How Mormonism changes its core doctrines

I was watching a TV programme with my mother and (as an aside) the presenter pointed out that people from Asia had settled America having crossed the Baring Straights.

My mother then said: "Well that's interesting because the (Mormon) church teaches that Lehi and his family were from Asia, so that confirms what it teaches."

I made no comment.

A colleague dashed back into the office shouting: "Help! I'm been chased by the Moomins!"

She said: "I told them "'I don't believe in God' and ran off!" But they chased me! The one said he was sorry for me!" (Moomins! She has a very good sense of humour!)

They are a right pair of idiots.

Someone on the RFM board suggested reporting them. I considered that suggestion, but then I thought better of it. Because the best thing is to just let them keep on putting people off their ersatz multi-level marketing scam church!

Arghh! Those Mormon missionaries again!

Whilst walking through the part of town where I live, those TWO bloody Mormon missionaries approached me in the street, again!

I decided to take the initiative by greeting them with a cheery "good morning! and, in a very British way, commented on the weather.

They started on their "We would like to share our message..." spiel when I told him I was: "really seriously not interested." I got the: "Don't you believe in God?" line.

At this point I snapped back with: "Oh, God! Don't start THAT nonsense, again!" And ignored their fading wittering as I walked away from them.

Their attitude set me thinking. Is being rude a new Mormon missionary tactic? Do they hope that by shocking someone with such a rude remark that they can force the person concerned to listen to their message, be so 'overcome by the spirit' (tm) that they will immediately seek baptism and become a 'golden convert' (tm)? Is it a general new missionary tool?

If so, that's a stupid idea in Britain. Some stereotypes are valid, to a point. We British people do appear to be aloof and somewhat standoffish. It's just that some things are not done. Challenging people in the street regarding their religion is one of these things.

British people can be patient. But here's the thing. Eventually, we do snap. During the 100 Years War (1337 to 1453) it is said that, due to their propensity to let rip with choice invectives, the French dubbed their English enemies as les Goddamns.

If these Mormon missionaries do not stop abusing people in the streets, I think it likely that they will learn the lesson that the French learnt over 650 years ago.

They are worse than people selling Amway, Kleeneze or Bettaware! At least you can use THEIR products to clean your floor! You can't wipe the floor with a Mormon missionary! Oh... perhaps you can?!

Those missionaries, again

Yes, I met those two rude missionaries, again. I was about to go into the local hospital for a routine blood test (to check that the prescriptions meds I am aren't harming me) when the bicycling buffoons finished harassing some random pedestrian and decided to illegally cycle towards me and try to engage me in their: "If you don't let us bore the crap out of you with our message about Jesus Smith (thanks for that quote, Mr Hinckley!) we'll start berating you for being an atheist" line, I just said: "I'm late for an appointment and after the last time I spoke with you, I have nothing to add to it."

They must have then remembered who I was as they ceased following me and I can't recall even geting a faked: "Have a nice day!"

Eco-facists and their latest video

I can't believe they could be THIS stupid. Oh, hang on, yes, I can believe they could be THIS stupid. And I speak as a former Green Party activist...

Mormonism it's ALL about the money.

Why do I gain the impression that with Mormonism it is all about the money? Again, cleaners and caretakers at branches and wards are being sacked and replaced with members 'called' to be cleaners and caretakers.

And the UK sales centre is being closed and centralised in Continental Europe. That's like the US, Canada and Central America all being run from the same central location. It will almost certainly not work.

Yet on the other hand, we see shopping malls, luxury hotels, etc, etc, being built with money from the Mormon church!

What IS happening? What IS going on?

Is The Mormon church morphing into a multilevel marketing real estate concern that has less and less to do with the cult that Joseph Smith founded?

RFM board is back online

The RFM bulletin board is back on line. www.exmormon.org

Matt meets the Mormons and gives 'em what for!

Yesterday, I had a good day. I had visited my doctor (yes, on a Saturday and for free) and gone to pay the gas and electricity bill (finally sorted out after a great deal of effort) I'd met my Managing Director and one of his children on the way back from Football practice (that's soccer, if anyone wonders) and I was almost at home having had a glorious walk in some surprisingly warm September sunshine when I was almost home when my heart sank. Oh, no! Mormon missionaries!

It was the overaggressive deadly duo I had had a run in with several weeks previously.

They have a very annoying way of approaching people on the street. They had just been told "no" by someone and switched their attention to a woman walking through a small park area at the side of the pavement (sidewalk). "Can we share our message with you?" said the more aggressive one. "No! Thank you" she said, firmly but politely.

"Oh!" He shouted at her, rudely. "So you don't believe in God?!"

I looked at his companion, who was heading towards me, a look of fervour in his eyes. "He's still very presumptive, isn't he?" I said.

Companion said: "Can we share a message with you about..." I cut him off by saying: No, thank you!"

He continued to drone on, giving me his sales script. I repeated myself. It made not a jot of difference. He went on and on.

At this point I lost my temper, somewhat. I said, very loudly: "I have said NO! I quite like the word no! It's short and to the point. It only has one syllable and two letters. N and O. I wonder which part of that rather short word you seem to have trouble grasping?"

At this point a man out walking his dog let out a snort of laughter.

The companion then said: "Well, if you are not interested in us sharing our message, perhaps you might know some people who would be interested in us sharing our message with them?"

I shouted: My God! It's like being assaulted by a religious salesman in the street! Please! Just go away! I am NOT interested!"

He then said: "Have a nice day!" To which I replied: "Yes, you have a nice day, too."

It was clear they were beyond reason and beyond debate or argument. My parents became Mormons in 1966. Throughout that time as a TBM and an exmo I have met many Mormon missionaries from all over the world from all types of backgrounds. I can honestly say I have never met a more dense and self-centred pair of plonkers as these.

Are they playing a game? Seeing how many people they can enrage?

RFM Board should be back on line, soon!

Eric, Susan, CZ and several other people have been working very hard to try to put right the dreadful situation that was not of their making.

The board should be back up and running by the weekend.

Dee you there!

PS... Eric, isn't it time RFM had a Paypal account sorted out for donations? Just a thought!

Tabloid: The documentary of Joyce McKinney and Kirk Anderson

In the mid-1970s the UK was rocked by the sensational story of how Joyce McKinney, a very intelligent University graduate and beauty queen had come to Britain and kidnapped and had a Mormon missionary, Kirk Anderson, chained to a bed in a remote cottage and forced him to have sexual intercourse with her. She absconded and was tried in her absence and found guilty.

Famed US film maker Errol Morris has made a film about her. In this extract he talks about Joyce McKinney:-

Kettle, meet kettle! Video of a kettle plus a moral message

I will show you a video of a very special kettle. When it was turned off, it shone with a blue light. When it was heating the water it had a very dramatic red light. When it had reached the boiling point, it turned itself off and reverted to the blue light.

My wife just pointed out that the kettle, although very pretty, only lasted for 12 weeks.

Isn't that like Mormonism? It looks shiny and special, yet pretty soon it fails and you find out that all is not well!

RFM Board to be back on line soon

Sadly, when the ISP that has always looked after the RFM Board and website decided to upgrade their systems, they managed to 'break' the RFM Board.

There were severe problems that meant that RFM had no other option but to suspend the operation of the board until a new system could be put into operation.

This should happen either today or certainly by the weekend.

Visit www.exmormon.org to check out the board status.

What has happened at the RFM Board?

Does anyone know what's happened over on the RFM Board?

It's still down after the Sunday break and it is now Tuesday evening.

I hope nothing serious is wrong.

If I can help (even though I am over here in the UK) please email me matt_exmo@yahoo.co.uk.

There have been problems with the board due to technical problems with the ISP. Perhaps they have jammed it in the 'off' position after the board was turned off for the regular monthly rest?

Summer is over, Autumn is on the way

Summer is fading and Autumn is, indeed, on the way. The Canada Geese are preparing for their long migratory flight and soon the ponds and lakes of the British Isles will cease to reverberate to their melodious honking as they spend their winter on the other side of the Atlantic.

There is something mythical and magical about their skeins as they fly, honking to each other, to leave our shores until next Spring, when their honking voices will again signal to the inhabitants of the British Isles that Spring is, again, on its way!

Some people say that it is the Autumn for the Mormon Church, that it cannot last long before it falls into the winter of it's existence. I feel that this is wishful thinking. Mormonism will be here for many years to come.

However I believe that it is slowly changing what it is and that this process will take a great many years. Mormonism will, over time, become less of a religion and more of a corporate body. It is probably for this reason that the Mormon church is buying more land, building shopping malls, etc. Preparing for a time when the core of Mormonism shrinks to Utah and neighbouring States in the USA, and that eventually Mormonism will not be so much a religion but a corporate brand.

There will still be some members of the Mormon church, but they will be seen as virtually museum pieces. There will still be some branches and wards across the USA and in some other parts of the world but these will be seen as curiosities, a fleeting memory of a distant past. And about as relevant as the early sects of Mormonism that faded away when their founder/s died.

Why are Mormons so Mormon?

Mormons are, by and large, nice people. But get them into full Mormon mode and they seem to become crazy people!

I heard of a Mormon woman who had a weird dream about Amazon and her son growing up to look at pictures of women's underwear on the Amazon website, so she has blocked Amazon from her computer!

I mean, how bizarre and flaky is that?!

Who on earth would do something so mindbogglingly dense? Oh. Sorry, yes, I already answered that question. A Mormon would.

My former Bishop: How I proved him to be a liar

My former Mormon Bishop was a liar. I already knew he was a bit strange, somewhat creepy and a flake, but I found out he was a liar, too. This was, I think, one of the later points that helped signpost me away from Mormonism.

I went to a party held by someone who was a recent exmo. I was still a practising Mormon at that time. It would have been about 1980 or 1981. A young member of the ward was there, too. She was 16 and had obviously being drinking alcohol before she arrived at the party. She was quite drunk. I was in my very early 20s. I was concerned about the state she was already in.

So I decided to personally deal with her drink 'orders' at the party. She asked for a rum and Coke. She got a coke with a negligible amount of rum. She wanted a Martini and lemonade. She got a Lemonade and did I remember to put in some Martini? Who can possibly say?! Someone at the party (a nevermo) asked me why I was giving her so much booze? When I explained what I was doing, she thought it an excellent plan and gave it her blessing. She expressed concern that Mormon teenagers were not taught how to drink responsibly. To which I agreed. (Much to my then surprise...)

About a week later I was called into the office of Bishop Gold. (Not his real name, but close enough, for real life!) He barked out: “Give me one good reason why I should not put you before a church court?”

I thought: “Well, probably because I haven’t done anything wrong, you idiot.”

I looked at him and said, coldly, “Well, Bishop Gold. Why don’t you start by telling me what is on your mind?”

He gave me a cock-and-bull story about how he knew I had gotten a young girl deliberately drunk and that he was not only considering a church court, but also considering reporting me to the police for encouraging underage drinking.

He said: “And I know this is true, because a non-member friend of mine told me that he had been invited to that party and how it had become an orgy!”

I knew this was untrue and that he had probably been given a very distorted version of the events at the party by a rather strange and disturbed Mormon woman who had fried their brains with illegal drugs several years before she became a Mormon.

I suddenly felt very angry at Bishop Gold. Normally I was known for being a quiet and “unassuming” person. Whilst I am usually a fairly placid person who is slow to anger, when I do get angry I do get angry. It was all I could do to restrain myself from really telling Bishop Gold what I (and most of the Ward, as it happens!) really thought of him.

I looked him straight in the eye and said: “Bishop, what I would like to know is, first of all, why you have chosen to lie to me, today? I am not pleased that you asked me to come to a meeting with you, and that you threaten me with a church court and then you lie to me.”

He went bright red. I though: “Bingo! Got you!”

He blustered for several seconds. He then said. “I didn’t lie to you! I… Well…”

I continued: “You did not have a friend from work go to that party.” (I knew all the people who attended, so that was a dumb story to use and was a totally unnecessary invention on his part.)

“In fact, I would guess that Sister Singer (not her real name) told you about the party, didn’t she?” (I could see by the way his jaw dropped that I had scored a direct hit, even though it was only a guess.)

“Did you know that Sister Singer was not at the party? So she obviously passed on to you a juicy snippet of gossip that she embellished and added on to!

“An orgy was it? Well, actually, no. The hostess and her boyfriend kissed, but then, as it was her birthday party, no surprise there. By the way, Bishop Gold, what is the legal age for drinking at a private party in Britain?”

He looked much happier now. Here was an answer he knew! Or thought he knew. “It is 18!” he said, with a sneer on his face. His sneering expression said: “Yes. You think you are clever, don’t you? You spotted I was making it up, you realised who had given me the information but I have got you on this one!”

“You are wrong, Bishop Gold. The drink laws in Britain are complicated. In Britain it is generally the case that the age for drinking alcohol in Britain in licensed premises is 18. Incidentally, if a child of 14 or older is eating a meal with his or her parents they are legally allowed to drink alcohol with their meal, either wine or cider.

"However, as for the legal age for drinking at a private party or in a private home in Britain? You might be surprised to learn that there isn’t one. It is perfectly legal for children to drink alcohol at home or at a private party they are at in someone else's home. You and I might disagree with the law, but that it is the law as it stands.” He went pale.

I then explained how I realised that she had arrived at the party when already drunk (probably with booze from Sister Singer, I suspected, but I didn't voice my suspicions to Bishop Gold) and that that I had given her 'pop' with enough alcohol to give it a smell and taste, but not enough to have an effect on her.

I had won. And he knew it. There was no Church Court. Our relationship thereafter was strained to put it mildly.

But this set me thinking. He had been all for setting up a church court for me (Oh, yes. Bishop Gold liked his church courts) but he had decided to base this on nothing but the gossip of a mentally ill member (she was jealous of the woman hosting the party) his own fatally flawed understanding of the British licensing laws as they stood in the late 1970s and early 1980s and he had chosen to deliberately lie to me. Doubtless he would have seen his lie as a subterfuge to break me and get me to confess. But it was a lie, never-the-less.

Prior to that I had known Bishop Gold as a blowhard, a flake, a martinet and a pompous, creepy, arsehole. I now knew him also as being a dangerously flawed individual who saw nothing wrong in lying to get his own way.

Yes, that was one of the baby steps that lead me away from the Mormon church to the truth. And I never thanked Bishop Gold for his help in that regard!

(The original of this post was created in 2006. This is a slightly different, modified version)

Was Joseph Smith a martyr?

Was Joseph Smith a martyr? That's a very good question. If you speak to any faithful Mormon (or TBM as they are sometimes known) the answer will be: "Why, yes! Of course he was! He was martyred at Carthage Jail!"

A martyr is someone who is put to death for his faith. "Like a lamb to the slaughter" is one definition of the act of being a martyr. Or Martyrdom as it is also known.

Generally, a martyr just accepts their fate and dies for their religion. They do not fight back. Some of them even make jokes about their martyrdom, and or forgive those that are martyring them.

Did anything like that happen in the case of Joseph Smith? No. It did not. Because Joseph Smith fought back. He drew a pistol on the mob who were attacking him and his companions and either injured or killed some of them.

Now, that was his right. Every man and woman has a right to defend themselves against attack. Even if this necessitates killing the attacker in extreme cases. And, let's face it, being attacked by a mob baying for your life is an extreme case.

But for followers of the church Joseph Smith founded to claim that Joseph Smith was a martyr is just plain wrong. A victim of a murderous attack, yes, he was. But a martyr? No. To describe Joseph Smith as a martyr is stretching the definition of that word beyond breaking point.

Here is a link to some 'real' martyrs for comparison:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christian_martyrs

Another dull summer

We have had another pretty dull summer in Britain. Poor weather, cloudy and cool in August. Now, that's just not fair, is it?

When people on RFM mention that they are suffering from heat waves in the 30s, I can only point to the fact that one evening it was 12c, and the heating decided to kick in that night, as it was so cold! Oh, well. All the rain makes Britain a very green place to be. Though we do, actually, have a desert in England.
http://gertsamtkunstwerk.typepad.co.uk/photos/dungeness/desert.html
will take to a picture of said desert.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeness_%28headland%29

Rather like the Mormon church. A desert, least where one would expect it.

Top Mormon Guilty of 'Million Dollar Fraud'

R. Dean Udy, of Brigham City, pleaded guilty today to two felony criminal counts in regards to his solicitation of $1,313,500 from 5 investors.

Udy pleaded guilty to making false statements to the Division of Securities in connection with a 2002 investigation it was conducting and he pleaded guilty to securities fraud, for failing to tell later investors about his disciplinary history.

In the December of 2002. Udy was a licensed securities agent. He consented to the entry of a disciplinary order by the Division of Securities relating to promissory notes that he had sold to investors.

As part of that order, Udy claimed that he had disclosed all notes that he had issued. However, it transpired that this was far from the truth. In fact, a subsequent investigation by the Division proved that Udy had issued at least five promissory notes totalling $1314,500 which had been kept hidden from the Division.

In October of 2003, the Division took the decision to revoke Udy's license as a broker-dealer agent and barred him from the securities industry.

However, it transpired that Udy sold at least two additional promissory notes after his license had been revoked. On December 21 2005, the Utah Attorney General filed four felony counts against Udy for providing false information to the Division. This was for failing to disclose important information to investors, and for selling securities without having the necessary license.

A spokesman said: “The guilty pleas entered by Udy will be held in abeyance for 36 months. During that time, Udy is required to pay full restitution to those who gave him money to invest and provide accurate information to the State about those investors.

“If he makes full restitution and complies with the other terms of the plea agreement, the two felony counts will be reduced to Class A misdemeanours and the convictions will be entered on his record.”

Brother Udy was a prominent Mormon, having served on a Stake Presidency (similar to the Diocese in the Episcopalian or Church of England) and as Regional Representative (Ogden Utah, Riverdale Utah, Syracuse Utah, and Clearfield Utah regions) of the Presidency of the LDS/Mormon church, the largest of several sects of the original polygamous cult founded by Joseph Smith.

It has been claimed that Udy cheated investors, many of whom were friends and fellow Mormons.

Why I think you should blog.

Do you blog? If you don't, I think you should at least consider it. I use Blogger.com, but there are many other systems you can use like Wordpress. Some are free, some charge. Check them out, and see what would suit you the best.

Blogging can be very cathartic and can help you put your own thoughts in order. Many times I have written a post and then realised why I had reacted to something in the way I had done.

Obviously, you need to be careful what you put in. Too much Real Life Information (or In Real Life Information) can be a bad thing, if you do not want your family to know certain things. So, be careful what you post, under those circumstances.

The Recovery From Mormonism website has a list of blogs you can read. You can also have your blog listed there, too, if it is related to ex-Mormonism.

Just visit www.exmormon.org and follow the links to the Bulletin Board.