- ji on Ex-Member Anecdotes and Motivated Memories: “Today, the Deseret News published an interview with the book author Jeff Strong — it may provide helpful background… https://www.deseret.com/faith/2026/05/23/jeff-strong-latter-day-saint-faith-survey-research-religious-disaffiliation/” May 24, 07:43
- on Historiography and Helen Mar Kimball: “John, they are not a child’s own words. They were written 38 years later by a 52-year old woman who believed Joseph Smith was a true prophet and plural marriage was an essential gospel truth.” May 24, 07:41
- on Historiography and Helen Mar Kimball: “This is actually shocking to me. When a child’s own words about being ‘doom’d’ and ‘fetter’d’ require scholarly reframing as melodrama, the question being answered is no longer what happened — it’s how to read carefully enough to avoid saying what it was. A 37-year-old man in a position of absolute religious and social authority sealed himself to a 14-year-old. The closing concern of this piece is that troubling interpretations of that fact need to be put to rest.” May 24, 05:53
- on Hymns Officially Rejected: “Eric, I hope you have people in your life who support you and love you. FWIW, when things seem to bunch up on you, you can always blame randomness — the nature of statistics are that its likely things will sometimes happen all at once. It is NOT God ganging up on you!! [GRIN] As for the OP, while I don’t think the Church can realistically do anything about it, I wish these hymns were all available somehow. I have a lot of respect for the efforts that went into writing and composing them. AND, I don’t believe that we can really compare them. They are different, and there is no use comparing apples and oranges. [So, I think the choosing of hymns to include is basically impossible.] The world would be a better place if we learned how to honor and respect EVERYONE’s contributions, especially artistic ones. And while we’re at it, we should stop comparing, and assuming that the ones not selected were not good enough. Comparison is almost always bad.” May 23, 22:15
- on Historiography and Helen Mar Kimball: “Thanks for this review, Jonathan. It’s very helpful.” May 23, 09:13
- on Hymns Officially Rejected: “I have written three hymns—words and music—they have all been performed as choir numbers or solos. I didn’t submit any because I doubted that I achieved the level expected, but each one shares my testimony and each one brings tears to my eyes. Good enough. Your submissions are very good. Thanks for sharing.” May 22, 21:32
- on Ex-Member Anecdotes and Motivated Memories: “I just finished reading the book. It says a fuller description of the methodology for his survey is on his website; but, if it is, I can’t find it (even after giving up an email address to get a password). Based on the brief methodology appendix included, there are some obvious concerns: (1) the sample is nonprobability and self-selected, so it may capture people unusually motivated to discuss LDS disaffiliation rather than the broader LDS population; (2) because there is no known sampling frame or denominator, the study cannot credibly estimate how many people are leaving or the prevalence of particular reasons for leaving; (3) the excerpt gives insufficient detail about recruitment channels, response rates, duplicate prevention, and eligibility verification; (4) selection bias likely affects the findings, since quiet leavers, disengaged members, highly orthodox members, international members (i.e., MOST members), and people outside the recruitment networks may be underrepresented; (5) the study relies heavily on retrospective self-report, which is vulnerable to memory distortion, identity reconstruction, social desirability, and post hoc explanations; (6) the validity and reliability of the survey instrument are unclear, including question wording, scale construction, typology validation, and whether measures were pretested or benchmarked; (7) inferential statistics and subgroup comparisons are methodologically limited because nonrepresentative samples make population-level confidence intervals, significance tests, and generalizations potentially misleading; (8) the “AI-assisted qualitative coding process” relied on is underdescribed; (9) expert advisory review (if we accept that the unnamed advisors are experts) improves seriousness but is not equivalent to independent peer review, replication, or public scrutiny of data and methods; and (10) the findings are geographically and demographically limited, especially because international responses were excluded and the sample reportedly overrepresents women and more devout or satisfied participants, which may skew conclusions about LDS disaffiliation overall.” May 22, 19:01
- on Hymns Officially Rejected: “Eric Chaffey hang in there, brother! God loves you and you are in GREAT company with not getting our hymns accepted. May unseen angels continue to watch over and comfort you!” May 22, 15:06
- on Hymns Officially Rejected: “Rich Winsor, I think you are right. 50 new hymns from members + existing favorites from other existing sources = many great hymns that are new to the LDS hymnal, which is fantastic.” May 22, 15:05
- on Hymns Officially Rejected: “anoneon feel free to share it with them, and let me know if any of them want to put music to any of them! [email protected]” May 22, 15:03
