A version of this was first published in the online journal SquareTwo in 2016. At the time I was more cautious than I am now, so I published it anonymously, but with permission I am republishing it here. This is…
Author: Stephen C
Anti-“Utah Mormon” Bigotry
A few scattered thoughts on both anti-“Utah Mormon” and anti-Latter-day Saint bias in general. (Sorry to mix the two but they are often synonymous and I don’t want to write two posts.) I still remember the first time I…
The Church’s New Statement on Abortion
As mentioned previously, I’m very pro-life. As far as we could tell, we were the only “Latter-day Saints” for life sign at this year’s March for Life, and living in the DC area I’ve had the opportunity to do pro-bono…
The First AI Church Art Show
I have grade school offspring that can draw better than me, and because of the accident of God ordained gifts (or lack thereof), I’ve been a little envious of those who are in a position to create meaningful, powerful art. …
Faith Demoting Rumors and Mormon Sexual Urban Legends
This last semester I taught a class on sexuality and statistics (the Chair’s idea, not mine, but it turned out) at Catholic University of America, which is the closest thing to a Catholic BYU since it is directly owned and…
Fetishizing Doubt
While some in the Church fear or are anxious around religious doubt, I feel that in some circles the pendulum has swung too far the other way, so I thought I’d directly address what I personally consider to be some…
Are Latter-day Saints Disproportionately Gay?
Anecdotally, it has seemed to me for a while that Latter-day Saint families in particular tend to have a lot of gay family members. I don’t know of any hard data that has done any kind of comparison-of-means by religion…
What Are The Odds of Being A Church Leader?
An issue that came up in my last post on church leadership as a marker of righteousness is that people are occasionally told that they are going to be the future bishops and stake presidents of the Church. There are…
Church Leadership Callings as a Marker of Your Standing Before God
In one of my recent posts I talked about the connection between wealth and Church leadership; one of the issues that naturally rose to the surface in the comments was the connection between Church leadership and one’s standing before…
Religious Studies and the Church, Part III: Graduate Training as a Ponzi Scheme
The subject of education that does not pay financially is a sensitive one for me. Thankfully, my graduate training equipped me with enough marketable skills that I’m fine, but I’m close enough to people in other fields (sometimes adjacent to…
Why Do Church Leaders Tend to Be Wealthy?
An uncomfortable apparent pattern in the US church is that Church leaders tend to be wealthier than average. I say apparent, since I don’t have any numbers, but this pattern is stark and widespread enough anecdotally that I’m going to…
Religious Studies and the Church, Part II: Rabbis in the Marketplace, Celebrity-Scholars, and Firesides
In the Latter-day Saint community the renowned gospel scholar has traditionally enjoyed a lot of social esteem. Much of what I’d say here I’ve already said previously, but to summarize: our attention is being fractured into a million pieces, making…
Religious Studies and the Church, Part I: Intellectual Authority as a Shortcut to Ecclesiastical Authority
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is somewhat unique in that we don’t have a paid or professionally trained clergy. Nonetheless, there are Latter-day Saints who still pursue high education degrees in fields normally pursued by clergy trainees…
The Future and the Church, Part VI: The Future of Religion Worldwide
“The Future of Religion” is one of those big picture questions that has been addressed by a wide variety of intellectuals such as Freud, Rorty, and basically every European intellectual in the 19th century. (The fact that the end of…
Of ProgMos and Pornography, and Latter-day Saints on Only Fans
In progressive discourse, the person (generally either gay or female) who challenges conservative religious sexual strictures is seen as a courageous trailblazer. However, as liberal Mormonism generally tracks the norms and values of progressivism generally, it too inherits the ambivalence…
The Future and the Church, Part V: When Will There Be More African Wards than North American Wards?
I took the recent congregation numbers by continent reported by the Church and extrapolated the growth by continent to look at the likely composition of the Church in the future. Now, this is not a sophisticated projection (to put it…
Under the Banner of Heaven: Review of First Two Episodes
I suspect a fear among some conservative Latter-day Saints is that a blockbuster, widely viewed movie will come around that presses on uncomfortable pressure points in a sophisticated way, and the 1-3 things that people know about the Church offhand…
The Future and the Church, Part IV: China
Like US exporters eyeing a potential 1.4 billion person market, the Church entering China is one of those white whales for hopeful, growth-minded Latter-day Saints (except with the everlasting gospel of the living God instead of widgets, but you get…
The Church Should Not Be Your Project
In Latter-day Saint parlance “making somebody your project” is the act of approaching your relationship with them mechanistically; only viewing your relationship with them through your ability to get them from point A to point B spiritually, and generally it’s…
Spiritually Moving “Great Art”
I don’t really get art. I couldn’t tell you whether a painting was done by a renaissance master or the local community college art teacher. While some of this is probably due to sort of an emperor’s new clothes style…