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117. The Mormon Episode: What is it Like to Be a Progressive Mormon?
Manage episode 321768114 series 2801148
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Cody Crabb knows how this sounds. In today's increasingly secular environment, saying you are religious sounds like you are saying you believe in aliens. Saying you are a progressive Mormon sounds like you either don't know what progressivism is or you don't know what Mormons believe. The Mormon church (they're actually moving away from the term "Mormon" and towards the "Church of the Latter-Day Saints," or LDS for short) isn't exactly known for being the most progressive institution.
Same-sex marriages are not recognized by the church, Brigham Young was a racist, Black people were not allowed to be priests in the LDS church until the 1970s.
So how do you exist as a member of the LDS church as a progressive person who doesn't see a difference between your romantic relationship and that of your gay friends? As someone who believes in fighting racism?
But some things are changing. Religions everywhere are losing young people, and they know they have to adapt or risk drifting into irrelevancy. There's only so much that religions can do when they stand so at odds with the direction the rest of society is going in.
In the LDS church, this is where the phenomenon of modern revelation comes in. At any given moment, there is a living prophet in the church, and the current guy, as of 2018, is a former heart surgeon named Russell M. Nelson, who can update the handbook and stances of the church to fit modern-day values. Their job is to interpret the word of God.
For example, a recent prophet said that the church was going to require the children of gay parents to be baptized at the age of 18, whereas you usually get baptized when you are 8 years old. There was a huge backlash to this inside and outside the church and after that backlash, the church revised its guidelines to allow everyone to be baptized at 8 years old.
Obviously a lot of these issues cause a ton of cognitive dissonance as a progressive person, and Cody talks about how for him, so much of the teachings of the church are about clothing the naked and feeding the hungry, which is exactly in line with progressivism. For the things that feel contradictory, you just have to believe in slow, incremental change, and realize that some things are always going to have to go "on the shelf."
Links:
Cody's website: https://www.codycrabb.com/
Cody's email: codycrabb8 [at] gmail.com
The Wikipedia page for the current LDS prophet, Russel M. Nelson: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_M._Nelson
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