. . . and apparently it thinks I’m a “Perfect Mormon.”
The obedient Latter-day Saint.
Temple recommend in hand, you live the gospel every day. Like a city on a hill, you remember the slogan every member a missionary. You beat your peers in seminary scripture chase, and you look forward to (or fondly remember) your beautiful temple wedding.
The quiz purports to differentiate subtleties amongst members (or, in the alternative, those who are somehow connected enough to want to take the quiz in the first place), but it didn’t ask me about any deviations from “perfect” with regard to orthodoxy and/or the subtle things.
Hello, it asked about caffeine use but not tattoos and piercings? (And facial hair for men?)
It asked about music but not books/movies/TV/periodicals/Internet/video games?
It also didn’t ask about actual church attendance or if/when I bear my testimony during Fast & Testimony Meeting.
It asked for one’s voting record but not guiding philosophy? (Ever heard of holding your nose to vote? I’ve done that since 1992.) AND it put socialism in the same voting line as libertarian? Are you fucking kidding me???
Also, only 2 questions of a feminist bent and those answers weren’t satisfactory, either.
And there were three other questions that didn’t have suitable answers, so I was forced to err on the side of orthodoxy because the next alternative was more removed from my reality.
Yeah, nuance-picking-upping it was not.
And on a picture showing a bunch of, uh, “famous” Mormons, I identified four: Joseph Smith, Porter Rockwell (NATURALLY!!!), Ezra Taft Benson, and Ken Jennings. The rest were not important enough to remember. Neither was Ken Jennings. I suspect you have to be from Utah to know them by sight.
It also asked nothing about my willingness to proselytize on my own time, which the answer is: No. I put my time in for 9 years as a kid, so I’ve made my contribution. I don’t talk about the church here to entice you to righteousness nor to repel you from my evil. I talk about my reality, one of which includes the church, for which I have an inveterate affection. In case you didn’t notice. Also notice I don’t talk a lot about my personal spiritual beliefs because those are, um, well, private. More private than sex.
The poll is still in beta testing, though. I wish the architect had put in a space for comments because really the poll assumes too much. Maybe I’ll link him to this post and let him scream at me, er, open a dialogue.
Hat tip chanson for providing that Monday-morning chuckle.
If I didn’t know it before, I know it now:
I am a Non-Mormon.
1 Orthodoxy, -1 LDS knowledge, -10 Cultural homogeneity
I guess it’s official.
I have to say – in all seriousness – that, as a non-religious mother who homeschools her kids, I really resented the implication in the quiz that the only reason parents homeschool their kids is to shelter them from secular influences. I hear it all the time, and I’m getting pretty tired of it. I homeschool my kids because our local school system fucking sucks…period.
I know. A lot of hard-core objectivists homeschool their kids and they’re atheists, so… I don’t really know how that stigma’s going to go away.
Kinda like, uh, self-publishing, eh? 😉
Ha! Very apt comparison. 🙂
lol, the quiz definitely left a lot to be desired in terms of nuance.
It sounds like you would logically score highly on belief, but you’re a bit out of the mainstream in terms of practice. What category do you think it should have put you in? Jack Mormon? Surely not “liberal Mormon”… 😉
Well, I’m not an official (if there is such a thing) Jack Mormon ‘cuz I go and I don’t drink or smoke. I *ahem* waited until I got married.
Er…lessee…politically somewhere in outer darkness, I’m sure, sitting between Camille Paglia (on her right) and Ayn Rand (on her left) and greeting people with “Blessed be” and “Merry meet.”
::gallic shrug::
I think I’m going to have to wait for the Great Quiz in the Sky to find out.
Aw, that’s nice. Instead of labeling me a heathen, it calls me a “free spirit.” LOL I scored as high as 2% higher than my peers. To be fair, I don’t think I’d fare any better no matter what religion they were testing me for. . . (LOL–I’m waiting for the test that explains my uncontrollable urge to take stupid quizzes.)
I do agree the questions box you in too much. I also home-schooled for a while because FL schools bite the big weenie, and it always irked me that this seemed to automatically lump me in with fundamentalist weirdos.
I love taking quizzes like this. (Maybe it’s a personality flaw…maybe it’s a medical condition…I’m waiting for some pharmaceutical company to come out with a patch for it.)
“Blissfully non-Mormon,” it calls me. Although that doesn’t address the circumstance of my having been raised in the traditional Utah Mormon way, I guess it’s reasonably accurate.
I love the picture that came with the results page: one of those old Mormonad style posters (how many of you have ever seen those?) saying, “Church can be like a drug…a drug that makes you really bored and want to go home.” That about sums up religion for me. 🙂
But haggis, you are a free spirit!
Ing, blissfully non-Mormon? I beg to differ. You can leave the church, but you can’t leave it alone. 😉
See, that’s where the quiz got it wrong! 🙂 It’s funny how true the “you can leave it but you can’t leave it alone” thing really is. But I dunno… Maybe it should be “you can’t leave, but you can’t leave it *behind*.” Kind of like how people are always puzzled by the fact that I store lots of food, but I just don’t feel safe without that 3 month supply in the closet.