Racism Is Not About Feeling

August 29, 2017 By David Mason

Plaudits to David Brooks for “How Trump Kills the GOP“, articulating from some position within the political right that white supremacy in the GOP predates the maniac in the White House, that the maniac’s amplification of “white identity politics” is bound to doom the GOP, and that “Each individual Republican is now compelled to embrace this garbage or not”. Using the word “garbage” was an especially nice touch. But I’m not convinced that racism “is about feeling others are inferior”,... Read more

This is the GOP’s Bloody Legacy

August 16, 2017 By David Mason

We sit, together, in a moment of terror, brought about by racist murder and the murderous racism of the man who is in charge of our law enforcement and military. The worst part of this time of terror is that it’s only going to get worse. There is nothing in the past year of presidential politics to suggest that this week’s catastrophe, finally, precipitates a change. Nothing in the past six months suggests that the racist maniac in the White... Read more

The Moral Bankruptcy of the Boy Scouts

July 28, 2017 By David Mason

The Boy Scouts of America is an antiquated cohort of corrupt, close-minded, selfish, vindictive, and paradigmatically un-patriotic fascists, who care nothing for the ideals the organisation historically espoused. Indeed, the BSA leadership seems not even to know what words such as trustworthy and reverent mean. The BSA, it is clear, has cynically wielded such concepts as duty, god, and country—maybe from its very beginning as a tool of colonial oppression—to turn impressionable young men, yearning to matter in the world,... Read more

Toxic Theology: Learning Doesn’t Matter

June 25, 2017 By David Mason

Another installment of “Toxic Theology”. Some things are just too poisonous to leave alone. By remarkably effective PR, the LDS church still projects into the very mainstream media that it is The Mormon Church. The LDS church’s size contributes to the illusion that the LDS church constitutes all that is Mormon-dom. A very quick glance at history and the extant field of Mormon institutions gives the lie to LDS messaging on this point. In fact, the LDS church is only... Read more

WE Does Not Include YOU

June 22, 2017 By David Mason

LDS Mormon critics who insist that “testimony meeting is not the place to come out” reveal their nervousness over an act that challenged their ownership of the meeting. Read more

Toxic Theology: There Are No Coincidences

June 4, 2017 By David Mason

In its quest to infuriate by greater and greater degrees, this blog presents Toxic Theology, a new series in which are examined particularly treacherous dogma that too many folks seem to accept as rote. First in the series is: There Are No Coincidences. This notion is a treacherous, toxic religious tenet. Last week, when a storm suddenly, violently, turned off the electricity of nearly two hundred thousand people in Memphis, I visited three AutoZone outlets looking for an inverter that... Read more

How to Not Be a Misogynist

May 15, 2017 By David Mason

Guys. Here’s my quick ‘Don’t Misogyny’ list. If you have had any interest during the past decade in understanding how you can make your immediate environment safer and in making yourself a less arrogant, less hostile, less misogynist brute, the following will seem elementary. But actual-factual incidents in My Mormon Church today demonstrate that too many of us still have too little interest in becoming less arrogant, misogynist brutes. So, here are the elementary ‘don’t’s for your information: When a... Read more

The Methodical Retreat from Goodness

May 12, 2017 By David Mason

Around the time #LittlePrincePumpkin managed to reach one hundred days in office, there was a spate of completely pointless public conversations, each of which began with a variation of “What have we learned about #LittlePrincePumpkin?” Of course, we haven’t learned anything at all. There’s nothing deep or mysterious about this rotten gourd. We all knew exactly what he is a year ago. He hasn’t changed. He won’t change. There’s nothing to learn. Which is why the public conversations of the... Read more

Forgiveness Is Not Nice

March 26, 2017 By David Mason

For outsiders, the nineteenth-century roots of Mormonism were a happy exploitation of the still-young ideals of a still-new nation that still presumed that some folks are created equal. Nathan O. Hatch has written at length about Mormonism in the 1830’s as an example of the ‘democratization of Christianity’ in the young USA. One of the democratic elements of Mormonism that is still sorta with us is LDS-Mormonism’s still unusual practice of letting everyone deliver sermons. Sorta. At least in theory, LDS-Mormon... Read more

Mormons Do Not Just Believe

February 28, 2017 By David Mason

I’ve seen the Broadway musical twice. I’m on record in The Commercial Appeal, a Memphis newspaper, as quite liking it. Nevertheless, I think the play is wrong when it sings that Mormons “just believe”. Some Mormons do, no doubt. But I’m not ready to accept that “just believing” is an essential characteristic of Mormon identity. I think beliefs are a red herring. Mormon VIPs John Dehlin and Patrick Mason (no relation) have exchanged some interesting ideas over in the Mormonism... Read more