“The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health” (Add Health), Found that conservative and evangelical Christian teenagers are more sexually active than mainline Protestants, Jews, and even Mormons. On average, white evangelical Protestants begin having sex shortly after turning sixteen, which is sooner than most other groups.
In trying to understand more deeply what it means to be a peacemaker, I was struck by the way that the following account is worded: And when they had sent away the multitude, they took him even as he was in the ship. And there were also with him other little ships. And there arose a great storm of wind, and the waves beat into the ship, so that it was now full. And he was in the hinder part of the ship, asleep on a pillow: and they awake him, and say unto him, Master, carest thou not...
Man I love this article. It’s an interview with a Harvard Psychiatrist and Director of Harvard’s “Study of Adult Development” — discussing the importance and healthiness of religion. I won’t dare tell you what magazine it comes from. Some of my favorite quotes: “Until you had religion that said love and compassion were more important than sacrifice, guilt, and fear-it wasn’t until you had that, that any city could survive. All of the world’s great cities self-destructed until you had this shift in how you used religion-from ritually supporting negative emotion to ritually supporting positive emotion.”
There were several complaints about the false doctrine thread — about how I was slighting folk doctrines. I’ll be back to the false doctrine series soon, but thought I would take a moment out and discuss a folk doctrine or two.
Introduction: The following is from a post by Reuben at SingleSpeed titled “Harmonica at Church”. He has agreed to let us post it here, with some questions for discussion: “My 3rd favorite thing about the LN Ward is Brother P. He’s a tall, slender old man whom I’ve never heard say two words, but he plays the harmonica beautifully. He’s at church every week – just him and his harmonica. He teaches the 8-10 year olds in primary, and they allow him to play his harmonica along with the songs each week during singing time. Sometimes when I don’t...
There was an interesting article in Time recently about Facebook’s censorship of pics with nips, specifically eliminating pictures of breastfeeding moms (and, in their defense, a few of topless women who just happened to be holding babies). But, this brought up an age-old question of Mormondom: why are there no nipples on the Nephites in the BOM vids?
The land of Star Valley is an almost mystical one, surreal in its environs and mystical in its origin. The last of the Mormon settlements, it is nestled in the foothills of the Tetons as the one of the last outposts of the Mormon colonial experiment. Entering the valley is not unlike a drug-induced quaintness that leads one to, at once, blink to ensure he’s awake/sober and refrain from blinking lest he pass the town entirely. One might even expect to hear this music played from the rooftops of such a valley. Even now, I can hardly take a...
I was struck last year, as I worked to understand mercy better, by the difference between mercy and kindness. If I had not focused on meekness earlier in the year, when I defined meekness and where I discussed being gentler with the ones we love, I probably would have defined mercy in terms of being kind. However, as I thought about it, it hit me that “mercy” is more than being kind and gentle – in a very important and fundamental way that has direct relevance to blogging.
