(Part 2) Best products from r/mormon

I've found that I've really enjoyed some books that address topics that are interesting to Mormonism without being related to it at all.

Karen Armstrong (comparative religion/religious history), Bart Ehrman (biblical textual criticism), Timothy Keller (I really loved "The Reason for God"), Joseph Campbell (mythology), have all helped me gain a greater understanding of religion in general.

Other books that cover science and history have been excellent as well. I had what could be called a spiritual experience learning about the magnitude of life and how it exists when I read Carl Zimmer's "Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea". I would also suggest learning a bit about the origins of modern civilization by studying about Mesopotamia. I found a bit of interesting American history (that also briefly mentions the 19th century "burned over district" and Joseph Smith) in "Occult America: The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation."

My current read is "This is my Doctrine: The Development of Mormon Theology" by Charles R. Harrell, a BYU professor. It seems like the type of book that many Mormons would find offensive, while many Mormons would find it inspired.

I also enjoy reading scripture and seeing what it says without trying to make it fit what I think it should say, especially the New Testament. Honestly, I think that the New Testament inspires fewer wtf moments than any of the other books of scripture :)

Hang in there, man. Your story is a common one, and one I’m all too familiar with.

My wife’s reaction was almost identical. We are in a good place now, but it took us almost 4 years to get here.

Here are some resources that have helped:

• Natasha Helfer Parker’s book, One Family, Two Views: How to Fortify your Mixed-Faith Mormon Marriage
  
  
• Jon Ogden’s book, When Mormons Doubt: A Way to Save Relationships and Seek a Quality Life
  
  
• The “Mormon Mixed-Faith Marriage” Facebook group (good for both the believing and non-believing spouse)
  
  
• Natasha has her own virtual counseling practice, Symmetry Solutions - we have used their services and they are really good at understanding the Mormon mixed-faith paradigm and helping both spouses approach the marriage from a healthy standpoint.
  
  Best of luck, feel free to ask me any questions, I’m happy to discuss further.

The full list of 2015 Brodie Award recipients can be found here.

A small selection of a few of my personal favorites among last year's winners:


Best New Blog 2015: Zelph on the Shelf

Best New Podcast 2015: Naked Mormonism Podcast

Best Discussion Forum 2015: r/exmormon

Best Humor Blog/Site/Channel/Podcast 2015: Brother Jake

Best LDS-Interest Interview-and-discussion Podcast 2015: Mormon Stories Podcast

Best LDS Church Watch/Analysis Blog/Site/Channel/Podcast 2015: Thoughts on Things and Stuff

Best Scripture Study Blog/Site/Channel/Podcast 2015: My Book of Mormon Podcast

Best LDS-Interest Book (Fiction) 2015: Their Works Shall Be in the Dark, by Alex Hansen

Best LDS-Interest Comic or Image 2015: Brutally Honest Mormon Coloring Pages, by Gileriodekel

Best Mormon-Themed Meme 2015: Nephi, Mormon and Moroni discuss the seer stone on Facebook and they’re not happy, by xoanan

Funniest Humor Piece 2015: Infants on Thrones song series: Disney Songs for Alienated Mormon Kids and Church House Rock: Polly Polly Gamy

Best Parody 2015: Updated Primary Songs for Children of Gay Parents, by the Debrief Society Podcast

Best Post Title 2015: If You’re a Pharisee and You Know it Wash Your Hands, by Tanner Gilliland

Best Original Research Regarding Mormonism 2015: Joseph Smith Disorderly Disgrace, by Naked Mormonism Podcast

Best Mormon Scoop or Leak 2105: Handbook policy leak, by FearlessFixxer

Best Personal Recording 2015: An audio recording of the Boise Rescue Mission, by cagelessbird

Best Church Watch 2015: New Church Essay is Lies, by Kate Kelly

Best Response to Apologetics 2015: Now We’re Blaming the Victims? by Natasha Helfer Parker

Best History Piece 2015: How the Book of Mormon Translation Story Changed over Time, by Christopher Smith

Most Insightful Commentary on the CoJCoL-dS 2015: Any Opposed, Please Sit Down and Shut Up, by Alan Rock Waterman

Best Mormonism-and-Orientation Piece 2015: Michael Ferguson, Seth Anderson/ Fighting Gay Conversion Therapy, by Mormon Stories

Best Mormonism-and-Race Discussion 2015: Lowry Letters: The Follow-up Discussion, by Infants on Thrones

Best Mormonism-and-Gender Discussion 2015: What Mormon Women Get, by Thinker of Thoughts and Jamie Hanis Handy

Best Exit Story 2015: Leaving the Church: A Compilation of the Evidence Against the LDS Church, by Eric Nelson

Best Faith Journey Piece 2015: Why I Love the LDS Church Enough to Both Criticize It AND Step Away From It, by Clean Cut

Best Advice 2015: 10 DOs and DON’Ts For Thanksgiving With Your Mormon Family, by Zina Jacobs-Smith-Young

Most Poignant Personal Story 2015: 234 LDS Mass Resignation Interviews, by Sage Turk

Best Mormon Parenting Piece 2015: Dad’s Primal Scream’s series on his kids and the policy

Best Real-Life Act or Activism 2015: Chubs Gato offering free resignation services

Most fantastic r/mormon AMA 2015: church employee Daniel Miller

Best Poem 2015: Dear Dad, by Alice_McCann


Your nomination(s) will help to acknowledge and immortalize the efforts of the year's most important, funniest, moving, underrated Mormon voices (including your own).

How much of my response did you read? I thought I made it clear that 1) I am not the author 2) I don't think these similarities definitively prove anything 3) I make no claims, I simply take issue with your "rebuttal" which accuses the blogger of "grasping at straws."

Again, my point is this: parallels are being drawn between diverse cultures and civilizations on account of similar symbolic imagery all the time. This doesn't prove anything as far as the Book of Mormon is concerned, but connections are there and some may be worth exploring for other reasons.

Scholarship:

For starters, I already referenced the mythologist, Joseph Campbell. In "The Mythic Image," Campbell briefly examines parallels between this "Rattlesnake Disc" and Tibetan imagery.

Amira E. Sonbol is a professor of Islamic history at Georgetown. She wrote a book called, "Beyond the Exotic: Women's Histories in Islamic Societies" where she links the Hamsa to the Hand of Fatima, to the Mano Pantea (which I referenced before) and other ancient representations of the symbol from remote cultures.

Charles Orser explored the connections between the Spanish "figa," Victorian good luck fists, and plantation slave charms... arguing that they are likely descendants of the hamsa or Hand of Fatima.

Dagmar Painter, the curator of Gallery Al Quds at the Jerusalem Fund in Washington DC, has discussed hand iconography in the Middle East and even in Native American cultures. See a video of her discussing these links.

Again, this doesn't prove anything. But given some of the examples I provided above, I think it's safe to say that your dismissal is too heavy-handed. So the hand in the "Rattlesnake Disc" doesn't hold the Eye in its palm... The Mano Pantea often doesn't hold the Eye at all... the Figa is merely a fist, and the hamsa (which is undoubtedly an earlier form of the Hand of Fatima), often looks nothing like a hand... but by your standards and lack of expertise, these connections would be disregarded on grounds of "pseudoscience."

Finding Darwin's God is an introduction to evolution by a Christian scientist. It's a great option.

Richard Dawkins is also very good. He's a militant atheist, but his writings on evolution are wonderful, clear, and beautiful. The Selfish Gene or The Greatest Show on Earth are both very good options.

That's a hard call. I am an active Mormon who is very interested in Mormonism and for whom Mormonism is a big part of my life, but I have a hard time thinking of a religion based gift I would want personally. But it would depend on her needs and intersests.

If she does not have a complete set of lds scriptures, "the quad" in Mormon lingo, she may appreciate that.

If she likes to read, some classic books that a ton of lds people have read and enjoy are:

Believing Christ

The Infinite Atonement

The Spiritual Roots of Human Relationships

Some people like LDS themed artwork, though it is not usually my personal taste.

This is really thoughtful of you to ask.

The two best things:

1. Read the NT with an excellent commentary. My favorite is the Orthodox Study Bible, and it will give you a much more traditional perspective on NT passages.
   
2. Read The Apostolic Fathers. These are the writings of the earliest Christians right after the NT: so something like 70 CE - 150 CE. These are the people who would have known the apostles. It's fascinating what Christianity looks like from their perspective. (Hint: at least to my mind, not Mormonism.) What I see is a sort of proto-Orthodoxy or proto-Catholicism. And some of the letters are just lovely. (Some are strange.)
   
   I"m planning to read some other history book soon, happy to update when I decide on which ones.

Mormonism requires more moral relativism than I'm willing to give to anything. As an adult, rational analysis gets the highest weighting in my mind, and won out over the childhood indoctrination I received as a child. I wish I would have started without a belief in magic.

The ideas that Smith said were required for exaltation, such as the followers giving him their wives and young daughters, is repeated in the cults of Koresh, Bent, and Jones. The faithful want to blunt the razor sharp edges of his plain meanings. They want to avoid comparison with other bad actors, including Warren Jeffs.

> that there is about the gospel of Jesus Christ and his church.

If I were a Christian, then I would wonder why my church had disavowed Matthew 19:14 and Matthew 11:28. I would wonder if the boy-faced prophet was all he claimed to be, and whether Matthew 7 provided a prescient warning. I would wonder why fast offering money has to go to Salt Lake first, and why they owned a god-damned mall. Yes, but despite all of that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?

My understanding of Christianity is that every tongue will confess and they will win the religious war. Mormonism tried to take over the point and standard bearer with a claim of a magical restoration. The NOMs would let the basic claims fall by the wayside, and the founder appears less and less innocent with every rock that is overturned and publicly admitted to. If I were a believer in Christianity, then I see that the liberal churches where "shades of gray" are allowable without excommunication offer a much safer worship environment. Where freethought is cherished, and litmus tests to prove worthiness are absent. Mormonism is a new Abrahamic religion and a throwback to excessive rule keeping. There is no room for error. The message to the children (and adults alike) is that perfection is possible, and being a member of the Not even once club is best of all.

As with the history, a rigorous approach to the Bible threatens some dearly-held doctrinal interpretations and thus is avoided because it's uncomfortable.

I wish the author would have persevered and enhanced the OT curriculum rather than just quitting and leaving somebody less informed to teach the class. There are many wonderful resources available for the Bible, why not bring some into the classroom?

It's not a full commentary, but there is a pair of volumes, Jehovah and the World of the Old Testament, and Jesus Christ and the World of the New Testament, put out by some BYU ancient scripture professors who actually seem to know stuff about the ancient world. They have their "eyes open" a bit more than the average LDS volume, even confronting hairy issues like the golden calf representing Jehovah, the documentary hypothesis, etc.

In general though, I think Mormons avoid a more robust approach because their theology is not yet robust. The naive acceptance of various prophetic statements on the bible over the centuries---combined with what amounts to belief in prophetic infallibility---has created a minefield that sustained inquiry will inevitably set off. The authors of the books I mentioned seem aware of the trap the church is currently in. They are fairly responsible in trying to introduce difficult topics. But on some of them, there's just no sugar-coating it. Either the modern revelation is wrong, or the best biblical scholarship is wrong, take your pick, is often what it comes down to.

For example, Jehovah and the World of the Old Testament, p. 27, has an infobox titled "Flood Stories" which compares the Bible and Epic of Gilgamesh versions of the flood story. At the end they say,

>Scholars noting the similarities between the biblical flood story and those extant in Mesopotamia have suggested two possibilities to explain this phenomenon: (1) both stories derive from a common, ancient source; (2) the Israelites adopted the story from the Mesopotamians. Most scholars accept proposition two as the more likely explanation, suggesting that the Isaraelites became familiar with the story during the Babylonian captivity and inserted it into their scriptures. Because the flood story is also alluded to in the book of Moses, Latter-day Saints tend to accept the first proposition.

Because Mormons are defending unique doctrinal commitments such as that Moses composed the flood story, they end up isolated from good commentaries because the best Christian commentaries out there will take option (2) rather than the less satisfying option (1). My own Study Bible ("NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible: Bringing to Life the Ancient World of Scripture") does this.

Taking a more complex approach to Joseph Smith's revelations makes it possible to access a world of great information about the Bible. But right now that's not on the table for the mainstream church, so they will have to continue to rely on their own resources for biblical commentary, which means compared to what's available they will always kinda suck.

That said, they can be so, so much better than what's currently in the manuals.

> The fact the RLDS conceded Joseph Smith practiced polygamy, prior to their transformation into CoC.

I agree that this weighs heavily in favor of the "Joseph was not a monogamist" hypothesis. Still, I am particularly interested in those particularly documents (or arguments) which swayed the historians at the time. Would have loved to have been a fly on the wall as they changed their minds.

> So essentially one would be vindicating the pre-CoC RLDS position or the Rigdonite position and not the Utah/ Brighamite/ Mormon position

Both of my friends are comfortable with the LDS Church being in some form of apostasy (one was excommunicated for this book and the other seems happy to concede the LDS Church might be wrong [even though he's still active]). I agree that for a believing LDS member the idea that Joseph was a monogamist is incoherent (as you've described).

I highly recommend reading In Faith and In Doubt both my husband (Mormon) and I (agnostic) read it and it’s done wonders to help us respect each other’s viewpoints and feel optimistic about our differences.

Side note: For whatever reason the book is kinda pricey to buy on Amazon, so we listened to it on Audible, which is free if you are just signing up or one credit if you already have an account.

From Amazon:
> In this book he explains how Mormonism has undergone four distinct phases. The first began in 1820 and ended with Joseph Smith’s death in 1844. The second began upon Joseph Smith’s death and ended with abandonment of plural marriage, publicly in 1890 and privately in 1904. In the third phase Mormonism denounced as apostasy its practice of plural wives, marking the first time an orthodox practice became grounds for excommunication. The fourth phase began with David O. McKay and is still underway. In it Mormonism has adopted corporate management techniques to consolidate and direct central church decision-making. The first phase was innovative and expansive, continually adding doctrine, scripture, teachings and ordinances. Subsequent phases have curtailed, abandoned, even denounced earlier teaching and doctrine. Phases two through four have all abandoned doctrine. Growth in these subsequent phases has been defined in terms of political influence, financial gains, cultural inroads, and population growth; while the underlying religion has been curtailed. Today, marketing the institution has become more important to Mormon success than preserving the original religious content. The changes from phase to phase have completely transformed Mormonism, sharing a vocabulary but redefining the terms. Modern Mormonism has now institutionalized change. For the first time in this book Mormonism is candidly described in terms which track the changes by examining doctrine, teachings and practices. Interestingly, the passing of the heavenly gift was anticipated by Joseph Smith’s prophecies and the Book of Mormon.

I haven't read it, but it looks interesting.

Just some observations: The first two links you provided were duplicates, the third one was by a private individual whose travelsite covers many sites of interest around the country and is likely not mormon. His is an article, not a public monument.

The 2007 article by Turley is a good one, and one of the very first put out by the church that at least gives some background an mormon involvement. But it's an article in the Ensign, again not on a public plaque for the world to see. The church, under Hinckley, dedicated the site in 1999 and on a picture on the very link YOU posted states:

"Built and maintained by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints out of respect for those who died and were buried here and in the surrounding area following the massacre of 1857"

IOW, passing visitors, who may encounter this site and its history for the first time, will have no inkling of the central role the church played in the massacre itself. The church instead passes itself off as 'the good guy' by generously creating this monument out of the goodness of their hearts.

Following the massacre the US Army, out of respect for the dead, erected a rock cairn. The church omits mentioning that when Brigham Young visited the site on May 25, 1861 he purposefully desecrated the monument by having it torn down. In Wilford Woodruff's diary he related how Young then stated: "Vengeance is mine and I have had a little." The Rock Cairn was leveled to the ground. Does that sound like the actions of a man who had any regrets as to what happened there?

http://www.1857massacre.com/MMM/brigham_young_desecrated.htm

Will Bagley's "Blood of the Prophets" describes the MMM coverup in great detail as does Juanita Brooks in her "The Mountain Meadows Massacre".

The church, I believe, owns the Haun's Mill site. You'd have to ask them why they've done nothing with it.

RE: Gov. Bogg's extermination order: I suggest you read "The 1838 Mormon War in Missouri"by LeSeuer who documents the attitudes and behavior the mormons brought into Missouri; how a whole county, Caldwell, was created just for them, and how the mormons failed to live up to their agreements with the locals and carried out extensive depredations themselves. Sidney Rigdon's infamous "Salt Sermon" set the stage for what followed. IOW, rather than being the peaceful, gentle victims portrayed in mormon mythology the mormons themselves were guilty of a massive sense of entitlement and criminal activity that brought retribution on themselves.

All Stuff You Never Heard in Sunday School.

It's truly a whole new world to explore. I read the book Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy by Simon Blackburn last year as a starting point. Great stuff. I'd recommend it if you'd like to dip your toes into philosophy a bit more. It's pretty cheap on used book sites as well.

I am a firm subscriber to #2.

One of the most cringe-worth experiences of my life was sitting in sacrament meeting after my son's baby blessing, listening to a member ramble on about his personal revelations from Joseph Smith and the Savior. The spirit was not only noticeably absent from his words, but strongly testifying of their dishonesty.

To make matter worse, my father-in-law, an agnostic Jew, was in attendance, and has made for interesting conversation since.

One of the points of our conversation afterwards, was that yes, members of the church do believe in personal spiritual revelation, which can include the ministration of angels or the Savior, but members who experience these things consider them of the utmost sanctity and rarely, if ever share them.

One notable recent departure that I took with a grain of skeptic-salt, but much pondering was Visions of Glory. At worst it's a fascinating dive into Mormon-millenialism, and at best it's a very moving and deep account of an anonymous mans visions over the past half-century. He covers everything from near-death experiences and journeys on the other side of the veil, to an in depth (if vague) timeline of the destruction of the United States and the coming of Christ (during general conference no less [which I had pondered about previously]).

The man who transcribed/shadow-wrote the book was John Pontius, of UnBlogMySoul, who's own story is a worthy venture. I found both sources to be worthy of study and experimenting upon.

https://www.amazon.com/Passing-Heavenly-Gift-Denver-Snuffer/dp/0615528961/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1505107753&sr=8-1&keywords=passing+the+heavenly+gift