My daughter plays excellent piano and the other day she happened to pick up the old morg song....I am a child of God... When she played it, I felt guilty because I had a positive reaction to it.....I have now learned that the music as used by the cult is designed to bring up old positive feelings and make us feel guilty that we left.....what shit...I never knew that music was programing me...I not only had to get the cult and it's teaching out of my head, but the music was also part of this cult....very clever.....What do you think? Ever happened to you???

It's not just religion that uses that but also the media, advertising, etc. We respond to music on a visceral level. (Well, most of us do.) :)

I always hated that song. The only good thing about singing in Primary was hearing the naughty ones shouting "BUM BUM" in "Book of Mormon Stories".

Just this past weekend, I had the TV on while I was randomly puttering about, cleaning and whatnot. Apparently, the movie "The Other Side of Heaven" was on -- about some mormon mishies in the South Pacific somewhere. The movie was ending (I wasn't really paying much attention and didn't realize what I was watching) and Elder Whatever was about to go home. The little village where he lived packed him up and put him on a canoe to take him to wherever he had to go to go home. As he was sailing off... the villagers started singing "God be with you til we meet again."

That is the only mormon song I really know well. I found myself walking around the living room dusting and SINGING ALONG, until I realized... WTF am I doing? Why am I singing mormon hymns?

So I made a Crown and Coke, cut off the TV, and turned the satellite radio on to deprogram the earworm outta my head.

"God be with you till we meet again" is not a Mormon hymn. Jeremiah E. Rankin, who wrote the text, and J.W.Bischoff, who wrote the music, were both Congregationalists http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/g/b/gbewiyou.htm . Today it is used by many different churches.

If it appears as a Mormon hymn now, that would be something like the Christus statue, which really is Lutheran, but appropriated by the Mormon church (not paying royalties, I suppose).

Seeing as how I've never been a member of any other church, "God be with you" is a mormon hymn TO ME.

Music is very powerful. It has the power to bring back memories of certain times and certain places. For example, "Baker Street" has the power to take me back to the summer of 1978 in an instant.
"Called to Serve" takes me back to a Zone Conference in Germany in 1985, when I first heard the song. It makes me want to puke every time I hear it. It sounds like a cheerleading song. One time my DW started to play it on her piano, and I had to stop her and ask her not to play it.

Oh, yes. I still respond positively to some LDS hymns. I sometimes find myself singing one. I don't feel guilty about it, though, and I'm not bothered by it. It expresses an emotion; it's not a commitment to Mormonism. The work isn't to try to purge ourselves of our Mormon experience: the work is to create a context (or new life) in which it doesn't trouble us so much. It is easy to get all-or-nothing about our responses and that doesn't work well, in my experience.

+1. I threw out all my old church books EXCEPT my hymnbook, my childrens songbook, and The Miracle of Forgiveness (conversation piece :-). ). While many of the lyrics no longer resonate, the tunes will be forever part of me.

As an ex-Catholic and an atheist, I still find power and an uplifting experience in religious music, especially classical and baroque era religious music (Handel's Messiah, Mozart's Requiem) and quite a few Christmas carols. I refuse to give up the gorgeous music just because I don't agree with the particulars of the lyrics.

Satan is clever, rock'n'roll is winning! Kids having sex in the street, dogs and cats living together, Mick Jagger mocking the Lord's Prophet....wait a minute, rock'n'roll isn't even subliminal, and definitely not Barry White!

A few years ago one of my most Turbo TBM sisters was bragging about the laser like focus of the primary music. When we were kids we sang songs like Give Said the Little Stream, Popcorn Popping and all kinds of other "fun to sing" children's songs. Many of them were secular and we'd sing them in the public schools as well.

My sister thinks the current primary song book is far better because it is filled with brainwashing tunes. Excuse me, I meant to say filled with important doctrine re-enforcing tunes. Songs like Follow the Profit are teaching unquestioned obedience. She listed several other examples that I don't recall but even though I was a believer at the time I was kind of appalled at her attitude. Get them while they're young and never let them think for themselves. Train the child up etc. etc.

Maybe I was always too much of a free thinker to be a good little morgbot. I tried, but I just never got there. Maybe if I had sung Follow the Profit as a 3 year old things would be different. Shudder.....

Stunted.

Music is very powerful. I was married to a music therapist who did wonderful things with people who could not be reached through normal conversation. There are people with brain injuries who cannot talk but who can sing. Amazing. The military uses cadences in close-order drill to help create a sense of group bonding. Some of the men I talk with remember the cadences they learned in boot camp forty years ago and performing them puts them back in the same feeling state. I imagine most ex-Mormons who where in the church very long can recall old feelings by sing church songs.

what better way to make them "feel" good about what they are doing but to use inspiring music. Ever wonder why they have made such efforts in producing music and film, i.e. YBU production studios, mo tab choir, etc. - why else, but to control the emotions. They combine music and film, plus lying, to help the sheepie digest uncomfortable material and condition them into morgbots. Gotta love the most recent major movies that have come out in recent years by TSCC, the music, the drama, the feelings - these guys are pros at it.

I love it, but I hate it.

I have the child hymns CDs in my basket up in my closet and have contemplated throwing them away but there they sit. I'm at the nice memory stage. But just because you remember the songs doesnt make some of the bad memories good either. Mostly the kid programs in my ward werent very good. Especially if you compare them to some other church's kid programs. I also have my child's CTR ring in my purse but I dont let her know I have it because I dont want her to wear it.

"Be Still My Soul" is among my top 10 favorite songs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be_Still,_My_Soul_(Christian_Hymn)

It was assimilated into the hymnal, so I hold no animosity over it. Just love it.

Brings back such terrible memories of teaching the little ones about the cult.

I remember when I got to the part about, "Teach me all that I must DO..." that made me cringe. We don't have to DO anything for eternal life. It's a free gift.

Indoctrination starts young!

And that is a change from the original "teach me all that I must KNOW" insisted upon by some GA years ago.

I hated that song too. I wasn't the only kid to look down at my hands at the part "with parents kind and dear".

still get to me.

I'm a musician, and I'm a sucker for music. There are some pieces, that no matter HOW many times I've heard them will get me choked up EVERY time I hear them. It's almost annoying, except that I wouldn't WANT to stop being moved by them.

And now everyone gets why our parents didn't want us listening to that "Devil Music" when we were growing up. What is "Devil Music"? It all depends on what generation you grew up in.... For me, Metallica, Megadeath, and all those Awesomely Crappy 80's bands.