On January 30, 2014, Newseek published a 3,100 word article entitled “When the Saints Go Marching Out” about the difficulties of leaving The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I read it and liked it—I even tweeted the author, Hannah Miet, and told her so. I thought it provided relatively balanced, insightful coverage of a few of the many, many challenges post-Mormons face when they outgrow their Mormon beliefs and community, including: the way information easily available on the Internet contradicts many of the church’s primary truth claims, anger over feeling they’ve been deceived, the difficulty of finding someone to talk to about doubts, and how inexperience and naivete impede socializing like most American adults.
On February 3, 2014, on the blog of FairMormon, a “non-profit corporation that is dedicated to helping people deal with issues related to anti-Mormonism,” there appeared. a 1,000 word response entitled “When the Saints Go Marching Out of Control” (which, I admit, is a fabulous title). The piece’s first criticism of Ms. Meit’s article is that she “chose to lead off by focusing on ex-Mormon efforts to actively proselyte* Church members”; the remainder of the first paragraph is devoted to that topic.
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