There have been so many posts about soaking and BYU lately that I thought you might have questions. Burner account to not dox myself
There have been so many posts about soaking and BYU lately that I thought you might have questions. Burner account to not dox myself
Good questions! I'll answer them in order.
No. I was terrified of being sent away on a mission, it was one of the main drivers that lead to my leaving the church. I know several men (women generally don't do missions) who considered or attempted suicide during their mission because they couldn't stand it any more. I'm grateful that I stood up for myself on this one, the social pressure to do a mission is unreal.
I never got mine because the blessings usually happen around the time before you leave on a mission, which is when I was making my exit. I spoke to a lot of people about theirs though, and even as a teenager it smelled like bullshit to me. It's kind of like astrology for Mormons, some believe it word for word while others think the blessing is open to interpretation.
I was 17 when I told my family I wasn't going on a mission, then 21 when I "officially" left the church. My main motivation was researching the contradictions between what Mormons taught me at church and what teachers taught me at school. Mormons said Native Americans were descended from Jewish people, school said Native Americans crossed the Bering Straight 10,000+ years ago from Asia. One of them had to be wrong, ya know?
As an organization, the Mormon church is about as systemically bigoted as it gets. They helped genocide the indigenous people of the US West, they colonized Mexico, they believe non-whites have dark skin because of a curse, they excluded black members from full membership until the 1970s, they still don't allow gay people to be full members, and they have a $100 billion (!) investment portfolio, so they're all in on US capitalism. Individually, I think this means you get that typical white American attitude towards race/gender/sexuality - if you point out the way they benefit from systemic white supremacy, they get real mad. There's definitely a mask that comes off when Mormons aren't around non-members though.
The bigotry stuff is very interesting. We don't really get Mormons in the UK, the only one I know of is one that met and I guess tried to convert my gf at her uni. Weirdly he then added me on FB but not her (I never met the guy). Is that a sexism thing?
Is there much bigotry towards mixed people or non-Anglo/American whites? My gf is half Polish and I'm half Asian, I'm interested to know what opinions that guy might've had on it.
Hmm, maybe he tried to reach out to you because he struck out with your gf? They are tenacious proselytizers.
As for non white people, Mormonism is systemically racist. They still have books that discourage their members from marrying outside their race. On an individual level it's sort of a mixed bag. Some white Mormons are your bog standard chuds, while others are proud to accept everyone, even if that can border on tokenism.
This is all surreal. I can't imagine going to a standard Christian Sunday school and here you were taught factually wrong things with survivors of those genocide still around to respond and refute those claims.
Thanks for doing this ama and your answers!