{"id":21079,"date":"2012-06-22T13:49:55","date_gmt":"2012-06-22T18:49:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=21079"},"modified":"2012-08-19T17:02:12","modified_gmt":"2012-08-19T22:02:12","slug":"hit-and-miss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2012\/06\/hit-and-miss\/","title":{"rendered":"Hit and Miss"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m not quite up to creating original content today, so I&#8217;m going to link and comment to a few posts and articles that caught my eye. It&#8217;s really amazing how much coverage Mormonism is getting lately compared to a few years ago.<\/p>\n<p>  <!--more--><\/p>\n<p><strong>Bloggernacle posts:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/feastuponthewordblog.org\/2012\/06\/22\/_believing-christ_-revisited-5-covenant\/\">Believing Christ, Revisited<\/a>, a series at Feast Upon the Word Blog by Joe Spencer discussing Stephen Robinson&#8217;s classic book. I think it&#8217;s about time they shortened the blog name to Feast Upon the Blog, don&#8217;t you?<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/bycommonconsent.com\/2012\/06\/20\/review-of-stephen-taysom-the-patheos-guide-to-mormonism\/\">Review of the Patheos Guide to Mormonism<\/a>, by Keven Barney at BCC. This Patheos guide is authored by Steven Taysom of JI. The short guide uses a standard template, covering origins, history, beliefs, rituals and worship, and ethics and community. It might be worth sampling some of the other Patheos guides.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/zelophehadsdaughters.com\/2012\/06\/21\/how-do-we-offer-pastoral-care\/\">How do we offer pastoral care?<\/a> at ZD. This is a real weakness for Mormonism and a real problem for those who need quality pastoral counseling and don&#8217;t get it. Four comments? This topic deserves a hundred comments.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencemeetsreligion.org\/blog\/2012\/06\/do-scientists-understand-the-origin-of-life\/\">Do scientists understand the origin of life?<\/a> at Science Meets Religion. I&#8217;m just happy that, despite fifty years of misguided commentary by CES blockheads, LDS scientists are still fighting the good fight and deign to contribute to the Bloggernacle.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wheatandtares.org\/2012\/06\/20\/fortresses-or-keeps-what-are-we-mormons-building-online\/\">What are we Mormons building online?<\/a> by Andrew S at Wheat and Tares. Kinda longish, but it&#8217;s always worth reflecting a bit on the nature and function of LDS online communities. Apparently Sunstone is going to kick this around at an upcoming panel. It would be nice if a solid Bloggernacler showed up on the panel to defend our turf.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Off-Bloggernacle posts:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/news\/opinion\/forum\/story\/2012-06-17\/mormon-lds-ex-mormon\/55654242\/1\">Why Mormons flee their church<\/a>, at USA Today by journalist Carrie Sheffield (who attended BYU then spiraled out of the Church after a failed attempt to deal with the usual doctrinal and historical issues; read her story <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cleveland.com\/opinion\/index.ssf\/2012\/02\/a_mormon_church_in_need_of_ref.html\">here<\/a>). Hey, I&#8217;ve got more sympathy for former Mormons than the average member, but if you&#8217;re going to then write about that exit experience as a journalist, remember Journalism 101: get the facts right and don&#8217;t let overt bias overwhelm your story. The fact is that the LDS Church has a year-to-year membership gain: every year more people join than leave, a terribly relevant FACT not noted in the story which carries a headline with a BIASED and loaded term (&#8220;flee&#8221;) that misleadingly suggests an ongoing net loss of membership. Perhaps this explains why subscribers are fleeing mainstream media publications? They actually *are* suffering net subscriber losses, likely because they typically don&#8217;t get facts straight and too often let bias drive their stories. The Church will still be growing when the only place you can find newspapers is in a museum.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/national\/on-faith\/mormonism-isnt-like-a-string-of-christmas-lights\/2012\/06\/18\/gJQAK9SzlV_story.html\">Mormonism isn&#8217;t like a string of Christmas lights<\/a>, at WaPo by Melissa Inouye, critiquing the &#8220;one strike and you&#8217;re out&#8221; approach to dealing with LDS doctrine and history. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.deseretnews.com\/article\/865557955\/LDS-similar-to-other-faiths-in-need-for-both-reason-belief.html\">This article<\/a> at the Deseret News gives some biographical information on Inouye: she is &#8220;a Latter-day Saint who holds a PhD from Harvard in East Asian Language and Civilizations and who currently lives in Hong Kong.&#8221; Nice work, Dr. Inouye.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If you like this sort of thing, Modern Mormon Men does a similar post from time to time: see <a href=\"http:\/\/www.modernmormonmen.com\/2012\/06\/linger-longer-9.html\">here<\/a> for the most recent post. It&#8217;s really clever how they anticipated my use of the &#8220;Off-Bloggernacle&#8221; term.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m not quite up to creating original content today, so I&#8217;m going to link and comment to a few posts and articles that caught my eye. It&#8217;s really amazing how much coverage Mormonism is getting lately compared to a few years ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[968],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-notes-from-all-over-features"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21079"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21079\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22029,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21079\/revisions\/22029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}