Author: Stephen C
-
Latter-day Saint Book Review: The Top Five Regrets of the Dying
Regrets of the Dying The Top Five Regrets of the Dying was a bestselling book by a palliative care nurse who spent a lot of time with patients as they were passing away. I’m not going to recommend it as a book; the writing isn’t the best and it gets kind of repetitious, but the idea…
-
Early Utah Was Relatively Egalitarian
In partnership with the Church, IPUMS (Integrated Public Use Microdata Series) has recently made the entire 1850-1890 set of census data available in tabular (spreadsheet) form for analysis. While individual records have been available for some time, as has a 1% sample of the quantitative data, this new development allows us to download all of…
-
The Active Afterlife of the Restored Gospel
Vietnamese depiction of the Pure Land, the Mahayana Buddhist paradisiacal afterlife Egyptian depiction of the Field of Reeds, the ancient Egyptian paradisiacal afterlife While I’m open to the idea of “sacred envy,” where we see things in other faith traditions and communities that we wish we had, that shouldn’t prevent us from recognizing places where…
-
Weaponizing Church Titles Against the Church, and Passive Aggressive Clichés
Recently I’ve done a series of posts explicitly identifying different rhetorical strategies used in social media spaces around Church topics (One on apologizing for others, and one on disingenuously citing prophets and invoking one’s church heritage). I didn’t mean for it to be an ongoing series, but I’ve just been noticing these more and more,…
-
Big Family Hacks
The Responsible Woman, by James C. Christensen I’m on the record as being very pro-big families. As we become more and more of a minority you have to be clever about how to pull it off logistically since society is increasingly built around the 1.6 kid family. Given Latter-day Saints’ (albeit increasingly fading) penchant for large…
-
In Defense of Tracting
Missionary methodology is one of those things in the Church that people have strangely strong opinions on. For my part, on a meta-level I recognize that Context matters What works in one location (and time) might not work in another. Missionary strategy is complex Because of #1, figuring out optimal missionary strategy is hard, and…
-
How Many Black People and Asians Were in Pioneer Utah?
In partnership with the Church, IPUMS (Integrated Public Use Microdata Series) has recently made the entire 1850-1890 set of census data available in tabular (spreadsheet) form for analysis. While individual records have been available for some time, as has a 1% sample of the quantitative data, this new development allows us to download all of the census…
-
Leaving the Church to Sin
A common accusation against people who leave the Church is that they’re just doing it because they want to sin, and in response the leavers often construct some highly noble narrative exclusively revolving around intellectual honesty and/or personal integrity around social issues. I kind of roll my eyes in the latter case. Not that I…
-
Long Live Ukraine, Long Live Russia
All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword Given that this is a Latter-day Saint blog, I feel an obligation to make some sort of commentary on how recent events are connected to Church-related issues, but I really have no idea. Recent events might be a step forward or back for the…
-
When Will We Be “Done” With Temple Work?
There must be this chain in the holy Priesthood; it must be welded together from the latest generation that lives on the earth back to Father Adam, to bring back all that can be saved and placed where they can receive salvation and a glory in some kingdom. This Priesthood has to do it; this…
-
From These Stones God is Able to Raise Up Pioneer Stock Members
There are two rhetorical practices used by ex-members and reform-minded cultural Mormons that I’ve noticed being used more recently. Latter-day Saint culture places a high premium on deference to authority. If you want to shut down a discussion with the orthodox who “pay the tithing and do the believing;” who are the primary fuel line…
-
An AI-generated Mormon Short Story: The Silent Prayer
In my last post I discussed the potential role of using AIs to generate ideas for Mormon fiction, concluding that the results were mixed but there were some gems in there. In this post I will take it one step further and use AI to generate an actual short story from one of the prompts that…
-
What Would a Mormon Tarantino Be Like? AI and Mormon Fiction and Cinema
Library in the Eternities Note: I fully support President Nelson’s shift towards using the formal, Christ-centered name of the Church when discussing members of the Church and the institution. However, for specific references to artistic, culture-specific things I think “Mormon” is appropriate and is keeping in the spirit of the new direction. I hope nobody faults…
-
Dear Non-Mormons, “Soaking” is Not a Thing
A homage to a past Mormon sexual urban legend I wrote earlier about the mythological practice of “soaking” in a post about faith demoting, sexual urban legends about Mormonism. Basically, “soaking” is a supposed practice where people have premarital sexual intercourse without thrusting, thus supposedly circumventing Latter-day Saint chastity regulations. While on the Joe Rogan…
-
Latter-day Saint Book Review: Merchants in the Temple; Inside Pope Francis’s Secret Battle Against Corruption in the Vatican
The story of the Vatican Bank and Vatican finances in general is a bit of a wild ride, the kind of thing can get you lost down Wikipedia rabbit holes for hours. I suspect the fact that the Vatican is its own state, combined with the fact that it’s managed by a coterie of clergy…
-
An Ode to Large Families
Preface: Why It’s Okay to Talk About Family Size Family size is one of those hyper-sensitive issues that people gingerly tip toe around in the Church, and with good reason. First, it abuts with the kind of cultural touchstone gender role issues that the Church has kind of soft preferences around but has generally avoided…
-
The Decline in Latter-day Saint Fertility Over the Past Decade
While members of the Church are known for our large families, anecdotally it has seemed that Latter-day Saint childbearing has been cratering and that we’ve been losing a lot of our fertility advantage. The problem is, getting robust, current childbearing metrics requires a fairly large sample size because it requires capturing enough women who have…
-
Is the Church Too Popular?
Fools shall have thee in derision, and hell shall rage against thee; While the pure in heart, and the wise, and the noble, and the virtuous, shall seek counsel, and authority, and blessings constantly from under thy hand. Ye are…a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you…
-
Is the Church Overbuilding Temples?
Growing up in the 90s, Church growth was conceptually tied to temple building, with announcements of additional temples assumed to be a proxy for the growth in temple attending members. While we aren’t privy to the more precise numbers that would be required to know the true state of Church growth like the number of…
-
Scams in Zion, Part III: Utah is Indeed the Ponzi Scheme Capital of the US
It’s been a long time coming, but this is part III of a series on “Scams in Zion,” with part I (showing that Latter-day Saint-heavy counties have less fraud) here, and part II discussing our multilevel marketing problem here. Here I’m directly addressing a particular kind of affinity fraud we’re known for: Ponzi schemes.…
-
“Oh God, Where Art Thou? (!)” On Anger at God
I had a season in my life when I was angry at God and it was more than a passing blip that was quickly buried under fear of getting struck by lightning. Anger at God is in some ways the summun malum of sin. Having moments of weakness that lead to poor decisions is one…
-
The Race of the Gods
Traditionally artistic depictions convey deity in the ethnicity of the artist and his/her surrounding culture. Consequently, I’m not going to begrudge early Latter-day Saint art’s depiction of a European Heavenly Father any more than I would a Japanese depiction of Amaterasu looking Japanese. However, as a faith becomes more cosmopolitan it becomes all the more…
-
AI Generated Imagery of Repentance, Heavenly Parents, and Moses’ Vision
I haven’t had as much time to produce AI religious art as I would have liked, so this might be it until we get the next version to play around with, but a few insights: AI is actually okay at depicting religious sentiment in art without specific prompts. For example, below is a MJ image…
-
Genesis Chapter 1: Midjourney Edition
Some religious artistic motifs and scenes have been done to death while many have barely been touched. Since text-to-image came online I’ve been cogitating about its possibilities for creating religious artistic imagery at scale for every…single..event in the standard works. However, as I have mentioned before, what we have so far, while great in many…
-
Is There Less Crime Around the Manhattan Temple?
The New York Police Department has very fine-grained data on crime frequency, with latitude and longitude coordinates for reported crimes. Of course, I’m sure a cop isn’t walking around with a GPS device to get it exact, and if you look at the data it tends to be laid out on a grid, suggesting that…
-
What Joseph Smith Looked Like According to AI
I recently took the plunge and dropped the $30 for the monthly subscription to MidJourney v5, the text-to-image generator that is currently leading the pack (by far). I uploaded a picture of Joseph Smith’s death mask, merged it with additional prompts about age and details about Joseph Smith’s eye and hair color, and asked it…
-
Adventures in Visiting Other Religions’ Services with Rowdy Boys: Memories and Tips
“Gothic church & Islamic mosque architectures combined.” From Midjourney v5. I’m a strong believer in the educational value of visiting religious services other than one’s own. However, you need to do it right so that you’re respectful and it doesn’t come off as a “let’s observe the natives in their natural habitat” kind of voyeurism,…
-
On Apologizing for Others
A rhetorical practice I’ve seen more and more lately is apologizing for others. This usually happens in the context of a Church leader saying something the supposed apologizer disagrees with, and often takes the form of “as a Mormon, I apologize for…” I think this approach is wrongheaded, whether you agree with the apologizer or…