Author: Kaimi Wenger
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WWJVF?
Examining one subset of the question “Who would Jesus vote for?”, Josiah at Christus Victor notes: Alan Keyes says Jesus wouldn’t vote for Barack Obama. Well of course he wouldn’t. Jesus isn’t even a citizen of Illinois.
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Barley for Mild Drinks?
A follow-up question occurred to be as I was looking over D & C 89:17 for my last post. A phrase jumped out at me, and I think it’s deserving of its own discussion. D & C 89:17 reads: 17 Nevertheless, wheat for man, and corn for the ox, and oats for the horse, and…
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Wheat for Man
Okay, we’ve previously touched on a number of Word of Wisdom topics: medicinal marijuana, chicken marsala, meat eating. And we all know about the tobacco and alcohol part. But what on earth are we to think of the strange grains list? In case you had forgotten it, D & C 89:16-17 reads:
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Feminist Mormon Housewives
I just noticed this new LDS blog (“Feminist Mormon Housewives: angry activists with diapers to change“), maintained by two self-described feminist Mormon housewives. The blog has some funny and thoughtful posts, such as: –The Prozac Relief Society: “Is it just me, or does it seem like every LDS stay-at-home mother is on some anti-depresant or…
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Best Books for New LDS Converts
I live in a relatively mission-field ward, which has a lot of new members. Several months back, one member asked about reading material. I happened to have an extra copy of Truth Restored on the shelf, and it seemed like a good new-convert book, so I gave it to the new member. It was a…
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Pop Quiz: What Not to Do
Do you ever wonder exactly how you’re doing, as far as keeping the commandments goes? Well, now’s your chance to find out. Get out the pen and paper, and simply go down the following list of sins (from Spencer W. Kimball, The Miracle of Forgiveness, at 25), checking off each infractions, to find out how…
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Three Years Ago — One person’s story
The past two years, around this time, I’ve reflected on what happened to me three years ago. I was headed into work for my second day as a law clerk. My route was the A train from 207th to Brooklyn. I was on schedule to be in Brooklyn just before 9.
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Primary Songs: Articles of Faith, Part I
Today we’ll discuss a topic near to my own heart: Primary music. I come to this topic with no particular expertise, other than eight years as a primary and nursery pianist, in four different wards. I do, however, have some strong feelings on the subject. We’ll start with some ground rules. What should a primary…
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Around the Blogs Flashback: JL’s post on Singles in the Church
I just noticed the new snazzy template over at Celibate in the City. One of the links (new, I think) is to JL’s first post from six months ago. I remember reading it at the time, and laughing at her dating misadventures. This time something else stood out to me — her poignant lament about…
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Seventies and Apologetics
I’m not really an apologist (if you want real apologetics, try Jeff Lindsay or Ben Spackman or Dan Peterson), but I just had a short, humorous, quasi-apologetic thought. I’ve seen a claim that the Book of Mormon can’t be true because it requires too many people. I believe the numbers used are generally those from…
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Reminiscing about the Arizona Temple Youth Guides, and Mission Thoughts
A few weeks ago, a former church leader e-mailed me. We reminisced a little, it was fun. Then, he sent me the text of a letter I had sent him from the MTC. Talk about a blast from the past. It started me remembering a period of my life, a decade ago, and contemplating how…
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Bloggernacle Notes
We’re trying out a new feature, which (assuming Kaimi doesn’t break it again) could be quite useful: Bloggernacle notes. It’s on the sidebar, right here. The idea is that we’ll drop quick links to other blogs into the Bloggernacle Notes section (since it seems like those posts don’t usually generate much comment anyway) and free…
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Bloggernacking the Convention
Karen Hall blogs the convention, in true New York Post style. She’s got a Page Six section (with boldface names like Don King and Brooks & Dunn), a bit of politics, and not-one-but-two different discussions of possible public nudity. With Karen’s post, I think BCC has solidified its status as the New York Post of…
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Happy Labor Day!
It’s that time of year again, when we get to celebrate labor by doing no work whatsoever. It’s a great idea. So I’ll be dutifully doing my part, and taking the family to a baseball game.
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Washington D.C. Sex-Blogging
By now it’s pretty old news, but in case anyone missed it, a tempest in a teapot hit D.C. a few weeks ago. (That’s the Washington Post link, and it’s completely safe for work, thouh the text is a bit sex-oriented in topic). A young female Senate staff assistant named Jessica Cutler (she was a…
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Technical Update: Still Not 100%
Hi everyone, here’s the scoop — Things are back to _looking_ more or less normal. However, rebuilding is still on the blink (and I’m still not sure why). Comments will eventually show up, but you’ll get a 500 error, until I figure out what’s going on.
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Thanks, Jeff!
We’ve been very happy to have had Jeff Lindsay as a guest blogger for the past two weeks. His posts were uniformly interesting and informative. Thanks for being a T & S guest blogger, Jeff! (And note that he can still be visited at his blog Mormanity, and it his own Cracked Planet website).
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Sheri Dew at the Republican Convention
As many of us know, Sheri Dew was selected to give the invocation at the Republican National Convention. The prayer she gave, as transcribed, was rather simple and probably uncontroversial: Heavenly Father, we come before Thee as citizens who care about this nation to express our gratitude for this land of liberty where we have…
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Now How Exactly Is This Going to Work at the Resurrection?
Woman Turns Husband’s Remains Into Diamond.
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Praxy and Doxy
John Hatch continues his coup over at the liberalmediablog, with an interesting post on whether the church values orthodoxy (right belief) over orthopraxy (right action). John notes: If I don’t show up to help someone in Elder’s Quorum move, no one says a word. If I miss my home teaching, no one calls to chastise…
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Technical note on Comments and Time Out
We get a lot of remarks about our wimpy little comment engine. It times out a lot. Sometimes people don’t realize this, and they double post (or triple, or quadruple, etc) a comment. I don’t know a way around this. I had previously thought that it was a result of the site being run by…
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The Priesthood of Our Lord
I speak not of the actual priesthood, but of the hymn. Number 320, set for men’s voices, is (I believe) the only hymn in the current book which is “approved” (i.e., has a notation at the bottom) for singing in rounds. Which we did today, in Sacrament Meeting. Logan Bobo led the first group. He…
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Bush-League Political Commentary
If Bush is a warmonger and Kerry is a flip-flopper, what is an LDS voter to do? Bo Gritz is nowhere to be found, and Cody Judy is out of the question. Alas, it is probably too late for Gordon B. Hinckley to mount a Joseph-Smith style LDS-prophet-for-president campaign. Thus, it’s clear that the only…
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The Place of the JST
Over at Intellectual Exhibitionist, Ryan Bell comments on a topic that I’ve wondered about on occasion: The Joseph Smith translation is not the official bible of the church. So we still rely on the KJV as the official word. This is exceedingly odd to me– we have one take on the Bible that’s the source…
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National Abortion Federation v. Ashcroft and the Strange Career of Partial-Birth Abortion Bans
By now, most everyone has probably seen the district court decision invalidating the partial-birth abortion ban. It’s no surprise that the judge in that case invalidated the law. The law did not include an exception for cases where the health of the mother was threatened, and was thus (under pretty clear Supreme Court precedent) unconstitutional.…
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“I think people should mate for life, like pigeons or Catholics.”
We’ve previously discussed the state of Mormon film, and some of the bloggers have wondered wistfully when we’ll see a Mormon Kieslowski, Korosawa, or even Kubrick come along. Now, over at Let Your Mind Alone, J.D. Payne has expressed a different goal: to become a Mormon Woody Allen (minus the whole yucky Soon-Yi thing, one…
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Recent Change to the Political Neutrality Statement
Over at BCC, John Hatch points out an important new change to the church’s political neutrality statement. The statement has an additional new sentence, and it reads: In addition, members who hold public office should not give the impression they represent the Church as they work for solutions to social problems. John gives a detailed…
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Subscribe to Sunstone as part of your ward’s missionary effort?
Kristine has the details. Does this mean that Sunstone subscription is part of the three-fold mission of the church? Will we soon be seeing mission callings extended to the Sunstone Symposium Mission? (Is that a foreign language mission?). “You have been called to the Sunstone Symposium mission, feminist-speaking. . .” (For many church members, that…