{"id":43927,"date":"2022-11-13T07:01:29","date_gmt":"2022-11-13T13:01:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?page_id=43927"},"modified":"2022-11-13T07:17:32","modified_gmt":"2022-11-13T13:17:32","slug":"recent-comments","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/recent-comments\/","title":{"rendered":"Recent Comments"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul id=\"better-recent-comments\" class=\"recent-comments-list\"><li class=\"recentcomments recent-comment\"><div class=\"comment-wrap\"><span class=\"comment-author-link\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.motleyvision.org\" class=\"url\" rel=\"ugc external nofollow\">Kent Larsen<\/a><\/span> on <span class=\"comment-post\"><a href=\"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2026\/09\/constructing-in-our-meetings-or-what-did-church-lead-you-to-think-about-yesterday-9-6\/#comment-563120\">Constructing in our Meetings (Or What Did Church Lead You to Think About Yesterday), 9\/6<\/a><\/span>: &ldquo;<span class=\"comment-excerpt\">Ji:  Well, I guess I wasn\u2019t too careful in how I worded that. You are correct that there is a vast difference between the Nazi guards and church leaders \u2014 and that is NOT at all what I wanted to imply. [And, I could argue that I didn\u2019t, that you\u2019re seeing a 2nd order inference that I didn\u2019t intend. But, it is there\u2026]. As for Frankl, I should have used the word \u201cmeaning\u201d instead of the word \u201chappy.\u201d    Regardless, Frankl\u2019s overall point is that we can find meaning in what happens to us if we change our perspective \u2014 how we see the events in our lives. Ultimately we DO have control over at least one part of our lives: how we think. What I\u2019m trying to tell \u201cOld Man\u201d is that he does have that control. He doesn\u2019t have to think in a way that is critical of what is wrong at church. And he will probably be happier if he takes that control.    rogerdhansen:  1) This post (and the others like it) is not the venue for criticizing how church is run. There are plenty of other places where you and anyone else can make those criticisms. As I just wrote above, this series of posts is about HOW WE THINK in church and how that can be better \u2014 not about how the church is run.     Perhaps I have by accident implied somewhere that I\u2019m looking for suggestions on how the Church should change \u2014 if I did so, I apologize. That\u2019s not wanted here, and that\u2019s why the original post has a paragraph near the end that says \u201c Let me emphasize that this is NOT a place to criticize what is wrong with church or your fellow congregants.\u201c    2) Your recommendations are all about how you want church to be \u2014 that\u2019s how they \u201chelp\u201d you, they give you what you want. You are assuming that others want that also. Perhaps you are right, and your suggestions have a certain attraction to me. But how do we actually know that they would be better? How do you know? [That\u2019s rhetorical, don\u2019t actually tell me since its outside of the scope of this post.]<\/span>&rdquo; <span class=\"comment-date\">Sep 13, 22:02<\/span><\/div><\/li><li class=\"recentcomments recent-comment\"><div class=\"comment-wrap\"><span class=\"comment-author-link\">Ben<\/span> on <span class=\"comment-post\"><a href=\"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2026\/09\/academics-and-church-growth-a-demographic-just-so-story\/#comment-563118\">Academics and Church growth: a demographic just-so story<\/a><\/span>: &ldquo;<span class=\"comment-excerpt\">Stephen C! &#8220;My great-grandfather was a U of Chicago Zoology PhD&#8221;   I can&#8217;t help but be interested in this story, and any journals or correspondence that might have stuck around decades later :)<\/span>&rdquo; <span class=\"comment-date\">Sep 13, 21:33<\/span><\/div><\/li><li class=\"recentcomments recent-comment\"><div class=\"comment-wrap\"><span class=\"comment-author-link\">Sterling<\/span> on <span class=\"comment-post\"><a href=\"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2026\/09\/academics-and-church-growth-a-demographic-just-so-story\/#comment-563117\">Academics and Church growth: a demographic just-so story<\/a><\/span>: &ldquo;<span class=\"comment-excerpt\">For those who want to test this historical hypothesis, President Ernest Wilkinson had BYU publish an annual *Directory of Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Higher Education and School Administration* between the mid-1950s and the mid-1960s. It might provide a window into how LDS members spread throughout academia and across the U.S. during a period of growth for both the church and higher education.<\/span>&rdquo; <span class=\"comment-date\">Sep 13, 19:46<\/span><\/div><\/li><li class=\"recentcomments recent-comment\"><div class=\"comment-wrap\"><span class=\"comment-author-link\">RLD<\/span> on <span class=\"comment-post\"><a href=\"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2026\/09\/academics-and-church-growth-a-demographic-just-so-story\/#comment-563116\">Academics and Church growth: a demographic just-so story<\/a><\/span>: &ldquo;<span class=\"comment-excerpt\">To try to answer jader3d&#8217;s question, and to agree with Stephen C and Jonathan, in most social science and humanities departments there is a very strong consensus that it is harmful to treat men and women differently, or to treat same-sex and opposite-sex relationships differently. Also, that if someone has strong and persistent gender dysphoria, the best treatment is for them to transition to the gender they identify with, and society has an obligation to treat them as belonging to that gender. So a church that doesn&#8217;t ordain women to the priesthood and excludes them from many positions of authority, does not perform or recognize same-sex marriages, and refuses to recognize gender transitions is, depending on the temperament of the individual, an unfortunate reality to tolerate, a problem to solve, or an enemy to defeat.    In those departments, but really only in those departments, these issues are regular topics of discussion. The Church doesn&#8217;t come up all that often, but papers providing evidence (of varying quality) of the harm done by practices like the Church&#8217;s are plentiful. Stephen C&#8217;s roundups give you a flavor, but keep in mind those are only the ones that talk about the Church itself. Setting aside the evidence, humans are wired to agree with their community so they fit in. Some members do just fine despite all this; others don&#8217;t.    The R1s indeed tend to set the agenda for the rest of academia, in part because we train so many of the faculty. (A lot of BYU professors are former members of my ward.) But at an R1, both size and power flow from research grant money, and the social sciences and humanities don&#8217;t get much of that. So the part of the university that&#8217;s hostile to the Church is fairly small.    Yes, HR policies tend to reflect the propositions I started with. If someone can&#8217;t stand to work alongside a trans person, an out-and-proud homosexual, or a woman, academia is probably not for them. But I could send them a collection of quotes and speeches from President Oaks suggesting they should have more of a live-and-let-live attitude and be grateful we live in a pluralistic society. The same pluralism (or religious freedom, if you prefer) that lets them live the life they choose lets us live our faith even when we lose culture wars.    Gender and sexuality are not the only issues where parts of the academy disagree with the church, though they&#8217;re by far the biggest. We&#8217;ve seen on the blog recently how anti-colonialist thought would recast the pioneers as villains, but that&#8217;s pretty niche. Economics is interesting in that it leans right rather than left. Studies have suggested that studying economics tends to make people more accepting of economic inequality, and if we take our scriptures seriously (D&amp;C 70:14, for example, or 104:16), that&#8217;s a problem. But given Church culture, I don&#8217;t think many economists see a conflict between their field and the Church. (My degrees are in Economics, though in practice I&#8217;m basically a free-range social science data geek.)<\/span>&rdquo; <span class=\"comment-date\">Sep 13, 14:20<\/span><\/div><\/li><li class=\"recentcomments recent-comment\"><div class=\"comment-wrap\"><span class=\"comment-author-link\">Stephen C.<\/span> on <span class=\"comment-post\"><a href=\"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2026\/09\/academics-and-church-growth-a-demographic-just-so-story\/#comment-563115\">Academics and Church growth: a demographic just-so story<\/a><\/span>: &ldquo;<span class=\"comment-excerpt\">Jader3d: Overton windows. It&#8217;s not as bald faced as some &#8220;God&#8217;s not Dead&#8221; professor challenging your faith,  but the operating background software is that if your institution is heteronormative or has gender roles that it&#8217;s damaging.<\/span>&rdquo; <span class=\"comment-date\">Sep 13, 08:55<\/span><\/div><\/li><li class=\"recentcomments recent-comment\"><div class=\"comment-wrap\"><span class=\"comment-author-link\">Stephen C.<\/span> on <span class=\"comment-post\"><a href=\"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2026\/09\/academics-and-church-growth-a-demographic-just-so-story\/#comment-563114\">Academics and Church growth: a demographic just-so story<\/a><\/span>: &ldquo;<span class=\"comment-excerpt\">As an aside, this goes back a while. My great-grandfather was a U of Chicago Zoology PhD back in the early 20th century, and when reading over his materials on FamilySearch he mentioned that Mormons had a reputation for wanting to get back West after getting their degrees (he ended up teaching at some college in Idaho and stopped believing, this was back when there was less space for LDS evolutionists, but he let my great-grandmother raise the family LDS, so here I am). So the coastal-degree-to-Mormon-Corridor pipeline has an old history.<\/span>&rdquo; <span class=\"comment-date\">Sep 13, 08:51<\/span><\/div><\/li><li class=\"recentcomments recent-comment\"><div class=\"comment-wrap\"><span class=\"comment-author-link\">jader3rd<\/span> on <span class=\"comment-post\"><a href=\"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2026\/09\/academics-and-church-growth-a-demographic-just-so-story\/#comment-563113\">Academics and Church growth: a demographic just-so story<\/a><\/span>: &ldquo;<span class=\"comment-excerpt\">Why would church members struggle more in the social sciences and humanities?<\/span>&rdquo; <span class=\"comment-date\">Sep 12, 21:22<\/span><\/div><\/li><li class=\"recentcomments recent-comment\"><div class=\"comment-wrap\"><span class=\"comment-author-link\"><a href=\"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\" class=\"url\" rel=\"ugc\">Jonathan Green<\/a><\/span> on <span class=\"comment-post\"><a href=\"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2026\/09\/academics-and-church-growth-a-demographic-just-so-story\/#comment-563111\">Academics and Church growth: a demographic just-so story<\/a><\/span>: &ldquo;<span class=\"comment-excerpt\">Thanks, RLD. I was wondering what your perspective would be. When we first started grad school, my wife felt like some ward members didn&#8217;t know quite what to make of her, as both of us were pursuing degrees. Then when we had our first kid, it was easier to fit in, but she sometimes felt more slotted into a box than understood. But that was 30 years ago.    I agree that the representation of academic politicization has been badly distorted &#8211; what happens at some high-priced SLACs and R1s is not what happens elsewhere, where most faculty just want to teach and research. Then again, those are influential departments, and other departments hire their graduates and sometimes want some of that activist glamour for themselves. And the leftward lean of some disciplines is quite real, which can have unintended consequences even with the best of intentions (like the institutionalization of land acknowledgments that can be off-putting to some conservatives, and things of that nature). It&#8217;s been striking how often Stephen C.&#8217;s research roundups include articles that are quite comfortable treating the Church less as an object of study than as a disease to be cured, or a hostile entity to be resisted. And since a lot of largely apolitical departments are in colleges of arts and sciences, they can&#8217;t escape decisions made in the dean&#8217;s office.<\/span>&rdquo; <span class=\"comment-date\">Sep 12, 14:56<\/span><\/div><\/li><li class=\"recentcomments recent-comment\"><div class=\"comment-wrap\"><span class=\"comment-author-link\">Jack<\/span> on <span class=\"comment-post\"><a href=\"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2026\/09\/kingdoms-of-glory-and-astronomical-apparent-magnitude\/#comment-563110\">Kingdoms of Glory and Astronomical Apparent Magnitude<\/a><\/span>: &ldquo;<span class=\"comment-excerpt\">Kent Larsen,    I agree with you&#8211;that luminosity is a symbol for glory. But in the OP&#8217;s defense I think the math becomes typological if we &#8220;read&#8221; it is a language. In other words, looking at the differences in magnitude as measured by math can also serve as a rough analog to heavenly things&#8211;much like the sun, moon, and stars do.<\/span>&rdquo; <span class=\"comment-date\">Sep 12, 00:17<\/span><\/div><\/li><li class=\"recentcomments recent-comment\"><div class=\"comment-wrap\"><span class=\"comment-author-link\">rogerdhansen<\/span> on <span class=\"comment-post\"><a href=\"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2026\/09\/constructing-in-our-meetings-or-what-did-church-lead-you-to-think-about-yesterday-9-6\/#comment-563109\">Constructing in our Meetings (Or What Did Church Lead You to Think About Yesterday), 9\/6<\/a><\/span>: &ldquo;<span class=\"comment-excerpt\">Kent,    I don\u2019t how my recommendations specifically helps me.  The second paragraph suggests a method for having more money going to help the poor.  Half the membership lives in developing countries.  They and their neighbors need help.  I\u2019d rather give to the poor rather hoard money or build McTemples. And what\u2019s with paying tithing before feeding your family?    The first paragraph suggests a way that members can protest the current 2-hr schedule.  Since members aren\u2019t supposed to communicate directly with high-level GAs, there are few avenues for making suggestions.  I\u2019m suggesting one.<\/span>&rdquo; <span class=\"comment-date\">Sep 11, 12:07<\/span><\/div><\/li><\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-43927","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/43927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43927"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/43927\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43936,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/43927\/revisions\/43936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}