For those of you on facebook, may I suggest you 'friend' John Dehlin. Some very interesting stuff is coming down. He has met with a church leader and some seem to be very concerned he may be excommunicated.
He is asking for feedback on his podcasts and for other questions and concerns to share with the leadership. He seems to be taking a very bold but respectful stance.
I saw that too, but still friended him and had my request accepted. I know quite a large number of John's Facebook friends and they do not know him personally. Just people familiar with his podcasts who wanted to be able to discuss things via Facebook.
I wish Joohn Dehlin well. I don't know if his SP would want all the negative publicity that could come with John being excommunicated, so maybe it'll be a disfellowship like Grant Palmer.
Many of his followers are worried that he will be disfellowshipped, excommunicated, or disparaged in some way.
However, he states that he is not concerned about that, that he is not on the defensive, and that he is taking this opportunity help the leadership come to understand the concerns of members.
Comeon, how can you put a friendly facade to the Church when you line up most detrimental,lethal interviews with black sheep one after another? It was obvious. I think John should be congratulated for milking this Gig as long as He did. And it is not over yet.
If John is ex'd or disfellowshipped, I tend to believe it will have a negative ripple effect. There are tons of folks, active and inactive, who have benefited from John's podcasts, etc.
It will be interesting to see what happens.
And yes, he is looking for comments on his MormonStories site. There are already over 400 comments.
It seems that John's SP wanted to meet with him because he was concerned that John's work was encouraging people to leave the church. The SP was going to review the MormonStories site and get back with John in a couple of weeks. That sounds like he is laying the foundation for disciplinary action to me. It sounds like a threat.
John has been doing this for a long time, and his priesthood leadership has known about it and talked with him about it before. So I have to wonder why is his SP doing this now, what is different?
Recently, John has been trying to organize local communities of "uncorrelated Mormons". As I understand it, he has organized about 40 so far.
John stated that: "The idea behind each group will be to: 1) foster local, face-to-face communities of support for non-traditional Mormons, and 2) help to encourage healthy/constructive living amongst those for whom the traditional LDS Church experience is not adequate."
I wonder if this is the real reason behind the SP calling John in and threatening him like this. It is one thing to voice your opinion on the internet, but to organize local support groups makes it much easier for people find others who share their doubts and concerns about Mormonism. It makes it much easier for them to leave the church and still have a supporting community and not become a social pariah.
IMO the church needs to keep those who have doubts isolated from each other. It needs to keep them thinking that they are the only one who has doubts, or that they will loose everything if they let go of the church. By creating a empathetic support system for these people John has become a threat to the church.
I predict that in a few weeks the SP will ask John to choose between disolving these groups, or being excommunicated.
John Dehlin, as much as I like his fair minded Mormonstories which looks at various things in the Church in a rational yet non confrontational way is the NOT what the church wants.
They want him to shut the F up, pray, pay, and obey.
They don't want anyone trying to reasonably point out how they can improve or what the members want. They don't care. The only reason why anyone leaves or has problems is because they were offended. If they get offended too easily, it's just too bad for them.
He will end up like Quinn or the September 6. The church wants robots, they don't want thinkers.
All members must take their marching orders from and ONLY from the designated hierarchy of the organization. That's simply how they operate. The chief value of their approach is as a warning to others to zip it and get in line.
That said I think their days of operating that way are numbered given the easy availability of faith-demoting information. I see defection only increasing. It's a new era and the old rules no longer apply.
The church used to excommunicate people willy nilly. But now they think twice about doing it, especially in John's case. He is a very public figure and he organized staylds.com and mormonstories.
He has claimed that his purpose was to help people stay in the mormon church. If they excommunicate him, they are destroying an ally, not an enemy.
Yes, many people have read John's stuff and decided to leave the church. In many ways, John is a stepping stone out for those who aren't ready to make the big leap. The church has to know that this is happening, John has to know that it's happening and the church doesn't like it.
But that makes it difficult for the church to discipline John, because he's trying to help.
If the church excommunicates John, they will look paranoid and desperate. This is the tug of war that is happening beneath the TBMs noses and they don't even know it. THere is a battle between mormons who know the truth and want the church to come clean and the church who knows the truth but wants to keep it a secret.
The victims are the members, like myself who didn't know any of this until one day.... BOOM goes the dynamite!
So true. The church is kind of in a pickle when it comes to John. I think he's doing good work and he's definitely made it clear he's not an enemy to the church. But I agree that he's probably helping more people out than to stay in. The cog dis was too much for even him, Mr. StayLDS himself, to bear. (I don't blame him).
And while I also think it's great he's facilitating a more open, honest dialogue about the church, bottom line is that the church doesn't give a shit about the members. All they want is people to thoughtlessly hand over gross amounts of their hard earned cash.
I'm friends with John on FB and will be watching with interest what the authorities have in store for him. I haven't been on John's page in awhile - anyone have an update about this? John are you out there?
It's one thing to disagree with the brethren in private, but start "infecting" the church by sharing your doubts -- particularly when you have a loyal, attentive audience and you're known for being rational and fair-minded rather than an easily-dismissed loon -- and they will come down on you.
MORmONS hate Hate HATE everybody,including each other. Go ahead, just try to make a list of all the ppl they hate. They HATE everyone! You can never please them unless you are making life miserable for someone else in a big way.
This deal with John Dehlin just proves it. LDS dont want to do better. They dont want to be helped. They dont want to do good. All they want to do is go on being MORmON which means HATING. John had to learn the hard way that there really is no redeeming quality or net positive outcome to the utter EVIL known as MORmONISM.
Geez, lighten up. It's obvious you yourself are filled with HATE. Especially when you result to calling mormons MORmONS! That's just an ad hominem attack. I'm tired of the MORONS joke. It doesn't do us any good.
It's people like you that make all of us disaffected former mormons look like angry anti apostates.
Your comments are so absolute. Mormons hate everybody? That's just ridiculous.
Besides, at some point I believe you have to separate the members from the leaders from the institution.