Tag: Prophet

Whack-a-Doodle Timelines, the Death of a Prophet, and a Massacre or Two

On By lisatorcassodowningIn Abuse, Inclusion, Outreach, Politics, RaceLeave a comment

DOES ANYONE ELSE FEEL STUCK on a timeline that is too confounding for words? Everything around me feels shoved into reverse as it stutters forward. Can a crab walk in two directions at the same time? Because it seems like anything can happen, especially if it makes no sense. And what does it signify when the people you’ve always known best are people you feel you don’t know at all? Is it only me? I doubt it. And that feels like the point. I need to slow down, start somewhere, so, because I’m the center of my own universe, let me start with Sunday morning, Sept. 28, 2025. I know what happened then. Not really. Oh, and it might be important to know (if you didn’t already) that I’m a Latter-day Saint. A Mormon. (Can I say that again?) Or it might not matter at all.

So here it is. On Sunday morning, a 40 year old man – a veteran who decorates his pick up truck with US flags and his home with a Trump sign – plowed into a Stake Center of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and then rained terror in the form of gunfire and improvised explosive devises on a congregation that included scores of children. He killed four people and wounded eight. To his mind, each victim, whether killed, wounded or traumatized, is or was, an “antiChrist” (his word), a Mormon, someone like me. The word he used – “antiChrist” – is decidedly Christian, but the actions he committed are not. 

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Allyship is a Love Unworthy of Rebuke

On By lisatorcassodowningIn authority, Christ, Inclusion, LGBTQIA, revelation2 Comments

LAST SUNDAY, I CAUGHT another glimpse of what it might be like to sit as an LGBTQIA congregant in a chapel surrounded by people you love, while they are comforted by a sermon that depicts your greatest hope as evil. If you’re LDS, you’ve likely had a high councilor deliver a classic sermon like the one mine did last Sunday, one that used thinly veiled language to praise those who resist “the pressures of the world” which “call good, evil and evil, good” by “fully sustaining the prophet.” While this language may be used to encourage avoidance of various sins, in this instance, it was also clearly coded as a rebuke against those of us who don’t accept and promote current LDS doctrine and policy about LGBTQIA people as eternal truth, whether we be LGBTQIA ourselves or an outspoken ally. The assumption is that if we disagree with the fallible human who serves us in the priesthood office of prophet, we disagree with God. Today, I’m not going to run a convoy of reason through the gaping holes in that logic. Rather, I want to speak specifically as an ally who was subjected to a type of public rebuke.

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