My Post-Mormon Publication List

It just hit me that I have written and done quite a lot of Mormonism and atheism related stuff, and I don't actually have a list of it all. Well, until now:

writings:

• Main Street Plaza: I've done more than 10 years of Mormon-related blogging, including regular features such as Sunday in Outer Blogness, the Brodie Awards, and the William Law X-Mormon of the Year Award,
• ExMormon: I wrote a novel composed of nine intertwined novellas about growing up Mormon and leaving the church (2006),
• I wrote a personal essay published in the 2011 Mormon-themed issue of Free Inquiry magazine (which inspired Mormon apologist Louis Midgley to publish some personal criticisms of me).
• I wrote a personal essay (short memoir) published in the collection Baring Witness, 36 Mormon Women Talk Candidly about Love, Sex, and Marriage (2017, University of Illinois Press)

presentations:

• I was interviewed about my novel and blogging in July of 2008 by Atheists Talk Radio (the other guest interviewed in the same program was P.Z. Myers).
• Sunstone Symposium 2009: I presented in the panel "Bridging Stereotypes Through Blogging"
• Sunstone Symposium 2012: I organized and presented in the panels "Who Gets to Say What Former Mormons Are Like?" and "Do Good Online Fences Make Good LDS Neighbors?" -- and presented in the panel "The Vagina Testimonies"
• I have organized Mathematics workshops at Camp Quest Switzerland in 2015 and 2016,
• I participated in a panel discussion with a former Muslim and a former Orthodox Jew for the "Abend der Apostasie" for "Welthumanistentag 2017" (in German).

organizations:

• I am the primary organizer/contact person for the Switzerland chapter of the post-Mormon network and of the Mormon Spectrum in-person communities.
• With Donna Banta, I am launching an indie publishing house: Mormon Alumni Association Books.

I think that's it. It's all I can think of at the moment...

Ma ha nei bu, Eebowai!!!

This past Wednesday I made a trip to London to see God's favorite musical with the post-Mormons of Switzerland!!

I had an absolutely fantastic time!!  This was actually the first time I've ever seen a real Broadway musical (not counting movie versions or amateur (school/church) productions).  And I'm so happy this one was my first. ;)

Ever since I first heard the score of The Book of Mormon, it has been my #1 favorite musical.  This, despite the fact that I hadn't seen the show until this past week -- but the music alone is sufficient!!

Since I already had the score memorized, there weren't too many surprises, but there were a few good ones.  With effort, I managed to restrain myself from singing along, but I couldn't help occasionally whispering to my friend "Oh, this next part is great!"

It seems like every time I read something about this musical from believing Mormons, they have to talk about the errors in the portrait of Mormonism (with the implication that the writers are simply ignorant of Mormonism).  One of my pet peeves about Mormonism is the attitude that no one except a faithful member of the CoJCoL-dS is qualified to speak about Mormonism.  Thus, if the musical makes it look like the Missionary Training Center is in Salt Lake City (when it's really in Provo, nearly an hour's drive from there!) it reinforces the belief that the writers must not know what they're talking about.

The key example is that (in the musical) the missionaries get assigned to their mission locations and companions while they're at the MTC -- when in reality, missionaries learn their mission location before entering the MTC and they are assigned a series of different companions throughout their mission.  But the thing is that the missionaries commit to spend a year-and-a-half to two years in a faraway place without knowing in advance where it will be, and they have to stay with a companion 24/7 for months without having any say over who that person will be.  And there is very strong social pressure not to be disappointed with your assignments -- though many people are disappointed (as Elder Price was in the play) -- and some manage to "turn it off," and convince themselves to love their call.  This is a specifically Mormon scenario, but to tell that story in a musical, they needed to use a little artistic license on the logistics in order to allow the Elders to do a song-and-dance together about it.

The whole play is like that.  There are some details that are wrong (though very few are gratuitously wrong), but that is nothing compared to the Mormon points (from little details to profound themes) that they got right.  I discussed a lot of these points in my earlier post on insights from the Book of Mormon, as well as in the Holly's Brodie-Award-Winning piece BOM: The Most Correct of Any Musical?  If you would like a carefully-detailed list of the accuracies and inaccuracies of the musical, see this post by Dad's Primal Scream.

Overall, I feel like this musical really succeeds at achieving universality by rendering with great fidelity a specific milieu (which I feel is something good for art to do, as I've often said).  It's a tale that wouldn't take place outside of Mormonism, yet anyone can understand the various characters' motivations and relate to their interpersonal dynamics.

I have to admit that my own Mormon connection is a big part of my love for this play.  Without it, I'm sure I would like the musical, but the fact that Mormonism has been such a big part of my life makes me want to jump up and say "Yes!!" when watching or listening to it -- and it makes me happy that such a brilliant piece was written about something that I have such a personal connection with.  The songs are loads of fun, and they mean something to me.

"We are still Latter-day Saints -- all of us.  Even if we changed some things, or break the rules, or have complete doubt that God exists.  We can still work together to make this our paradise planet."

My great big Mormon family reunion!!!

For the sake of having a fun story to blog, we should have had an embarrassing disaster or at least some awkward discussions of religion. But for the sake of the family, I'm glad the whole thing went smoothly -- more than smoothly, even -- fantastically!!

This isn't even everybody.

It's all the more astonishing because we had 67 people in attendance (out of the 98 descendants + S.O.s of my Mormon grandparents). It may not sound like much, but 67 is a lot of people. And these folks are normally spread all across North America and the whole world -- and most hadn't seen each other since the last reunion, 10 years ago. Some were new, and were meeting the extended family for the first time.

As for religion, about half of the adults in my generation (my siblings and first cousins) are former-Mormon or never-Mormon, and about half are believing/practicing Mormons. But as far as I could tell, neither side was judgmentally looking down on the other or trying to impose one set of beliefs and practices on the whole group. Our family absolutely came first -- before any kind of ideology -- because we genuinely wanted to see each other and reaffirm and reestablish our family relationshps.

Personally, I wanted to facilitate building memories for all the kids who are too young to have attended the last reunion so that the cousins wouldn't just be "some people my mom and dad know" to them. And I think this goal was passed with flying colors.

The religion question never took center stage. The time and address of the services of the CoJCoL-dS were listed on the schedule, as well as an alternate gathering at the amusement park of the Mall of America (some of the faithful opted for the latter). There were also some (pretty tame) evening drinking parties -- including one at my parents' house! And there was a huge, fun talent show in which all the kids really hammed it up!

My "talent" was designing this fab reunion T-shirt

The day after the extended family left (and we were down to my own parents, siblings, and nieces and nephews), we had a big family meal that began -- in traditional Mormon style -- with a prayer. It was at that moment that it hit me that we hadn't had a single whole-group prayer for the entire reunion. This is kind of unusual for a Mormon family gathering: normally some meal would have a prayer or some event would open or close with a group prayer, even if some of the members of the group are not believers.

Yellow team rules!!

This is partially because my nevermo sister-in-law did all of the leg-work to organize all of the venues, all the food, all the financial accounting, etc., and made sure (through delegation or, if necessary, doing it herself) that everything that needed to get done got done. And she didn't have any particular reason to schedule in any group prayers.

It's also partially because there were so many people (including so many little kids) that it is hard to get everyone to quiet down and be reverent for a prayer. Some big Mormon families would manage it, but you have to really want it in order to manage it, and this group was more focused on making everyone feel welcome and comfortable.

This is everybody.

Swiss Post-Mo Club: Getting Better and Better!

We just had a fantastic ice-skating-and-fondue party with three new families! How'd this happen?

Shortly after moving to Switzerland, I signed up as the contact/coordinator of the Switzerland chapter of the post-Mormon organization. But, really, it was mostly just me and two other couples (who didn't even meet through post-Mormon), so it kind of wavered between being "the Swiss post-Mo club" and being a handful of people who happened to be friends with each other. Once in a blue moon someone would visit from the US, and we'd have an actual ex-Mormon gathering.

Then someone emailed me about the group, and I saved his name to include in the next exmo event. Some months later, another person emailed me -- this time a mom with kids in my area, and I met her and posted about it on post-Mo. Then, another family who had recently moved to Switzerland saw that, and here we are.

The conversation was amazing!! We had a group of people who had never (or barely) met before, yet we immediately had so much in common and so much to talk about!

The funny part was that -- by crazy coincidence -- our group got on the same bus with some Mormon missionaries!! No joke!

I tried to make polite conversation with one of them (I'm always curious about the situation with Switzerland not letting any more American mishies in), but I'm afraid I may have made a bad impression. I don't bear them any ill will -- honestly, I thought it was cool that we happened to run into another bunch of people who have this exotic culture in common with us, and I'd be more than happy to have a friendly chat with them.

I have to teach my kids a little better manners though. I'd been chatting with mishie #1 for a few minutes when my son Nico suddenly said (full voice) "Mom!! That guy's a Mormon missionary!" (They learned about missionaries from the Book of Mormon musical.)

Then, as we were getting off the bus, Nico kept talking about the mishies. Later we had a discussion about talking about people who are standing right there and can hear what you're saying, the appropriateness or lack thereof, etc.

Anyway, the event was great fun, and we're definitely planning get together again!!

Is your post-Mormon chapter this fun?

Check out what the Swiss post-mo's have been up to! :D

ex-Mormon vs. post-Mormon vs. DAMU

What's in a name? ;)

Back when I wrote my handy guide to different types of Mormons I claimed that ex-Mormon and post-Mormon are just two words for the same thing. Since then, many people have told me that there's a real difference between the two, namely that an ex-Mormon is someone who is angry and/or recovering whereas a post-Mormon is someone who has moved on.

That makes a lot of sense as a distinction, and I suppose that's the idea of this one new forum I found the other day: postmormon.org. I guess if that's it, I'd qualify more as post-Mormon than ex-Mormon myself. My novel qualifies more as ex-Mormon since the focus is on being Mormon and experiences shortly after leaving the church. (Yay, I don't have to change the title!) Maybe the sequel should be called post-Mormon...

However, it's important to keep in mind that a lot of people's choice of labels depends more on which they encountered online first, so people who started out on RfM are more likely to adopt the label "exmo" whereas those who came in through the foyer are more likely to go with DAMU (DisAffected Mormon Underground).

It is becoming increasingly clear that Recovery from Mormonism (the main bulletin board of exmormon.org) has a bad reputation -- not only with believing Mormons but within the post-Mormon community -- as being full of angry rants, and I think that may be why a number of former Mormons take offense at being called exmos.

It's unfortunate if this is causing a division of the variety "I don't believe in the church anymore, but I'm not one of them." I'm not terribly interested in posting (or even reading) a bunch of angry rants myself, but I think most of us have gone through some anger over this, and can understand what people go through when it sinks in how very much they and their families have sacrificed for something that ultimately they've found to be false. So I hesitate to say "Hey, just buck up and stop complaining" or even "Whew! I'm glad I'm not like that!" since who knows if any given "angry apostate" will still be "like that" a year or two from now.

So I guess I'm saying that while I'm interested in building bridges of common interest with the faithful Mormons, I don't want to do it by trying to draw a line around the "good guys" that includes me and leaves people who aren't all that far from me out in the cold...

Cross-posted here.