ersatz<\/em>\u00a0\u201ccommunities\u201d online, where they can \u201cmeet\u201d together to spur one another on to greater and greater heights of disdain for their still-believing relatives and neighbors and to ever more frenzied contempt for their former leaders and onetime beliefs. \u00a0No more is departure from the Church necessarily a massive social setback. \u00a0No longer does it mean at least temporary\u00a0isolation. \u00a0There are large support groups and considerable\u00a0numbers of \u201cfriends\u201d \u2014 albeit overwhelmingly of the \u201cvirtual\u201d kind \u2014 who are there to encourage and sustain the newly-minted apostate, and to proselytize for more converts.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Having left one community, these folks join another. \u00a0And there is little serious communication across the gulf between the two.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
I genuinely believe that this is socially\/psychologically vital to understand.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Posted from Grindelwald, Switzerland<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u00a0 David French\u2019s article is, I think, both insightful and important: \u00a0 \u201cWe\u2019re Not in a Civil War, but We Are Drifting Toward Divorce\u201d \u00a0 I\u2019ll go further, and apply it a bit closer to home: \u00a0 One significant factor in current apostasy from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/a>