Category: America’s Peculiar Piety

  Mormonism must be done away with by the thousand influences of civilization, by education, by the elevation of the people. —Robert Green Ingersoll, 1884* The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has come a long way since the “Great Agnostic” could recommend to a newspaper reporter that the “influences of civilization” should simply …

Given that I’m a proud, barely famous atheist and skeptic, people are often surprised and fascinated to learn that I am a former Mormon (or as I like to say, a “Formon”). After the obligatory polygamy jokes and questions about the “magic underwear,” people are generally curious to know why I left the Church. This …

I have been convinced for some time that Joseph Smith’s claims about the discovery of the Golden Plates were a hoax, that Smith himself wr ote the Book of Mormon, that he forged the “Reformed Egyptian” writing he showed to Professor Charles Anthon, and that the whole imposture grew out of Smith’s earlier career as …

The story of Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon, and the eventual rise of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) is one of the more colorful, even outlandish, tales American history has to offer. Yet one of its more fascinating postscripts is undeservedly overlooked: the story of a freethinking journalist who, albeit …

Are all Mormons devout and orthodox believers? Or are some of them freethinkers? And if there are freethinking members inside this religion with a reputation for conformity, are they marginalized? If so, why would they stay? Religious belief and affiliation serve many different needs. They offer adherents a sense of purpose and meaning, a sense …

Preserved in a bottle in the magnificent Basilica of St. Anthony in Padua, Italy, are the tongue and larynx of that eponymous saint. Visitors are informed that when Anthony’s remains were exhumed for transfer to the newly completed basilica in 1263, thirty-two years after his death, these organs had survived intact in miraculous testament to …

I am an atheist, but I grew up Mormon. My children have asked their grandparents and others about religious belief and how it works in order to try to understand it. But for all of their interest and curiosity, I doubt they’ll ever completely understand what it’s like to be a part of a religious …