few notes: Hyper­links to orig­i­nal source mate­r­i­al may be found by clicking…

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The 1832 First Vision account was suppressed between 11 and ~30 years.

The 1832 First Vision account was sup­pressed between 11 and ~30 years The evi­dence LaMar Petersen, an ama­teur Mor­mon his­to­ri­an, met with Levi Young (senior Pres­i­dent of the First Coun­cil of the Sev­en­ty) on Feb­ru­ary 3, 1953, and took these notes: His curios­i­ty was excit­ed when read­ing in Roberts’ Doc. His­to­ry ref­er­ence to “doc­u­ments from which these…

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The three-fold nature of the LDS Church: corporate, totalistic, and individual-growth

The three-fold nature of the church: cor­po­rate, total­is­tic, and indi­vid­ual-growth bwv549 last updat­ed 2016-06-06 Teach­ings and actions of the Church, its lead­ers, and its mem­bers may be cat­e­go­rized into three promi­nent mind­sets: cor­po­rate, total­is­tic, and indi­vid­ual-growth (aka “growth-mind­set”): There is cer­tain­ly over­lap and inter­play between these mind­sets, but many of the Church’s teach­ings and actions…

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An Evening with Zhenya

For the LDS Ven­tu­ra Cal­i­for­nia stake Relief Soci­ety on 17 March 1992 In com­mem­o­ra­tion of the 150th anniver­sary of the Relief Soci­ety Writ­ten and per­formed by Eugene Kovalenko — Lis­ten to the record­ing of the event using the play but­ton below — https://​mor​mon​band​wag​on​.com/​a​p​p​/​u​p​l​o​a​d​s​/​m​p​3​/​A​n​E​v​e​n​i​n​g​w​i​t​h​Z​h​e​n​ya.mp3 Pro­gram notes for: A jour­ney home to Lia­hona­grad In song, verse, and sto­ry [2015 Note 1: This pro­gram was…

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Meeting with Maxwell, the Special Witness

In 1993 I per­son­al­ly asked Neal Maxwell a ques­tion: “As an apos­tle of the lord Jesus Christ, have you seen the sav­ior?” He was embar­rassed and could not answer that ques­tion, he final­ly told me to read an arti­cle about some­one else’s dream. Many in high posi­tions feign author­i­ty from a self pro­claimed impor­tance. Neal…

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Four Alternatives to Church Policy in Handbook 1, Section 16.13 with “Clarifications”

Over the last two weeks, the LDS church has had their new pol­i­cy on LGBT and LGBT chil­dren leaked, pro­vid­ed an expla­na­tion by Christof­fer­son, then final­ly “clar­i­fied” through a state­ment from the first pres­i­den­cy and com­men­tary from Church Pub­lic Affairs. The church stat­ed that the “ques­tions” regard­ing the pol­i­cy change was caused by “incom­plete news reports, tweets…

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Bogus Justifications Behind Church’s New Policies

The LDS Church released changes to its Hand­book on Novem­ber 5, 2015 in rela­tion to same-sex cou­ples and chil­dren raised by same-sex cou­ples. Specif­i­cal­ly, the Church now pro­hibits chil­dren of same-sex cou­ples from being bap­tized until they are 18 – and only if they move out of their par­ents’ homes, dis­avow all same-sex rela­tion­ships, and receive…

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