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Recently, my son participated in the Blue & Gold Banquet for boy scouts in our ward. As a special guest, a couple of scientists from a local pharmaceutical company came and did a chemistry demonstration. I’m assuming the two of them are not members of our church. Afterwards, I imagined a hypothetical conversation between them and the primary president (or whoever set this up): Scientist: We’d be happy to do this same demonstration for your Girl Scout troop, just let us know when.
PP: oh we don’t do Girl Scouts in this church, only Boy Scouts.
Scientists: …wait, what?
Do we ever think about how this stuff must look to outsiders? We take it for granted that This Is The Way Things Are, but in 2017 we’ve got to look a little backwards. Wait, women aren’t allowed to handle money in your church? Wait, the women’s meeting is presided over by a man? Wait, you gave black men the priesthood almost 40 years ago but the top leadership is still 100% white? Yes, there’s a logical explanation for all of these things but to an outsider, I don’t think it looks like a ringing endorsement.
I have read some comments from ex-mo’s outside the jello belt and they say that they eventually asked people that knew them (and now know they are non Mormon) how they viewed Mormonism and what they knew about it. Some of the ex-mo’s were shocked that the non-members knew a reasonable amount of the crazy parts of our history, but out of respect didn’t push that. Interesting how a TBM views themselves. I really pay attention to Jana Riess’s blog, especially when she looks at Pew religious surveys. She just had an interesting one
http://religionnews.com/2017/02/15/americans-warm-slightly-toward-mormons-other-religions/ ” class=”bbcode_url”> http://religionnews.com/2017/02/15/americans-warm-slightly-toward-mormons-other-religions/ If you look just at the coming generation(s), Mormonism and many other religions have some really strong headwinds pushing against them.
[img]http://religionnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/PF_17.02.15_feelingThermometer_age640px.png [/img] I sit on the board of a local interfaith homeless shelter. A hand full of LDS wards participate. They do a great job, but it always interesting to hear the top Pastor explain “The Mormon’s have a hierarchy. It’s very much IBM in the 1950’s.” Everyone on the team knows I am LDS, I held back for awhile but the team was having trouble with their LDS contact person suddenly not being available. In other churches you sign up and do your assignment as long as you like. So year after year, we connect with the same church leader as the new season begins. Not in the LDS church. Calling rotation just screws that up. Eventually I had to explain the whole darn deal to them. And had to out myself to do it. It actually turned out pretty good.
And if we were telling a faith promoting story – I am having a great missionary experience.
I am not ashamed to be LDS. I don’t mind talking about my church. I just have no desire to be perceived by either side as a missionary for the church. That’s why I didn’t just announce my religion. It shouldn’t and doesn’t matter to me in my service. I am there for the homeless. (Okay diatribe done).
Back to the OP – Yes we look strange on multiple levels.
Christ looked strange in his day too. To some of the Jews he was inactive or “Jack Jew”. I’m feel comfortable being strange. Even before I joined the LDS church.
My friends know & understand. Always keep them guessing.
Some of our strangeness is good, but a lot of it is neutral or bad. Such as endorsing scouting only for boys but never (in 100+ years) for girls. In 2017, is there a good way to explain that to a never-Mo that won’t cause them to give major side eye to the church? And would they really be wrong? Joni wrote:Some of our strangeness is good, but a lot of it is neutral or bad. Such as endorsing scouting only for boys but never (in 100+ years) for girls. In 2017, is there a good way to explain that to a never-Mo that won’t cause them to give major side eye to the church? And would they really be wrong?
I agree completely. In fact, this is more than strange. It is discriminatory and wrong. (IMO)
The “strange” I’m referring to is different. It is odd beliefs or religious practices that make us different or not accepted. For example, garments, temple, Family History, etc.
Honestly I’ve never run into a non-member that cared about the church and Girl Scouts. I have met lots of people who think some of the doctrinal stuff is weird though. DarkJedi wrote:Honestly I’ve never run into a non-member that cared about the church and Girl Scouts. I have met lots of people who think some of the doctrinal stuff is weird though.
Ditto. The church as adoption of scouts is just another 1950’s framing of a family. Girl scouts does not have that same “ring” (don’t take this as criticism of Girl Scouts – I wish more young girls participated a bit).Around here, non-LDS churches either sponsor Girl AND Boy Scouts, or neither. (Not just scouts, either. My daughter participates in a basketball ‘sports ministry’ in another church that has a roughly equal number of boys and girls. In every ward I’ve ever been in, church basketball is only for boys/men.) In comparison, our failure/refusal to provide equal opportunities to kids of both genders probably looks really weird. We only look weird in this respect to more liberal Protestant communities. We look quite normal to the more conservative evangelical communities, even as they consign us to Hell as non-Christians. I’m not pleased by that alignment.
Yeah, Ray’s assessment is what I was going to say. The problem is that the church thinks it’s a badge of honor to be looked askance at by the Liberal Protestant churches because they think they are aligned with their true loves: the Evangelicals. Nevermind that the Evangelicals are the ones who truly deeply hate and resent Mormons. Why we want to curry favor with those a**holes is beyond me. We’re like the insecure girl in high school. Joni wrote:Around here, non-LDS churches either sponsor Girl AND Boy Scouts, or neither. (Not just scouts, either. My daughter participates in a basketball ‘sports ministry’ in another church that has a roughly equal number of boys and girls. In every ward I’ve ever been in, church basketball is only for boys/men.) In comparison, our failure/refusal to provide equal opportunities to kids of both genders probably looks really weird.
Apparently it works differently here.
hawkgrrrl wrote:Yeah, Ray’s assessment is what I was going to say. The problem is that the church thinks it’s a badge of honor to be looked askance at by the Liberal Protestant churches because they think they are aligned with their true loves: the Evangelicals. Nevermind that the Evangelicals are the ones who truly deeply hate and resent Mormons. Why we want to curry favor with those a**holes is beyond me. We’re like the insecure girl in high school.
I have contemplated this, and the answer seems to be political motivation. The Evangelicals and Catholics hold similar “religious freedom” ideals as we do (I’m talking things like opposition to gay marriage, etc.). So aligning with them gives us more clout because both of them are much larger than we are. The church likes to pretend that everybody cares what we think and always watches us. That idea clearly only exists within our own minds (at least some of our minds). In reality our agendas would go nowhere without these alliances, as distasteful as they may be – but that’s how politics works.
DarkJedi wrote:The church likes to pretend that everybody cares what we think and always watches us. That idea clearly only exists within our own minds (at least some of our minds). In reality our agendas would go nowhere without these alliances, as distasteful as they may be – but that’s how politics works.
Utah is probably the only exception as I do think they hold enough sway with “church broke” Utah legislators to make a difference in that one state.I think the scripture said we would be considered a “peculiar people”. So, people think we are very strange. Magical underwear, salamanders, secret ceremonies. I had one person tell me he’d heard about Mormons. He drives by the temple regularly and said he heard “it takes a lot of money to get it”. I shared the story in Sacrament meeting years ago, and everyone broke into laughter. I guess hearing it in its naked truth form was amusing. But it’s the way it is to an outsider.
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