Former member here - I removed my records last October. I loved watching your content before I left the church, and I still love watching it today. I really wish you would have been on this panel. Your insights are so much more thoughtful and considerate than the ones that came from the Ward Radio guys. Keep up the good work!

@Murph, such a clear-minded analysis here. It would have been nice to have someone like yourself participating in this discussion. Aloha

35:27 the current church leadership handbook says nothing on masturbation. Pre 2010, the church leadership handbook condemned masturbation. Millennials may remember the pamphlet: FOR YOUNG MEN ONLY

That was a very thoughtful episode. Couldn't hold the tears. Well, life goes on

Love the way you handled this!! Great commentary!

Ward Radio had a couple of reactions. They are not my favorite, as I prefer something more serious, but I did watch their reactions since they participated.

I love how fair you are.

Bridger and I just recorded our reaction on our channel. Should be released soon. Stay tuned.

One of the main things about what a cult does is try to force you to stay in it. Mormons often say to pray and come to your own testimony. This is not a behavior to what cults do.

Been looking forward to hearing your take on this. With respect to the cults vs religious movement dichotomy you suggest: I think that's a false dichotomy. There is nothing in the definitions of the terms that would necessarily prevent a religious movement from being a cult. But we could interrogate that with the broader Mormon movement and compare the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to Community of Christ. Both trace their origins to Joseph Smith, but one exhibits much more cult-like qualities than the other. I do favor the term high-demand religion over cult. Less baggage and more explanatory. Joseph Fielding Smith cut out the 1832 account of the First Vision and hid it in a safe. There objectively have been efforts by church leaders to hide information from the members. And yes, all the examples of "outsider perspective" are examples of cult-like behavior. But high-demand religion is probably the better term at this point. Emotional control extends to things like "if that made you feel uncomfortable, then it's from Satan". It runs deep in the culture. I know of at least two people who, while on their missions, received revelations that said they should come home from their mission and begin dating people of their same-gender. Does the church just accept that as the valid revelation of those people and that the prophets are wrong actually when they've said that God does not condone homosexuality? All that to say that Liz is absolutely correct, if you get an answer that is contrary to what the prophets teach, that means that you're wrong, not them. Go back and try it again. Agree with your conclusion on the cult issue. If it's true, then it's a true cult. If you wanted to know the church's position on race and LGBTQ issues in the 60's and 70's, you could ask the folks at Bob Jones University what they thought about those things and get an answer close enough to the LDS church. The church leaders are products of their environment, I'll grant, but the absolute falsehoods they've taught about LGBTQ people are deplorable. If Spencer Kimball were right about the causes of homosexuality, you and 99% of other LDS men would be just as gay as me (if not even gayer). Nothing that they have ever taught about the causes, disposition, or desires of LGBTQ people has been correct. And the November Policy is an example of the church being more destructive to families than anything LGBTQ people have ever done. The church's position is that it is about chastity. But tell me, what mechanism do LGBTQ people have for expressing love and intimacy like their heterosexual peers do? The fact that there isn't one should be a clear indicator that it is about being gay. If you're the sort of gay the church can tolerate, then you're fine. But if you're not that sort of gay, no temple, no priesthood, and likely excommunication for you. Liz nailed it. Noting that the Family Proclamation has never been established as doctrine, that the definition of doctrine is a wishy-washy as you could desire it to be, and that no LDS scriptures discuss gay marriage, where in the doctrine is gay marriage proscribed? Answer: it isn't, church leaders have just thought that gay people are icky. And the idea that "the doctrine" is marriage between one man and one woman is laughable. That's as "it's just policy" as you can get in the Brighamite tradition. Also, I hope Tember gets access to better scholarship so that he can understand the claims that he makes in this video better. He misses so much vital context that my heart just aches for him. Cardon deserves to marched through the streets with a bell and cries of "shame, shame, shame". I'd recommend you listen to Dan McClellan's material on what the Bible actually has to say about sexuality. The basic summary is that what the Bible does have to say is from a context and culture that is not seen in the modern world. This is where good, true, consistent revelation would be useful. Or where the book that would draw us nearer to Christ than any other book, written by authors who saw our day, should be able to shed further light and knowledge on the subject. But as time has gone on, what the church knows about LGBTQ issues, according to its own manuals and documents, has decreased. If we were to accept the Book of Mormon as true, this issue is shining another huge spotlight on the question of why we should accept Brigham Young as Joseph's rightful successor vice Joseph III. Community of Christ is actually doing stuff with these sorts of issues and making meaningful changes that are often ahead of the curve. I'm gonna pause here for bit and come to the rest in another comment. Got some errands to run. Good work so far, Murph. And please, don't have Jacob Hansen on. He's a nob and a goober. Get somebody decent, like Patrick Mason or Jim Bennett. Or even Kwaku. I like watching your stuff, but I won't be tuning in if you have Jacob Hansen on.

Great episode! I consider the use of Cult to describe Mormonism about as equally incendiary a term as using Anti-Mormon for all critics. So, I tend to not use it-particularly with believing members of the Church. At the same time, it took a significant amount of work over a couple years to decondition and unpack my conditioned thinking and what I consider to be cognitive distortions that I experienced growing up in the 1970-1980s, and serving in leadership in the 1990s-2016 period with a literalist, Benson, McConkie, Hinckley, Packer version of Mormonism. Luna Lindsey Corbdon’s book, Recovering Agency, was very helpful for me. I think rather than asking if Mormonism is a Cult, it is more helpful to have discussions about individual experiences and cognitive distortions, as well as the impacts of conditioning people to handle dissonance from disconfirming information by bypassing and avoidance (a shelf model), and the implications of conditioning members to believe loyalty and obedience are higher moral values than honesty, integrity, and the application of critical thinking and personal autonomy.

One more comment, Murph. If you do have Jacob on, I hope that you guys actually address the opposing scriptural interpretations on gay marriage, including the assumptions made by both sides. Jacob has said on multiple occasions that the opposing view to his has no basis, which is simply untrue and disingenuous. He’s also said that change is impossible which flies in the face of both ongoing revelation and the basis for the argument he presents to sola scriptura Christians in favor of the BOM and modern prophets. His pledge to leave the Church or oppose the prophets if a change is ever made on gay marriage contradicts his condemnation of ProgMos who oppose the current position. Basically, for a guy who makes explicit appeal to the rules of logic, Jacob violates them left and right to make his points, and for once I would like to see him actually have to play by his own rules.

3:44 Christ and His disciples would have absolutely been described as a cult. It’s definitely a pejorative meant to marginalize us but by the strictest definition other than small I think we fit the definition.

It’s kind of astonishing how many times horrible policies, practices, and doctrine are justified by saying things like…Well they were a product of their time or Well all Christians believe that, Well everyone judged LGBT people back then, Well sometimes God has to kill innocent children (3 Nephi). Once I listened to all this it’s clear that I had to define my own moral compass away from organized faith. That said I really like your channel and your compassionate approach.

In your discussion of whether masturbation is sinful, you allude to it being an issue if it becomes a controlling issue or an obsession. It seems that it generally becomes that sort of a problem only in sexually repressed/repressive spaces. There may be specific counterexamples, but issues like "see addiction" do seem largely isolated to communities like evangelicals, LDS, and the like. Which does beg the question, is there something inherently problematic with masturbation, or is the problem with the act of calling it sin, or are those who are drawn to high-demand circles somehow more likely to be predisposed to problematic masturbation habits? The concept of sin does make it a theological question, but we can Euthyphro that issue and see that there may be some holes in the theological reasoning. There is no scriptural or doctrinal prescription for the priesthood ban on women. It is the simply the result of the inequities of how men and women are treated in the church. Meanwhile, Community of Christ is about to have its first female church president prophet. They're a bit late to the party on an absolute scale, but, as I mentioned in my last comment, if we were to accept that the Book of Mormon is true, why exactly would it follow that the Brighamite tradition is the rightful successor as opposed to the Josephite tradition. And just a reminder, separate but equal is not equal. When the same people teaching a doctrine that we now accept as a false doctrine also taught a doctrine that we now accept as true, by what metric or measure do we know that the doctrine we accept as true is actually true? When they've gotten so many big things wrong, as you allude to, and I'm with John Dehlin that the changes made about those was a good thing, how can we know what, if anything, they teach today is true. Agree with you 100% on the word of wisdom point. No doctrinal foundation for that at all. Cardon tries to make this big "C", little "c" distinction, but my experience has been that it's the institutional, big "C" church that is the fount of homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, and racism that has plagued the tradition, and it is the members who constitute the little "c" church who, in diversity, are more likely to find ways to try to accept the marginalized and work around the big "C" church's bigotry. "Give Russell M Nelson a break" calls into question why the church has a gerontocratic hierarchy in the first case. Nelson's qualifications for being the prophet amount to he was the best at not dying. But he was not prepared or qualified for handling the legalization of gay marriage, COVID, CSA, the handling of church funds, the internet and social media, and so on. His administration has seen a church hit with scandal after scandal. To use Cardon's language again, the little "c" church does more good in the world than the big "C" church does. But the little "c" church does do a lot of good with the limited resources they have. You will hardly find a more welcoming and charitable people than the little "c" church. Last note, Bella was the MVP of this whole discussion.

@MormonismwiththeMurph at around 17:30 you say that following Christ requires a high demand. Why do you covenant everything you own including your time and talents (used to include even your lives) to the Church instead of Jesus himself? He said ‘follow Me,’ not ‘Follow My church’

The church does tell you what underwear to wear, which type of bathing suit to wear, how to have sex with your spouse, whether or not you can use birth control, what you can take into your body such as coffee but power drinks, soda, and obesity are ok, who you can give your tithing to, any many more. It is true that other religions have rules but they don't keep you out of their church because of it. Other religions have rules, but don't we preach we are the one true church on the earth with a living prophet and the others are not "playing with all the keys"? Was there a reason you did not play Dr. Dehlins expert explanation of a cult? The one point he made is that a cult usually does not allow you to leave with your dignity and the continuation of harm aspect. * I appreciate your views on LGBTQ falling in love and wanting to have companionship and not because they are hyper sexualized. If Joseph Smith sealed men to men back in the beginning, it can be done again. Did God create one man to several women as in polygamy? There seems to be wiggle room. I realize Tember is representing himself, but what about his wife who is married to a man who is attracted to men? This may be the area where 51% get divorced but it is projected that 69% will eventually divorce. * Supposedly masturbations was taken out of the handbook in 2010 but someone forgot to tell the Bishops who still ask because of their own traditions. * I love how the men come forward to say the women are equal. Does anyone think Cardon can't name the 12 apostles? Men at church come and go into the women spaces to preside over them but no woman walks into the men's spaces to observe them. There was a time when women were not allowed to even listen to the Priesthood session of conference. All women who want equality or a voice do not want the Priesthood. Women were given the Priesthood by Joseph Smith. They performed blessings on the sick. Brigham Young took all that away. He also shut down the RS for 20 years. He took the money they earned as their own organization separate from the men and pulled them under the Priesthood banner.

Wouldn’t it have been cool if 2000 years ago God sent his only begotten daughter to earth instead of his son and if all 12 apostles were women? That would’ve been awesome! Just a thought experiment.

Also the firey plane of death by Rusty Nelson is a great example of lying to emotionally manipulate. The God I was taught about in the LDS Church would not need to exaggerate or lye to make his points heard or help people feel the spirit. By virtue of the lie technically the spirt could testify that the story was true in Rusty’s fake story…. Though at the time as a tbm I absolutely felt what I thought was the spirit. Obviously… the mormon god is a trickster god!

Is all of Christianity a cult just simply because we have 10 “thou shall not….”?

Even applying the definition of a cult that you offer, the origins of Mormonism fits that definition very closely. I prefer Hassan’s BITE Model, by which standard the Mormon church unequivocally is a cult.

I love Murphs honest approach to this subject. The LDS Corporation tells its members to only listen to them, what they say and not to go outside the corporation to get answers. This by definition makes the LDS Corporation a cult. Now that we know that this Corporation was fined by the U.S. government for illegally investing tithing money, we need to take a closer look.

Yeah the whole cult thing just comes down to definitions. Same goes for if Mormonism is a Christian religion. So the church can just define itself out of being a cult and define itself into being a Christian religion.

The debate with the ex-mo's convinced me to remove my records. I was in a cult and didn't realize it until I heard real people slap the crap out of Cardon's babbling nonsense. It was like I came out of a spell, that was broken by reality slapping me also in the face.

Grind yer axe, Johnny D. Around 50% of ALL marriages divorce now. But facts like that hurt your narrative, huh, Johnny?

56:17 - every thing Cardon said about The State of Deseret being an abolitionist state was a flat out lie. It is important to say that Brigham Young approved the sale of slaves when he was Governor of Deseret. They entered the union under the confederacy. There are real problematic issues with the early church with slavery and racism.

26:57 I think she pushes the pendulum too far by saying being gay is beautiful. Sounds like she’s being a bit self-delusional. I adore my wife and coming together to be one flesh by creating children together that are part of both of us is something she’ll never have. It’s simply not an equivalent relationship.