Doubts and silent shame about the early history of the church has become openly acknowledged by many members.

My own sister is extremely paranoid that she will be leaving the church. It has been her cocoon and security blanket since she was a very little girl.

She forbids any discussion of anything that even may lead close to a shadow of a doubt.

This defensive behavior is not strength, but comes from weakness.

She has stopped attending half the Sundays now, and no longer serves in any calling.

The church is weak and slipping down the slippery slope of an enormous fraud exposed.

Nothing can reverse this trend, as it is simply a fact that Joseph was a scoundrel, Brigham a liar and the subsequent leaders in it for their own glory and ego-perks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nC8y1qdPj9c

This is a very sad post. Your sister depended on the dogma as context for life. Now all that context and dogma is questionable. Eternal marriage etc., all the stuff that means something potentially down the drain. No wonder she does not want to delve deeper

The Achilles heel of the Mormon church is that they are having to defend non-existent multiple historical events and peoples. It is like trying to defend Marians from Mars who lived, built and thrived for a thousand years in Nevada..but left nothing behind. And the historical fact that Joeseph Smith was a well-documented narcissistic fraud, adulter, etc.

are too abundant.

When I was a little kid I had a living great-grandmother who was a little kid when Brigham Young was still the President of the Church. That's how close it really all is.

I personally don't think that Mormonism is any more ridiculous than Islam or any of the other major religions. But they've been around so long and have had centuries during which they had both political and ideological control of entire countries and empires that they have been able to demand respect and deference...at the point of a sword if need be. Plus their origin stories are shrouded in the haze and fog of ancient history to the point that the true history is a mystery in most respects. And even with all that going for them, a dispassionate and objective examination reveals that they're full of the same founders of dubious character and their doctrines are often incoherent and unintelligible.

Nonetheless, the big religions have many centuries of momentum behind them.

Mormonism only enjoyed about a century of real forward momentum derived largely from the fortuitous (for the longevity of the organization) circumstances of having an ambitious leader like Brigham Young combined with the relative isolation of Mormons for about two generations in the western United States.

The momentum is gone. The cats are almost all out of their bags. Younger members of multi-generational Mormon families aren't replenishing the supply of BICs. And nobody outside of Mormondumb who first hears about things like the fact that Joseph Smith "translated" golden plates by looking at a rock in his hat is ever going to take the missionaries' spiels about the divinity of Mormonism seriously.

I was thinking that the leaders and their talks are part of the problem. How can you believe in something when they don't? Like Hinckley.

What about the position they took on children of gays? Then they reversed it with no fanfare and acted as though it never happened. I think each person has their tipping point, that moment when their shelf will fall. Many people aren't getting much from the church.

I've said it before, but my exmo therapist said this about my daughter (as she is over the top TBM, she was anti at age 20). He said she has this virtual reality helmet on and the moment any doubts seep into that helmet, she has to double down on her efforts to stop the thoughts. She knows the reality.

I never thought I'd leave. Nobody thought I'd leave. I left kicking and screaming, but at some point even those who don't know all the history, find moremonism sorely lacking.

I know that helmet. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HZFTUtbn1RU

Jehovah's Witnesses, Scientologists, Christian Scientists and Children of God each share the same straight-jacket for their members, similar to Mormons.

Here is a very personal narrative of a girl who reveals the truth of her journey through nonsense and hypocrisy.

You will relate to much of her tale.

Any controlling group has very similar tactics, doctrines and oddball meanderings of their Elders and Sages.

Papa don't preach. Spiritual perversion, here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aT3udbSlmWg

Perhaps the great cults will one day merge and lie together.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyBVW5IA0nw

The OP sister sounds a lot like my sister. Interesting.

This is why I place as much blame on members as on the leaders.

Leaders give people what they want, otherwise it would die.

If your sister is weak and afraid, after the Mormon fantasy dies, she will just join another cult. And there are countless ones out there, to name a few:

Statism

Materialism

Feminism

Marriage

etc

She will be fine.

I continue to say that the legacy history of ChurchCo means less than the current situation/condition of things:

arrogance of leadership, RMN is a classic example, somewhat similar to league with the Buffon that Hinckley was.


ChurchCo continues to minimize / dilute the core, basic teachings of Christ-Like living such as Honesty, Kindness.
This is Obvious to most anyone giving a once-over to the current lessons, talks, etc.

I wrote several years ago that TBMs don't really care about the skeletons in the church's closet because those were in the past — flecks of history. All that mattered was the church today, the church they know and experience personally and have constructed in their imaginations. THAT church is true.

Now I think two things are happening. The first is that the skeletons are out dancing around and more TBMs acknowledge them, but their justifications are just variations of, "It doesn't matter because The Church Is True."

The second is that the church they know and experience has been changing. The change has been slow, like the boiling frog analogy Mormons love so much, but they've reached a point where the difference between 2019 Mormonism and the church they grew up with is obvious. The cocoon and security blanket just aren't there anymore. The well is running dry.

Mother said something slightly negative about how things were run in mormonism. My aunt put her finger on her lips and said, "No, no, no. Don't tempt the devil. He wants us to doubt and we must never do it."

IMO your mother should have slapped her hand away in a violent manner.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PNtvXTjVg0

Timestamp 1:30. Enjoy.