You can still call yourself a Mormon if the Church does not consider you to be one. Bagley identifies himself as a Mormon who doesn't believe in God. He probably feels a connection to some of its history.

Mormon history tends to be more interesting if have close ties to it. You can't lose your history like you can your Church membership.

I study Church history a good deal more than I would if I had never been raised in the Church, and I find it interesting.

Some of it is kind of cool, like having your own "hideout" in the middle of Utah, away from the rest of the world.



Edited 10 time(s). Last edit at 10/06/2019 07:12AM by behindcurtain.

Noooooooooooooooooooooo !
That means I am still a mormon since they still have me on their membership rolls !
And I've met Will Bagley. He is a fantastic historian. The stuff he writes is quite interesting.

Will has enormous reserves of talent and metal acuity. I think he handles the religion better than it could ever handle him.

If that is true, he is paraphrasing Graham Greene, who described himself as "an atheist, but a Catholic atheist."

The approach makes sense to me. As much as we wish it wasn't true, most of us spent enough time in Mormonism that it left a permanent mark. We'll never fully eradicate the culture and, dare I say, some elements of the religion. I'd bet, for example, that 70% of us drink a much higher volume of sweet drinks than most people our ages because those are the habits inculcated in us when we were young.

in b 4 ~ edited 11 time(s)...by behindcurtain

After jettisoning Christian morality, he proceeded to discard everything Biblical: the Incarnation, miracles, the Resurrection, and an afterlife. About the only thing 1999's "Humanist of the Year" retained was some vague "god-essence" in each one of us, which is awfully close to Pantheism.

I would call him "functionally a Christian atheist."

christian morality is an oxymoron.

But I do know he hasn't believed in the LDS Church since he "was old enough to think for himself."

Ex-communicating him would be a public relations nightmare for the LDS Church (and the publicity would doubtless be profitable for Will). He's still a member of record, and that's the way he presents himself.

I have no idea what his actual spiritual/metaphysical beliefs are, of course.

He could've replied here, but obviously elected not to (he posted once as "Sagebrush Willie" if I remember correctly). His works speak for themselves.

Mostly we just talked about health and issues with our kids...

Anybody have directions to an Old Farts Anonymous Meeting?

Is he related to our Don Bagley, like our Steve Benson and Ezra Taft

He's Beetle Bailey's 2nd cousin twice removed I think.

well that didn't work...Bagley.....Baily? WTF was I thinking? Must be time to go home.

Time to go home and smoke something.

I don't doubt that Will and I are related. There is a certain amount of physical resemblance, and we both come from Mormon pioneer stock. But I have no paperwork to prove it. I am of fan of both Will and Pat, and their work. Will occasionally comments on my Facebook posts.

Pat and Will are brothers. I believe Will is the older one.

He's doubtless related to Will and Pat, but it's probably not a close relationship.

As Will once noted (after discovering an ancestor of mine and one of his were in the "Nauvoo Legion"--Utah edition--together), "We're all cousins."