The Salvation Army vs. the lobby for gays and the sentiment for feckless cohabitation. Be the first to like. Like Unlike Read more »
LDS Newsroom
- Funeral Services for Frances J. Monson Announced May 20, 2013
- Frances J. Monson, Wife of President Thomas S. Monson, Passes Away May 17, 2013
- Elder Dallin H. Oaks Honored for Championing Religious Freedom May 16, 2013
- Mormonism in the News: Getting It Right| 15 May 2013 May 15, 2013
- Rendering of Meridian Idaho Mormon Temple Now Public May 15, 2013
- Mormons Around the World: Country Newsroom Websites |14 May 2013 May 14, 2013
- Mormon Delegation Encourages Religious Dialogue at International Conference May 14, 2013
- Church Donates More Than 1 Million Pounds of Food to Top Hunger-Relief Organization May 9, 2013
- Mormons Around the World: Country Newsroom Websites | May 9 May 9, 2013
- Mormonism in the News: Getting It Right | 8 May 2013 May 8, 2013
Blog Archives
The University of Chicago Prys into the Bedroom
The University of Chicago has conducted an extensive investigation into the sex lives of Chicagoans. This isn’t some Kinsleyesque voyeurism into the mechanical details, but an investigation of the social mechanics–who whom? in what kind of relationship? The fruits of the survey (served here with a little whipped polemic on top) include two items of particular interest: women have happier relationships when they know their men through church or extended family, and women have happier relationships if they marry young. Let’s not kid ourselves that we Saints have all our marriage customs right, but maybe we have them less... Read more »
Chesterton Quotes
Here’s something for y’all to gnaw on while I curse Movable Type for deleting my entry on Elder Oaks and the Second Coming. Stuart Buck’s running great excerpts from Chesterton essays. The original collection’s here. I printed it off and enjoyed it. Chesterton in a very Burkean moment. On parenting. On why religions have added their rules and mystifications to Christ’s simple doctrine of Love. On the special knowledge that doctors and scientists have of the existence of the soul. The best of the lot. Be the first to like. Like Unlike Read more »
Marrying and Giving in Marriage
In the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark. When I was young this struck me as incongruous. I thought marriage was a good thing, but these verses seemed to associate it with the unrighteousness of times when the wickedness of men had become great in the earth; and every man was lifted up in the imagination of the thoughts of his heart, being only evil continually. Why would marriage be a feature of fallen times? Why would people keep marrying... Read more »
And the dragon fought, and his angels
Rod Dreher’s tribute to the Chaplain Corp has got online. He praises them for two reasons: First, for providing troops the assurance that, come what may, God will be there with them; if they don’t come back alive, that the sacrifice will have been worth it; and that there’s something better waiting for them on the other side. Second, for helping soldiers coping with stress and loneliness stay morally straight. I am well aware of the need for this second. Theodore Dalrymple learned about the depravity of mankind from his work as a welfare and prison doctor, and from... Read more »
Good ol’ Gossip
We’ve already discussed good ol’ gossip’s tendency to keep up public standards (which warms my heart, to be sure, but apparently isn’t an argument to everyone’s taste). I’ve just discovered that gossip does some private good. She-who-shall-be-nameless just suggested to me that we dress our daughter in a little graduation gown and I carry her with me throughout the commencement ceremonies. This is horribly kitschy, but I’m horribly sentimental, so I was inclined to assent. Luckily gossip saved me. I sat through several BYU graduations and thus through a multitude of proud parent-graduates hauling their tikes through the graduation... Read more »
Mothers, heroism, and the divine house
Yesterday was Mother’s day and the lady’s birthday, so I took over all her job descriptions except milk-nurse. I got up early, cleaned and dressed the kids, cooked breakfast, washed up, went to church and back again, made a three-course meal, washed up again, polished the silver, vacuumed all the crumbs, washed up again, and wrote a poem to go with her birthday cameo. I’m not boasting, I’m exulting. I felt like a hero out on adventures, I felt charged up and fine-fettled, I enjoyed myself immensely. That got me thinking. The thing about adventures is they end. Afterwards... Read more »
A Plat for the City of Zion
Some works of art are created, and some grow organically from the works of many hands. (For application to LDS art, see here and here). Among these latter, Paul Johnson singles out the modern skyline. The skyscraper city is a creation, certainly, and most beautiful and most recognizable in its fantastic edge against the sky. Skylines have, by slow and unplanned accretions, become signatures. They have also become beautiful. Not only that, but skylines speak to the ethos of the capitalism that created them. Each skyscraper attempts to outdo the others and set itself apart. In so doing, the... Read more »
The Unchurch Militant
In politics, there’s something to be said for being known by the company you keep. Be the first to like. Like Unlike Read more »
With precious things build a House
Come ye, with all your gold, and your silver, and your precious stones, and with all your antiquities; and with all who have knowledge of antiquities, that will come, may come, and bring the box-tree, and the fir-tree, and the pine-tree, together with all the precious trees of the earth; And with iron, with copper, and with brass, and with zinc, and with all your precious things of the earth; and build a house . . . I’ve been thinking about the real place that art can have in Mormon life. Yesterday I talked about how Church art shows... Read more »
A Few Thoughts on LDS Art
A few thoughts on LDS art, in which a wide-thrown net is gradually drawn tighter: I’ve been reading through Paul Johnson’s new art history. He keeps theorizing to a minimum for a better focus on sculptors and sculpture, painters and painting, in short, on art, but he does allow himself a few necessary asides. One such aside is on the question that has launched a thousand books–why did Classical Greece and Renaissance Italy produce such a high flowering of art and culture? He points out that both Greece and Italy were city-state cultures, marked by trade, turbulent politics, and... Read more »
Missionary Work and the Fear of the Spirit
Aaron Brown has summed up my missionary experience: As missionaries, we realize that investigators are unlikely to receive spiritual confirmation of the truthfulness of the Church right after the elders sit down on the couch for the first time. Getting spiritual confirmation is a real chore for many, and often doesn’t come for a long time. Thus, we pitch certain “attractive” doctrines to our investigators, betting they’ll find one or more of them to their liking. Eternal families, Baptism for the Dead, you name it. And one of the best selling points for Mormonism, we believe (and I think... Read more »
Not by My Voice or the Voice of My Servants
I have the great good fortune of announcing Emma’s first words. For no particular reason I was tickling her and urging her to say “I prefer not to” like a little Bartleby, when the blessed event occurred, if ‘occurred’ is right word, since what actually happened is that Emma said nothing, which I took to be an affirmation of the opposite sentiment. “I prefer to” is quite the mouthful for our three-month-old prodigy and we couldn’t be more proud. Be the first to like. Like Unlike Read more »
Pat Tillman, His Duty All Ended
“Courage,” John O’Sullivan has pointed out, “is the patron saint of all the virtues.” Yet saints are solemn and courage is not. Be the first to like. Like Unlike Read more »
To the Hustings!
With all this political talk, Christus Victor raises the important question: whom should the religious vote for? Be the first to like. Like Unlike Read more »
Eat, drink and fling.
Some of the plausible and specifically Christian arguments for socially sanctioned gay unions–I think Kaimi’s advanced it on this board–is that an irreducible core of the homosexually inclined simply do not have the choice to be chaste. Under the circumstances, the argument goes, perhaps its best that society encourage them to refrain from the sin of promiscuity even if they can’t be discouraged from the sin of homosex-uality. Now Gordon has found a variant of the same argument: society should accept and discipline promiscuity into ‘polyamory,’ because some people simply do not have the choice to be faithful. I’m... Read more »
Create your own quasi-Canon!
Not that we don’t already. Not that there’s anything wrong with that (grins inoffensively). I’ve just been flipping through BYU magazine. It announces that you can now order customized books and DVD’s of BYU speeches. Just select your preferred speeches, and voila! Here’s the site. A belated hat tip to doctrinal.net, who’s already posted on downloading the speeches as mp3′s. Note: I am not criticizing customized books of speeches. I actually like the idea. Be the first to like. Like Unlike Read more »
So Help Me God
We take oaths in this country when we testify. Nowadays, anybody can do it, and perjury is the only penalty. Used to be that hellfire also awaited the liar. That was the theory, anyway, and under that theory until well into the 20th Century, the several states wouldn’t let atheists testify because the atheists didn’t believe in future rewards and punishments. I don’t know what the states did about Universalists or cheap grace evangelicals, or even what they’d do with us–our discussion below about having too little hellfire in our beliefs got me wondering, though I eventually concluded that... Read more »
Baptizing the Gentile Dead
First Things’s Fr. Neuhaus has noticed the efforts of some Jewish groups to keep holocaust victims from our vicarious baptism (about 4/5′s down, the 23rd bulletpoint under While We’re At It). Although apparently retracting his concession that we’re ‘marginal Christians,’ he definitely takes our side. Why worry about baptism, he says, if you believe it has no effect? Fr. Neuhaus discusses a lawsuit in the works, but I can’t confirm it. For some previous discussion, see here and here. Be the first to like. Like Unlike Read more »
Why AT&T has yet to make me CEO
AT&T fired an employee who wouldn’t promise to ‘value homosexuality,’ though the employee, a benighted Christian, did promise to not discriminate. Luckily the employee was able to salve his distress with a lawsuit. (Hat tip: Clayton Cramer) Be the first to like. Like Unlike Read more »
Old Age and an International Church
We worry that a church formed and led by provincial American ethnics can hardly do well internationally. We want either a more varied leadership or a more decentralized church. We hope that these changes will allow the gospel to go in its pure form without any of its cultural baggage. Let us stipulate that there’s something to the complaint. I, for one, would like to think that my near-complete failure as a missionary and our near-complete failure as a mission wasn’t my fault or the Spaniard’s fault. In any case, I think we’re forgetting that the past is also... Read more »
Dear Lord, I refer you to Appendix A.
Outside a few key ordinances, we don’t like written prayers, by which I mean planned or prescribed prayers. We have some scriptural support for our position in the saying of the Lord, But when you pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do. We have repeated prophetic guidance, usually quoting this saying. (See, for instance, Russell M. Nelson, ?Sweet Power of Prayer,? Ensign, May 2003, 7). Instead of reading from a prayer, we try to pray what’s in our hearts and what the Spirit directs. Be the first to like. Like Unlike Read more »
The Missionary Field of Dreams
In a post on the growing alliance between Mormons and other conservative religious, two commenters presented an appealing, sincere, and I think mistaken view of missionary work. Gary Cooper suggests that LDS people have a bad reputation with many Christians and others as being guilty of ‘pushy’ proselytizers. Instead, Gary suggests that we realize the harvest is the Lord’s. Our duty is to exert ourselves setting examples of righteousness and in being good friends. We then stand ready to ask questions and make invitations when our friends have been sufficiently prepared by the Spirit and broach the subject of... Read more »
Yes, kind sir, I was made that way.
John Derbyshire, the toast of New York, has reviewed a history of homosexuality. He speculates that some core of homophobia (what a victory for our enemies is that word) is innate, just as some core of homosexual attraction may be, and heterosexual attraction too. No one on this board–No saints that I know–have made much of the supposed naturalness of homosexuality, so in that sense the innateness of homophobia (Oh bother. Let’s call it same-sex disgust) has very little to say to us. The speculaton does serve to remind how hard it can be to sort through habit, and... Read more »
The Envy of Ephraim Shall Depart
I?ve just received one of those little email alerts from a marriage movement group. Apparently certain NGOs want a UN human rights conference to declare that one cannot make distinctions on the basis of sexual orientation without violating human rights. The group, United Families International, is opposing the declaration despite the notorious toothlessness of the UN on the sound principle that a rotten apple is still a rotten apple even if no one?s going to make you eat it, and the even sounder principle that the american courts can?t be trusted not to pluck rotten apples from the international... Read more »
The Mystery is Solved!
Gordon, given your long interest in BYU sports and your recent interest in cussing, I thought you’d appreciate this explanation of the word Yewt. Over at www.cougarboard.com they use ‘Yewt’ both to refer to the Utes and as an all-purpose profanity substitute. Phrases like, “We’ll kick your yewts, you sons of yewting yewts” are not uncommon. In fact, ‘yewt’ gets used so much that one often forgets that it is a substitute at all and one is often at a loss to think what particular profane word a poster had in mind, if any. I have sometimes wondered about... Read more »
Spare the Rod, Spoil the Child
Some think ‘Spare the Rood, Spoil the Child.’ Others say ‘Spare the Iron-Rod-is-the-Word-of-God, Spoil the Child.’ Me, what I have in mind is a supple willow switch. It was good enough for my father and my grandfather and all the school-of-hard-knocks Scotch-Irish rest of us. We may be brutes, but at least we’re mannerly, respectable brutes. :) Ah, well. Enough of these fond reminisces. Discipline, that’s our theme. I’ve been reading a Protestant father on discipline. He’s articulate and thoughtful and has helped at least this reader see that the Rod and the Rod and the Rood are intertwined.... Read more »
Heaven, Hell, and Nothing Else
In the Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis lays out his vision of a universe where everything and everyone must choose between Heaven and Hell. There is nothing else to choose and the choice is absolute. “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’” “Everything becomes more and more itself.” He argues that every good choice, if taken to its logical conclusion, leads to complete submission and holiness. Every bad choice, if taken to its logical conclusion,... Read more »
Catholics Made to Provide Contraception
I’ve decided to stay in touch with my sexually-obsessed inner Puritan. Mormon texts, Mormon shmexts, what about birth control? More to the point, what about religious freedom? California law requires employers to pay for contraception through health plans. Catholics think contraception is wrong, so Catholic charities and Catholic hospitals resisted the rule. Now the California Supreme Court has ruled that the Catholics must comply. Apparently, it mattered to the Court that the charities and hospitals employed non-Catholics and treated non-Catholics. Segregation marches on. Religious belief is no longer allowed to influence legislation, post-Lawrence. In California, it is no longer... Read more »
Mormons for Bush, Dean, and ESJ
A while back we discussed the Mormons for Dean blogs (see here, e.g.). These bloggers are moving on, to LDSdemocrats.com and other places. What was intriguing about these sites was that one could make donations and volunteer through them. The campaign could know that x dollars and x footsoldiers came from the Saintly ranks. I, for one, got excited by the prospect that my own political involvement might help to strengthen the Church politically. If I was going to volunteer and donate, why not do it through Mormons for Bush? A recent post on Mormons for Equality and Social... Read more »
Conferences and Events
- American Society of Church History Annual Meeting
- American Academy of Religion/Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting
- Communal Studies Association Annual Meeting
- Society for the Scientific Study of Religion/Religious Research Association
- Western History Association Annual Conference
- Utah State Historical Society Annual Meeting
- Center for Studies on New Religions
- Mormon History Association
- European Mormon Studies Association Conference
- Sunstone Symposium