If All The Emotionally Disenfranchised Members Came Back?

[_moksha]

On the MAD Board, Tzusuki asks a very intriguing question"

What Would Happen To The Church If All The Emotionally Disenfranchised Members Came Back?

...but still had no love for the culture that drove them away to begin with?

What is your opinion?

[_Sethbag]

Someone would inevitably offend them, and they'd leave again. :-)

[_Zoidberg]

On the MAD Board, Tzusuki asks a very intriguing question"

What Would Happen To The Church If All The Emotionally Disenfranchised Members Came Back?

...but still had no love for the culture that drove them away to begin with?

What is your opinion?

I think this question is overgeneralized. The "culture" varies greatly depending on geography. I've never had any love for the Utah culture, but things are different (as in better) on the other side of the Zion curtain.

[_Blixa]

I sort of agree with Zoidberg. I'm not sure how much "Utah Mormon" and "Mormon" culture overlap, but on the other hand the original question blurs other lines: wouldn't "emotional disenfranchisement" be "cultural?" And isn't Mormonism about creating a separate sphere/culture/state/society etc., in the first place? And furthermore, doesn't Mormonism attempt to export its "local culture" along with its "spiritual message," thus entangling the two pretty tightly?

Seems a superficially thought through question...

[_guy sajer]

On the MAD Board, Tzusuki asks a very intriguing question"

What Would Happen To The Church If All The Emotionally Disenfranchised Members Came Back?

...but still had no love for the culture that drove them away to begin with?

What is your opinion?

It's probably in many cases precisely the culture, and its manifestations, that served to emotionally disenfranchise them in the first place.

I was never emotionally disenfranchised; intellectually disenfranchised, absolutely. But I couldn't stand the culture, nonetheless.

[_Trevor]

I think I would inevitably find myself outside the LDS Church again, if I tried to go back. I would get depressed. I would be miserable going and listening to so much that I fundamentally disagree with. It was easier for me to go to city wards, where I liked the local, ethnically-mixed membership. Still, I could not read the Ensign or watch General Conference and hope to last more than a year. I would also need to avoid going to Stake Conference, if that consisted of smug, self-satisfied white guys coming from the suburbs to shepherd the child-like, poor urbanites (how it seems to me that we were viewed). Of course, my lack of belief in Christianity is a fundamental problem, which has kept me from joining another church, and makes it all the easier not to go back to my family's tradition in religion, even just to have some form of non-work-related community.

[_Lucretia MacEvil]

On the MAD Board, Tzusuki asks a very intriguing question"

What Would Happen To The Church If All The Emotionally Disenfranchised Members Came Back?

...but still had no love for the culture that drove them away to begin with?

What is your opinion?

Is this just another way of suggesting that people don't leave the church because it is substandard religion, it has to be for some other reason like they hate the culture?

The culture had nothing to do with why I left the church, although I can't say that I miss it much either.