I’ve been thinking about having my name removed lately.  I’ve ben pretty sure for awhile that it’s something I would eventually do, but I wasn’t in a hurry.  Really, it’s more than that.  Name removal is really the final step in truly leaving Mormonism, and it’s a scary line to cross.

I told myself I’d do it later,  for several reasons.  If I did it now, I’d be afraid my family would freak out and think I was rushing into things (or out of things, as the case may be).  But at the same time, I wonder if it will take something as final as name removal to get my family to take me seriously.

But then, being a member of the Church doesn’t actually hurt me much- I like our home teachers, and we let them visit when they call.  The bishop and the missionaries haven’t bothered us for a long time.  The only times Mormonism seems to even matter is in family interactions.  But there, it’s the elephant in the room.

I resolved some time ago to write an email to my extended family, explaining that I’ve left the Church and it’s not a sensitive topic, so we can feel free to talk about it- I’m a fairly open person  after all.

I’m not going anywhere with this, really.  I’m not going back to the Church and I don’t know that I want my name on the Church’s records.   I’m not really that angry at Mormonism, and I’m even getting less interested in the internet exmo scene.  Realizing that I was an ex-Mormon, not just a regular guy, was kind of a big deal.  But I wonder if i can just be a regular guy.  and I wonder if name removal isn’t the final necessary step to finally leaving Mormonism behind.

Today my wife and I went to a service at the Church of Christ, Scientist. We’re not sure that Cedar Ridge Community Church is a good permanent church solution for us, and we were in the mood for something different. I actually found an Episcopalian parish I wanted to attend, but they’re on some kind of weird summer schedule (I guess most Episcopalians don’t go to church in the summer) where they only have an 8:00 am Rite I Eucharist service (old style, and with no music). I was kind of annoyed about that.

Alternately, we’ve been thinking about visiting an Orthodox church again, but we hadn;t hear back from the OCA parish in Bethesda about whether they have child care during the liturgy.

So instead, we decided to go on a wacky adventure to the Church of Christ, Scientist!

I should co ahead and say that I’m not actually interested in joining the Church or practicing Christian Science. But the church is odd and quirky (much like Mormonism) and I wanted to at least visit. Plus, I’ve been keen for some time on getting my hands on a copy of Mary Baker Eddy’s Science And Health With Key To The Scriptures, just out of pure theological curiosity.

Anyway, there was child care available, which was good (without it, we would have just had to go home, because there’s no way our one-year-old can quietly sit through, well, pretty much anything).  The service was kind of boring- Christian Scientists have no preachers, because the Bible and Science and Health are their preachers.  That means the sermon is just a set of collected readings from those two books.  It takes up most of the hour, and it’s hard to sit still and pay attention.

There were also some responsive readings, which I always really like in a religious setting, and some hymns.  It was nice to sing hymns after six months of nothing but contemporary Christian praise music.  Did I mention that I like hymns?

One of the readers sounded hilariously like a Mormon General Authority- actually like a cross between Thomas S. Monson and L. Tom Perry, I thought.  My wife mentioned that the man had sounded like a GA, and I laughed because I had been thinking that the whole time.

The meeting was not well-attended, although the church was in a really nice building.

The topic of the sermon/readings was Life, and it was all about how life, mind, and spirit are real and  how matter and death and illness are illusory, which I think is pretty much the gist of the religion.

At the end, when we went downstairs to fetch the little one, the nice lady there gave us a copy of Science And Health, and that pretty much made my day.  Also, it was really nice of her, because I think the book cost something like ten dollars.  The thing was, the cover was glossy and it hurt my eyes in the car on the way home when the sun reflected off it.  So she really did blind me with science.  As in, Mary Baker Eddy blinded me with Christian Science.

Incidentally, Christian Science is not the same thing as Scientology.

First, before you read this post and certainly before you comment, go back and at least read The Old Limbo Crossroads, to get some background. It’s better if you’re new to this blog to get completely caught up by reading What’s Going On, but the previous Crossroads is really the bare minimum.

Okay, now on to the topic at hand, which is Evangelical Christianity.

I grew up Mormon, but I grew up in East Tennessee, which means that most of my peers were Evangelical Christians of some kind. Most of my close friends were nonreligious or Roman Catholic, but most of the Christianity that I was exposed to in my formative years was evangelical.

In particular, I had one really good evangelical friend whose name was Brock. We had kind of a common understanding that meant we didn’t try to convert each other, but through him I was exposed to a lot of the people that he went to church with. This exposure was often limited, but it was significant: these were people who really believed in Jesus Christ, who lived Christ-centered lives, and who were happy about it. You could see it in their faces, that Jesus Christ had made a difference. It was something that I did not see in my fellow Mormons, and it was something that stuck with me and was not easy to reconcile, even on my mission. I often thought back to these people and wondered how, if the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints was really Christ’s church on earth, how these non-members could be so obviously and vibrantly Christian.

As I served my mission, my understanding of Jesus Christ developed and it drifted towards a more full understanding of grace, one which I inevitably had to try to reconcile with Mormonism (and I did it by constantly revising the Gospel According To Kullervo). Most of the doubts I had about Mormonism were laced with Evangelical concerns. My personal understanding of Jesus Christ ultimately developed into something very Protestant, with Mormonism’s specific practices and odd doctrinal quirks pretty much tacked on to the side.

Thus, last year when I finally started giving serious voice to my doubts about Mormonism, it was because I increasingly saw Mormonism as something that did not match my understanding of Jesus Christ, the Bible, and what I thought Christianity was all about.

Granted, leaving Mormonism ultimately led me to have to seriously examine, and in the end dig up and re-plant, my belief in Jesus Christ and in God. But I feel at this point that I have come full circle and I am now back in a place where I can state without (much) reservation that I believe in Jesus and I want to follow him.

Anyway, because of all of this, Evangelical Christianity is attractive to me. I have very little interest in theological liberalism (a topic that I will address in a future post), and reading some of the writers in the Emergent conversation (Brian McLaren, Rob Bell, Donald Miller) within Evangelical Christianity has done a great deal to resolve many of my major theological concerns, showing me that I actually can be an Evangelical Christian without being a mindless fundamentalist or a rabid Republican. It has all been extremely compelling.

Right now my family is attending Cedar Ridge Community Church, which is a kind of emergent Evangelical nondenominational church, and it’s a really good place. It has a lot going for it. I agree with everything they preach form the pulpit, but in a way that challenges me instead of leaving me complacent. I am excited about their commitment to reaching out and blessing the world in so many ways. It is a church where I have few objections. But the more time goes by, and the more I find myself wanting to seriously follow, serve, and draw closer to, Jesus Christ, the more those objections seem to be a big deal.

Most of my objections have to do with Evangelical Christianity in general as opposed to the church we attend in specific.

The first is a question of authority, or more properly, of authoritative-ness. I guess I believe that all authority is given to Jesus Christ, like it says in the gospels, and that this authority still resides in Jesus, as opposed to being found in a book or in a pedigree of clergy or priesthood. Since Jesus promised us that when we are gathered in his name, he is among us, we have access to his authority when we are acting in his name.

That’s fine and good, and it’s actually kind of a tangent, because it’s not really my problem. My problem is that in the church I attend, there’s a real sense of all being on the journey together, like we’re all trying to be disciples of Jesus Christ in the best way we can, and we’re helping each other do that. That sounds great, but it doesn’t do the trick for me.

While there may be Authority, the kind that actually only Jesus has from the Father, I don’t feel like this set-up is very authoritative. Trustworthy. Reliable. Solid. I don’t feel like this church as an institution has much of any weight behind it whatsoever. It doesn’t feel solid. I’m not saying I think it won’t last- the church has been around for 25 years after all. But what is 25 years in the nearly 2000-year history of Christianity? What institutional experience and wisdom can there even be in an organization that is so new, especially one that is both Evangelical and Emergent, both of which in the context of church history mean some measure of rejection of broad arrays of Christian tradition?

My point is that I don’t feel like Evangelical churches are authoritative. I don’t think the Bible alone makes them authoritative, either, and I also don’t even think belief in Jesus Christ makes them authoritative.

What I’m trying to say is this- I wouldn’t feel confident going to the pastor at Cedar Ridge for personal or spiritual guidance. I feel like he’s just a guy, same as me, trying to figure thigs out. That has a certain appeal, sure, especially from the pulpit (there isn’t technically a pulpit, but that’s beside the point), but at the same time it doesn’t make me feel like he’s a spiritual leader that I could turn to. As far as I know, he hasn’t been to a seminary or anything. It’s kind of a surprise that that matters to me, growing up Mormon with a lay clergy, but as it turns out I think it actually matters a lot.

So with Evangelical Christianity, I have problems with how authoritative I feel the institutions and clergy are. My second problem is more theological. In theory, I believe in Jesus Christ’s atoning sacrifice, once for all. I believe in salvation by grace through faith. I believe that the price for my sins has already been paid, that I am already forgiven before I even did anything wrong.

My problem is that that sounds great on paper and in conversation, but it seems too abstract in practice. Let’s say I do something wrong, and feel bad about it. What am I supposed to do to be right with God? My theology tells me that inasmuch as I have faith in Jesus Christ, I am already right with God. But that doesn’t seem very real. I feel like I’m left trying to convince myself that I’m already forgiven and that it’s already taken care of and I should just be thankful for what Jesus did for me. But I still feel really bad, and all I can do is try, in vain, to talk myself out of the guilt.

It’s all abstract: I just have to trust that my wrongs were already righted 2,000ish years ago so I have nothing to worry about. But I have a hard time convincing myself of it. Maybe it’s because I really don’t have faith. Maybe it’s because I’m still stuck in a Mormon mindset that demands I earn my salvation. I don’t know. But at the very least, I would like something concrete to do, at least an outward manifestation of reconciliation, so I can have some kind of closure on my sins. I’m not talking about earning forgiveness; I know I can’t do that. I just mean that I want to be able to somehow make concrete the abstract idea of my salvation by the grace of God. And Evangelical Christianity, in my opinion, doesn’t really offer that. It has no real sacraments, no clergy to confess to. It seems like the whole religion is just about deciding you believe, and then being glad about it.

I see it seem work for other people, and in theory I think it sounds great. But in practice it doesn’t seem to have any effect. I don’t feel transformed, healed, or even justified by just “realizing it’s all okay.”

Maybe I’ve missed the point- maybe Christianity is about realizing, for real, that it is okay, that Jesus made it so when you believe in him your sins are gone, and there’s nothing you have to do but acknowledge and accept it, for real. Maybe my insistence on some external performance is holding me back from real conversion, real faith, and the kind of transformational Christianity that I’m hungry for. I acknowledge the possibility. But it doesn’t change anything. And reassurances from other Christians that I’m on the right track are nice and supportive, but they’re not authoritative- they’re just more people like me, in the same boat as I am. What do they know? How are they more trustworthy than I am?

I imagine that the person that I really should trust is Jesus, that he has told me himself that he has atoned for my sins, and that anything else would just be noise. Maybe. But it doesn’t seem to be happening, to really be connecting. Again, I am left feeling like I’m just trying to talk myself out of feeling guilty.

I’ve talked about forgiveness for sins as probably the most important example, but the principles apply to the sum total of religious life. Evangelical Christianity has all of the action happen in the long ago and far away, and thus in the inaccessible abstract.

My third problem with Evangelical Christianity is the form of worship. For the most part, praise bands and Christian pop music do absolutely nothing for me. I want the deep spirituality of liturgy and hymns. I’m not trying to be a worship-consumer or anything, but modern, contemporary worship just doesn’t feel like it has any weight behind it. It is sincere but ephemeral, and seems to be primarily a matter of emotional appeal. Part of leaving Mormonism was the realization that emotions are not the same thing as the Holy Spirit. Emotions are the product of propaganda as often as they are the product of nearness to God.

Evangelical Christianity (particularly, for me at least, the emergent conversation) is firmly rooted in scripture, reason (within the context of faith), and mysticism (i.e. the Holy Spirit), but has abandoned tradition almost entirely. I know the emergent conversation has made overtures at recapturing some tradition, but in my opinion it’s been barely more than a token effort, and comes across as superficial to me.

In fact, sometimes Evangelical Christianity seems altogether tacky and plastic, not anything like an ancient Middle Eastern (or even European) faith tradition, and certainly not anything like the Kingdom of Heaven.

Finally, I have some issues with Community. I feel like Christian community is absolutely critical, as Jesus commanded his disciples to be one even as he is one with the Father. I realize that the emergent conversation has tried to emphasize this, but in practice it seems ot not be happening. How do you have authentic community in a megachurch?

Even at Cedar Ridge, which is certainly no megachurch, it seems to me like the congregation might be too big for authentic community, and although they try really hard (and admirably) to foster community, it seems artificial. It’s like they’re trying to make a plant by mixing the component parts all together in a bowl, instead of planting the seeds, setting up the right conditions, and cultivating it as it grows.

Anyway, I have a strange love-hate relationship with Evangelical Christianity, and I’m hesitant to embrace it more fully than I already have, while at the same time, it has things that I want and need that I don’t know if I really can find anywhere else. And I feel like I must face the real possibility that my hesitation is because of the lingering effects of my Mormon roots, or maybe because I simply haven’t fully been able to understand and appreciate what Jesus Christ is all about.

I just don’t know if I can figure all of this (Christianity, God, Jesus, what I believe and how I believe it and how I should express it) out on my own.  I’ve read tons of books on Christianity and I’m reading the Gospels, but at the same time I still have so many concerns and dilemmas and uncertainties.  Prayer and the input from internet people aren’t doing the trick.  I think I might need to seek out a minister or something.  Someone to talk to who does Christianity for a living.

Maybe this is unreasonable of me, since I have no intention of going back anyway, but it actually bothers me that the missionaries haven’t showed up since my wife and I stopped going to the Mormon church.  I even saw them in our building one time, and I totally expected them to at least drop by and say “hi.”  I mean, we’re less-actives in their area!  Don’t they have an area book or at least a ward roster that they’ve gone over with their Ward Mission Leader to see who they can visit?

The last time I heard from missionaries was in December, around Christmas.  They called a couple of times trying to set up appointments.  They claimed that they were new to the ward and just trying to meet all of the members in their area.  I told them to cut the crap- we all knew that my wife and I hadn’t been to church in months and that was the reason they wanted to visit.  The missionary on the phone played innocent and wounded, but the insincerity was tangible.  That’s the one thing that really bugs me the most about the Mormon missionary program- it tends to foster really insincere behavior on the missionaries’ part.

Anyway, I told them it would probably be a waste of time for them to visit, but that I would talk to my wife and see if there was a time that would be good.  I don’t think they ever called back.  I was just being honest; I was a missionary myself, and I promise that it is extremely unlikely that a missionary is going to say something that would make me suddenly change my mind about the church.  And their sweet spirit isn’t going to do it either since I’m 1) very suspicious about making life decisions based on warm fuzzies that someone else interprets for me and 2) I know they’re doing everything they can to cultivate that sweet spirit, and some of it is genuine, and someof it isn’t.

In any case, we would be happy to feed them and chatand whatever, but probably it wouldn;t be worth the missionaries’ time, unless they just needed ot get in some reactivation hours to report back to the mission president.  Maybe I was too aggressive or forceful about it, and they wrote “wants no contact” in their area book.

In any case, it bothers me.  Maybe it shouldn’t, like I said, since I really have no intention of going back to Mormonism, but to me it makes the whole missionary program seem hypocritical.  Aren’t they suposed to at least be trying?

We haven’t heardfrom the bishop in months, either.  Our home teachers call every now and then, but  that’s it.  They’re good guys, and we’re happy to have them visit.  We had some friends in the ward, but they moved.  Our babysitter is a new member, but that doesn’t really count.

I’m just saying, it seems for all the bluster of saving sould and perfecting the saints and whatnot, that our ward and the missionaries seem perfectly happy to let us fall between the cracks.  That’s what bothers me. I don’t want to stay in the church, but it’s kindof insulting to have nobody even care when I leave.

I recently read Finding Faith by Brian McLaren.  It’s worth reading, though now it’s being published as two separate books under different names.

The thing is, I don’t know that I really want to be an atheist.  Kind of.  I’m torn in quite a few directions.  The reason why I would be an atheist is not because I’ve been logically convinced of the nonexistence of God.  Logic is great and useful and everything, but to me it isn’t the be-all end-all of existence.  I’m not uncomfortable with being nonlogical or even a bit illogical.  Logical arguments aren’t really going to convince me one way or the other.  I don’t really make any other decision in my life based on pure logic, so why should I decide what to believe (or not to believe) based on pure logic.

I’m not a mathematician, a philosopher, or a scientist anyway, so the sad fact is that other peoples’ logical arguments are likely to dazzle me a bit because I’m not trained to shoot them down.  That’s not to say I reject logic entirely- I even think I’m pretty good with it and I’m actually fairly consistent about being able to see holes and hidden assumptions in other peoples’ logical arguments.  But I’m not an expert, and I don’t claim to be, and I’m not confident enough in my command of logic to want to base really anything on it.  Especially something of this level of importance.

That’s not a new revelation or anything; it’s why I’ve not been totally convinced by anybody’s logic in the past, and I’m unlikely to be convinced by it in the future.

So, with reluctance to let my provisional atheism soldifiy into something more permanent, I’ve been trying to figure out what I can believe, what I want to believe, and what I do believe, in a way that is honest with and true to myself.  McLaren’s book was useful.  It’s not a recipe for instant monotheistic belief- I could probably refute many if not most of the points he tries to make.  The usefulness of the book lies more in McLaren’s honesty and authenticity.  He’s aclearly a guy who’s been spending his whole life trying to figure out life, the universe, and everything, and Finding Faith is basically just a structured set of observations that he thinks might be helpful to someone else on the same journey.  Even when he actively tries to persuade, he admits it up front, and he’s transparent about it, which is refreshing.

I don’t know that Finding Faith was my spiritual panacea.  I didn’t walk away from it suddenly believing in God.  But it did get me to start thinking about important things in some new ways, and it may have helped me get to a place where I think I can start believing again.

Also I had the chance to talk to McLaren at church on Saunday and thank him for the book, and to briefly tell him how it had been helpful to me.  He’s a really nice guy, and he’s speaking at church nexty Sunday, which I am eagerly anticipating.

One particularly (in my opinion) credulous meme in the Mormon Church is that the time, place, and manner in which the Church was restored was the only way God could have done it. Now granted, Mormon God is not fully omnipotent in the definitional sense (even though the missionaries teach that he is), but seriously, it seems pretty clear to me that if God needed to do the Restoration, he could have done it anywhere he wanted. Europe handled the Reformation, and Protestantism is going strong today. Europe could have also handled the Restoration, assuming such a thing needed to happen at all.

In my last post, I talked about the problems with the doctrine of the Great Apostasy. I want to now deal with a couple more. Primarily, if some regeneration did need to happen, why didn’t God do it within his Church, like he appears to have done at very other time throughout Mormon scriptural history? Why wasn’t Joseph Smith a Roman Catholic (or Eastern Orthodox!) priest who God raised up to be His Pope and restore all that was lost? Unless the Catholic Church wasn’t God’s church, but that could only be the case if True Christians were actually wiped out and replaced by impostors at some point. Gradual corruption never made God totally abandon his Church and start over again in the scriptures, so why would this be the one weird exception?

Because God couldn’t have done so? Poppycock. At best, God didn’t want to. Mysterious ways and all that, but to me that’s really a cop-out. The whole business is one more counterintuitive thing that has to be accepted on faith, or based on an extremely subtle “whispering of the spirit” that is absolutely indistinguishable from the rublmings in my stomach due to not having eaten breakfast yet.

And don’t even get me started on why God waited like 1800 years to restore the truth. That’s nonsense. The bit about how that’s when the time was right is also nonsense. Even if God had to do the whole Restoration thing the way he supposedly has done it according to Mormonism, there’s no reason to think it wouldn’t have persevered despite the persecution just like all kinds of other heretical movements throughout Christianity have done.

And seriously, this is God. He can preserve his people from their enemies, right! Didn’t he have an angel kill like 180,000 people in the Bible once to preserve the Israelites? Sigh.

Note- I have also added this post to my Sailing Away From Mormonism page.

In order for the Mormon church to make any sense, there has to have been a Restoration. In order for there to need to be a Restoration, there has to have been a Great Apostasy. This is fundamental enough that the new Preach My Gospel manual that the missionaries use starts out with the Great Apostasy from the beginning. The main problem, in my opinion, is that there’s no good evidence that such a Great Apostasy occurred, at least to the extent that it would have needed to occur for Mormon theology to make sense.

From the standpoint of Mormonism, the Apostasy meant that 1) there were no more living prophets and/or apostles to continuously reveal the truth, 2) true doctrine became subverted by human ideas and was thus lost (and without living prophets, it was not re-discoverable), and 3) the priesthood authority was gone from the earth.

Each one of those points is incredibly problematic. The first point seems hard to argue with, because nobody was claiming to receive revelation, prophet-style, on behalf of all Christendom. To many Mormons, thats eals the deal. However, the sad truth is that the Latter-Day church doesn’t seem to get ay revelation, either. After Joseph Smith, there’s basically been a long line of prophets who don’t prohesy. Now, most Mormons will dispute this, and their evidence will be geenrally statements that they personally ascribe prophetic-revelation-status to (though the maker of the statement did not), or they appeal to the “probability” that the prophet gets these big revelations all the time, but doesn’t share them with the Church and the world for whatever reason. Or, barring those, they will shift their definition of revelation to include a moregeneral type of inspiration.

In any case, there’s not much evidence that the rate of contemporary revelation right now was any different than during the Great Apostasy. Nevertheless, there’s a differnence- the next two points (true doctrine and priesthood authority) make clear the difference between the Church during the Great Apostasy and the Latter-Day Church.

James E. Talmage, in pretty much any book he wrote, was quick to trot out shady, questionable doctrines and practices of the medieval Catholic church as evidence of its apostasy. What it basically comes down to is that doctrines were changed away from the “plain and precious truths” that were taught by Jesus Christ and his apostles. This is also problematic, for a couple of reasons.

First, despite what Mormons may learn in Primary and Sunday School, many doctrines and practices have also changed during the not-quite-two-hundred years of the latter-day church. I need only mention the big, contentious ones like polygamy, Blood Atonement, and the Adam-God theory. Sure, some of those doctrines have come and gone, but so did some of the questionable Catholic doctrines that Talmage loves to pick on. It’s not limited to the anti-Mormon fodder, either. Plenty of other doctrines and practices have changed or evolved over time and members don;t even bat an eye.

As an aside- a common Mormon metaphor for the Apostasy and Restoration is a broken glass. You can’t just put the pieces of a broken glass back together to make the cup good again; you have to actually make a new cup. The broken glass is the Christian church during the Apostasy and the new-blown glass is the Restored church. If the Apostasy was just a matter of inspired leadership and correct doctrine, then the metaphor is complete junk. Rediscovering old, correct doctrine, if such a thing exists, is merely a matter of going back to old texts and seeing what was taught before the change away from the truth. It is well within human capability, and it’s exactly what the Reformers were trying to do. If it was just a matter of inspiration/revelation and true doctrine, then the Reformation (and accompanying counter-reformation) should have done the trick. The Mormon Church even teaches that those men were inspired.

This is the point in the discussion where the Mormon falls back to the bunker of Priesthod authority, but I am afraid there is no cover to be found there either.

According to Mormon theology, the big evidence for the Apostasy and Restoration, the real clincher, was authority. God’s priesthood, the power and authority to act (and lead) in His name, was gone from the earth. It had to be fully restored in order for God to run things the right way, for the ordinances like baptism to have any effect, and for the Kingdom of God to be built on earth.

However, there’s no real indication that the Priesthood, assuming that it did indeed exist the way that Mormonism teaches that it once did, ever left the earth. In fact, I think it’s completely and utterly unreasonable to think that it did.

Mormonism believes in a lay priesthood- all worthy men can (and these days should and are) be ordained deacons, teachers, priests, and elders. This Priesthood existed in the time of the apostles, but it was lost, so only the apostles themselves could give the Priesthood back to us. Thus, first John the Baptist and then Peter James and John appeared to Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery to give them this priesthood, so there would be an unbroken line of authority back to Jesus Christ (for the Melchizidek Priesthood) and to Aaron (for the Aaronic Priesthood).

But that means that this lay Priesthood existed in New Testament times, but it had disappeared by Joseph Smith’s time. The problem is that the Christian church didn’t disappear during that time. In order to have the Priesthood die out and fade away but the Church continue, you’d have to have an entire generation of Priesthood-holders simply not give the Priesthood to anyone else. Simultaneously, you’d have to have an entire generation of Church leadership come in and claim leadership positions without even holding the Priesthood (if you think about that in the framework of the modern Mormon Chruch, it doesn’t even make sense).

The Mormons claim that John, not Linus, was the second leader of the Church (since he got Revelation on Patmos after Peter’s death, and only the leader of the Church would get scriptural revelation like that), which means that the Catholic line of authority was broken from the beginning. The problem with that apologetic is that it confuses leadership with the Priesthood. Linus may not have been “the prophet,” but as a member of the Church, there’s no reason at allt ot hink he didn’t have the Priesthood. Past that, the Catholic church (and the Orthodox Church and even the Anglican Communion) can show an unbroken line of apostolic succession all the way down to the current set of bishops. What reason then is there to believe that all those bishops don’t have the Priesthood?

Sure, they may not use it right, and they may have their heads full of false doctrine, but Mormon theology is pretty clear that priesthood authority doesn’t go away despite personal apostasy. A wicked missionary’s baptism is still valid, because he had the authority, and it was the Priesthood (i.e., God) doing the job, not him. Look at Alma the Elder in the Book of Mormon- he was one of a whole crop of evil clergymen who were ordained by the equally wicked King Noah and were doing al kinds of wring things and teaching all kinds of wrong doctrines. Nevertheless, the line of authority that gave Alma his Priesthood was still a valid one, so he could baptize all of those people at the Waters of Mormon. If he had the Priesthood, then why don’t the Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Orthodox clergy have the Priesthood?

In short, although there may have been a falling away from the truth over time, there’s no real reason to believe that The Great Apostasy ever happened in such a way as to necessitate the Restoration as it is taught in Mormonism.

Note- I have added this post to my Sailing Away From Mormonism page.

I’ve been thinking about what kind of Christian I want to be if I decide to be Christian after all.  I’m kind of torn.  I currently got o Cedar Ridge Community Church (the one founded by Brian McLaren) with my wife.  She likes it a lot, and she’s looking to settle down in a congregation and make it her home.  I can’t say I blame her.  She’s pretty solid in her Christianity, and just wants to get on with living a Christian life, being part of authentic community, and worshipping God, and I can’t say I blame her.  In many ways, my religious search is probably frustrating as I nervously flit back and forth between all kinds of different ideas and theologies.

There’s much about emergent Christianity that appeals to me.  The sermons at Cedar Ridge are dynamite- I agree with the theology being presented 100%.  However, I’m not incredibly excited aboutt he mode of worship.  Actually, I think it’s innovative, relevant, and a fantastic idea, but I don’t know that it’s the mode of worship that really appeals to me and connects for me.

I’d be much more comfortable in a more traditional liturgical service- Episcopal, Lutheran, or even Eastern Orthodox (I’m looking forward to trying out a Greek Orthodox service in the near future).  I like the liturgy.  I prefer the music- I’m not all that enthusiastic about contemporary praise music.  Some of it can be great, but not all the time; it just doesn’t mesh with my preconceived notions about what “church” and “worship” are supposed to be like.

In some ways, because of it’s broad tolerance for vastly differing theological approaches, the Episcopal Church would be almost ideal.  I really enjoy a good Episcopal service.  However, I prefer the sermons at Cedar Ridge by a factor of maybe a million.  And Cedar Ridge seems like one of the most friendly, welcoming places we’ve come to (other than maybe the Quakers).

The other factor is that I’m not excited about going to church separately from my wife.  I feel pretty strongly about that.  We should be together at church.  Even if I decide to be a committed atheist, I still plan on going to church with my wife every Sunday for the rest of my life.  It just feels right to me.

I don’t dislike anything about Cedar Ridge.  It’s just not my ideal fantasy church.  I don’t mind going to Cedar Ridge (and I certainly get something- quite a bit actually- out of it when I go), but I’m not so sure that in terms of worship it’s a perfect match for me.

The whole issue is pretty much unripe though, given that I still haven’t decided that God exists anyway.  But if I do decide to be a theist, it’ll be an issue.

We went to church today, as usual.  Pastor Matthew talked about living in community, authentic community to be precise.  The subtext was definitely that the most important community for us was community with God, i.e., a relationship with the divine.

I’m still not sure what that means.  How do you have a relationship with someone you can’t see?  With someone you can talk at, but they never seem to respond?  I mean, I can read about Jesus, but that doesn’t put me in a relationship with him any more than reading about Alexander Hamilton puts me in a relationship.  Even if I’m this obsessive Hamiltonian scholar, I may feel like I know Hamilton, and I may know his life backwards and forwards, but it’s still a fairly one-sided affair.  Alexander Hamilton doesn’t really reciprocate.

A lot of people who I respect talk about having a relationship with the divine,  so I don’t dismiss it out of hand.  But when I pray, I don’t get answers, and I don’t believe I ever really have.  I don’t get that, either.  I mean, God is God, right?  If he wants to have a relationship, why doesn’t he engage a little bit.  Actually say something, you know?  And I don’t mean this subtle stuff, like a vague feeling of divine presence or “he spoke to me… through the Bible!”  I mean spoke.  If I can talk to god the same way that I can talk on the phone to my brother Racticas, why doesn’t God talk back the way my brother does?  Does he not have the ability?

I just don’t understand what people mean by having a relationship with God.  Don’t get me wrong- I think it sounds really nice.  I just am at a loss to what it actually means.

If God isn’t able to relate to me, or I am not able to relate to God, then we’re really talking about Deism.  And I don’t see the point to Deism.  Why believe, based on no affirmative evidence whatsoever, in a God that isn’t really interested in interacting with you?  You may as well be an open-minded humanist atheist, willing to accept that “there are more things in heaven and earth…” but assuming in general that there’s not such a thing as God, at least not in a way that’s particularly relevant to your day-to-day life.

To untangle that sentence, what difference would it make in my life, between Deism and atheism?  If there’s no functional difference, I may as well go with the preponderance of the evidence and assume atheism.