How Succession Crisis & Lack of Prophetic Seership and Revelators, Supports the "Independent Mormon" Position

 

In my view, Joseph Smith not clearly assigning someone to replace him is proof of a Independent Mormon living as a legitimate interpretation. In other words, even  Mormon historians and scholars often admit that Joseph Smith did not designate a clear successor other than his brother who was killed and perhaps Joseph Smith III. This is why there was debate and confusion among Mormons after Joseph Smith was killed. 

This to me proves that being Mormon today is not about belonging to a particular Mormon sect or denomination but belonging to the Mormon tribe. For me this means that my belonging to the tribe of Ephraim, according to my patriarchal blessing (and my great grandfather's being told they are the pure blood of Ephraim as anglo-saxons), turns Mormonism into as an indigenous Anglo-Saxon religion for me personally. For it is my own blood relatives whose names are in the Doctrine and Covenants. In other words, those born in the Covenant are part of a tribe and quasi-ethnic indigenous Anglo-American culture and ideals, with a set of scriptures filtered through the Anglo-American Joseph Smith: which replaces the ideas filter through the middle eastern Apostle Paul. 

So that with my Full Circle Theory, just as Christianity went through a cultural evolution from Paul to pseudopographic to Constantine and then Augustine and eventually the Protestant Reformation, so too Mormonism repeated this full trajectory creating a full circle restoration of all things. As Mormonism went through a near identical transformation toward an eventual Protestant-Reformation-type transition toward the legitimate option of being an Independent Mormon and every  Mormon receiving their own revelation based  and living by the dictates of their own conscience; and finding in the LDS revelations/scriptures the grounding for truthful ideals and principles that takes precedence over any edicts of any Mormon sect or denomination from Prophets or Bishops in these various Mormon denominations that all conflict with each other when it comes to claims to divide authority from their top leaders.

Now if any Mormons sect or denomination wants to convince me that they are the "true and living church" then they need to demonstrate that: if they are living church with an actual prophetic prophesying seer seeing through a sear stone and revelating as a revelator (meaning translating scripture), either producing something like the inspired Bible (the Joseph Smith Translation) or translating gold plates into the Book of Mormon (as Joseph Smith claimed), let's see it. Put up or shut up as they say. 

There has been attempts by some to do this. For example, the Remnant Movement claims to be translators of new translations of the Mormon Standard Works but I'm simply unconvinced that this is supernaturally led versus mere psychological creation. But at least they are trying. 

As for most other Mormon sects and denominations, I do not see anything close to an actual living church, an actual living source of prophetic prophesying or Seers engaged in seership and seeing with a seer stone nor revelating as revelators producing New Revelations in published scriptures to be voted on by common consent which was all signs and evidence of a living Church during Joseph Smith's lifetime. I see nothing of that sort today. Instead, in the Utah-base Church for example I see a Corporation functioning like a business and top leaders functioning more as administrators and guardians of the original revelations in the Standard Works; and making mere policy decisions and producing new handbooks of instructions not new and living scriptural Revelations where it says Thus saith the lord. Instead, in almost every attempt to claim revelation it seems to be to correct a prior policy. So I do not see any evidence of actual revelation but instead a business administration. This is not to criticize the Utah-based LDS Church because I do consider it part of my Mormon tribe as a quasi-ethnic tribal fraternity so to speak, who is retaining the memory of my 19th century Pioneer polygamous Mormon ancestors (whose names are contained in the Doctrine and Covenants: as most of the names in there are my own relatives). So I'm not against the Utah-based Salt Lake administrative Church functioning like a business because what it is "selling" so to speak is my ancestral tribe in the form of the Standard Works and the ideals and principles of an anglo-americanized Christianity based on my ancestry. But that does not mean that I consider them to be the "mouthpieces of God" in all things or that they alone have the right to speak for God and try to control my every thought and behavior down to the underwear I wear or whether or not I'm allowed to drink coffee before I am allowed into their temples. 

Joseph Dies like a Lamb as King & Deliverer of God's New Word (Scriptures) Whose "Blood" Finishes former LDS Law-Codes

 

Also in line with my Full Circle Theory, just as Jesus was killed in part for claiming to be "King of the Jews," Joseph Smith was crowned King of the House of Israel (which basically meant that he was king over the Mormon People), and was killed for doing so according to Governor Ford. From the Joseph Smith Papers website:

… in the summer of 1844 that Illinois governor Thomas Ford placed the belief that Smith “had caused himself to be crowned and anointed King of the Mormons” first in a list of “causes of excitement” that led to his death.[73]

D&C 135:3 states that, '"Joseph Smith, the Prophet and Seer of the Lord, has done more, save Jesus only, for the salvation of men in this world, than any other man that ever lived in it..." Joseph Smith is also believed by many LDS thinkers to be Messiah ben Yoseph, see here.

The JST, Genesis 50:34-35 explains that the Lord will "raise up Moses" to lead and write, and similarly promises a later prophet (Joseph Smith) who will "write the word of the Lord" and make revealed scriptures available again. In Moses 1:41 the Lord tells Moses that because his words will be taken away, "I will raise up another like unto thee; and they shall be had again among the children of men." This is talking about Joseph Smith who became the new Moses. 

The Book of Mormon in 2 Nephi 3:9–15 describes a "choice seer" who is Joseph Smith and states that "he [Joseph Smith] shall be great like unto Moses, whom I have said I would raise up unto you, to deliver my people, O house of Israel" (emphasis added).

2 Nephi 3:17-19 compares Joseph Smith to Moses, noting that God will give Joseph Smith power to bring forth His word. Joseph Smith is thus cast as God's latter-day "word(s)" (spokesman) as a deliverer like Moses. This presents Joseph Smith as an Anglo-Saxon "savior/deliverer," who speaks for God and is given power to even change the words of Christ in Mark 9 in the JST. 

D&C 135 uses the word "blood" several times in religious language, as if Joseph Smith's martyred blood acts as some kind of salvific effect through Joseph Smith, as God's word (spokesman), sealing his scriptural revelations --and his work to gather an Ephraimite tribe -- with his blood; which efforts takes on an immortality or kind of "resurrection" through his "name" that "cannot be slain." As D&C 135: 3-7 puts it (emphasis added):

3 Joseph Smith, the Prophet and Seer of the Lord, has done more, save Jesus only, for the salvation of men in this world, than any other man that ever lived in it. In the short space of twenty years, he has brought forth the Book of Mormon, which he translated by the gift and power of God, and has been the means of publishing it on two continents ... has brought forth the revelations and commandments which compose this book of Doctrine and Covenants, ...; gathered many thousands of the Latter-day Saints [mostly Ephraimites in the 1800s], founded a great city, and left a fame and name that cannot be slain. He lived great, and he died great in the eyes of God and his people; and like most of the Lord’s anointed in ancient times, has sealed his mission and his works with his own blood; and so has his brother Hyrum. In life they were not divided, and in death they were not separated!

4 When Joseph went to Carthage to deliver himself up to the pretended requirements of the law, two or three days previous to his assassination, he said: “I am going like a lamb to the slaughter; but I am calm as a summer’s morning; I have a conscience void of offense towards God, and towards all men. I shall die innocent, and it shall yet be said of me—he was murdered in cold blood.” ...

6 Hyrum Smith was forty-four years old in February, 1844, and Joseph Smith was thirty-eight in December, 1843; and henceforward their names will be classed among the martyrs of religion; and the reader in every nation will be reminded that the Book of Mormon, and this book of Doctrine and Covenants of the church, cost the best blood of the nineteenth century to bring them forth for the salvation of a ruined world; and that if the fire can scathe a green tree for the glory of God, how easy it will burn up the dry trees to purify the vineyard of corruption. They lived for glory; they died for glory; and glory is their eternal reward. From age to age shall their names go down to posterity as gems for the sanctified.

7 They were innocent of any crime, as they had often been proved before, and were only confined in jail by the conspiracy of traitors and wicked men; and their innocent blood on the floor of Carthage jail is a broad seal affixed to “Mormonism” that cannot be rejected by any court on earth, and their innocent blood on the escutcheon of the State of Illinois, with the broken faith of the State as pledged by the governor, is a witness to the truth of the everlasting gospel that all the world cannot impeach; and their innocent blood on the banner of liberty, and on the magna charta of the United States, is an ambassador for the religion of Jesus Christ, that will touch the hearts of honest men among all nations; and their innocent blood, with the innocent blood of all the martyrs under the altar that John saw, will cry unto the Lord of Hosts till he avenges that blood on the earth. Amen.

In the early Mormon Church, after Joseph Smith's death, Joseph was called the Prophet, and usually Church Presidents avoided the term Prophet and only called themselves Presidents.  This was because the word(s) of God through Joseph Smith as God's mouthpiece, had basically seized, and the flow of revelations and new scriptures almost completely dried up after 1844 except for a few rare exceptions. This was a type and shadow of Jesus and Paul revealing new scripture and then revelations basically drying up as well around 200 AD. 

So that one can see that just as Jesus said "It is finished" in John 19:30, meaning that with his salifific death the law-code was no longer necessary. Similarly, with Joseph Smith's death you see grounds for a similar interpretation: wherein, as D&C 135 makes clear, Joseph Smith was a shadow and type of a Christ: as we saw above he is described as a lamb and slaughtered and is innocent blood, just like Jesus. So that just as Jesus said it is finished, one could interpret Joseph's martyrdom as it is done when it came to a Moses-like spokesman producing new scripture and gathering the Mormon Ephraimites. For by 1900, the Mormons had gathered enough people to form a tribe through the sacrifice of polygamy which selected for Anglo-Nordic genes to grow a quasi-ethnic Peoplehood composed of mostly Anglo-American Ephraimites in the 1800s. Thus, one could say it is finished in that the work of the Prophet and Seer was complete upon his death, as Joseph Smith as an Anglo-Saxon filtered an Anglo-Americanized Word (Scriptures) that cannot be slain but lives on through the Book of Mormon, D&C, Book of Abraham and JST.

With the Prophet and Seer killed and his blood sealed, all of a sudden there was an almost absolute loss of divine revelation and seership. Odd isn't it? Even though the seer stone and Oliver's rod remained in possession of LDS Leaders (the revealtory inflow seized and the heavens closed almost completely). No one revealed new scripture (except for again a few rare exceptions). 

Joseph had allegedly healed people with a red handkerchief like the Apostle Paul did but today LDS members generally don't believe in such things. The Mormons under Smith's Mosaic guidance were a close-knit people gathering to specific locations, but after Smith's death the gathering was denied and reinterpreted and Mormons were scattered. The law of consecration was attempted under Joseph's leadership, but after his death this ideal was abandoned. Plural Marriage was a new and everlasting covenant, but after Joseph died by the 1900s, Mormons who practiced polygamy began to be excommunicated and even jailed under the approval and leadership of LDS President at the time, Heber J. Grant. 

This to me points is evidence of my Full Circle Theory, as the same pattern of Jesus through Paul and the Gospels revealing scripture and then upon their deaths, the heavens close for the most part; so too, upon Joseph Smith sealing his blood after bringing "forth the Book of Mormon, ... [and] the revelations...which compose this book of Doctrine and Covenants," that prophetic and revelatory role seized. Mormon leaders today function more as business suited administrators than seers composing new scripture or prophesying as Joseph did.

 What this means to me is that Mormonism has repeated the cycle of the history of the Bible and Christiandom as a type and shadow of it. For example, just as Abraham practiced polygamy to seed the tribes of Israel, the dispensation of Abraham or polygamy (as mentioned in D&C 110: 11-12) has ended (as of about 1900), and with it the need for Mosaic leaders gathering a people. For the Mormon people had gathered and the seed of male polygamists had produced a Peoplehood by 1900.

 Joseph's role as a new Moses and seer was to reveal new scripture and gather Zion as an Ephraimite People from the north in the 1800s. Joseph was successful in doing that. His role as temple high priest, orchestrating polygamist temple sealings, was also finished when the last LDS Leader to function as a temple high priest (orchestring polygamist sealings on the altar in Mormon temples) ended that practice, and polygamy became instead an excommunicatable act. This was a full circle restitution of how both Judaism and Christianity had once honored righteous polygamists but then began demanding strict monogamy. And then Judaism evolved into the sect of Christianity and every Christian being their own priest and prophet as guided by the Pneuma. So, likewise, in Mormonism we are now in the dispensation of every Mormon becoming a prophet individually and learning to guide themselves by the dictates of the own conscience: as we read in Numbers 11:29 how Moses wishes that all the LORD's people were prophets and that the LORD would put His Spirit (Pneuma) on them.

 Joseph Smith was the model of this wish of Moses, writ large, and now every Anglo-American of the seed of Ephraim whose Pioneer Mormon ancestors recieved patriarchal blessings from Joseph Smith's father and practiced polygamy (like mine did) in order to produce a quasi-ethnic tribe, are now in my view released from the LDS Church's "laws and ordinances" (and policies and Church Handbooks of Instruction) which were in effect up until Joseph Smith sealed his blood and the people had gathered to raise up seed by 1900, when it was then finished as then leaders like Heber J. Grant denied the revelations like D&C 132 and John Taylor's 1886 revelation and rejected other original doctrines and revelations; and thus at that point all Mormons were entitled to become prophets for themselves as Moses wished. 

So if we follow my Full Circle Theory, Joseph Smith dying for claiming Kingship and seeking to birth the Tribe of Ephraim through polygamy -- and thus forming an Israelite tribe in the 1800s -- explains why the D&C 135 above says he "has done more, save Jesus only, for the salvation of men in this world ..." For just as Paul saved Gentile's by grafting them into Israel, Joseph and his father saved Anglo-Saxons by declaring them Ephraimites fron the north in patriarchal blessings, and just as Paul liberated Gentiles from the curse of Adam, Sin, and the Laws and Ordinances of 1st Century Judaism, this was a type and shadow of Joseph liberating Anglo-Saxons from the false doctrine that Adam sinned and they are to be punished for Adam's transgression (which Joseph Smith rejected). For, as Ephraimites, Joseph Smith explained that Anglo-Saxons are not saved by having their genes purged out and replaced with Semitic genes, for Joseph saved them from the need for that process by revealing patriarchal blessings where many or most Anglo-Saxons were told they are the "pure blood of Ephraim" and thus already Israelites.  For more details see my post here. 

Since the whole point of the Apostle Paul's salvation system was the rescuing of Gentiles from being outside Israel (outside God's covenant relationship with Israel) by grafting them into Israel, by Joseph Smith declaring Anglo-Saxons in America as already Israelites, he had equally "saved them" so to speak from the need of having a Jewish Messiah's seed enter them to purge out their old Gentile genes, for they were already told through the teachings of LDS Apostles and Prophets in the 1800s: that they were either literal children of Jesus' descendants (for Jesus was married and had children) and/or they were told they are already Israelites as Ephraimites in their patriarchical blessings.

So just as Jesus says "salvation is of the Jews" in John 4:22 -- which indicates that the Messiah, through whom salvation comes, is of Jewish descent, confirming that the Jewish people are central to God's redemptive plan and entrusted with divine covenants -- so too, in the last dispensation, "Joseph Smith, the Prophet and Seer of the Lord, has done more, save Jesus only, for the salvation of men in this world ... [which] cost the best blood of the nineteenth century to bring ... the salvation of a ruined world; ... [Joseph Smith] died for glory; ... [as his name now goes] down to posterity as gems for the sanctified" (D&C 135:3, 6), for his sealed blood sactifies Mormons as his famed name lives on in his Anglo-Ephraimite Scriptures, and Joseph's had "saved" (verse 3) Anglo-Saxon Mormons from the abomination of Creedal-Christianity, by presenting for example instead of a bodyless god (in the Creeds), Joseph's Word(s) proclaimed a bodily / fleshly God the Father (even depicting him with an erect phallus), who sexually procreates and even impregnated Mary, and Jesus himself had sex with his wife or wives and had children (whose offspring are among the Mormons as the chosen seed). 

Moving full circle, just as Paul as an apostle to the Gentiles was seeking to save them by gathering them into Israel as adopted Sons, grafted in with their genes replaced, Joseph Smith was a prophet to the Anglo-Saxons and Scandinavians and was seeking to "save" them by gathering them as one of the Lost Tribes of Israel from the north as pure blooded Ephraimites. From this perspective, Joseph Smith has done more save Jesus only by declaring Anglo-Saxons as righteous by lineage as the chosen seed and not an inferior second class citizen in Israel. Smith delivered this message and died a martyr, sealing his blood and his word/scriptures for Anglo-Ephraimites. 

In my Full Circle Theory, just as Jesus taught a way to be spiritual and an ethical life without the need of the temple system of sacrificed animals or strict Torah-observance -- in preparation for the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 AD --  and as Jesus tells the Samaritan woman that a time will come when you will not worship God only in a specific location in a particular Temple because the Pneuma of God is actually everywhere like the wind; all these events are types and shadows of the restored gospel, and how Joseph came to deliver Anglo-Americans through gathering them as Ephraimites, attempting the Law of Consecration, and growing through Polygamy, etc.; and then Joseph Smith dies and his scriptures are sealed by his blood, in preparation for the eventual end of the Mormon priesthood when the temple high priest approving polygamist sealings on the altar, ended the eternal law of polygamy and thus forfeited the right to the priesthood and the need for Mormon temple altars (which were originally designed for polygamist sealings), that had been instituted in the dispensation of the gospel of Abraham in order to raise up seed, and so now that dispensation was finished by about 1900.

Just as Jesus had told the woman about the omnipresent Pneuma in preparation for the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD, so Israelites could learn how to be spiritual without a temple, similarly we see a type and shadow of this with Apostles Parley and Orson Pratt describing the Pneuma as omnipresent spirit-matter as the Great God (grounding all the Gods) that empowers each individual with divine knowledge and intelligence as if to prepare them for the end of Mormon temple altar sealings and thus end of the Abrahamic priesthood. This spiritual material field of energy, also described in Lectures on Faith 2 and 5 (which was the origional LDS Doctrine), can be thought of as expanding beyond the priesthood and temple walls to illuminate and unite all Mormons in all Mormon sects and demnomations as one Peoplehood: with the freedom to choose their own way to be Mormon based on the dictates of their own conscience.

Why I Choose Independent-Mormonism as a Spiritual Path

 

Here is my current view on Mormonism, as of the year 2026. I think it's unwise and self-hating almost to take advice for how to live life from a bunch of middle easterners in the first century who thought the world was ending in their lifetime and who had no concept of modern American democracy. Why would anyone read a holy book not produced by their own ethnicity or countrymen and written closer to the century in which we live by instead choosing a holy book written in the 1st century  in a foreign part of the world by a different ethnicity by those who are not a member of their country? It seems kind of odd to take advice and directions from another ethnicity with a 1st century mindset, speaking a different language in another part of the world, who's political ideology contains ideas antithetical to American democracy. This is what Creedal-Christianity is telling me to do, reject my own ancestral religion of Mormonism which was produced on the American continent during the time of American democracy, and instead embrace a Pauline worldview that is often antithetical to the American Dream. 

In my view, Creedal-Christianity makes no sense. Especially when you realize that Paul's spiritual mysticism is based on his concept of imitating a suffering Messiah so that the more you suffer as a slave and express the virtues of a slave being weak and subservient and docile, the closer you are to this Jewish messiah. As Paul says it in Galatians 2:20 (Expanded Bible):

I was put to death on the cross [have been crucified] with Christ, and I do not live anymore—it is Christ who lives in me. I still live in my body [flesh], but I live by faith in [or because of the faithfulness of] the Son of God ...

In other words, to take Paul seriously and imitate him as he says to do in the New Testament, would mean copying his behavior which would mean abandoning the American pursuit of happiness through life-lived-now, property, and freedom, and instead living a life as a potential martyr not seeking to live now, not acquiring property or marriage or freedom but ideally being celibate and thinking of yourself as a slave of Paul's messiah. To be truly Pauline is to live a life of servitude and slavishness and seeking suffering and eventually a martyr's death. I think this is obviously impractical and irrational and most modern Christians completely ignore most of what Paul actually says in the New Testament as they simply reinterpret everything to match their American lifestyles.

As a Nordic and Anglo-Saxon American I also find it odd that so many Americans would take the advice of someone who spoke a foreign language in a foreign culture and country, who lived 2,000 years ago. I can certainly strain out a gnat from the camel of Paul's teachings and find a lot of beneficial teachings but the overall message is completely antithetical to the American way of life. Blindly following his way and his mentality and lifestyle does not make any sense to me. I think someone like me can get the same kind of spirituality and mysticism from a fellow Northern European like Frederick Nietzsche, who wrote closer to the 21st century in an Indo-European language related to English; who wrote on the other side of Darwin and the industrial revolution, who has more useful things to say on how to live today as an American.

So why would I ever be a Protestant or a Catholic or even an Eastern Orthodox when those spiritual ideologies are still stuck in the 1st century with the ideal being docile and slavish preaching egalitarianism and not embracing American democracy and American exceptionalism; and has nothing positive to say about the reality of our competitive world of "dominance hierarchies" (as Jordan Peterson put it). Note that Jordan Peterson himself in his Bible Lecture series, begins by completely rejecting Christian Fundamentalism (i.e. biblical literalism). For Peterson does not take anything in the Bible literally, as he simply mines it for psychological archetypes and reinterprets things through a Jungian and Nietzcheanish lens.

 So if I were to be religious, or as they say "spiritual but not religious," holding to a religious or spiritual mental framework in seeing the world, why would I not go with my immediate ancestors chosen religion of Mormonism: when it was created by Anglo-Americans like me who were my own relatives, who canonized the US Declaration of Independence and Constitution as sacred writ? 

Note that when I speak of being "Mormon," I am talking only about being an Independent Mormon. Independent means you are not a paying member of the mainstream LDS Church headquartered in Salt Lake Utah, nor any other Mormon sect or denomination. The reason I choose not to belong to any denomination is because I don't like when religion becomes controlling. So an independent form of Mormonism, where you don't belong to any particular sect or denomination but practice a kind of non-denominational Mormonism to me is the best version of "Mormon spirituality" for the American like me; for you have the psychological benefits of believing a God is on your side, seeing the Universe as a friendly place (as Einstein framed it), but you are forming a spirituality through people who are your own ancestors as a kind of ethnic religion for Anglo-Saxons in the 1800s. For all of the leaders in Mormonism in the 1800s, when most of the Mormon scriptures were produced, were Anglo-Saxons living on the American continent; they were Anglo-Americans speaking the Norse-influenced English language and therefore they knew what it was like to be an American living on the American continent.  But when I pick up the Bible those are people in the Middle East who have no genetic or cultural or linguistic similarities to me, they live in a completely different culture and spoke a different language; with Paul himself unfortunately being mistaken about his Messiah is going to return to Earth at any minute and scoop up his celibate male-bride followers who have lowered themselves to acting as if they were slaves of their messiah husband as male-brides, who believed they became "spiritual Jews" by being seeded by Paul's Messiah supernaturally; so that they discarded their own cultures and genealogy by thinking of the memory of their great-grandfathers, whose image was projected onto their Norse gods, now seen as demons. So instead of maining the memory of their ancestors through their Norse gods, they became demons and avoid. Instead of retaining their ethnic European cultures, they rejected most of it as now "spiritual semites." They selected this foreign religion, this foreign deity from the Middle East; and so now they thought they should be slavish male slaves and male-brides to a male Messiah that's offering a psychology of weakness and slavishness (as Nietzsche rightly argued); with the end goal being your eventual suffering and death to discard your cursed and disgusting Anglo-Saxon body that was seen as contaminated by Sin that is now purchased as a slave and engaged to be married to a Jewish Messiah; and eventually the Earth will be conquered by a Jewish Messiah who will make every ethnicity (Norse, Anglo-Saxon and Japanese, etc.,) bow to this Jewish sovereign; so that there's no more American sovereignty or democracy. So I can't really take the New Testament seriously except as mythology and the only way to benefit from it psychologically is through a Jordan Peterson frame of mind; and the only way to integrate the Bible into my spiritual worldview that feels empowering and not disempowering and demoralizing, is to ignore what Paul says about being a slave and an supernaturally inseminated male-bride of a messiah; and instead reinterpret the Bible through Mormonism, because in Mormonism you have the insurrection of the texts as I argue here: wherein my own relatives as Anglo-Americans took over the biblical narratives and made my people, my ancestral lineage, the chosen seed and people of God; for in Mormon scripture the Father God is speaking to my people, Anglo-Americans and selecting my ancestors in the 1800s to be the chosen people of God with the power to rule and conquer over all the other nations. So again, unless I am a self-hating "white" person , despising my own ancestry, as a sad cuckolded type of person, why would I go with any other religion or spirituality than Independent Mormonism?

Exalted by Priesthood "Seed" (Insights from Max Mueller)

 

In my Full Circle Theory, Mormon Priesthood was a bloodline lineage and those of the "chosen seed" were to practice plural marriage in the 1800s as the dispensation of the gospel of polygamist Abraham in order to raise up seed, that is birth an Anglo-Saxon Nordic tribe of Ephraimites: who were to be in charge of leading the other Tribes of Israel with Joseph Smith as King of the House of Israel. 

The whole point of the higher priesthood in Mormonism, therefore was that the priesthood was the literal seed (sperm) of the male body (see Abraham 2:11); and so when D&C 132 calls for Anglo-Nordic Mormons in the 1800s to use their Anglo-Norse male seed to birth a Peoplehood, you have a restitution of, a reliving of, the biblical Abraham's seed birthing the tribes of Israel. Just as Abraham's seed grew into the Jewish People, Joseph Smith and his Anglo-Nordic People grew into the Mormon People. 

Those who, like me, descend from Anglo-Nordic Polygamist Pioneer ancestors are the "blood of Ephraim" (according to LDS Scripture) and we are thus within the covenant by birthright according to Mormon Scripture and Prophetic Teachings. So in my view, we are accepted by birthright and bloodline lineage, just as modern Jews are members of the Israelite covenant. Jews do not earn their covenant peoplehood status, but are members of the Jewish race by grace-gift, they are born into People of God. So too, as I see it, the Ephraimite Mormons are also of the covenant ethnos by birthright, they are this accepted by God through the grace-gift of lineage through the sacrifice of the Anglo-American Joseph Smith (whose sealed blood and words in Americanized LDS Scripture offers a form of salvation per D&C 135). This is combined with all the Anglo-American Mormons as polygamist Ephraimites offering "sacrifices on the altar" in the form of being sealed to plural wives on temple altars in the temple in the 1800s. These sacrifices or offerings birthed a Mormon Peoplehood (just as Abraham's polygamy seeded Israel) as the new "chosen seed." Gentiles (Goyim) are not the chosen seed but they are "saved" through the seed of the Israelite Jesus whose DNA transforms the Goyim into "spiritual Israelites"; but birthright Ephraimite Mormons are already Israelites by bloodline. Thus, as Joseph Smith explained, those of Ephraim don't need their blood purged out by Jesus' DNA like a pure Gentile (Goyim) does. Just as Israel stopped practicing polygamy at one point, so too the ending of polygamy and the gathering of the Ephraimites from the north by most Mormon sects by the year 1900, released Ephraimites like me from the "laws and ordinances" of any Mormon sect or denomination. For the need for the "temple high priest" and that priesthood had ended by 1900, as the priesthood of the body (the seeds) were no longer growing lives through polygamy (see Abraham 2: 11; D&C 132), and therefore, Mormon temples with sacrificial altars (which were designed to seal polygamists for eternity under a ruling temple high priest) became unnessary: as there was no longer a temple high priest approving of polygamist sealings any longer. So just as Jesus's human sacrifice ended the need for any more anmial sacrifices in the Jerusalem Temple (which temple was destroyed by Titus as God's doing), so too the end of polygamist sacrifices had completed the sealed blood of Joseph Smith whose LDS Scriptures were the new Word of God which spoke of the birthing of a New Ephraimite Peoplehood on American soil. 

The priesthood is inherited by birthright bloodline and thus it is not something you earn or get from any Mormon authority in any Morrmon sect or LDS institution. As Max Mueller explains  in his book Race and the Making of the Mormon People at Location 2423 - 2551 of the ebook (emphasis added):

The Patriarch and the Priesthood

The ritualized naming of patrilineage defined the hierarchal order in the restored church. And patrilineage defined the priesthood. In 1835, Joseph Smith Sr. began performing patriarchal blessings for Latter-day Saints outside his immediate family. That same year, Joseph Smith Jr. revealed that “the order of [the restored] priesthood was . . . handed down from father to son, and rightly belongs to the literal descendants of the chosen seed.” The prophet specified that this priesthood order was established at the beginning of human history with Adam. Adam passed the priesthood to Seth, his firstborn. Adam also ordained his great-grandson Methuselah. And “under [his] hand,” Methuselah ordained his grandson Noah. [See D&C 107: 40-52]

… Though it was an essential building block of the Mormon hierarchy, the priesthood was more than an administrative office. It was also the organizing principle of the Mormons’ reimagined conception of Israel’s covenantal family, an ancient family restored in this lifetime and bound together for the eternal life to come.[93] As early as September 1832, Smith first revealed that, through their ordination, priesthood holders of the latter-day Church of Christ became “sons of Moses and of Aaron and the seed of Abraham.”[94] For the first five years of the church’s history, because most Saints were believed to be Gentiles by birth, such patrilineal bond between latter-day priesthood holders’ and their Israelite forefathers was believed to be the fruit of spiritual adoption into the restored covenant. But in April 1835, when Joseph Smith expanded the hierarchical organization that he established in 1831, the distance between patrilineage and priesthood collapsed. To be sure, the laying on of hands of one Melchizedek priesthood holder conferred the same priesthood to another worthy (male) Saint, whatever the lineage. Yet the Saint who was “a litteral [sic] descendant of Aaron”—Moses’s brother and the first high priest of the Israelites—had the “legal right” to the priesthood.[95] And through their patriarchal blessings more and more Saints who had believed themselves to be Gentiles discovered that they were birthright heirs to the Israelite covenant.

As such, the priesthood increasingly became a family business. It was passed down from ancient Israelite fathers to latter-day Mormon sons. At the same time that Joseph Smith Jr. was articulating the import of Israelite patrilineage for the priesthood within the church-wide hierarchy, his father’s patriarchal blessings revealed how individual Latter-day Saints’ genealogies related to their priesthood authority. For example, on April 30, 1835, Joseph Smith Sr. declared that Jonathan H. Hale, a future bishop of Nauvoo, was already “of the blood of Israel” and thus already had “the power of the Melchizedek Priesthood.” Likewise, because Wilford Woodruff was a descendent of Joseph and “of the blood of Ephraim,” the patriarch declared that Woodruff’s “great blessings” included the “power and authority of the Melchisedeck priesthood.” These inherited authorities would extend into future generations. “Thy sons shall receive the priesthood,” the patriarch told Woodruff.[96] Such blessings reveal that the early Saints understood that rights to the priesthood were a result of birth and not simply a condition of belief.

… [the now canonized Book of Abraham, as a] new translation reinforced Smith’s belief that a Saint’s priesthood authority was inherited from his ancient forefathers.[97] … Like the Book of Mormon and the book of Moses, the book of Abraham expands on familiar biblical themes. In Joseph Smith’s translation, Abraham is more than the father of many nations. He is also the first patriarch to articulate the origins of the patrilineal priesthood. Abraham explains that the priesthood “was conferred upon me from the fathers; it came down from the beginning of time . . . [from] the first man who is Adam, our first father.” …

 

God explained to Abraham that his own “seed” was synonymous with the priesthood. “In thy seed (that is, thy priesthood) for I give unto thee a promise that this right [of the priesthood] shall continue in thee, and in thy seed after thee (that is to say, the literal seed, or the seed of the body) [Abraham 2:11]" Yet the book of Abraham also presents the potential for an ever-expanding priesthood. The Lord promises to make of Abraham “a great nation,” a nation that would not only include his own descendants. His progeny “shall bear this ministry and Priesthood unto all nations . . . for as many as receive this Gospel shall be called after thy name, and shall be accounted thy seed.” ... 

The book of Abraham thus presents the priesthood as both particular and potentially universal. The priesthood is an inherited authority. But it is also an authority that is intended to be shared: to restore, through the act of adoption—ritualized first in the patriarchal blessing and later in the temple—the less favored biblical lineages into the heavenly father’s good graces. …

… From Gentile to Israelite 

It is important not to overstate how quickly the Latter-day Saints’ covenantal contract contracted from its universal beginnings. What would become in the Utah period a peculiar, even an ethnic Mormon identity, remained in the 1830s and early 1840s largely inchoate. As Jan Shipps has argued, in the first decades of Mormon history, the formula for “making Saints” appeared to differ little from the process of “making converts to Protestant churches.” Acceptance of the Mormon gospel, obedience to Joseph Smith’s revelations, acceptance of the authority of the priesthood, and baptism into the Church of Christ were enough to make anybody a Mormon. Yet unlike members of many other evangelical traditions, Mormons began to understand conversion into their church as the result of heretofore undiscovered descent from biblical patriarchs. Save for the few Gentiles whose conversions made them into “new creations”—even with new blood of Abraham coursing through their veins—the Holy Spirit did not have to “renovate” many converts’ whole beings, as Charles Grandison Finney might have said about evangelical rebirth and sanctification.[107]

Conversion [to Mormonism in the 1800s] was not the cause of new life. Instead it was the effect of descent from ancient biblical forefathers.[108] The missionaries in America and in the British Isles found receptive audiences because these converts had an inborn yearning to hear and accept Mormonism. As much as their minds and hearts, the Mormons began to believe that these converts’ blood was predisposed to the message of the gospel. Likewise, other Gentiles seemed to prove their true Gentile ontology by their indifference or antagonism to Mormonism. Writing in his journal in June 1840, Wilford Woodruff made the distinction between unbelieving Gentiles and Saints unequivocal. At that time, Woodruff witnessed increased levels of “Gentile” persecution in England and heard troubling reports from the United States. In the two previous years, anti-Mormon Missourians attacked a Mormon settlement at Haun’s Mill, in Caldwell County, killing eighteen. The Saints’ were finally expelled from Missouri. And Joseph Smith and other leading Mormons had been imprisoned in the Liberty, Missouri, jail for five months. In response, Woodruff wrote that “England & America” would not be “excepted” in the final judgment before Christ’s return. Instead these nations “are ownly fuel for the fire & tinder for the Breath of the Almighty.” The Mormons’ Gentile persecutors had “trodden” down the two branches of Israel, “Judah & Ephraim.” But, Woodruff warned, Israel “will rise again & fulfill the word of God on thee!”[109] For Woodruff, a “Gentile” shows his true colors in response to the gospel; a Gentile rejects it, an Israelite embraces it.

In June 1840, as Heber C. Kimball described the nature of the British converts in Preston, “the Saints, in general, as they have been baptized into one body are partakers of the same spirit, whether they be Jew or Gentile, bond or free.”[110] And yet, despite Kimball’s paraphrase here of Paul’s universalistic message to the Galatians (and its echoes of Nephi’s description of the universal covenant open to “black and white, bond and free”), lineage and its corollary, race, mattered when it came to the creation of the restored house of Israel. And lineage and its corollary, race, would matter even more in the coming years and decades. 

British and, later, Scandinavian converts...from supposed Gentile nations were easily renamed the seed of Abraham.[111] And their new, or rediscovered, names allowed these (male) converts to be appointed to the priesthood. …

Today there are hundreds of Mormon sects and denominations claiming to be the true successors of Joseph Smith's prophetic ministry and scripture-making people forming theology. Yet not one of them has sufficiently proven any actual sheership in the form of translating new scripture, nor have they sufficiently proven any prophetic abilities to prophesy, etc. This to me is evidence that the higher priesthood and Temple rituals are finished, meaning they have served their purpose in forming the Mormon People themselves: who are part of the Covenant of Israel and thus all the restoration branches are the same tribe of Ephraim through birthright bloodline; regardless of their differing ecclesiastical systems and differing laws and ordinances and policies and manuals of instructions. That is all man-made invention at this point in my opinion. What is verifiable is their bloodline,  their Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian bloodlines which were selected for by Mormon polygamists as the first Mormons in the 1800s. 

The principles of Mormonism are sealed in LDS Scriptures already, and so ongoing claims to prophetic leadership and following man-made guidelines is no longer necessary, especially given the fact there is no longer a temple high priest in control of who can and cannot practice plural marriage, because most Mormon sects have abandoned plural marriage ever since about 1900. Therefore, while I support any Mormon who chooses to be part of a Mormon sect or denomination and chooses to be told what to do by their ecclestiastical leaders, I find no reason to do this, neither scripturally nor geneologically. My own "Independent Mormonism" is grounded more in the underlying Norse-like psychological energy of the teachings and mighty lives of the original Mormon founders Joseph Smith, Brigham Young and John Taylor. 

I believe we are in the in the dispensation where the scriptures are sufficient to guide oneself, as Joseph Smith himself explained that we only seek guidance from above when we don't have sufficient guidance already in the Mormon Scriptures already published. So for me as a descendent of Pioneer Anglo-Nordic Mormon polygamists, I am of the birthright bloodline and don't need to be told what to do by any particular Mormon sect. So I embrace all Mormon sects and denominations equally as my blood kin as a quasi-ethnic tribe and peoplehood, regardless of differences in Creed or Sectarian Church Manuals; as we all share one common cause of maintaining the principles and values of our Mormon forefathers and rejecting Creedal-Christianity and growing as a healthy thriving kinship Peoplehood. 

Introduction

 

This site is meant to work together with my Google site on Full Circle Theory & Independent Mormonism. For my longer essays and articles see that site. These will be shorter blog posts on the topic of being an Independent Mormon. 

As an introduction, I will address the criticism I've seen online that to be an "Independent Mormon" and not believe in a priesthood hierarchy or being a saint is an oxymoron. This is what I see people say online. Yet for me I have come to view Mormonism as more than a mere belief system and more of a quasi-ethnicity. The best way to explain how I see there being an end to the need for the priesthood and that being consistent with being an Independent Mormon, is to turn to the Bible itself: wherein one sees that the priesthood was originally designed for a select number of Israelite men which was based in ethnicity as a certain lineage had the role of practicing ritualistic Temple sacrifices; based on the idea of God choosing to birth an ethnic people (the Israelites as a tribe). Based on my Full Circle Theory, I see Mormonism as a typological reliving of the Old and New Testament, as a type and shadow of the past restored full circle. So this Hebrew Bible trajectory of a priesthood class offering sacrifices then leading to the end of priesthood hierarchy in the New Testament (according to Protestantism) is in my view replayed in Mormonism.  

In the original Mormon Temples in the 1800s, it was believed that through the metaphorical "sacrifice" of plural marriages on the temple altar, that Anglo-American Ephraimites were birthing and expanded the "chosen people." 

Because the Nordic and Anglo-Saxon Ephraimites (a mixed ethnos), as the first Mormons in the 1800s, had accomplished the growth of the tribe of Ephraim through the "sacrifice" of polygamy, in my view the purpose of polygamy had been fulfilled by about 1900. Therefore, just as most New Testament believing Christians believe that Christ became the last high priest, removing the necessity for temple priests during the Old Testament days; so too, my Independent Mormon point of view is that today Mormon Temples no longer practice the "sacrifice" of plural marriages and therefore because there is no longer a temple high priest in the role of organizing plural marriage temple "sacrifices" (that is plural marriage sealings) as explained in D&C 132: this means to me that there was an end of the priesthood by about the year 1900. 

In my view, temple garments as well became obsolete as they were specifically designed in the beginning to maintain the secrecy of plural marriage. 

As I see it, the slow developing concept of the LDS high priesthood was clearly designed overtime for the organization and practice of plural marriage. This is why Book of Mormon Witness David Whitmer is on record saying there was no higher priesthood hierarchical structure in the beginning of the LDS Church. This is because Mormon Scripture is clear that when the priesthood was "restored" to it's more advanced hierarchy, it was based on "the dispensation of gospel of Abraham," (D&C 110:12), meaning the works of Abraham which works were plural marriage, has the birthing of a people through the seed of the body of male polygamists (see Abraham 2:11 and D&C 132). The whole point of the "higher priesthood" was to organize the ethnolinguistic tribe of Anglo-Americans in reproducing the Ephraimite tribe on the American continent through the selected genes of Anglo-Norse men practicing plural marriage: where the elect Ephraimite genes were selected for among the  noblest priesthood holders: who produced the highest number of children and established a new Anglo-American tribe as God's "chosen seed" (D&C 107:40) and His people (D&C 133:4) in the 1800s. 

The fact is that in the 1800s, Joseph Smith sent out a proclamation calling Mormon converts from mostly Britain and Scandinavia (Sweden, Denmark and Norway) to migrate to North America in Missouri. My great-grandfathers did just that and came to America to gather to Zion. Then they practiced polygamy it was their Nordic and British genes, their Viking lineage, that contributed to the making of the original core Mormon Peoplehood. 

On my Google Site I explain my core theory on being an Independent, i.e. a non-denominational Mormon, which is based in my full circle theory. In brief, this theory explains that basically Mormonism is a literal restitution of all things, that is a repeated cycle of typologies from the Bible and Christiandom itself. 

What I show in my other site is that everything we see in the Bible and in the development and growth of Christianity has co-occurred in Mormonism. Just as there was a Moses that set the Jewish people free, Joseph Smith acted as a new Moses who set Anglo-Saxon Mormons free from Augustinian indoctrination in the 1800s. Just as Christianity went from an early stage, a more non-denominational stage and phase, to developing into the post-Constantine Catholic Church; and then it became corrupted requiring a Reformation and the end of priests for instead "the priesthood of all believers," i.e. independent Christian believers (Protestants). So too, I think the same thing is repeating itself within Mormonism: with the top LDS leadership corruptions taking place in all the Mormon denominations, for example as we saw with Warren Jeffs, etc., to give just one example. Thus, the need for more Independent Mormons to counteract institutional power and corruption in the various Mormon denominations and sects. 

So that if one believes in a "Higher Power" or divine Source, and one can see the same patterns recycling themselves, then one can reasonably theorize, as I have done, that Mormonism is repeating the same cycle as what occurred in Christiandom. So that just as the Bible moves from Moses and a priest class to a "priesthood of all believers" under Paul, and then evolves into Catholic Priests and then the end of Priests and a Priesthood with the Protestant Reformation, I see the same pattern in the Mormon restitution of all things: so that we see a growing increase of Mormons moving away from a priesthood hierarchy and a kind of reformation taking place in various Mormon groups (just one example of this is the Remnant Fellowship groups). 

Mormonism is basically repeating the same cycle as Christendom, as it began with a more "Protestant style" of worship in the early 1830s, with more miracle healings attempted to be demonstrated and even "speaking in tongues" (glossolalia) like the Pentecostals; and then by 1835 it was developing into a more hierarchical priesthood like the Catholics; and by the 1840s Mormonism had moved from a mere Protestant type sect (during the early 1830s) to a quasi-ethnic Peoplehood. Then by 1844, Joseph Smith began stepping down from his role as Prophet-Priest and turning over much of that role to his brother Hyram as he was going to focus on being basically a secular King defending American democracy. When Joseph Smith was assassinated there was a "succession crisis" and even today honest historians will admit that there was no clear and obvious successor. I personally see this as a sign that the Mormon Movement was not intended to continue past Brigham Young and John Taylor as an organization always led by one single Church President/Prophet; and was meant to eventually splinter into a Protestant- like Reformation just like in Christendom, due to the fallibility of human beings themselves and the corruption that often and inevitably to takes place among those who are given too much power and control over people under them. In my opinion, the beginning of this "corruption" in the Utah-based LDS Church, occurred in the 1900s, when to give just one example, even though D&C 89 clearly says it's not a commandment nor a constraint on members, Utah Church Leaders sought to totally control the behavior of their members by doing the exact opposite of what the scripture verse actually says by making it a commandment and a constraint on the membership. More examples can be given. 

I see in Mormonism the same developments one sees in Christianity, the same patterns re-occurring, as if given our human nature it's almost inevitable. So that in my full circle theory, one has justification for seeing the end of the priesthood and the end of a need for temple priests overseeing plural marriages by about 1900. Especially after the ending of polygamy in most LDS sects after about 1905. For when one understands that plural marriages were literally performed on a temple altar with a temple priest offering that plural sealing as an act of symbolic sacrifice (as D&C 132 explains), then to me it logically follows that no more plural marriages after 1905, means no need for temple priests or a priesthood; for the priesthood during the dispensation of the Gospel of Abraham was clearly, in my view, originally interlinked to the new and everlasting covenant of plural marriage sealings. So that the priesthood hierarchy governing plural marriage sealings, as the means to the ends of selecting for "pure blooded Ephraimites" from the north and the making of a Mormon Peoplehood in the 1800s was accomplished by about 1900; so that with that people-making goal accomplished by 1900 (a tight nit ethnolinguistic Mormon Peoplehood formed), then at that point polygamy became obsolete and no longer needed as a practice. For it had accomplished its usefulness which was the means of the formation of a largely Nordic Anglo-Saxon Mormon population. 

So that with most of the LDS sects and denominations today rejecting the original doctrines of there being "pure blooded Ephraimites" (as the patriarchal blessings of my own relatives often exclaimed), and the abandonment of a literal gathering to Zion in Missouri; the rejection of the original communitarian ideal of the law of consecration (based on the vision of Moses 7:18); and the stoppage of plural marriage by 1905; by most Mormon sects. 

All these endings of scripturally mandated ideals and principles, in my view makes it so appeals to "priesthood authority" has also ended. Especially the obvious evidence that the tremendous outflow of revelations and new scripture productions through the Prophet, Seer and Revelator Joseph Smith, slowly trickled down to nothing after John Taylor and by now today has completely ended. A clear sign to me that the days of Prophets, Seers and Revelators has come to end, as another fulfillment of the cycle repeating. So that just as it the Bible says there is a time for everything under the Sun, I think it is the time of each individual to to search the scriptures  we have in our tradition and form own conclusions based on the dictates of own conscience.

I find the situation that we are in kind of like a Jewish person today considering the priesthood of a Levite in the days of the Bible no longer authoritative today and instead every Jew is equal in today's practice of Judaism. Similarly, I believe that all those who descend from the Mormon Pioneers are, according to Mormon tradition, quasi-ethnic Mormons; regardless of whether they hold the priesthood or not. 

This leaves room for the interpretation by Independent Mormons like myself, that we have entered the Phase of Independence just as occurred in Christiandom in the movement from Catholicism to Protestantism or from ancient Temple-sacrifice Judaism to modern Rabbinic Judaism. So just as the Protestant Reformation broke away from Catholic control, and Reform Judaism lessens the controlling aspects of Orthodox Judaism, we see various unorthodox Reform-like Mormon groups arising inside and outside Utah-based LDS Church. 

Note that this doesn't mean that if someone believes in the Supernatural that someone can't be healed by a priesthood blessing or that there can't be two Mormon movements or groups offering options to the Mormon, one that is more Catholic-like and one that is more Protestant-like. That is in fact what we see. For example, I served part of my LDS Mission in Independence Missouri and I ran into many Book of Mormon believers in Mormon sects that rejected the priesthood hierarchy of the Utah-based LDS Church; but they continued to identify as "Mormons" with very similar beliefs and ideas and traditions, but tended to function more like Protestants. It was definitely interesting to be an LDS missionary in the 1990s and sit down with someone in Missouri to read the Book of Mormon that they said they believed in while they are brewing coffee in the kitchen.

 I think this variety of Mormonisms and "ways to Mormon" is a good thing. It leaves room for each individual to choose which path works best for them or not at all, and for some like myself the independent path is a better path for growing toward my true authentic self without feeling heavily laden and bogged down with a yoke of man-made traditions that are constantly shifting like a house on sand. But I also know other Mormons in my life who benefit from the Utah-based LDS Church and its hierarchical priesthood structure. For those types I support them in choosing the more structured path. But either way, either the structured approach or the independent approach, both are ways of appreciating and respecting your Mormon Heritage.

From an independent perspective, even if one sees Joseph Smith as not supernaturally inspired at all, his vitality and accomplishments can still be appreciated from a Nietzschean perspective as an example of sheer Will to Power. From this perspective, Joseph Smith, while imperfect and fallible, can still act as a kind of example of man's potentiality and a his kingship vision can be reinterpreted from an independent perspective as no longer about being a Priest and instead being the "King of your Castle" so to speak, in your own way. 

I also see Mormonism as "mythologically" more in line with the Norse mythology of my Nordic ancestors, at least more so than with Protestantism. So to be an Independent Mormon allows me to interpret Mormonism more through a Norse theological lens and not be confined by only one of the various Mormon denominations and sects; most of which have chosen to abandon the original version of Mormonism that was in my view more Norse-adjacent in the 1800s, with for example an emphasis more in the beginning on  procreating Gods. For most Mormon denominations today have all wanted to instead align more with mainstream Catholic and Protestant dogma. As an Independent Mormon, I don't have to agree with that more Augustinian way of being Mormon. Yet I can simultaneously respect and honor every other LDS sect and their desire to do  what they want to do,  and so if they want to appear and act more like a Protestant or mainstream "Christian Church," if that works for them I fully support them. Because as I see it, either way my Mormon Pioneer ancestors are being validated and commemorated as the Mormon Scriptures themselves contains the names and life stories of my own Anglo-Norse ancestors; so that for me at least for me, Mormonism is kind of like an indigenous ethnic religion, similar to Shintoism in Japan or Confucianism in China.

In my view, as an Independent Mormon, my  identity as a "Mormon" has more to do with my ethnolinguistic Anglo-American Pioneer heritage than what I believe or don't believe. I can not stop being "Mormon" anymore than someone of Jewish ethnicity can stop being Jewish even if they become a secular atheist or agnostic. In other  words, I'm a DNA Mormon. Just as there are many ways of being Jewish, from Orthodox Judaism to Reform Judaism, etc., I don't see Mormonism as one thing either; and whether one is more of an "Orthodox" type of Mormon or "Reform" type of Mormon, you are a Mormon in my eyes. 

I also sometimes describe my way of being Mormon as living on the periphery, meaning my way of being Mormon is sometimes attending Mormon social activities on the periphery: going to the cultural hall for activities, maybe the occasional Sunday visit in chapel, but never going in for Bishop's interviews and entering the institutional system of control.