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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Five Key Facts

This is a very short sum­ma­ry of what I view as the 5 most impor­tant facts in under­stand­ing alter­na­tive mod­els for LDS truth claims. To the best of my knowl­edge, every point made in this doc­u­ment is accept­ed as fac­tu­al by both LDS and non-LDS schol­ars (please cor­rect me if I am mis­tak­en and I…

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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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Riding the Wake of 60 Years of the Good Ship Zion

It’s Christ­mas­time 2015. I’m 61 years old, a lov­ing hus­band, father of four, grand­fa­ther of nine and — eight months into the Post-Mor­­mon por­tion of my life. The past two years of tran­si­tion have been painful, ter­ri­fy­ing, embar­rass­ing, dis­ori­ent­ing but ulti­mate­ly lib­er­at­ing. I am an active, faith­ful, life­time mem­ber of the L.D.S. Church. I was married…

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Leaving the Church, Part 7 — Priesthood Restoration

1. Overview: Like the First Vision sto­ry, Joseph Smith wait­ed many years before claim­ing to have received the priest­hood from John the Bap­tist and Peter, James, and John. Although the Church teach­es that the priest­hood was restored in 1829, Joseph Smith and Oliv­er Cow­dery made no such claim until 1834. Not even mem­bers of Joseph’s…

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Examining the Fruits of the Church in Practice

I first need to make a cru­cial dis­tinc­tion here, between the Cor­po­rate and Insti­tu­tion­al Church, and the Church that exists in the lives of the indi­vid­u­als and fam­i­lies that com­prise the var­i­ous Wards and Branch­es of the Church. Even though I was a con­vert to the Church, I raised my fam­i­ly in it, and was…

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