I don't remember when I was a member of the mormon church, the war like behaviors from the morg in the old days as I do now. It appears that the cyber age and the Internet are crushing the mormon church, its doctrines, and its history like no other force has ever been able to do. With millions of bits of information available instantly, it appears to me that the mormon church is defending itself in every social network, encyclopedia, radio and television, and frankly every media. It appears that the years of being able to hide its history and doctrines and political stances have caught up them. It appears to me they are in a war for their very existence and life. Fifty year ago I never saw any of these kinds of public relations tactics of desperation from the mormon church. It appears to me they are hanging over a Clift, and hanging on with their fingernails. It appears society and worldwide audiences know them for what they really are, a cult. Is anyone here old enough to remember the old days that the church never had to fight for its life like it is today? Or am I just seeing this wrong?

Hence the "I'm a Mormon" commercials. The church missionaries can't win educated converts when all it takes is a google search to learn the truth. The last hope of the LDS church is converting the third world of uneducated and non-internet savvy members. However third world members cant pay good tithings to support the church.

Joseph Smith practiced polyandry by marrying eleven women who stayed married to other men. Most Mormons refuse to accept this truth until shown the genealogical and recorded evidence.
The truth is "wife swapping" was condoned and practiced by Joseph Smith. However Smith was the one who decided who, when and where another man had to share his wife with the Prophet.

"...to whom shall we go?" (John 6:68)

Mormonism is fake dogma like ALL religions, but it's a REAL culture and people. It won't go away just because it's exposed any more than any other, some of which have been around a very long time. As long as enough people WANT or even NEED to believe, they can EASILY rationalize the information.

The problem with the internet is information overload, and MISinformation.

The Mormon church will continue on indefinitely, but evolving.

amos Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Mormonism is fake dogma like ALL religions, but
> it's a REAL culture and people. It won't go away
> just because it's exposed any more than any other,
> some of which have been around a very long time.
> As long as enough people WANT or even NEED to
> believe, they can EASILY rationalize the
> information.


Agreed.

However I don't believe that most rationalize the information away, I think they just ignore it.

I remember the old days well. The first example of national mormon media overreach I recall was the flawed Reader's Digest inserts back in the 70s I think. These magazine inserts were very similar to the " I am a mormon" vids, in that the object was to "normalize" the average member with a story about a "typical" member. (Meet Jim, Jim's a mormon, he has a job, he mows his lawn, he helps people, blah, blah, blah ..)

Much of TSCC promotional media in those days was specifically gauged to make mormons seem "normal" and "mainstream". TSCC was so into positioning the Osmonds or Harmon Killebrew, or Gordon Jump as representative of "normal" mormons, and TSCC worked tirelessly to position itself as mainstream -- next to Catholics, Jews and Protestants.

I would say that the 80s represented the golden age of TSCC's power and priesthoods (priesthoods?, yes priesthoods!)

I believe the culture war for TSCC has already been lost for the following reasons:

1. The internet has made it possible to expose the dissembling and lies of the church in a few hours.
2. Cultural milestones such as South Park, Family Guy, Big Love, and the new Book of Mormon musical, have established the culturally permissible (and financially viable) proposition that the "mainstream" response to TSCC is to merely laugh at it. If you ask 20 random people on the street about mormons, 17 of them will have a negative view, or outright know it is a cult.
3. Rather than actually fight successfully the efforts of TSCC critics, the promotional and social media efforts of TSCC are hurting TSCC, providing even more "laughable" material for mainstream consumption. The "I am a mormon" vids are a great example. Where these vids were shown as TV ads in a major market, the comment blog was littered with observations such as "not really sure what mormons are, but why does any church need to run ads to reassure us they are normal? Sounds pretty fishy to me!" Bullshit like this just cause naive people to do their homework and presto: CULT!
4. Exmormons are emerging. More and more resignations are occurring TSCC-wide. Exmo groups are growing and their influence is increasing. More and more families contain knowledgeable exmo members. More and more people are realizing that there are many more exmos than TBMs, and as this awareness increases, many more closet doubters will give voice and action to their concerns. TSCC cannot construe everyone as gay, feminist, sinner, or prideful forever, and this will also fall flat over time. TSCC may be able to position christian or atheist criticism as anti, but the exit stories of hundreds of regular, believable everyday members cannot be so easily categorized away. People know that their own family members and neighbors are not bat-shit crazy as portrayed.
5. Serious erosion of membership amongst the young. "The church is hemorrhaging young people" was the topic reported by several senior TSCC leadership posters here on the Board many times. Young people are not nearly as easily dissuaded from conducting due diligence. Only a small percentage are unwilling to watch South Park. TSCC is now so devoid of fun, friendship and intellectual stimulation that were it a commercial venture, the management would have long ago been fired. Look around, what are the retention stats in your ward? Odds are they are terrible.
6. Finally, I would observe that at the end of the day TSCC is on its own. It will not have any natural allies (without some third issue - such as Prop 8) to provide corresponding legitimacy. I can't think of any other groups that would benefit from defending TSCC, and in fact most of the natural allies will sooner or later be piling on.

I suppose a revival is possible and others here have predicted TSCC will change to accommodate over time -- I just can't think through how this would work successfully.

IMHO, the church would have to suffer an epic revolution and fade away into oblivion for awhile with its core sycophants, and then possibly re-emerge in a new generation of people with a completely revised form of worship proposition to peddle if they have any chance at all.

Very interested if anyone has different ideas!



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/30/2011 04:13PM by rodolfo.

rodolfo Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I would say that the 80s represented the golden
> age of TSCC's power and priesthoods (priesthoods?,
> yes priesthoods!)

ROTFLMAO!

A lot of people see the Internet as a problem for any authoritarian group. Totalitarian states will try to shut down or limit access to the Internet, providing filters, bullying search engine companies into complying with blocking listed sites, using spyware, etc.

I agree with #1. I think #2 is a little optimistic. #3 seems right: I like the idea that the "I'm a Mormon" ad campaign backfires with nevermos who are automatically giving the ads a BS check.

#4 seems like two points. That exmos are an emerging group that will give courage to others is certainly possible, but only if exmos speak up. There is an Exmormon scholars site, but the Exmormon ad campaign has none of the reach or profile of the LDS "I'm a Mormon" campaign. And it seems to me that there are a number of exmos or people heading that way (the NOM board) who are all about tolerance and I'm not sure they will speak up. They even hide in the wards looking like active members. The last half of point #4 is really about how the church's efforts to marginalize groups of people will falter and turn back on the church, especially as people realize that not all exmos end up crazy (although LDS culture and the church function so as to drive people crazy who question the church, cost them their families, drive them from their communities, etc.).

Do you have anything to back up #5? I like the point, but what's the evidence? Seems to me the church is too good at swallowing up the young through intense indoctrination and using teens' sense of peer orientation against their own real freedom.

#6 doesn't seem to fly to me. Many evangelicals and the more puritanical and conservative sects of Christianity, as well as some Muslims, while they may not embrace the church in full fellowship, respect the church for its conservative stands and political action against secular humanist culture. These are the church's allies. As long as the church has cash and power, they will applaud its efforts. You may have a point in that I don't see these groups having any motivation to keep Mormonism strong by supporting it in any direct way; but in the culture war these groups will speak in accord with the church.

I understand this whole operation is run on a ridiculously low budget of a few hundred dollars per month.

And yet, it manages to consistently rank high on google search results as well as reach thousands of unique site visitors.

A few hundred dollars can actually make a difference against a multibillion dollar ChurchCorp. Talk about paradigm change!

Search engine rankings rise and fall, and all you need is some money to promote and build a TON of links to pro-mormon sites optimized for the most popular search keywords and BAM! Exmormon sites get pushed down to page 10.

I know people who can topple well-established authority sites like this one in 6-9 months. I know a reputation management consultant who will push down ANY negative Google results about your organization for about $10,000.

The Moth can get people to do this anytime. The question is what is the exmormon community going to do to prepare for this and prevent it?

totally agree with all of these points. When a levite priest
like in ancient times walks past a wounded man lieing in a ditch as I was, as a suffering of biopola depression since
that warning voice ph call from the stake pres back in the 80s that threatened me with damnation if I didnt go on mission,
only to suffer nervous breakdown, failed my uni exams that year
tho still went on mission only to be sent home unwell.Then
years later the son of this stake president is my local new
bishop who decides by revelation that manic depression is
not welcomed in his ward, terminates me, and that was 5 years
ago and no letter has had me re-proved for attendence,and yet
this arrogant bishop becomes stake president, the whole stake
I am banned prooves time and time again that jesus had it
with the levites of ancient times and now in modern times
the same shit walking past a wounded man, throwing salt in
his wounds and the greater example was the good samariton
that stops to help and leads me away from the cult and
to find the real jesus of love and compassion. Also was led
to surrender my filthy rags of rightousness and enter into
christ rightousness where grace takes affect immeditatly as
the mormon doctrine after all we can do only then we are
saved by grace is the greatest lie ever told, and answering
to priests who rob god of his priesthood. For there is
now only one royal priest jesus and one judge, jesus to
answer to.....

I pray that the cult of mormonism will die as found wanting
but an empire of riches that build 4 billion dollar shopping
malls when the world is in crises, is sickening to the core
let alone all the false lies covered up on archive church
history now to the surface and the church still tries to
ignore it as a flicker in history, claiming that we should
still continue to heed to modern prophets. Yet false as they
come these elite prophets and many of them. There has only
been a few true prophets on earth,mainly biblical and based
on the word of god. Except you reject any other angel preaching any other message than the word of god, the bible
accursed is that church. Mormonism is accursed and is above
the bible filled with blasphemy and adultrous plogimany and
racism toward the blacks, let alone death threat temple
oths tho removed thankgoodness since 1990, the levitical
ancient laws forbid any removal of the law if the law is
to be practised, those who live by the law die by the law
but jesus came to fulfill the law, ending rituals and ordiances
tho the moral laws remained the same.
The bible says the dead are concious of nothing, and anything
that pertains to the conjur of the dead is the occult for
the only spirits in or out of the temple that appear are
demons in discuise and I have seen them in temples and
fact is stranger than fiction.

then there is the sunday pagen catholic sabbath, blatenly
changed to sunday by that church and all wander after the
mark of the beast with the new world order comming, already
signed on michael Jacksons funeral day,while the whole world
and media focused on a dead man, the pope and many sunday
churches including some muslem and buddhist were signing that
one world govenment treaty to usher in the mark of the beast
666 that all sunday relegions are under its banner of curse.

The original 4 commandment remember the 7th day(saturday) and keep it holy and the levites the only tribe not to turn to goldern calf worship in moses time, stated by law that this
sabbath was a law unto man forever without change.
The levite book of mormon so called lost sheep, birthright
of joseph if fulfilled Jacobs blessing to his son,proberbly
kept the true sabbath but mormonism has wandered after the
catholic beast to conform to it and justify the resurrection
day is now the sabbath. This is not biblical and there is
hardly anything biblical about mormonism.

flee from its jaws of deception and all sunday relegions
for they are all wrong. Surely Joe smith if he was a true
prophet would of got that right. No wonder jesus didnt
return in joes time as promised as they were still all pagen
and living the catholic sunday law of sabbath....

No one knows the time of christ comming but more likely
he will come on his true sabbath, which also was the
time he was crucified, from fri sunset to sat sunset and
he slept in the grave and went now where and rested in death
and then he resurrected and made it possible for all to
be resurrected, those saved in christ who would of and had
accept the true sabbath mark,authority and sealing up of the
true sabbath, and not exchanged this importance for silly
temples and priesthood that was done away with as priesthoods
could not be restored as that was robbing god of priesthood
and plus priesthood and poligimany never worked, not in ancient
times without its problems and in joe smiths time and if it
wasnt for the law of the land, poligimany would of continued.
But so much for obeying laws of the land, and allowing nazi
flags fly high on mormon chappels in 2nd world war as to not
rock the boat, after the articals of faith said not to support
corrupt govenments. Mormonism is do anything to keep its
elite image of the only true church yet it is as false as
rotten meat to the core, tho the milk is sweet at first
and very deceptive in the most suttle sense to deceive millions. There own united order that is suppose to come
in for all members to live by may well join with catholic
united order the mark of the beast 666, sabbath sunday pagen
law of the land, where we cannot buy or sell and how many
are prepered to be be-headed than conform to sunday law
of the land. Yet execution gilotines and plastic coffins
in the thousands in secret locations filmed in america and
even australia all over the world, ready to incinerate quickly
those who refuse the sunday antichrist law of the beast.
see revelations 13 etc. Its all come to pass while the world
bathed in wonder over michael jacksons death and funeral
while the beast got the signatures by many relegions of the
united nations backing.... Shame that mormonism and other
relegions, that involve masonary jesuits etc behind it that
have tricked us and robbed us of our tithes and offering
to build their empires to usher in the false christ and
the very lucifer himself appearing as christ at the vactican
taking form of man, the little horn on the beast with the
face of man, the antichrist...

wake up world if we claim to be christian otherwise
eat,drink and be merry for our false relegions want save
us anyway especially sunday pagen relegions of the world.

levite.

To bad Nero died a long time ago.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/31/2011 12:39AM by Freevolved.

This crap about 666 being Nero? I hear now in that same breath the number was 616 and the christians got all wrong. They follow these stupid atheist scholars with this crap. They can't seem to make up their minds, it can't be Nero then if 616. The facts should know better then to get in the way of bigot christian hating atheist. 666 Is the number of one to come its that simple. To distort it? Is a tactic of an anti christ to decieve people to believe they are safe. Its always something its not real, its Nero now, its 616 now, on and on atheist plot.

I do want to praise God that you all escaped mormonism, I don't know how does more to damage Christs message the atheist or the mormon. I think its the atheist but the father of lies was definately at ole Joe's core. One step from being out right satanist if you ask me.

Satan is after you.

He and his army of evil atheists are coming after your lucky charms.

What ever will you do?

Sounds like the rantings of an insane person.

I remember when Modern Microfilm was the leading threat. The Tanners were villified.

I remember when I had to buy books and hope that the author used goods sources. Very few people could have access to old documents. Even handling the fragile pages could damage them further.

Now I can sit at my computer and read these sources for myself. I can view the image of pages as if I were in a special collections library. I do not have enough years left to live to read all that I want to.

The only thing the LDS Church can do is spin more deception. The truth is now at everyone's fingertips, without charge or cost.

showing signs of getting a grip on the shift. I'm afraid the golden age of ex Mormonism is going to end.

They have the money and people to flood the place with faith promoting information the way we flooded in with the opposite. It's quite possible that a person who googles, say, the Kirtland Bank in 2015 will have to scroll through 100 sites that rehash the FAIR explanation before they get to a factual site.

FAIR and friends are building the land mines as we speak. It will just take time to get the buried all over the landscape.

You all know that religions do not operate in isolation from the society which feeds them. In our society, Mormonism was fairly well integrated in the 1950's when women all were pretty much SAHMS and men controlled everything in business and in the home.

Time marched on and the church was not flexible.

RACIAL EQUALITY. It tried to include African Americans in the priesthood in the 60's but Harold B. Lee prevented a policy change claiming the church had to produce a revelation before the "Negro" could have the priesthood. Look how long it took for that essential change to be made. Spencer W. Kimball finally took action before the lawsuits charging discrimination (50+ of them) were made public. He insisted they not lie and call the change a revelation. They humored him while he was alive and ignored his requests and called it a revelation (complete with FPS) after he died.

GENDER EQUALITY. Then it was women. They have been crushed, make no mistake about it. Women did not win in the Mormon church and they lost some of the independence and autonomy they had. The rights of women diminished after the Female Spring when the LDS Church opposed the Equal Rights Amendment.

SSA EQUALITY. Statistics show the church is again behind the eightball on this fast-moving issue. The Mormon bullying in California tarnished the squeeky clean image they liked to portray, saying "we don't involve ourselves with politics unless it is a moral issue." Does anyone over the age of 8 believe the "I'm A Mormon" blitz proclaiming Mormon normalcy is just coincidentally taking place while Mitt Romney is jockeying for the Republican nomination?

CLASS WARFARE. Saving the best for last. The Mormon church cannot continue unscathed because it has made fatal errors recently which put it on the wrong side of the class warfare that we see developing in America. The Mormon Church is a corporation and it is wealthy. It uses its money to influence elections. It is not transparent and it is deceptive. It takes people's money, giving them nothing in return except good feelings. Then it turns and asks them for more. What other organization most closely fits this description? YES! Wall Street and the banks. They also prey on the poor. After taking our taxpayer dollars in bailouts, they fail to redo people's like they were supposed to, and then they have the gall to ask people to pay $5.00 a month to use a debit card.....oh, sorry, I got the corporations mixed up there. I meant to say they ask their customers to clean the toilets for free so they can generate more money by taking away the jobs of elderly custodians.

The Mormon Church is in the 1%.

We are the 99%.

We are mad as hell and aren't going to take it any more. Their mall will fail and 2012 is the tipping point.

Anagrammy

I would add that internationally mormonism is far to closely aligned with Americanism as well.

Atheist can be excellent people. Old mormons and new are taught to hate certain groups...After the gays I guess it may be atheist...Why hate and sterotype.

There was an interesting academic presentation a few years ago at Sunstone about how the church's public image changed throughout the 20th century. From about 1935 to 1975 the proportion of media references to Mormonism became increasingly positive. After that, they started declining because of the church's racism, opposition to women's rights, and more widespread knowledge of the church's history.

Keep in mind, all that was before the Book of Mormon was conclusively debunked through DNA studies and Joseph Smith's occult interests were fully exposed. If Mitt Romney gets nominated for president, the additional exposure will probably produce more negative PR for the church.

But as one of the posters above pointed out, it's important to distinguish between the church and the culture. The church seems to be evolving into a real estate corporation that will continue to claim to lead Mormon culture, but will actually be less central to it than previously. A larger proportion of Mormons will probably become more cultural than religous, i.e., they will attend church only occasionally, not tithe, and put most of their Mormon energy into the social aspects.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/09/2011 02:20PM by oddcouplet.

In the old days, circa 1980's, COB had a tight grip on what went down in SLC and UT. Every excommunication, every Sunstone event, every scandal and murder, they could control what went out to the world. We in Asia received Church controlled rags a week later and we saw none of the grisly details of the Hofmann case. Thankfully we had Newsweek and Time which both covered it in depth, but scarcely were the church leaders implicated. Later, during the trial, we hardly ever heard about it again. I am belatedly learning that none of the top leaders ever testified as their involvement with Hofmann. I'm sure their lawyers worked their behinds off to ensure this. Anyways, my point is you are correct, the cult has nowhere to hide and cannot but respond with fight, flight, or ignoring the issues.

True dat!

I'm also taking comfort in the growing influence of social media and real-life friends' recommendations and "Likes" in determining search engine results (see Google's +1 indicators next to results now) or at least in making decisions these days.

There are so many ways for consumers to leave their honest feedback and reviews in plain sight online about "products," that the Church will always be exposed for what it is.

And normal people will continue to not want to talk with Mormons and still treat them with skepticism, online or off :) Consumers are getting smarter and smarter every year about their buying decisions. And no one's buying the cult these days in the countries with clout.


P.S. I just found out at a conference this weekend that most everyone in Mexico who has electricity will ALSO have high-speed internet packaged in the deal each month for some small amount. So that's one more country whose citizens will finally get the light of well-researched truth shining into the average household.