- This topic is empty.
-
Posts
-
Old-Timer wrote:
I just believe that the vast majority of members now wouldn’t feel comfortable in Joseph’s church – and, objectively, I would say a really large number of the members then didn’t either.
It would actually make logical sense that the vast majority of members DID feel comfortable with JS church, as they were all converts and knew what they were getting themselves into. They were also well into a transcendental period of time when JS kind of “thinking” was “cool” and was becoming popular in the masses. At least it was more acceptable at the time. Probably most of the early saints were transcendentalist with existentialist leanings, which are similar to secular humanist. I’m guessing it wasn’t until BY era when we started to get 2nd and then 3rd generational mormons that the membership in general migrated back into “NORMAL” type of thinking and worship where 85% of the population is at (the guardians took over!) I think this is just the natural evolution of religion in general and I shouldn’t begrudge the LDS church so much. It’s just that I am part of it, and I don’t like it. I and probably most folks on this board are in the 15% of the population that lean against the grain of authority, organized religion and the masses.
I think you make a good point though. Certainly MOST LDS members today would not be able to handle JS’s church. We know this from basic psychology. 85% of the masses are Guardians/stage 3 folks. They would not survive in the LDS church of 1835. That is why we no longer have it.
So once again, we come back around to the question that started this entire website: How do folks like us survive in an organization that doesn’t meet our spiritual goals, personal philosophies, ideology and spiritual understanding?
An ever increasingly Cafeteria Mormonism until they kick me out.
When I said that the majority of the early members weren’t comfortable in the Church, I was thinking of all the splinter groups and those who never did practice polygamy. I should have said most members weren’t comfortable OR “fully believing” OR something similar – that the vast majority always have been cafeteria Mormons who stayed LDS largely (or even entirely) because of their testimonies / witnesses. I’ve no time for secular humanism at all. At times when I’ve not been religious I’ve left religion alone. Humanists seem to want a religion without the religious bits and to go round bothering all the other religious folk. They also seem to think that they have secularized society by themselves. They haven’t. That was apathy, not them.
SamBee wrote:They also seem to think that they have secularized society by themselves. They haven’t. That was apathy, not them.
SamBee wrote:They also seem to think that they have secularized society by themselves. They haven’t. That was apathy, not them.
+1. Brilliant!
😆 I’m only half joking… and I’m not thinking of LDS here, because truth be told most of the people I’ve ever known haven’t been LDS. And apart from one guy at college I don’t really encounter most of them outside the meeting house/teaching. The majority of people I went to school with were not religious, or at least only nominally so (i.e. christened and some of them confirmed too)… a lot of them would marry in a church I suppose… but most of them wouldn’t be particularly pro-Christian. And it’s not because of the vigorous letter campaigns of humanists round here, but because they can’t be bothered attending church, or because their parents gave up on it. A case of growing apart from the church, rather than becoming alienated from it (although I have seen that too) I saw it happening with my parents too. Some Sunday mornings we couldn’t be bothered getting up, or missing our lie-in.
I think one of the factors driving folk out of church other than boredom and apathy would be sex. No “sex before marriage” has driven a lot of folk out of churches.
I know a lot of skeptics and folk who actively campaign against religion, but the truth is that they’re not even representative of atheists, although their views get a lot of media coverage. Some people don’t have church weddings because churches turn round to them and tell them “if you’re not a member/active member, you’re not getting in”.
The mass of the people here seem to have some vague quasi-New Age wishy-washy views about life. I think most of them believe in God, or a “force” (whatever that is), probably life after death, but perhaps not ghosts. I hear the stuff about “not harming others” a lot, which is positive, but not well thought out in the details.
SamBee wrote:The mass of the people here seem to have some vague quasi-New Age wishy-washy views about life. I think most of them believe in God, or a “force” (whatever that is), probably life after death…
This sounds like a lot of people “here” too – I mean StayLDS. At least this is the view point that many members would say about me, and they aren’t all wrong in that assumption.
One of the things that offends Christians about humanism, secular or otherwise is the idea that God is not necessary and that man alone is capable of achieving anything and everything. It can be interpreted as arrogance but that presupposes that a person has a belief in the reality of God and His abilities and choses to ignore it. The reality is that a humanist doesn’t have that faith and hasn’t had that experience so finds that it’s up to him or her since there’s no one or nothing else that can be counted on. It can be interpreted as a confidence in humanity’s ability to achieve whatever it wants or that we’re alone in the universe and assuming an other is a vain hope and we’re all doomed. (too much?) Good point GB. cwald wrote:SamBee wrote:The mass of the people here seem to have some vague quasi-New Age wishy-washy views about life. I think most of them believe in God, or a “force” (whatever that is), probably life after death…
This sounds like a lot of people “here” too – I mean StayLDS. At least this is the view point that many members would say about me, and they aren’t all wrong in that assumption.
I don’t know how many members are into horoscopes, crystal healing, tarot and reiki (reiki has been far too fashionable for its own good the last decade…) although we do have a New Agey tradition of angelic visitation. I do have a tarot pack, which was left in a house I moved into. I don’t use it, but the artwork’s kind of cool.
There seem to be a lot of people out there with the same ideas, but no idea how they got them… which is through the current culture. Some people, e.g. the Theosophists worked hard to popularize such ideas in the Western world, and it’s taken about a hundred years to percolate through. I suspect we’re in the same phase as the late Roman Empire, and it will end the same way, with one or two religions in complete dominance… possibly Islam, because Islam has the fight and defiance Christianity once had, as well as the self-confidence and assertion.
Interesting comment Sam — and scary comment about Islam. 😮 I think we are well under way, at least in Amercia, not sure about your part of the world, into a new transcendentalist era whre the status quo on spirituality is not cutting it for the masses. We see massive amount of causalities and slowed growth in most “religions” while the percentage of folks who say they are “spiritual” continues to rise sharply. (I had an article about this with the numbers for my reference, but i can find it – I’ll keep looking). so anyway, that is what mean by “new wishy washy” beliefs. Some of us even call ourselves, “NEW order Mormon.” Folks are “feeling” the pull from the spiritual realm, but many are not finding what they are looking for in organized religion. I am one of those.
I think a lot of the issues about Islam are to do with the west’s interests in Middle Eastern oil etc, but it is a two way process. They see as a holy war, what is essentially a scramble for minerals. And the Israel business rubs them up the wrong way too. It’s not that Muslims have violent tendencies particularly, it’s because they breed quicker than questions (check the birthrates) and are confident and assertive in what they believe. In some parts of the world, e.g. Turkey, Malaysia/Indonesia, parts of sub-Saharan Africa etc Islam’s been quite liberal, but in the Arab countries, the opposite. Iran is the classic example of a formerly liberal Muslim country turned into a theocracy. Our fight with them has enraged them, I suppose.
I personally think that the West has had a spiritual crisis for around a century, partly due to two horrific wars, and complete cultural disintegration.
In late Greece, before it was conquered by the Romans, and the later Roman Empire, “foreign” exotic religions came from outside, and undermined the corrupt and staid practices of the old religion. The old Roman gods had become worn out, and their “servants” were too establishment.
We’re the same. The last while has seen the disintegration of Christianity (and Judaism) – probably two/three hundred years for the intellectuals, about a hundred for the society in general, and perhaps about fifty/sixty years for the majority IMHO. The biggest threat to world Jewry, has not been brutal anti-Semitism and murder, but apathy and dissatisfaction. In fact anti-Semitism probably prolonged certain communities as they were hammered together. I suppose Mormonism is the same. Outside persecution, it is a personal choice.
Great commentary Sam – never really thought of it like that but, I think you are probably right. This quote about the Jews really makes sense, and explains a lot of why Mormons are still encouraging the “persecution complex” that is prevalent in the Mormon Belt. SamBee wrote:We’re the same. The last while has seen the disintegration of Christianity (and Judaism) – probably two/three hundred years for the intellectuals, about a hundred for the society in general, and perhaps about fifty/sixty years for the majority IMHO. The biggest threat to world Jewry, has not been brutal anti-Semitism and murder, but apathy and dissatisfaction. In fact anti-Semitism probably prolonged certain communities as they were hammered together. I suppose Mormonism is the same. Outside persecution, it is a personal choice.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.