A while back I was reading an article by Seth Payne (and I blogged about it on my personal blog from a slightly different perspective)…and I guess I was most impressed/shocked by something that Seth had done.

See, while I was already interested in the paper because he tried to analyze the Ex-Mormon exit narrative (I’m just a sucker for that…even if someone gets it wrong [it happens more often than I'd care to admit], but fortunately Seth had a reasonable analysis, I think) what I didn’t expect was in this shift that Seth took. Rather than speaking about how flawed and petty and prideful Ex-Mormons must be or whatever, he notes:

…the narratives themselves seem to be driven by an estrangement process both doctrinal and social. I believe that we, as liberal and intellectual Mormons are partially to blame for perpetuating these feelings of estrangement.

I discussed this a bit on my blog, but I wanted to discuss this again because I hadn’t really quite seen something like it. Continue reading…