Part I: Most Latter-day Saints read the Book of Mormon as a historical narrative. As David Hume predicted, they feel a strong connection to the actors and events, which helps them internalize the doctrines. But when some Saints lose their faith in the historicity of the Book of Mormon, they feel compelled to abandon it …
Speaker: Parker Blount
SL09122 The Spiritual Director is In
A subtitle for this presentation could be “The Good Red Road,” a phrase referring to one’s sacred path. I will discuss my experience participating in a two-year spiritual direction program and how my perceptions of religion and spirituality changed. I finished the program with my gratitude for my LDS background intact, but my LDS certainty …
SL09234 Panel: Divine Malfeasance [Partial]
Richard Nixon claimed, “If the president does it, it’s not illegal, Holly Welker, Michael J. Stevens, Doe Daughtrey, Stephen Carter, Parker Blount
A PLACE CALLED LITTLE UTAH
My experiences growing up in a small rural LDS branch in Georgia differ greatly from what I see and experience in the Church now. These differences might be compared to a Parker Blount
”Then I Became Me”: A Qualitative Analysis of Written Accounts of Leaving the LDS Church
This paper reports on my examination of 127 personal narratives of people who, for varied and complex reasons, have disassociated themselves from the Church. Of those under study, seventy-one percent had been lifetime members; sixty-two percent of males are returned missionaries; and of those married, over fifty percent are temple marriages. As I report my …