exmo.com comes to WashPo

[FMCoug]

Wow, pretty bold and obvious warning to Mitt not to use the "so-called" White Horse Prophecy to his advantage during the campaign.

How could it possibly be used to his advantage? Seems like the statement does him more good than harm.

Keep the statement handy though. The white horse prophecy might be the topic for the next robocall from the Gingrich campaign, that Newt has never heard and the campaign disavows.

[myboynoah]

How could it possibly be used to his advantage?

Duh, he secures the Mormon vote by telling them he's the fulfillment of the prophecy.

[NorthwestUteFan]

Duh, he secures the Mormon vote by telling them he's the fulfillment of the prophecy.

Sweet. 2 Million votes down, 52 million more to go. He is a virtual shoe-in!

[Coach McGuirk]

http://ifeellikeschrodingerscat.blog...ectations.html

[LA Ute]

Wow, pretty bold and obvious warning to Mitt not to use the "so-called" White Horse Prophecy to his advantage during the campaign.

That was a response to a guy named Rex Rammel, in Idaho, I think. He was running for some office up there using the church and his membership to claim some kind of priesthood sanction for his candidacy. His efforts got some press attention, prompting the church's slap-down.

[Shaka]

http://ifeellikeschrodingerscat.blog...ectations.html

I thought this was a fantastic blog entry. I couldn't agree more with the writer.

[Coach McGuirk]

I thought this was a fantastic blog entry. I couldn't agree more with the writer.

Me too.

[UtahDan]

--Kim Farrah, spokeswoman for LDS public affairs, cited in "LDS Church issues statement on Rex Rammell," Rexburg Standard Journal (17h21, 24 December 2009).

(UD, your link doesn't work. Those Who Monitor This Site have probably disabled it.)

I linked this quote above. But you are right, the FAIR article is broken or has been killed. Interesting. It has been there for some time previous.

[UtahDan]

I thought this was a fantastic blog entry. I couldn't agree more with the writer.

I know Carl from other forums and met him at the DC MoSto conference which he helped plan along with Super. He seems like a very good guy and a very bright guy. Not surprsingly I don't agree with the point he is making in his blog. His summation more or less is found in this paragraph:

I think that for far too many in the church have set up a false church. They think that their church says science is satanic, that it tells all of its women to only stay home and produce babies, that the prophets and apostles are infallible, never have disagreed, don’t currently disagree, never will disagree, and meet with the Savior weekly in the temple meeting Thursday morning, that all of church history is puppies and rainbows and roses except for when other bad evil nasty people attack the completely innocent and saintly Mormons and maybe the 116 pages incident, that polygamy was introduced and ended without a hitch, that anybody who is questioning the church in any way, shape, or form must be secretly a dirty sinning apostate because why would you ask questions unless you had been completely abandoned by the Spirit?!?, that the Book of Mormon civilizations were every Native American from the top of Alaska to the bottom of South America, that every prophet from Adam to Thomas S. Monson knew exactly everything that every other prophet knew, and that it all corresponds to the current correlated manuals, and that everybody outside the church is not going to end up in the Celestial Kingdom so we should shun them, even members of our own families, too bad for them.

My critique is two fold. First, a lot of these ideas he is ridiculing here are promoted by the correlated materials as well as in the culture. He is a scholar in training who has a much larger world view but forgets that a lot of people don't have the inclination or opportunity to gain that broad view. So while he is being sarcastic, there is a lot there that really is believed by some. And it really is tough on some people when those beliefs bump up against other realities. Second, it seems to be a more biting version of the "people leave over silly things, (silly people!)" canard that is so familiar. It is a caricature that doesn't do any justice to the real reasons people find themselves in faith crises.

[UtahDan]

Not to be thwarted, the wayback machine still has it:

http://web.archive.org/web/201106091...whitehorse.pdf

[Moliere]

I know Carl from other forums and met him at the DC MoSto conference which he helped plan along with Super. He seems like a very good guy and a very bright guy. Not surprsingly I don't agree with the point he is making in his blog. His summation more or less is found in this paragraph:



My critique is two fold. First, a lot of these ideas he is ridiculing here are promoted by the correlated materials as well as in the culture. He is a scholar in training who has a much larger world view but forgets that a lot of people don't have the inclination or opportunity to gain that broad view. So while he is being sarcastic, there is a lot there that really is believed by some. And it really is tough on some people when those beliefs bump up against other realities. Second, it seems to be a more biting version of the "people leave over silly things, (silly people!)" canard that is so familiar. It is a caricature that doesn't do any justice to the real reasons people find themselves in faith crises.

I agree with UD.

But I'll add that I think Carl could have better worded the first part to say something like "the church has built up a false church within itself". Now I'm not saying the church is in apostasy. I'm just saying that the correlation of teachings and the overindulgence of CES have taken us down a very, very narrow path of belief. Mormonism is wider and grander than the church currently allows it to be.

[jay santos]

I know Carl from other forums and met him at the DC MoSto conference which he helped plan along with Super. He seems like a very good guy and a very bright guy. Not surprsingly I don't agree with the point he is making in his blog. His summation more or less is found in this paragraph:



My critique is two fold. First, a lot of these ideas he is ridiculing here are promoted by the correlated materials as well as in the culture. He is a scholar in training who has a much larger world view but forgets that a lot of people don't have the inclination or opportunity to gain that broad view. So while he is being sarcastic, there is a lot there that really is believed by some. And it really is tough on some people when those beliefs bump up against other realities. Second, it seems to be a more biting version of the "people leave over silly things, (silly people!)" canard that is so familiar. It is a caricature that doesn't do any justice to the real reasons people find themselves in faith crises.

I think the article is mostly spot on. And he adequately addresses Sheffield's crappy op-ed.

The paragraph UD quotes here and takes issue with, I think he's (the blog writer) reached too far with. He's fine in trashing on Sheffield's wildly inaccurate picture of the Mormon church, but he seems to imply that all (many?) people who leave the church, do so because of this false view of Mormonism. I think many of the people that are apostatizing over historical issues are not suffering from this false, rigid view of Mormonism. In fact, if Sheffield were to write her story in a truthful way without the falsifying and manipulating, I doubt the problem was due to her belief in this "cult of false expectations".

[LA Ute]

I know Carl from other forums and met him at the DC MoSto conference which he helped plan along with Super. He seems like a very good guy and a very bright guy. Not surprsingly I don't agree with the point he is making in his blog. His summation more or less is found in this paragraph:

My critique is two fold. First, a lot of these ideas he is ridiculing here are promoted by the correlated materials as well as in the culture. He is a scholar in training who has a much larger world view but forgets that a lot of people don't have the inclination or opportunity to gain that broad view. So while he is being sarcastic, there is a lot there that really is believed by some. And it really is tough on some people when those beliefs bump up against other realities. Second, it seems to be a more biting version of the "people leave over silly things, (silly people!)" canard that is so familiar. It is a caricature that doesn't do any justice to the real reasons people find themselves in faith crises.

My critique is also twofold:

1. He himself, ironically, is talking about a false church -- or at least a grossly caricatured one. How many people in the church are really such Pollyannas?

2. A biting style is rarely productive in dealing with people's most cherished beliefs. My guess is that he is on the young side?

[Jeff Lebowski]

I know Carl from other forums and met him at the DC MoSto conference which he helped plan along with Super. He seems like a very good guy and a very bright guy.

While I have only met him 2-3 times, I know his family extremely well. His parents are two of the finest people I have ever known.

[ERCougar]

Carl sounds like a fantastic guy--an interesting guy whom I'd love to meet some day. But his blog post is really just a slightly more elaborate "blame the people, not the church" argument. It reminds me of Cardiac's "of course you can't know any of this stuff--it's silly to expect to" approach to these issues. Yes, I completely agree, but I can think of about three people who approach things that way, and none of them speak up in Sunday School or Seminary. At some point, you have to wonder, especially in a church with a lay ministry, how much of the "people" is due to "the church".

I grew up sort of a hyper-active Mormon. I read my scriptures every day, I went to seminary every day, etc, etc. In short, I did everything I was supposed to do, and then some, trying to "magnify my calling". I was very black and white in my thinking, and was only encouraged in this vein by seminary teachers and the like. I think I would have had a much healthier approach to the Gospel had I taken it less seriously and literally across the board. I've seen my MIL go from a reasonably normal active Mormon to a crazily anxious and uptight one ever since beginning a job in the Seminary and now Institute. In my experience (and a whole lot of other examples I can think of), the more you swallow of this "church", the less healthy and balanced you become.

Yes, we'd all like to approach things like Carl or Cardiac, but where is the voice that encourages that? Certainly not on Sunday.