Dan McClellan: I am an active member of the Church

[Okrahomer]

Here

From the comments, some folks simply cannot get their minds around this.

[InCognitus]

33 minutes ago, Okrahomer said:

Here

From the comments, some folks simply cannot get their minds around this.

He also posted that on YouTube and this other one too:

Apparently he's getting a lot of questions on this lately and he's addressing them.

[JustAnAustralian]

It's interesting that one of the topics he responded to was whether was an apologist for Mormonism, when most of the questions I've seen have been whether he was doing the opposite.

Edited yesterday at 04:59 AM by JustAnAustralian

[InCognitus]

1 hour ago, Okrahomer said:

some folks simply cannot get their minds around this.

I don't quite understand the problems, honestly.

This is the YouTube version in case anyone prefers that:

 

[Calm]

23 hours ago, InCognitus said:

I don't quite understand the problems, honestly.

This is the YouTube version in case anyone prefers that:

 

He has been consistently saying this for a long time and I don’t see much difference from when he hung out here or other places I interacted with him.

Edited 3 hours ago by Calm

[Calm]

1 hour ago, InCognitus said:

don't quite understand the problems, honestly.

I think a lot have misconceptions about what scholarship is intended to do.

Or maybe what the Church or Gospel requires?

Edited yesterday at 06:42 AM by Calm

[The Nehor]

A lot of Christians think he is a an apologist for Mormons because they don’t understand what the LDS Church (and a lot of other restorationist churches) teach. If they did they would know that a lot of what Dan says is disliked and derided by people of his own church. I have seen people on the web commenting that  the LDS church is pro-LGBT because Dan is. Also people claiming that LDS people in general are very skeptical of biblical historicity to a degree I rarely see in the Church because Dan seems to be that way.

Edited yesterday at 07:26 AM by The Nehor

[Stargazer]

17 hours ago, Okrahomer said:

Here

From the comments, some folks simply cannot get their minds around this.

Yeah, I found some of those comments to be very amusing. In a eye-rolling kind of way.

[Stargazer]

14 hours ago, The Nehor said:

A lot of Christians think he is a an apologist for Mormons because they don’t understand what the LDS Church (and a lot of other restorationist churches) teach. If they did they would know that a lot of what Dan says is disliked and derided by people of his own church. I have seen people on the web commenting that  the LDS church is pro-LGBT because Dan is. Also people claiming that LDS people in general are very skeptical of biblical historicity to a degree I rarely see in the Church because Dan seems to be that way.

I can relate to what you say here, because I have intensely disliked some of what Dan has said/written. And unfortunately, I have a rather negative personal experience with him that I find it hard to shed.

On the other hand, I myself have found that some of what I have had to say about certain subjects seems to elicit dislike and derision from people in my own church, so maybe I need to be more understanding with him.

He actually makes sense, occasionally, so there's that.

[Okrahomer]

17 hours ago, InCognitus said:

I don't quite understand the problems, honestly.

I don’t get it either. I noticed at least one genuinely puzzled commenter asking for non‑partisan information about the Church, specifically because he admires Dan’s scholarship so much that he wants to understand more about Dan’s religious beliefs. And given the sheer volume of incredulous reactions, I wouldn’t be surprised if others are now curious as well. That’s a good thing. Good for Dan.

[Calm]

7 minutes ago, Okrahomer said:

I don’t get it either. I noticed at least one genuinely puzzled commenter asking for non‑partisan information about the Church, specifically because he admires Dan’s scholarship so much that he wants to understand more about Dan’s religious beliefs. And given the sheer volume of incredulous reactions, I wouldn’t be surprised if others are now curious as well. That’s a good thing. Good for Dan.

Yes, we need to shed the conformity in thought image because this is actually a wide allowable range in most of the peripheral stuff.

It’s not surprising we are seen as ridiculously high conformists given how our missionaries look and our WoW standards and a certain look at least in the past with hair and clothing among women, the clean cut look for men (the BYU look, is that still a thing?), but it’s unfortunate (especially when members start believing it as well and thinking of good, solid, faithful members as apostate because they differ in politics or evolution, errancy in leaders and other views.

[Okrahomer]

10 minutes ago, Calm said:

Yes, we need to shed the conformity in thought image because this is actually a wide allowable range in most of the peripheral stuff.

It’s not surprising we are seen as ridiculously high conformists given how our missionaries look and our WoW standards and a certain look at least in the past with hair and clothing among women, the clean cut look for men (the BYU look, is that still a thing?), but it’s unfortunate (especially when members start believing it as well and thinking of good, solid, faithful members as apostate because they differ in politics or evolution, errancy in leaders and other views.

Agreed. I do think there is probably still a “BYU look”; although maybe it is morphing a little right now. It would help if BYU would shed the no beards policy.

[InCognitus]

2 hours ago, Okrahomer said:

I don’t get it either. I noticed at least one genuinely puzzled commenter asking for non‑partisan information about the Church, specifically because he admires Dan’s scholarship so much that he wants to understand more about Dan’s religious beliefs. And given the sheer volume of incredulous reactions, I wouldn’t be surprised if others are now curious as well. That’s a good thing. Good for Dan.

The thing that puzzles me is how many people were surprised to find out he's LDS.  I don't watch every single video that Dan puts out, but there are numerous times in interviews and in the Data Over Dogma podcast where his membership in the church comes up, and he's constantly being bashed in the comments about being a member of the church.  In many of the interviews with him that I have watched (I think in a couple of them they were interviewing him about his book, The Bible Says So) he speaks fondly of his conversion to the church and how that led him to read the Bible for the first time prior to serving a mission, and how that got him started in Biblical scholarship.

He discusses the church to some degree in this Data Over Dogma episode, for example:

At about the 13:16 minute mark he discusses debates he had on his blog with James White about whether "Mormons" are Christians, and that comes up again around the 18:00 minute mark (where they are discussing the name of the church) and a little later he says, "you will find a lot of people who insist that I probably can't even call myself a Mormon anymore and shouldn't call myself a Mormon for multiple reasons. One of them being that you're not supposed to use that word."

There's a lot more from there.