First time here

[Calm]

4 hours ago, rpn said:

Maybe your comments could be helpful if you were specific about what you think is a problem

If people want to write in using the contact Fm service and share specific objections, with the name of the video and a time stamp, that would be helpful. So far a number of those who have written in have been willing to do that. 
 

https://www.fairmormon.org/contact

[Calm]

4 hours ago, rpn said:

There is another thread on this site that absolutely rejects the video I think you are speaking about.   As you are new, you won't be able to comment on it, but you might want to look at it as a preliminary response.

He can comment, just not start a thread himself...

bluebell got there first. That is what happens when I actually can sleep.   

Edited December 7, 2020 by Calm

[Calm]

4 hours ago, Mike Livingston said:

But if these guys are professors and part of CES then there opinions matter.

Have you watched the videos or just listened to them? (Serious question, not challenging; I want to know the source of the confusion)  I just don’t understand how you can imagine they are professors. 
 

The whole point of the videos is to reach out to youth through youth. Using professors would make that look so awkward....like the high school teacher with longer hair and casual dress who tries to act cool as if he is part of the in crowd of kids....and in my day just laughed when a student brought pot to school for our secret Santa exchange. 
 

Are CES hiring that young of people these days?  Serious question as I haven’t had kids in CES for at least a decade.  My niece was hired for something after she graduated, but she was late 20’s by then, having gone on a mission.  She wasn’t a professor though. I think she taught seminary. 

Edited December 7, 2020 by Calm

[Calm]

4 hours ago, Mike Livingston said:

Fairmorm should stick with defending the church and stop worrying about these little peons who shouldn't matter if groups like fairmorm are good at their job.

We can’t help if people don’t read or watch our stuff. And youth wasn’t.  We had tried a couple of different things with us at the helm that hadn’t worked. We looked at what others were doing to see what did. 
 

Jeremy Runnells is not a little peon. His CES letter has taken out so many individuals, caused conflict in many families and it is most effective in the younger than 30 group.  It is a major issue worldwide. The letters we get about this are heartbreaking and many FM members know personally people who have walked away from the church after the CES Letter knocked out their foundation. Some even have had it happen in their own family (family members being hurt or losing their faith is a common reason for people to join FM in hopes they can help it not happen to another family).  
 

And the “Letter” (it is a book now and was 88 pages when it started iirc) is awful as far as accuracy and honesty. Its effect makes no sense to me.  But no one has been able to make something that youth are willing to engage with, in and out of FM. 
 

Until now. 
 

And hopefully we will be able to keep what makes it a success and drop the most problematic stuff. The videos do get better as they gained experience and Kwaku did a great job with his Saints Unscripted shows, so I have great expectations we will be seeing better productions eventually. (Covid has delayed stuff)

Edited December 7, 2020 by Calm

[Calm]

Quote

The only reason I'm on here is because I didn't believe my brother in law trying to tell me that a bunch of byu professors put out a video of Brigham Youngs face on a rapper. 

They didn’t. Maybe you are confusing us with FARMS/Neal A Maxwell Institute.  We had one BYU professor on our board, Dan Peterson, but the rest were not connected with BYU.  The group is international, connected primarily online with a yearly conference...which has never been held at BYU as they wouldn’t allow us to sell our books, a major source of our income.

 We have had a few professors as members, a number of BYU students, but at the moment I am not sure we have any profs in the group (I handled our membership for sometime, but that has been several years).

Edited December 7, 2020 by Calm

[Chum]

9 hours ago, Mike Livingston said:

Well after watching that video plus a bunch more I've pretty much gone down a rabbit hole I guess. I've probably spent 30 or so hours in the past four days researching and I'm totally pissed at what I'm finding. First off, why are these videos attacking individual people by name? I've been a member my whole life and I have never heard a church leader or source attack an individual, only satan. For the first time in my life I have let doubt creep in and now I'm online complaining to people I have never met.

Some members like me and Mike have a website and posted some unhelpful videos. Mike watched them and is in a darker place. Also, before now, the site was known to be pretty benign and non-controversial.  Is that everything or am I missing something important?

Mike, can you clarify who you are cheesed off at?

edit: I know zero about FM. Some of Calm's last posts clarify that FM occupies a space between Billyjoe's Mormon blog and official Church messaging.

Edited December 7, 2020 by Chum

[Calm]

Quote

the site was known to be pretty benign and non-controversial. 

Do you mean FM or the website you two share?  If the latter, I can understand the frustration if its character has been altered.
 

 I was a moderator of a great message board where intelligent, civil critics and members discussed stuff (the pre-precursor of this board) until one of our posters who liked to hang out on anti boards couldn’t answer questions there and so he invited the crowd to come over to our little community. Totally threw off the dynamic and eventually killed that board. Thankfully we had the precursor of this one to migrate to, though not before we lost a lot of great posters who just got tired of being attacked or bored with the trivialities and repetition and they gave up message boards altogether.  

[AtlanticMike]

I was asking if fairmormon was made up of byu professors not the people in the videos. My brother in law said that . And after talking to a guy named Tom at the church's p.r. department he also said fairmormon was made up of byu professors. I've called back twice and apparently Tom is the highest guy in the church you can actually talk to because they wouldn't let me speak to anyone else. Calm, thank you taking the time to write me back. But as I've said before attacking people personally isn't going to get fairmormon very far. And your wrong, Jeremy runnels is a peon compared to other corporations that attack Mormonism. Why not attack the Catholics or the Baptist or maybe the jehovah witnesses because they also attack our beliefs? Do they have to much money? For the life of me I dont understand how you or fairmormon can think attacking individuals is a good idea. Mormons have been attacked for 190 years and we've done pretty good by taking the high road and turning the other cheek. We're probably one of the most successful church's in the world financially and also spiritually. We haven't needed to attack individuals like scientology does because we have a positive message that we offer. You guys went to far, it didn't work and you need to apologize and move on. 

[Calm]

20 minutes ago, Chum said:

Some members like me and Mike have a website and posted some unhelpful videos. Mike watched them and is in a darker place. Also, before now, the site was known to be pretty benign and non-controversial.  Is that everything or am I missing something important?

Mike, can you clarify who you are cheesed off at?

edit: I know zero about FM. Some of Calm's last posts clarify that FM occupies a space between Billyjoe's Mormon blog and official Church messaging.

If interested, I can try and find something describing how we came together. I missed the early years as I wasn’t on AOL and was too shy back then to ask to join FAIR as it was known then.  Remarkable what the old message board and this one has done for my confidence, lol. 

[Calm]

6 minutes ago, Mike Livingston said:

And after talking to a guy named Tom at the church's p.r. department he also said fairmormon was made up of byu professors.

A lot of people seem to have that mistaken impression, probably because we took a lot of FARMS material and tried to make it more accessible as well as had BYU professors at our conferences. 

If Juliann sees this thread (she doesn’t visit the Social Forum much), she may be able to give a better breakdown of what it was like in the beginning being the “Mother of FairMormon”....I think I am going to start calling her that, lol. She was one of the founders as mentioned in the other thread. 

[AtlanticMike]

Chum I'm cheesed off at only one thing! Attacking individual people by name and using their image to make them look like a bunch of chumps. Yes I know they speak ill of the church but who cares, so does most of Christianity and 99% of atheist. Go ahead and attack Christianity or atheist or even John delins foundation I just found out about today, I think its called open stories foundation. But attacking people individually is operating in the same manner as scientology. It's also dangerous for the people your calling out personally,  am I the only one who can see that??? We all know there's some crazy mormons out there. 

[Chum]

1 hour ago, Calm said:

Do you mean FM or the website you two share? 

 

I was making a point that FM was a site that was operated by members of non-importance, people like me or Mike or anyone at all. My phrasing was confusing.

Reiterating: I see now that isn't the right way to consider FM.

Edited December 8, 2020 by Chum

[Chum]

1 hour ago, Mike Livingston said:

Chum I'm cheesed off at only one thing! Attacking individual people by name and using their image to make them look like a bunch of chumps.

I think that's what you're angry about. Who do you hold responsible for that?

[Calm]

1 hour ago, Chum said:

FM was a site that was operated by members of non-importance, people like me or Mike or anyone at all.

We have had accountants, salespeople, photographers, university professors (nonBYU as well as BYU), lots of students and those going for their grad degree, writers, lawyers, teachers, a captain of a fishing vessel, dentists, doctors and nurses, physicists and other scientists, engineers, therapists, housewives, and retired professionals, etc etc, computer geeks and luddites, extroverts and introverts, born in the Church, long time converts, and recent converts, a number of bishops...don’t know of any stake presidents or mission presidents though lots of former missionaries and even some kids prior to their mission, at least one RS Pres, lots of EQ Presidents, Gospel Doctrine teachers, unpaid seminary or institute teachers, Youth and Primary teachers, etc. 

Mostly Americans, all over the US as well as North and South, some Europeans, New Zealander. One of our members was working in Australia for a time. Maybe one of these days we will break into Asia, we already have members who are fluent in Japanese and maybe Chinese. Also English, Spanish, German, Italian, Norwegian and Finnish, Portuguese, Igbo...likely more I am not aware of. 
 

I don’t know if you would call that important or not, but it is a great group to hang out with. Was life changing for me to find others who not only were willing to discuss religion, but eager too. 

Edited December 8, 2020 by Calm

[bsjkki]

2 hours ago, Mike Livingston said:

Chum I'm cheesed off at only one thing! Attacking individual people by name and using their image to make them look like a bunch of chumps. Yes I know they speak ill of the church but who cares, so does most of Christianity and 99% of atheist. Go ahead and attack Christianity or atheist or even John delins foundation I just found out about today, I think its called open stories foundation. But attacking people individually is operating in the same manner as scientology. It's also dangerous for the people your calling out personally,  am I the only one who can see that??? We all know there's some crazy mormons out there. 

The ‘Church’ is not attacking anyone by name. FM is not the Church. If a private organization wants to debunk the CES letter and call out the author by revealing factual information, I don’t understand the problem. 
 

I haven’t watched the videos. Are they mocking him or revealing more contextual information about him and the letter. 
 

I don’t really understand your angst.

I think it is fine to seek to discredit the CES letter in its merits and question the authors motivation. 
 

When I first read it, I found it lacking. I find it doubtful these were sincere questions. Since this was written by a church educated seminary teacher, I concluded he must not have been paying attention in his classes or have studied much of anything on his own.

You don’t like FM style, find. How does this have anything to do with actual church leadership?

Edited December 8, 2020 by bsjkki

[bsjkki]

@Mike Livingston

I don’t understand why you called church headquarters. They are not in charge of FM. 
 

Do you want the Church to force FM to make editorial changes? Do you think it is the Church’s job to control private groups because you don’t like their editorial decisions? 
 

Your anger at the church based on this groups media is bewildering to me. 
 

Do you call church headquarters when Ordain Women does something you don’t like? Exponent? MWEG?

Faithful members are involved in all...and maybe even a BYU professor here or there.
 

 

[Chum]

8 minutes ago, bsjkki said:

@Mike Livingston

I don’t understand why you called church headquarters. They are not in charge of FM.

 

I was wondering that as well. I think it took a little time for the OP to puzzle out who the dramatis personae were. He seems to have a better handle now.

[AtlanticMike]

Bsjkki thank you for responding. My call to church headquarters was the first time I have ever called them. I called to find out if fairmormon was part of the church pr department, it was a place to start. You can think my anger is bewildering all you want but I'm not mad at the spiritual side of the church I'm mad at the corporation side of the church and yes there's a difference. And I'm sorry if you dont believe fairmormon is part of the church but something in my gut tells me that it is. Are you so naive to think corporations dont fund non profits to do their dirty work bsjkki ? I could be totally wrong but I dont think I am. Personally I dont care about the ces letter but I do care if the church I love is attacking people personally. Like I said before, take a look at scientology, they've made attacking former scientologists an art form. And no I dont call church headquarters on the other groups you mentioned because I've never researched them. I'm a simple straight forward person and right now I'm interested in fairmormon and what they stand for because it's affected me deeply. If I find out these videos were sponsored by just a fraction of my tithing I will write every General Authority I can. If I dont get a response I'll make ten copies for each general Authority and send them again. If no response I'll send 50 letters to each. Fortunately for me I'm fairly well off so I can splurge when I want to. So as you can see I'm pretty pissed off and I dont really know why to tell you the truth. For the first time in my life I feel like my testimony has been shaken to the core and I dont fully understand why. But I will get to the bottom of it.

[Tacenda]

7 minutes ago, Mike Livingston said:

Bsjkki thank you for responding. My call to church headquarters was the first time I have ever called them. I called to find out if fairmormon was part of the church pr department, it was a place to start. You can think my anger is bewildering all you want but I'm not mad at the spiritual side of the church I'm mad at the corporation side of the church and yes there's a difference. And I'm sorry if you dont believe fairmormon is part of the church but something in my gut tells me that it is. Are you so naive to think corporations dont fund non profits to do their dirty work bsjkki ? I could be totally wrong but I dont think I am. Personally I dont care about the ces letter but I do care if the church I love is attacking people personally. Like I said before, take a look at scientology, they've made attacking former scientologists an art form. And no I dont call church headquarters on the other groups you mentioned because I've never researched them. I'm a simple straight forward person and right now I'm interested in fairmormon and what they stand for because it's affected me deeply. If I find out these videos were sponsored by just a fraction of my tithing I will write every General Authority I can. If I dont get a response I'll make ten copies for each general Authority and send them again. If no response I'll send 50 letters to each. Fortunately for me I'm fairly well off so I can splurge when I want to. So as you can see I'm pretty pissed off and I dont really know why to tell you the truth. For the first time in my life I feel like my testimony has been shaken to the core and I dont fully understand why. But I will get to the bottom of it.

I've seen reports that the church donates to the More Good Foundation, but not directly to FairMormon. And More Good Foundation has shown that it donated to FairMormon. But IMO, FairMormon needs the donations in order to help those with questions. Where else are they to go, here? Or in their Sunday School classes? Where it wouldn't be appropriate and would take up too much time. This board is helpful, but it's not as focused on helping those with questions like FairMormon is. The church should definitely help them out! 

[Calm]

33 minutes ago, Mike Livingston said:

And I'm sorry if you dont believe fairmormon is part of the church but something in my gut tells me that it is. ...

Are you so naive to think corporations dont fund non profits to do their dirty work bsjkki ?

We are all faithful members of the Church. FM got started as a group of members back around 2000 engaging with antiMormons of the evangelical kind online. They pooled resources and efforts in order to deal with the overwhelming numbers and repetition of the attacks and because for some reason AOL had turned over moderation of religion groups to those Evangelicals, leading to any defense of other faiths getting people banned or posts deleted (or so I was told iirc, we never had AOL so I never got to participate). 
 

We were funded originally by Juliann, then FM membership fees and bookstore sales. We got some donations over the years.  We have gotten more lately or at least in 2018. Haven’t seen our 2019 tax return yet. In 2018 we got a nice chunk from the More Good Foundation, which has many donors which include the business side of the Church I believe. 
 

If we depended on funding from the Church to survive, we wouldn’t have lasted past the first year, the first month even. What organization was ever funded by waiting 20 years to get the donation?

Edited December 8, 2020 by Calm

[bsjkki]

22 minutes ago, Mike Livingston said:

And I'm sorry if you dont believe fairmormon is part of the church but something in my gut tells me that it is.

Well, I would not want to argue with your ‘gut’ with facts and information.

 

25 minutes ago, Mike Livingston said:

Personally I dont care about the ces letter but I do care if the church I love is attacking people personally.

I care about the CES letter. I’ve watched it destroy faith. The church is not FM. 

I do believe private organizations can use media to defend the faith. I am sorry you are so concerned and found this so upsetting. 
 

I am sorry this incident shook your faith. That is really sad. A faith crisis is not ever fun.. you will find shifting through what is vital to your faith and what is not is an arduous process. 

I found the CES letter more upsetting. It’s a cleverly worded document filled with lies and half truths designed to lead people away from Christ’s church. 
 

The church has not done what you think it has done. Don’t join FM. 
 

 

[Calm]

Mike, did you write direct to the FM representative or through the website?  I am not seeing your name among the emails and I want to be sure you get an answer to your email. 

[Raingirl]

1 hour ago, Mike Livingston said:

Bsjkki thank you for responding. My call to church headquarters was the first time I have ever called them. I called to find out if fairmormon was part of the church pr department, it was a place to start. You can think my anger is bewildering all you want but I'm not mad at the spiritual side of the church I'm mad at the corporation side of the church and yes there's a difference. And I'm sorry if you dont believe fairmormon is part of the church but something in my gut tells me that it is. Are you so naive to think corporations dont fund non profits to do their dirty work bsjkki ? I could be totally wrong but I dont think I am. Personally I dont care about the ces letter but I do care if the church I love is attacking people personally. Like I said before, take a look at scientology, they've made attacking former scientologists an art form. And no I dont call church headquarters on the other groups you mentioned because I've never researched them. I'm a simple straight forward person and right now I'm interested in fairmormon and what they stand for because it's affected me deeply. If I find out these videos were sponsored by just a fraction of my tithing I will write every General Authority I can. If I dont get a response I'll make ten copies for each general Authority and send them again. If no response I'll send 50 letters to each. Fortunately for me I'm fairly well off so I can splurge when I want to. So as you can see I'm pretty pissed off and I dont really know why to tell you the truth. For the first time in my life I feel like my testimony has been shaken to the core and I dont fully understand why. But I will get to the bottom of it.

You better take some Pepto-Bismol if your gut is telling you that Fairmormon is part of the church. 
 

Once again, you are deliberately choosing to ignore facts. A number of posters - including founding members of Fairmormon - have repeatedly shown you are flat-out wrong - yet you keep up with your whiny accusations. 
 

Some random person makes a poor choice in creating a video and it shakes your testimony “to the core”?  That’s baffling. 
 

Why did you come here to attack the church and make false claims against it and it’s members? 

[juliann]

You do realize, Mike, that if FM is run by the church they can run down "Tom" in 10 minutes and check out your story. 

[Chum]

3 hours ago, Mike Livingston said:

And I'm sorry if you dont believe fairmormon is part of the church but something in my gut tells me that it is.

Your gut is mistaken. It's not a big deal. It happens to all of us.

Calm is in a direct position to know what's what and she has set us straight on this.

Edited December 8, 2020 by Chum