Our small men’s fellowship will be widening the sc of our online dialogue once a month to all men who would like to join in our little corner of Mormonism. The intent of having these discussions is in much a response to the spiritual and cultural erasure undermining western civilization. We wish to preserve our values, our religion, and our way of life but understand that the only way we can do this is via the family unit- by becoming strong God-fearing men, loving husbands, and good fathers in which children can be raised to honor the Lord. So we invite all young men in the movement who share that conviction to join us.
We are Mormons and so we value all truth, however, the scope of these discussions will be centered much around topics of courtship, marriage, and fatherhood. In our polarized swing out of organized religion we have had the tendency to glorify foreign eastern cultural and spiritual philosophies while disregarding many of the great values, institutions, and traditions of the heritage we stand upon. We don’t reject other cultural traditions in our search for truth but a crucial element to preserving our way of life is to understand our own cultural identity and the role we play in Christ’s gospel. We will be bringing figures such as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, as well as Plotinus, the church fathers, C.S. Lewis and Tolkien, and many of the influential minds of western canon into dialogue with Joseph Smith, Denver, and the prophets of the book of Mormon. To encourage intergenerational dialogue we will also be inviting successful older married men to each our meetings to weigh in on our discussions.
For March 10th we will begin Sacrament around 7:10AM PST(8:10AMST) and have our presentation and discussion from 7:20-9:00 PST(8:20-10MST). We will discuss what agape (charity) is and how it differs from other forms of love. We will have a brief history lesson into how western civilization has lost touch with agape and how in its effort to find divine love has instead opted for its adulterated imitation of romanticism, the 18th century movement and philosophy. We will discuss the fruits of charity vs the destructive ends of romanticism, both on the scale of our individual mental well being and the societal health of humanity. We will trace how romanticism was a plague during Joseph Smith and the restoration and how it is still skewing our modern perception of dating, marriage, and God’s relationship with us. We will discuss all this in the hopeful attempt that we can better orient ourselves, to avoid the pitfalls of romantic projections and religious delusions, in midst of this cultural war and ongoing new wave of spiritual enlightenment (or maybe counter-enlightenment) in our little corner of Mormonism.