Category: Social Pressure

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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General Conference: Scrambling to Close the Floodgates of Apostasy

April 2015 LDS General Conference seemed to have one major theme: Apostasy. The majority of talks were about bolstering personal faith in the face of doubt and dealing with wayward loved ones. This session seemed as reactionary as last fall’s. Then, in the context of legalized marriage equality, leadership emphasized family values. This conference, in …

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Reblog: Learning to Care Less About Disapproval

Godless in Dixie has a good post today about some of the effects of leaving a high-demand religious system, in his case, a Christian denomination. He’s a little more harsh about Christianity in general than I’d be, but his points are valid nonetheless. The most useful part of his post is the section on how to deal …

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