B C Baker

Son of God, Servant of Jesus Christ, Seed of Abraham
'My grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me'.

[B C Baker @bcbaker66]

@ExMosPostingLs Thanks. Done.

[B C Baker @bcbaker66]

@EbbaWow @LargeInStature_ Cheers! I mostly did...

[B C Baker @bcbaker66]

@RigdonNancy3 @ThoughtfulSaint I don't even believe you want the truth.

[B C Baker @bcbaker66]

Two great (and quite familiar) examples from someone else: https://t.co/9yVR9Bwro9

[Dem Saints @LDS_Dems]

I had a close friend who left the Church because he claimed leadership was biased against him and all men going through divorce.

In reality, he cheated on his wife, refused to pay child support and the Church was now supporting his family emotionally and financially.

[B C Baker @bcbaker66]

Possibly unpopular opinion, but if you want to know why I'm not jumping up and down at the chance to read a collection of apostates' exit narratives, I will remind you that sometimes the stories people tell both pre- and post-exit are factual lies:
https://t.co/EEJLlSM5rP

[Jesse Fox @jesse_k_fox]

Why are we so willing to talk about people leaving the Church, but so reluctant to listen, I mean really listen to them?

I haven’t read Torn, and I know people have strong opinions about it. Personally, I enjoy hearing perspectives that challenge my own thinking.

What I find interesting is that a book about why people we love leave the Church, and what we can learn from them, has become controversial in the first place.

Maybe that’s because this topic is deeply personal.

Perhaps some people have a loved one who left and still don’t have answers. So, out of frustration they feel inclined to make their voices heard because someone writes a book and says we can do better.

Perhaps others have lived through the experience themselves. The title resonates because they know what it feels like to be torn.

Leaving the Church is often emotional for everyone involved. Those who leave are affected. The loved ones who remain are affected. Few people walk away from that experience unchanged.

That’s why I wonder where our focus should be. Should it be on the author? The critics? The debate?
Or should it be on the people actually living this reality?

The spouse trying to understand. The parent searching for answers. The child wrestling with faith. The friend trying to maintain a relationship despite different beliefs.

When the conversation becomes centered on a book or a controversy, I’m not sure much healing happens.

But when the focus returns to the people who feel torn, we have a chance to learn, to understand, and maybe even to help.

After all, the people who need our attention the most are those who are torn.

[B C Baker @bcbaker66]

@EricCMeadows Yo.

[B C Baker @bcbaker66]

@RigdonNancy3 @ThoughtfulSaint What do you hope I will write in reply?

[B C Baker @bcbaker66]

@EbbaWow @LargeInStature_ Mission, university study, and work.

[B C Baker @bcbaker66]

@LargeInStature_ Spectators sports are as much a part of the entertainment complex as Hollywood is.

[B C Baker @bcbaker66]

@TheUnderTiny Thanks. I think...

[B C Baker @bcbaker66]

@jesse_k_fox We were all a bunch of 'hypocrites', according to him (his exact word). But if we had contacted him contrary to his wishes, he would have accused us of not respecting his boundaries. Those are two of the most common tropes in exit narratives, and we're damned either way.

[B C Baker @bcbaker66]

@jesse_k_fox Also, there is often nothing we can do to satisfy the aggrieved. A man announced at a stake YSA FHE that he was leaving the Church and wanted ZERO contact from us. Months later, I bumped into him, and he used the fact that no one had reached out to him as proof that no one cared.

[B C Baker @bcbaker66]

@jesse_k_fox Yes. Which, from my perspective, is what will drive the sale of this book. People will read it and believe they know things that are true and valuable - encouraged by those who find its takeaways appealing.

[B C Baker @bcbaker66]

@jesse_k_fox It's probably not actually people self-consciously convincing themselves of things. We are prone to take shortcuts and keen to appear informed, so adopting 'popular' narratives is just what people many times do.

[B C Baker @bcbaker66]

Here's a better link to my earlier thread: https://t.co/EEJLlSM5rP

[B C Baker @bcbaker66]

My personal experience with people who lie about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and abuse. An important 🧵.

[B C Baker @bcbaker66]

@jesse_k_fox The power of the narrative is so great that Europeans living in the East would still use its framework even when recording details that ran exactly counter to the narrative. In history, we call this 'reading Indigenous countersigns': evidences of local reality that sneaked in.

[B C Baker @bcbaker66]

@jesse_k_fox People who travelled from Europe to the East in the 16th century had already made the trip in their heads by reading what others had written and what society was therefore saying. So they would then organise their own narratives within the framework of that familiar story.

[B C Baker @bcbaker66]

@jesse_k_fox I encountered this phenomenon all through my PhD research. European texts for European audiences would slavishly stick to the expected script despite a corpus of texts (mostly letters) being filled with 'countersigns' that the situation on the ground was very different.

[B C Baker @bcbaker66]

@jesse_k_fox A similar example: travel narratives are a known phenomenon. We historians have 1,000s of examples of how people who write about their travels imaginatively visit places first through existing narratives and then recreate those narratives even when they experience something else.