About The Latter-Day Order of the North Star
Truth is truth. It doesn’t do anyone any good to try to pretend otherwise.
The Latter-Day Order of the North Star is dedicated to taking a clear, factual view of the Mormon church, also called The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
We’re a group that recognizes the value of community and shared faith while also recognizing the necessity to engage with truth, facts, and scholarship. We are committed to the idea that people should think for themselves and shouldn’t allow other people to do their thinking for them just because those people claim a connection or conduit to a higher power.
Just because a leader, or a book, makes a claim, that doesn’t meant it should automatically be believed, especially when there are facts, evidence, research, or scholarship that can shed more light on those claims.
Allowing an organization to do the thinking for its members is a precarious situation people should be very careful with, regardless of what the organization is.
The Strength of the Church
The church is always stronger when it confronts the truth head-on, rather than trying to convince the members that some new piece of information or some new way of doing things is the way things have always been, or when the church tries to distract away from the truth like politicians do. The church should always frankly, verifiably, present the truth and the facts, whatever they happen to be.
Church Leaders Should Not Be Worshipped
In the Mormon church, leaders, especially the church president, are considered to speak for God and so what they say should be followed just as if God said it. This results in the leaders being venerated and practically worshipped as if they were God. Further, a great deal of emphasis is placed on the organization of the church and doing whatever it says, without question. Once again allowing the leaders and the organization to do the thinking for the people.
For instance, members of the church are told if they want to know if something a leader says is true they should pray about it. If their prayer confirms what the leader said, then great, but if their prayer goes against what the leader said, if the member is inspired that what the leader said is not correct, they’re supposed to just ignore that and do what the leader says anyhow.
All of this culminates in the church and the leaders being unquestionable, as if they were gods on Earth. Most Christian churches worship God and Jesus. The Mormon church tends to worship the church president and the church itself instead.
Even in the Mormon temple people pledge to the church. Not to God, but to the church.
Thinking for yourself is not encouraged, and researching any information that comes from outside of the church, any information that’s not part of the church’s carefully controlled and correlated materials, is actively discouraged.
Dallin H. Oaks, current president of the church, even famously said, “It’s wrong to criticize leaders of the church, even if the criticism is true.” The organization of the church isn’t really interested in truth, just in loyalty and compliance.
People should always think for themselves.
Pursuing Clear Light
In the Latter-Day Order of the North Star we quietly work from within to help move the church in a more truthful and honest direction, to help evolve the church beyond its questionable roots and claims, while preserving the good that the community offers.
Who knows, the person sitting next to you in the pews on Sunday might even be a member of the Order themselves.