Video Of The "Former Bishop'S" Presentation That I Attended

[blooit]

I think your analysis is correct. He actually started watching Shawn McCraney's The Heart of the Matter as early as 2007 - and has described how "mad" he was at McCraney when he began watching - noting elsewhere that his "coming out" as a fundamentalist Protestant to his family came in early 2011, with his formal renunciation on The Heart of the Matter in August 2011. He has alluded elsewhere to beginning an apologetic effort to "prove Shawn wrong" which ultimately led to his crisis of faith and conversion to fundamentalist Protestantism.

And for the original poster, Blooit, Bob Millet and Greg Johnson will be doing an LDS/Evangelical dialogue in Idaho Falls next month. Todd Wood is somewhat involved in it, as you're probably already aware. I certainly hope to be in attendance, and would extend a warm welcome to any other MDDB posters able to attend.

I was not aware, but will get ahold of Pastor Todd right away. This sounds great!

[Kenngo1969]

"adieu" or "ado"? Either way, it seems to be much ado about nothing.

Well, in that case, adieu!

[Kenngo1969]

I have just listened to the talk. I do believe that he got his information from antimormon sites and not from his own research. The questions that he has are standard on antimormon sites. It does show that the internet is creating problems for members and it certainly has caused a problem for this man. Too bad really. And I don't think that he wanted to hear what FAIR had to say about it because the antis discount FAIR.

Ah, well. Someone has to seperate the wheat from the chaff!

[BlueDreams]

He seemed like a sincere/nice enough guy.

I didn't watch all the Q+A. I'm not a big fan of watching these things in the first place, but it's a slow morning so why not .

My short thoughts:

You could definitely feel his newness to his new church. He still linguistically associated himself with mormons throughout the presentations. Nothing important, I just thought it was funny...kinda endearing. It makes me feel that he also had this distanced association of mormons and all other christians long before is evangelical conversion. Where it's either this or that with little chance of gray. To me this is always a dangerous mindset. It means having to negate spiritual experiences of others that's unneccessary.

His grasp on doctrine reminds me of what I call cultural doctrine. They're random ingrained beliefs/assumptions by those raised LDS that have never really been looked at in depth. These things are usually not entirely wrong, they're just not complete. For example him talking about the pure in heart seeing God. His line of reasoning's pretty obvious: Baptism by proper authority is necessary for salvation (true) ergo only those baptized could see God (not true). It's a heavy focus on instrumentality with minimal understanding beyond that.

I did find it weird that he considered his callings as a sign of being proud (or that he was that good at keeping track....I can hardly remember some of mine). But as he continued to talk it sounded more like he was converted the the gospel of doing things while LDS as opposed to a fuller understanding of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Which also explains his expectation to not ask questions. I have no doubt about his current sincerity and his previous belief. I just wish that he could understand it's not the full picture and does not represent the LDS faith.

With luv,

BD

Edited May 8, 2012 by BlueDreams

[DBMormon]

listened to the first hour.... I agree he is very deceptive at times and throws the LDS faith under the bus on areas where he should know better. He seems to cut no slack in places that it would have been very natural for a person intimate with LDS culture and theology to have been kinder in the way he answered questions

assumed because he was pride that all other mormons in their shirt and ties were proud too. some are, many are not

Edited May 8, 2012 by reelmormon