- Jonathan Green on Constructing in our Meetings (Or What Did Church Lead You to Think About Yesterday), 9/6: “Since the amount of time we spend per month in Sunday School isn’t changing, our scriptural literacy will be just fine. Spreading out the time more evenly could be more effective, and it means we won’t entirely skip whole lessons. Some teachers will find a shorter lesson easier to teach, and hopefully it helps teachers realize that their job is not to cover everything mentioned in the lesson.” Sep 8, 03:49
- on Constructing in our Meetings (Or What Did Church Lead You to Think About Yesterday), 9/6: “In the prescribed video, Elder Kearon expressed a hope for sacrament meetings, saying “Let the singing be transformed. Let us choose hymns that people can sing…” This suggested to me that Elder Kearon thinks our singing needs to be transformed, and that we are not choosing hymns that people can sing. That thought resonated with me. Last Sunday in my ward, all our hymns were four-digit, and yesterday two of them were. My ward seems to purposefully choose obscure or unfamiliar hymns to force the congregation to learn them, as if forcing errant children to take their medicine. But instead of treating hymns like medicine for children who must be forced to change, maybe we should treat hymns like desserts for adults with more of the appreciated and loved hymns being selected more often. Like a wonderful meal, our sacrament meeting should be a time of conviviality and happiness and comfort.” Sep 7, 22:31
- on Constructing in our Meetings (Or What Did Church Lead You to Think About Yesterday), 9/6: “I really appreciated how everyone in our Sunday School class collectively realized that the change to a 25-minute class is a mistake. A counselor in the Sunday School presidency did as directed and showed us the 15-minute video and then began a discussion on the video that was over almost as soon as it began. The counselor called on the bishop who had his hand raised only for the bishop to reply that we were out of time. The entire class was rather stunned by how short it was. I fear for our collective scriptural literacy because the vast majority of Saints simply are not going to read, let alone study, the scriptures.” Sep 7, 21:39
- on Constructing in our Meetings (Or What Did Church Lead You to Think About Yesterday), 9/6: “It depends on the area. For a lot of things, there are good precedents in the history of Christianity. For a few things, we really are unique. I’m filling in for Gospel Doctrine next week, and seeing the new schedule in action, I’m planning a lesson that makes just one major point, and making sure I’ve got people ready for the benediction and invocation well in advance.” Sep 7, 20:34
- on Constructing in our Meetings (Or What Did Church Lead You to Think About Yesterday), 9/6: “Here’s a few of my thoughts in reaction to what I experienced in Church yesterday: As we went through our weekly introduction of new members and visitors, it occurred to me that we (or at least I) don’t always consider how our meetings look to outsiders. If we thought more about it, and asked others how our meetings look, I wonder what we might do differently One brother compared our beliefs to those of other churches, suggesting that our beliefs are unique in one area. I wondered if he really knew this to be true? Has he studied other religions? Or attended their services and asked questions? I don’t necessarily want to suggest that we need to shut up or not compare; rather I think we need to find out! To talk to other religions and understand what they believe better. In fast and testimony meeting a visitor, someone brought by the missionaries, stood up and said, among other things, that since he already had a church, he didn’t really need a church. Trying to put myself into his shoes, I wondered what the value is to searching or investigating other churches. Isn’t there something to be gained, even if we already have a church, perhaps one that we are committed to and believe to be the only Church? Perhaps the most amusing testimony of the day came from a brother who said that he was tempted to sleep in and miss church on occasion. But, in this case, church starts at 3pm!! I suspect that, like many people, he has some insomnia, and so sleeping at 3pm isn’t that odd. But without that context, I thought it kind of funny… ” Sep 6, 20:27
- on The Spiritual and Social Goals of the Deseret Alphabet: “More fascinating is Mormon->Mahr-mon” Sep 6, 14:12
- on The Spiritual and Social Goals of the Deseret Alphabet: “From the article: some pronunciations of BOM words based on the phonetic alphabet. CUMORAH -> CUE-MORAH LIAHONA -> LYE-AY-HOH-NAH DESERET -> DE-SEE-RET” Sep 5, 20:57
- on Seeing Responsibility in our Meetings (Or What Did Church Lead You to Think About Yesterday), 8/30: “No, I’m with you: everyone involved should take our church meetings more seriously. I think our speakers and teachers frequently don’t put in the effort they should because they don’t believe they can make a difference, but they can. And it’s a real rush to work hand-in-hand with the Spirit in preparing a talk or lesson. But when the leaders are sweating bullets about who should give a talk or lesson, it’s often not about who can do it “best” from the congregation’s perspective. Those people are usually well-known. It’s about who will grow the most in the process. And if that means the congregation doesn’t get the “best” talk or lesson, the Spirit will make up for it–if we want him to.” Sep 5, 02:55
- on Cutting Edge Latter-day Saint Research, August 2026: “In case it wasn’t clear, I mentioned the two journals I did because they are NOT in google scholar.” Sep 4, 15:47
- on The Kids are All Right: Church Activity, the Youth, and the Best and the Brightest: “To add to the anecdotes, the people I’m seeing struggle the most are in mental health fields, like psychology and social work. With the Joseph Fielding Smith/Bruce R. McConkie era firmly behind us, church members aren’t expected to believe anything about the world that’s contradicted by modern science. Yes, we believe in things for which there’s very little generally accepted evidence: Nephites, obviously, but also the resurrection and God himself. But that’s very different from being told your religion says the world is 7,000 years old while geology says it’s 4.5 billion years old, and you have to choose between them. A young member can now study biology, physics, chemistry, engineering, etc. without ever being taught something that argues against their faith. Scientific fields that study people, individually or collectively, and then draw conclusions (as they should!) about how people should live or how society should function are another matter. The gap between what the church says and what the academy says isn’t as wide as some members suppose–the sociologists I work with generally agree that stable two-parent families are best for children and adults, for example–but LGBT issues and gender in general are huge areas of conflict. So it makes sense to me that while a university education in general does not reduce young members’ faithfulness, an education in certain fields has a good chance of doing so.” Sep 4, 14:51
