Best christian denominations & sects books according to redditors

Bias breakdown, in my opinion:

• At least seven are written from a pro-LDS perspective.
  
• Five are mostly critical of the church (I'm combining CES Letter and Letter for my Wife as one; they are largely redundant).
  
• Four are remarkably neutral; a balance of supportive and critical LDS narratives.
  
• Three are about Christian theology and don't even mention Mormonism once.
  
  ***
  EDIT: Damn, I knew I'd forget some. Add these to the list above:
  
  
• Studies of the Book of Mormon (B.H. Roberts) - proLDS
  
• Educated: A Memoir (Tara Westover) - neutral

I also recommend Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven.

It's primarily about a double murder committed by a Mormon splinter
cult, the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints, in 1984. However, it also goes into detail of some of the really shitty things in the history of the Mormons.

It was a fascinating, frightening read.

Given that people are asking about church problems, I thought I'd make a post about it.

Information deemed as "anti-Mormon" can be validated with LDS or neutral resources, the "anti" information is actually typically the truth. I make a point of verifying sources directly with LDS information. I do not assume it's trusted unless the information can be corroborated with information in BYU archives, LDS.org or other LDS-run sites.

• Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon with his face buried in a hat. Emma (this is from RLDS/CoC history but the LDS church uses the RLDS archives for its records as well), David Whitmer (page 423 under "Manner as Follows"), Joseph Knight and others' accounts support this. A talk in 1993 called "A Treasured Testament" mentions this method. When's the last time you saw LDS artwork depicting Joseph Smith translating the Book of Mormon with his face in a hat?
  
  
• Joseph Smith married fourteen and sixteen year old girls when in his mid to late thirties. Familysearch.org supports this. See Helen Mar Kimball, the fourteen year old bride. Joseph Smith also married women who were married (which has no scriptural justification), see Zina Huntington Jacobs as one example of several. More information can be found at wivesofjosephsmith.org which is based off of LDS author Todd Compton's book, "In Sacred Loneliness" which was published by Signature Books. The age of majority at the time was twenty one, and average marriage ages were not outside the early twenties, teen brides were rare. See 1890-2010, Netherlands 18th century, and Social History.
  
  
• Joseph Smith [ordered](https://byustudies.byu.edu/hc/6/22.html#HOC (page 448) the destruction of the Nauvoo Expositor and declared martial law. (Martial and law each have a link). This is what led to his incarceration at Carthage.
  
  
• The information found in the Nauvoo Expositor (see Affadavits of Wm Law, Robert Foster, Jane Law and Austin Cowles) was not untruthful. LDS-owned Familysearch.org supports the allegations of polygamy, and the Second Anointing is a ordinance which little information can be found, but a reference of it can be found on LDS.org.
  
  
  
• Second Anointing
  
  
• See section "What is meant by having one's calling and election made sure?"
  
  
• See History of the Church, 5:391-392.
  
  
• Joseph Smith had several contradictory accounts of the First Vision. I find the official explanation for why there were multiple variants to be wholly unsatisfying. The singular detail which should be uniform in all of them is not uniform. Who did Joseph see?
  
  
• There are problems with the priesthood restoration as seen on LDS-run josephsmithpapers.org. There's a six year gap in the record of the supposed event and the first time it shows up in any book or manuscript.
  
  
• The manuscript (there's nothing there for May 1829 at all) for the time frame doesn't suggest that such an event occurred.
  
  
• In August 1830, the manuscript for Doctrine and Covenants 27 was written, it does not match the modern version.
  
  
• In 1831 Joseph Smith was ordained a High Priest by Lyman Wight after he ordained Lyman Wight as high priest. Why would Joseph Smith need to be ordained a high priest if he'd received this office already from Peter, James and John and isn't ordaining Lyman Wight as high priest before Lyman Wight ordained Joseph Smith a circular exercise?
  
  
• 1833 edition of Book of Commandments CHAPTER XXVIII (predecessor to Doctrine and Covenants)
  
  
• 1835 edition of Doctrine and Covenants Section L
  
  There's multiple other issues which are problematic and I've already taken up a substantial amount of space here. I wanted to illustrate issues which cause people to go from believer to non-believer. I was once a believer, I thought I had felt the Spirit, I even got married in the temple. The church is not what it represents itself to be. The Spirit may be nothing more than a normal emotional response which is exploited easily by religious organizations.
  
  
• Elevation
  
  
• Elevation 2
  
  
• Elevation 3
  
  
• Frisson
  
  
• Frisson 2
  
  
• Frisson 3
  
  
  I did once have a pretty strong testimony, but that is when I only knew part of the information. When allowing myself to investigate information with an eye to scientific reasoning in the case of the Book of Mormon and Book of Abraham as well as the Bible, ultimately none of the scriptures hold up to scrutiny.
  
  There's no genetic, archaeological or linguistic support for the Book of Mormon as verified by any credible scientist. The world of science is not "out to get" Mormons, it just doesn't support Mormonism's assertions of accuracy of canonized LDS texts.
  
  The Book of Mormon is specific in the extent of the expansion of the civilization in Helaman 3:5-8. The limited geography explanation is directly contradicted by the Book of Mormon. A small village of perhaps a hundred people in Canada settled by the Vikings a millennia ago for a duration of maybe ten years has been found, but yet no whole cultural digs have been found to support the Book of Mormon. The items where some aspect is used to support the Book of Mormon are typically a single item or aspect of a dig and explanations given by those supportive of Mormonism are not accepted by archaeologists.
  
  A small cluster of Africans have had their genetic history linked to seven Semitic men dating to 2,500 years ago, and yet no genetic, archaeological, linguistic or cultural evidence in the study of Native Americans supports a cluster of Hebraic people from the same era as the progenitors of the African tribe previously mentioned. Lehi, Laman, Lemuel, Sam, Nephi, Zoram, Jacob and Joseph and Mulek are all males mentioned in the same era who supposedly left Jerusalem (or were born in the wilderness) making for at least nine male progenitors who made it to the Americas. Regardless of if all of those descending people have died out, we can now perform genetic tests on bodies of people who died multiple millennia ago. The Anzik child shares genetics with ancient Siberians (and most of the Native Americans).
  
  Edit:formatting
  
  Edit 2: grammar and minor fact adjustment

This is duplicitous and unabashedly so. You make it seem like your post-modern, intellectualist approach to Mormonism is ubiquitous in the rank and file membership, which is blatantly dishonest. Quit your lying for the lord and tell the straight story.

You say:
>"I was taught about the Nauvoo Expositor, also he had a gun and fired it down the hallway"

Having been born in the church and been very active until about age 24, I've only ever met ONE member of the LDS church who knew about Joseph having carried a gun in Carthage and have NEVER heard it discussed in any church setting.

If you knew about it, then you're the exception and you know it. Most LDS faithful don't have any idea of any of the context surrounding Smith's incarceration and most are under the impression that it was entirely due to bigoted "anti mormon persecution".

>"Also, calling the Nauvoo Expositor a "newspaper" is insulting to newspapers. It was very poorly written, had no sources, and was just one large slander piece to Joseph Smith and the LDS church.

You don't get a pass to burn down a printing press because it's a crappy paper. Sorry. ([Mormon Think: Nauvoo Expositor]
(http://www.mormonthink.com/glossary/nauvoo-expositor.htm))

>"To this day there is no strong evidence that Joseph Smith Jr did or did not have more than one wife.

What the hell are you talking about? You're either LYING or are underinformed:

-Todd Compton's In Sacred Lonliness discusses in depth each of the wives of JS.

-Wikipedia: List of Joseph Smith's wives

-Mormon Think: Joseph Smith Polygamy

This isn't a controversial issue any longer. Even the LDS apologists have admitted such:
>"Joseph Smith was eternally married to what currently are argued to be between eight and eleven already married women. If we consider only those eight marriages that can be adequately documented, we find that six of the marriages occurred within an eight-month period between late October 1841 and June 1842. Two more marriages occurred early in 1843. The women ranged in age from 20 to 47, with an average age of 29. Of those eight marriages, five were to women who had Mormon husbands and three were to women married to disaffected members or non-Mormons. Three of the women's first marriages to Mormon husbands and two of the marriages to non-Mormons lasted until death. The other three remaining marriages ended later in life after Joseph's death in 1844. In all cases the women continued to live with their first husbands. Technically, a woman with more than one husband is defined as being involved in a polyandrous relationship, or practicing polyandry." (Samuel Katich, A Tale of two Marriage Systems, 2003)

He ordered the destruction of a private printing press that was exposing the fact that he was using his religious influence to coerce women into secretly marrying him and then denying it publicly. Did he deserve to be assassinated? No. Was he completely innocent (a lamb to the slaughter)? Absolutely not. The point of all this is that you will never hear anything about the Nauvoo expositor or Joseph's secret polyandry or anything leading up to his "martyrdom" in Mormon Sunday school, except that he was killed by "an angry mob".

You should read Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer for an in-depth story of the FLDS church. It's a very good read and those people are freaks! It was written before Jeffs' arrest, trial and imprisonment, but it gives the whole background story. Creepy AF.

I would be very, very cautious of any religious organization that compels you to formally "join" it (complete with secret ceremonies) and forces you to tithe to be a full-fledged member. It seems to me that true religion is transparent rather than secretive. The LDS organization is anything but transparent. Have you read Jon Krakauer's book Under the Banner of Heaven? If not, I highly recommend it (the Amazon reviews are also a good resource) for a very thorough and unbiased history of the LDS movement. This is another recent article about the LDS that brings up some pretty troubling dealings on the business end of things.

I spent several years out in the American West living very close to a large LDS community and I saw a lot of very upsetting things go on within that community. Most of them had to do with the mistreatment of women and children, but a lot was simply cronyism and manipulation. It is a community that works very hard to keep appearances up to "outsiders", but they weren't able to hide everything.

I'm sure you are considering this conversion very carefully and I don't mean to undermine or disrespect your personal beliefs in any way, but I'd really encourage to you spend a great deal of time reading accounts from people (especially women) who have left the LDS church before you decided to join. Their recruitment can be quite intense, but it does not tell the whole truth behind the organization.

In the context of this community, I will also say that is is next to impossible to be a feminist and a Mormon at the same time. The ideologies conflict that violently.

OK, I will shut the fuck up now. Best to you in whatever choices you make in your life!

This is the "Holiness to the Lord" parchment, found among Hyrum Smith's belongings after his death. It is further evidence that the Smiths practiced folk magic. A number of similar items were found among his belongings at that time:

Here is the "Saint Peter Bind Them" parchment.

Here is a graphical reproduction of the "Jehovah, Jehovah, Jehovah" parchment.

Here is the inscribed dagger.

...all found among Hyrum's belongings. Also, on Joseph Smith's body was found this Jupiter Talisman.

They won't teach you any of that in Sunday School. For more information I recommend D. Michael Quinn's book Early Mormonism and the Magical World View.

You seem like a super intelligent girl. You need to read four things before you get baptized. And read these items with your LDS boyfriend.

1) Letter to a CES Director

2) Translation and Historicity of the Book of Abraham from LDS.org.

3) Cherry Picking! The Book of Abraham Essay shows you how The Mormon Church lies about their true history and doctrine. There are many other sources that show this academic dishonesty

4) Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith


Read these items with your boyfriend. Make him read them critically. Don't let him off the hook. If you are planning to change your entire life for your boyfriend, he should be willing to do the same for you. Fact check everything using sources. Don't rely on anyone's word. And don't let your boyfriend use ad hominem arguments to defend The Mormon Church. Be honest... with yourself and with each other.


When you are done reviewing these items, if you wish you can move on to Mormon Think and Year of Polygamy. And check out NewNameNoah's videos on YouTube. NewNameNoah will show you the Mormon Temple ceremony in a safe environment.

Oooo this is my wheelhouse!

First, I would recommend looking at the Mormon History Association Best Book awards going back to 1966. Quality scholarship, research, and writing are a mainstay with them.

Required reading:

Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet by John Turner / Brigham Young: American Moses by Leonard Arrington

Considered two of the best books about early Utah and the Brigham Young years. Arrington's book was considered groundbreaking when he wrote it, and Turner's book brings in the valuable perspective of the non-Mormon writing about Young. For many Mormons, Turner's book will be less sympathetic to Young than Arrington's, but Turner also worked closely with the Church Archives (and spoke glowingly about them and that process), so his research had access to some better sources. If you need a primer for Brigham Young, I recommend Arrington's book. For a Brigham Young graduate level course, I recommend Turner.

Early Mormonism and the Magic Worldview by Michael Quinn

To understand much of what happened in early Mormonism, you must understand the role that folk magic played in the lives of Americans in the 1800s. Quinn's research at this time was top notch, and he was a quickly rising star among Mormon historians. Considered one of his best works, and foundational to the understanding things like seer stones, divining rods, visions, and everything else that happened in the early church days.

David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism by Greg Prince

Covers late 1940s - 1960s Mormonism, one of the "rising moments" of Mormonism when we went from a Utah-church to a worldwide church. Prince had amazing access to the journals of President McKay's secretary, which led to some candid discussions about things like the publishing of Mormon Doctrine by McConkie, blacks and the priesthood, ecumenical outreach, and politics.

Spencer W. Kimball by Edward Kimball / Lengthen Your Stride: The Presidency of Spencer W. Kimball by Edward Kimball

Ed was Pres. Kimball's son, and the books cover both the apostle years and presidency years of Spencer W. Kimball. If you had to choose one, get Lengthen Your Stride, but make sure it has the CD that comes with the book. This has the unabridged manuscript prior to the Deseret Book edits, which is much more interesting.

By the Hand of Mormon by Terryl Givens (heck...anything by Terryl Givens!)

I'll admit - I'm a Terryl Givens fanboy. By the Hand of Mormon was the one that first got me in to him, mostly because he took the Book of Mormon as a serious work of literature to examine it's merits. It's not as devotional as many traditional LDS books about the Book of Mormon (it was put out by Oxford University Press), but it really gave me a deeper appreciation for the Book of Mormon as contemporary literature. Also check out Viper on the Hearth (Mormons on myth and heresy), People of Paradox (Mormon culture), When Souls had Wings (the pre-existence in Western thought), and so many others.

And just because I'm a big book nerd, here's the list of books that are on my desk right now that I can give you quick reviews if you want:

• Leonard Arrington and the Writing of Mormon History by Greg Prince
  
• The Mormon Jesus: A Biography by John Turner
  
• Mormon Feminism: Essential Writings, edited by Brooks, Steenblik and Wheelwright
  
• Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness by W. Paul Reeve
  
• Pedestals and Podiums: Utah Women, Religious Authority and Equal Rights by Martha Sonntag Bradley
  
• A Reason for Faith: Navigating LDS Doctrine & Church History, edited by Laura Harris Hales
  
• Glorious in Persecution: Joseph Smith, American Prophet 1839-1844 by Martha Bradley Evans
  
• The Mormon Church & Blacks: A Documentary History, edited by Harris & Bringhurst
  
• From the Outside Looking In: Essays on Mormon History, Theology and Culture, edited by Neilson & Grow
  
• Out of Obscurity: Mormonism since 1945, edited by Mason & Turner
  
• Mormonism & American Politics, edited by Balmer & Riess
  
• Seeking the Promised Land: Mormons and American Politics by Campbell, Green & Monson
  
• A Book of Mormons: Latter-day Saints on a Modern-Day Zion, edited by Jensen & McKay-Lamb
  
• Revelations in Context: The Stories Behind the Sections of the Doctrine & Covenants by the LDS Church
  
• Natural Born Seer: Joseph Smith, American Prophet, 1805-1830 by Richard S. Van Wagoner
  
• Revelatory Events: Three Case Studies of the Emergence of New Spiritual Paths by Ann Taves (looking at Mormonism, Alcoholics Anonymous and A Course in Miracles)
  
• A House Full of Females: Plural Marriage and Women's Rights in Early Mormonism, 1835-1870 by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
  
• Baring Witness: 36 Mormon Women Talk Candidly about Love, Sex, and Marriage edited by Holly Welker

A church meeting in Frankfurt (faithful source, in-depth book about TSCC's relationship with / attitudes about the Nazis)

Welcome! We believe that the Orthodox Church is the original Church founded by Jesus Christ, yes. The best way to get a good idea of what Orthodoxy is about is to visit a local parish near you, but here are some books that I would recommend:

The Orthodox Church

The Orthodox Way

Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy

Know the Faith

On the topic of visiting a local parish - do you live in the US? If so, there is a great online search engine to help you locate nearby Orthodox churches.

It's been discussed so many times before. I'll just cut to the chase. Open a set of scripture to facsimile #3. There you will read Joseph Smith's claimed translations of the characters over this person or that person's head.

Here you can see the canonized facsimiles that contain real Egyptians characters along with Joseph Smith's claimed transitions. If you buy yourself a book on basic Egyptian you will have everything you need to test Joseph Smith's claim by yourself. There is no need to do the translation yourself. But doing so will bypass the fearful idea Mormons learn at church that equates problems with Joseph Smith as being just "anti-mormon lies".

Joseph Smith got the translation of the characters wrong while making several other verifiable mistakes.

There is no good apologetic response that directly responds to this problem other than to hand wave it away and talk about Nibley parallelisms. Some Mormons are even now claiming that the facsimiles (and the rest of the papyrus) was just inspiration from which to write a non-literal story about Abraham. However, that idea is mostly wishful thinking. Joseph Smith's own words do not support that idea.

That's just the begining, there are dozens of other verifiable problems with the BoA.

Start with the CES letter's section on the BoA.

Then read [The Joseph Smith Egyptian Papyri by Robert K. Ritner](
https://www.amazon.com/Joseph-Smith-Egyptian-Papyri-Complete/dp/1560852321)

Magic Parchment photo and discussion

Canes and whatnot

More from earlier Reddit discussions

This book by Quinn

Edit to add: This book by the Tanners There is a sample of the first 6 pages for free online, you can read all about the Jupiter talisman in those first few pages.

D Michael Quinn is set to release a book on finance in November.

https://www.amazon.com/Mormon-Hierarchy-Wealth-Corporate-Power/dp/1560852356/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1468545789&sr=8-1&keywords=quinn+d+michael+books

Where to begin?! Lol welcome.

At this point there’s quite a few ways to disbelieve the JW doctrine. Many people will fill you in I’m sure and debate over doubts here within the comment section. If you were really interested in knowing. I’d suggest:

John Cedars

Start from the very beginning if you’d like to view all the doubts via video format. There’s a lot of substance within that channel so I’d def start there. If your into podcasts I’d suggest:

This JW Life

Shunned

The Prodigal Boys

The Daily Dose

Book References:

Crisis Of Conscience

The Reluctant Apostate

Combating With Cult Mind Control

I suggest you read Under The Banner of Heaven. Not only is it a fascinating read, but it will also explain how the FLDS's brand of polygamy (which is obviously the most prominent form of polygamy in the country) goes hand in hand with child rape.

No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith https://www.amazon.com/dp/0679730540/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_dE1KAbJZEKJ0S

Lee was eventually convicted and executed, but the others all escaped punishment for the most part (albeit living as fugitives). Brigham Young played a role (enormous to some, tacitly implying in others) and yet has a university named after him.

It's not to necessarily blame the Mormons, but they did secede from the United States and were not very good at integrating with society under their initial leaders. To claim that Mormons are actively trying to destroy the United States now is as spurious as saying that Obama is a Muslim communist nazi.

Krakauer's excellent Under the Banner of Heaven contains a well-investigated version of the story, as well as a good amount of the Mormon history.

> In my understanding polygamy is not officially gone from church doctrine, but rather just not currently practiced. Reading OD1 seems to confirm this as in no place does it strictly repeal it. Is this true? Will polygamy be practiced in the Celestial Kingdom and would it be practiced again should the laws of marriage in the United States change to permit it?

Yes, it is still doctrinal and does still shape sealing policies. I've been taught that it would be practiced again in the future and that it is practiced in the CK. I don't, however, believe that.

> I've heard rumors and read accounts of prominent Mormon leaders (Joseph Smith & Brigham Young in particular) marrying women who already had husbands that were still living. Is this true? What is the reasoning behind this?

Yes, it's true. I don't know the reason. It's one of the most troubling aspects of the historical practice of polygamy.

> In the afterlife, can someone marry my wife? (We are sealed in the temple)

Who really knows what exactly will happen in the afterlife?

> Brigham Young had children with multiple (like... 15ish?) wives? Why were these children not permitted to have a father they didn't share with so many others? Did Utah Territory have a significantly larger female population than male?

Brigham had children with 16 of his 55 wives. In a lot of cases, I don't really see a significant difference between growing up with Brigham Young or Heber C Kimball as your father and growing up without a father—especially when those fathers spent so much time off on missions. Utah didn't have significantly more females than males. The census actually indicates that there were more men than women. AFAIK, it was only a small number of men that were able to get a large number of wives. Elder Widstoe talks about it in his book "Evidences and Reconciliations", and concludes that they practiced polygamy not because there were surplus women but because they believed that God commanded it.

> D&C 132:62-64. Do we still believe that? Why is that still in the scripture, it seems very... ... not what I learn in Sunday School. Man owning women, man sleeping with many women - women being denied the same, if the original wife disagrees God will "destroy" her... this is a bit concerning, please tell me I'm misunderstanding this.

No, I think that you do understand these verses. I don't know whether or not "we" (the Church) believe them, but I don't accept them. They're in the canon, but any lesson that includes section 132 is usually selective about how it covers it and mostly just covers the blessings of eternal (one man and one woman) marriage.

Polygamy is difficult to understand and easy to judge. There was some good that came out of it (including me), but a lot of it was also done poorly.

If you really want to learn more about polygamy, I would recommend reading history books.

Here are some good ones you could look into:

• Mormon Polygamy
  
• Mormon Enigma
  
• In Sacred Loneliness
  
• Rough Stone Rolling
  
• Joseph Smith's Polygamy
  
  I would also recommend reading what Parley P Pratt wrote about polygamy in his autobiography, as well as this essay that the church recently put out.

"The Mormon Hierarchy: Wealth and Corporate Power" by D. Michael Quinn will be the authority on the subject when it comes out in October. Quinn was a BYU professor, church historian, and EDIT: in my opinion on track to be an apostle when he started to learn too much and was excommunicated with The September Six.

 

Till then, /u/Mithryn's research here is fairly thorough.

 

 

This is a good resource for how the church supports Mission Presidents, which is a pretty low level clergy.

Check out D. Michael Quinn's book Early Mormonism and the Magical World View if you haven't already. There's all kinds of good stuff there.

There are no non LDS egyptologists who believe JS translated any of the Book of the Dead correctly. The book below takes a look at all the translations and the journal entries while JS was translating.

https://www.amazon.com/Joseph-Smith-Egyptian-Papyri-Complete/dp/1560852321

Incidentally, the Lowry Nelson letters were the final straw for me. They showed that the essays were not truthful. Clearly, prophets had stated that blacks were less valiant in the preexistence was doctrine. The essays contend otherwise.

In examining church material it became clear that the church lies and covers stuff up.

The other big issue was marrying other men’s wives, young girls, and girls who he was a custodian for while he never got sealed to his children or parents.

Yup, it was B.H. Roberts. The book he eventually wrote and published is called "Studies of the Book of Mormon."

Interestingly, the book was published by the University of Illinois, not the Church.

Choice quotes:

>In the early 1920s, Roberts was asked by the First Presidency of the LDS Church to develop an apologetic to explain difficulties in the Book of Mormon.

The book was published in 1985, which shows how long and hard he worked on it.

>Roberts was "torn by an internal struggle between his faith and a desire to be honest with himself.

A problem many at FAIR don't seem to struggle with....

>Roberts concluded that the "evidence I sorrowfully submit" pointed to Joseph Smith as the Book of Mormon's creator.

>Although Roberts's manuscripts were intended for perusal by the general authorities of the LDS Church, the authorities proved uninterested in examining them.

Funny how the very people who gave him the task weren't interested. They really aren't scholars.

>He also warned that the problems described would haunt the church "both now and also in the future" and, unless answered, they would undermine "the faith of the Youth of the Church."

Good read for under $20

It was what ultimately made my shelf fall. I held up everything on the fact that the BoM existed and no explanation made sense except for the Church's accepted history.

Learning that a prophet tasked with that specific task came to the conclusion that Joseph probably wrote the book was earth-shattering.

Sure.

Native American DNA shows no mid eastern link as described in Book of Mormon and is of Asiatic origin.

Book of Abraham hoax

http://www.amazon.com/The-Joseph-Smith-Egyptian-Papyri/dp/1560852321

You can hear Robert Ritner speak on it here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcyzkd_m6KE

Plus Hitler liked the Mormons!

Recommended read: Moroni and the Swastika: Mormons in Nazi Germany: https://www.amazon.com/Moroni-Swastika-Mormons-Nazi-Germany/dp/0806146680

How is it that Mormons were persecuted in Missouri but welcomed in Nazi Germany? That's fucked up.

If your interest is serious, speak to the priest. He will probably have a list of materials in mind to recommend. Find out who teaches Catechism and ask them as well.

I recommend The Orthodox Church and The Orthodox Way by Metropolitan Kallistos (Timothy) Ware. They provide a solid foundation of Church history and basic beliefs. If you're looking for more specific details on Orthodox doctrine check out the websites of the different jurisdictions; most of them have explanations of doctrine:

Orthodox Church in America

Greek Orthodox Archdiocese in America

There are others out there, such as the Russian and Antiochian Churches. Doctrinally they'll all be the same.

You should also pray. A lot. Prayer is usually the first thing we're encouraged to do when taking on a new task. Ask God to lead you as you seek, and I have it on pretty good authority that you'll find.

Good luck and God bless!

D. Michael Quinn addressed the scope of the finances (holding companies, property, etc.) in his book but I don't think he came up with a specific value. However, his goal was more to address the integration of church leadership in these external finances than to quantify them.

Edit: And I agree with you, it's really frustrating.

Rough Stone Rolling by Richard Lyman Bushman:

http://www.amazon.com/Joseph-Smith-Rough-Stone-Rolling/dp/1400077532


The best researched biography of Joseph Smith by an award winning historian who taught at Harvard, Columbia and BYU who is also an active believing Latter-day Saint.


Edit: If you like archaeology and the Book of Mormon, then try Mormon Codex by John L. Sorenson:

http://www.amazon.com/Mormons-Codex-Ancient-American-Book/dp/1609073991/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1450660578&sr=1-1&keywords=Mormon+Codex

> You better believe I am going to plug it here for two reason: 1. This is my target audience…

Yes, /u/Porter_rockedwell, this is your target audience. Luna Lindsey plugged her book Recovering Agency here and even bought banner adds for the top of the page, and I remember much complaint but lots of praise. I suggest that you make your book available for kindle, which is easy for amateur self-publishers and how most people here would buy it.

As far as /u/daysofapostacy goes, it's seriously bizarre that anyone would claim that /r/exmormon is a lucrative place to gain followers for a fashion blog instead of sticking to bourgeoise TBM Utah Valley-girls. If /u/daysofapostacy was chasing fame and profit she would gone on pretending to be TBM. Choosing to come out as apostate is probably going to hurt her business.

one source I just found from: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/yearofpolygamy/2016/09/10-things-polygamy-gave-mormonism/ "'10 Things Polagamy gave Mormonism' SEPTEMBER 27, 2016 BY LINDSAY HANSEN PARK.

​

\>10. Temple attendance, sacredness, holy garments, and oaths:

This is a complex and sensitive topic, so I will try and tread as respectfully as I can.

If biographer’s of Emma Smith are to be believed, the temple garment started out as a way to set polygamist men apart from monogamist men ( see Emma Hale Smith Biography, page 140). While the Endowment Ceremony first developed around those who were secretly initiated into plural sealings, it was quickly extended to more than just polygamists. Still, it is suggested that those receiving their endowments would have known about the secret practice, even if they didn’t currently live it. They would have been initiated into the Holy Order which meant keeping the practice secret, or rather- sacred, from the outside world.

You've asked some pretty big questions. It'd be hard to answer them in a reddit comment. My primary recommendation would be to talk to your priest.

On the other hand, if you're not comfortable with that for some reason, maybe you could try to ask some more specific questions. If you just don't know what to ask, I recommend reading The Orthodox Way.

You can also try listening to some podcasts at Ancient Faith Radio.

If you'll indulge my curiosity - I am a convert, and it seems somewhat astonishing to me that you are asking this question :) How old are you, roughly? How is it that you are here with us (thank God!) and do not have more of an understanding of your faith? Please don't take offense at my question - the parish I attend is about half converts and has a wonderful Sunday School program for the youth. I understand this isn't the norm, but would just like to hear more about your circumstance. Thank you :)

If you want to read a good book about Mormon fundamentalists in the US, try John Krakaeur's book Under the Banner of Heaven - it's really interesting.

This is such a great short summary. You have a gift.

Another great book about the LDS sect is Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, by Jon Krakauer (of Into the Wild and Into Thin Air fame). Excellent reporting and harrowing as fuck.

Fun fact: the mormon power structure hated that book so much they tried to have it removed from shelves in many Utah and Idaho bookstores.

The field of early Mormon history is filled with faithful history, written by believers and critical history that believers would call "anti-mormon". For example, Rough Stone Rolling is a highly respected biography of Joseph Smith written by an quality historian but that historian is still a believing Latter-Day Saint. I'll give you an example of the differences. When describing Joseph's use of a seer stone to locating buried treasure Bushman describes these activities as Joseph's prophetic training and he is developing the skills needed to later use that stone to translate the Reformed Egyptian writing for the Book of Mormon. A secular historian doesn't begin with the a priori assumption that magic rocks exist in the world and people may need to train to use them. In choosing a naturalistic description of Joseph's behavior the reader may see that as an attack on Joseph's credibility as a prophet.

The one book that I believe reasonably walks the line between the two would be Michael Quinn's Early Mormonism and the Magical World View

I wouldn't say it was the best non-fiction book I ever read but Under the Banner of Heaven was the best non-fiction book I read in the past year or two.

You may be interested in this: https://www.amazon.com/Brigham-Young-John-G-Turner/dp/0674049675

Bushman Review: “The story Turner tells in this elegantly written biography will startle and shock many readers. He reveals a Brigham Young more violent and coarse than the man Mormons have known. While lauding his achievements as pioneer, politician, and church leader, the book will require a reassessment of Brigham Young the man.”—Richard Bushman, author of Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling

I also have it linked in the text portion of the Wives of Joseph Smith Infographic

References:
Marriage Details are from wivesofjosephsmith.org
Which has compiled genealogical research from the following sources:

[A] familysearch.org (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City)

[B] Mormon Polygamy: A History, (Van Wagoner, Signature Books, Salt Lake City, 1989)

[C] Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith, (Newell & Avery, University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago, 1994)

[D] In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith, (Compton, Signature Books, Salt Lake City, 1997)

[E] Doctrine and Covenants, (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City)

Additional Panel References:

[1] "Utah Struggles With a Revival of Polygamy", NY Times, 8/23/1998, James Brooke

[2] Polyandry definition at wikipedia.

[3] Henry Jacobs' mission call; "Zina and Her Men", FAIR LDS Conference, 2006

[4] David Sessions mission call, wivesofjosephsmith.org, Patty Bartlett Sessions Biography

[5] Desdemona Fullmer quote, wivesofjosephsmith.org, D. Fuller Biography

*The cameo silhouettes were created by mormoninfographics for presentation purposes.

Other Resources
Black and White version of this chart for printouts, download here.
Full Rez image from above here.

>doesn't mean he had any interest in living with them

We know this isn't true. That he lived with them and slept in their beds is explicitly documented in some cases.

I recommend Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith, an excellent biography of Emma by two faithful LDS historians.

>The relationship between Emma Smith and plural marriage is a very complicated one--later in her life, I think I remember reading that she denied her husband ever allowed or entered into plural marriages, but I'm having trouble finding a source that says this so I may be misremembering.

A great source on Emma is Mormon Enigma. (My copy is at home so I can't cite page numbers or grab exact quotes) but when her son went and interviewed her shortly before she died, she denied that Joseph had ever practiced polygamy. Although she certainly knew that he had. That whole interview is quite interesting because of how unreliable Emma is it it. Joseph Smith III (her son doing the interview, not her husband) I also really respect and he eventually did concede that his father wasn't innocent in polygamy after being exposed to the evidence.

"Joseph Smith, the Prophet and Seer of the Lord, has done more, save Jesus only, for the salvation of men in this world, than any other man that ever lived in it" (D&C 135:3)

Seriously, after I read Mormon Polygamy: A History and No Man Knows My History and thought about how I'd been taught to deify Joseph Smith and knew little to nothing about the actual man, it was then that I understood the allegations of cult-like characteristics that are lodged against the Mormon church.

Pro-Nazi



"Dec 9,1933 - [Less than a year after Hitler becomes chancellor of Germany,] 'Church News' article 'Mormonism in The New Germany,' enthusiastically emphasizes parallels 'between the LDS Church and some of the ideas and policies of the National Socialists.' First, Nazis have introduced 'Fast Sunday.' Second, 'it is a very well known fact that Hitler observes a form of living which Mormons term the Word of Wisdom. Finally, due to the importance given to the racial question by Nazis and the almost necessity of proving that one's grandmother was not a Jewess, there no longer is resistance against genealogical research by German Mormons who now have received letters of encouragement complimenting them for their patriotism.'



"Jan 25,1936 - 'Church News' Section photograph of LDS basketball team in Germany giving 'Sieg Heil' salute of Nazi Party."

"Many of those who felt the greatest anxiety about being able to carry on their religious activities are finding that at least one branch of their church work has received its greatest boon since Germany’s adoption of Hitlerism. It was always difficult for Genealogical workers to get into the archives of the recognized church to trace back family records. When the pastor learned of the intention access to the records was often denied. Now, due to the importance given to the racial question, and the almost necessity of proving that one’s grandmother was not a Jewess, the old record books have been dusted off and stand ready and waiting for use. No questions are asked. In fact, some of the Saints instead of being refused by the pastors now have received letters of encouragement complimenting them for their patriotism. All genealogical workers who are interesting in tracing back family history in Germany should take advantage of the present unusual opportunity." –Deseret News 1933

Moroni and the Swastika: Mormons in Nazi Germany http://www.amazon.com/Moroni-Swastika-Mormons-Nazi-Germany/dp/0806146680/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1424195771&sr=8-1&keywords=Moroni+and+the+Swastika

Books:

The Orthodox Church http://www.amazon.com/The-Orthodox-Church-New-Edition/dp/0140146563

The Orthodox Way http://www.amazon.com/The-Orthodox-Way-Kallistos-Ware/dp/0913836583

Welcome to the board! I found ex-JW information around 20 years after I left, but that was some years ago.

>I still always go back to what if, or second guessing myself.

It's likely because you've never deconstructed the [false] beliefs that you were taught.

You've just now found out about the ex-JW groups, if I read your opening post correctly.

There is a mountain of information out on the internet now, about how wrong the WT Society was/is, and more significantly about how CORRUPT the WT Society was/is.

Someone's already recommended JW facts, right? I haven't read the rest of the thread yet.

Edit to add JW facts link: https://jwfacts.com/

And the book written by Ray Franz that first blew off the lid on the inner and extremely corrupt workings of the WT Society: https://www.amazon.com/Crisis-Conscience-struggle-between-religion/dp/0999499211

Also, to anyone else reading this, if I haven't linked the most current version of Crisis of Conscience, please tell me. Thanks!

Oh, and John Cedars' book: https://www.amazon.com/Reluctant-Apostate-Leaving-Jehovahs-Witnesses/dp/0995669104

And his highly informative YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCz1w0ll081JJiYcjb298pOw

Oh, and EXJW Critical Thinkers' channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpHhWSPtMDTSa8dzapmzo5A

No, there aren't. Here's a very good history book about the subject.

Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven has a lot of horrible facts about Mormon polygamy in it. Obviously you haven't read that.

Here's a piece about Elizabeth Smart as more evidence.

Wikipedia entry about the FLDS, whose president Warren Jeffs was just this year sentenced to life + 20 for fucking little girls.

You may choose to believe that Mormons don't practice plural marriage, but it's absolutely not true.

Then direct people to this and not pirated property.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B07B7C21M3/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=&sr=

Try Krakauer's other well known book Into Thin Air, and because there's some controversy regarding his version of events, also The Climb by Anatoli Boukreev who was a major player that day.

Krakauer's other book Under the Banner of Heaven is a good "true crime" style story about some Morman murders, but may not be enough like Into the Wild to appeal to you.

Over the Edge of the World is more of a history, covering Magellan's circumnavigation of the earth. It was facinating and definately had intrigue, machinations, and survival elements.

Another book on exploration and survival, Endurance: Shakleton's Incredible Voyage

And another one, Fatal Journey: The Final Expedition of Henry Hudson. I think this is the one I read, but I can't be certain. It doesn't seem to be as well regarded, but i thought it was still interesting.

A book on diving and survival: The Last Dive, Chowdhury

The Hot Zone could be thought of as science survival. Anyway, you'll probably love the opening bits in Africa, although it does slow way down after that.

Far away from survival, but still about travel are the wonderful Bill Bryson's travelogues. Witty and informative. In a Sunburned Country and A Walk in the Woods are particularly recommended.

Check out the response of the current professors of UCLA to Muhlenstein's claims.

Next should be Professor Ritner's book The Joseph Smith Egyptian Papyri: A Complete Editon

Oh yeah, and while ancient languages are never an exact science, the Rosetta Stone makes study of Egyptian Hieroglyphics possible, much more so than just guessing.

In short, no scholar outside a small group employed by BYU and/or apologists for TSCC find the writings on the parchment remotely related to anything about Abraham or Joseph.

You are unfortunately wrong. Read Under the Banner of Heaven.

http://www.amazon.com/Under-Banner-Heaven-Story-Violent/dp/1400032806

Here are a couple books to consider reading together. They can help him understand and deal with the pressures he's under, and also help you know what he's going through.

• [Leaving the Fold] (http://www.amazon.com/Leaving-Fold-Marlene-Winell/dp/1933993235/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1464644226&sr=8-1&keywords=leaving+the+fold), by Marlene Winell.
  
  
• [Recovering Agency] (http://www.amazon.com/Recovering-Agency-Lifting-Mormon-Control/dp/1489595937/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1464644338&sr=8-1&keywords=recovering+agency), by Luna Lindsey.

Here is a great book about it:

https://www.amazon.com/Early-Mormonism-Magic-World-View/dp/1560850892

It wasn't just Smith Jr and the peep stone (whitewashed to "seer stone",) there were lots of other magical practices the Smith family engaged in. From dowsing that has been scrubbed from the D&C (now listed as the "Gift of Aaron", you know, the one with the staff that allegedly turned into a snake?) to animal sacrifice and the nature of the solstice and what it had to do with recovering the mythical golden plates, the Smiths were deeply engaged in folk magic and the occult. Smith Jr had a Jupiter talisman in his pocket at his death that you can get a replica of today on eBay, and hairs from his and Hyrum's head were placed in walking canes that can be seen at the Daughters of the Pioneers museum today.

One more thing: Smith Jr supposedly learned how to scam people use a seer stone from another seer, Sally Chase and (allegedly) used her stone to locate his first one. I believe it was simply an attempt to legitimize his own scamming by showing he learned from another confidence schemer. Smith Jr never found any treasure that was recovered with his peep stone other than the golden plates, which no one has ever seen, including none of the 3 or 8 witnesses or anyone else. And where are the plates today? Taken away in to heaven? Really?!?

2 great books, on this topic.

1. An Insider's View on Mormon Origins
   https://www.amazon.com/Insiders-View-Mormon-Origins/dp/1560851570/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1540922636&sr=8-1&keywords=insiders+view+of+mormon+origins
   
   
2. Secret Combinations Evidence of Early Mormon Counterfeiting 1800-1847
   https://www.amazon.com/Secret-Combinations-Evidence-Counterfeiting-1800-1847/dp/194414109X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1540922568&sr=8-1&keywords=mormon+counterfeiting
   
   In summary: Joseph, and others, were heavily involved in conning others. This was their thing. These were not honest farmers trying to make an honest buck. They swindled people. The gold plates were just another con that eventually worked its way into a religion (only after Joseph couldn't sell the copyright to the Book of Mormon in order to make some $).

Apologists have overused the term "so called scholars" and "so called archaeologists" when dealing with people presenting evidence against the church while not being accredited PhD holders. They attempt to undermine the evidence by looking at the credentials of the person presenting information rather than the material claims of the information.

The defense of the Book of Abraham is often full of this flimsy tactic. Any criticism against translation or historicity of the Book of Abraham commonly asserts that unless you have a PhD in Egyptology, you are not qualified to talk about the BoA authoritatively. If you do have a PhD in Egyptology (Dr. Robert Ritner, "The Joseph Smith Egyptian Papyri: A Complete Edition" ), the argument will be waived away as a misinterpretation while assuring everyone else that the church is still true in this arena.

Do you know much about Elder B. H. Roberts? He's the church historian I respect the most. Leonard J. Arrington, who was a church historian and is often called the "Father of Mormon History", called B. H. Roberts "The intellectual leader of the Mormon people in the era of Mormonism’s finest intellectual attainment."

Well, Elder Roberts had this to say about the Book of Mormon: “There were other Anti-Christs among the Nephites, but they were more military leaders than religious innovators… they are all of one breed and brand; so nearly alike that one mind is the author of them, and that a young and underdeveloped, but piously inclined mind. The evidence I sorrowfully submit, points to Joseph Smith as their creator. It is difficult to believe that they are a product of history, that they came upon the scene separated by long periods of time, and among a race which was the ancestral race of the red man of America.”

“If from all that has gone before in Part 1, the view be taken that the Book of Mormon is merely of human origin… if it be assumed that he is the author of it, then it could be said there is much internal evidence in the book itself to sustain such a view. In the first place there is a certain lack of perspective in the things the book relates as history that points quite clearly to an underdeveloped mind as their origin. The narrative proceeds in characteristic disregard of conditions necessary to its reasonableness, as if it were a tale told by a child, with utter disregard for consistency.”

“One other subject remains to be considered in this division… viz. – was Joseph Smith possessed of a sufficiently vivid and creative imagination as to produce such a work as the Book of Mormon from such materials as have been indicated in the proceeding chapters… That such power of imagination would have to be of a high order is conceded; that Joseph Smith possessed such a gift of mind there can be no question….In light of this evidence, there can be no doubt as to the possession of a vividly strong, creative imagination by Joseph Smith, the Prophet, an imagination, it could with reason be urged, which, given the suggestions that are found in the ‘common knowledge’ of accepted American antiquities of the times, supplemented by such a work as Ethan Smith’s View of the Hebrews [published in Palmyra in 1825], it would make it possible for him to create a book such as the Book of Mormon is.”

That's directly from A Study of the Book of Mormon by Elder B. H. Roberts. Buy it here.

Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet. Written by a non-Mormon scholar. Well done.

• The Orthodox Faith, by Fr. Thomas Hopko, is online and free.
  
  
• The Orthodox Church and The Orthodox Way, by Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, are a pair of very good introductory books.
  
  
• Introducing Eastern Orthodox Theology by Fr. Andrew Louth, is another good theological introduction.

For Orthodoxy, you could read Fr. Thomas Hopko's The Orthodox Faith (also called the "Rainbow Series" because the 4 books are published in differently-colored covers). You can buy them, but the text is also on the OCA website here: The Orthodox Faith

It's a general overview of the doctrine and life of the Orthodox Church.

There's also The Orthodox Church and The Orthodox Way by Metropolitan Kallistos (Timothy) Ware. These are pretty commonly suggested to a person interested in learning about the Church.

In addition, though, to reading, I would suggest actually attending services at the various churches you're considering. Between the time I left the Southern Baptists and the time I joined the Eastern Orthodox Church, I visited around a number of places and did a good bit of reading and discussing.

In the end, though, I think experiencing Orthodox worship was at least as important to my decision to become Orthodox as my reading was. For me, Orthodoxy just seemed real; there was just something there in the Orthodox services that I didn't sense anywhere else.

If serious, read The Orthodox Way by Bishop Kallistos Ware. He was an Englishman who converted as an adult.

Rough Stone Rolling would be a good place for her to start. You might enjoy it as well. It was written by an LDS historian, so it shouldn't be too scary, but it does tell a slightly different story than what we'd typically hear from the Church. It's not a book that's likely to convince her the Church isn't what it claims to be, but it could help her to see that the Church isn't particularly forthcoming with a lot of its history, and get her thinking on those terms.

It's like scientology + 200 years.

The Mormon Church started as a cult but has since slowly been absorbed by mainstream american society and has dropped some of the worst cultist practices.

It still works pretty much as a cult and includes subtle manipulation techniques capable of turning your head on itself. There's a very detailed book written by a former mormon on this. I strongly recommend it whether you join or not.

http://www.amazon.com/Recovering-Agency-Lifting-Mormon-Control/dp/1489595937

I've read A View of the Hebrews. I recommend reading B.H. Roberts' Studies of the Book of Mormon first as a primer. There are significant historical knowledge gaps between the time View was published and our own and I found Roberts' work helpful in bridging those gaps. Roberts set out to answer a few simple historical questions about the BoM that a member had written in to a GA...

Reading View will get you:

• a firsthand read at what was probably the source of a lot of major thematic points of the Book of Mormon, rebutting FAIRs claims of no connection; and,
  
  
• firsthand read of numerous and very specific pseudoscientific linguistic and cultural theories that were considered credible at the time the BoM was written, which have since been discredited, and which were incorporated into the BoM by the author(s) of that work.
  
  Reading Roberts work provides:
  
  
• firsthand knowledge that when FAIR characterizes Roberts' work as a piece of "devils advocacy" they are lying;
  
  
• a well-articulated summary of early concerns with BoM anachronisms (linguistic, anthropological, metalurgical, and agricultural/animal husbandry);
  
  
• strong evidence to the theory that Joseph Smith incorporated material from his life/social milieu into the Book of Mormon;
  
  
• examples of overt and thinly disguised plagarism from the Bible;
  
  
• analysis of simplistic and superficial stories/teachings of the BoM;
  
  
• Roberts' retelling of how his findings went over with the 12 and FP when he shared them with that body; and,
  
  
• all of this written from a perspective of faith from a President of the 70 who died in full fellowship, was church historian, who literally wrote The History of the Church and was formerly a strident defender of the Book of Mormon.
  
  Your husband might read Roberts work with you or on his own, given that he probably has a copy of Roberts six volume History of the Church and doesn't consider that anti-Mormon (in fact it's quoted extensively in official church publications.)
  
  Best of luck.

B.H. Roberts in Studies of the Book of Mormon documents how Joseph would entertain family and friends with long tales of the early inhabitants of the Americas. And don't forget, he didn't do it in a few months, he had four years from the first visit of the angle until he was allowed to get the plates. Thinking about the story, maybe even writing notes. It wasn't magic, like the church would have you believe.

You should read An Insider's View of Mormon Origins. It feels less amazing when you take out the parts that could be found in his own back yard.

This book is specific to Joseph Smith, but No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith is fantastic.

I know that the literature you are allowed to read on a mission is very limited. However, before you go, you could do some research on Joseph Smith as a person. He was a very colorful character, and had an extremely interesting life. Sometimes you have to go outside of official church doctrine on him to get the full picture because they don't want their prophet to look like what we all are: flawed human beings.

Myself, I am a non-believer. However, even with the flaws Joseph Smith had, I don't think that precludes anyone from believing that his message has value.

Edit: http://www.amazon.com/No-Man-Knows-My-History/dp/0679730540/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1405797598&sr=8-4&keywords=joseph+smith

I would STRONGLY recommend this book. I feel it gives a balanced account of his life. It's not a book that tries to demonize JS, nor a book that portrays him as a perfect, godly man. It's just a book that tries to get at what his life was all about.

>Where do you draw the line between religion and superstitious nonsense? Frankly, I'm having a difficult time separating them at all. Too many people say, "I don't understand how that works, therefore God."

There are principles for reasonable belief. The three I can think of are:

1. Faith must not conflict with what you know. Faith exceeds knowledge, but it cannot bypass it.
   
2. Make sure your beliefs are internally consistent (you'd be surprised how many Christians ignore this principle)
   
3. Your faith must be living: transforming you into a better person. A faith that makes you into a worse person is a bad faith.
   
   >Assuming that Christianity is correct, how can one know with a little more certainty? I'm willing to make a leap of faith, but without some credible evidence, it's like trying to ford the Mississippi river. Can we bring it a little closer to "caulk the wagon and float it across?"
   
   Short answer: yes. Long answer: yes, but it's going to require some research on your part, and by research I don't mean a few google searches. Books can be a good friend. Some others here may be able to recommend good books about the historicity of Jesus and the church, but I tend to favor the philosophical and metaphysical.
   
   >Assuming there exists some evidence sufficient to convince me of Christianity's veracity, which version is correct and how can one know? Or does it really matter, since every Christian church agrees on the most important points?
   
   It's incredible unlikely that any given church is correct on every single point of doctrine. The best you can do is take up the protestant ethic by studying for yourself to see which doctrines appear to be the most reasonable. Looking for the "correct" church is a red herring, in my opinion.
   
   Examining your faith can be a very rewarding experience, even if you end up becoming atheist/agnostic. Just don't take in more than you think you are ready for.

> Is the book of Mormon peer reviewed?

Start with By the Hand of Mormon by Terryl L. Givens, Understanding the Book of Mormon: A Reader's Guide by Grant Hardy and The Book of Mormon: The Earliest Text by Royal Skousen.

These are three independent works, all published by reputable academic presses (Oxford and Yale) by scholars whose scholarly credentials have landed them academic positions at accredited institutions of higher education.

If you want the real deal, start here and learn and see academic scholarship at it's finest painting a majestic picture of this incredible text.

I'm almost always juggling reading material. At the moment I am reading Neuromancer by William Gibson, and Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. Just finished reading Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet by John G Turner, which I highly recommend.

No, I don't equate everything to Nazi Germany. I was recalling something I MIGHT have read in a book about Mormonism in Nazi Germany. And, yes, I do actively try to inform myself politically.

The reason you were downvoted is because you come across as uninformed.

In addition to the other two books listed here, you may also want to look into Vladimir Lossky's The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church.

You often hear a number quoted from the World Christian Encyclopedia that there are some thirty thousand denominations, but when you look into how that number was counted, you find it's an exaggeration; they're counting each liturgical rite of the Catholic Church as a separate denomination to come up with hundreds of denominations of Catholicism alone, each autocephalous Orthodox Church is its own denomination even though they're all in communion, every church in the Anglican Communion is its own denomination, and so on.

The major Christian divisions are Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and Protestantism. All these groups share belief in the doctrine of the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the Atonement, summarised in the Nicene Creed. Groups that have historical connections to Christianity but reject these fundamental tenets, such as the Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, and Muslims, are often thought of as not being part of Christianity at all.

Catholicism is the largest Christian denomination, accounting for just more than half of the world's Christians. The Catholic Church bases its claim to authority on historical continuity with the Church founded by Jesus in the persons of the apostles, with St Peter as their head. The head of the Catholic Church is the Bishop of Rome, or the Pope, who stands in the same relation to other bishops that Catholics believe St Peter did to the other apostles. The main dogmatic authorities accepted by Catholics are the Bible, the canons of the twenty-one ecumenical councils, and certain papal documents, which have defined the faith with increasing precision as questions have arisen over the centuries. The Credo of the People of God, issued by Pope Paul VI in 1968 and now known to have been drafted by the philosopher Jacques Maritain, summarises these teachings. A good book on Catholicism is The Catholic Catechism by Fr John Hardon.

Orthodoxy is the dominant Christian tradition in Slavic countries and what was once the Eastern Roman Empire. Like the Catholic Church, the Orthodox Church bases its claim to authority on historical continuity with the Church founded by Jesus, but it is more decentralised, with no bishop having any real enforceable authority over other bishops. The major division in Orthodoxy is between the Eastern Orthodox and the Oriental Orthodox. The Oriental Orthodox recognise the first three ecumenical councils as authoritative, but split from the Church over the Council of Chalcedon's definitions of the dual nature of Christ. The Eastern Orthodox recognise only the first seven ecumenical councils (the same accepted by Catholics), with anything those councils did not define being a matter of private theological opinion; they are often thought of as having parted ways with the Catholics in 1054, but this is an oversimplification. The division developed more gradually. A good book on Orthodoxy is The Orthodox Way by Bishop Kallistos Ware.

Protestantism is the dominant Christian tradition in parts of Western Europe and countries once colonised by the United Kingdom. It is the most diverse branch of Christianity. Protestants reject Catholic and Orthodox tradition, claiming to have restored the beliefs of the Church established by Jesus on the basis of the Bible alone. Most Protestants respect the first four ecumenical councils as having upheld biblical teaching, but reject the doctrine of later councils as unsupported by or contrary to Scripture. Within Protestantism, four major streams of tradition can be distinguished: Anglican, Lutheran, Reformed, and Anabaptist. Anglicanism was founded when the Catholic Church in England split from Rome, originally for political reasons related to King Henry VIII's concerns about succession, and later became influenced by Lutheran and Reformed ideas. It has historically been defined by a confession of faith known as the Thirty-Nine Articles, but nowadays the Church of England's own clergy are only expected to affirm that they appreciate or respect this historic creed. Lutheranism derives from the ideas of Martin Luther, who rejected the authority of the pope and councils after concluding they had rejected the teaching of the Bible and the Church Fathers about justification. The primary Lutheran creed is the Augsburg Confession. The Reformed tradition derives from the work of John Calvin, a French theologian who was active at roughly the same time as Luther. It has historically been defined by the Westminster Confession of Faith. Anabaptists—not to be confused with Baptists, who descend from the Anglican tradition—are named for their practice of delaying baptism until the person is old enough to understand the faith and choose it for themselves. They are represented today by the Amish, Mennonites, and Hutterites.

First off, Welcome! You are a special snowflake, and don't let anyone tell you different! Also, I love cream cheese brownies and wine. Something in common already :). Secondly, I'm a catechumen (officially in the process of joining the Church) so take anything I say with a grain of salt as I'm definitely still learning. Other more experience Ortho folks will chime in I'm sure.


Having already attended some services with the intention of continuing I'd say you've got the right idea. Others here, like myself, experienced Orthodoxy first in books. It can be easy to read and read while never going to see and experience for yourself. So, good on ya.


If you're interested in supplementing what you're learning in the services and conversations with the priest, there are lots of good books and web resources. A couple books I’d recommend would be “The Orthodox Way” by bishop Kallistos Ware and “The Orthodox Church” by the same author. The first book deals more with Orthodox spirituality and the second starts off with some history in the first half and teaching/doctrine in the second half. Search through this sub-forum and you’ll find a lot of great questions/answers and links to some great articles.


I’m also a big fan of this blog by Fr. Stephen Freeman.
Feel free to ask any questions you have, there are some really great people in the sub-reddit that will be glad to help you out.


ps...My wife's interest in Orthodoxy isn't at the same place as mine. In my opinion it's best not to rush them or try to crame Orthodoxy down their throats in our new found enthusiasm. Pray for them, be patient and trust God to work on her heart is His own timing :)

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0999499211/ref=sr_1_3_det?ie=UTF8&qid=1520134846&sr=8-3#productPromotions

Hardcover

Paperback

Very excited. I never got to read this and I need to make a decision soon

An excellent book that covers the progression of the LDS and its fundamental strain is Under the Banner of Heaven.

According to D. Michael Quinn in his book, Mormon Hierarchy: Wealth and Corporate Power, he estimates that that church members payed $33 billion (with a "B") in tithing donations in 2010.

I did some back of the envelope math a few weeks ago, based on estimated activity rates in the United States, family size, and median income, and came up with just over $3 billion in tithing donations. If the United States is home to 41% of the global Mormon population, and if D. Michael Quinn is right in his guess, then I seriously underestimated my assumptions at about $7 billion in donations.

What's interesting though, is that the church is more wealthy as a corporation than a religion. They have investments in agriculture, real estate, properties, farming, stocks, and much more. Some estimate that the church is worth more than $100 billion, and if so, tithing is making up anywhere from 20-35% of its total revenue.

But the church is bleeding members, and to lose 1/3 of your income would be a serious financial setback for the church. With that in mind, it perfectly clear why the church leadership is spending so much time focusing on "stay in the boat", and other related topics.

But I prophesy that in 100 years, the "Corporation of the Presiding Bishop of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints" won't be a religion any longer, at least not as we know it, but instead will be a literal non-profit, tax exempt, run of the mill charity. It'll be more akin to the Salvation Army than Protestantism.

Alas, I believe it has been pushed back to August. :(

I've met abusive families before, but this was different. This was two young girls, neither of whom would have weighed more than 110 pounds, independently telling me that they were afraid of what their father would do if they broke his rules. And I don't mean "My dad would get so mad if he knew I smoked," I mean "My dad would beat me with a belt if he knew I danced with boys." Serious shit.

I didn't have a problem with polygamy until I read Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer, which is about fundamentalist Mormon polygamist families. The girls in those households are quite literally brainwashed from birth into believing that they are worth less than men and that a man owns his wife. They frequently get coerced into marrying men in their 40's or 50's as soon as they hit puberty. Although they technically make their own free decision to marry, they are told that they'll be excommunicated from the only community they've ever known if they refuse to marry the man they've been chosen by. It's fucking sick.

Cults sometimes do illegal things, but not always. More frequently, they legally build towards an illegal goal. That's not why we oppose them though. Cults are extremely manipulative and often get people to completely drop out of life and devote themselves to a charismatic leader. I've studied them before, they're very very bad things.

Anti-bullying campaigns are usually pretty dumb, but they do serve a point. Young people are very sensitive to peer pressure. Western girls get pressured into eating disorders to conform to their society's ideals. In the same way, Muslim girls get pressured into hiding themselves from the world. Although Muslim girls frequently get quoted saying "I choose this for myself," you can't deny the fact that their brothers and fathers are leaning on them. As I mentioned with the story of the girls I went to school with, a lot of Muslim women live in fear of the men in their life.

This is not a simple matter of free expression. It's not like they're banning Uggs or Crocs simply because they're ugly. The veil is a tool used to oppress women. It stands as a barrier between the woman and the outside world. It reminds me of the line from Shawshank Redemption about prison.

(quoted from memory, not perfect)
"These walls are kind of funny. First you hate them, then you get used to them. After a while you can't imagine living without them"

I recommend you pick up the book [Recovering Agency] (https://www.amazon.com/Recovering-Agency-Lifting-Mormon-Control/dp/1489595937/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1484835604&sr=8-1&keywords=recovering+agency). It goes into depth on how the Mormon church controls its members, and the psychological, emotional, family and social struggles they can face in separating from it.

Thank you for being willing to support her.

Also consider the method by which the Book of Mormon was "translated".

It was done the same way Joseph would look for treasure. How successful was he at that? That method of treasure seeking also got him in trouble with the law.

Read Early Mormonism and the Magic World View.

An Insiders View of Mormon Origins written by a former employee of the Church Education System. It got me out.

EDIT: A little more detail. This guy graduated from the church-owned BYU with a Masters in History. Many of the things he's written in this book have been confirmed by the church itself in the recent "Gospel Topics" articles.

But, TBH, these kids won't be able to read anything you give them. As missionaries, you are limited to a small set of books, no newspapers, no movies, no music. If you want to really make them think, you could ask some questions about the Book of Mormon itself. 2 Nephi 5:21 states that dark skin is the result of a curse from God. 2 Nephi 2:22 states that there was no death or reproduction before the Fall of Adam, which Mormons believe happened about 6,000 years ago. The introduction of the Book teaches that Joseph used the Urim and Thummim to translate the book from the Gold Plates. In reality, he used a rock in a hat, an illegal practice used by con-artists known as scrying. Good luck!

For the past year I've had regular conversations with the missionaries who work in our area. In an effort to understand their beliefs I've gone through several books, among which is Grant Palmer's An Insider's View of Mormon Origins, which deals with issues like the authorship of the Book of Mormon, the golden plates, and other hot-button issues. Palmer, an active Mormon, ends this book with the conclusion that Joseph Smith probably never translated anything correctly; that the Book of Mormon is an amalgamation of the Bible, 19th-century doctrine, and his own fruitful imagination; and that some of the foundational events (such as the First Vision) were the result of elaborations over time. Yet Palmer does not reject Mormonism and instead calls for a renewed focus on Jesus Christ.

When it comes to the question of whether Mormons are Christians, I think we must tread cautiously for two reasons. First, Jesus said that it's not our place to decide whether someone else is saved; that authority belongs to Jesus alone. Second, Mormonism is a spectrum like any other system of thought. Someone like Grant Palmer could identify as Mormon while clearly demonstrating the fruit of the Spirit that always accompanies saving faith. In the same way, it's possible for someone to identify as Christian and yet clearly fail to keep in step with the Spirit.

I tend to think that if Paul were to write a letter to the Mormon church today, he would write something like his letter to the Galatians. The Galatians were given the plain and simple gospel, yet they were convinced by a rogue sect to add on all the burdens of following the ceremonial laws of the Old Testament. Did Paul consider the Galatians to no longer be Christians because of this? I don't see a clear indication of this. What is clear is that Paul insisted that the gospel remain absolutely pure, even if an angel brought a different gospel. This is a good lesson for the Mormon church as well as Christian denominations.

What keeps Mormonism going is not the evidence for their faith (since there is little if any at all), but their reliance on emotions (the "burning in the bosom") as a sort of spiritual divining rod for truth. Random chance will ensure that some small fraction of people will get a positive answer to their prayers, even if it's purely coincidental. The fact that emotions are so untrustworthy is precisely why Jonathan Edwards preached against the dependence on one's emotions as proof of conversion nearly a hundred years before the Mormon church was founded.

The aspect of Mormonism that most concerns me is not its unique beliefs, but its tendency to produce atheists. It seems to me that most Mormons who leave their faith because of the lack of evidence also assume that Christianity, on which Mormonism claims to be based, has just as little evidence in its favor. I firmly believe that Christianity is an evidence-based religion, and so I spend a lot of time talking with the missionaries about the reliability of the New Testament and the historicity of Jesus's resurrection. They may never leave Mormonism, but if they do, I want them to see that Christianity is a rational choice.

I think this was just published, hadn't seen it here yet. Many of you may have heard of Robert Ritner, a respected never-mo Egyptologist who has taken a special interest in refuting the bad scholarship coming from LDS hacks. He actually trained John Gee, who is one of the main LDS scholars that defends the BoA and was cited in the latest essay. Ritner takes personal disappointment that Gee has become a shill for the mormon party line, and I think that helps motivate him to stay engaged long past the point that he needs to.

Ritner published a book on the BoA that I recommend if you're interested in all the gritty details: http://www.amazon.com/The-Joseph-Smith-Egyptian-Papyri/dp/1560852321

The linked response essay contains the important points from the book, and is written as specific refutation to the church essay. It's succinct and devastating enough that it might be a good candidate for sharing with friends and family.

I'm even fascinated by Mormons in particular, but what you're describing is just way too much for me. Have you ever read Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven? It's about a murder that two Mormon brothers commit (thinking they received the order to do so from God) while also diving in to the history of Mormonism as a whole and how it might have influenced the two into doing what they did, and it's fantastic. It's structured like narrative non-fiction along the lines of Capote's In Cold Blood or Larsson's Devil in the White City.

The Book of Mormon at 531 pages.

An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon is also interesting, despite its flaws.

Rough Stone Rolling

I'm not sure if your friend already owns or has read this book, but it is a really interesting balanced view of Joseph Smith. It talks about some of the more difficult issues in early Mormonism, but explains them in a way that leaves room for belief.

"Rough Stone Rolling" by Richard Bushman

https://www.amazon.com/Joseph-Smith-Rough-Stone-Rolling/dp/1400077532

In Sacred Loneliness: the plural wives of Joseph Smith

Relevant to the latest essay.

That phrase from the temple ceremony was autobiographical. JS was not an original thinker as much as he was very well-read and very tuned in to the philosophies of men and the theological trends of the day. You could have taught your class using Grant Palmer's excellent book.
An Insider's View of Mormon Origins https://www.amazon.com/dp/1560851570/ref=cm_sw_r_sms_api_4r3sxbY6AYSPN

> Why are there no pictures of the tablets or other evidence? Cameras existed at the time the tablets were discovered.

Perhaps I can help a bit (but I'm not trying to take away from the OP; he can probably answer these as well; just noticed it had taken a while to get to this one and I was raised LDS, though I should announce here that I really do not have much trust in the Church's faith claims anymore; however, I'm trying to be factually accurate here and present factual answers; let me know if you have problems with it). Cameras (daguerreotypes) indeed had been invented around the early 1800s, but they certainly were not popular enough to warrant photographing a backwoods farm hand and his divine golden book. Instead, Joseph Smith got together some of his family and friends (and, in turn, their family members) (and one highly influential farmer who ended up losing his farm and his marriage over the whole deal) as witnesses to the plates. The two pre-prepared statements described how an angel showed three of them the plates and that later another eight were given the plates to handle by Smith. However, while everyone signed, a few were uncomfortable at signing something they had not themselves written. Many of these witnesses later left the LDS Church and a number of them either attempted to start their own churches or joined other split-off movements and became witnesses for scriptures and artifacts produced by other prophets. Almost none of them supported Brigham Young in any way as Joseph's Smith successor. However, none of them ever retracted the entirety of their statements in support of the Book of Mormon.

> Also why do Mormons believe that Native Americans are Jews who now have dark skin as a punishment? DNA testing has proven that Native Americans are not Jews but from Siberia.

Mormons believe that because that is what the Book of Mormon teaches, although nowadays it's quite popular to talk about a "nuanced" view of the cursing such that the dark skin is the sign of the cursing and that the actual curse is to be removed from being influenced by God's spirit. This particular nuanced view developed quite recently (probably within the past fifteen years or so). In the Book of Mormon, the first major author is Nephi, the youngest son of a family which lived in Jerusalem around the early 500s BCE. They are inspired by God to leave before the destruction in 587 BCE. His brothers, Laman and Lemuel, are described as wicked, though Nephi, who writes autobiographically for the first section of the book, is unable to ever explain exactly why his brothers are wicked or what their actual sins are apart from "rudeness" at one point and later trying to kill Nephi because they're tired of him, as the youngest brother, attempting to usurp leadership of the group. They cross the Arabian peninsula, Nephi is taught by God how to build a boat, and finally, completing years of travel, they arrive in the New World. Eventually the family splits into two groups of people, Nephites and Lamanites, and the Lamanites soon get cursed by God and receive a "skin of blackness". God explicitly tells Nephi that the purpose of the skin of blackness is so that the Nephites will not find the Lamanites "enticing", and God tell Nephi "I will cause that they shall be loathsome unto thy people, save they shall repent of their iniquities." (You can read all of this in 2 Nephi 5.) (EDIT: And, if you're interested, there's a fascinating book just published that attempts to study the Book of Mormon from a literary perspective instead of a historical or theological one that goes into far more analysis of the Nephi character, both as narrator and as dramatis personæ. It doesn't always succeed in avoiding historicity, but it's a fun read nonetheless. And I say that as a disaffected Mormon.)

As for the DNA testing, apologists have tried to show for nearly the past three decades that the text of the Book of Mormon implies the presence of other peoples in the Americas besides the described tribes of the Book of Mormon (Nephites, Lamanites, Mulekties, and Jaredites). Technically, though, this view requires a very careful reading of a text which is never really that clear about describing other peoples already in the Americas. A few years ago the LDS Church changed the wording in the book's introduction from saying that the Book of Mormon was an account of the "principal ancestors" of the Native Americans to saying that it was an account of people who are "among the ancestors" of the Native Americans. It's usually pointed out that the introduction is not part of the revealed text and can thus receive occasional improvements and fixes, and it is also usually argued that the text, which chronologically ends in the early 5th Century CE, doesn't make any explicit claims as to the ancestors of modern Native Americans (though I find this personally untrue; the Book of Mormon seems, to me, to give a strong indication that Native Americans are Lamanites). Even so, many Mormons still hold to this view of Native Americans being principally Lamanite in origin, which even extends to the idea such ancestry among Polynesians. And while many LDS apologists also love pointing out the difficulties of dealing with American populations before the cataclysmic arrival of Europeans, nowadays you'll find that most educated Mormons in genetics and anthropology accept the DNA findings as accurate and either simply assume that the Book of Mormon peoples comprised very small populations that were absorbed completely by the larger surrounding populations or explore other options for appreciating the Book of Mormon beyond a historical approach.

> Is this why Mormons actively tired to keep Blacks out of any high position in the church until the 1960s?

Actually, no, that's a different skin-blackening and/or cursing. Mormons view the mark given to Cain in Genesis 4:15 as black skin (though, again, you'll find modern Mormons differing from the majority of historical Mormons in emphasizing that the mark is described as being given to prevent Cain from being killed and is thus a positive thing). This mark was preserved through the flood by Ham, one of Noah's sons, and by Ham's son Canaan who is himself cursed by Noah in Genesis 9:20-27. This belief wasn't solely a Mormon belief, but was quite common among 19th Century Christian churches. However, Mormon scriptures add to this doctrine extensively from a different record, the Book of Abraham, which is supposed to have been written by Abraham himself. Abraham describes how the Egyptians are descendants of Ham and that through this lineage "the curse" was preserved through the flood (Abraham 1:21-24). He also describes how Pharaoh (which is an anachronistic term to be used in Abraham's time of around 1800 BCE), while being a pretty cool guy, is cursed as to having the Priesthood (the authority of God, in Mormon-speak) (Abraham 1:26-27). So, from these scriptures most Mormons of the 19th and 20th Centuries assumed that black people could not be ordained to the Priesthood. Prophets such as Brigham Young spoke about this and proclaimed that black people would never receive the Priesthood until Jesus Christ returned at the end of this world. The Church felt that, since this cursing from the Priesthood was governed by lineage, nobody with any amount of black heritage was allowed to be ordained to the Priesthood, which automatically invalidated them from holding any leadership position in the Church from the local levels up. Even when historians in the 20th Century rediscovered that Joseph Smith apparently had no problems ordaining black men to the priesthood, the LDS Church continued to point back to Abraham as the source of its doctrine. Then in 1978, after years of public outcry and on the verge of a new Temple about to be opened in Brazil with little to no Mormons able to attend (people with black ancestry of both genders, as well as white women who married black husbands, could not attend the Temple for ordinances that Mormons consider essential to achieving their fullest potential in the worlds to come), the Church announced in June that ordination to the Priesthood was now available to all worthy males (the Temple restrictions also went away, but without any fanfare). In later retrospection, most of the authorities involved in the decision describe the "good feelings" they had in considering removing the ban, but the change did not involve anything stronger for revelation (no visions, no angels, no audible voices from heaven). Most Mormons view the announcement as proof of continuing revelation, and the letter written to announce the change was eventually placed into Mormon scriptures, though there is no actual "Thus saith the Lord" revelation for the change.

Hope this helps. I tend to write long because context can be very useful in answering these sorts of questions.

I want to second /u/amertune's motion for the LDS Institute manuals and /u/lispbliss's suggestion of Grant Hardy's Understanding the Book of Mormon.

To those I would add both of the Mormon-related contributions to Oxford's A Very Short Introduction Series. There is one about The Book of Mormon and another about Mormonism generally.

Not about serial killers, but I would say they were somewhat psychopathic..
Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer.

I highly recommend Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer. He wrote The Perfect Storm, Into to Thin Air, among others. It's not complimentary of Morman ideology or their political influence over Utah. Despite that, I admire a lot about their culture.

This Book has an excellent read on the whole thing. The Mormons were basically a barbarian horde as they crossed the country.

To further read on the awful foundations of the Mormons, the Mountain Meadows Massacre will make your blood boil.

This one is legit.

http://www.amazon.com/Brigham-Young-John-G-Turner/dp/0674049675

Thanks for mentioning us pre-internet pioneers of exmo-ness.

I left in late 1995. Made the mistake of reading Richard S. Van Wagoner's "Mormon Polygamy: A History"

I felt so guilty for reading that book. But, I just couldn't put it down. It was the first time I felt like someone was giving me a real picture of Joseph Smith the man, not the myth. Decided I needed to balance out what I was getting in Van Wagoner's book with something more "church approved." Went to Deseret Book. Asked the girl working if they had anything on polygamy. She said she thought they had one book- they did. It was the book I was already reading.

That was the moment I took the red pill. There was no turning back and the floodgates were opened. I then read:

• No Man Knows My History
  
• Quest For The Gold Plates
  
• By His Own Hand Upon Papyrus
  
• Salamander: The Story of the Mormon Forgery Murders
  
• Secret Ceremonies
  
• Where Does It Say That?
  
  And then I started checking out copies of Sunstone and Dialogue.
  
  I started checking out some of the articles at Utah Lighthouse Ministries and made one trip to their book store, but I was already becoming an atheist and I didn't really like how they weren't just trying to debunk Mormonism but also trying to sell born again xianity.
  
  By November of 1996 I was already attending a Unitarian Universalist congregation and also pretty much an athiest at that point.
  
  When stuff like MormonThink came along, I was already pretty much post-Mormon. And, when I discovered r/exmormon, I was suddenly surprised at how much I liked watching what was happening here.
  
  I'm always surprised at the announcements people make about being done with this place. But, then I found it when I was already over all the emotional rage at having been deceived. I think I just like watching the train wreck at this point. People's posts here really give me the sense that Mormonism is imploding at a rate faster than this stodgy institution is prepared to deal with- makes me happy.

Since you're posting here, I'll assume you have an interest in Orthodoxy and how it sees itself in relation to other forms of Christianity. This is a great, accessible resource for that, going over the basics of theology, doctrine and history.

One thing to keep in mind is theology is not scholastic in Orthodoxy, but relates 100% to how close one is to God and one's mastery of prayer. You won't 'get' Orthodoxy from books, but from experiencing the Liturgy with a real, live community.

But I'm the last person to steer one away from books, so here's a couple that give great overviews of Christianity in the east:

http://www.amazon.com/Mystical-Theology-Eastern-Church/dp/0913836311

http://www.amazon.com/Greek-East-Latin-West/dp/9607120043

These are the two books I used as my intro to Orthodoxy (aside from the posts from the folks here)

http://www.amazon.com/Orthodox-Church-New-Timothy-Ware/dp/0140146563/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1310527893&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Orthodox-Way-Kallistos-Ware/dp/0913836583/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1310527939&sr=1-1

I also like this priest's blog:

http://fatherstephen.wordpress.com/

Don't leave us!!!!!!

The Roman Catholic Catechism is a great tool to understand Catholic beliefs.

Return to Rome is a book about someone who came from being a Protestant to being a Catholic.

The Orthodox Way is a good intro to Orthodox understanding.

Becoming Orthodox is a book about a ton of Protestants converting to Orthodoxy.

Hi there. I was born & raised JW. 37 years. At 19 whilst i was disfellowshipped i married an unbeliever. Then l was reinstated 11 months later. My husband never became a believer but supported me & our 2 kids in it. We rarely were invited to gatherings & no Brothers ever reached out to my husband like is encouraged in the publications. We always felt like outsiders. I voiced to my mother over & over that something was wrong i just couldn’t put my finger on it. And then it happened. I found out why.
Here is my letter i wrote my JW Family & friends.
https://www.bcbpa.com/anonymous-canada

Your gonna wanna watch this court footage. It happened in the summer of 2015

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCZ6rs9OvQLaoydMR6GjsqQ

Here is the link to the only ever Governing Body member to wake up and leave
https://www.amazon.ca/Crisis-Conscience-struggle-between-religion/dp/0999499211/ref=asc_df_0999499211/?tag=googlemobshop-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=293003641842&hvpos=1o1&hvnetw=g&hvrand=218145622079509894&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9001283&hvtargid=pla-434348371353&psc=1


Here is his interview

https://youtu.be/iK3F9hBcy2M

Here is the actual JW history

https://youtu.be/VE3zp9FiyiQ

5th edition came out this year.

https://www.amazon.com/Crisis-Conscience-struggle-between-religion/dp/0999499211

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0999499211/ref=sr_1_3_det?ie=UTF8&qid=1520134846&sr=8-3#productPromotions

Reading Ray Franz's book opened my eyes and I'll be forever grateful to that dear man. Here it is, it was just re-released this week! It's quickly sold out but will be in stock very soon.

Reading your post made my heart glad, and you can take a deep breath, you will be fine. The fact that you're here now shows you've already taken the first big step in getting your freedom.

I was in your shoes 2 years ago and i still can remember the incredible relief that I felt when I realized Armageddon is made up, they just use it to control the rank and file, identical to the Catholics and their fearmongering about Hell.

Reasearch! Research! Research, the King and his Kingdom!

In research you will find your freedom. It's better to be slapped with the truth than kissed with a lie.

Most of my knowledge of Mormons comes from Under The Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer which is a fascinating book, but yeah there is apparently some inherent racism in their (original) beliefs. Not that all modern Mormons are racists of course, but they've def. had some fucked up ideas about black people in the past...

https://www.amazon.com/Joseph-Smiths-Polygamy-1-History/dp/1589586859/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1518919832&sr=8-3&keywords=joseph+smith%27s+polygamy

https://www.amazon.com/Sacred-Loneliness-Plural-Wives-Joseph-ebook/dp/B019RD9ZX8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1518919866&sr=8-1&keywords=in+sacred+loneliness

https://www.amazon.com/Mormon-Enigma-Emma-Hale-Smith/dp/0252062914/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1518919952&sr=8-4&keywords=in+sacred+loneliness

http://www.mormonthink.com/joseph-smith-polygamy.htm#links

Plugging a book by one of my favorite authors: Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven.

Provides an in-depth look at Mormonism and relates that to religious zealotry in general. IMHO it is up the with Christopher Hitchens for the Atheist reading list.

President Romney will make it legal. Read Under the Banner of Heaven by John Krakauer.

It seriously is. It's unique in a way that no other denomination is like, and is such a distinct historical occurrence in that the circumstances which surrounded it created a completely distinct culture in the matter of only decades.

Edit: For anyone interested in a good historical book on the early LDS movement that I've been reading (a secular outlook that gives both the main LDS narrative and secular criticism/realism): Pioneer Prophet by John G Turner

Lots of people here are or have been in the same boat. You are not alone.

Focus on your relationship with your wife and kids. Most people recommend going very slowly with spouses. You will have to bring up your issues some day. If nothing else your wife may notice your change in attitude. The critical thing at that point (or before that point) is to make sure your wife knows that you love her. You are questioning the church, not your marriage. Many TBMs have trouble making that distinction.

The second most important thing is that when you do start talking to your wife about church issues is to make sure she does not run to her family for advice. That is one reason to start slowly at the very edges. Ask that she keep your confidence. Cultivate the idea that this is something that the two of you have to work out together, and that family interference will only make it worse. It is the two of you against the world.

A family member or close friend leaving the church might be an opportunity to talk about why they left. I know you said that your families are uber TBM, but don't be surprised if someone does come out as ex.

One thing you might do is get a copy of No Man Knows My History by Fawn Brodie. It is an old book. Get it in paperback and let your wife see you reading it. Encourage her to read it with you.

I think the book used to be sold at Deseret Books, but I don't see it on their website. It might still be available in a brick and mortar store. Here is the Amazon link if you can't find it an official church site.

The video says that you wouldn't be able to do research.

That's BS. I didn't watch past that. If they are going to make stipulations like that, assuming Joseph didn't have access to some sort of research, or a pre-written book even, than I could care less what other shit they dribble on about.

If you have time to read a book, No Man Knows My History by Fawn Brodie covers a lot on the authorship of the BOM. Truthfully though it wouldn't matter what books or websites you gave your brother, as a true believer he has to deny all evidence contrary to his beliefs.

*Grammar

No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith Paperback – August 1, 1995

https://www.amazon.com/No-Man-Knows-My-History/dp/0679730540

I was coming to say this exact thing! I'm about 1/3 into it and it's SO fascinating. I live in SLC, so I went to his author event when the book came out at Wellers Book Works. He had a lot of pictures and things on display, gave a great talk, and there was some really great Q&A and discussion. It's by David Conley Nelson.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0806146680/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1467557842&sr=1-1&pi=SY200_QL40&keywords=moroni+and+the+swastika&dpPl=1&dpID=51LtvDcQJnL&ref=plSrch

Most members/exmos don't know about it, because the church doesn't talk about it.

I would be happy to! Christ the Conqueror of Hell does a fantastic job of explaining the Orthodox view on Hell. This book does a fantastic job of introducing Orthodoxy to Protestant and Catholic Christians. In fact, it was written by a Protestant. Because of that, he does a great job of explaining some unfamiliar terms or practices to his audience since he is coming from the same place. It's essentially a very well educated Western Christian explaining the Eastern Church to other Western Christians.

I can't recommend this book enough. It's an anonymous story describing the journey of a Russian Christian and his journey through the faith. It's really uplifting and surprisingly entertaining for a book written in 18th century Russia.

Finally, if you're looking for something deep, I would recommend this one. Vladimir Lossky was a brilliant Orthodox theologian who focused on the "mystical" side of Christianity vs. the more "scholastic" approach of the West. Really, anything by him is worth your time.

Let me know if these are what you're working for. If not, I may have a few more books I can recommend. I personally think these are a great place to start.

Outsider recommended The Orthodox Church which covers the history and beliefs of Orthodoxy. (Well, when I say it like that, it sounds pretty boring - it's not.)

Along with that, I'd recommend The Orthodox Way by the same author. it's meant to give a view into how Orthodox Christians do "spirituality."

The standard historical introduction is The Orthodox Church by Metropolitan Kallistos (Ware).

A good theological/spirituality introduction is The Orthodox Way, also by Met. Kallistos.

Well, there's this banned Mormon cartoon that was for kids explaining Mormonism. You'd have to be batshit to think any of it was "logical."

And then more seriously if you're looking to see the history of Mormonism, it's beliefs, history, etc., I can't suggest Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith by Jon Krakauer enough. Although it does focus more on the FLDS, it's extremely fascinating and really dives into the religion.

Both religions are pretty crazy, but Mormonism is just considered slightly more for its very shady origins.

>Last thing you need to know, the in-laws are VERY LDS (Mormons) and we are very not.

Ah. There it is. Fucking mormons with their ridiculous ideas about booze. One beer = falling down gutter drunk who has thrown their entire life away. It's insane.

I'm an exmo and I am so sorry about these people. They believe they are God's chosen people and truly, that they are better than you and everyone else. So therefore, they think they deserve to steal your child from you because a lifetime of religious cult brainwashing is better than if mom has one beer after the kid goes to bed at night. /s

Get a really good lawyer to defend yourselves, obvs. I'm sure that working with CPS and the Guardian ad litem is helping your case as they see y'all are working hard and are good parents.

Document the damages. The court costs, lawyer's fees, therapy, security measures taken around your home, any above-and-beyond hard expenses that you've incurred as a result of defending your family from religious cultists. Hell, I'd get a lawyer on board with Steve Hassan's work on exiting cults and start painting your in laws as Jim Jones type brainwashed cultists. Make THEM look like the unfit parents because they are.

Then find a personal injury attorney--they don't get paid unless you do, so initial consultations are free. If they think they can win your case, and you've collected sufficient evidence that their campaign to steal your children has traumatized you and your child(ren), they will take your case and go after them for every dime they can squeeze out.

There are two other books that can help you build a case that mormonism is actually a dangerous cult and your children are far safer with their own loving parents than these unhinged religious nutcases. (I know, I know, but mormons are soooo dang nice. I lived that shit and mormons are NOT nice behind closed doors. They are nice in public so people don't realize how terrible their cult actually is.)

One book, "Recovering Agency" is one of the best about exiting mormonism. The other one, is a story about a horrible murder, but the early chapters really lay out how mormons are mind controlled and where all their wonky doctrine comes from. Those books, plus Steve Hassan's BITE model regarding how to define a cult, could be super useful in laying a case that these mormon grandparents may very well be dangerous AF. You might also read Elizabeth Smart's book about her kidnapping because the people who kidnapped her were trying to start an offshoot cult of their own -- the kidnapper/rapist was an excommunicated mormon who thought the mormon church was too modern and liberal.

I strongly suggest doing some reading and making your attorney aware of relevant portions that might help you fight back ONCE the custody bullshit is resolved. Until then, document, document, document, and let your attorney do all the talking.

Start here.

I recommend that you read this article and that you read this book.

An excerpt from the article:
>Sometime after Henry and Zina were married, Joseph told Dimick Huntington, Zina’s brother, the story of why he was compelled to introduce plural marriage, and asked that Dimick tell the story to Zina. As Zina is quoted by one author to have said, “Tell Zina I have put it off and put it off until an angel with a drawn sword has stood before me and told me if I did not establish that principle [plurality of wives] and live it, I would lose my position and my life and the Church could progress no further.”

I would also add that Celestial law supersedes the Levitical law.

I suggest reading those things and go to the Lord about it to give you peace.

I too had questions about this and have been patient in receiving understanding. [D&C 50:40] -
>"Behold, ye are little children and ye cannot bear all things now; ye must grow in grace and in the knowledge of the truth."

Ummm I'd suggest just reading the actual book

That's how you're going to get the best answer. I read it and it was a huge factor in breaking my shelf because I think it's obvious he knew the BOM was bullshit (or at least that it wasn't literally/historically true).

You must be new here. There's no need for people critical of polygamy to exaggerate how shady it was. The truth, as told even by LDS scholars, it quite damning. If you read enough of it, you may leave the church or you may stay, but I guarantee your current view of your religion will not remain intact.

http://josephsmithspolygamy.org/

https://www.amazon.com/Sacred-Loneliness-Plural-Wives-Joseph/dp/156085085X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1475096207&sr=1-1&keywords=in+sacred+loneliness

A thorough description of Josephs lies and deceit surrounding polygamy. ISL

https://www.amazon.com/Sacred-Loneliness-Plural-Wives-Joseph/dp/156085085X

Check out the book Early Mormonism and the Magic World View if this sparks your interest.

The Mormon church is rich as FUCK.

And they are one of the few established religions that take $$-making so seriously as to schedule annual settlements with their members.

I like the pre-prohibition Mormonism that dealt in the occult like Jupiter Talismans, seeing stones, completely mis translated papyrii (the PoGP sure is a fun read), and other cool out-there shit.

Post capitulation (ditching polygamy for statehood, changing/enforcing the WoW during prohibition, Elohim deciding black people were cool as of '78) Mormonism is boring AF.

This is the good stuff:
https://www.amazon.com/Early-Mormonism-Magic-World-View/dp/1560850892

Actually....

Magical beliefs were prevalent in the US during this time. Smith was not the first. There is an amazing book by Michael Quinn called Early Mormonism and the Magical World View.

https://www.amazon.com/Insiders-View-Mormon-Origins/dp/1560851570

https://www.amazon.com/Crisis-Conscience-struggle-between-religion-ebook/dp/B07B7C21M3

Otherwise you may be able to find a PDF somewhere

Sure is - Amazon link here (I'm presuming you're in the US) - it was written by a former member of the JWs' governing body.

$35.43 when you preorder on Amazon

https://www.amazon.com/Mormon-Hierarchy-Wealth-Corporate-Power/dp/1560852356/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

So tempting.

Biography of Raymond Franz


Excerpts


>In 1944 Franz graduated from Gilead, the group's school for training missionaries, and temporarily served the organization as a traveling representative in the continental United States until receiving a missionary assignment to Puerto Rico in 1946. Franz became a representative of Jehovah's Witnesses throughout the Caribbean, traveling to the Virgin Islands and the Dominican Republic, until at least 1957 when Jehovah's Witnesses were banned in the Dominican Republic by dictator Rafael Trujillo. At the age of 37, Franz married his wife, Cynthia, who joined him on missionary work. Both returned to the Dominican Republic in 1961 to evangelize for four more years and were then assigned to Watch Tower headquarters in Brooklyn, New York.

Source:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Franz

In his book, Crisis of Conscience, Franz talks about his days in the Dominican R, page 19 (Spanish edition):

> During a period of almost 5 years that we stayed in the country, we saw the fall of four different governments and in April 1965 we experimented a war in the surroundings of the capital (Santo Domingo) Translated by me.

Source:

https://www.amazon.com.mx/Crisis-Conscience-struggle-between-religion-ebook/dp/B07B7C21M3/ref=sr_1_1?__mk_es_MX=%C3%85M%C3%85%C5%BD%C3%95%C3%91&crid=CHM8SVLF16CH&keywords=crisis+of+conscience&qid=1550170558&s=gateway&sprefix=Crisis+of+C%2Caps%2C338&sr=8-1


Source of the Photo and Web Page ...Tribute to...

In Tribute to Cynthia and Raymond Franz


https://www.commentarypress.com/








We want to ask the members of the Governing Body of the Jehovah's Witnesses:


> Why did you erase the work of Raymond Franz in his missionary work in the 2015 Yearbook?

> Why are you coping with Stalin's, Chairman Mao Ze Dong's ways to erase friends, comrades of struggle?


Source:

Stalin manipulated the science of photography to further his own political career and to erase the memory of his victims. In each case, the juxtaposition of original and doctored images reveals how easily history can be distorted.

https://www.history101.com/photo-altering-soviet-union/


More people erased by dictators:

https://www.businessinsider.com/people-who-were-erased-from-history-2013-12#leon-trotsky-russian-revolutionary-3

Manipulators of China's history:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/08/chinas-memory-manipulators



The Borg Manipulation to erase Franz work

In 1954, Trujillo traveled to Rome and signed a concordat with the Pope. Trujillo’s one-time confidant, Germán Ornes, wrote: “Since the Dominican Church is overwhelmingly pro-Trujillo, [it] has been a great source of support for ‘the Chief’ [Trujillo].

https://www.jw.org/en/publications/books/2015-yearbook/history/catholic-church-trujillo/

Jehovah’s loyal servants had to be courageous in the face of such violent opposition—and courageous they were! Even government officials recognized this. For example, on July 31, 1957, Luis Arzeno Colón, an inspector for the president, wrote to the secretary of state, lamenting: “Although the law recently proclaimed by the National Congress declares illegal the religious activity of the sect known as Jehovah’s Witnesses, the majority of its members continue in their steadfastness.”

https://www.jw.Borg/en/publications/books/2015-yearbook/history/vicious-attack/

Shortly thereafter, Secretary of Security Arturo Espaillat ordered the ten remaining missionaries to leave the country. On July 21, 1957, Roy Brandt wrote to Trujillo, requesting to meet with him to explain our situation.

https://www.jw.org/en/publications/books/2015-yearbook/history/head-witness/


Sorry GB, you can Stalinize the Memory of Cynthia and Raymond Franz, but they will always live in the hearts and minds of people in FREEDOM

Not mormon specific, but there's a great one called Talk Origins (play store link, couldn't find it in iStore) that goes through a lot of creationist claims in a FAQ way.

I've also got the kindle app for whenever I'm bored - you can email yourself documents and it'll sync across multiple devices. Quite easy to load up a bunch of eBooks ahead of time to have a read through. Mormon wise, Under the Banner of Heaven is excellent, as is It's Not About the Sex, My Ass.

Not to be critical, but I was raised in a religious household, and I started to question the doctrines of the church and the bible when I was a teenager. What was it that allowed you to believe so strongly and so blindly for so long? Was it your choice, or do you feel like you were manipulated into a sort of blind faith even into adulthood?

Also, are you all familiar with ["Under the Banner of Heaven"] (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000FC1R2S?btkr=1)? Krakauer is a great author who really tried to give the history of the Church an even handed analysis, and as an outsider, I think he succeeded greatly. I don't think it was well received by LDS though.

Available now

[Crisis of Conscience: The story of the struggle between loyalty to God and loyalty to one's religion. - Kindle edition by Raymond Franz, Deborah Dykstra, David ...]
(https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07B7C21M3/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1520187343&sr=1-4-fkmr0&keywords=crisis+of+conscience+raymond+franz+2018)

No idea, but some links for context:

February: http://signaturebooks.com/wealth-and-corporate-power/

June: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1560852356/

Amazon gives the date of February 15, 2017. https://www.amazon.com/Mormon-Hierarchy-Wealth-Corporate-Power/dp/1560852356/

I'm not sure how reliable that is

I actually happened to be in a position to visit the Kirtland Temple today (great tour by CoC volunteer -- not preachy or any awkward HeartSell attempts or commitment patterning.) There is a book/gift shop in the visitors center that I took a few minutes to browse around.

This book was for sale: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1560852321?ref=olp_product_details

I confirmed with a volunteer that CoC doesn't accept the Book of Abraham and was told that most visitors are LDS so they stock applicable books... but I'm guessing that book wouldn't be too popular with the typical Deseret Book customer. (They also had Early Mormonism and the Magic World View.)

I hear Mormon Enigma is pretty good.

They don't even know Joseph Smith.

Get started here. http://mormonthink.com/ Then check out this book. http://www.amazon.com/No-Man-Knows-My-History/dp/0679730540 Next I'd move onto http://www.amazon.com/History-God-000-Year-Judaism-Christianity/dp/0345384563

and This is a big help for developing some critical thinking skills: http://www.amazon.com/Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle-Dark/dp/0345409469

The Mormon church fit in relatively well with Nazi Germany; it is yet another sad chapter in the history of the church.

https://www.amazon.com/Moroni-Swastika-Mormons-Nazi-Germany/dp/0806146680/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1474484978&sr=1-1

Also, these two books by Timothy (Kallistos) Ware https://www.amazon.com/Orthodox-Way-Kallistos-Ware/dp/0913836583 and https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/014198063X/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1480292564&sr=8-1&pi=SY200_QL40&keywords=the+orthodox+church&dpPl=1&dpID=51exHD4f7sL&ref=plSrch are relatively easy to read and give a good summary of church doctrine and history.

It's an excellent choice. Like others have said, reading more than one book with different viewpoints on Christian fundamentals is a good idea, which is why I love threads like this, so thanks for posting.

Here are some suggestions from my own explorations in the last few years.

---

Mere Christianity

What Christians Believe by the venerable Bishop Ken Myers (im_just_throwing_this_out_there)

Essential Truths of the Christian Faith by R.C. Sproul, for more of a basic Reformed theology perspective

Dogmatics in Outline by Karl Barth, for a Reformed-ish (emphasis on the "ish") perspective sometimes called "neo orthodoxy". It's a summary of a much (much) larger work, and it's probably the toughest read out of the other books I'm recommending, because it encapsulates quite a bit of his very complex thought in a pretty short space.

The Orthodox Way by Bishop Kallistos Ware for an eye-opening perspective and well-written about a tradition I knew nothing about from my American, Baptist/evangelical upbringing.

The Catholic Religion by Vernon Staley, which is actually about the Anglican church. This was recommended to me by an Anglican redditor.

Someone already recommended Simply Christian by N.T. Wright. I'm about halfway through this right now. Being a regular on this sub, where his theology is pretty popular, I wouldn't say it's mind-blowing to me, but your mileage may vary. It's certainly a good read so far; his writing style is clear and easy to read (I think even easier than Lewis), and it seems like a good jumping off point for further exploration (he has other books I want to read, and I figured I'd start with his introductory book first).

Modern:

• Kallistos Ware - The Orthodox Way, How Should We Study Theology
  
  
• Irenei Steenburg - Beginnings of a Life of Prayer
  
  
• Michael Pomazansky - Orthodox Dogmatic Theology
  
  
• Thomas Hopko - Speaking the Truth in Love
  
  
• Dumitru Stăniloae - Orthodox Spirituality,The Meaning of Life and Existence
  
  
• Justin Popovic - Commentary on the Epistles of St. John the Theologian
  
  For the books above, you will see that they all have 4.5 to 5 stars on Amazon. Of all of the above, I most highly recommend the first part of Beginnings of a Life of Prayer - "Taking Stock of Our Struggle". It is life-changing.
  
  From Antiquity:
  
  
• John Cassian (360-435) - Conferences
  
  
• John of Damascus (676-749) - Complete Exposition of the Orthodox Faith - still used as a textbook in many Orthodox seminaries. It uses the term "Orthodox" as "orthodox", not the modern Eastern Orthodox Church. It was written before the widespread splintering of Christianity.
  
  Of the above, I especially recommend Chapter XII from Conference III, "The answer on the economy of Divine Grace, with free will still remaining in us".
  

Amazon

• Deeper/Further/(Eventually)Higher - If I can't be out riding, might as well watch people riding things I never could.
  
• Anything by Jon Krakauer. Into the Wild is an obvious choice, but Eiger Dreams and Under the Banner of Heaven are great as well.
  
• Ride the Divide is a good flick as well, and available on Netflix last I checked.
  
• 3point5. Pro-deal pricing can be addicting.Plus being in the top 5% for snowboarding, camping, and running have to count for something, right?!

Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith by Jon Krakauer.

This book is worth reading; it gives a pretty solid history and context for Mormonism.

Read Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer (author of "Into Thin Air")

The show will basically tell you everything you need to know, but in a nutshell: gold plates, Utah, Joseph Smith, mission, magic underwear. On a serious note, if you'd like to read up on the history of Mormonism in America, I'd recommend borrowing [Under the Banner of Heaven] (https://www.amazon.com/dp/1400032806/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_gzNczbGTWMEVV) by Jon Krakauer from the library. He's one of my favorite non-fiction writers and even if you don't read the entire book (which deals mostly with Mormon fundamentalists, i.e. polygamists), there are several early chapters that will tell you more than you need to know about how Mormonism developed as a religion and what Mormons believe.

My mom has a lot of good things to say about Under the Banner of Heaven. It's about the fundamental polygamist communities in Utah and Arizona.

Not sure if this fits under your definition of "world religions" but Mormonism is currently undergoing an interesting, scholarly reassessment of its history. Mormons have a pretty unique and (if I may say so myself) fascinating cosmology that you may enjoy learning about. If you're interested I would start by reading Bushman's Rough Stone Rolling.

http://www.amazon.com/Joseph-Smith-Rough-Stone-Rolling/dp/1400077532 - Rough Stone Rolling - The best biography of JS that I've ever read.
http://mormonthink.com/ - Probably the best researched and least partisan resource.
http://20truths.info/ - 20 Truths about Mormonism

P.s. have you heard of this book? It's been very helpful as I deprogram. Understanding the cognitive biases that make us susceptible to manipulation not only helps me to process what I've been through, but will hopefully guard against future manipulation. Highly recommend it.
Recovering Agency: Lifting the Veil of Mormon Mind Control https://www.amazon.com/dp/1489595937/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_jY00DbE2X2MNF

Here is is a classic:
https://www.amazon.com/Studies-Book-Mormon-B-Roberts/dp/1560850272

This video is excellent:
https://youtu.be/GAGasQ7j_ZI

You can buy his history here:

http://www.amazon.com/History-Church-Volume-Joseph-Smith/dp/B002Q7IP48

His article mentioned is in this book (I think): http://www.amazon.com/Studies-Book-Mormon-Brigham-Madsen/dp/1560850272

But the mention that the Book of Mormon being written by Smith is best quoted here:

http://www.mormonthink.com/josephweb.htm#bh

You can go to the Marriott library Special Collections dept on the 4th floor...just ask them about the BH Roberts stuff, they will be glad to bring you tons of stuff...that I am sure that the church doesn't like people to know about. You can also buy his writings now. The book is called Studies of the Book of Mormon...here is the amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1560850272/qid=1091914132/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/104-3960798-7723963?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith https://www.amazon.com/dp/156085085X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_8C5LybY8TYZ4Q

The author was LDS when he wrote it.

So maybe a copy of Uncle Tom's Cabin, then . . .

Only you will know the best approach. The church has tons of weak spots. It's just that people place value on different things.

To discredit the Book of Mormon itself as a historical document, start with a couple of simple websites. I really find the Wikipedia page on BOM anachronisms to be a great starting point. It's an avalanche of evidence in short form. If this is her "one thing" have her go down the list and discuss each item on the page. How does she explain the elephants? The metal currency? The animals that shouldn't be there and the animals that should have been in a book set in the ancient US? If the Book of Mormon can be shown to be a work of fiction, the rest unravels.

To discredit Joseph Smith as a person who produced divine scripture, read By His Own Hand Upon Papyrus. It's not too long, and because we actually have the original text used to produce the Book of Abraham, it's very easy to prove that what Smith produced was a bunch of made up bullshit.

To draw attention to the fact that Joseph Smith was a serial rapist who abused his spiritual authority to have sex with women who trusted him, all the while going behind his wife's back, send her to Wives of Joseph Smith. In Sacred Loneliness is excellent and extremely thorough, but the book is also the size of a cinder block and can be off-putting to someone only willing to read one thing.

To point out historical spin on polygamy, you could discuss the following:

• Remember that awesome story about how Smith ordered Heber C. Kimball to give his wife Vilate over to him as a plural wife, and Kimball handed her over like chattel? The church teaches this as some kind of great show of faith, completely glossing over the fact that Vilate was not property to be given away and that just a few months later Smith was fucking their 14 year old daughter instead.
  
• Remember that tragic story of martyrdom where Joseph Smith was dragged out of his house to be tarred, feathered, and nearly castrated, and then one of his adopted twins died? Gee, why would they want to castrate him? Could it be because he was having sex with women he wasn't married to, putting them at risk for rejection by society? One of the mob members that night was a brother of a girl Smith had recently propositioned, so his actions were what caused the death of the baby. Chew on that for a while.
  
• Remember why Joseph Smith was in jail for that last time? Yes, it was for violating the First Amendment. He ordered the destruction of a printing press because it created the papers that revealed all of the fucking around he had been doing. The publisher of that paper was William Law, his counselor in the presidency, who had spent years defending Smith against charges of polygamy and only learned the truth when his own wife was propositioned. William Law was doing nothing but telling the truth about Smith's behavior, and Smith's own lawless actions in trying to cover up polygamy are what brought him to his death.
  
  The polygamy issue is a rabbit hole of ugliness that nobody can unsee. It's possible your wife is genuinely unbothered by it and wouldn't care how many women and girls Smith raped, but I want to believe if she has any conscience at all that her stomach will turn once she sees what is behind the curtain.

Bret Metcalfe’s Book demonstrates how the first books of the BoM were produced at the end of the “translation “ process after the rest of the book had been written because of the loss of the 166 pages Joseph continued on and did not backtrack to first produce Nephi until the end of the process. He shows how the specific details about Christ were written after the later portion of the story had been produced and how vague Joseph is in the first few books with names and places and the story as he perhaps could not remember the names or details written in the 116 pages of the book of Lehi.

Dan Vogel’s you tube accounts demonstrate how the BoM directly deals with issues in Joseph’s home and family issues in an attempt to bring family together on theological issues and draws on the popular issues of the day such as the presumed advanced lighter skinned peoples who were responsible for the mounds and advanced civilizations they observed.

Michael Quinn’s Early Mormonism and Magic World View truly provides the context for Joseph’s treasure digging and how the BOM fits into the magic world perspective even to the day Joseph looked for the plates to have significance in the magic calendar. It is not valid to view the history without the magic overlay.

The most important thing to discuss is the spirit and elevation emotion see https://mormondiscussionpodcast.org/2017/08/premium-fix-faith-crisis-one-weird-trick-wood-vs-steel-tools/


https://www.discoverbooks.com/New-Approaches-to-the-Book-of-Mormon-Exploration-p/1560850175.htm?gclid=Cj0KCQjw753rBRCVARIsANe3o44oLXnpzGkS8gnEgABdjlmH8YPThwelpNYor5d3N75kKSd8g662I3waAjxbEALw_wcB

https://www.amazon.com/Early-Mormonism-Magic-World-View/dp/1560850892

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLv91bBcxP_pnTAArZuIJqFUPuj8zS2Xwa

An Insider's View of Mormon Origins

I don't believe there is. However, on Amazon's listing you can send feedback to Audible requesting an audio version. The link is on the bottom of the right hand column.

>Looking for the Audiobook Edition?
Tell us that you'd like this title to be produced as an audiobook, and we'll alert our colleagues at Audible.com. If you are the author or rights holder, let Audible help you produce the audiobook: Learn more at ACX.com.

If you read grant palmer's book "An Insider's View of Mormon Origins" at the same time you read rough stone rolling you can identify more issues. They both address the same problems to some degree but bushman spins it in a pro-mormon way while palmer spins it the other direction.

It is actually quite fascinating to see how two scholars interpret the same facts totally differently.

https://www.amazon.com/Insiders-View-Mormon-Origins/dp/1560851570

I'm not a huge non-fiction reader but I really loved Under the Banner of Heaven and Freakonomics

Read the LDS "Gospel Principles" manual, located here.

You could also read "Rough Stone Rolling" to learn more about Joseph Smith and the Church's founding. Rough Stone Rolling is generally considered a reasonable account, by both ex mormons and active mormons.

SECTION | CONTENT
:--|:--
Title | Jehovah's Witnesses v. Mormons - Ep. 1 - Faith versus Faith (with Jonathan Streeter)
Description | In this new series I explore the similarities and differences between Jehovah's Witnesses and other high control groups. First up are the Mormons, with ex-Mormon vlogger and blogger Jonathan Streeter answering my questions about the various beliefs and practices of the LDS Church. Resources mentioned in the video: 1. LDS.org Official Gospel Topics Essays: https://www.lds.org/topics/essays?lang=eng&old=true Essay acknowledging that Joseph Smith married 14-year-olds and other men's wives: https://www.lds.org/topics/plural-marriage-in-kirtland-and-nauvoo?lang=eng&old=true 2. Rough Stone Rolling: sold in official church bookstore here: https://deseretbook.com/p/joseph-smith-rough-stone-rolling-richard-l-bushman-5351?variant_id=104298-paperback On amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/Joseph-Smith-Rough-Stone-Rolling/dp/1400077532 3. Insider view on Mormon Origins, on Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/Insiders-View-Mormon-Origins/dp/1560851570/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_t_1?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=SP990KXWHKW4G8ZH8G8S  4. CES Letter: http://cesletter.com/ 5. "Letter for my wife and children" - similar to CES letter above, but with a softer tone. More accessible. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B18W3AgWXw6zMUllRW85bXc0RWc/view 6. FAIRMormon Apologetic website: https://www.fairmormon.org/ 7. Exmormon Subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/ 8. Mormon Stories Podcast: http://www.mormonstories.org/ 9. Jonathan’s Website: http://thoughtsonthingsandstuff.com/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVTCFh3uDMH0GZlwl1JOoHQ FaceBook: https://www.facebook.com/ThoughtsOnThingsAndStuff/ 10: Mormon Spectrum (for finding local support groups): http://www.mormonspectrum.org/  Support me on Patreon: https://patreon.com/cedars Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/cedarsjwsurvey Buy my book, "The Reluctant Apostate": http://a.co/5qFN4JU
Length | 1:30:08






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Others have given good suggestions, but I'll add my own thoughts. First, let me recommend "Joseph Smith--History" which you can read here, https://www.lds.org/scriptures/pgp/js-h/1?lang=eng. That is the canonical description of the initial events (visions, angelic visitations, etc.) that led him to found the Church of Jesus-Christ of Latter-day Saints, and was written by Joseph Smith himself in the mid 1830s. If you have downloaded the LDS "Gospel Library" app for Android/iPhone, it's also available via Scriptures->Pearl of Great Price->Joseph Smith--History. It's just a few pages long.

Secondly, I recommend the Book of Mormon, which we view as a book of ancient holy scripture like the Bible. According to Joseph Smith's account, he was given the ancient record from an angel of God and translated it miraculously in 1829 (when he was 23), then returned the ancient record to the angel when complete. It describes God's dealings with a branch of the Israelites who migrated to the Americas around 600 BC. It's named after Mormon, who (according to the book) lived around 400 AD and was instrumental in compiling the records of the various prophets before him in addition to adding his own account. This book is core to my own personal witness that he was a true prophet. It's around 450 pages long, and as scripture it is fairly dense, so it's not just something you can read in an afternoon. You can read it online here, https://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm?lang=eng, or in the "Gospel Library" app via Scriptures->Book of Mormon. Or, if you would like a hard copy, you can request a free copy here: https://www.comeuntochrist.org/beliefs/book-of-mormon-request. (Free books are made possible by donations of church members.) Someone else recommended a few chapters to begin with, which sounded good to me. I'll add a suggestion, namely 3rd Nephi chapters 11-27 where it presents an account of Jesus visiting these people after his death and resurrection in Jerusalem. And starting from the beginning is also not a bad plan. Certainly read the modern introduction and the testimony of the various witnesses who said Joseph Smith showed them the ancient plates from which the book was translated.

Thirdly, for a more in-depth historical view, I strongly recommend Rough Stone Rolling by Richard Bushman, https://www.amazon.com/Joseph-Smith-Rough-Stone-Rolling/dp/1400077532. He's an award-winning biographer, and this is a fantastic book with a very complete description of Joseph Smith's life. (Also quite lengthy, but I found it easy to read.) To me it strikes a great balance between being respectful towards Joseph Smith and those who view him as a prophet (Bushman himself is a believer), and being historical and not afraid to talk about things Joseph Smith did which were somewhat questionable. It made Joseph Smith a very human figure to me. Most other accounts of Joseph Smith's life by contrast are very one sided--presenting only the good about Smith to argue that he was a true prophet, or presenting only the bad about Smith to argue that he was a fraud.

Good luck in your quest to learn more! Don't hesitate to ask more questions here.

Here is a multi-volume work of the history if the LDS church written by B.H. Roberts. It's like 80 years old so it is a bit outdated in a few areas.

Rough Stone Rolling is a biography of Joseph Smith written by Richard Bushman. It is generally considered to be the pretty good historically and is pretty well cited.

I also find Wikipedia to be a pretty good starting point for studying different topics in LDS history. Apparently there does end up being some editing wars for a lot topics so you have to be careful.

A new 4 volume narrative history of the LDS church has also been announced and will start coming out next year. That might end up being good.

Edit: just realised I didn't read your post well enough. I just gave you general history sources when you were asking for specific leads. Sorry about that. I hope someone else the info you're looking for.

Rough Stone Rolling. The author is a retired Ivy League (Columbia) history professor and a Mormon. The idea behind the biography is to tell the whole story of Joseph Smith, warts and all. The author cites extensively to journal entries, letters, newspaper articles, etc. written during Joseph Smith's life. This biography discusses many unflattering aspects of the founder of Mormonism, including Smith's: (i) polygamous marriages, (ii) marriages to underage girls; (iii) secret marriages to ployandrous women; (iv) the use of a magic rock and a hat to translate the Book of Mormon; (v) criminal charges for fraud; (vi) erroneous "translation" of Egyptian scrolls said to be written by Moses, later found to be common Egyptian funerary scrolls; (vii) substantial debts, the result of several failed business ventures; and (viii) Smith's lying and attempts to cover up all of the foregoing, which ultimately lead to his death.


http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1400077532?pc_redir=1413704830&robot_redir=1

I've read this one and found it very interesting.


https://www.amazon.com/Recovering-Agency-Lifting-Mormon-Control/dp/1489595937

love those books, another great one and aimed at exmos Recovering Agency: Lifting the Veil of Mormon Mind Control

Margaret Singer's Cults in Our Midst is a good one.

Luna Lindsey's Recovering Agency: Lifting the Veil of Mormon Mind Control is worth a look (it does mention JWs too).

And Eric Hoffer's The True Believer should be in every right-thinking apostate's top pocket.

She may not know about Joseph Smith's polygamy/polyandry. You might try reading this book, In Sacred Loneliness, by Todd Compton, a believing Mormon. It talks about how Joseph Smith coerced young girls (14 year olds, dude) and already-married women into marrying him. Then, discuss.

Women don't like this one bit.

As for Freemasonry itself, you will have to be very discerning with the information you come across, and especially on reddit.

In the Golden Verses of Pythagoras, it is said,
>
> -> 30. Never do anything which thou dost not understand.
>
> -> 31. But learn all thou ought'st to know, and by that means thou wilt lead a very pleasant life.

I advise against joining Freemasonry as a means to contrast it with Mormonism. A prominent feature of the Mormon temple ceremony is the trade of oaths with penalties for guarded information. This is also present in Freemasonry, and though they would portray themselves as benevolent, there is much to cast this into doubt.

I'm happy to direct you towards information relevant to your search. Maybe this information is not exactly what you are asking for, but I'm sure it will broaden and deepen your understanding of the topic at hand.

• 
  Joseph Smith and Kabbalah:
  The Occult Connection by Lance S. Owens
  
• 
  Early Mormonism and the Magic World View by D. Michael Quinn (Amazon)
  
  Both of these works were rigorously researched and have cited sources. Quinn's Early Mormonism and the Magic World View has over 300 pages in notes and sources. It is my opinion that if you don't have an understanding of the esoteric, occult foundation of Mormonism, then you don't understand Mormonism.
  
  Personally, it has allowed me to temper my understanding of Early Mormonism and the actions of my ancestors. For some, learning this may only condemn it further.
  
  After finding the edges of the current popularly held views of scientific materialistic reductionism, we are left looking at chaos and nondeterminism with wonder. There are so many evidences that our universe and our existence is much more meaningful than society would admit. Without passing judgement on the details of early Mormon history, I now have greater context for understanding it.
  
  If you should find yourself lost in searching for answers within the paradigm of linear thinking, send me a message. I have found that some of the greatest minds have been marginalized or silenced for embracing nonconforming, nonlinear, nondeterministic thinking.

This one, this one, and then this one. In fact, read those even if you don't go.

I was just looking for both of these on Audible, too. Thanks for the tip to request the audio version. I just requested it for both, too. I'd appreciate it if others did, too:

http://www.amazon.com/An-Insiders-View-Mormon-Origins/dp/1560851570

http://www.amazon.com/Early-Mormonism-Magic-World-View/dp/1560850892/

I’m an exmormon! This book will tell you everything you ever wanted to know about Joseph Smith and his magical practices.

https://www.amazon.com/Early-Mormonism-Magic-World-View/dp/1560850892

Also, if you want to know why members like me are leaving, this website explains all the dirty laundry of Mormonism.

Cesletter.org

A relevant passage about Joseph Smith and magic in the ces letter:

“In order to truly understand the Book of Mormon witnesses and the issues with their claims, one must understand the magical worldview of many people in early 19th century New England. These are people who believed in folk magic, divining rods, visions, second sight, peep stones in hats, treasure hunting (money digging or glass looking), and so on.”

If you have any more questions about the real story of the book of mormon without being preached at, feel free to ask me or the exmormon subreddit.

Feel free to skip over my essay, and down to my recommendations. The essay is intended to add some context for someone trying to understand mormonism from the outside.

The mainstream branch of mormonism, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is starting to diverge significantly from its historical roots. The folk magic/occult practices found at the church's origin are now considered completely foreign and abhorrent. The same for the practice of polygamy, it is disavowed and a distant memory within the mainstream church. The membership hardly remembers how central of tenet plural marriage once was. It isn't a relevant part of the religion anymore.

The original church is being watered down and the rough spots sanded over and evened out. The temple rituals originally included some very disconcerting elements and language. They have been significantly revised over time. First, they modified their nude bathing initiation to be a semi-nude washing off with a small hose. Now, as I understand it, all washing is omitted. Initiates are allowed to wear undergarments and not be naked under a sheet. Now, the officiant doesn't touch the initiate at all, if I understand correctly. Also, the death oaths for revealing the secrets of the temple are gone, as is the oath of vengeance against the United States of America for not preventing the deaths of Joseph and Hyrum Smith.

The personal priesthood interviews to determine worthiness are another thing that is being changed and toned down within mainstream mormonism. The change is being driven by new order mormons, NOMs, who are putting their ward bishop on notice that they won't tolerate the bishop asking invasive questions of their children. I don't think that would've have gone over very well when I was a youth in the church. My parents would have been excommunicated for trying to dictate terms to the bishop. Still, today, I assume that some bishops would not accept terms presented by the NOMs.

I believe studying the church's origins helps to show that the church is not the one-true church that many of us have been taught that it was from birth. Studying the early history shows their practices were even more cultish than today. That said, outsiders would still consider their current secretive, masonic-based temple rituals plenty cultish, though.

Outsiders need to be able to separate its history from its current practice. Except for the temple, the LDS church's Sunday and weekly worship services are standard fare, albeit with a significant time commitment each week. Most of their services are about propping up their mythology, with some socialization- getting to know one another thrown in. They don't delve too deeply into any troubling elements of scripture, or of church history or former practices. The lessons are standardized by committee. Certain topics are definitely too hot to handle. If I were to say one thing about it, I think church is now more about being one of the ways that is used to present their family into the community, especially in highly mormon communities. It's a way to primp and preen, and try to impress the neighbors. Parents thoroughly wash, dress, and parade their families before the other members of the ward. The goal is to appear to be the perfect mormon family. To add the final piece to the puzzle, the family must fall into line and prove they are worthy of respect, that means regular participation in temple rituals. To be eligible to attend the temple, the member must affirm they agree with and try to follow the current theology of the church 100%, but mostly that boils down to agreeing to pay 10% of their income to the church. At this point, I think the temple rituals are a lot like Tevia said in Fiddler on the Roof in the lead in to Tradition! They don't know why they do those rituals, but it was good enough for Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, so it must be good for something. The faithful would say it is a requirement to seal a legal agreement with god; it is buying an insurance policy that says families are forever.

I'll stop here, except for stating that a new dynamic is emerging in the church. People are quitting, either by simply not attending (going inactive), or by formally resigning. Issues like the church's support for prop 8 begin to call into question whether the church is on the right side of history. They see the tremendous cash outlay required to build their mall and wonder whether the church is making the right kind of financial choices for a so-called charitable organization. As noted above, these issues can lead a member to begin to question whether their church is everything it claims to be. Is it the one true church? That question runs headlong into the buzzsaw of early mormon history. The information is available online that shows that it is not what it claims to be. Of course, this type of research can lead to loss of faith. What happens when only one partner in a marriage learns the truth? How should young adults respond to their parents' expectations for them knowing that missionary work for something they don't believe in is not something they are wiling to do? How should young women attempt to break out of the rigid sex roles and limited life plan offered by mormonism? I discovered these existential, heartbreaking, and painful experiences detailed here on this subreddit. The politics of how to deal with that fallout when the blinders come off and people face a new reality is what the subreddit is mostly about. It provides a new community for those who are looking for a new worldview, free from the clear cut and rigid worldview presented from childhood as the truth.

Recommendations

• Brodie's No Man Knows My History
  
  
• Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven, which you've read.
  
  
• Bhattacharya's Secrets and Wives
  
  
• Church Administrative Handbook, Instruction for stake presidents and bishops. (In two volumes: one is publicly available; the other is available if you look hard.)
  
  Next on my reading list:
  
  
• D. Michael Quinn's Early Mormonism and the Magic World View
  
  I am about halfway through with Jessop's Escape, which you've read.
  
  Other media:
  
  
• Mormon Expression Podcast # 200: top ten changes to the temple
  
  
• Mormon Expression Podcast # 176: top reasons to leave mormonism
  
  
• Mormon Expression Podcast # 175: top reasons to stay in mormonism
  
  
• Mormon Expression Podcast # 192: Community of Christ, the most liberal branch of mormonism, by far.
  
  Other subreddits you might like to take a look at...
  
  
• exit stories
  
  
• bestof exmormon
  
  

Not only are the borrowings not well known among Mormons, but even those who do hear of the close resemblances between Mormonism and Freemasonry and their rites often denounce those who suggest a relation. D. Michael Quinn was excommunicated from the LDS church for his research into and publication of the similarities between Mormonism and hermeticism and the influences of the latter upon the former, as others historians have argued as well. I should add that Quinn still believes in the LDS movement, even after his excommunication.

I really liked An Insider's View of Mormon Origins, despite the somewhat clickbaity title.

If you haven't studied "anti-Mormon" sources, you can't claim you aren't any of those things, because that's part of it. The constant reminders to only get your information from the church. That is one of the biggest elements of indoctrination, brainwashing, and sheltering.

They're preventing you from doing thorough research and frankly, it's not our job to digest all of for you. The problems with the church are so numerous there is no way anyone is going to be able to lay them all out for you in a comment on a reddit post. Asking us to tell you why we left is not evidence you weren't indoctrinated if you refuse to go do the study yourself.

Most active members have no idea just how much information there is and that no, it is not spun. Here's a little bit of the history on why and how the real history the church is now trying to manage finally came out. There is a couple in Provo who have a Christian ministry basically dedicated to taking down the Mormon church. Around 1990 they published a pamphlet that talked about some serious stuff the vast majority of members didn't know, like Joseph's Smith polygamy. Normally the church wouldn't respond to these things, but they felt the claims were worrisome enough (getting questions from members) they needed to publish a response, so they invited two BYU historians into the archives (you know the ones in the mountain) to study ALL of the historical documents they had and write a refutation debunking the Tanner's claims.

For about two years Michael Quinn and Dan Vogel studied every document and took photos of each one, with the church's blessing. Problem was, not only did what they find back up the Tanner's claims, but the actual history was much worse (things like Polyandry). They did write a rebuttal, but it was rejected by the Q15 and they were told not to publish anything at all, ever. More than twenty years later the essays on lds.org the church finally published to at least be a little bit honest are right out of Vogel and Quinns essays. By being a little bit I mean, if you not only read the essays, but then follow the footnotes, well. It's not good. The Saints book is the same way. It doesn't out and out lie, but talk about out of context and leaving out very important information if it's too faith challenging. It's still not fully honest. Not even remotely. Shouldn't the church have to be as honest as they expect the membership?

Being historians, not publishing and keeping it all a secret didn't sit well with them and they published anyway. In fact, Dan Vogel made all those facsimiles of all those documents, thousands and thousands of them, available to any other scholar wanting to pour through them and publish their own findings. For their trouble they were excommunicated as part of the September Six (google it).

Many (maybe most on church history) of the anti-Mormon books out there directly source these documents and you can even get them yourself. Dan Vogel published all of them in several volumes called, "Early Mormon Documents." The goal was to publish all the source material he and Quinn had collected without editorial comment. I'm not sure how much more objective it can get or how any Mormon can claim the stacks of books that came out of these are not sourced or dishonest.

If you want a summary list of the major issues, and it's a long one, you should download the free pdf version of the CES letter on cesletter.org. Then read the rebuttals over on Fair Mormon. Then read the rebuttals to the rebuttals.

When I left, a nice summary didn't exist, so I had to read books and boy did I read a lot of them. I happened to start with Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith, which is well sourced out of the RLDS archives, but I also read Grant Palmer's, An Insider's View of Mormon Origins. Incidentally, he was another BYU professor excommunicated for publishing the irrefutable truth. Keep in mind, these people were active members. They were not trying to tear down the church. They simply felt it was morally wrong to continue to have blatant and significant inaccuracies in teaching manuals, in conference talks, in Seminary, in well......everything.

My reading list (those I can remember at least):

Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith

An Insider's View of Mormon Origins

Joseph Smith: The Making of a Prophet (A Biography)

No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith

The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power

Mormon America: The Power and the Promise

If you still think everything other than what is directly published by the church are anti-Mormon lies or tricks, well I can help you there at too. How deep have you gotten into Journal of Discourses? It's almost worse than anything written by an anti-Mormon. So much worse than a couple of troublesome quotes. I also re-read the D&C while reading Teaching of the Prophet Joseph Smith in tandem. It was a lot harder to swallow that way to say the least and both of those are obviously considered faithful study.

​

If you want to claim you aren't brainwashed or indoctrinated you have to do the work. Saying "I posted on Reddit and no one convinced me," or the other favorite, "people much smarter than me have already studied all that and say its fine," are not valid arguments. They're lazy cop outs.

​

Good luck on your search for truth. I encourage you to study it out from ALL sources, including faithful sources you haven't yet studied.

​

edited to add: Forgot one of the most important. In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith

edited edited to add: If you want something a little more biased for the church you can even just read Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling. If you're going to read the D&C and Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith at the same time as I did, I recommend at least reading this one first. It's going to be much clearer if you've read at least one of the biographies and Rough Stone Rolling was published by Deseret Book.

I don't have a link, but as I recall, a chapter or two of An Insider's View of Mormon Origins covers this quite well. (I don't have a copy, I checked it out from the BYU library.)

Not a rebuttal of Nibley's book, but covers pretty much everything you need to know. http://www.amazon.com/Joseph-Smith-Egyptian-Papyri-Complete/dp/1560852321

A freebie from Ritner: http://signaturebooks.com/a-response-to-translation-and-historicity-of-the-book-of-abraham-by-dr-robert-ritner/

Try this book. It's much more current and scholarly. The Joseph Smith Egyptian Papyri: A Complete Edition https://www.amazon.com/dp/1560852321/ref=cm_sw_r_em_apa_LtKDxbS6XFRGG

You put the wrong link.

The fifth edition of the book can be found here and isn't available on hard cover through amazon yet.

https://www.amazon.com/Crisis-Conscience-struggle-between-religion-ebook/dp/B07B7C21M3/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1520359740&sr=1-6&keywords=crisis+of+conscience+franz

Available as kindle edt

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B07B7C21M3/ref=mp_s_a_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1520349818&sr=8-8&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=crisis+of+conscience+by+raymond+franz&dpPl=1&dpID=51ABjkoh3ML&ref=plSrch

https://www.amazon.com/Crisis-Conscience-struggle-between-religion-ebook/dp/B07B7C21M3/

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Crisis-Conscience-struggle-between-religion-ebook/dp/B07B7C21M3/

It looks like they're still in stock ;)

When the only versions available were for hundreds of dollars on ebay, downloading a versions from the internet might be justifiable, however, now there is a new version available, it isn't really. The kindle version is <$10

or you could request a copy through your local library.

The Case for God and The Bible: A Biography by Karen Armstrong are both good. The God Delusion is a simple breakdown and explanation of most major religious claims. Beyond Religion: Ethics for a Whole World by the Dalai Llama is an interesting book on ethics. The Koran: A Very Short Introduction by Michael Cook is 150 funny and insightful pages on Islam. Under the Banner of Heaven is a shocking and fascinating account of fundamentalist Mormonism. The Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan discusses religion, and Cosmos and Pale Blue Dot are my secular versions of holy books. And of course given the occasion, I can't leave out God is Not Great.

I recommend avoiding authors like Lee Strobel and Deepak Chopra. Both are essentially liars for their causes, either inventing evidence, or deliberately being incredibly misleading in how they use terms. Popularity in those cases definitely doesn't indicate quality.

The idea that the script is somehow an ancient temple ritual was proposed first by Nibley I believe. Here's the long and short of it:

1. Ritner (university of Chicago) has translated the scrolls. There is a book you can by for $20 or so which tells you exactly what is on the scrolls. It's worth buying if you have any question. Parts of his translation were plagiarized by the BYU folks trying to translate the scrolls and it appears that it upset him a bit, but I digress.
   
2. Timing: Abraham would have lived about 2200 BC. The scrolls date to about 150 BC. So Abraham never got near these scrolls. But what is more, the scrolls can and have been accurately translated. There's nothing on them that has anything to do with Abraham, which the church admits in their gospel topics essay on Abraham.
   
3. What is perhaps more problematic is that most scholars believe that Abraham never lived. He is a mythical historical figure.
   >By the beginning of the 21st century, archaeologists had given up hope of recovering any context that would make Abraham, Isaac or Jacob credible historical figures.
   source
   
   
4. Moreover, the whole idea that ancient biblical temple rights are in any meaningful way connected to modern LDS temple ceremonies is a stretch. The LDS temple rights mix the creation story (4-6th century BC?) with masonic ceremonies from the 19th century (the basis of masonry being developed no earlier than the 13th century). There was no temple worship in early Christianity, as even apologists will admit (I have references if needed).

Law of attraction isn't mormon doctrine, by the way. Some Mormons do add a bunch of junk woo on standard LDS beliefs though. I know people who use astrology, crystals, cupping, and a big trend is essential oils. It's not Mormonism though. Just a general non-skeptical credulity problem.

As far as getting your friend out of the TBM mindset, here's a few tips:

• beware the backfire effect. It's real and powerful. If you come at it directly, he will retrench and push you away.
  
  
• Create cognitive dissonance. Research issues of racism and homophobia in the church, show him you're a great person and be open and conversational about yourself. He will probably slip into a non-orthodox view and feel totally conflicted about his church just by having a good friend who happens to be gay and atheist. This is enough for a lot of people, without any additional prodding. They work through their cognitive dissonance by gently accepting and then embracing and defending their friends even when it means accepting the church is wrong here. And then it becomes acceptable to question the church, since if it is wrong here, why not on other issues as well? The domino effect.
  
  
• If he proselytes or invites you to Mormonism, use this opportunity to ask thoughtful questions. I wouldn't bring up the CES letter since that's too direct but I would respond to his invitations or conversations with relevant questions. Make sure it's not a dynamic where he's defending the church, but about his beliefs. So questions like, "I read there was a policy change in November 2015 that said children of gay parents would not be able to be baptized until they were 18 and disowned their gay parents' relationships. Do you feel comfortable with this policy?" Or, "I read that there's elements of pseudepigrapha from the Bible that were in the Book of Mormon, but those passages were misattributed to Isaiah and the actual authors lived later than Lehi's exodus from Jerusalem so there's no way Lehi would've had those writings. Were you taught about this anachronism?" It's tough, since to really get into the major issues you kind of have to know a ton about this obscure religion. That's why it's escaped major critical analysis by the big hitters outside the faith: it's just too small and obscure to have an outsider really strike down TBM testimonies.
  
  Best I've seen from an outsider is Philip Jenkins' takedown of the Book of Mormon as a historical record and Robert Ritner's book on the Joseph Smith Papyri (Book of Abraham).
  
  
• Retrenchment into Mormonism may be a sign he's struggling with some issue, not that he's super TBM. I've found some of the most "faithful" people in the church are struggling with their sexuality or with their beliefs or their ability to keep the rules so they feel guilty or broken. It's a last-ditch effort to make it work, and going on a mission is part of that. They're told that if they buckle down and give it 100%, God can change their nature. It doesn't work, and some people realize this before a mission but I think most realize it after. Your friend may be going through a hell that is so hidden from view that it's impossible to see. And he likely won't let anyone know. So I suggest treading carefully and with compassion. Part of it is you don't want anyone to know because you feel intense shame and inadequacy, and even acknowledging there's an issue is defeat. There's also the fear of death that is a huge thing.

If you want a new perspective on the Book of Mormon, I suggest Grant Hardy’s Understanding the Book of Mormon. In it he looks at the three narrators (Nephi, Mormon, and Moroni) and why they included what they did.

https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Book-Mormon-Readers-Guide/dp/0199731705

I believe that they are referring to The Book of Mormon: A Reader's Edition by Grant Hardy. His other book, Understanding the Book of Mormon is highly recommended by other redditors. /u/Karl_Marxxx

May be it would be helpful to point you to some honest source that seeks to give a non subjective and fair evaluation for the claims of the church.

1.   A book that provides a general view on how to go about thinking about hard church issues. It is really good. Entitled the Crucible of Doubt by Teryl Givens: https://www.amazon.com/Crucible-Doubt-Reflections-Quest-Faith/dp/1609079426/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=crucible+of+doubt+givens&amp;amp;qid=1561524835&amp;amp;s=books&amp;amp;sr=1-1<br />

   
   

2. My favorite book to start thinking very thoughtfully and from an academic perspective on the book of Mormon. Incredible stuff. Entitled “Understanding the BOM” by Grant Hardy: https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Book-Mormon-Readers-Guide/dp/0199731705/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_t_1?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=KBX8MX63A88H3GCBCHYR
   
   
3. My favorite book on early church history focused around the life of Jesus Christ. Written by the renowned Columbia U History Professor Richard Bushman. Entitled Rough Stone Rolling: https://www.amazon.com/Joseph-Smith-Rough-Stone-Rolling/dp/1400042704/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=richard+bushman+rough+stone+rolling&qid=1561524690&s=books&sr=1-1
   
   
4. My favorite book on modern day church history. It is a careful look at the David O McKay era with incredible source material. It completely changed my view of how the upper echelons of church governance works, but somehow at the same time strengthened my faith in our very fallible leaders. Entitled The Rise of Modern Mormonism by Greg Prince: https://www.amazon.com/David-McKay-Rise-Modern-Mormonism/dp/0874808227/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=the+rise+of+modern+mormonism&qid=1561524807&s=books&sr=1-1

I think it is Grant Hardy's book that talks a lot about the necessary opposition that Nephi writes into the Book of Mormon. About the importance of that opposition to the overall importance in teaching the doctrine contained. That Lamen and Lemuel and very 'flat' characters because their depth of personality and character is unnecessary to the goal's of Nephi's writing, to bring its readers unto Christ.

But, it is unlikely it was really that simple. Lamen and Lemuel were not really that unreasonable outside a few occurrences in their reactions and which of us haven't acted quite unreasonably at times. That it's more possible they were traditionally obedient Jews and saw their father as out of line (I mean, even Nephi needed to come to terms).

I haven't watched the episode yet, but your comment alone has me pulling it up right now.

Edit: u/atari_guy, apparently this video link is unavailable.

Highly recommend reading a good book together with your wife written by LDS women about Emma Hale Smith. It will help you both appreciate Emma's perspective and is well researched. It's called Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith. http://www.amazon.com/Mormon-Enigma-Emma-Hale-Smith/dp/0252062914 It was sold in Deseret book stores. There shouldn't be too much about this that threatens your wife but if read together can lead to interest in that time and good discussions together. This was very helpful for my wife and I when we were in a similar situation two years ago. Show more love now with your wife, your courage honesty and integrity will make a huge difference, that's what's real, that's what's good.

That was a fantastic book. In fact, I would recommend any of the author's other books, especially Under the Banner of Heaven.

Scott Carrier is absolutely brilliant on the radio, but I found this piece to be a bit unfocused. Reading it in his voice seemed to help a bit.

If you found this story interesting, I highly recommend Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven. Krakauer more deeply explores Elizabeth Smart's story, along with many more in an absolutely fascinating book.

On the lighter side, Dave Chappelle asks, How old is fifteen really?

I answer timidly both because I am a TBM and because I don't know anything about the psychology involved, but I'd say the idea that a Mormon would think "well if JS is wrong that's on him, not me" is pretty far fetched to me. We are each encouraged to gain, through personal revelation, a testimony that (among other things) JS was a prophet. We are encouraged to take personal responsibility for our own beliefs and actions.

.

All that said, the LDS church is definitely authoritarian on belief.

.

Regarding Mount Meadows, look up the history before assuming it was a result of people acting in response to Church authority. I'd recommend this book, by a non-LDS author.

If you enjoyed Fawn Brodie's book, I highly recommend the recent Brigham Young biography, Pioneer Prophet, by John Turner.

Brigham Young is incredibly fascinating in his own right, albeit for very different reasons from Joseph Smith.

Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin

https://www.amazon.com/Origin-Species-150th-Anniversary/dp/0451529065

No man knows my history, by Fawn Brodie

https://www.amazon.com/No-Man-Knows-My-History/dp/0679730540/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1485453081&sr=1-1&keywords=No+man+knows+my+history

If I can find it in the UK I'm sure you must be able to find it in the USA: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0679730540/ref=cm_sw_r_awd_NKdjub0M3YDAK

If you really want to go down the rabbit hole, you might as well read the book that started it all No Man Knows My History by Fawn Brodie.

I always thought the only known photograph of Smith was the one used on the cover of No Man Knows My History (got to love the hair do). We had someone do a presentation about this one at our temple visitor's center. He also compared the facial features in the photo to the death mask. Note, the version on the book cover is a painted replica.

Absolutely best historical account of it all coming to be is "No Man Knows my History" by Fawn Brodie.

https://www.amazon.com/No-Man-Knows-My-History/dp/0679730540

Worth reading every page.

If you happen to like reading, and are interested in more on the history of Mormonism, I once read this biography of Joseph Smith called No Man Knows My History. It was actually recommended to me by a District Overseer I knew a long time ago, (he knew how much I loved to read) which was really the only reason I got away with reading it at the time. People would see me reading it and ask what I thought I was doing and I would just tell them the D.O recommended it to me and they would shut up. Anyway, it was fascinating, well written, and really just an interesting perspective on the history of the church.

I found my way out by reading about church history over the course of many months (I didn't know about about the CES Letter at the time). The issues never seemed to end and never had good explanations, and I finally could not keep trying to dig the church out of the pit it had created for itself.

Nothing can definitively prove that the church isn't true. I still can't prove it isn't true, but I have overwhelming evidence that it isn't. If you're 1) a reasonable, open-minded person; 2) read about problems in the church/church history; and 3) realize that it is illogical that a supreme being would allow and perpetuate these problems, then you'll find peace of mind in leaving the church. Try picking up a copy of "No Man Knows My History" by Fawn Brodie from the library. Hide it under your bed when you're not reading it--that's what I did :)

Leaving has removed an enormous burden that I didn't even know I was carrying.

This is the next book on my reading list. Moroni and the Swastika I've heard focuses on Mormons in Germany at the time but it could touch on what you're asking. Anyone else read this that can shed some light?

Light From the Christian East by James R. Payton - written by a non-Orthodox scholar who is sensitive to accurately describing Orthodox theology while making them accessible to non-Orthodox.

The Orthodox Way by Kallistos Ware - not to be confused with his older classic, The Orthodox Church, which describes the historical development of the tradition. This work is more personal because of its focus on how Orthodox theology applies to the life of a Christian. Ware is an Orthodox bishop who has been famous for decades for his attempts to introduce Eastern Christianity to a popular audience.

Introducing Eastern Orthodox Theology by Andrew Louth - Louth is a gifted Russian Orthodox scholar and priest who writes ably on a number of topics.

The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church by Vladimir Lossky - Lossky is one of the most influential Russian Orthodox theologians of the 20th century. This book is a classic introduction published in the 50s, and also advocates for a certain understanding of Orthodoxy that emphasizes its distinctiveness (the "mystical" part) from Western theology.

It isnt light reading, it isnt too difficult either, but you might like Valdimir Lossky's Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church as he does a lot to counter the problems you see in calling God a person, which he would agree are valid, while also maintaining the personhood of God.

https://www.amazon.com/Mystical-Theology-Eastern-Church/dp/0913836311

I think Pope Francis is sincere, but I also think that it is more complicated than merely "doing what is needed to heal the breach." The Schism is as much about people as it is about theology. Human beings and the relationships between them are complicated at the best of times. The self-understanding of these two communities has been distinct for so long that it is easier to argue than to find common ground. There are currently "Byzantine" Churches in communion with Rome and it hasn't worked out terribly well for a lot of them (though there have been bright spots).

If I might be so bold, the "liberal" people (I don't like that word, but I don't have another one) in both camps can hardly see the point in being separate, though they would like to change things in both their Churches in other ways that would make them unrecognizable. The challenge is to have the "conservative" people satisfied with the process and expected result of re-approachment, enough to establish common cause between them. A traditional Catholic has to see that the Orthodox showing up won't force them to budge on things that they are fighting with progressives in their own Church about. The same with the Orthodox. The famous resistor of "false union" Bishop Mark of Ephesus doesn't just appeal to those seeking to preserve the Orthodox faith, but also traditionally committed Catholics.

And what happens if the Catholics are willing to compromise on a great many things, but the Orthodox get difficult on some point? Would not the Catholics feel abused? "We've come all this way and it hurts us and you still won't give up on point 9?" This has been the problem with the Miaphysites. It looks like all the theological issues have been resolved, but we seem to be left with Saints and Anathemas on both sides that have rooted the problem beyond reconciliation. We seem to be "right there" except we have beloved saints on both sides that effectively said, "you can never go there." What do we do with these saints? How do we understand them?

As for something to read. There are several books depending on your interest in using big words. :)

Lossky would be the heavy weight: http://www.amazon.com/The-Mystical-Theology-Eastern-Church/dp/0913836311/

Though I much prefer Zizioulas, more approachable and puts apophatic theology in balance: http://www.amazon.com/Being-Communion-Personhood-Contemporary-Theologians/dp/0881410292/

Of course Bishop Timothy Ware's book is the usual "internet standard recommendation: http://www.amazon.com/The-Orthodox-Way-Kallistos-Ware/dp/0913836583/

If you want something very approachable (almost no technical terms) and a little more "what does this mean" you might try an introduction to sacramental theology in general: http://www.amazon.com/For-Life-World-Sacraments-Orthodoxy/dp/0913836087/

And probably the least "theological" but I think this is both my wife and my favorite: http://www.amazon.com/Bread-Water-Wine-Oil-Experience/dp/1888212918/

Orthodoxwiki.org is a pretty good go-to site for specific topics from an Orthodox perspective. Wikipedia for that matter is excellent if you want a more secular perspective.

Also, this is a great pair of books (by the same author, incidentally) on both the history and practices of the Orthodox Church. Though keep in mind they're written by an Orthodox bishop, not a secular historian.

The Orthodox Church (this one's the history book)

The Orthodox Way

I was able to find a copy of The Orthodox Church at a local library.

Also, this is a great podcast about Byzantine history. It isn't really about the Church specifically, rather the Byzantine Empire, which was intimately tied to the Eastern Orthodox Church for many many years (history's kind of a side interest of mine).

Just finished reading this, fantastic book. The Orthodox Way, by Kallistos Ware amazon link

Crisis of Conscience: The story of the struggle between loyalty to God and loyalty to one's religion. https://www.amazon.com/dp/0999499211/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_vgdpDbJYRG69T

That Watchtower article is crap - you must always independently research Watchtower.


Here's the link to Amazon where the book can be ordered from:
https://www.amazon.com/Crisis-Conscience-struggle-between-religion/dp/0999499211/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1539476363&sr=8-1&keywords=crisis+of+conscience+by+raymond+franz

​

Best of luck

Here’s the link to the UK Amazon page:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0999499211/

Of course!

This was amazingly helpful to me: https://oyc.yale.edu/religious-studies

Teaches you the history and context behind the Hebrew Bible and Greek Scriptures. It’s a great intro to a deeper look at the Bible. I learned so much from those two courses. They are pretty long, but well worth it.

Then I would recommend checking out Bart D Erhman’s books. He has a few lectures on audible and YouTube.

Also, I highly recommend reading Ray Franz’s book Crisis of Conscience. He was a Governing Body member in the 70s/80s who left and wrote an autobiography about his experiences. It’s mind blowing.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0999499211/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1522373103&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=crisis+of+conscience+by+raymond+franz

Have you read Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer?

These guys may have Utah's polygamist child molesters beat out for the title of World's Sickest.

This book has more info on our perverts.

If you're interested check out Under the Banner of Heaven

It's a book about religious extremism (and Mormonism specifically) and does a fantastic job opening a window into the minds of these people. It's not as much about the average mormon but does go into your question quite a bit.

Have you read Under the Banner of Heaven?

It's a great read, but it feels like he sensationalizes some stories about the church as well as puts forward a generally negative portrayal of the Mormonism in general. Then again, from some of the history he presents the criticism feels merited. I'd be curious what your thoughts were on it from an LDS perspective.

I have heard good things about Grant Hardy's Understanding the Book of Mormon

I enjoyed Grant Hardy's Understanding the Book of Mormon. It gave me some interesting things to think about while reading the Book of Mormon.

http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Book-Mormon-Readers-Guide/dp/0199731705

No but it is on amazon. Could also probably be found in most large public and university libraries.

https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Book-Mormon-Readers-Guide/dp/0199731705

For every example of crazy behavior among muslims I can give you an equally crazy behavior among Christians.

Here, enjoy:
http://www.amazon.com/Under-Banner-Heaven-Story-Violent/dp/0385509510

(qualifies for Prime, and you can start reading it under a minute on your Kindle. THEN you will be qualified to do comparative religion studies :-)).

May I recommend a book for you: Under The Banner Of Heaven

Okay, I've seen this argument before:

>As we often have to point out, we're dealing with America in this case ... Yes, there are other religions. But the one we have to deal with day in and day out is Christianity.

First, that's a poor argument, because it implies that other religions do not exist in the US. The US is very diverse, and all these world religions that we're talking about are here as well. I've met plenty of Jewish people, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists (admittedly fewer Buddhists), so I've "dealt" with people from all these religions right here in the US.

Second, there is a /r/debateachristian subreddit. So if everyone agrees that this sub-reddit is really about Christianity, I don't see the point of it.

Third, even if everyone in this sub-reddit agrees that we're really talking about Christianity when we say "religion," that author (as far as I know) did not write that post exclusively for the /r/debatereligion sub-reddit. She posted to the open Internet, where there is no accepted convention that by "religion" we mean "Christianity." She still displays poor understanding of what religion is, and my previous argument stands.

Fourth, it is nonsensical to write "religion" if you really mean "Christianity." That approach harms the debate because you're using a word with a clearly different meaning than the one with the meaning you intend. Just write "Christianity" if that is what your argument refers to.

Then, you wrote "I think the insights still hold" so I'm going to offer a counter-example from a religion that is not Christianity. Buddhism does not involve faith. A Buddhist only adopts teachings that have been directly experienced.

After that paragraph, you seemed to go back to "religion" = "Christianity," so I'll respond in that way. You wrote:

>The point is that when religion inspires bad behavior, it's a uniquely powerful method for rationalizing such behavior. No appeal to the earthly consequences makes a difference.

I think there are cases of what you're referring to, but they are exceedingly rare. You're talking about people who commit violence and continue to commit violence because God told them to (it seems, correct me if I'm wrong). It's true that things like the events described in "Under the Banner of Heaven" do happen in the US. But not often. And not disproportionately for religious people. Again, I would say there must be far more people committing crimes like that because they're mentally ill than because they're religious. For most religious people, an appeal to earthly consequences definitely makes a difference.

Thanks. I recently finished reading Under the Banner of Heaven and my head is still spinning....and I was raised Catholic, so that says a lot.

While currently reading this book, I'm guessing Mormon.

I have to recommend Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of a Violent Faith. It's written by John Krakauer, and parallels the story of the foundation of Mormonism with this crazy murder committed by two fundamentalists. Incredible book.

https://www.amazon.com/Brigham-Young-John-G-Turner/dp/0674049675

Alao Emma Smith: Mormon Enigma.

I found it on amazon. I think its up to the publisher as to whether it can be released as an e-book.

http://www.amazon.com/No-Man-Knows-My-History/dp/0679730540/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1411662535&sr=1-1&keywords=no+man+knows+my+history

Interesting, the melodramatic effects were really annoying though...

Everyone on this subreddit needs to read No Man Knows My History by Fawn Brodie if they haven't already.

• 
  Which part of the mormon movement do you belong to? Community of Christ? Temple Lot? Bickertonite? Strangite? Cutlerite? Remnant Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints? How do you know that your particular branch is the true church?
  
  
• 
  Have you ever read "No Man Knows My History" by Fawn Brodie?
  
  
• 
  What is your opinion on the origins of the Book of Abraham? Specifically, how do you rectify the fact that the original papyrus that Joseph Smith claimed to translate was found in the 60's and accurately translated by Egyptologists, and it had nothing to do with anything J.S. said it did?
  
  
• 
  Have you ever seen any of the 3 Nephites, or heard stories about them?
  
  
• If polygamy was made legal in the United States, do you think that the LDS church would have another "revelation" and allow it for their members again?
  
  
  
• 
  Have you been to r/exmormon?
  
  

It's just under $14 on amazon.

I would suggest giving a bit more time since many of us on here have limited hours in the day to read.

By His Own Hand Upon Papyrus: A New Look at the Joseph Smith Papyri by Charles M. Larson

Quick read, great full color foldout photos of the papyri (best available anywhere, I believe).

No Man Knows My History by Fawn Brodie

https://www.amazon.com/His-Own-Hand-Upon-Papyrus/dp/0962096326

https://www.amazon.com/No-Man-Knows-My-History/dp/0679730540

This is a particular difficulty in Mormon history--for a long time anything put in print seemed to have an extreme bias one way or another. In recent years there seems to be a greater effort in Mormon Studies in adhering to better historical standards that I think result in better, more accurate, and less biased narratives. Personally, I don't think I'd use Krakauer as a source because he's a good writer, but not a historian.

I think better sources to use would be:

Richard Bushman's Rough Stone Rolling (2005). Bushman was a history professor at Columbia University and is a Mormon. His bio of Smith will likely be considered the "standard" bio for years to come. It's a bit longish, but I think it's very readable regardless if you are Mormon or not.

Robert V. Remini's Joseph Smith (2002) is a quick read--a lot shorter than Bushman and a good overview. Remini was a history professor at the University of Illinois and is not a Mormon. He's best known for his massive biography on Andrew Jackson, a contemporary of Smith.

Fawn M. Brodie's No Man Knows My History (1945) is old, but is still often referenced. Brodie was a history professor at UCLA. She was raised Mormon, but was later excommunicated. Her book is a psychobiography which is a historical approach that has largely fallen out of fashion these days.

I'd definitely recommend looking at josephsmithpapers.org. It is an on-going publication project that is putting digital images and transcriptions of all of Joseph Smith's personal papers as well as the papers produced by his clerks under his direction. You'll find letters, revelations, early editions of the Book of Mormon, and all sorts of stuff! I'd take a look at Smith's own personal history written in 1832, and his history begun in 1838 and continued over the years even after his death and finally finished in 1856. (For more info on these specific documents, be sure to read the text under "Historical Introduction" in the bottom half of the pages.)

Another good narrative on that site is the book written by Smith's mother, Lucy Mack Smith. You can find the published 1853 version here. (Skip most of the early stuff--she spends a lot of pages talking about her own parents and childhood. While interesting, it's probably not pertinent for your paper.)

The site also has a good overview of Joseph Smith's life and his papers written by Richard Bushman and Dean Jessee too.

There are a lot of academic journals out there too that will have articles about various aspects of Joseph Smith's life or of his contemporaries (in no particular order): BYU Studies, Journal of Mormon History, John Whitmer Historical Association Journal, Mormon Historical Studies. You can find articles in BYU's Studies in Mormon History database and I bet JSTOR or other places probably have some of them.

If you need help finding info on a specific aspect on Smith, feel free to send me a message and I'll try to help best I can.

While I don't consider it to be a cult, the history of Mormonism is extremely interesting, as is the life of it's founder, Joseph Smith.

A good book written by a member of the church is called "Rough Stone Rolling." Another great one by a non mormon is called "No Man Knows My History"

I thought you were making some shit up but you are correct:

From Moroni and the Swastika Book Review

"Chapter Five focuses on how Mormons used their strong belief in genealogy, which they used to provide sacred saving proxy ordinances for deceased family members, to ingratiate themselves with the Nazis, who had a strong belief in genealogy, which they used to determine an individual’s racial purity and whether or not they would lose civil rights or even be imprisoned. Chapter Six is called “Mormon Basketball Diplomacy in Hitler’s Reich”. It covers the German hosted 1936 Olympic games and gives details on how Mormon missionaries were the early coaches and trainers for the German Olympic basketball team. "

Photo

Buy the book

"The rise of the Hitler movement in Germany caused a great many to fear that religious activity and missionary work would meet with disastrous opposition. Since the National Socialist party have come to power, a few sects have been prohibited or restricted, but activities in the 'Mormon' church have been carried on about the same as before. As a matter of fact, a number of interesting parallels can be seen between the church and some of the ideas and policies of the National Socialists."

So began the fawning Deseret News op-ed dated Dec 9, 1933. That article can now be viewed here:
https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=x5dOAAAAIBAJ&sjid=0LUDAAAAIBAJ&pg=2672%2C4026967

And what were those parallels between Mormonism and Hitlerism? "Fast Sunday" and the "Word of Wisdom". American Mormons could see Mormon theology fulfilled in Hitler's government policies. Clearly, the line separating church and state was not so clear at that time in Mormon eyes.

But wait... there's more: Blood purity. Just as the Mormons of the 1930s were particularly careful that not a single drop of Negro blood gets access to the Melchizedek Priesthood, so were the Nazis very careful that not a single drop of Jewish blood gets into their veins. So the Nazis were quite pleased to know that Mormons can be extremely good at looking into German genealogy charts.

"Many of those who felt the greatest anxiety about being able to carry on their religious activities are finding that at least one branch of their church work has received its greatest boon since Germany’s adoption of Hitlerism. It was always difficult for Genealogical workers to get into the archives of the recognized church to trace back family records. When the pastor learned of the intention access to the records was often denied. Now, due to the importance given to the racial question, and the almost necessity of proving that one’s grandmother was not a Jewess, the old record books have been dusted off and stand ready and waiting for use. No questions are asked. In fact, some of the Saints instead of being refused by the pastors now have received letters of encouragement complimenting them for their patriotism.

All genealogical workers who are interested in tracing back family history in Germany should take advantage of the present unusual opportunity."

So did the Mormon church take advantage? I think an entire book was written to answer that question.

https://www.amazon.com/Moroni-Swastika-Mormons-Nazi-Germany/dp/0806146680

It takes a socialist to recognize a fellow socialist. Mormonism was born out of Protestantism but nurtured with Joseph Smith and Brigham Young's utopian socialist ideals. In the 1930s, these ideals were still pretty much alive. At that time, the US government under Franklin Delano Roosevelt had embarked on the most ambitious socialist expansion of government, and it had all the appearance of success. FDR and Hitler's Nazi Germany were still allies. The Mormon Church didn't see anything wrong with socialism and being friends with fellow socialists. Why would it when the whole idea was such a rousing success?

This is a good book:

https://www.amazon.com/Mystical-Theology-Eastern-Church/dp/0913836311

If you're serious about our atheism, please read The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church Paperback by Vladimir Lossky.

https://www.amazon.com/Mystical-Theology-Eastern-Church/dp/0913836311

If you want to find out whether God exists, you have to seek God. Seek and you shall find. If God is real, you will find Him. If not, you will have simply wasted your time, which will be meaningless anyway since we are all going to die someday.

I recommend reading Timothy Ware's The Orthodox Way.

I'd recommend The Orthodox Way by Metropolitan Kallistos. It's a good, basic overview of Christian theology such as the nature of the Trinity, the Fall, the Sacraments, etc.

That's fair. I can't say I believe in the Christianity I was raised in either. I was raised in a more fundamentalist atmosphere and have become more of an academic Christian.

I'm not sure if I think morality is relative, but I am pretty sure our understanding of it is relative. Maybe there is some morality that exists outside of context, but once we start applying it wholesale everything gets hazier. Nothing can be applied wholesale; we can only understand things in context because we only exist in context. But this may be my love for postmodern philosophy talking.

If you are still interested in studying the Bible, I would encourage looking at modern academic commentaries/articles (getting suggestions from a professor or pastor that you trust might be helpful) as well as exploring other more foreign Christian theologies, such as Eastern Orthodoxy. Some places to start might be a basic book on exegesis such as The Bible Doesn't Have to Be Hard to Read and good article on the JEDP theory. On the subject of Eastern Orthodoxy, some good accessible books are The Orthodox Way and For the Life of the World.

If you're interested, The Orthodox Way is a good introduction to the eastern Christian perspective of God.

There's a book by Ted Campbell called Methodist Doctrine which is really just a simple intro to the Christian faith.

Orthodox Way is really good too. Maybe intermediate level reading, but good nonetheless.

I got these:

The Orthodox Church by Kallistos Ware

The Orthodox Way by Kallistos Ware

The Mountain of Silence by Kyriacos C. Markides

The Sayings of the Desert Fathers

I'm still reading them but I hear that this selection will cover a lot of bases. Check eBay too, they can found pretty cheap.

>I really want to believe, but I can't.

Read: The Orthodox Way

It is a condensed version of the theology of the Church Fathers. Orthodox theology is what every Christian no matter what denomination should consistently believe. Revisit the church issue afterwards.

I am so sorry that this is happening to you. You are right to be concerned - this could very easily tear your family apart. I have seen it happen firsthand when someone in my family was recruited into the Dubs then became totally alienated from her non-Dub husband. You could very easily end up in a situation where both your wife and your child are brainwashed into thinking you are a bad influence and that only other Dubs are worth spending time with. You definitely do not want to be complacent about this. The JWs are not "just another religion". It is a very dangerous and nasty cult.

My advice would be to immediately start "studying" the JWs yourself - but NOT with their own material. JWs don't know their own history very well at all, but you can find a lot of eye opening stuff using outside materials like http://www.jwfacts.com

Here are the three books that I would strongly recommend you purchase and start reading right away:

The Reluctant Apostate: Leaving the Jehovah's Witnesses (a very long and well-researched explanation of the JWs - if you can only read one of these books, I would make it this one)

Combating Cult Mind Control (not focused on just the JWs, but a general book about how cults operate and how to try to work with someone to get them out)

Crisis of Conscience (an older book written by one of the "Governing Body" members that ended up leaving the religion)

If you read those books, you will learn a LOT about how the JWs operate and have ample proof that this is not a legitimate religion. However, you can't confront her directly with this info. She has been programmed by the cult to reject any direct attack on the religion.
However, as you read them, you will probably think of some questions that you'll have for your wife about the Dubs. Start asking her questions NOT in an aggressive way but just in a "curious" sort of way. For example, "What do you make of [this thing]? What is the JW explanation for that?"

When people are being brainwashed, you can't confront them directly about it. That just makes them dig their heels in. You have to slowly dismantle the belief system by asking them questions and forcing them to realize for themselves that the cult doesn't have a good answer for it.

I also recommend trying your best to find excuses to spend time away from home on meeting days to keep her away from the dubs as much as possible. Time spent away from the indoctrination sessions can often help people realize on their own that it is bullshit.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0999499211/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1520391160&sr=8-1&pi=CB192198896_AA75_QL70&keywords=crisis+of+conscience

I was in a similar situation as you. I won't try to guess your current views on the Watchtower organization, but let me share my experience.

For two years I was disfellowshipped, but still believed it was The Truth. We have a special acronym for this over at r/exjw - POMI (Physically Out, Mentally In). It is not a good situation. You try to lead a normal life, but deep down you feel deeply guilty and unworthy, convinced that, when Armageddon comes, God will personally destroy you for turning your back on Him. It's virtually impossible to do anything meaningful with your life when you live with this burden.

Fortunately, after 2 years I gave myself permission to research my faith.... actual research. I read Crisis of Conscience. I visited JW Facts. I soon realized that, it wasn't all "apostate lies" like I had been warned. Rather, I had been lied to by the Governing Body my entire life. I really can't put into words how joyful it is to be set free from Watchtower guilt.

My point is this: There is life after Watchtower. And it's more rewarding and satisfying than I could have ever imagined.

Read this. It will tell you all you need to know

Right, sorry, I read a book a while ago:
http://www.amazon.com/Under-Banner-Heaven-Story-Violent/dp/1400032806 , didn't remember the name right.

https://www.amazon.com/Under-Banner-Heaven-Story-Violent/dp/1400032806

>Jon Krakauer’s literary reputation rests on insightful chronicles of lives conducted at the outer limits. He now shifts his focus from extremes of physical adventure to extremes of religious belief within our own borders, taking readers inside isolated American communities where some 40,000 Mormon Fundamentalists still practice polygamy. Defying both civil authorities and the Mormon establishment in Salt Lake City, the renegade leaders of these Taliban-like theocracies are zealots who answer only to God.

>At the core of Krakauer’s book are brothers Ron and Dan Lafferty, who insist they received a commandment from God to kill a blameless woman and her baby girl. Beginning with a meticulously researched account of this appalling double murder, Krakauer constructs a multi-layered, bone-chilling narrative of messianic delusion, polygamy, savage violence, and unyielding faith. Along the way he uncovers a shadowy offshoot of America’s fastest growing religion, and raises provocative questions about the nature of religious belief.

Here ya go: http://www.amazon.com/Under-Banner-Heaven-Story-Violent/dp/1400032806/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1397220648&sr=8-1&keywords=under+the+banner+of+heaven

Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith

http://www.amazon.com/Under-Banner-Heaven-Story-Violent/dp/1400032806/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1317762966&sr=8-1

>Also...this has nothing to do with religious cults

lol, good one! this is 100% religious based, no matter what that douchebag guy says.

>Then again, I'm not predisposed to link Mormons with brutal religious cults.

may I offer some light reading to you then?

http://www.amazon.com/Under-Banner-Heaven-Story-Violent/dp/1400032806?ie=UTF8&keywords=under%20the%20banner%20of%20heaven&qid=1464441817&ref_=sr_1_1&sr=8-1

Dude was sly: He went to Missouri to evade legal action on the part of a wealthy man that he convinced of the existence of a motherlode of precious metals which Smith foresaw using a "seeing stone." Utah is the only state to declare war on the Union. One of the more interesting of Smith's abilities was that to commune with god and dictate the Doctrines and Covenants (now a power only granted to president of LDS and rarely used at that). Polygamy was an addition via the D&C's revealed to Smith after falling in love with a woman outside of his marriage.

Source: Trying to be as accurate as I can by memory from reading Under the Banner of Heaven

> but if that same extremist group simply replaced religion with nationalism they'd be killing immigrants and then people are still dead.

But they would stop killing homosexuals, cutting off women's clitorises, and many more atrocities that are specifically religious in nature.

Without religion, the world would become more peaceful and less atrocities would be committed.

I fully agree that plenty of nationalistic groups would still commit atrocities, but it would be to a much lesser extent. Nationalistic groups are also much easier to displace than religion that pervades all aspects of certain societies.

I'm not talking about the books specifically, I'm talking about what people do in the book's name. Sometimes that is just a cover for corrupt leaders to seize control; corruption and violence have always been part of our society and will always be a part of it.

Leaders like Stalin and Hitler will always exist somewhere in the world, no one's debating that.

It's ridiculous though to then ignore genuine examples every day of physical and mental violence committed because of religion, especially on a smaller scale than the leaders of a country using it to seize power.

My family has an FLDS background and I've seen firsthand some of the atrocities

Many of the FLDS leaders and leaders of other religions, especially on a local level, do these things because of their religion and because they genuinely believe it is God's will, not because they're trying to seize more economic power. This is undeniable, and that sort of violence simply wouldn't exist without religion.

This is a great book that dives into the FLDS culture and the motivations that lead to murder and the enslavement of women — a perfect example of what I'm talking about as well as just a really great book in general.

Under the Banner of Heaven disagrees.

I've had to read quite a few books about religious cults in particular as part of a study a while back. Some that were helpful to me (obviously I don't know what your study is supposed to be) then:

Under the banner of heaven by Jon Krakauer

Raven: the untold story of Reverend Jim Jones and his people by Tim Reiterman

Jesus Freaks: A true story of murder and madness on the evangelical edge by Don Lattin

Start with Under the Banner of Heaven, /r/SaltLakeCity, and then slowly walk back your reticence. Utah is great, has quirks but is awesome. Seriously though, your job is relating and selling to Utahns? EDIT: spelling

Mormonism is fascinating. A bit terrifying at times (this is an excellent read), but a really fascinating system of beliefs.

Still all bullshit but it's fun to investigate sometimes.

If you really want to read a book about Mormonism that will drive you to put your head through a wall (Aside from the Book of Mormon itself) head to the library and grab a copy of Under the Banner of Heaven.

I read that book mostly out of curiosity and afterwards I couldn't even understand how I could be so infuriated with a group of people for their lack of objective thinking.

Anyways, it's a fascinating and relatively concise read that includes the history and founding of the LDS church.

But polygamy is very much alive out west. Polygamists pretty much take over or establish their own towns where they control literally everything (all of the local business, government, etc.) and as such, the practice can't be stopped. Look into Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven to see what I'm talking about.

The Mormon church has always been the most violent (quasi) Christian sect and their history is dominated by violence between the church and locals or the federal government. Brigham Young only officially rid the church of polygamy under the threat of force from the government. The president at the time (forget which one exactly) threatened to send the army to invade the Utah territory if polygamy wasn't ended. Wasn't exactly a willing forfeiture from the Mormons. A practice, no doubt, started because their so-called prophet Joseph Smith couldn't keep it in his pants when living in a boarding house.

Mormons do a lot of the same practices that conservative Muslims do. Instead of hijabs/burqas, it's ankle-length dresses and turtlenecks with that weird magic underwear. Polygamy is/was a major practice by both religions as well.

I am also a research scientist, so I like reading non-fiction that has nothing to do with Klenow fragments or PCR. Examples are The Devil in the White City by Eric Larson, which is about both the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago and a serial killer; or Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer, which is about how truly bizarre Mormons are. Both authors have other excellent books, as well.

Here is the mobile version of your link

Perhaps give him a copy of Under the Banner of Heaven and discuss it with him afterward? Among other things, it's a biography of the hustler that founded the religion. The basis of the religion is completely absurd: golden tablets and magic spectacles my ass.

Joseph did posses a stone that he believed helped him see things which were hidden. His translation was initially through the Urim and Thummim, and as he learned to use that easier, he used his stone, and at some point probably no stone at all.


I don't have sources handy, so hopefully someone else will post some. A great book with tons of sourced info is Rough Stone Rolling. Fantastic book.

It's interesting to hear NOMs or other apologists explain this. Richard Bushman acknowledges this, but somehow passes it off like it would be expected of a boy from back then.

After all, the world was very different back then. He was a good boy from the country. /s

> Can you think of any parts of the Smith narrative that don't fit with the sex-and-power idea, outside of trivialities?

Have you ever read anything about Joseph Smith from a sympathetic perspective? I don't mean apologist literature. I mean work that is actually trying to understand Joseph Smith, rather than to support a preexisting thesis. Things like Rough Stone Rolling, In Heaven as it is on Earth, American Crucifixion, Mormonism: The Story of a New Religious Tradition, Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, etc. When the events of Joseph Smith's life are put into their full, rich historical context, it quickly becomes apparent that J.S.'s motivations were complex and variegated. Certainly sex and power played a role, but so did sincere, intense religious belief, a desire to unite and redeem his family, and a firm conviction that God was working through him. For instance, the money digging events can only be understood when put into the context of early 19th century folk religion, as Quinn does in Early Mormonism. This is not an avaricious Joseph Smith, but someone who is trying to help lift his family out of poverty using methods of folk religion that were ubiquitous in the region.

It seems to me that you are having a bit of a crisis of faith /u/villaged . I'm sorry it took me so long to figure that out about you.

Joseph Smith was a guy that was far from perfect. Changing the story of the First Vision is only the tip of the iceberg. If you'd like to learn more about the man the founded Mormonism I would recomend stopping in at Deseret Book and picking up Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling by Richard L. Bushman. This is a book that is great for folks that are not sure about Mormonism and don't want to read any "anti-Mormon" literature. If you'd like to learn more after that you can wander into the Utah Lighthouse Ministry and speak with the awesome folks there.

Another wonderful resource for folks that have questions is New Order Mormon. The moderators of the board there work very hard to keep the discussion open and to help folks get honest and well researched answers to their questions.

As for me personally, I left Mormonism almost 10 years ago because I couldn't stay in a church that was (in my opinion after doing my own research) lying to me about its founding. I don't believe that Joseph Smith had a vision of God and Jesus, and I think he was a con man that started a religion. I think that Brigham Young was a tyrant that forced people to do his will and he put them in situations where they had no choice but to follow his commands.

That being said, I love Mormons. Most of my family is Mormon and many of my closest friends are Mormon. I guess this is why I feel like I need to defend incorrect statements about Mormons. I'm not trying to convert or deconvert anyone, I just want the truth out there.

If you have other questions that you'd like to discuss with me please feel free to message me. Or you can find me on NOM or some of the other boards I mentioned above. I hope you are able to find peace.

Namaste

Recovering Agency: Lifting the Veil of Mormon Mind Control

I don't have experience with any. This is why your thread interested me. I need a better therapist. Stopped going to the last one after I eventually realized she wasn't able to even recognize the problems Mormonism caused me let alone help me recover from them.

These are books I have seen mentioned different places, but I haven't taken the time yet to delve into any of them. I often get caught up with choices and procrastinate making a move forward.

Recovering Agency: Lifting the Veil of Mormon Mind Control

When I Say No, I Feel Guilty

The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem

Combating Cult Mind Control

Hell yes they did this to you, and hell yes you should feel angry! Growing up as female IS HORRIBLE. I've been there. I know. A book that has really helped me undo the cultish mindset and work through my anger is called Recovering Agency:Lifting the Veil of Mormon Mind Control.

Yes, I know the title is cheesy, and the cover art is worse, but this book really helped me deconstruct the damage that was done and kind of cognitively work through it like a therapy session. It really helped me feel free and to release the inner turmoil by working through my anger and frustrations.

http://www.amazon.com/Recovering-Agency-Lifting-Mormon-Control/dp/1489595937/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1416287286&sr=8-1-fkmr1&keywords=undoing+mormon+mind+control

The book Recovering Agency could be helpful for you and your friend to read, it would be from an outside perspective of a different church which your friend may be more willing to listen to. It's really good, as is using logic and reason. http://www.amazon.com/Recovering-Agency-Lifting-Mormon-Control/dp/1489595937

The other book is The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine one of America's Founding Fathers. you can get it free online or for not much on amazon, it is a very excellent book and a good read.

http://amzn.com/1489595937

also, cesletter.com

https://www.amazon.com/Studies-Book-Mormon-B-Roberts/dp/1560850272/ref=pd_sim_14_3?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=F9YXCS1912MC6H5QDGF9

> Alright then, I'll make the same suggestion to you that I made to another user; read Nicholas L. Syrett's study, "American Child Bride: A History of Minors and Marriage in the United States." Syrett is a professor of women, gender and sexuality studies and this particular work makes it quite clear that child marriage was an accepted practice that wasn't challenged until the mid-late 18th 19th century. In fact, the biggest outcry wasn't until 1894, when Cassius Marcellus Clay married a 15 year old girl at the ripe old age of 84, I believe. This marriage made national news.

The historian says with zero citations and zero evidence for his claim. This after having just caught lying about the laws of 19th century Nauvoo claiming that "english common law of marriage at 10 years old when effect" when in fact laws prohibited minors below the age of 17 marrying at all without parental consent.

All while you ignored citation after citation and argument after argument that you just whole heartedly failed to address.

You claim that child marriages were not seen as immoral or controversial until suddenly out of the blue and for no reason at all in 1894 one man decided to marry a 15 year old and everyone decided to get upset about it. Doesn't the fact that in 1894 a big famous controvrersial case about marrying underage girls provide evidence for the fact that well before that point it was controversial? It's like saying that because in 2017 people became outraged at Kevin Spacey assaulting underage boys it wasn't controversial until 2017. And that is what i'm talking about when I talk about mental gymanstics.

>Also, if you're going to quote Helen Marr Kimball, at least provide the sentence immediately before the quote. " I remember how I felt, but which would be a difficult matter to describe--the various thoughts, fears and temptations that flashed through my mind when the principle was first introduced to me by my father [Heber C. Kimball], who one morning in the summer of 1843, without any preliminaries, asked me if I would believe him if he told me that it was right for married men to take other wives, can be better imagined than told." And then your quote begins immediately. After that she writes about how her father taught her about plural marriage and why it was being established. Absolutely no mention of child marriage. Nice try, though.

Nice try? That's all you have to say when the founder of your religion was forcing 14 year old girls into practices they called "heinous crimes" "improper" and "unnatural". Are you listening to yourself? You're excusing the supposed prophet of the almighty God who had access to such eternal wisdom as "tea is bad for you" and "don't drink coffee" but was simply following the culture of his day in having sex with 14 year old girls. Do you think that having sex with 14 year olds is right or wrong? If you think it's wrong then why even if it was culturally acceptable at the time would excuse a supposed prophet of God doing it? Maybe for the same reason that he was moot on the cultural practice of slavery? Which God didn't bother to imform anyone was a disgusting and immoral practice?

As for your claims let's take a look at the Nauvoo City Council ordinance of 1842 which states:

>“All male persons over the age of seventeen years, and females over the age of fourteen years, may contract and be joined in marriage, provided, in all cases where either party is a minor, the consent of parents or guardians be first had.” Brian C. Hales, Joseph Smith’s Polygamy

What's mind boggling is that a professed objective historian could claim that there were no laws about marriage age's up until the early 1900's and miss that there were laws in Nauvoo itself at the time Joseph Smith was having sex with 14 year old girls in the 1840's. If that doesn't completly discredit your crediblity I don't know what does.

In additon we have here clearly stating that 14 year old girls could not marry without permission from their parents. If it's true as you say that marrying a 14 year old was seen as completly normal and unnoteworthy why then would he need the permission of the girls parents?

Even Brian Hales. A Mormon scholar admits that these marriages were at least "eybrow raising".

>Matrimonies for females who were fourteen years of age were eyebrow-raising but not scandalous in the 1840s.

http://josephsmithspolygamy.org/audio/sealings-to-young-brides/

Further revealing your "objectivity" "bias" and "well researched" historical claims.

And finally as long as we're quoting Helen Marr Kimball let's see what she said about her mothers concerns about her marrying Joseph Smith at such a young age.

>‘If you will take this step, it will ensure your eternal salvation & exaltation and that of your father’s household & all of your kindred.[‘] This promise was so great that I willingly gave myself to purchase so glorious a reward. None but God & his angels could see my mother’s bleeding heart-when Joseph asked her if she was willing...She had witnessed the sufferings of others, who were older & who better understood the step they were taking, & to see her child, who had scarcely seen her fifteenth summer, following in the same thorny path, in her mind she saw the misery which was as sure to come...

https://www.amazon.com/Sacred-Loneliness-Plural-Wives-Joseph/dp/156085085X


What's clear here is your "objectivity" and desire for "historical accuracy" are disineguous misdirections from your clear bias and willingness to mislead others with false at worst and poorly researched at best information. When "by their fruits you will know them" is somehow not applied when the fruits of what you want to believe are bad. So if we're "not getting anywhere" it's because of your refusal to engage in open and honest discussio and instead attempt to mislead, misdirect and engage in all around disingeuous behavior and then refuse to acknowledge any of it on his way out. What's clear is that you're as brainwashed as Joseph Smiths' victims and just as willing to do whatever it takes to excuse his behavior to continue to justify your beliefs.

>That was my only or primary point with that example: that the rule, "he who asserts must prove" is only a very general rule of thumb, and that we are allowed to make presumptions as long as we have some independent grounds for those. If I've established that much - and you seem to have acceded on that - then that point is made. That only leaves one other question.

I've never pretended the claim about Joseph having sex with HMK was anything other than a presumption, or that you weren't allowed to make such a presumption. But even if you consider it a justified or logical presumption, it's still a presumption, and to present it as anything other than that is disingenuous. That's the only thing I've ever raised a question about; the surety with which people present their opinion on the subject.

If people simply said "we presume Joseph had sex with HMK", that would be great. But that's still far different than saying "Joseph had sex with HKM".

I don't mean to be condescending, but it really seems like you haven't done your homework on polygamy. At the very least, if you haven't read "In Sacred Loneliness" and "The Persistence of Polygamy", I highly recommend taking the time to do so, especially if you're going to be making claims based on historical context and what should be considered "unusual" or not for Joseph Smith's polygamy. If you don't have time for "In Sacred Loneliness", the Compton's article here is a decent summary:

A Trajectory of Plurality: An Overview of Joseph Smith's Thirty-three Plural Wives

But if we both agree that the actual evidence is ambiguous, and that claiming Joseph had sex with HMK is a presumption and inference, that's all I've ever been saying, so we don't need to belabor a point we agree on.

Magic World View is a great book, but the first half -- the section that traces the development of folk magic in the West -- is so dense and hard to get through that I usually suggest it after some more accessible material. But Quinn's insights into magical thinking, folk practices, and superstitious traditions in 19th century America and among Mormonism's founders are fascinating.

Oh certainly he was very controversial, as was polygamy, but the age of the bride wouldn't have been at all in my understanding, and certainly doesn't constitute pedophelia. My great grandmother was around the same age when she was married.

Reread over my post in the other thread and I think you'll understand my point. I'm not supporting pedophelia or polygamy, I simply think it's unreasonable to lampoon Joseph Smith as a pedophile for having a 14 year old bride. Though I have no moral issue personally with either (a 14 year old bride that is, not pedophelia), they do both seem like really bad ideas. And of course a 14 year old in our culture today is rarely (if ever) prepared to make that kind of commitment.

Scharlatan, mad genius, or divine seer, he led a fantastically interesting life no matter how you judge him. Early Mormonism and the magic world view is a terribly interesting book if you're interested.

http://www.amazon.com/Early-Mormonism-Magic-World-View/dp/1560850892

Thank you for this reply. I forgot about that Article of Faith, that's very useful in instances like this. Mormons certainly do have an interesting history. I was so shocked when I learned about all the unpleasantries about church history (with the scrying, the Jupiter Talisman, etc). It definitely helped drive me away form that religion, because it wasn't what I though it was. But actually, now that I'm more into "the occult" side of things, that bitterness that I felt about the church has worn off and it's become more of a fascination.

On a related note, I've been wanting to get this book, Early Mormonism and the Magick World View. Have you read this, by chance? If so, what did you think about it?

2 is answered really well in An Insider's View. Essentially, JS knew the bible incredibly well.

For a TBM, he does a pretty good job staying neutral, but yes, he has his biases.

You might prefer his:

https://www.amazon.com/Insiders-View-Mormon-Origins/dp/1560851570

Grant Palmer's book is fantastic.

Grant Palmer's An Insider's View of Mormon Origins has a nice high-level roundup of the prevailing issues in the 1800s North American protestant zeitgeist that wound up in the BoM, too.

I agree with many of the comments here, I think a few soundbites here and there aren't going to do much unless you have a more solid understanding. I would strongly recommend this book
so you can really discuss the issues from a knowledgable standpoint. Besides, maybe you will find out the Mormon church is really true and he will baptize you. Haha.

>Much longer issue here, and some of the research is so new that it is only a few years old. In summary though, the hypocephali, the lion-couch scene, and the sacrifice/altar scene were all used by ancient Egyptians as a "and/also" metaphor. It was one story used to tell another. Or in other words, the author got to create stories analogous to commonly known stories. It's hard to find a modern day equivalent, it's so foreign to our way of thinking. Since the original authors of these died, we can never know what the author intended by his or her use of these scenes.
>
>Also, to state the attached text to the scrolls were the Book of Abraham is incorrect reasoning. It was common practice to attach vignettes to entirely different texts. We assume "if they're adjacent, they match". This is not the case with Egyptians. Further underscored by the idea that Facsimiles 1 and 3 are not even referenced in the adjacent extant scrolls we do have.

Everyone watching, this is that self delusion in action. Your explanation is so ridiculous that it doesn't even warrant a response. Pick up a copy of "By His own Hand Upon Payprus." Your excuse is that basically the symbols we see don't actually mean what we think they mean, even though we can read them. I have a book full of pictures my dad bought at Deseret Book that has the little hieroglyphic on the margins, and a very lengthy "translation." We have the book the "translators" used to code what each symbol supposedly meant. The very fact the church locks these documents up and doesn't talk about them is all the proof one should need. Even Hugh Nibley's assistant who was assigned to review left the church.

It does disprove it, and non-peer reviewed ramblings of paid apologists can't cover up the obvious truth.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1560851570/ref=kinw_rke_tl_1

As far as the Kinderhook plates go, why are you trying to slander the man who created the plates? That was the tactic the leaders of the church took BEFORE we found them, and scientifically proved that they were not ancient, and were in fact created by the very process described by the guy who waited 36 years to announce it. A more pertinent question would be why did every Prophet, Seer, and Revelator defend Joseph Smith's claim that he could translate the plates up until we actually found them and science vindicated the farmer?

The people who planted the plates weren't the ones that claimed he translated them. William Clayton, Joseph's trusted scribe who recorded all sorts of very important revelations and church documents was the one who claimed that. And you expect me to believe that out of nowhere he just noted some random note about the Kinderhook plates that he made up and never mentioned again?

Obviously the conspirators were hoping that eventually Brigham would have tried to translate them. It doesn't matter why they waited so long, we know that they created them, and the church has already admitted that. But I guess that footnote in History of the Church is still around so you may have not understood the latest apologetic argument.

So rather than resorting to lying and slander to defend the church, I'd suggest you start being more honest in your research.

Maybe the author of this book:

https://www.amazon.com/Joseph-Smith-Egyptian-Papyri-Complete/dp/1560852321

Here's some Wiki about him:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_K._Ritner

If I remember correctly Ritner had quite the back and forth on Patheos with a BYU professor or two.

If you're interested in the subject Jon Krakauer - Under the Banner of Heaven, contains a narrative history of the beginning of the Mormon Church and their westward migration to the Midwest and then to Utah. It covers other subjects too in a meandering back and forth, but it makes for very interesting reading.

I keep seeing this thing where people want "the government" to take care of more and more stuff for people. Can we instead say "the taxpayers should pay for this, including paying for anyone that wants to have huge families and contribute nothing at all to the rest of their community". See https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FC1R2S/ for a good take on how some very out-there crazy communities essentially live off of the rest of the taxpayers by using whatever they can to get money.

I mean sure, it'd be nice. I'm all for revising the tax code. But how many immigrants are you willing to absorb, how many other people are you willing to pay for, and how high are you willing to see your tax rate go? The money has to come from somewhere, and the people you take the money from, they tend to get pissed off if you just hand it out to people they don't think contribute very much. That causes a lot of friction, and tends to attract a lot of people who just see free money and services, so there's no need for them to stay and fight or stay and try to improve the place where they're at?

via: http://www.amazon.com/Under-Banner-Heaven-Violent-ebook/dp/B000FC1R2S

I haven't read it, but this might be helpful. It just came out 3 weeks ago.
https://www.amazon.com/Mormon-Hierarchy-Wealth-Corporate-Power/dp/1560852356

https://www.amazon.com/Mormon-Hierarchy-Wealth-Corporate-Power/dp/1560852356

Only way we could ever have incontrovertible proof is if we had Joseph Smith sign an affidavit not under duress that he made it up. We don't have that but we have a lot of evidence of fraud. My first shelf item was hearing that the Joseph Smith papyri that was used to write the Book of Abraham were discovered. I had no idea. I learned that they were translated as something very different. I decided to research the topic with an open mind from an academic unbiased POV. I used this book: https://www.amazon.com/Joseph-Smith-Egyptian-Papyri-Complete/dp/1560852321/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=joseph+smith+egyptian+papyri+ritner&qid=1555347679&s=gateway&sr=8-1-spell. I read the Church's current explanations on the topic. In the end, I couldn't arrive at any conclusion other than Joseph Smith made it up. Soon after I learned about the Kinderhook Plates. More proof that Joseph Smith could make up something. I learned about Joseph Smith admitting to using a seer stone to commit fraud by making people believe he could use the stone to find buried treasure. People would pay him to find treasure but he never did. He was convicted for that fraud. He used the exact same stone to dictate the BoM. There is proof that it was in Joseph Smith's character to commit fraud. There is proof that Joseph Smith willingly lied and got others to lie for him as leader of the Church (lots of this evidence). There is proof that his works (Book of Abraham and Kinderhook Plates) are fraudulent. There is a lot more also. PM me if interested and I will share some more of my notes. mormonthink.com is a great resource as well.

160 years ago, Mormons attacked, captured, and murdered at point-blank range an estimated 120 innocent pioneers traveling from Arkansas to California. Among the killed in the Mountain Meadows Massacre were 50 children.

From Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven:
> Out of the entire Fancher wagon train, only seventeen lives were spared — all of them children no more than five years old, deemed too young to remember enough to bear witness against the [Mormons].
> Those children not killed were taken to Mormon homes to be raised as Latter-day Saints; some were placed in households of the very men who had murdered their parents and siblings. In 1859 an agent of the federal government managed to find all seventeen survivors and return them to their Arkansas kin, but before handing the kids over, their Mormon keepers had the audacity to demand thousands of dollars in payment for feeding and schooling the youngsters while they were in the [Mormons'] care.

The Mormons had convinced a contingent of Southern Paiute Indian warriors to accompany them on the raid, painting their own white faces dark to look like their Paiute accomplices in an attempt to avoid blame. From Krakauer:

> The Mormon militiamen, [Mormon military leader John D.] Lee reported, "piled the dead bodies up in heaps, in little gullies, and threw dirt over them. The bodies were only lightly covered, for the ground was hard, and the brethren did not have sufficient tools to dig with." Within days, wolves and other scavengers had scattered their remains across the meadow.
> Upon completion of this halfhearted, hastily undertaken burial, according to Lee, the [Mormons] gathered in a circle at the site of the mass murder to offer "thanks to God for delivering our enemies into our hands." Then the overseers of the massacre reiterated "the necessity of always saying the Indians did it alone, and that the Mormons had nothing to do with it...It was voted unanimously that any man who should divulge the secret, or tell who was present, or do anything that would lead to a discovery of the truth, should suffer death."

Further reading:
https://www.britannica.com/event/Mountain-Meadows-massacre
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Meadows_massacre
https://www.amazon.com/Under-Banner-Heaven-Story-Violent/dp/1400032806
https://www.amazon.com/Mountain-Meadows-Massacre-Juanita-Brooks/dp/0806123184

The site has a long list of references. http://www.wivesofjosephsmith.org/References.html

It may look like a blog but it seems to be sourced well. Seems like the story I linked was drawn from this book. If you are really interested, you should see if your library has a copy

D. Michal Quinn literally wrote a book called Early Mormonism and the Magical World View.

https://www.amazon.com/Early-Mormonism-Magic-World-View/dp/1560850892/ref=nodl_

And, he has done interviews and podcasts explaining what he researched. Try Mormon Discussion, or Mormon Stories. There are plenty of exmo podcasts that “touch that topic”, and have a context to frame it in so the discussion is interesting and relevant. Not just a bunch of bro’s who don’t have a clue what they are talking about who end up on unrelated tangents as often as they are on topic.

it must be a spin off of the LDS church because it was spurred by a "revelation" to the husband. If you want to check out more fun ways that mormons act out on their "revelations, check out Under the Banner of Heaven by John Krakauer. Mysterious ways, indeed.

https://www.amazon.com/Becoming-Orthodox-Journey-Ancient-Christian/dp/1936270005

https://www.amazon.com/Mystical-Theology-Eastern-Church/dp/0913836311/ref=sr_1_8?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1522778316&sr=1-8&keywords=orthodox+eastern

Essentially the Orthodox don't believe that we can know for sure why and how we are saved, unlike the Catholics and Protestants. The Orthodox don't claim that certain actions are guaranteed to send us to hell, nor even that hell involves eternal fire. They emphasize more of an approach of constant prayer and empathy towards fellow man, as the best way to evangelize.

Crisis of Conscience https://www.amazon.com/dp/0999499211/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_9WHzCbMPB3A85

He will love this book, it's a must have for every JW.

I think you're perceiving anger because I'm saying something negative about the organization, and it's making you feel defensive and angry, so you're projecting how you feel onto my words.

You're misinformed about every claim you made. If you want, you can research and see for yourself.

A few things to consider. Have you noticed that the Watchtower always bring court cases and political news stories to the congregation's attention when it has to do with them being "persecuted"? They mentioned Russia and had everyone write letters. They've talked about how they went to court and fought for their right to preach, and not to salute the flag. But they never mention the cases that accuse them of wrongdoing. They lose and settle so many of these cases, but never mention them. They never get into the details, they don't show you the supposed lies against them and how they've defended Jehovah's organization. They just tell you to believe their side of the story, without actually telling you anything about the story.

As for your claim that some witnesses made up the 1975 date, I used to believe that too. Until I saw copies of old Watchtower Publications that aren't available in the online library. You have to find a long time Jehovah's Witness that still has them. Here's a link to a page that gives a lot of sources, including audio, as to how so many JWs came to believe the end would come in 1975 https://www.jwfacts.com/watchtower/1975.php

You don't have to look that far though, the Overlapping Generation is a hard one to swallow these days. Soon they'll be claiming that Jehovah's Witnesses who remember them saying that the generation of 1914 would not pass without Armageddon's arrival, had also just gotten confused and made it up. You'll see.

You can decide whether or not you want to verify it for yourself.

Lastly, I suggest you read Crisis of Conscience if you ever get a chance, and are actually interested in learning both sides.

The Trinity doesn't relate to feminism.

You might check out The Orthodox Way, especially the first couple of chapters.

Also Orthodox Dogmatic Theology

Yes. I notice you have no refutation for the point on the Temple Lot either.

Brian Hales is "unrespected" just as anyone who doesn't conclude JS is horrible is "unrespected." Next you'll say Bushman isn't respected either. But he is, including outside the LDS world. Hales only isn't respected because he is a physician instead of a professional historian. An amateur can still make a quality argument.

What I really wish we had was a book on JS like Rough Stone Rolling that wasn't written by a Mormon so we could finally have an "objective" book (about impossible anyway). RSR is lovely but not good enough for anyone else. If we had one by a non-Mormon we could use that. Alas. I guess we should only listen to people who aren't Mormon to tell us about Mormons, right?

Curiously, there is one of those for Brigham Young though ( http://www.amazon.com/Brigham-Young-John-G-Turner/dp/0674049675 ). Shame it's not more often part of the discussion, wish more Mormons and exMormons read it.

Is a video of a guy dancing is all it takes to convince someone to find merit in a cult? If the Book of Mormon (the play) wasn't enough, try reading Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer for a great exposé of what Mormonism is about.

edit: added the word "in"