I’ve been keeping up with a number of LDS blogs in my feed reader. For a complete list of the ones I read, see my del.icio.us “mormonism blog” category.
What struck me initially was the number of theologically liberal Mormon blogs there are when compared with the number of conservative ones. These are the kind of Mormons who read Dialogue and Sunstone; the kind who might be feminists and pray to Heavenly Mother; the kind who might agree with Grant Palmer that the Book of Mormon had its authorship solely in Joseph Smith. These are people who still hold to their Mormon beliefs and heritage while denying or downplaying vital doctrines and speaking out against church leadership.
Granted, there are a few strictly conservative Mormons out there who are defending their faith vigorously (Jeff Lindsay’s Mormanity comes immediately to mind), but they seem harder to find. Are they just less outspoken? Did I stumble across the wrong link lists in my initial searches? If anyone can point me to where all the conservative Mormon blogs are, I’d be much obliged.
Anyway, one of the reasons I started this post was to mention a meme practiced amongst LDS bloggers. It seems popular for LDS blogs to assume a title once used by LDS newspapers or other periodicals. For instance, there are LDS blogs called Times and Seasons, Millennial Star, and Nauvoo Neighbor. Since I discovered this custom, I’ve jokingly contemplated renaming my blog The Nauvoo Expositor ((For those who may not be familiar with LDS history, The Nauvoo Expositor was an anti-Mormon newspaper founded by some former members of the LDS church. It printed only one edition in the summer of 1844, and was promptly shut down by Joseph Smith and the Nauvoo city council on the grounds that it was a “public nuisance.” The incident led to charges of censorship and suppression of free speech and was the primary reason Smith was being held in Carthage Jail at the time of his assassination.)).
Of course, that’s not an appropriate name for this blog at all. I routinely speak out against vitriolic anti-Mormon literature and I try not to spend all my time here talking about Mormonism. Nevertheless, I think it would be fun to stir up a little controversy. If nothing else it would certainly be a quick way to get some attention from the Mormon blog community. I’m too chicken to do it, though, and that’s probably why I’ll never have a large readership here.