Church is True Podcast — first week review
The Church is True Faith Crisis and Reconstruction podcast series is here. The first three episodes were released this week. Here’s a link to the first episode: Mormon faith crisis podcast link
At the beginning of the podcast, I give a strong warning to only proceed if you are already very aware of all the church history and scripture issues, the gospel topics essays, CES Letter issues, etc. I don’t want to cause faith crisis for someone who is not already familiar with the issues. But I think the audience already fits that bill.
Episode Summaries:
Episode 1: introduction of my personal journey through faith crisis and reconstruction. Topics: trust, what to do with previous spiritual confirmations, cognitive dissonance, faith vs belief, belief as a choice, apologetics, neoapologetics, metaphorical vs literal paradigms, fundamentalistic vs nuanced testimony.Episode 2: Old Testament. Literal, 19th century view vs modern scholarly view. Gotcha issues for LDS. Evolution, Noah’s flood, prooftexting. Pete Enns: this is what it looks like when God lets his children tell the story. My testimony of the OT after faith deconstruction and reconstruction.
Episode 3: Book of Mormon Evidence. 19th century hemispheric model Native American origination story vs new church essay LGT and Mixing Populations, DNA Science, anachronisms like horses, steel, etc, ancient metal plates, Reformed Egyptian, Stephen Smoot’s critique of an inspired but non-historical view of the BOM. My view of the BOM as inspired and sacred scripture yet not being historical and viewing it as a revelation through Joseph Smith. My testimony of the BOM.
Here’s where you can find them on iTunes. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/church-is-true-lds-mormon/id1516616452
I threw down some ambitious goals at the beginning of the first episode. Goals for the podcast series:
- define an intellectually bullet proof version of Mormonism that satisfies all church critics. I will break down all the apologetic issues. This part will align me more intellectually with Exmormons than most faithful LDS, but it’s important for my project to do this.
- retain a version of Mormonism that is true and beautiful and worthy of engaging in. This part will align me more with my faithful LDS religionists, which is where I feel most comfortable.
- avoid getting excommunicated. I’m trying very hard to present this from a faithful standpoint.
Going into the podcast series, I thought I had a 0.1% chance of getting in trouble by my stake president for doing this. I’m upping that probability to 1% now. The reaction from the conservative LDS side has been a little more negative and aggressive than I thought it would. I will work very hard to disarm that negative energy and work to reconcile those feelings. I want very much to be aligned with all my fellow LDS. On the positive side, I’ve received a lot of praise and thankyou’s and that motivates me to keep going. Thanks to the people that support the project!
Have you listened to any episodes? Let’s discuss the episodes here.