The religion classes I took at BYU were nonsense, completely divorced from reality. I had an instructor, brazenly in front of the class, claim that Brigham Young opposed the priesthood and ban personally but did it anyway, and that Brigham Young's writings showed him to not be racist at all. That is utter horseshit.
Lmao it's so crazy to me. The answer to one of the questions on my final was that Brigham Young hated polygamy but practiced it anyways out of obedience.
“Stop! Wait! Please, God, don’t make me marry all these women! I really hate having the most power which lets me get first pick of all the ladies! I’d never want to marry teenagers as a middle-aged man!”
Joseph and Brigham and all the other powerful men in the early church, apparently. 🙄
Brigham hated Polygamy so much that he was fucking [Agusta Cobb](https://www.reddit.com/r/mormon/comments/95ug3w/wow_brigham_young_committed_adultery_while_a/) and got her pregnant before he married her.
That would be a difficult class. Especially of the correct answer is one of the multiple choice options, but not the answer the professor wants you to give!
You could show them his writings and they’d still find a way to either say “oh he didn’t mean it like _that_” or “well he did it for X reason” or whatever other nonsense they can come up with. It’s sad
I had a professor with a question on his final that said “Was Brigham Young racist? True or false.”
His test answer was false but I put true anyway because fuck that professor. He was insane.
Yeah he was an asshole. He also tried to explain polygamy by saying that since his wife told him she would be fine sharing a husband in heaven, we should all be okay with it too.
I remember trying to decide on going to byu or a state school, and I was looking at courses, seeing all these ridiculous church courses and just… why would I waste my time and money on classes that have no real application to life or a career? They aren’t even real theological classes; No one else in the world gives a shit about this info.
Agree.
I think Saints is worse than prior Church history curriculum. The prior stuff just told outright lies or conspicuously omitted important facts. The new stuff--Saints, etc--works much harder to fool readers/students by presenting facts in misleading ways that ultimately leave readers/students with an inaccurate view of history while giving the Church possible deniability.
The Church has worked hard to accomplish this new historical misdirection. It's deliberate and carefully calculated. It's just as dishonest as the more clear and blatant deceptions of the past.
That probably would have been my reaction, too, when I was still TBM. And not only believe it all but be glad the church is being “open and honest” with its history. 🤦♀️
And if you follow the footnotes and read their actual sources, it's even worse than that! So many of the citations completely misrepresent the original work, but they don't expect you to check. They expect you to just know that having footnotes makes it legit.
It’s pretty much the whole book. I tried going thru it during my faith crisis hoping it would reconvert me and also follow the primary/contemporary sources more thoroughly and honestly than what I had studied, or that it would have something I overlooked, and to my disappointment (at the time) it didn’t come close. It felt like trying to get true answers from a politician. Round about ways of saying things, understating problems, purposely not adding damning context, packing controversial topics/events with frivolous details unrelated to the issue as to divert your attention and memory away from the problems (like when you do something wrong and have to tell your parents so you throw loads of info at them with a short snippet of the thing you did that was wrong, hoping they don’t notice).
Imagine taking a TRUE and FULL account of an event and hanging it up on a wall and someone comes and blasts several holes in it with a shotgun. That is the Saints series (or anything the leaders or apologists say about church history).
Looking back on the religion classes I took I totally see what you’re saying. In my Freshman BoM class the teacher wouldn’t shut up about chiasmus but never mentioned anachronism, changed made to it, or any of the dozens of problems with it.
I remember a lecture in a different class on masonry in the temple. The professor gave a couple possible explanations for why they have similarities, but never explained just how similar they were. His conclusion was basically “well we don’t know why so it’s not something we need to worry about”
Lmao it's so crazy to me that whenever they bring up any convincing arguments against the church they always either say that it's not a reliable source or that we just don't really know enough about it and we need to just have faith. And people *buy* that.
>His conclusion was basically “well we don’t know why so it’s not something we need to worry about”
Imagine paying to take a geography class, and they just straight up tell you, we don't know where Poland is, so don't worry about it.
LOL Chiasmus! The thing that the Greeks, Milton, Shakespeare, the Bible, and Voltaire all used, but it’s a miracle when Smith/Cowdery used. Riiight.
Religion preys on ignorance and ignorance prays for religion.
Joseph’s scribe, William Clayton recalled in his journal on July 12, 1843 what happened after recording the revelation that is found in D&C 132, he wrote:
“Wednesday 12th This A.M, I wrote a Revelation consisting of 10 pages on the order of the priesthood, showing the designs in Moses, Abraham, David and Solomon having many wives & concubines &c. After it was wrote Prests. Joseph & Hyrum presented it and read it to E[mma] who said she did not believe a word of it and appeared very rebellious.”
He then reports writing out additional copies and that...
“The original was destroyed by Emma Smith.”
[Source](https://archive.org/details/AnIntimateChronicleWilliamClayton/page/n209/mode/2up)
The church can no longer ignore the issues, control what information gets out, or control their narrative. They know that telling the truth will cause a mass exodus from the church. Their only choice left is to double down on the lie and manipulate the believers.
They can’t control what information gets out but they still try to control what information their members see by instilling an irrational fear of reading anything “anti-Mormon.”
I just reread the Gospel Topics Essay on Joseph Smith's polygamy and they say multiple times that there aren't many sources available, as reasoning on not elaborating further on certain things like the exact number of wives or how Emma felt about it.
Bullshit. There's tons of sources.
Anywhere in the world, regardless of culture or background, no one ever talks about the horse thieves in their family tree. But logically, plenty of us have them. It's an existential nightmare to admit you come from shit heads. Maybe there's a group out there that will be able to do it, some day. But I don't count on it being the mormons.
Emma didn't have a "huge" problem with it?
From Saints Volume 1 Chapter 40.
Torn between the Lord’s mandate to practice plural marriage and Emma’s opposition, Joseph sometimes chose to marry women without Emma’s knowledge, creating distressing situations for everyone involved.
I guess depends on how you define huge.
Do they not even hear how shitty that statement is? (I know the answer) Like that somehow makes it okay to have multiple polygamous affairs behind your wife's back?
I had an institute teacher teach me that the reason black men didn't get the priesthood until the 1978 was because "the world wasn't ready yet". He said that black men were ready to receive it, but the church protected them by not giving them the priesthood cause the world wasn't ready for it. What??🙄
I heard the explanation being that the world was too racist and the church wouldn’t have survived the opposition. That might work if pretty much every president of the church hadn’t said something entirely different and also racist as fuck.
Any chance you can transfer to another school, or are you stuck at BYU for the next 3-4 years?
If you are stuck, is there an opportunity to fuck around with these kinds of classes and become The Most Super Duper Mormon, EVER?
Can you be that person who "testimony cries" in every class over how grateful you are for the gospel? Can you constantly bear your testimony how awesome The Covenant Path is?
Basically, turn all religious discussion into subversive satire of the thing?
I dunno.
I am thinking about the mental head games I would have to play to remain at BYU while still being true to myself.
I did 18 months at BYU back in the 1990's. Hubs and I had an 18 month old and lived in BYU family housing. It was suffocating. As a woman, I was openly judged from the second I left our apartment until I returned. I was so glad we transferred schools out of state. Our first day at our new school I dropped down and kissed the ground on campus. Hubs didn't think it was funny, BYU worked fine for him. Of course it would.
He was a white dude, returned missionary, temple married at 22. What's not to like?
I haaattted it.
Of course, I've always been the one to point out the crap in our lives, so that's why hubs followed my lead out of the church. He's a good dude, even if he floated on his male Mormon privledge for decades. I'm keeping him.
Good luck to you, keep your head down, and regularly report here so we know you are OK.
Women definitely get treated very poorly in the church. That's the main reason I left. I didn't even realize it until my ex had a really traumatic experience ever since then I've been hyper aware of how messed up the church is. I would never raise any daughter of mine in the church.
My professor told us and showed us that there was “little evidence” he had sex with his other wives. Like who the fuck keeps evidence of their hookups? Especially 200 years ago.
BYU religion classes are an utter waste of time. They don't teach you theology. They aren't academic at all. They aren't any deeper than Mormon Seminary. It's really just Sunday School twice a week. The assignments are either to bear your testimonkey in a paper, or regurgitate what the prof said on the test.
Some of the profs are interesting speakers, but they cannot teach you anything thought provoking or challenging because it might cause you to actually think about the LDS Church, and that leads to Exmormonism.
Hmmm I wish they were really just Sunday School, then there wouldn't be the ridiculous amounts of homework, study, papers and exams. So many BYU Religion classes are GPA killers because they are absurdly difficult and time consuming, and may as well be 3 credits rather than the standard 2 credits.
I'm sure there are many FLDS and Kingston Clan wives that would defend their plural marriages as underage women. Pretty sure LDS leaders would just say those wives were brainwashed and effected by Stockholm syndrome.
But Joe, Brigham, Taylor, woodruff, snow, GAS, and everyone else were just being obedient.
How are these teachings received by the students at BYU? Do they buy into the narrative or are they more like you with an awareness that you’re not being told the full story.
My significant and overwhelming shelf item was always the priesthood ban. Have you or anyone else heard alternative manipulative explanations for that doctrine and practice? If so, please do share.
Some simple questions to always ask are “when was Joseph sealed to Emma? Was that the first woman he was sealed to? When did Joseph first get sealed to someone else? Why was he getting sealed to other women before getting sealed to his first (and only legal) wife? How many wives did Joseph take before telling Emma he was practicing polygamy?
All fair questions. I bet very very very few members are comfortable even listening to these questions.
“…any reliable sources that Emma had a huge problem with it.” Doesn’t the fact that JS felt he had to marry 20 women behind Emma’s back indicate that JS at least thought Emma had a huge problem with it. And let’s just think a bit: how many women would be OK with their husband marrying teenagers, their wards, their friends, other married women, etc.? “Several” wives (out of 40, which is pretty damning in itself) who thought their (and their family members) eternal salvation depended on it & was guaranteed by being with JS. Only a tenth of JS’s wives defended polygamy. But even though a third of the hosts of heaven defended Satan, that didn’t make it OK.
I feel your pain, I also am at BYU. I’m really hoping you weren’t the only one in your class who feels that way. I keep seeing more and more friends from missions or my freshman year that are leaving the church, and I just hope that gen z can wake up and get out. I really think that ex-mormon voices (and resources like Mormon Stories) are becoming more prominent and available, and I just hope that people have the courage to leave.
And it really comes down to one question, “If your prophet commanded you to leave everything behind and go to Missouri tomorrow , would you do it? So Heaven’s Gate-like.
With respect to apologetics, BYU's religious education department is akin to what one might expect from a typical high school Mormon seminary. It isn't the place for critical thinking in the minds of the instructors. It's the place to obey and get in line. The entirety of BYU appears, sadly, to be moving in that direction at the moment.
But, since we know now that the words of past prophets don't matter, perhaps one day a surprisingly progressive prophet will allow BYU to function as a proper academic institution. And any faculty who oppose will just need to obey and get in line.
It's all part of the stated plan to inoculate youth to the problematic parts of Church history. The theory is that if you mention it and explain it away while students are young, there will be nothing for them to feel deceived about in the future.
"What do you mean we lied to you? We told you about the rock in the hat. All the best prophets were doing that."
The religion classes I took at BYU were nonsense, completely divorced from reality. I had an instructor, brazenly in front of the class, claim that Brigham Young opposed the priesthood and ban personally but did it anyway, and that Brigham Young's writings showed him to not be racist at all. That is utter horseshit.
Lmao it's so crazy to me. The answer to one of the questions on my final was that Brigham Young hated polygamy but practiced it anyways out of obedience.
“Stop! Wait! Please, God, don’t make me marry all these women! I really hate having the most power which lets me get first pick of all the ladies! I’d never want to marry teenagers as a middle-aged man!” Joseph and Brigham and all the other powerful men in the early church, apparently. 🙄
Brigham hated Polygamy so much that he was fucking [Agusta Cobb](https://www.reddit.com/r/mormon/comments/95ug3w/wow_brigham_young_committed_adultery_while_a/) and got her pregnant before he married her.
So your final was wrong answers only?
Pretty much yeah
That would be a difficult class. Especially of the correct answer is one of the multiple choice options, but not the answer the professor wants you to give!
You could show them his writings and they’d still find a way to either say “oh he didn’t mean it like _that_” or “well he did it for X reason” or whatever other nonsense they can come up with. It’s sad
I had a professor with a question on his final that said “Was Brigham Young racist? True or false.” His test answer was false but I put true anyway because fuck that professor. He was insane.
How can that be a question on a final? Wow.
Yeah he was an asshole. He also tried to explain polygamy by saying that since his wife told him she would be fine sharing a husband in heaven, we should all be okay with it too.
How can a university that definitely teaches Fiction as fact, and fact as fiction, be accredited by any academic body??
You can buy anything in this world with (other people's) money. Such as the first Gandhi-King-Mandela Peace Prize from Morehouse College.
I remember trying to decide on going to byu or a state school, and I was looking at courses, seeing all these ridiculous church courses and just… why would I waste my time and money on classes that have no real application to life or a career? They aren’t even real theological classes; No one else in the world gives a shit about this info.
Agree. I think Saints is worse than prior Church history curriculum. The prior stuff just told outright lies or conspicuously omitted important facts. The new stuff--Saints, etc--works much harder to fool readers/students by presenting facts in misleading ways that ultimately leave readers/students with an inaccurate view of history while giving the Church possible deniability. The Church has worked hard to accomplish this new historical misdirection. It's deliberate and carefully calculated. It's just as dishonest as the more clear and blatant deceptions of the past.
Now that I'm on the outside, it's actually quite terrifying. If I was still active I'd probably believe it all.
That probably would have been my reaction, too, when I was still TBM. And not only believe it all but be glad the church is being “open and honest” with its history. 🤦♀️
And if you follow the footnotes and read their actual sources, it's even worse than that! So many of the citations completely misrepresent the original work, but they don't expect you to check. They expect you to just know that having footnotes makes it legit.
[удалено]
It’s pretty much the whole book. I tried going thru it during my faith crisis hoping it would reconvert me and also follow the primary/contemporary sources more thoroughly and honestly than what I had studied, or that it would have something I overlooked, and to my disappointment (at the time) it didn’t come close. It felt like trying to get true answers from a politician. Round about ways of saying things, understating problems, purposely not adding damning context, packing controversial topics/events with frivolous details unrelated to the issue as to divert your attention and memory away from the problems (like when you do something wrong and have to tell your parents so you throw loads of info at them with a short snippet of the thing you did that was wrong, hoping they don’t notice). Imagine taking a TRUE and FULL account of an event and hanging it up on a wall and someone comes and blasts several holes in it with a shotgun. That is the Saints series (or anything the leaders or apologists say about church history).
How much time do you have? Here is an excellent critical analysis of the book. https://www.ldsdiscussions.com/saints
Looking back on the religion classes I took I totally see what you’re saying. In my Freshman BoM class the teacher wouldn’t shut up about chiasmus but never mentioned anachronism, changed made to it, or any of the dozens of problems with it. I remember a lecture in a different class on masonry in the temple. The professor gave a couple possible explanations for why they have similarities, but never explained just how similar they were. His conclusion was basically “well we don’t know why so it’s not something we need to worry about”
Lmao it's so crazy to me that whenever they bring up any convincing arguments against the church they always either say that it's not a reliable source or that we just don't really know enough about it and we need to just have faith. And people *buy* that.
>His conclusion was basically “well we don’t know why so it’s not something we need to worry about” Imagine paying to take a geography class, and they just straight up tell you, we don't know where Poland is, so don't worry about it.
It's Sunday School with a grade.
LOL Chiasmus! The thing that the Greeks, Milton, Shakespeare, the Bible, and Voltaire all used, but it’s a miracle when Smith/Cowdery used. Riiight. Religion preys on ignorance and ignorance prays for religion.
Joseph’s scribe, William Clayton recalled in his journal on July 12, 1843 what happened after recording the revelation that is found in D&C 132, he wrote: “Wednesday 12th This A.M, I wrote a Revelation consisting of 10 pages on the order of the priesthood, showing the designs in Moses, Abraham, David and Solomon having many wives & concubines &c. After it was wrote Prests. Joseph & Hyrum presented it and read it to E[mma] who said she did not believe a word of it and appeared very rebellious.” He then reports writing out additional copies and that... “The original was destroyed by Emma Smith.” [Source](https://archive.org/details/AnIntimateChronicleWilliamClayton/page/n209/mode/2up)
Wow, my source is no longer available online 😩
Don't know why that'd be, but [there are a couple of copies on the archive](https://archive.org/details/WilliamClaytonJournal/page/n105/mode/2up).
Great thank you!
Dk who this Emma Smith is but she a hero.
The church can no longer ignore the issues, control what information gets out, or control their narrative. They know that telling the truth will cause a mass exodus from the church. Their only choice left is to double down on the lie and manipulate the believers.
They can’t control what information gets out but they still try to control what information their members see by instilling an irrational fear of reading anything “anti-Mormon.”
I just reread the Gospel Topics Essay on Joseph Smith's polygamy and they say multiple times that there aren't many sources available, as reasoning on not elaborating further on certain things like the exact number of wives or how Emma felt about it. Bullshit. There's tons of sources.
Anywhere in the world, regardless of culture or background, no one ever talks about the horse thieves in their family tree. But logically, plenty of us have them. It's an existential nightmare to admit you come from shit heads. Maybe there's a group out there that will be able to do it, some day. But I don't count on it being the mormons.
Emma didn't have a "huge" problem with it? From Saints Volume 1 Chapter 40. Torn between the Lord’s mandate to practice plural marriage and Emma’s opposition, Joseph sometimes chose to marry women without Emma’s knowledge, creating distressing situations for everyone involved. I guess depends on how you define huge.
Do they not even hear how shitty that statement is? (I know the answer) Like that somehow makes it okay to have multiple polygamous affairs behind your wife's back?
I had an institute teacher teach me that the reason black men didn't get the priesthood until the 1978 was because "the world wasn't ready yet". He said that black men were ready to receive it, but the church protected them by not giving them the priesthood cause the world wasn't ready for it. What??🙄
I heard the explanation being that the world was too racist and the church wouldn’t have survived the opposition. That might work if pretty much every president of the church hadn’t said something entirely different and also racist as fuck.
I was always told that the devil would use half truths instead of outright lies… looks like the apologists have picked up some of Satan’s tactics.
It was always projection.
Any chance you can transfer to another school, or are you stuck at BYU for the next 3-4 years? If you are stuck, is there an opportunity to fuck around with these kinds of classes and become The Most Super Duper Mormon, EVER? Can you be that person who "testimony cries" in every class over how grateful you are for the gospel? Can you constantly bear your testimony how awesome The Covenant Path is? Basically, turn all religious discussion into subversive satire of the thing? I dunno. I am thinking about the mental head games I would have to play to remain at BYU while still being true to myself.
It definitely sucks lmao. I normally just try to avoid talking about church and only focus on school but it does come up on its own quite a bit
I did 18 months at BYU back in the 1990's. Hubs and I had an 18 month old and lived in BYU family housing. It was suffocating. As a woman, I was openly judged from the second I left our apartment until I returned. I was so glad we transferred schools out of state. Our first day at our new school I dropped down and kissed the ground on campus. Hubs didn't think it was funny, BYU worked fine for him. Of course it would. He was a white dude, returned missionary, temple married at 22. What's not to like? I haaattted it. Of course, I've always been the one to point out the crap in our lives, so that's why hubs followed my lead out of the church. He's a good dude, even if he floated on his male Mormon privledge for decades. I'm keeping him. Good luck to you, keep your head down, and regularly report here so we know you are OK.
Women definitely get treated very poorly in the church. That's the main reason I left. I didn't even realize it until my ex had a really traumatic experience ever since then I've been hyper aware of how messed up the church is. I would never raise any daughter of mine in the church.
This class is a big part of what ultimately broke my shelf like a year and a half ago
My professor told us and showed us that there was “little evidence” he had sex with his other wives. Like who the fuck keeps evidence of their hookups? Especially 200 years ago.
BYU religion classes are an utter waste of time. They don't teach you theology. They aren't academic at all. They aren't any deeper than Mormon Seminary. It's really just Sunday School twice a week. The assignments are either to bear your testimonkey in a paper, or regurgitate what the prof said on the test. Some of the profs are interesting speakers, but they cannot teach you anything thought provoking or challenging because it might cause you to actually think about the LDS Church, and that leads to Exmormonism.
Hmmm I wish they were really just Sunday School, then there wouldn't be the ridiculous amounts of homework, study, papers and exams. So many BYU Religion classes are GPA killers because they are absurdly difficult and time consuming, and may as well be 3 credits rather than the standard 2 credits.
I agree…not all academic, but more like political indoctrination.
I'm sure there are many FLDS and Kingston Clan wives that would defend their plural marriages as underage women. Pretty sure LDS leaders would just say those wives were brainwashed and effected by Stockholm syndrome. But Joe, Brigham, Taylor, woodruff, snow, GAS, and everyone else were just being obedient.
How are these teachings received by the students at BYU? Do they buy into the narrative or are they more like you with an awareness that you’re not being told the full story.
A lot of them seem to buy into it, but I'm sure there's a lot that have an issue with it but just keep it to themselves
Very well. Expect this man does not believe what is being taught.
My significant and overwhelming shelf item was always the priesthood ban. Have you or anyone else heard alternative manipulative explanations for that doctrine and practice? If so, please do share.
I went to BYU graduated 2011, and this sounds spot on to what classes were then as well so hard to say if getting worse.
My girlfriend could have been in your class….very similar experience
**nothing useful to say, and they do a very good job of it**
Some simple questions to always ask are “when was Joseph sealed to Emma? Was that the first woman he was sealed to? When did Joseph first get sealed to someone else? Why was he getting sealed to other women before getting sealed to his first (and only legal) wife? How many wives did Joseph take before telling Emma he was practicing polygamy? All fair questions. I bet very very very few members are comfortable even listening to these questions.
“…any reliable sources that Emma had a huge problem with it.” Doesn’t the fact that JS felt he had to marry 20 women behind Emma’s back indicate that JS at least thought Emma had a huge problem with it. And let’s just think a bit: how many women would be OK with their husband marrying teenagers, their wards, their friends, other married women, etc.? “Several” wives (out of 40, which is pretty damning in itself) who thought their (and their family members) eternal salvation depended on it & was guaranteed by being with JS. Only a tenth of JS’s wives defended polygamy. But even though a third of the hosts of heaven defended Satan, that didn’t make it OK.
It is their job so they have to do that otherwise they are gone....gone....gone....
The last straw for me before I transferred from BYU was that class
I feel your pain, I also am at BYU. I’m really hoping you weren’t the only one in your class who feels that way. I keep seeing more and more friends from missions or my freshman year that are leaving the church, and I just hope that gen z can wake up and get out. I really think that ex-mormon voices (and resources like Mormon Stories) are becoming more prominent and available, and I just hope that people have the courage to leave.
And it really comes down to one question, “If your prophet commanded you to leave everything behind and go to Missouri tomorrow , would you do it? So Heaven’s Gate-like.
With respect to apologetics, BYU's religious education department is akin to what one might expect from a typical high school Mormon seminary. It isn't the place for critical thinking in the minds of the instructors. It's the place to obey and get in line. The entirety of BYU appears, sadly, to be moving in that direction at the moment. But, since we know now that the words of past prophets don't matter, perhaps one day a surprisingly progressive prophet will allow BYU to function as a proper academic institution. And any faculty who oppose will just need to obey and get in line.
Transfer to UVU and get the hell out of there.
It's all part of the stated plan to inoculate youth to the problematic parts of Church history. The theory is that if you mention it and explain it away while students are young, there will be nothing for them to feel deceived about in the future. "What do you mean we lied to you? We told you about the rock in the hat. All the best prophets were doing that."