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In 1912, while giving a speech in Milwaukee, Theodore Roosevelt was shot in the chest. The bullet was slowed by Roosevelt’s steel eyeglass case and by a single-folded paper copy of his speech, such that Roosevelt’s injury was minor enough to allow him to deliver his scheduled speech in full, beginning with the lines, “Friends, I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible. I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot — but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose.” Roosevelt also implored the crowd not to lynch the would-be assassin, and instructed the police to take him into custody without incident. (Roosevelt would carry the bullet in his chest for the remainder of his life.) Trump’s fist-pumping was undeniably badass, but I think Teddy has him beat.
As for your general question, I’ve had a similar thought process about religious conversion. I’ve found the Latter-Day Saints faith particularly appealing, particularly given my strong family connection to the church. Like you, I have no illusions about the fundamental truth claims at the heart of the religion, and I find the Christian foundation of it just as uninspiring as I found it fifteen years ago. However, while I could never credibly promise orthodoxy, I think I could manage Mormon orthopraxy — a commitment to the behavioral constraints demanded by the religion. Quitting coffee would be a massive stumbling block, although as long as they’ve got some workaround allowing me to still consume a comparable amount of caffeine I could manage it. Most of the other commandments are ones I’m already more-or-less observing, whether voluntarily or otherwise.
They seem prepared to weather the pressures of wokeness better than nearly any other Christian (or Christian-adjacent) denomination, and are also far more deeply-rooted in American culture than Orthodoxy is.
Caffeinated soda and energy drink are, as far as I know, not against the official rules.
I mean, I would have to drink a lot of caffeinated soda to match my current caffeine intake from coffee, and I’d be ingesting all of the sugar and corn syrup alongside it. Energy drinks would be a bit better, although still significantly worse for me than black coffee, and with a bunch of additives that make me jittery. Doable, but suboptimal for sure.
Energy drinks often have far higher caffeine than all coffee barring like 44oz of strong drip.
Oh I’m well aware. I switched from energy drinks to coffee for health reasons.
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Not having any real knowledge of their positions or practices, I just did a search and got a few statements from them on the topic. Seems kinda vague. They don't seem to prohibit ye olde Trumpian diet coke. Frankly, they don't seem to prohibit just literally taking caffeine pills or putting caffeine anhydrous into any regular food/beverage. There are some typical warnings about caffeine addiction being bad (and it is, btw; from the sound of it, purely from a non-religious standpoint, you might want to consider changing your consumption to improve your material life), but it sure seems like one of those issues where if you're mostly quiet about it, they probably won't give you grief or even really tell you that it's going to wreck your spiritual soul or whatever.
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This is exactly what Mormons do.
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As far as I know, caffeinated soda is seen as a viable workaround. I don’t think there is any prohibition on pre-workout type supplements, so there are definite alternatives.
As far as weathering wokeness, I wouldn’t bet money on it for long. They seem to be slower to modernize than all but tradcath and separatist sects like the Amish and Haredim, but the Mormon church has liberalized substantially over the last 30 years. The Mormon fertility rate has dropped almost to the national median. Age at marriage is going up. BYU has LGBT clubs, although though the honor code forbids sex outside of marriage.
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