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xmormon.org

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By Mason

I recently started putting together xmormon.org, a sister site to luciferslantern.com. The focus of the site is pretty straightforward: collecting the stories of ex-Mormons throughout history and building a resource center for people who have left the church.



The basic premise is that people have been leaving Mormonism since the earliest days of the church. If you’ve left, or you’re in the middle of figuring out what leaving means for you, you’re not the first person to walk that road. You won’t be the last either.


Because I'm impatient and want to get this ball rolling, I’m using Wikipedia’s Creative Commons license to get initial articls poated. This license allows existing articles to be copied and adapted as long as the license requirements are followed. From there, I’m giving each article a more standard format, then adding context, cleanup, and workikg to add original material over time.


I’m just one guy, so this seemed like the most realistic way to start building the site without waiting forever to make it useful.


There’s still a lot of editing ahead. Some of the current articles need cleanup, and I have a lot more people and resources to include. I also expect the tone of the site to shift a bit as I work through the material. Some Wikipedia articles about dissenters and former members seem to carry assumptions that don’t always fit the purpose of this project, so part of the work will be making the entries feel more balanced and readable.


The goal isn’t to make every former Mormon look heroic or to flatten every story into the same narrative. Some individuals should be looked up to, others, not so much... Some people left quietly. Some were pushed out. Some became public critics. Some simply moved on.


Their reasons were not all the same, but their stories still belong to the larger history of Mormonism.


I’ve also added a section where people can share their own stories. History matters, but so do the experiences of people leaving now. That part of the site is meant to give people a place to describe what their Mormon experience was, and what leaving looked like for them in their own words.


There’s enough on the site now to get a feel for the direction, but it’s still very much in progress, so please bookmark it, and check in often!

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