The Mormon Facebook

Posted by: philomytha on: August 15, 2010

In: LDS Life
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I just created a profile at the new mormon.org website.

I’m guessing that anyone who stumbles across this blog knows about mormon.org, but in case you don’t, it’s a companion website to a new ad campaign that the LDS church is running. The basic premise is “Hey, look, we’re not weird!” and features commercials spotlighting a variety of normal (if exceptionally cool) people whom you might not expect to be Mormon. The most popular one so far seems to be hip-skateboarder-guy. This may in part be because he is also a hip-photographer-guy whose photos you might not want your bishop to catch you looking at.

So the website is a place for all you nonmembers who have never met a real live Mormon to find a virtual Mormon neighbor. Any Mormon can fill out a profile telling about their lives, their personal religious experience, and answering FAQs about Mormons.

As a superstitious agnostic universalist Mormon pragmatist I’m pretty unorthodox, but I’m still a Mormon, so I figured why not? I mean, the point of the website is to let people get to know the real Mormons, right? To show a more accurate picture of a misunderstood group. To represent the people, not just the doctrine. And while I’m unorthodox, not very religious, and currently inactive, I’m not all that unusual as a Mormon. There are plenty of Mormons like me, and if the general public is going to get a representative picture of Mormons, we should be included.

So I filled out a profile. It’s not critical of the church, and I’m pretty sure I didn’t assert any position that contradicts church doctrine. I didn’t bear testimony, of course, I basically talked about being a cultural Mormon. The question is, I suppose, how broad a spectrum of people the church wants to show. Do they want to show that Mormons can be all kinds of people with all kinds of views, or is the goal to show that Mormons are all kinds of people who all believe the exactly the same? I’m guessing the latter, though I think the former would be more reassuring to the general public.

Right now my profile is “Pending Review.”