Jensen's Vote for Next LDS Church Leader |
Salt Lake City, UT—James Jensen, the blogger behind
MormonVistas, has completed his transition from the faith that initially
inspired his online work to the cynicism that now typifies his blog’s “truth
seeking.”
“It has been quite the faith transition,” Jensen recently reflected
in the podcast that accompanies his blog. “Where I used to just believe
everything I heard and read from the church, now I can see that it is all
sanitized and whitewashed milk that keeps Mormons weak and subservient to the
church’s massive PR machine.”
Jensen’s faith transition can perhaps best be measured by
the change in what follows this phrase: “If they would only.” When MormonVistas
started, Jensen often wrote about how “if members would only” followed by
phrases like “serve one another” or “put in a little more effort to magnify
their callings” after which Jensen often wrote that, “wards and branches would run
better.”
But over time Jensen’s faith in those principles was first
challenged by suspicions and then completely replaced by an unmitigated cynicism
toward Mormon leaders, practices, and culture. Now Jensen’s website and
podcast often feature “if members would only” followed by “see how the church
is all about power” or “look past the façade to see what is really going on.”
An example of Jensen’s overwhelmingly cynical approach is a
recent post about how “Modesty Creates Sexual Violence.” In the post, Jensen
describes grudgingly attending the missionary farewell of a distant cousin.
During that meeting, a “charming and talented young woman” gave a “boilerplate,
clichéd talk” about personal struggles, the death of a close friend, and finding her faith amid uncertainty. After talking about her
struggles to set her own boundaries for sexual expression, the young woman
remarked, seemingly parenthetically, that she was “grateful for modesty
standards that help her see and then feel in control of the signals her clothes and body
send.” From this remark Jensen wrote a 700 word tirade about the oppressive
nature of modesty teachings in the LDS church, teachings that, according to
Jensen, “commodify women’s bodies, turn them into objects, and perpetuate sexual
violence.” Where in years past Jensen
may have found inspiration or expressed at least a balance of sympathy and
suspicion for what this unsuspecting young woman had said, he now finds nothing
but the nefarious “power workings” of the “whited sepulcher” and “evil empire”
that is the LDS church and its culture.
If asked about the post, the young woman would have no idea
what Jensen was saying. Jensen himself would find pride in his brave “truth
seeking” and “truth speaking.”
Though MormonVistas is now consistently “revealing” the
shortcomings and hypocrisies of the Mormon Church, Jensen has recently written
several positive posts about the man who now seems to be the patron saint of
liberal and/or disaffected Mormons: Pope Francis.
I like this one.
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