Many groups are accused of being enemies of the church rather than compatible or allies. The list changes (at one time Republicans led the enemies list). If you belong to a group that you believe is wrongly on the list, here is a place to speak out.
Tell us your group.
Tell us how being in it has increased your testimony of the restoration, Joseph Smith and Brigham Young.
Tell us how being a member has increased your kindness and charity. How you now have more patience with other members when they are wrong or disagree with you.
Tell us how being in the group has motivated you as a member missionary and helped you in sharing the gospel.
Share your testimony of how your group is an ally and not an enemy.
Wheat & Tares 
So I started to write, but then when I looked at the questions, they feel so antagonistic to me right now. I feel like Ordain Women has answered these questions so many times and our website is full of explanations and testimonies. I don’t have the emotional energy to submit my experiences and my testimony to more scrutiny. I am an ally to the church. I have a testimony of Jesus Christ and the restoration. I feel that my life and my words speak to that.
I love the Woody Allen quote. Someone on a BCC thread today made the remark that there are two types of Mormons: those who don’t want to be hated by ex-Mormons, and those who do. That seemed a pretty astute observation.
I’ll add to it that any associations with groups that advocate for equality should be perfectly compatible with a testimony of Jesus (given that God is no respecter of persons) except to those who enjoy the status quo and don’t like it when people are called out for their bad behavior.
I’ll modify that BCC commenter’s thought to say that I sometimes think there are two types of Mormons: those who don’t give a tinker’s curse what non-Mormons think of us and those who want to welcome all. But there’s another contingency: those who care all too much what evangelicals think of us and those who think we are courting the wrong non-Mormons.
Did not mean to make any group tired. Just wanted to provide an open and friendly forum.
I don’t think I belong to a specific “group” that is sometimes seen as an “enemy of the Church,” unless it’s the subset I sometimes think of as “Mormon Realists.” (Parenthetically, Kristine A wondered the other day why she tends to think of W&T as her LDS blog home; for me, it’s because this group seems to have the highest percentage of “Mormon Realists.” At least currently.)
My testimony of the Restoration and its architects is paradoxically enhanced by knowing that Joseph, Brigham, and others were imperfect human beings who sometimes made grotesque mistakes. My personal jury is still out on which of their doings which I dislike are grotesque mistakes in the eyes of God, since I’m an imperfect judge (who also makes grotesque mistakes).
I do actually have more patience with others, especially as I have come to understand that learning the actual history of the Church, in its context, is a fairly rare undertaking compared with learning the Correlated History of the Church™. That means that I no longer take it personally when I make an offhand remark about seer stones or Masonic ritual and someone has a hissy in GD.
I feel that this helps me as a missionary, because I no longer either feel as if I have to apologize for Mormon dingbattiness; nor am I caught with my pants down when my interlocutor comes up with something that I should have, but didn’t, know. I can just be real about what the Church does for me and my family, how I feel about it, and why I stick around despite its imperfections.
Why am I an ally of the Church? “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” I could come up with a list of scriptures as long as your arm that speak of the value of truth and knowledge, and nary a one that says that God’s people should be treated like mushrooms. I am an ally because people who don’t get inoculated tend to get sick, and because we no longer have herd immunity in the Internet age.
I also completely understand folks like Nancy, who are probably not only tired of feeling as if they have to justify themselves, but also justifiably reluctant to do so, especially in light of recent huge losses in the Local Leader Casino roulette game.
“It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.” Voltaire
I once belonged to the School of Metaphysics, which was sort of an all around Eastern wisdom group focusing on dream interpretation, meditation, reincarnated past-life revelation, and all sorts of other great stuff. I can’t say that that specific school had such a profound effect on me, but it was part of a trend I took in my life towards looking for truth outside the church, which has had a profound effect on my life and understanding.
I think I can say it has increased my kindness, tolerance, patience, love, etc. But maybe not. Maybe not more than if I had stayed focused JUST on church like a lot of people I know. I feel like I have a rich spiritual and intellectual life. But is it richer than people who have the Proclamation on the Family hanging on their walls and stick to General Conference? I’m not sure. All I know is that I feel like I am on my own individual journey. The church is part of that journey, as was the School of Metaphysics. The universe outside the church is infinite, and the universe inside the church is also infinite.
It hasn’t increased my faith in this being “the only true church.” But it has increased my faith in the real spiritual experiences of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young.
Logging in from home.
I was actually thinking of how being a political moderate has made me a better person.
I find that it strengthens my appreciation for things Brigham Young said such as:
” “It floods my heart with sorrow to see so many Elders of Israel who wish everybody to come to their standard and be measured by their measure. Every man must be just so long, to fit their iron bedstead, or be cut off to the right length; if too short, he must be stretched, to fill the requirement.
If they see an erring brother or sister, whose course does not comport with their particular ideas of things, they conclude at once that he or she cannot be a Saint, and withdraw their fellowship, concluding that, if they are in the path of truth, others must have precisely their weight and dimensions.
Let us be patient with one another. I do not altogether look at things as you do. My judgment is not in all things like yours, nor yours like mine. When you judge a man or woman, judge the intentions of the heart. It is not by words, particularly, nor by actions, that men will be judged in the great day of the Lord; but, in connection with words and actions, the sentiments and intentions of the heart will be taken, and by these will men be judged.” ”
And Joseph Smith on supporting people in their own way, if they don’t agree with our way:
“”If I esteem mankind to be in error shall I bear them down? No. I will lift them up and in their own way, too, if I cannot persuade them my way is better.””
Being a moderate aids me in being more patient with people, appreciating the extremes as counterbalancing each other. It makes me a better member missionary as I feel more inclusive.
So, being a political moderate is not necessarily a failing that makes one unfit for membership in the Church or a depth of feeling.
Nate says in #6, But is it richer than people who have the Proclamation on the Family hanging on their walls and stick to General Conference? I’m not sure.
Yes. Yes, it is. However, they don’t know it. The poor “work’ouse” child in a Dickensian novel who receives an orange on her pillow on Christmas thinks herself rich; she has little with which to compare her poverty. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
I used to have a very strong testimony about almost everything related to the church. Then I went to work for the church, which rather unexpectedly decreased my testimony of the restoration, Joseph Smith, and Brigham Young. I know of a number of fellow church employees who’ve had the same experience. Based on the OP criteria, does that make the church its own enemy?
I’m not being snarky. This is a serious question. I sometimes think the church does as much damage itself to members’ testimonies as outside groups. But what can you do about that?
Re#9 The church is indeed it’s own enemy, isn’t that precisely the main point of the heterodox portion of the bloggernacle?
#9 – comes under the category of you don’t really want to see two things in their respective processes of fabrication: sausage and legislation.
Without specific anecdotes, hard to answer as to the goings-on in the Church Office Bldg. Interesting to note, however, what folks REALLY believe once money (e.g., their salaries) gets involved.
Knowing of mine own flaws, yet having a testimony, I don’t get too hung up over the misdeeds (alleged and proven) of Church leaders, both past and present. Just proves what the Lord can accomplish in spite of having to work with the “Hew-Mon” race, and mostly, thanks to patriarchy and the Priesthood as currently instituted, the male portion thereof.
That is an excellent question.