Where am I in belief?

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Today’s guest post comes from Christian Kimball, a longtime friend of By Common Consent.

There has been an unusual flurry of talk lately about “Middle Way Mormons.” The Salt Lake Tribune (Peggy Fletcher Stack); By Common Consent (Sam Brunson); Wheat and Tares (a series); and even Times and Seasons ran a piece.  I commented, I provided background, I was quoted, but I have resisted doing my own “how it is” counter-essay.  Until now.

I’m a “Middle Way Mormon” by everybody’s definition.  It’s not my label—I prefer “Christian who practices with Mormons.”  But it’s better than the alternatives on offer. This is not a to-be-wished-for designation—a high ranking Church leader sympathized with me about “living on a knife edge.”  It’s just a label for a modern reality. [Read more…]

Rachel Held Evans & Evolving Faith

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Kristine A. lives in Rexburg, Idaho and blogs at Wheat & Tares.

I just got home from a conference held in North Carolina and hosted by Rachel Held Evans and Sarah Bessey. They are two evangelicals who have experienced faith crises; Rachel describes her journey back into church in her book Searching for Sunday, a book I know is popular with liberal Mormons. Sarah, I believe, describes hers back into the same congregation in Out of Sorts. They announced the conference in March and sold out 1500 tickets within two weeks. When I heard some of the speakers included many of the names that had strengthened my faith when it felt like everything had fallen apart, I felt compelled to go. Well, that and the fact it was about two hours away from my old home in Virginia and best friend, who agreed to attend with me. [Read more…]

On Disappointment and Happiness

Disappointment happens—and it hurts. What’s worse is that there are opportunities for disappointment everywhere.While there’s nothing particularly modern about disappointment, modern communications technologies can amplify our awareness of disappointing events and also provide fora in which we can express the disappointments we feel. These technologies, in other words, have expanded our capacity for disappointment. Just as it’s now completely normal to encounter a Facebook post articulating disappointment with an occurrence on the other side of the world, it’s also long since become commonplace to posit “the internet” as a factor in leading people to become disappointed with the Church. If disappointment is a basic part of human experience, I believe that it’s worth thinking about what part disappointment plays in our efforts to build Zion and how, then, we can engage in that work in our current technological environment. [Read more…]

Scripture as Literature of Faith Crisis

In the many narratives of faith crisis that one hears these days, a common theme is resistance to the idea that the Sunday School answer of “read the scriptures” will do much good. “Don’t you understand that the scriptures got me into this mess in the first place?” people ask incredulously, especially as they’re troubled about questions of Book of Mormon historicity, the character of the Old Testament God, or a number of other concerns. [Read more…]

Book Review: To Mormons with Love

I was hoping for a little more whoop ass, but the book was very sweet and sincere.

I just finished reading a fascinating book a couple months ago called To Mormons, With Love by Chrisy Ross. She blogs here and gives a quick overview of her book here. You can buy her book on Kindle here. Chrisy and her family are nondenominational Christians who live (voluntarily, not because of Witness Relocation or anything like that) in Utah County – and even enjoy it mostly! I’m not sure I know many Mormons for whom I could say the same, but I might live in the opposite of a Mormon bubble. [Read more…]