Free Republic

Ninth LDS President David O. McKay, once wrote: “The fallacy that Jesus has done all for us, and live as we may, if on our deathbed, we only believe, we shall be saved in his glorious presence, is most pernicious. Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world, has given us the means whereby man may obtain eternal happiness and peace in the kingdom of our Father, but man must work out his own salvation through obedience to the eternal principles and ordinances of the gospel. For centuries men have been blinded by the false teaching of ‘belief alone sufficient’; and...

June 29, 2013. 7:00 pm – open to the public. Salt Lake City, Utah. In June 2012, around over a hundred people showed up to support resignation from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (also known as the Mormon or LDS church). This year, they are doing it again. Former and current members of the LDS church will be marching on Ensign Peak at 7pm on June 29, 2013, in a mass resignation event from the LDS church. This event means a lot to the people who are involved. Resigning from the church is a milestone for...

I just wanted to share with you my story of grace so you can more fully understand why we do what we do. Rob Sivulka is definitely more on the truth end of things and I am on the grace end, but whatever the approach our goal is the same. I pray that you would read my testimony and not go by emotions, but by the facts. I know some of what I say will well up anger or frustration in some of you (it did in me when I was first confronted that Mormons are not Christian), but please...

(This was actually a reply to another thread but thought I'd re-post it as its own thread) I think I was at least partially responsible for approximately 10 friends and my entire family (parents & siblings). I may have lucked out but some things to note that I think helped me was: 1) I never came across as angry or bitter. I was always nice, friendly and self assured (but not arrogant or condescending) 2) They all knew I was a "good" Mormon so they were all very curious as to why I left when it wasn't because of being...

I did not expect to meet so many atheists when I moved to Utah seven years ago. But I should have known better: America as a whole is secularizing, and Mormonism itself has a “scorched earth policy.” My Mormon girlfriend in high school once essentially said, “If the LDS Church isn’t true, I don’t know that I could ever believe in God.” Mormonism already is a form of atheism: it denies the existence of an all-powerful, all-knowing, first, most high God, and instead teaches a kind of naturalism or materialism: everything is matter, even spirits, and everything is subject to...

http://www.lds.org/church/news/mormonor ... c?lang=engHow about being straight up and saying that Mormons put on costumes and chant rituals in secret buildings that only 10% of gross earnings paid as "tithes" allow entrance? Mormonism wants people to think they are normal that they are just Christians like everyone else. Each year they get rid of more and more of their embarrassing doctrines - or doctrines that aren't politically correct anymore. Apologist attack dogs fight any critics on technicalities. Mormonism has one thing that works for them - and that is the funneling of cash from members to the Cult coffers. This is...

...When Sean replaced his temple garments — the sacred underwear he’d promised to wear day and night — with boxers, I couldn’t take it anymore. It was too much betrayal. I called up a neighbor with a husband like mine and cried. But instead of empathy, she offered questions that stunned me into silence. Was Sean addicted to pornography? Watching R-rated movies? What sin had brought him to this terrible place? ...Her questions were so off-base...She was sincere, and trying to help, but she believed what the Church teaches — that a man would only leave because he’s disobeying the...

ST. GEORGE — Tourism in Utah has had a complicated and ambiguous relationship to Mormonism from the time the state was settled, said Susan Sessions Rugh, the Friday luncheon speaker at the annual conference of the Mormon History Association. SNIP She applied it to Utah in analyzing "this messy mix of church and state, religion and business, God and mammon." Rugh compared the views of three tourists to Utah: Frenchman Albert Tissandier, who came in 1885; Vermont novelist Zephine Humphrey in 1934; and photographers Dorothea Lang and Ansel Adams in the early 1950s. How does the traveler observe the landscape,...

I grew up in a wonderful home---an only child until age ten; raised lovingly by my mother, aunt, and maternal grandparents. I was precocious, spoiled, and curious about the world around me. My mother had me baptized in a Methodist Church when I was four, but we only attended for a couple of months. My mother, aunt, and grandparents provided for my every need and taught me the values of integrity and respect for authority. Because I had very little formal religious training, I was left to my own devices on how to find spiritual truth. Intrinsically I knew there...

My name is Jody Ormond Morris. Like so many other names, it tells a story. Mine is of a fifth-generation Mormon who was converted to Christianity and is now serving the Lord with his family as a pastor in the OPC. I'd like to share my story with you. I'm named after my grandfather, William Ormond Morris, and my great-great-grandfather, Joseph "Jody" Smith Morris. He was named after the Mormon prophet, Joseph Smith. My dad gave me his nickname—Jody. From Wales to Utah My Mormon history began in Wales during the earliest days of the Mormon church (the Church of...

Wondering what that billboard on U.S. Highway 93 in Jerome County that reads "You are not alone" is all about? Jeff Ricks will tell you it's an invitation. Ricks, 54, was raised in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints... That changed in 1993 when a business venture in Idaho Falls went under and he lost faith in the church's teachings about tithing. He expected blessings from paying a full tithe, not the hardship that came from losing his home and business. "Everybody who leaves the church leaves for different reasons," Ricks said..."Everyone has a trigger that brings them...

The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. - Nietzsche This year's conference will be held October 9th–11th at the Embassy Suites Hotel in Salt Lake City. Visit the Exmormon Foundation website for more information and to make reservations. These conferences are a lot of fun and they're very educational. (I've attended the last two.) It's a full weekend packed with friendly and intelligent conversation, informative lectures,...

As a former Mormon...I had to address the recent news story about the proxy baptism of President Obama’s dead mother... Church officials are now stating that it is not the practice of the LDS church to perform such proxy baptism without family members’ permission. That is, at best, disingenuous and, at worst, an outright lie. Until 1995, LDS church members could submit names of any deceased person for proxy baptism, even in the absence of any relationship. In 1995, Jewish groups became rightly outraged when they discovered that Mormons were posthumously baptizing Jewish Holocaust victims into the LDS church. At...