- Stephen C on History from the Middle: The Enchanted World of the Man Who Baptized Wilford Woodruff: “Congrats! I love your take on the LDS version of the “Great Man” view of history.” May 19, 13:33
- on History from the Middle: The Enchanted World of the Man Who Baptized Wilford Woodruff: “Thanks, everyone!” May 19, 11:43
- on History from the Middle: The Enchanted World of the Man Who Baptized Wilford Woodruff: “Congratulations, Chad! It sounds like a great book. Also, it sounds like an important book. The Kirtland Camp should be in the manual the next time we study church history.” May 19, 10:35
- on History from the Middle: The Enchanted World of the Man Who Baptized Wilford Woodruff: “Congratulations, Chad! And best of luck with your appearance at Benchmark Books on May 28 (5:30 p.m.)!” May 19, 09:03
- on History from the Middle: The Enchanted World of the Man Who Baptized Wilford Woodruff: “First, as one of the voluminous posterity of Zera Pulsipher, I and my thousands of cousins have been particularly rewarded by your application of your research abilities. Second, your question of why write about a “middle manager,” reminded me of a comment I left at the economics blog Marginal Revolution ten years ago. Tyler Cowen had described a book on chess players. “It’s a book about chess, and it doesn’t even focus on the great players. It’s about the players who are good enough to make a living — ever so barely — but not do any better. [ . . . ] Overall biography and autobiography are far too specialized in the lives of the famous and successful.” The comment I left was: “Mormons have a very broad and democratic collection of biographies of their 19th Century predecessors. This is due to two causes. The first is our belief that family bonds have eternal significance which leads us to seek familiarity with our dead and to leave records that will allow our descendants to know us. The second is that the first Latter-day Saints felt they were eyewitnesses of something important and wanted to leave a testimony of it. Thanks to these factors, it is easy to find research on hundreds of second-tier associates of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, and tens of thousands of multi-page biographical essays on nobodies written either first-hand by the nobodies themselves or by their children. These are of most interest to direct descendants of these people, so today most of those 19th Century Mormons are each known in detail to a few percent of present-day Mormons, but we like hearing the stories of others’ kin too.” [ . . . ] “I could rattle off a dozen such, and if you asked another dozen Mormons to chew your ear off doing the same, chances are you would end up hearing about at least 80 distinct individuals.”” May 19, 08:22
- on Phoning it in: How Did You Participate in Church (Or What Did Church Lead You to Think About) Yesterday, 5/17?: “I use my phone continuously during most of Church. I send thank you notes with my notes to each speaker or class leader. Almost always get a positive response. I have been doing it long enough that the regulars all know what I am doing on my phone.” May 18, 15:09
- on Phoning it in: How Did You Participate in Church (Or What Did Church Lead You to Think About) Yesterday, 5/17?: “I was definitely distracted by my phone during church this Sunday, but so was my whole ward: we got notified of a tornado warning during the intermediate hymn! We went to the gym, waited for the worst of the storm to pass, then went to Sunday School. Our poor high councilor never got to speak. The lesson focused on having a “face-to-face” relationship with God like Moses had. Good stuff. That got me thinking about the alternative: The Israelites basically told Moses, “You go talk to God and tell us what he says. We don’t dare talk to him.” Then what they got instead was a bunch of rules. I suspect that for a lot of us, too much of our relationship with God consists of following rules in the hopes of pleasing him rather than actually getting to know him.” May 18, 15:06
- on Every Decade is a Decade of Decision: “I mentally left the Church after my first trip through the temple. This ritual was so far removed from anything i personally believed that I became mentally disengaged. My first temple visit was at the start of my 2-1/2 year mission to Belgium and France. It was 1964, and there were some very unfortunate things still in the ceremony. But the whole thing seemed like a glorified initiation ceremony. After my first encounter, I left the MTC (one week at that time) and walked up and sat on the State Capitol lawn. I was pretty much in a daze. I sat there for several hours shattered. I finally decided to continue my mission to Europe. I can’t remember exactly why. My mission did nothing to improve my faith. If anything it did the opposite. The Mission i was in was an exercise in killing time. Few if any baptisms. The Church in most areas was in bad shape. Ten percent of members were active. Many branches had missionary presidents. Much of what we were told to teach has since been proven wrong or inaccurate. One of the few Church books we had to read was Mormon Doctrine. I didn’t agree with significant parts of the opus. McConkie got it wrong. After my mission, the leadership moved the Church even farther away from my personal beliefs. I’m not even PIMO anymore. Now I just want to help my neighbor. Which seems to be at the heart of NT teachings.” May 17, 20:19
- on Phoning it in: How Did You Participate in Church (Or What Did Church Lead You to Think About) Yesterday, 5/17?: “Here’s some of how I found the Gospel in what happened in Church (5/17): One of the speakers in Sacrament Meeting repeated the now common statement that charity is a spiritual gift. I’m not sure what this means exactly. Gifts sound like things that are given to us, that we don’t have to put effort into developing. But I find that I have to work to develop these things. This seems more like the desire to develop charity is the gift, and its something we need to develop. Another speaker quoted a general authority saying essentially that the purpose of this life is to change ourselves so that we will want to be in heaven—so the judgment after this life isn’t about keeping those who are unworthy out of heaven, but about changing hearts so that people want to be in heaven. I like that idea, and I wonder if the same kind of thing might apply to getting into our wards and branches. Are we creating places that those who want to be in heaven will also want to be, or where we are training people to want to be in heaven? Are we creating welcoming places? Where people will want to learn these things? This kind of complicates what a congregation is about, doesn’t it? Apparently the Quechua word for repentance essentially means “change of mindset”. Sounds very different in some ways — not as much guilt. The teacher in Sunday School, talking about Moses being translated, called it “death with an asterisk”. LOL. ” May 17, 10:40
- on Why We Shouldn’t Minimize Our Differences: An Evangelical Perspective on the Restoration: “Sure – I clearly did not say everything McConkie said should not be followed/believed. I dont think McConkie is saying to worship Jesus, but to follow Jesus as the path to God. In your quote above, I agree with him completely but the way I read it, he is saying what I wrote below but in a better way. Me; “For me as a member, I worship God, I follow Jesus as the path to God. I do not worship Jesus. My main relationship with a deity is with God. I do not worship the church or its leaders or doctrines in any way. The church is also a path to God, through Jesus. Everything should lead us to God in the church through Jesus.” McConkie; “In other words, true and perfect worship consists in following in the steps of the Son of God; it consists in keeping the commandments and obeying the will of the Father to that degree that we advance from grace to grace until we are glorified in Christ as he is in his Father. It is far more than prayer and sermon and song. It is living and doing and obeying. It is emulating the life of the great Exemplar.” What do you mean by the “measure” of Elder McConkie?” May 17, 07:24
