Mormons Make Great FBI Recruits

TLDR: 1. Strong foreign language skills from overseas missions. 2. It's easier getting them security clearances since they don't use drugs or alcohol.

This reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from Burn After Reading. From Osborne Cox when being dismissed from his job as an analyst:

> I have a drinking problem? Fuck you, Peck! You're a Mormon! Next to you, we all have a drinking problem!

Sounds potentially problematic, having a lot of members of one group, any group, in your intelligence service? But then again, i can imagine the type of person who would be willing to apply to an intelligence service in the first place...

(2015)

Lots of people think this means "don't smoke" or something like that.

From the members I have conversed with, they are forbidden from using caffeine.

Probably something also about similar views about a moral high ground.

3. Mormons are overwhelmingly white and come from a cultural background of conservative patriarchal Christian whiteness which comports with the historical and present culture of the FBI.

You left out “heirarchical authoritarian”, but, yeah, that.

Sounds a bit like the "cultural fit" narrative that has been used by some FAANG companies to prefer people from certain ethnicities

I would add that their culture is a good match. They are Lawful Good through and through. Historically their church youth programs were tightly integrated with the Boy Scouts (until a recent split as BSA became more inclusive), and are raised to have a strong sense of duty to their church, country and community.

Isn't there some memo from Scientology saying that they had goals to get members into such bureaucratic positions and recruit members in those positions?

I can get why the FBI may be drawn to Mormons, but I also wouldn't be surprised is the Mormons actively encouraged their members to get jobs with the FBI.

Coffee and black/green tea are typically considered to be prohibited (I know active members who drink green tea and still participate fully), but caffeine in general isn't banned. One of the apostles even acknowledged drinking a whole lot of diet coke to help while learning to use a computer[0]:

> It took a great deal of time, repetition, patience; no small amount of hope and faith; lots of reassurance from my wife; and many liters of a diet soda that shall remain nameless.

[0] https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference...

It depends on the family. My girlfriend wasn't allowed to drink any caffeine when she was a kid. Caffeine was normal in my family though. Coffee is pretty universally frowned upon (I don't get it either). Apparently Mtn Dew > Coffee as it pertains to health. They base their dietary standard on the "Word of Wisdom".

Source: grew up Mormon, and still have a close relationship with my Mormon family.

I am extremely not Mormon, but we don't have any reason to believe Mormons are more likely to be sexual abusers than Jews, Muslims, or Hindus.

It's probably more politically safe to claim Mormons are more likely to be sexual abusers, but I wouldn't feel any less safe leaving my children with a Mormon family than with a Jewish family, a Muslim family, or a Hindu family.

I'm not a member, just going off what they told me. From what I understand the actual edicts (maybe it's called something) else aren't really supposed to be published or talked about. So I've only talked to ex-mormons about this.

3rd mentioned in the was a willingness to serve.

Having grown up Mormon, I'd add a 4th that wasn't mentioned in the article: deference to authority. The Mormon church is a very hierarchal organization. Orders go from the top down. People lower on the ladder should not ever contradict their leaders. When a Mormon leader asks you to do something, you expected to comply. I imagine that this mindset would make you fit in well in the FBI, at least in the lower and middle layers of the organization.

You're using Christian way too much to describe Mormons. I am pretty sure most Christians aren't going to see Mormonism as a plus.

three factors:

> "Mormon people often have strong foreign language skills, from missions overseas"

> "a relatively easy time getting security clearances, given their abstention from drugs and alcohol"

> "and a willingness to serve"

It's quite a strange religion, not to be offensive. I always get approached by them at the mall when i'm in the US...I always think to myself the kind of person is drawn to this belief around the character of Joseph Smith.

Opinions differ. Best as I can tell, like all other dogmas, their rules are some blend of urban legends, game of telephone, and calvinball.

eg The nephew of the owner, prepping for his missionary work, gravely explained to me that he has to be careful not to immerse himself in open waters (or maybe it was just moving water) past the belt line. Something about being vulnerable to witches or demonic possession or whatever. And it was totally true because his cousin's best friend knew a guy who swam while on mission and then died.

Which is funny because most Mormons I know dislike the FBI specifically because their actions as of late are directly in opposition to their beliefs.

I spoke with some LDS youngsters who came to my door some time back. They're friendly. I learned that they do not like being referred to as "Mormon" but instead prefer "LDS". For them, being called Mormon is derogatory.

What religion isn't strange?

Seriously, the only reason you think that the religions that you're used to aren't weird as shit is overexposure.

I worked with an ex-Mormon guy for about a year or so who was an ex-CIA contractor. He said there are a lot Mormons in the CIA as well and they called it the "Mormon Mafia" (mostly in a joking manner). So when he'd meet new people within the CIA who were Mormon they would sometimes ask him, "Mormon Mafia?", if they suspected he was Mormon.

This guy did his mission in Russia and speaks Russian... so there you go. He had some crazy stories about doing mission work in Russia. He was almost killed several times.

I am a member, and every actual commandment is definitely public record. Even the temple covenants are (as of recently) public record[0], and those used to be the ones that were held in the highest level of secrecy.

There are a whole lot of people who have their own interpretations of the commandments, and that coupled with our history of secrecy surrounding the temple could definitely give rise to the idea that it's difficult to know what all the requirements are, but it's all online and available to everyone at this point.

Here's the relevant information about the health code[1]:

> The Lord revealed in the Word of Wisdom that the following substances are harmful:

> Alcoholic drinks (see Doctrine and Covenants 89:5–7).

> Tobacco (see Doctrine and Covenants 89:8).

> Tea and coffee (see Doctrine and Covenants 89:9; latter-day prophets have taught that the term “hot drinks,” as written in this verse, refers to tea and coffee).

[0] https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/temples/what-is-temple-e...

[1] https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topi...

Pretty sure you could just say any family...

As a former mormon with most of my family in intelligence or military, the Security Clearance reason may be valid but I call bullshit on the language skills reason. Most mormon missionaries will never learn enough of their respective mission languages to actually have normal conversations, as 99% of their conversations revolve around religion. And the FBI doesn’t really have an emphasis on language anyway, that is more of a CIA thing (which also recruits a lot of Mormons). It’s funny how all of the glowing traits that are claimed about Mormons that are cited as reasons to hire them always come from the perspective of other Mormons.

That being said, this is the first one that I’ve read that has slightly touched on one of the major reasons: Mormon nepotism. The Mormon Mafia talk in this article may sound like a joke, but it is very much a real phenomenon. If you hire a single Mormon, and that person achieves a position of influence in your company, you will wake up some day to the realization that there are now hundreds of Mormons...and they all had a say in hiring each other, and they all give glowing reviews about each other, and they all end up in the same organizations, and they all get promoted in lockstep with each other. The Mormon Mafia isn't an FBI thing, it is a real phenomenon that happens in a lot of different places. I got a great job out of college primarily out of Mormon nepotism. I got fired after leaving Mormonism for the same reason.

A good way to prevent this from happening is, not surprisingly, a general anti-nepotism practice: don’t allow people interview candidates from their alma mater. 99% of these asshole Mormons that try to create Mormon Mafias within companies went to BYU, and 99% of the people they want to hire at the exclusion of others also went to BYU. It works surprisingly well for non-Mormon nepotism as well...never underestimate an HBS grad's tendency to think other HBS grads are the bee's knees. Don’t let them have a say in their hiring.

Best counter to workplace discrimination: more workplace discrimination.

Get an authority involved if you have proof.

> glowing traits

Nice one, if intentional

This is a new phenomenon, too. It was only a few years ago that there was a church-wide semiannual congregation (known as General Conference) where the leadership announced that it was bad to be referred to as "Mormon".

The reasoning is: Mormon is a character in their scripture (The Book of Mormon), but he is not the main figurehead for the church, so referring to them as though he is, is a misrepresentation.

Do you have any idea what you are talking about?

It's not about the character of Joseph Smith, anymore than Judaism is about the character of Moses or Catholicism is about the character of Peter.

Even 150 years ago, Mormons had quite the reputation for both fighting for ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mormon_Battalion ) and fighting against ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_War ) the U.S. Army.

It's not really discrimination to say "you have a potential bias on this particular candidate, you shouldn't be involved in the decision".

Especially since Mormons had a lot of friction with the US government in the past.

It's actually quite public. The 'raw' doctrinal backing comes from 'Doctrine and Covenants, Section 89': https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/history/topics/wor...

Clarifications as to what the 'hot drinks' section means has come over time, generally being shared during the twice-annual General Conference. The most prominent call came in 1921.

You can read more about it here: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/revelations...

The caffeine thing is a long-standing internal debate that arises from:

1. Unclear doctrinal specifics

2. An orthopraxic rather than an orthodoxic culture

The first item is that the only doctrine possibly relating to caffeine is a single verse in modern scripture that says "hot drinks are not for the body or belly". Long-standing teaching by leadership has merely narrowed down "hot drinks" to mean tea and coffee.

The second item is by far more important in the debate: Mormons are _highly_ orthopraxic, meaning that you're usually free to hold heterodox doctrinal beliefs as long as your public life and behavior reflects the common orthopraxy. Or, to put it simply, the public appearance of righteousness is culturally far more important than internal doctrinal beliefs (this is, ironically enough, not technically doctrinal). The same chapter that defines "hot drinks" (coffee/tea) as not good for the belly defines beer ("barley... for mild drinks") as entirely appropriate, but since the orthopraxic behavior is to be seen as avoiding coffee, tea, hard liquor (which is specifically called out in the same scripture) then avoiding anything above and beyond those is often seen as an increased sign of righteousness.

So you'll often have arguments between Mormons who follow the letter of the law and others who follow what they define as the spirit of the law. And since coffee and tea both contain caffeine then many Mormons will avoid caffeine as well.

You'll find this same argument about following just the doctrine defined in the open canon versus following behavioral practices above and beyond it in other aspects of Mormon life, such as: not calling members of the church or the church "Mormon," payment of 10% of monthly income (though the scriptures call for 10% of an annual "increase"), women only wearing at most one set of earrings, no dating for youth below the age of 16, men applying to serve missions the instant their 18th birthday arrives (though the window for honorable service is many years wide), no clapping in meetings, no drums or brass in meetings, and so on for many other cultural practices.

This is, as you can probably recognize from some of the items in that list, in no way a phenomenon isolated to the LDS religion, but it does inform the inevitable debate you'll hear if you ever bring up caffeine in a group of Mormons.

As someone who is seemingly not from a preferred racial demo, I know exactly what this person is talking about.

It's not caffeine. It's coffee, black/green tea, and alcohol. Soda has caffeine and is seen as okay.

Think of it as Jewish Kosher or Muslim Halal.

It helps that the mormon faith is fairly harmless as far as religions go. Aside from maybe polygamy and abuse cases, there are few explicit conflicts of interests. The LDS church runs hedge funds and have a somewhat less extreme political orientation than e.g. southern baptists or Scientologists . Most Mormons actually practice the family values they preach, unlike say evangelicals.

I do, and so do most people who have been approached by some FAANG company

Really?

Tech was predominantly white (as was the US) in the 70s, by the 90s Asians and Indians were over represented.

I'll submit this is prima facie evidence that tech was (and is to some degree) highly meritocratic, and more so than any other large portion of the economy.

What did the FBI do?

As a former Mormon myself, I think you're being ridiculous. And frankly, you sound pretty bitter and may not be the most neutral of judges.

Mormon nepotism isn't anything more than you see from other people around their things (church, schools, even sports teams). I lived and worked in Utah County of all places for years (where huge percentage of people are Mormon) and the majority try to be open minded, tolerant, and accepting. Now if you go around shitting on their most sacred beliefs or being an asshole, don't expect it not to affect their feelings toward you, just like it would any other human. I've also lived and worked in places where I was the only Mormon (or one of 2 or 3) in the whole group.

If your claim that being Mormon causes this nepotism (rather than say, just being human as I would claim), then it must be something about their faith that causes it. Where do you think that comes from? Can you point out a teaching or belief of theirs that would encourage this?

> They will always prefer hiring other Mormons, and they will use a bunch of bullshit reasons why they’re better than others as their cover.

You realize this is what all humans do right? We make decisions emotionally and then justify them rationally, even to ourselves. Frankly I find it disturbing that you advocate against actively discriminating against a group of people on that basis. You could easily s/Mormon/gay or anything else in there and it would be exactly as truthful/accurate.

Also, the "Mormon Mafia" is a joke, not an actual thing. For most it's a self-aware attempt at humor.

I would consider that discrimination, unless it applied to all religions. e.g. if you're a Catholic, you can't interview a Catholic, etc. But even that I don't think would legally fly because (IANAL) I believe religion is a protected class.

This one went over my head

I'm guessing you've gotten some downvotes for this probably because this is recognized as a pretty bizarre belief, and one most modern Mormons do not follow or aren't even aware of. Since Mormonism almost never repudiates the teachings of their past leadership, it merely stops reinforcing old and odd teachings, you'll always be able to find at least a few members who still know about and hold beliefs that the rest of the membership has either forgotten or have never been taught.

The particular belief in question here arises from modern LDS scripture (D&C 61) where God says to a group of early LDS missionaries that "there are many dangers upon the waters." These dangers are from Satan being given power over the waters as the world approaches Armageddon, and while faithful LDS missionaries will be preserved while traveling over any water (canal, lake, sea, etc) they're encouraged not to risk it if their faith is not strong enough.

This used to be a pretty common teaching from leadership, but in recent decades it's fallen out of fashion. Missionaries are still forbidden from going swimming at any point during their missions, but usually it's presented as a result of insurance dangers facing unsupervised 18 year olds (which, let's be honest, is an entirely reasonable and accurate concern).

For almost every weird or odd belief you've heard that at least some Mormons believe, there are usually a combination of scriptures and old leadership quotes behind it, but the modern teachings have left them behind with the hope that if these odd teachings are ignored they'll go away (which works out pretty well, for the most part).

By mainstream Christian standards, the doctrine is, quite frankly, "heretical", but members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the primary branch of "Mormonism") very much consider themselves Christian, have values that align strongly with many other Christian denominations, place Christ at the center of their doctrine, etc. In my opinion, culturally, we're a lot more Christian than the typical perception would suggest.

That being said, we've got our own offshoot groups that we don't consider "really Mormon", so I get where people are coming from on that question.

Youngsters are probably not the best source for this info as they're too young to remember that 20 years ago "Mormon" was perfectly fine, and in fact a lot of Mormons called (and still call) themselves "Mormon." Some time back the leadership of the Church decided that Mormon was offensive for some reason and made it so.

But then "LDS" is now out of date as well! The leadership has decided that they don't want to be called "LDS" anymore. They even dumped the wonderfully succinct "lds.org" domain for "churchofjesuschrist.org."

Now they want you to use the full name of the Church (at least the first time referenced in the convo), which is "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints." So for example, if you want to refer to a person you would have previously called "Mormon" or "LDS," you should instead use "member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints." There is a minor relief though. On subsequent references you can shorten it to "Church of Jesus Christ" or "the restored Church of Jesus Christ."[1]

Personally I like the (still silly long) acronym COJCOLDS. But realistically very few Mormons are going to offended if you call them "LDS."

[1]: https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/style-guide

It's not discrimination because it has nothing to do with whether Mormons are hired. It has everything to do with who has a say in hiring them. BYU grads can still be hired, they just have to be hired by someone who isn't going to bias their decision with their personal beliefs.

Christianity has lot of weird stuff. When you really start to think it over from roots and consider certain aspects. But members are just told to follow and ignore those aspects. Not to mention the stuff that is simply ignored if you would slightly expand it.

Mormonism is more strange than most. The leader who started it was literally a traveling treasure digger in 1820's New York. He conned people out of money by going to houses and telling them that they had treasure on their property and if they paid him, he would dig it up. He was never successful, but moved from town to town doing so. He often claimed that this treasure was left by Native Americans and ancient inhabitants. The law eventually caught up to him and he was even tried in court for these accusations and admitted to the con. Just a few years later, low and behold he found ancient scriptures made of gold buried in his backyard. These were written in an unknown language ("reformed egyption", I language that scientists now say never existed), that only he could read. He translated the book which eventually became the "Book of Mormon" today, which is the baseline for most of Mormonism.

He then gained a following by claiming to speak directly to God and writing these discourses in a book called "The Book of Commandments", which the modern church has now edited down to what they still use, known as "The Doctrine and Covenants", which they believe are direct words from God. This is where strange rules like not drinking coffee, tea, and alcohol come from, which modern Mormons follow today. Funny enough, the founder didn't prescribe to any of these rules himself, in fact he was drinking heavily on the night of his death.

The leader, Joseph Smith took his followers from state to state as the nation expanded, building a larger and larger following. He was kicked out of each state due to unruly practices in that they were starting to preform, like an attempted assassination on the Missouri Governor (he was shot 4 times in the upper chest and head and managed to survive), starting an illegal bank and printing his own currency, practicing polygamy (he was married to at least 38 women that we have record of, but probably many more), and much more.

The prophet, Joseph Smith died after a newspaper ran a story that unveiled his polygamy to the world. He got his militia together and burned the printing press down. This lead to his warrant and eventual arrest. While in jail he had arranged for his militia to break him out of prison. So when they heard a mob approaching the jail where he was kept, he actually told the jail guards that his militia was coming and they didn't want to die for this. So the guards stepped aside and let the mob approach the prison, only to find that the mob was filled with angry people from town that had read about this story or who were upset with the many other things Joseph Smith had done. They approached in protest. Joseph Smith had smuggled a gun into the prison in a trenchcoat, she he started firing at them through a door, and a firefight broke out as a result, leaving Joseph Smith dead.

After Joseph Smith, comes Brigham Young who took all the Mormons to modern-day Utah to start a fresh life. From there, a whole other fascinating story begins. Including things like "Blood Atonement" (killing people to absolve them of their sins), more polygamy, The Utah War (armed Mormons fought off several bands of US Military), the Mountain Meadows Massacre (120 immigrants were killed in cold blood that were passing through Utah heading to California), and so many more that I can't get into here.

It is quite a fascinating history if you are curious. This isn't even getting into Doctrine. Much of which is a spiritual spin off Stone Masons rituals, the basis that Jesus visited the modern-day-USA after he died on the Cross in Jerusalem, a whole group of ancient Americans who traveled over from Jerusalem in 600BC, and so much more.

Its definitely different than your standard religion.

For others gaining a new vocabulary word today:

> Orthopraxic v. orthodoxic: In the study of religion, orthopraxy is correct conduct, both ethical and liturgical, as opposed to faith or grace.[1][2][3] Orthopraxy is in contrast with orthodoxy, which emphasizes correct belief. The word is a neoclassical compound—ὀρθοπραξία (orthopraxia) meaning 'right practice'. [1]

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthopraxy

I'm a former Mormon (I guess you could call me an "ex-mormon"). Just some advice: be careful about getting (or propagating rather) information from ex-mormons regarding Mormonism (or rather, verify it first). There's an incredible mix of ignorance and/or antipathy that leads to extremely unreliable information. Of course there are plenty of exceptions, but it's a massively deep philosophy/corpus that not many (even active members) put in the effort to actually know it, and for some reason some people become LLMs when asked questions about it, answering very confidently with whatever sounds the most correct to them without regard to actual truth value.

Note that “mission” in the parent comment likely refers the practice of certain Christian sects that send out evangelists to proselytize in another geographic area. It probably is not referring to CIA operations.

(Posting this because there is a dead peer comment that seems to have misunderstood).

They say there's a half-truth behind many jokes...

I wouldn't waste me breath. These claims tend to come from people who are, "I didn't get hired because I am a white male." I've been on tons of interviews and have gotten tons of rejection and never once has a company told me its because I didn't fit their demographic or was a white male. But these people will claim that. In reality, they just think they have sunshine coming out of their asses and need an excuse to justify their hurt ego.

My dad also posts on online forums, claiming to also be a former Mormon while still having unrelentlessly positive things to say about Mormons. He's very much still a Mormon, much like I would expect you to be. Have some integrity. The vast majority of ex-Mormons are definitely bitter, and would love to destroy the church, and for a multitude of entirely valid reasons. The exmormon subreddit, which is the most popular and active of all of the ex-religion subreddits, can fill you in on exactly why exmormons are so bitter about their former religion if you're curious.

And you're right. All humans do this to some degree. Mormons, with their sanctimonious belief that they are the only ones that can receive revelation from god, seem to do it far more than other groups. Something about believing in the Power of Discernment...if the Bishop thinks this guy is a great guy, then he obviously is a great guy!

And you're also right that the Mormon Mafia is a joke, but it is only a joke within the Mormon Mafia. For everyone else, it is a career nightmare. If you, god forbid, go to a bar with a couple colleagues after work, you can expect to never be treated the same ever again. You'll be passed up for promotion, denied positions of responsibility and trust, and constantly have your work called into question. Because you're not trustworthy anymore...you're an alcoholic. Wouldn't it be nice if we had less alcoholics on our team? Gee, where can we find fewer alcoholics? I know...BYU!

EDIT: I should add, out of an abundance of caution due to the upset Mormons that I have just offended, that there are plenty of Mormons that are not like this. I'd probably say most mormons are not like this. One of the managers I work with most is a mormon, and he knows that I'm exmormon, and we get along fine. He also has hired 14 non-mormon people, including two muslims, a lesbian, and his top performer is an ex-heroin addict, so I'm pretty damn sure he's open minded about other people and isn't just looking to pack his org with like-minded people. I would never propose a measure to discriminate against mormons, but I absolutely would try to mitigate their tendency towards nepotism. There are enough mormon nepotists out there that it has become a problem, and I'm just calling that out.

Or an example that time changes, the same way banking or agriculture or pretty much anything used to be some way until we discovered that this or that way resulted in more performance or ROI?

I don't deny your view, and I agree that it may be a little more meritocratic, but maybe not endeudamiento anymore.

I was raised Mormon. The whole time I grew up we were told by all the previous prophets to be proud to be called Mormon. It was a sense of pride.

But the new/current prophet hates it and said that God told him he doesn't like the name anymore and that being called Mormon is "a victory for Satin" (the devil).

God is a little inconsistent within Mormonism. First he wanted Polygamy and it was sooo important that he even sent an Angel with a flaming sword down to earth to get them to practice polygamy (even though the prophet was already practicing it in secret at the time). Then in 1904 when the Supreme Court forced the church to stop practicing polygamy or else they would take all assets away. Then magically within days, God told the prophet that its actually ok if they don't do polygamy anymore. Then he hated black people for a while and wouldn't let them into the temple or get the priesthood (which essentially kept them out of heaven according to Doctrine), then changed his mind in 1978 when public pressure was mounting. He didn't want children of Gay people to be baptized in his church for a few years, and then changed his mind after the PR got really bad. Mormon God is heavily influenced by American PR.

The next prophet will probably embrace the name "Mormon" again. So don't stress too much about it. Most active Mormons can't keep track of what doctrine currently is or isn't which is why so many times you get different answers from different mormons about policies and doctrine. Because it really depends which prophets you grew up under, because things change dramatically as they take the helms of power and claim to speak for God.

It has been a cycle. For a period before Hinckley was president (1995-2008), the term Mormon was discouraged. Hinckley was more media savvy and embraced it. Going even further back, Mormon was acceptable. It all depends who is in charge at the time.

Yes Mormonism was started by a conman, yes it's utter bullshit, no it's not any weirder than the canonical Abrahamic religions.

There's a dude who parted the sea with his magic snake stick. Actually happened. People believe it.

Burning bush, speaking with the voice of the creator of existence, 100% true. Really, does that sound less ridiculous than Joseph's magic golden tablets?

How about Jesus?

Died and came back to life.

Healed the sick.

Replicated food and drink. Walked on water, and turned it into wine when he felt like showing off.

Less ridiculous?

Not in any way.

There's a decent amount of nuance missing in your story, and I would (truly) love a source if you have one for this as I've not heard evidence before (just speculation):

> So when they heard a mob approaching the jail where he was kept, he actually told the jail guards that his militia was coming and they didn't want to die for this.

But let's stipulate all that for the sake of discussion. Does that really sound more strange than Moses' magic tricks, or the "magicians" all through the Old Testament, or even the very idea that God himself came down as a person to be brutally killed in order to save human souls who simply believe on him, and if they don't believe then he will torture them for all eternity in a burning pit of fire? Frankly the Mormon founding seems a whole lot less strange to me.

Is that an effort to blend in more with evangelicals?

> i can imagine the type of person who would be willing to apply to an intelligence service in the first place...

What?

Operation Snow White, run by Scientology, was one of the largest government infiltrations in US History. I don’t see any evidence that the same thing is happening with the Mormon church though.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Snow_White

Visiting some of the historical museums I found there was a, brief, time when the Mormons tried making their own script and empire. I believe it was called "Deseret". Later they tried to get it accepted as a state.

Interestingly, I've found a lot of parallels between early Islam and early Mormonism. Both of their leaders had similar tendencies and both were evicted from their original location where they claimed their new Zion. Though Mohammed was more successful in retaking Mecca whilst the Mormons were forced out of Missouri (1).

In no specific order:

- Prophet's with dubious histories prior to their revelation - Both given new revelations from an angel - Both claim a that the Christians or Jews had corrupted the original gospels - Focus on political power early on - Polygamy prominent among early leaders - No alcohol - Strong focus on certain forms of "purity"

1: https://www.sos.mo.gov/archives/resources/mormon.asp

Since we are adding acts of Mormon rebellion and killing. It is worth also adding Mountain Meadows Massacre to the list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Meadows_Massacre

tldr: 120 emigrants were traveling by wagon train towards California, passing through Utah. They set up camp south of Salt Lake in a meadow for the night and woke up to being surrounded by the Mormon militia, painted as Native Americans who then opened fire on them, killing 120 men, women, and children. Their goal was to frame Native Americans of the massacre.

Mormons did spare any child under the age of 8 because Mormon Doctrine states that children under 8 are innocent and they were taken and raised into Mormonism.

this is not about Mormonism at all; just "nepotism."

when I was in Google Ads in 2008, nearly all the SmartASS team were Canadian. What are the odds?

Then when I was back in there in 2017, someone told me, "Now it's only about half."

Believe and do not question - questioning's the devil's work.

The LDS church specifically has a practice where many young LDS members go on a "mission" for two years. In fact it is so common that almost every LDS member would understand the phrase "[a specific person]'s mission" to refer to that two year mission for proselytizing.

That "massively deep philosophy/corpus" doesn't help things, though. With nearly 200 years of a leadership that teaches that whatever is spoken by God's servants (the highest church leadership) is to be equated as similar to the word of God (with a normal human distribution of those leaders who approach this view with a cautious humility through those who speak their musings with confidence) there's a HUGE of collection of some pretty odd beliefs. Since the church leadership almost never repudiates these past statements, preferring to have them quietly fade from the collective memory and consciousness of the membership over time, chances are that there's still some few members who are aware of these weird beliefs and can back them up with some sort of statement by a modern LDS prophet or apostle. This makes any "actual truth value" of an odd teaching or belief really difficult to gauge, and chances are there's some actual statement behind many of that unreliable information.

That's speaking of teachings and doctrine, of course. When it comes to history that's less like trying to nail Jell-o to the wall and it's much easier to find sources for more accurate history, and I agree that it's a bit sad how little accuracy in history seems to be respected by some believing and formerly-believing members.

I wouldn't say "to blend in" although I don't think that's wrong either. The stated goals are to emphasize that the COJCOLDS believe in and worship Jesus Christ, and are a "Christ centered religion." There's definitely some unity goals here to be more accepted as Christian, but they also really believe that the name of the church was literally set by Jesus Christ, and that He (Jesus) is inspiring the current leadership to restore the God-given name.

So there are a handful of factors/motivation at play, but yes a huge goal is to brand themselves more as Christian.

Most Mormons I’ve met are so wholesome and kind that I think they would legitimately choose to work in the FBI or IC to make the world a better place. If we’re gonna have one group overrepresented I can’t think of a better one, and I disagree with basically all of their beliefs.

For one the IC basically excludes edgier and free spirited types, or those with baggage, by design. It also excludes financially motivated people and academic types - in practice we’ve already ruled out most of the urban upper middle/upper classes and most poorer people. Among the remainder you have to pick those with college education that are willing to live in or around cities. And then among those, people willing to commit to a long career, believe in the cause, maintain discretion, unlikely to fall off the wagon… and without any kind of concerning overt bigotry. Besides people who enlisted directly out of high school I feel like Mormons are the only major group who would consistently fit the bill.

Not really sure how Mohammed can be said to have a "dubious" history. If you don't want to believe the traditional accounts, that's fair, but late antiquity was not a golden age of objective recorded history lol, so there isn't much better info to go off otherwise. I would refer people to r/AcademicQuran on issues of early Islamic history.

I can't say whether Smith had a "dubious" history, but I'm not inclined to take this view because people think it's ok to bigoted and dismissive of the Church of LDS, and I think it's unfair.

Also polygamy was part of pre-Islamic Arabia, whereas it was contrary to custom and law in the context in which the LDS Church developed. Comparison on this point is superficial.

This is the Mormon immune response to exposure to information that causes cognitive dissonance: slander the people who left the church because the fact that they left the church means they are ignorant.

Yeah all Mormons have whiplash from changing doctrines, rules, and guidelines that change throughout their life.

I was raised during the "Hinckley" reign. So Mormon was a term of endearment during the time and embraced.

Things like the caffeine that is being talked about elsewhere on this thread is similar. When I grew up it was frowned upon, but now its acceptable.

The temple covenants and rituals have changed many times throughout my life. I don't attend anymore, but I heard that they just changed it again within the past month or so.

> Most Mormons I’ve met are so wholesome and kind that I think they would legitimately choose to work in the FBI or IC to make the world a better place.

Yes, they would, and very often they'd be so convinced of their righteousness that they’d use their power as government agents to run over anything that thet saw as standing in the way of their vision of a better place.

If you look at the history of abuses by the FBI, almost none of them were venal and corrupt, they mostly were just putting a vision of a path to a better world ahead of things like due process.

This is exactly the kind of thing motivating the saying “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions. ”

> by the 90s Asians and Indians were over represented

That's evidence of US tech industry's massive racism factor: that our endemic Black and Latino populations (40%) are underrepresented while this clear minority of Asian Americans (6%) are elevated?

I don't think the church cares about blending with evangelicals, more that they don't want entities that consider themselves adversarial to the church controlling the image the church projects.

Evangelicals consistently consider the LDS/Mormon faith a danger to their version of Christianity- and therefore seek to label it unchristian to poison the well.

Allowing that counter-messaging to percolate by not embracing their actual name that starts "Church of Jesus Christ," (at the very beginnings was called "Church of Christ," though as you can imagine that led to differentiation issues.[0]) became problematic as the "Mormons aren't Christian" messaging became more and more emphatic from its rivals.

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/history/topics/nam...

It's likely not that different, the events you cite are just more recent and so we have greater insight into them. There was probably plenty of con artistry and substance abuse on the ground floor of other major religions, but after thousands of years most of the evidence we retain about these founders was recorded by them or their acolytes.

Actually I completely agree with you. There are indeed plenty of things where it's murky and hard to piece together the truth (particularly since Joseph and the early church were so secretive about some teachings like polygamy).

The type of thing I had in mind are things that aren't ambiguous but rather are pretty clear. Things like "the actual edicts ... aren't really supposed to be published or talked about" regarding caffeine/word of wisdom. I certainly don't claim to know everything, but I have spent an insane amount of time reading/researching Mormon history and I've never heard that before. Stuff like that seems to pop up constantly for some reason when I talk about things with ex-mormons.

This is how I interpreted the OP as well. Just replying to supply the word "missionary" in case it helps anyone make the connection.

Nah. Zero messaging internally encouraging government work.

I'd say the high level of education, pro-work, pro-patriotism, high morality emphasis on top of the extra level of foreign language competency makes it a natural fit.

I was surprised to find out recently my Dad had applied to the CIA back in the 60s- but on reflection not too surprised. The more the 60s and 70s went counter-culture, the more that the Utah/AZ/Idaho axis of Mormons went from their traditional pro-Democratic post FDR base to a pro-government pro-Republican, anti-Communist direction.

He ended up going into business instead, but if his background check hadn't gone on so long, he'd likely would have taken a .gov offer if it'd come before his corporate offer.

The FBI goes after folks like Cliven Bundy. Support for separatism is higher is rural regions, including where LDS are. The LDS Church speaks against nationalism specifically but - like everywhere - folks hear what they want to hear.

lol, why would I slander myself? If avoiding cognitive dissonance is my goal, it would be far easier to just accept uncritically any dumb thing against the church than to have to defend the truth.

This is the type of black and white response that I find so common with ex-mormons. If somebody pushes back on disinformation (even easily disproved like the above thing about keeping caffeine teachings secret), the superstitious thinking kicks in and excuses fly (like "they must be a secret apologist" which I heard recently). It's every bit as ridiculous as the believers are when they dismiss inconvenient facts like Zelph the White Lamanite[1][2] because it goes against their preferred narrative. It's superstitious thinking.

Edit: Hah! I couldn't have asked for a better real-time example to demonstrate my point: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35774479

[1]: http://www.mormonthink.com/zelph.htm

[2]: https://mormonr.org/qnas/3yUz5/zelph_the_lamanite

> It’s funny how all of the glowing traits that are claimed about Mormons that are cited as reasons to hire them always come from the perspective of other Mormons.

I'm Jewish and have a pretty positive (in the standard ways) view of Mormons. Would have considered living in Utah if there were more of a modern orthodox Jewish community there. Can't imagine better neighbors.

At least by Wikipedia's chosen sources [0], the attempted assassination of Gov. Boggs was linked, via circumstantial evidence, to Joseph's bodyguard, Porter Rockwell (who, even within the "Mormon" Church, is considered a somewhat controversial figure), but the culprit's true identity isn't exactly a settled question.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Smith#cite_note-156

When I was growing up in the 90s, I had a few LDS friends. My school had a ton of LDS kids for some reason even though I didn't grow up in an area that's known for them. These kids always described themselves as "mormon". I never heard the term "Latter Day Saints" until much later.

It's not that they aren't supposed to be published or talked about, its that the caffeine thing was never an "edict" in the first place. The edict was no coffee or tea, and culturally that became "no caffeine" because that was a common link between the two. It became a common enough belief among lay-members over the case of many decades that the church in recent years put out a statement clarifying that caffeine is not in fact prohibited or addressed in any way by church doctrine.

Huh? The current prophet doesn't "hate" it, and never said that God told him He doesn't like it either. You're putting your own words into his mouth. Let's be more precise in representing others, even if we disagree with them.

Reminds me of this Reddit AMA+Answer from an ex-CIA officer.

https://old.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/a8c03j/i_am_andrew_bu...

Don't know how it went over in the Mormon community, but us Ags loved it.

> Historically their church youth programs were tightly integrated with the Boy Scouts

In western states, yes. In the east it ran from supportive to apathetic to passive-aggressively hostile. In some councils, the split wasn't all bad for the BSA.

My perception is that they don't want to "blend in" to the point that there's no distinction, but they want acceptance under the umbrella of Christianity. Most other groups under Christianity reject LDS doctrine as heresy, LDS church says "we are Christians though". I'm not trying to project an opinion about who is correct, just trying to describe what I think is going on.

Point out the lie when you see a lie, but this sort of blanket statement is inappropriate and reflects your own biases.

They're all weird, it's just that the weirder parts get rounded off over time or turned into divine magic.

Religions are a bug in the human pattern-matching firmware, of course they're going to be weird. There is something distinctly LLM-like about them. It's like when you see a midjourney image that's evocative of a concept but not quite matching physical reality. Religion has a lot of the 'made by an AI' fingerprints in it. I suspect an AGI could do quite a good job at crafting one that would be very useful for keeping the human population docile.

This is mostly an issue of the hierarchal/revelatory nature of the church.

If every folk belief held by any Pope or Church Father was held as a controlling 'belief' of the Catholic Church, it'd spin apart instantly via the contradictions.

The 'Mormon' church has to deal with the contradiction of near-infallibility of its leaders with their very human frailties and willingness to opine on things without much knowledge.

Considering their need to weld together tens of thousands of converts under murder, oppression, and official government endorsement of their extermination, it was understandable they needed to centralize a belief in their leadership in order to survive. Climbing down from that philosophy has been understandably fraught and drawn out.

Many early apostles including Brigham Young, and even Joseph Smith, drank alcohol.

Just anecdotal but as someone in the Pacific Northwest with a large Mormon population I have seen this occur in government and doctors offices, slowly everyone replaced by Mormons. My current office the practitioner I work with is the only non-mormon left and he's not happy about it. Mormons look out for each other, which ends up in this situation. It's nothing more nefarious than that but still off putting to those outside the church as it very much seems like a 'Mormon Mafia'.

Side note, out of prison Mormons were the only religion that actively supported ex-cons and would set you up with a place to stay and a job if you didn't have one. I seriously thought about converting just for the stability (and still might). The Catholic church had monks come to prison but I couldn't even get a visit with a priest/monk at my previous church once outside to just talk about coming back to society, my fears, and re-adjustment. Or a single parishioner to talk with. But they did offer tele-counseling (if I had insurance).

It comes from a letter written by Thomas Halman or Holman, Jr, one of the guards, to a George Weston on 30 July 1844 (about a month later). The letter is in the Special Collections of the Newberry Library in Chicago. I have been unable to find a digitized copy of this letter anywhere online, with the only quotation from it being that when Halman was concerned about the approaching mob, Joseph said "Don't trouble yourself ... they have come to rescue me." Nothing else of the letter seems to be easily available, and most of the references to it are erroneously citing the wrong book by Dr. D. Michael Quinn with the wrong date (it comes from his "Origins of Power" book, page 141).

So, it seems reasonable to accept the source as it is a first-hand account written within a short time frame of the event. However, all we have currently (until someone decides to digitize the letter) is these few words from it.

(Link to a 1966 bibliography that lists the letter's existence and location in the Newberry Library: https://www.siue.edu/lovejoy-library/tas/Kimball_Sources.pdf page 20)

Edit: I was incorrect with my assumption that the author of the letter was one of the guards. I've been unable to determine the names of the guards at Carthage that day, so the letter does not represent a first-hand account, as I thought, but instead represents what was being commonly relayed by local residents of Carthage at the time. I found a larger quotation in an article from the 1995 JWHA journal (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sv9HIDgATUM7tPxlbd-UcX7uvIV... page 26). It seems the author of the letter is trying to simply relay all of the known information about the attack and murder of the Smiths.

While you're probably right the previous poster was over-exaggerating. Your accusation is meaningless without additional details.

To their point: When I was a kid, caffeine was looked upon very poorly. Now, every Mormon I know drinks Soda and in fact the amount of Soda Shops has exploded in areas known to have large LDS populations.

As a counterpoint, the two architects of the CIA torture program, one of the most evil of things that has ever come out of the CIA (which is a ridiculously high bar), were Mormons. High ranking Mormons in ecclesiastical positions, teaching love on Sunday, and torture on Monday through Saturday. And they probably legitimately thought they were making the world a better place...in a very compartmentalized and thoroughly corrupted way. Religion is a plague on this world...people can be just as easily corrupted by it as they can be elevated by it. I'd prefer to not have any group overrepresented at the CIA.

I believe not accepting the divinity of Christ in the trinity is the stumbling block. Same with Muslims, who misunderstand the trinity to mean three Gods.

The west is trying to get rid of meritocracy not realizing the only other options that have been successfully implemented by humans are nepotism and discrimination.

In Military Bootcamp, Mormon Church was the only church they would give you food and allowed you to escape work on Sundays.

> The west is trying to get rid of meritocracy not realizing the only other options that have been successfully implemented by humans are nepotism and discrimination.

“Meritocracy” is just discrimination where the speaker agrees with the basis of discrimination, thus seeing it as “merit”. It isn’t an alternative to discrimination.

>> tried making their own script and empire. I believe it was called "Deseret":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deseret_alphabet

It was a phonetically correct alphabet for English.

In case you are unfamiliar, in many languages, the language is written exactly as it is spoken. For example, in Spanish and Italian, words are written exactly as they are pronounced. If you can read the word, you can pronounce it though you might not know the meaning.

Children in English-speaking places will usually have to study "spelling" where they learn how to correctly spell words.

Deseret alphabet was pronounced exactly as it was written which shows which spoken accents the speakers had.

Yeah but this site probably isn't composed of mostly Mormons

While people do love to get involved in some delicious nepotism, some groups do it more.

I have worked in the same area and I have seen a team of 35 go from 1 or 2 Mormons to 30. Slowly, the less palatable personalities were let go and replaced by friendly Molly's. So it's not as ridiculous as you are proclaiming.

It's not some huge conspiracy, but it does happen. Mormons are definitely more likely to hire someone they know from their Church than most Social Groups who source candidates internally. It's not malicious...generally it's just a matter of kinship... "Oh, I heard Jeff's daughter needs a job! Bring her in for an interview!"

Nice, thank you!

Reference to the late Terry Davis' first of two favored adjectives for CIA operatives.

Whether or not it's true I don't know, but your claim that it doesn't exist because they didn't tell you is ignorant.

IF they were doing this they're not going to explicitly tell you they are because it's a massive lawsuit waiting to happen.

What they are doing though is putting in laws, regulations, and culture pressure that incentivize them not to hire white males, or at least hire less of them. That's objectively true.

They/we do accept the divinity of Christ, we just don’t accept the Nicean creed version of the Trinity.

That version of the Trinity wasn’t/isn’t universal and other accepted Christian churches that don’t follow the Nicean creed - something shared with Jehovahs Witnesses.

>”I've been on tons of interviews and have gotten tons of rejection and never once has a company told me its because I didn't fit their demographic or was a white male.”

And you never will because it would be insane for any employer to make an admission that they discriminated against you. For one thing they’d have nothing to gain by telling you that, and, if they did tell it would make for an open and shut discrimination lawsuit.

Characterizing it as 'misunderstanding' is disingenous, we just don't believe it stands up to scrutiny. Any inquiries into the nature of the trinity result in the trinitarian doing one of two things: collapsing into obvious polytheism, or claiming their doctrine is incomprehensible and therefore inscruitable, neither of which are satisfying answers. Many Catholics in particular will in fact fall into what their church considers various heresies in trying to wrap their heads around what they claim to believe.

Thanks for the clarification. I'm not an American, so when I read that he was working for CIA and had been on missions in Russia (nearly got killed) without any context, and I assumed the worst.

This completely changes the meaning and makes more sense

They never called them bigots. They're saying that the Church funds anti-lgbtq legislation and implying the Church is not completely harmless.

It's weird of you to accuse them so confidently when you misunderstood.

"Productive" is a judgement about tactics that like-minded people can disagree on. Calling someone a bigot isn't an indictment of their soul or character or motivations. It is a shorthand for describing their actions. Mormonism frequently works towards and supports discriminatory policies, and so can reasonably be described as bigoted.

They can individually act differently, but if you're associated with a politically active abrahamic religion you're gonna have to carry that cross, so to speak. No one owes anyone the benefit of the doubt on this.

There's a restaurant in the Salt Lake city airport, White Horse Spirits and Kitchen, that features a large logo on their wall written in Deseret. Though, as you pointed out, it's technically a phonetic alphabet so the restaurant's sign technically says "W'hitey Horsey" which cracks me up every time I walk past it.

I've checked the website and it's easy to get lost clicking around like on tvtropes.org

> I am a member, and every actual commandment is definitely public record. Even the temple covenants are (as of recently) public record[0], and those used to be the ones that were held in the highest level of secrecy.

Great! So here's a very legit question: is there a PDF version that I could read linearly to get a good idea of the whole doctrine? (I mean something like the Talmud)

I'm just curious and want to learn.

Descendants of survivors of the trek to Utah carry their genes. If there is someone to be scared of it is survivors, for you know not what they did to survive.

> their own script and empire ... Deseret

On the empire topic, one might consider Utah. It was originally desired for the name to be Deseret and one of the two primary competing news organizations locally is called Deseret News[0]. In practice it's not really an empire (for all of the obvious reasons) but it's also kinda hard to ignore the influence that the church has on most of the population.

[0] https://www.deseret.com/ I didn't know this was the domain until now. There you go, I guess.

All members of the LDS are Mormons; but, not all Mormons are members of the LDS. In addition to the LDS, there is also the the Fundamentalist Church of (Jesus Christ of) Latter-day Saints and the Community of Christ.

CNN's web site had a piece on this yesterday: https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/29/us/mormon-beliefs-explained-c...

Other denominations are now starting to follow suit and declining to renew charters or lease space to the BSA.

So "it's okay because everyone is doing it". That also doesn't explain OP getting fired for leaving.

What is an Ag?

Not sure if it is on his resume, but once it was pretty well known that he is a high performer, he became very vocal about it. I think he is pretty invested in de-stigmatizing past drug addictions.

I don't think this adequately describes the experience or guidance, for a lot of believers. Grappling with unbelief is embedded in the synoptic tradition itself, and so we know it was present and acknowledged at the very earliest beginnings of christianity. Many prominent and highly influential early church fathers wrote about it, and acknowledged belief as an unstable and often fleeting state to be anticipated and received with gratitude. "The silence" of god is one of the most common themes in christian literature. Some churches address it explicitly in their catechism.

The public performance of belief is universal orthopraxy for christians, I think. But privately and with trusted confidants the conversation is far more nuanced than "ignore the weird stuff."

> As a former Mormon myself

Or Formon, as we say in the business.

I’ll see myself out now.

It's like these people have forgotten there are non white and non Asian people in tech. I wonder why.

The whole "we can progress to become gods" thing is a stumbling block to "normal" Christianity, too. As is the "these other books are also scripture".

No offense, but you sound a little naive.

Your account was created somewhat recently, so I'm going to guess you're a young person and you're trying to keep a bright, optimistic attitude towards life :)

That's a good thing, but you should know there's all kinds of discrimination out there, and anyone, of any race, can be a victim.

Where did freedomben slander (I think you meant libel, since it was written) anyone?

It's not exactly the same thing but many (most, I dare say) members of the Ku Klux Klan were religious church-goers. It seems rather valid to point out the corrupting potential of religion.

On this topic I'm often reminded of a line from Killing in the Name by Rage Against The Machine: "Some of those who work forces; they're the same that burn crosses." The song was written in response to the beating of Rodney King[0] by LAPD officers in 1991. I wouldn't be particularly surprised if those officers had considered themselves to be a positive force in the world who just had a lapse in judgement on a bad day.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodney_King

The latter of the two is probably reasonable, because claiming that a finite mind can not grasp an infinite one is a reasonable conclusion (even from a thermodynamic point of view :)).

“I and the Father are One” is the genesis.

Not all mysteries are scrutable in a given axiomatic framework, thankfully Gödel taught us that.

You are more than free to do so, I’m just letting you know that there are more productive means in case anyone hasn’t told you before :)

Certainly, but shorthand usually gets corrupted by sloganeering and shuts down productive discussions over preference.

Once you realize all politics is preference, it’s illuminating to consider more nuanced strategy.

As a non-mormon person who went through Army basic training, the Jewish service gave out food on Sundays, and everyone escaped work to go to their preferred service.

It's obviously very difficult to compress any religion's doctrines down into an easily digestible form, but the pamphlets used by the missionaries do a pretty good job of summarizing the most important points [0].

Beyond that, the Gospel Topics[1] section is, as you found, a bit of a rabbit hole, but contains the church's official stance on any topic where they've taken a stance. If you can't find it there, it's likely that there isn't an official consensus.

[0] https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/handbooks-and-call...

[1] https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topi...

> Soda Shops

I live in SLC and it's hard to miss.

https://www.franchisetimes.com/dealmakers/soda-brand-swig-wi... (First thing I searched and I guess they just got awarded some bullshit. Convenient timing.)

Some excerpts:

> And so in April 2010, Swig was born in St. George, in a valley in southwestern Utah

> we grew from two [2] stores in 2013 to 17 stores until 2018

But good for them, I suppose.

>> I'm a former Mormon (I guess you could call me an "ex-mormon").

> This is the Mormon immune response

OP literally said they don't identify as a Mormon any more, so your response feels like a knee-jerk reaction against something you've seen elsewhere, rather than an actual response to their comment. They're speaking from the outside looking at others on the outside, not trying to justify their own current beliefs.

No, I simply don't accept that politics is preference. Politics is in some ways the physical manifestations of our values into the world. They affect people in real and profound ways.

A "preference" for the subservience or disenfranchisement of certain people, for example, is no mere preference.

Agnostics?

    The reasoning is: Mormon is a character in their scripture (The Book of Mormon), but he is not the main figurehead for the church, so referring to them as though he is, is a misrepresentation.

That's the explanation I was given as well. Thanks for clarifying and thank you all for the explanations.

Presumably a graduate from Texas A&M (the other organization identified).

As we can see from more current situations, cops rarely think beating a black guy is wrong at all, so they don't even believe they had a lapse in judgement, they think they were right!

Most mormons I've met are actually pretty normal. If it didn't somehow slip they were LDS, you would never know, and that's in Salt Lake City where there are many.

Salt Lake City is the only city I've lived in with late night/24 hour coffee shops.

> Fundamentalist Church of (Jesus Christ of) Latter-day Saints

The correct abbreviation is FLDS I think.

Yes. Texas A&M Aggies.

They would never say that, and it could always be "we have too many white guys already, we want some more diversity instead!" But in my experience, it only seems to be used as a tie breaker, companies will mostly go for best professional fit before they consider anything else.

To add, it wasn’t just opening fire and killing that many. They opened fire, lied siege, and prompted the settlers to surrender. Then executed everyone expect the few children younger than 8.

They shouldn't be considered christians, but in the voting booth, they vote for the same thing that evangelicals do.

To be fair, others label the LDS as "unChristian" as well, with solid reasoning. For example, the Catholic Church rejects LDS baptism as invalid. That alone makes them a non-Christian. For purposes of marriage between an LDS member and a Catholic, that is a "Disparity of Cult" case that you would also see with a Muslim or Hindu.

LDS profess Christ, to be sure, and they adhere to OT/NT conservative values, and outwardly seem like nice Christian people. But they also embrace a "new Gospel" with extra books beyond the Christian canon that change the whole message. And, if you pay attention to their terminology while they speak at length, you may eventually realize that the LDS use words that have completely different meanings from the ways other Christians use words. If you've changed the underlying definitions and then speak in the same way, you're saying completely different things to the in-group without outsiders knowing the difference.

The LDS sect is fundamentally "henotheistic" rather than mono- or poly-. They literally believe that Jesus and God the Father are/were separate celestial gods, and they literally believe that every man can become a god of his own celestial kingdom, with a minimum of one celestial wife and celestial children to accompany them for the rest of eternity. They've taken major features of Judaic Temple worship, mixed in a good deal of Freemasonry, and come up with something that is far beyond Christianity as any Christian knows it.

The Mormons own a pretty big chunk of Missouri where they believe Zion is. I think the idea is that when the End Times come, they'll be the ones doing the evicting.

> Mormon people often have strong foreign language skills, from missions overseas

I remember reading that the Mormon language school that prepares people for their overseas mission trips has a lot of Special Forces personnel from the military attending as well.

The reason: the number of languages taught at the Mormon school exceeds those taught at the military language schools. This includes dialects spoken by a tiny proportion of the global population but that population is strategically useful to some agenda of US foreign policy.

False Flag operation and war crimes all before breakfast.

That's an oversimplification and not charitable. Trinitarians are perfectly capable of defending the doctrine without making stupid mistakes. I wouldn't call the doctrine "incomprehensible"; it's just beyond human understanding, in a way that we could contemplate it for the rest of eternity without reaching the fullness of what God has planted in that seed of knowledge.

It's easy to believe in the Trinity if you approach it as a little child, as Jesus encourages, and if we word it simply as the Fathers did. If we don't attempt to adorn it with our own analogies or explanations, it's elegant, simple, and transcendent.

I actually agree with what you wrote, but it’s interesting to note that many fewer people believe in universal values.

Many now believe that values are a preference (this is not something I believe, though, as I believe in objective morality, with the caveat that I realize it’s just a belief, like a belief in angels or something).

The Old Testament has Abraham, asked to kill his son, then told ha ha that was just a test.

The BoM has Nephi, told to slay a king. Are you kidding me God? Do I look like I'm kidding? He's wicked, do it.

Precedent has already been set.

Mormon was an ancient prophet who compiled and abridged the record which he called the Book of Mormon. When the church started publishing the book, people started calling members of the church, 'Mormons'. It was largely used as a derogatory term by those who did not like the church, but members eventually embraced it.

Kind of like the term 'Yankee' was a derogatory term for Americans that the British came up with. Eventually, Americans embraced it and even named a baseball team after it.

The church and its members do not think the term is bad, but think it can distract those who think the church is not Christian so it is trying to de-emphasize it.

As a person who got tricked a lot as a child, I'm still unfortunately very guarded around people who are doing something just out of the goodness of their hearts. What's the catch? As I've done more volunteer work I've come to a better place with this.

But I still wonder sometimes if people are titrating. "I'm such a monster M-F that I'm gonna go hard on righteousness on Sunday"

Or for Mormons, Monday. Mormons make a big deal about having a special night for your family, traditionally on Monday. So these guys came home from a day of torture on Monday to bond with their wife and kids. No Saturday for a buffer there.

There is additional doctrine, beyond question. It is a church that is open to further revelation equal to that which came from biblical apostles.

There is, however, nothing incompatible with Christian worship prior to the Nicean creed. Definitely post-Nicean it is a heretical sect vs mainline Christianity, but so is all of non-Catholic/Orthodox Christianity on some point or another if you cite the Catholics as the authority, if only on the issue of who's in charge.

There is plenty in the Bible to support a henotheistic view of Godhood, so it isn't extra-Biblical/Christian, just not the enforced POV post-Nicea.

> Most Mormons I’ve met are so wholesome

Most humans I've met are wholesome, too. Of the Mormons I've known, several are utter scoundrels, quite a few were mean and petty, and many were dishonest when it suited them. Much like the rest of humanity, there are bad people who happen to be Mormon, and good people who happen to be Mormon. Several Mormons I knew developed a drinking habit on their mission, fell out for a while, and returned to the church.

Don't buy into the mythos. They're just people. The one trait that I did note as almost-uniform among the practicing Mormons that I've known is a distinct holier-than-thou attitude. In the good ones, that seemed to keep them honest. In the bad ones, it was their justification for misbehavior -- especially the petty meanness.

random anecdote, but the first company i worked at, most of the team/org was mormon. and to make things even weirder, the boss was also the local "bishop" so he was everybody's boss in both the secular and spiritual worlds. not sure how common this sort of thing is, but i definitely felt at a disadvantage compared to the mormon people on the team.

Citing two prominent Mormon apologist foundations certainly doesn’t help your point that you’re not acting as closeted Mormon apologist. And when you use a misunderstanding of a non-Mormon about secrecy and caffeine as an example of ex-Mormon lies, you are certainly showing your bias towards those who leave the church.

The exmormon community is extremely thorough and factual when it comes to talking about the church, because it is to their benefit. More people have left the church after unsuccessfully trying to refute The CES Letter than have ever left due to smear campaigns and slander. The truth is to the rational thinker’s benefit, which is why the church spends so much time and money hiding it and whitewashing it.

> [he] never said that God told him

> You're putting words in his mouth

Ok... His exact words were:

"The Lord has impressed upon me the importance of the name He has revealed for His Church, even The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints...the name of the Church is not negotiable.”

He later said (in the same speech):

“[The name] is a correction. It is the command of the Lord.”

I'm not about to split hairs. But he claims to be a prophet and represent God. Then he gets in front of the church at a worldwide conference, when he knows the most people will be watching and says "The Lord has impressed upon me...", "It is a command of the Lord".

You can call it what you want, but he is clearly implying that his deity told/impressed/inspired/commanded this change.

I'm not putting words in his mouth. These are the transcripts from his announcement. This is what he said. It is hard to interpret it any other way. He seems to be very clearly stating that this is directed by "the Lord".

Utah State's mascot (The college) is also the Aggies. Seems like it is probably more likely that.

I'm a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

It's pretty common, but if you felt at a disadvantage compared to the members, that bishop/boss was not doing his job properly. We're not supposed to favor members, even if only slightly.

Unfortunately, it's natural to do so because there is an implicit assumption that there are shared values.

I don't know how to fix that.

I'm a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who went to boot camp.

Not true in my experience. Yes, we got out, but so did Catholics and Protestants and more. And we were small enough to be stuffed into a furnace room in the church building.

I still loved it. Best part of the week.

They are justifying their current beliefs about exmormons.

"goes after" is a funny way to say "enforces federal law"

I've seen a lot of good things in this thread, but also a lot of innocent misconceptions.

I'm a practicing and believing member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. AMA, I guess, to see if I can clear up some misconceptions.

I do have some non-mainstream beliefs for a member of the Church, but I am quite orthopraxic as far as members go.

(TIL what orthopraxy means; thank you to the two commenters who defined it!)

Just so you know, my stance is that anyone can do what they wish so long as it doesn't hurt anyone else, but don't force me to say that what you're doing is ideal.

Yes, I said "ideal," not "okay." That's where my beliefs are not quite mainstream.

Mohammad is a Shi'ite now? Is this like Muslims sacking Taxila before they existed?

> Often, after a long career in the FBI, agents will join the Latter-day Saints’ Security Department

Why does a church have a security department, especially one that staffs so many people? The article states that most of them work desk jobs, which probably means they aren't running physical security at individual churches, so what kind of threats does the church overall face?

Jehovah's Witnesses are not more accepted than Mormons as Christians in my experience. Or any other church in Wikipedia's non trinitarian category.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Nontrinitarian_denomi...

Great way to hide money -- be a church.

They also lobby hard, and track their missionaries closely. I'll give them a pass on some of the missionaries work, they often go to places that can be dicey.

You're replying to the person who used the term "Ags" upthread.

After reading the deseret alphabet pronunciation guide, it took a second to get used to but I don't hate it.

Asians and Indians can be racist too. Also, those groups aren't the only minorities on earth.

I would imagine it’s less to police or protect the church locations and more to “police” the actions of their parishioners.

> I'll submit this is prima facie evidence that tech was (and is to some degree) highly meritocratic

How do you imagine that constitutes evidence of meritocracy?

This reminds me of a book I read a while back where a CIA guy was talking about problems they had with a newer generation of officers.

IIRC, one of the field officers was interviewing another female officer's agent (agent being the local national spy) and when they got on the topic of the work he had done with female officer, he said "We haven't done anything, all she does is try to convert me to christianity". She was removed thereafter.

Seems to me that a secular mind is probably best for the objective reasoning required for areas like the FBI, CIA.

> Citing two prominent Mormon apologist foundations

Um, I think you're confusing MormonThink and MormonR for "FAIR" or the "BoM Foundation". They're two "middle-way" sources that try to balance the knife's edge of giving just enough of the negative-yet-factual information that faith is still possible, as opposed to something like the CES Letter which is a compendium of pretty much every negative-yet-factual piece of information that, in total, make faith in the organization pretty much impossible for the average member who reads it. But they're definitely not apologetic sites, they're just more of a "shallow water" approach than a "throw you in the deep end of the pool" approach.

I get the sense that there are a lot of Mormans on HN.

> If you hire a single Mormon, and that person achieves a position of influence in your company, you will wake up some day to the realization that there are now hundreds of Mormons...and they all had a say in hiring each other, and they all give glowing reviews about each other, and they all end up in the same organizations, and they all get promoted in lockstep with each other.

Lots of cultures do this, different asian sub-ethnicities, Jewish people, immigrants. You know who don't seem to do it much in my experience (and should), African Americans. I am opposed to nepotism personally, but I see it happen so much that I think everyone should take a crack at it if they can.

I don't know about nepotism, but I have heard the security background were easier with mormons. If you list all mormons as references and the investigators go and ask other mormons about how good and trustworthy you are as a person, what would you expect them to say?

I would also wonder what the ratio of atheists in the organizations were compared to the general population.

That mistake is actually kinda funny given the post this comment thread is in. I suspect that's why they would assume the reference was to USU's mascot. It makes sense if one happens to miss the details of who commented what.

Yes, you can find hints of henotheism in certain parts of the Hebrew scriptures. However, henotheism in Judaism had died out by the time Christianity developed. It's not something found in the New Testament.

Did I miss the percent of Mormons in the FBI mentioned? I see the 2% of US population identified, but nowhere how many are in the FBI. According the Pew Research Center[0] 1.6% of the US population is Mormon in 2014. The FBI employs approximately 35,000 people [1].

Looking at differently [2] - take the population of the US; subtract all who are not citizens, under-age, over-age, non-computer users, have no bachelors; subtract all who cannot secure a clearance, subtract all who lack the specific skills required for the role, subtract all who are not willing to take a mediocre salary, and, and, and... What do you have left?

There might be a correlation (we do not know, as we do not have a percent of Mormons in the FBI), but the factors identified are also readily present in several other groups.

I could have written an article that the US DoD hires disproportionately color-blind people. We should investigate! (I can back this up with real numbers too ;))

[0] Pew Research Center: Religious Lanscape Study https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/religious-landscape-stu...

[1] FBI: How many people work for the FBI? https://www.fbi.gov/about/faqs/how-many-people-work-for-the-...

[2] US Census https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045221

References moves an article from tabloid toward journalism.

It's not just a funny joke that attempting to define LDS doctrine is akin to trying to nail Jell-O to the wall. For almost every doctrinal position there are either other doctrinal positions or historical events that go against it (or sometimes both). Even on something as traditionally Christian as the Atonement of Jesus Christ and grace vs. works, the LDS doctrine and previous LDS leadership authorities can be read to support penal substitution theory or satisfaction theory, and you'll find plenty supporting both the supremacy of grace AND the supremacy of works.

Honestly, the best approximation of LDS doctrine is probably not found in any form of text but is best found through the practices of the majority of the active membership. Oh, and the Wikipedia pages are also probably a good place to start, since they can be changed to keep things current with changing emphasis and practice.

Of course, that's not to say that you can't find attempts by LDS individuals and academics to create what you're asking for, it's just that as time moves on each attempt has fallen out of favor as the culture of the organization shifts away on certain items:

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mormon_Doctrine_(book)

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopedia_of_Mormonism

3: https://deseretbook.com/p/lds-beliefs-doctrinal-reference-ro...

4: https://gregkofford.com/products/this-is-my-doctrine

Unrelated, I once did a salesforce buildout for a well-known church. You would be surprised at the amount of fields on the “church member management” page. Large text fields for input on “what did this person say about the church that was negative?” Investigation and credibility tracking… I was shocked.

Catholic dogma classifies Protestants heretical Christians and Mormons not Christians. The Council of Nicaea codified already dominant rejection of henotheism.

"my stance is that anyone can do what they wish so long as it doesn't hurt anyone else" sounds straightforward at first, but: how does one define "hurt"? Honest and curious question.

I would expect a lot of people to share that general stance, but differ widely on what it means to hurt or get hurt, and when to stay clear and when to intervene even if it's not you that gets hurt, or when some action merely has the potential to hurt.

Exactly, thank you. Most members consider MormonThink to be anti-Mormon, and IMHO they do tilt that way but they try to be balanced. MormonThink is definitely not a bunch of Mormon apologists. Go look at the actual apologist sites like FAIR and see how many "refutations of MormonThink" they have. Hint: it's a lot.

Mormonr is IMHO very fair, just on the other side fence. They're a faithful group, but they are committed to truth and scholarship and they're willing to say, "yeah that embarrassing thing does seem to be true" when it seems to be true.

> Citing two prominent Mormon apologist foundations certainly doesn’t help your point that you’re not acting as closeted Mormon apologist.

For someone so committed to "truth", "rational thinking," and being "extremely thorough and factual" you've sure gotten a lot wrong in just this message. Mormonthink is far from a prominent apologist foundation. Most Mormons consider them anti. You should probably look at the site before jumping to such a confirmation-bias driven conclusion.

> Catholic dogma classifies Protestants heretical Christians

No, it actually does nothing of the kind.

I grew up a practicing Catholic but have always been especially fascinated with other Christian denominations. Forgive my elementary question.

Wikipedia frames the Mormon belief with Joseph Smith as being seen at a similar level to Elijah or Moses. Prophetic, but still human and imperfect. Would you say that’s roughly accurate?

Teaching which was not dogma once did, though the current teaching is more nuanced (and not just in the negative sense of recognizing that some Protestants are not validly baptised and therefore cannot be heretics regardless of their beliefs.)

That's a great question.

That's not just roughly accurate, that's exactly accurate.

I don't see Elijah or Moses as perfect either.

Jehovah chastised Moses at the burning bush for saying that he was not a good speaker and not having faith that the Lord could make him a great speaker.

He also corrects Elijah in 1 Kings 19 when Elijah says that only he is left. The Lord says that there are more. He also teaches Elijah about Himself, so obviously Elijah didn't know everything.

Also, Elijah was prone to outbursts, kind of like how Peter the Apostle was impulsive.

No, prophets are not perfect. But we listen to them anyway. Or should.

Mohammad doesn't post at r/AcademicQuran.

That's a good point.

I don't know how others define it, and I'm not sure I could pin down my own feelings about it.

Here's a starting point: don't push something on someone without helping them understand the consequences.

As an example, when I become a parent, I want my child to be baptized a member of the Church. But I sure will not allow that child to be baptized until he/she understands the covenants that come along with baptism, understands what must be done to keep the covenants, and wants to be baptized.

It would be a great hurt if I did not do otherwise. I feel like many parents who are members hurt their children by pushing them into baptism without properly teaching them why and letting the child make their own decision.

This is a stupid and bigoted comment that doesn't even make sense given that r/AcademicQuran is full of people citing secular academics.

I forgot dogma has a more specific meaning in Catholicism. My understanding of current teaching is Protestant beliefs are material heresy but not formal heresy. Please correct if I am mistaken.

> My understanding of current teaching is Protestant beliefs are material heresy but not formal heresy.

Beliefs, as such, cannot be distinguished as formal or material heresy, because if a belief contradicts a necessary belief of the Catholic faith, whether a person holding it engages in formal or material heresy depends on other aspects of the individual heretics relationship with the belief, not the content of the belief.

And the Church doesn’t hold that “Protestant beliefs” as a class are heretical for the baptized to hold. There are beliefs within the Protestant community that the Church holds to contradict necessary elements of the Catholic faith so as to be capable of being heresies when held in the requisite circumstances, sure.

Also, there’s an evolving view both theologically – which kind of follows on practical treatment – that the doctrinal divisions between the Catholic Church and the Protestant Churches, as well as those between the Catholic Church and Eastern and Oriental Orthodox are, in general, as relates to (even validly baptized) members of the respective communities of a distinct theological character from heresy (which is essentially the religious equivalent of “treason”), even if heresy was the right frame early in the respective splits. This provides a theological reinforcement for (and in some respects follows from) efforts focusing on dialogue, clarification, and resolution of disputes rather than condemnation, which have made some progress in (in the case of the Protestant direction) both the Anglican-Catholic and Lutheran-Catholic dialogues.

They have a large number of volunteers either proselytizing or serving in various countries. Security help ensure that the areas they serve in are reasonably safe. For example, moving out people in advance of the war in Ukraine [1]. These are similar to the teams or consultants that travel manage risks for large, global conglomerates.

In addition any high profile event or personality is a potential target and requires people who can help manage the risks.

1 -https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/missionarie...

This did happen and it was egregious, but there is slightly more to the story (not that it makes it ok).

Years ago in Arizona I worked with a guy who was a descendant of John D. Lee who was the ringleader and later executed for his role in this attack. Lee's Ferry over the Colorado river is named for him also. So I looked into John D Lee a bit.

Here is his account:

http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/mountainmeadow...

The people in the wagon train were believed to have been those who had burned the Mormons out in Missouri, and although it seems revenge is a more likely motive then fear, there may have been an element of both. At any rate it wasn't just bushwhacking random wagon trains as many passed through the territory at the time.

I found Lee's account an interesting read and his grandson (or great grandson) looked very much like him.

You missed a perfect opportunity to use “righteous!”

I think there are over 40 churches descended from the teachings of Joseph Smith now (someone knowledgeable once told me this, I don't have a source). Most of them are very small.

An initial split occurred before leaving Missouri with a large number of followers including Joseph Smith's mother and other family members (as I recall) choosing to follow James Strang to Beaver Island instead of Brigham Young to Utah.

That settlement was forcibly broken up, but it's an interesting story. You can google James Strang, (The King of Beaver Island) to read more on it. That church is still around as well and claim to be the true inheritors of the teachings of Smith.

https://www.ldsstrangite.com/

> Beliefs, as such, cannot be distinguished as formal or material heresy, because if a belief contradicts a necessary belief of the Catholic faith, whether a person holding it engages in formal or material heresy depends on other aspects of the individual heretics relationship with the belief, not the content of the belief.

My understanding is the individual heretic's relationship with the belief separates material heresy from formal heresy. What aspects of the individual's relationship with the belief separate material heresy from not heresy?

> Also, there’s an evolving view both theologically – which kind of follows on practical treatment – that the doctrinal divisions between the Catholic Church and the Protestant Churches, as well as those between the Catholic Church and Eastern and Oriental Orthodox are, in general, as relates to (even validly baptized) members of the respective communities of a distinct theological character from heresy (which is essentially the religious equivalent of “treason”), even if heresy was the right frame early in the respective splits. This provides a theological reinforcement for (and in some respects follows from) efforts focusing on dialogue, clarification, and resolution of disputes rather than condemnation, which have made some progress in (in the case of the Protestant direction) both the Anglican-Catholic and Lutheran-Catholic dialogues.

I know of the desire to avoid the word heresy. Has this evolving view yet produced a new preferred term?

"If you would just stop being evil, I wouldn't have to torture you!"

As a member of the church that also served a mission in Russia, this all checks out. Putin's government and the Russian Orthodox church were incredibly brutal towards outside religions.

Lots of messy things at that time. For example, it was legal to kill a member of the church of Jesus Christ (i. e. Mormon ) in Missouri from 1838 to 1976. Doesn't make it right, but there were a lot of difficult relationships

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mormon_Extermination_Order

No it's not. The church owns a lot of property and has many high profile leaders. Church security does not do anything close to police work on/for parishioners.

The LDS Church doesn't have a record keeping tool like this and it is intentional. We believe in repentance and records like that can often get in the way of the repentance process

Not exactly correct. The Mission Training Center has only missionaries of the church attend for language training. But, Special Forces and many other agencies have studied and patterned their own language training off of the MTC model.

Also 2 hour church instead of the standard 1 hour!

I would guess that they are 'brutal' (your word) towards evangelical religions, which does make sense if they want to protect their culture that is linked to the Russian Orthodox church. I don't imagine they are 'brutal' towards Buddhism, for example, which isn't evangelical (i.e. doesn't send out missionaries and only teaches its religion to those who express an interest by themselves).

As a practicing Christian and member of the church of Jesus Christ I was taught, and teach regularly, to question everything. Questions are how we build understanding and faith. The last chapter of the Book of Mormon is an admonishment to reflect on what is written, to think about, ask questions and to pray about it.

Moroni 10

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bofm/mo...

What I think too many very intelligent people forget is that faith and knowledge are two different things. But, if you want to start a project, a business, or a relationship... You need both. One feeds the other.

I choose never to undermine the faith of others because it is those strong beliefs and acts of faith that created light bulbs, assembly lines, search engines, massive online book stores and put us in the moon again and again. Faith is pretty powerful stuff

Hebrews 11

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/nt/heb/...

I lived in Ulan Ude, a predominantly Buddhist town and province of Russia near Lake Baikal. Lots of people, when asked their faith, would say "shamanism". But that was a cultural hint and misnomer. People would practice their religion out in the woods or travel to the large Buddhist temple outside of town because most public officials and the Russian Orthodox church did not allow for Buddhism practices in town.

When I was in Omsk I listened to a man testify that the Russian Orthodox church was good because Father Oleg the local priest had a man killed because he was trying to collect a debt on a member of the church.

Selective enforcement depending on the political willpower du jour.

> I wouldn't call the doctrine "incomprehensible"; it's just beyond human understanding, in a way that we could contemplate it for the rest of eternity without reaching the fullness of what God has planted in that seed of knowledge.

I am trying but failing to see the difference here. It sounds like what you're saying is, "I wouldn't call the doctrine incomprehensible, it's just that we (as humans) can't comprehend it"

> It's easy to believe in the Trinity if you approach it as a little child, as Jesus encourages, and if we word it simply as the Fathers did.

If you approach it as a little child, it's also very easy to believe in Santa Claus, but that doesn't make it any more true (or any more likely to be true either).

of course, if OP was fired for leaving the church, that is an outrage and is grounds for legal action and/or terminating the manager. Religion (or non-religion) is a legal protected class.

But that's not what I was arguing against. I was arguing against discriminating against mormons by disallowing them from hiring/evaluating/etc another person just because they happen to be in the same faith. Unless of course you want to expand that to all faiths. I.e. no catholic can hire a catholic, etc. But then that opens up some pretty obvious other problems. Which is my point.

> because most public officials and the Russian Orthodox church did not allow for Buddhism practices in town

This is total bs. For one, it is always super fun to see how slavic-supremacist types get butthurt over being unable to do anything about religious holidays of other ethnicities.

And look, you've even ad-hoc'ed a dark unrelated anecdote. Pushing agenda much?

In what way? I regularly get to enjoy pipe organ at a local Catholic Christian church.

I've only heard about controversies regarding Jehovah's Witnesses, but that's the problem nonspecific to Russia.

What's wrong with de-stigmatizing current drug addictions?

It used to be 3

They are brutal towards proselytizing ones, certainly.

As an non-member and a person who went to bootcamp experience, this is true. I don't know what branch you were in but I'm assure you this was in fact the case.

But thanks for calling me a liar, very Mormon of you.