An Open Letter to the Spammers, Scammers, and the Other Unsolicited Salespeople in My Inbox
As anyone who has put a contact form online will understand, from the moment I opened my website, my inbox has been peppered with solicitors eager to "improve my SEO," "design my homepage," or give me a…
B.I.T.E. Model Basics: Are You in a Cult?
The B.I.T.E Model The BITE model was introduced by Steven Hassan in 1988 with the book Combatting Cult Mind-Control. It was a quiet but important turning point in psychological literature. Robert Lifton had already published the critical analysis of…
The Hale Family
Hale Family Overview Hale family members were direct descendents on both sides of soldiers American Revolutionary War. Some ancestors went back to the Mayflower. They were Congregationalists for a while and then Methodists. Almost all names are shared with another member of the…
The Lewis Family
Lewis Family Overview Direct ancestors served in the American Revolutionary War, their children served in the American Civil War. All members of the family were firmly Methodist throughout their lives A relative through Sarah Cole was the naturalist Pickering who traveled with…
The Harris Family
Harris Family Overview The extended Harris family was well-represented through New England and though they were not quite wealthy, they were generally shrewd and well-off with larger-than-usual amounts of money and land. There seem to have been some tendencies towards narcissism,…
Paella, Polar Bears, and LDS Church Predators
While visiting a Spanish mission once with my parents, I met a Mission President who invited us for dinner. I had questions about the Church at this time, but I assumed they would work themselves out. I was still a thorough believer, although this…
How An ex-Muslim Man Gave Me Faith To Become An ex-Mormon
In 2020, I was tiptoeing up to the edge of my faith crisis much like I tiptoe to the edge of a rope course platform. My "shelf" had broken over 6 months ago (that's not a sexual euphemism--it means that I stopped being able to assume that…
Joseph’s Origin Story | The Fayette Lapham, Esq. Interview with Joseph Smith Senior
Note: for the sake of clarity, I will be calling Joseph Smith Senior “Old Joe,” and Joseph Smith junior as “Joseph” or “Joseph Smith.” In 1870, as Brigham Young in the Deseret Territory was telling his daughters to…
Lost Witnesses of the Restoration: The Harris Family
Read the Introduction to the Lost Witnesses of the Restoration series here. Lucy Harris is commonly remembered among Mormons as the grouchy housewife who disapproved of her husband’s scribing for Joseph Smith and whose unhallowed hands stole the…
Lost Witness of the Restoration: The Lewis Family
Read the Introduction to the Lost Witnesses of the Restoration here. Nathaniel Lewis was named after his father, a Connecticut military man who had already seen combat in the French & Indian War. He was born in 1769, not long after his sister,…
Lost Witnesses of the Restoration: Isaac and Alva Hale
Read the Introduction to the Lost Witnesses series here. Isaac Hale, born in 1763, was a man of rough edges. He was a fifth generation colonist in New England, a rationalist, a capable provider, and by all accounts a caring and honest man. He…
We Need the Word “Cult”
The Word Cult Over my years of growing up in the Church, selling the Gospel on the streets in Russia as a missionary, and then deconstructing Mormonism in my 30s, I have had lots of opportunities to bump into the word "cult." And I have, at alternate points in my life,…
Lost Witness of the Restoration: William Law & the 1887 Interview
Read the Introduction to the Lost Witnesses of the Restoration Series. William Law was an Irish-born, Scotch-descended, Canadian doctor. He was converted in 1836 under the influence of John Taylor's Saja-Boys-worthy vocals (not the…
The Lost Witnesses of the Restoration: Introduction
Belief in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (COJCOLDS, Mormons) has always been rather legalistic. Members are eager to "prove" the validity of their claims with evidence ("where did the Book of Mormon come from if not from God?"),…
Loud Laughter
Q: "Don't You know how disrespectful it is to laugh at the Lord's anointed like this? How dare you make light of something we hold to be sacred!" I hear you. The loud laughter can be kind of prickly when you are still living on the "inside." Let me just say this: I have been accused…
Most Radical Read in the West: The Nauvoo Expositor
This is the crazy backstory you never heard. On June 7, 1844, in a zealous frontier town in Illinois, a newspaper was published. It was simple enough. Four sheets of newsprint in cramped columns. A marriage was announced. Penmanship classes were…
Choice
Q: "...you chose to have a faith crisis." You know what's weird? This idea: members calling our faith crisis as our "choice." Every time that phrase comes up, I want to say, "Wait, you think we just woke up and 'chose' to have a faith crisis?" As if faith crises are akin to choosing whether…
How Could You?
Q: “How could you turn your back on all your ancestors/parents/leaders/ Professors/Bishops/Visiting Teachers/friends like this?” 🎤 Conference weekend came and went and with it came a fresh harvest of name-calling for those in crisis. I think it was Neil Anderson’s talk that provided…
Full of Darkness
Q: "You are just full of darkness now." 😔 Most Post-members have to field this kind of cutting comment at least once along their journey. It’s another one of those dismissive in-group lines that is used to alienate those who “fall into apostasy.” 🧠 From a psychological…
You Think All Church Members Are Stupid
Q: "It sounds like you just think all Church Member are stupid for believing in this." 😔I hear this. I feel it. I didn’t know what post-members thought of me, after they would leave. That not-knowing would make me so uncomfortable that I would usually drop…
You Used to Love This
Q: "You used to love the Church, the Gospel, the Book of Mormon. What happened?" And, in many ways, I still do. 🛵Mormonism is a pretty good ride. It fuses Christianity, the Enlightenment and a magical worldview in some pretty interesting ways and it offers a lot of creative…
Many Churches, One Church
Q: "The Church you describe sounds nothing like the Church I am experiencing." 🎭One of the weird things about the the LDS (and maybe all religions? Idk) is that there are simultaneously thousands--maybe millions of versions of it being lived or believed in around the…
As Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis stated in 1933; “We can have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of the few, but we cannot have both.”
Today, at a time of unprecedented income & wealth inequality, his words ring truer than ever.
Businesses should not be allowed to just foist their legalese on people like this and consider it “binding.”
If Consumers have no right to change the terms, it shouldn’t be considered “an agreement.”
#contracts #magicalthinking
The reasonable people in America need to start acting like the majority they are and stop allowing their crazy uncle/aunt/cousin/manager to control the narrative. Stand up, speak out, say more. Say it to your boss. Say it to your rich neighbor. Expect human decency from the people around you.
“There is no such thing as one-way #liberation. When we free ourselves, we also free everyone around us.”
“Speak the truth, even if the liars find it offensive.”
John Larsen
#Truth is valuable, even if that word has been distorted by money-grabbing prophets, politicians, and corporations.
Don’t stop living in #integrity just because your good heart was once used against you. Your #honesty is needed.
Let go of the lie of this holiday.
Learn to practice gratitude without
🗡️ #thanksgiving 🩸
“You wouldn’t hold the swa-tika sacred, but you hold the symbol of Native American holocaust as sacred….every one has more human rights than the original peoples of this land.”
youtu.be/Gewf3d7iZT4?...
There will never be a weapon, a territorial border big enough, or a surrender comprehensive enough to make insecure men feel secure.
#peace has never been secured through oppression.
Stop assuming you have to get some CEO’s permission to make a living. Learn to barter again, meet with you neighbors, share resources, share food, share seeds. Learn to garden and do it in any patch of soil you can. Pick up trash. Be polite and hold your own boundaries. This will change the world.
