Category: Demand for Purity

Digging Through Trash: Symbols in Tyler Glenn’s (ex)Mormon Music Video

A demon makes a contract with a Catholic Bishop

This week, rockstar Tyler Glenn will launch his new solo album, “Excommunication.” As a teaser, he has already released two music videos, Shameless, and the highly symbolic and controversial exmormon coming-out video, Trash. You can take three minutes to watch it now. I recommend full screen. We exmormons have never had an anthem before. Not officially. …

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Elder Uchtdorf’s Spiritual Abuse:
“Be Not Afraid, Just Tune Out All Opposing Signals”

Hanging Gardens of Babylon

When I first heard Elder Uchtdorf’s Saturday morning talk during the October 2015 General Conference, I had high hopes it signaled a movement toward a kinder, gentler LDS Church. I hoped that some combination of pressures from public critical voices, the mass exodus of fleeing member, and Uchtdorf’s sincerely held Christlike outlook on the Mormon …

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Feeling the Spirit as a Secular Mormon
Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Spirit

Many of the highly-promoted interpretations of LDS doctrines are divisive, shame-inducing, and thought-stopping in nature, as I’ve described in my book, Recovering Agency. But what if there is a more loving, inclusive, mind-freeing, self-actualizing way to interpret some of those same doctrines that increases free agency rather than restricts it? Wouldn’t such an interpretation be …

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