Well if all of that is true, then yes. But in this case, you’re just commenting about one guy’s comments in one MB thread.
You have a bunch of other guys saying the same thing and also (much more importantly) “actual evidence”, then that’s a lot more than what we’ve seen here.
Whose comments are quite in accordance with the reports of many others, and also with a lot of actual written documentation put out by various LDS sources in times past.
Besides, this is IMHO, not FQ.
And people wonder why MLM is so popular among Mormons. They love literally creating downlines.
Ding! Ding! Ding! You figured out the catch which very few believing members ever do.
Their catchphrase “families are forever;” means that if you aren’t an active, believing, obeying member you won’t see your family in heaven, but they simultaneous believe that each husband and his polygamous wives are off creating their own worlds, without end.
Growing up Mormon, the contradiction never occurred to me because we were heavily indoctrinated to accept everything taught, without questing or thinking for ourselves.
The most detailed explanation of the doctrine that God was once a man and men can become gods was laid out in a sermon called the King Follet discourse, given at the funeral of a member by that name. A later prophet famously coined the couplet, “As man now is, God once was; as God now is, man may be.” but that doctrine has been downplayed in public by more recent leaders, although it’s never been officially repudiated, as was God - Adam.
The Plan of Salvation is the name Mormons call their doctrine of the progression from the pre-existence, where we all lived as spirits with God and his wives; to this Earth; and then the hereafter. The initial stages of the afterlife is humorously explain by Brother Jake, a really funny apostate in a five-minute video Brother Jake Explains: Life After Death
As I posted earlier, only the best of the best go to Super VIP Heaven and go on to become gods. However, Mormons believe that anyone who dies before they turn eight automatically get this winning ticket.
There’s evidence that many of Smith’s teachings were spur of the moment declarations which he never attempted to reconcile with other seeming contradictions. This idea that babies and small children become Gods is also found in the King Follet discourse.
The absurdity of this is captured by a podcast of apostates, Infants on Thrones.
Apparently, Mormon Studies is an academic field because of the volumes of evidence, where such knowledge has been lost to history for older religions.
Scholars, and internet sleuths, are able to track the radical changes to Mormon doctrines because of contemporary published articles as well as letters and sermons. Scholars study Mormonism to get an idea of how other religions may have evolved.
Absolutely! I completely agree with this, also noting that current members are also “not always the best source of unbiased and accurate information about those groups.” Does anyone remember that one Mormon who posted here in a thread that only “Church approved sources” should be read?
It’s said that you can tell the level of indoctrination of religions by the number of forums of former members, and Mormonism shares that along with Jehovah Witnesses and other such churches.
There are plenty of sources online for and against the LDS church for anyone wishing to become more informed. There is nothing I’ve posted which isn’t argued in minute detail, both pro and con.
This is a message board and I am simply one member. I’m not writing an article to be published in Journal of Mormon History so you won’t find any footnotes. Not surprisingly, no one else here does that either.
If you have specific challenges to my comments, feel free to disagree. It’s a message board and not a blog.
I’m not claiming to be a scholar, but I grew up Mormon in a conservative household with a mother who spent a lot of time teaching us about the doctrines, and then I studied the evidence after I left. I may have some facts wrong, and am open to corrections, but I don’t believe I’m completely off base.
TokyoBayer has commented, articulately and at length, about the LDS church, and his experiences with it, in a number of threads here over the years.
I’ve personally known practicing Mormons, and former Mormons; everything I’ve ever read TokyoBayer write about the LDS here on the SDMB has been extremely consistent with what I’ve heard personally from other sources.
I did reply earlier to this exact part, but I’ve been thinking about it for a couple of days.
IMHO, Mormonism itself is incredibly sexist. Almost all Mormon males 12 and older have the priesthood and no Mormon females do. This priesthood is the underlying power within the church and is supposed to be the basis for power within a family as well. The father is supposed to be the “priesthood leader” of the family, with the power to receive divine inspiration from God leading him to direct the family.
However, there are couples who do manage to work together satisfactorily, while this becomes a problem between other couples.
The problem with Mormon style polygamy is that it greatly reduces or eliminates the possibility of equality. The husband has the priesthood, and the wives are to follow.
The Church doesn’t provide much in way of preventing abuse of power, although they may have made some improvements since the time when I was growing up.
IMHO, this is unconscionable, as organizations the create power have a responsibility to prevent the abuse of that power by individuals. The Mormon church falls short in this aspect.
Mormon style polygamy simply will never be equitable or fair, and always has the possibility of abuse.
What Joseph Smith did was polygamy isn’t really different than what is happening in the fundamentalist cults now. In some ways, it seems to me to be more cult-like.
He introduced the doctrine of marrying other men’s wives.
The LDS Church has never invalidated these marriages or clarified if they were in line with actual doctrine or not. The second prophet of the LDS Church, Brigham Young, also married other men’s wives.
Joseph Smith “tested” some of his associates by asking for their wives. One, in particular is a sad story concerning one of his inner circle, Herber C. Kimball and his wife, Vilate.
Bolding in original.
However, this was just the start. Joseph convinced Heber to give him Heber’s 14-year-old daughter Helen Val Kimball in marriage. Heber then helped convince Helen and Joseph then furthered pressured and manipulated the girl by promising her that this marriage would give her parent eternal salvation, and only permitted her 24 hours to decide.
When the leaders are able and feel entitled to marry scores of women and girls, the power dynamics are such that abuse is inevitable.
Naturally, this doctrine doesn’t stand up to reality. It gets even worse when combined with the Mormon belief that anyone who dies at seven years and 364 days or younger goes straight to the highest kingdom becoming a god and you also accept evolution, with the estimated number of humans who have ever lived at 117 billion.
The vast majority of those 117 billion lived in when the average life expectancy was only 10 years or so. There are going to be a lot of gods in the next round.
I mean, that seems messed up in a lot of ways. Should you kill your children to guarantee their afterlife? What if, at seven, they are already showing signs of straying? What if your child is sick? Should you treat them, or is that a sign that God is calling them to heaven?
The concept behind the belief is not that different from what a lot of Christians teach. Obviously, no Christian is going to accept a Mormon belief, but a lot of Christians believe that any child who dies at a young age automatically goes to Heaven.
…okay, I guess I should chime in here. (I am currently an active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.)
I don’t have much to say about the factual content of @TokyoBayer 's posts, which as far as I know from what I’ve been told/read/studied are basically correct. The interesting thing is that those who grew up in the Church, like @TokyoBayer (especially if you happen to be in a certain intellectual/family class) are, in my experience, much more likely to know those kinds of things than, say, recent converts – there’s definitely some sweeping under the rug, though in the last ten years or so I think there has been at least a bit of greater transparency (perhaps forced).
I wasn’t told a lot of the historical stuff by my parents (who were converts and didn’t really know it), but my mom (who is also very practical and cynical) remarked on the temple marriage rules basically rolling her eyes, pointing out to me some RL examples where it didn’t seem to work, and saying “eh, God will sort it all out.”
I agree that the patriarchal theology (of which polygyny is a part) can lead to abuses, and that concerns me. I do think there has been incremental progress in this direction – it’s now a part of theology that women are given the authority of the priesthood through their callings (which is definitely not something I heard growing up), though it’s still true that men are the only ones who can be ordained to the priesthood - eh, baby steps. More relevant to me personally, I live in a ward where I do trust the leadership of both sexes, and where I feel that women do get a voice. (I also realize this is not a general answer, and I I know many MANY women in the Church do not feel that way. But I’m speaking here of my own situation.)
…I’m also a really really bad example of a practicing member, so, uh, yeah, don’t take me as the example of what a real orthodox member would look like. (I’m in the Church really because of my amazing ward, and not because of the overall theology, whereas most members I know are the other way around.)
Thanks @Bootb . I believe that this doctrine (you’re automatically saved if you die before you reach the “age of accountability” at which you can agree to be baptized, which is somewhat arbitrarily set at age 8) was specifically as a reaction to other churches’ doctrine at that time that said, or at the very least strongly implied, that babies who were not baptized would not be saved (thus implying they were going to hell). (When I asked my husband’s devout Lutheran friends how they dealt with this, the response was for them to shrug their shoulders and basically say, “Well, God will work it out, we don’t have the answers.”)
I was reminded recently that Joseph and Emma Smith, like many people in those days, had many children who didn’t live to adulthood. According to Wikipedia, she gave birth nine times and four lived to adulthood. The first was born in 1828 and lived a very short time. The Book of Mormon was published in 1830, with its insistence that baby baptism is an “abomination” because “for awful is the wickedness to suppose that God saveth one child because of baptism, and the other must perish because he hath no baptism.” I can’t find a citation and I’m too lazy to take too much time to look, I will bet you (a small sum of) money that someone told JS that his little boy was going to hell because he hadn’t lived long enough to be baptized. And regardless of whether one believes that Joseph Smith was a prophet, I feel for him – it’s devastating enough to lose your babies without being told that they’re doomed forever.
Hey! Good to see you here! I always like your take on these Mormon threads, even if you can’t say “Mormon” anymore. 
It comes down to this, that the patriarchal theology is troubling. The question is how bad it can be. Because I grew up in a family where my father used the patriarchy as justification of his abuse and also to keep my mother in line, then I have first hand experience the horrible consequences of the negative side of patriarchy. I also saw how the Church backed up my father and undermined efforts of my mother to try to protect her children.
I don’t know how much Mormonism has actually changed. Because the Mormon church generally doesn’t allow members to choose their own congregations, there is a lot of what members call leadership roulette. Sometimes you can get good local leaders, other times you are stuck with conservative misogynists.
IMHO, the Mormon church will never take the steps to deal with the terrible abuse which happened while it was actively practicing polygamy, first in secret and then later openly in Utah.
The best argument against it would be the women forced into it, for example Sarah Pratt, the first wife of Orsen Pratt, a close associate of Joseph Smith. Smith callled her husband on an overseas mission to England, then propositioned her. She rejected him, and Smith then claimed she was having an affair with another man. Her husband refused to condemn her, so Orsen was excommunicated for insubordination’ and Sarah was for ‘adultery.’
He later rejoined the church and became a leader again, going on to take nine more wives. His 10th wife was 16 and he was 57. Sarah was incensed that he would marry someone younger than his daughter.
Sarah had some things to say:
Mormonism has made an almost (many would quibble that “almost” is an unnecessary qualification) cult-like following of Joseph Smith, and I just don’t see them ever acknowledging his horrific abuse.
When sex, money, power and religion are brought together and controlled by a few old men, it’s inevitable that there will be abuse. Haven’t we seen this time and time again?
Hi there! Nice to see you around too! 
(And yep, you know I’m still an active member by the phrasing, lol.)
Absolutely with the leadership roulette. Like I said, I’m in the Church for my (really great) local leaders, not the overall Church leaders. My ward in general is just really amazing, partially I believe because we’re not in the “Mormon corridor” and we are near a university, so everyone in the ward has had to have a lot of practice with dealing with a variety of perspectives and mindsets, and in general is way more progressive than most wards. (I think I’d probably last about five minutes in Utah – which is where your family is from, right?)
Now, my perception over the last fifteen years is that everything is getting incrementally better in all these things even at the top leadership level, probably in large part because transparency is forced to a certain extent by the rise of the Internet and a much greater degree of information sharing in general, and also because of some high-profile abuse cases. But it is absolutely also true that a patriarchal leadership is just going to in general be much worse at things like seeing the woman’s point of view, which is crucial in things like abuse cases. Though there has additionally been incremental progress in having more women in leadership councils, etc.
But I would be the last person to say it wasn’t legit for anyone to say, “look, incremental isn’t nearly good enough, especially when you can really only track that progress over a decade,” and especially when one has first-hand knowledge of how bad it can be. I get that for a lot of people, the creeping progress would not be enough. At times, I’ve come extremely close to making that decision myself.
I think you’re right about this, because Joseph Smith is so central to the theology. If they went that far, they might as well be RLDS! Even as someone who is hardly orthodox in my theology, I had a moment of “but… that’s not the way I look at it,” when I read your comment. (I mean, I agree that the evidence tracks that way, but for me it’s definitely one of those “…it’s been a while since I studied this, and unless they call me to teach Gospel Doctrine again (1), I have a lot of other things I need to worry about first.”)
(1) I wrestled with a lot of this stuff the two times I was called to teach Gospel Doctrine. The first time I lost my faith basically entirely. The second time I came to the conclusion that the Holy Spirit was present in my ward/our church, with all its flaws and coverups and problems, and that that was worth sticking around for. But now that I’m not in that calling I have other stuff to think about.
(Of course, again this is from a perspective where I’ve only been exposed third-hand to church abuse and have won leadership roulette to where I’m certain that would not fly in my ward; I’m really sorry (and have always been when you’ve talked about it) that you had to go through that and that the Church aided and abetted it.)
It’s been a little while since your reply, but a number of things come up which let me to revisit this. First, a shocking story about the Mormon church discouraging a bishop in Arizona from reporting to the authorities the horrific sexual abuse of his own children. Second, I watched the Neflix documentary on the FLDS polygamy group titled Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey and third, I listened to a podcast about recent happenings about the LDS missionary program which were relevant to this discussion.
First, the article titled Seven years of sex abuse: How Mormon officials let it happen
It’s a gut-wrenching article that shows how the Mormon damage control system helped allow this abuse to continue.
Are we surprised that a conservative religion has problems not only with sexual abuse but also conceals it?
The article outlines how the hotline for local leaders operates mostly to reduce the risk to the Church rather than to help the victims. They have lawyers handle the difficult questions and then claim that the conversations are privileged. All records are destroyed every night.
Both after my father sexual abused my sisters and after my older brother raped me and our younger brother, the LDS church handled that internally, despite many of the actions being felonies.
While the church has been forced to make some reforms, it’s certainly spending far more of it’s time, energy and money protecting itself than the victims of sexual abuse. The latest story shows that little has changed outside what is been forced upon it by the threats of lawsuits.
In Netflix show Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey dives into the problems of polygamy in the FLDS church and the problems that their prophet Warren Jeffs, now serving a life sentence plus 20 years for child rape.
Ironically, he didn’t do that much more than the founder of the Mormon Church, Joseph Smith, who also took a number of 14-year-old wives. It’s been said that the only thing that saved the Mormon movement was the assassination of Smith, as he was increasingly becoming out of control.
The look and feel of the FLDS church isn’t that much different that the LDS one in the 60s and 70s as I was growing up. Although the documentary focused on the girls and women, boys and men also face a lot of pressure to conform.
The emphasis on obedience over all is still something said by many leaders, and there apparently has been a big push by some leaders to really pressure more boys to go on missions.
The number of kids opting out is apparently rising, and the leadership is putting maximum manipulation on these boys.
I don’t see a lot of difference between the FLDS and mainstream Mormon churches. While the former is currently openly practicing polygamy, the latter still have it as an eternal principle. The types of cult-like behaviors of the FLDS isn’t that much different than what many missionary presidents impose on their missionaries.
Some local leaders may not be that bad, but the Mormon church can’t get too liberal or they will hemorrhage followers to the conservative breakaway sects.
Yeah, I was linked by a ward friend to the Arizona story and I’m horrified and upset (but not shocked, sigh). The hotline thing is both awful and horrifying – one of the (relatively liberal LDS) blogs (that I have mostly fallen out of the habit of reading but have been revisiting these last couple of weeks) had an article where the author had, a while back, actually called in to the hotline to see what it was all about (fortunately not as someone in active crisis), and the exchange was, perhaps literally, damning; they said they could only talk to bishops, there was no resource for survivors.
(And I thought of you, too. I would have liked to say that there’s been progress since you were a kid on this front, but it really doesn’t look like there’s been much, does it?)
Some local leaders may not be that bad, but the Mormon church can’t get too liberal or they will hemorrhage followers to the conservative breakaway sects.
Mm. The Church is hemorrhaging the younger generation already because they’re too conservative (or… in this case… idek if “conservative” is the word, just too awful). And not necessarily because of terrible experiences like you had – anyone my age (40’s) or younger is exposed to stuff my parents’ generation never were, via the internet and culture in general. (I’d never have heard about the Arizona article thirty years ago.) There are quite a few people I know who are my parents’ age, or a little younger – former stake presidents, former bishops, high councilors – where some or all of their kids have left. Maybe that hemorrhaging was also happening thirty years ago, but it seems to me at least anecdotally that there was less of it. I think they’re bound to lose people no matter what.
But agreed to obedience over all as a way to double down on the psychological in-grouping. Still hearing a bunch of that, although honestly I don’t think it’s any more than I heard when I was a kid (when I was also in a couple of other different cultures that prized obedience), and probably less overall. It’s just more jarring than it was, now that I’m no longer in those other cultures.
(Our current stake president is actually kind of terrible about obedience in general and missionaries in particular. I really do not like him. But that’s another story.)
I don’t see a lot of difference between the FLDS and mainstream Mormon churches. While the former is currently openly practicing polygamy, the latter still have it as an eternal principle. The types of cult-like behaviors of the FLDS isn’t that much different than what many missionary presidents impose on their missionaries.
Welll… I’m going to push back against this a little. I’ve never met a practicing LDS member who takes polygamy seriously (if they did, I think they’d go be FLDS) – it seems extremely common to say, “eh, it’s an eternal principle but I’m just going not to worry about it,” the way that my Lutheran friends just mostly don’t worry about babies maybe being damned if they don’t get baptized before they die. (Yes, sometimes polygamy bothers people, and sometimes damned babies do too, but often it doesn’t.) And maybe what you say about mission presidents is true (I never went on a mission) but I don’t think it’s quite fair to say that the fact that some missionary presidents may engage in some aspects of cult-like behavior means that as an entire church that we’re not that different from the FLDS. I guarantee I’d rather be in the modern-day LDS church than the FLDS. Though I will also concede that I would absolutely positively rather be in my ward than in at least 90% of the other wards out there, and I’d be pretty unhappy in most wards if I couldn’t leave. (Actually, that’s a large part of why I think LDS and FLDS are qualitiatively different – I could leave my ward at any time, and socially it might not be ideal but it would honestly be fine (partially because a lot of my socialization is already outside of the ward, and partially because LDS has a lot invested right now in proving that they are normal and not culty, so while there might be some social shunning/repercussions there wouldn’t be other consequences), whereas I get the impression that it’s very much harder for a woman to leave the FLDS and polygamy because it’s got much more in the way of explicit socioeconomic ties.) And this:
The look and feel of the FLDS church isn’t that much different that the LDS one in the 60s and 70s as I was growing up. Although the documentary focused on the girls and women, boys and men also face a lot of pressure to conform.
…is rather fair. Except, as I alluded to above, I feel that the LDS church in the 70’s fit in a bit better with the surrounding culture than the FLDS church does now. I grew up in the US South, and while we were considered weird and going to hell, in terms of the overall gestalt I didn’t feel like there was a lot of difference between my Baptist friends and myself.
Do you want to take this to another thread? I’m happy to talk about this, and will engage if you start another thread and tag me, but I do sort of feel like even though we’re referring to polygamy and the FLDS, our discussion is becoming more specific to Church of Jesus Christ Latter-Day Saints policies and at the same time farther afield than general polygamy advocacy.
Umm, no. Well, at least not a mainstream view. Yes, unbaptized babies and such are often portrayed as not going to Hell, per se (the first Circle of Hell is there for virtuous pagans and unbaptized infants, etc).
The first circle is Limbo, the space reserved for those souls who died either before baptism or those who hail from non-Christian cultures. They live eternally in a castle set on a verdant landscape, but forever removed from heaven.
Limbo is a pleasant place, with no punishments, but it is not Heaven.
Yes, absolutely horrible. And Utah “looks the other way” with the child abuse/rape, incest and other horrors in the Jack-Mormon/FLDS cults, even tho they do not condone such.
Your expertise here is a great source.
I was a little surprised to hear that knock on my door and see two comely young women (instead of two young men in white shirts and black ties) being Mormon Missionaries. I was polite to them, offered them a cold drink, told them I was a Lay Priest of The Celtic Christian Church (not entirely true) offered to lead them in the Doxology*, and they backed off, being very confused. I think they marked my house as “loonie, stay away” since I have not had that knock/ring since.
I think that’s a good idea, and it could be of interest to other people as well. A discussion by a former Mormon zealot with an active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
(“Church”, 'cuz I ain’t typing that out every time) but not overly invested in the theology, which I take to mean a “cultural member” but I’ll let you clarify to the extent you want. I appreciate the respectful nature of your replies and intend to extend the same.
I will comment on this one point as it relates directly to polygamy:
That’s fair, especially among members under 60(?) or so, and especially outside of Utah.
To be clear, the Church has declared that polygamy is to not be practiced temporally, on Earth at this time. However, they have not renounced it as an eternal doctrine, mostly because they don’t want to touch it.
When I used to read the blogs or posts of various former members then it seems to have been treated it as you said. The Church has seemed to have done a fairly successful job of minimalizing the historical practice.
My almost 87-year-old, active LDS mother still believes that she will likely be required to accept polygamy in the Celestial Kingdom. (I told you I grew up in a conservative family.) But also accepts that she would have been excommunicated for practicing it now.
I said this before, but there is a small movement of mainstream members who start up polygamy, but they tend to become independent polygamists rather than join the FLDS. One of my high school seminary teacher has a brother who did that, but then became disillusioned and quit. The cool thing is they had real swords made to fight in the Armageddon, and Brother Gilbert brought it to school one day. As a D&D gamer at the time, that was the best seminary lesson ever.
I think I mentioned it uptread, but two of her grandparents grew up in polygamous households, and I knew both of my great-grandparents so it was part of our direct family history.
I just wanted to clarify my point about polygamy and any further discussion can be done in “The Discussions” thread.
Back in the Jurassic era when I was a missionary, missionaries were mostly young men, about 90%.
These days, there are lots more women serving as well. Some places have more than 50% women.
We never made lists like that, official or otherwise. Missionaries are usually in one area for only a few of months before getting transferred to another and replaced by others. No one I saw was ever that organized.
Tracking, is really inefficient and everybody hated it. The church has tried various other ways to get away from it. The number of missionaries is declining as well so there could be a number of other reasons you haven’t gotten visits again.