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Benedict ‘Insurgency’ For Mormons

LDS reader suggests ways for Mormons to go on countercultural offensive
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A Mormon and frequent commenter here who blogs under the name MC on the “Junior Ganymede” blog has some long, interesting thoughts about how the Benedict Option might play out for LDS church members — and some advice on how it should. Excerpt:

  • Squeaky-clean Mormon musical artists have found some success on YouTube where there’s little message filtering, and those who wish to find a pearl of great price may find it. Just as I write that, I’m amazed that it’s Christians who should now be grateful for an unfiltered medium, but here we are.
  • I am pleasantly surprised at how quickly and enthusiastically kids have embraced the “Mormon Prom” trend. Perhaps because I went to high school back east with so few LDS, it was hard for me to imagine the “cool” Mormon kids embracing this outsider idea of having a separate prom. But when I saw an article about kids in Orange County, CA doing it,  I realized that it was the real deal. OC is the epicenter of “California Mormons,” who are cultural trendsetters for BYU and therefore the Church. The kids in my distant locale love it, too.
  • I think that the American Mormon tendency to identify as “Super-Americans” is likely to be counter-productive going forward. We are rapidly reaching the point where hyper-patriotism is allegiance to an unholy entity. And Mormons might as well embrace their pariah status. The avant garde loves to transgress the dominant pieties. Well, can there be any question that in our society it is adherence to Christianity that is transgressive?

 

  • I can picture a future where public school becomes a place for “losers,” because every responsible parent will have abandoned them. I’m not saying that’s a good thing, nor a charitable way to look at things. But our decades-long effort to “fix the schools” was a concession to a key premise of the Left, that government custody is where our kids belong. Whereas insurgency is all about flipping the script.
  • One can also imagine big families with a stay-at-home mom becoming a cool thing again, in much the same way that breast-feeding made such a huge comeback from that bizarre mid-century period when it was considered passe.

Read the whole thing. I boldfaced what to me, as an outsider, is the most interesting statement MC makes. What if Mormons stopped considering themselves to be “Super Americans,” and instead let their freak flags proudly fly? Thoughts, readers? Thoughts, Russell Arben Fox?

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