In Maine, Judge Clapp was not pleased. The sarcastic comment he made at an October 6, 1998 custody hearing would get him in trouble. He would ultimately face accusations that he harbored anti-Mormon animus.
Well which church? There seems to be a lock on the Mormon Church in this case … which we all know has a lock on family values in the entire world.
“It’s the MOST WONderful TIIIME of the YEARRRRRR.” The leaves are starting to change color. The evenings and mornings are a bit crisper. Even the birds’ singing suddenly sounds sweeter than ever.
General Conference must be coming this weekend.
Lately more and more Church members have begun to wonder why the Church is so supportive of the United States military. We’ve experienced a long tradition of this, beginning with the Mormon Battalion in 1846. When the U.S. Army requested 500 men to join the service in the conflict with Mexico, Brigham Young responded positively despite the fact that our people were in the middle of a forced exodus from the country. This story is proudly retold in our Church lessons and manuals, making it a seminal moment in the formation of our military philosophy. Isolation in the West kept members physically separated from the conflict of the Civil War. But by the time of World War I, Mormons had become involved in the military machine. Continue reading…
There has been a lot of discussion in the b’nacle about the worthiness interviews routinely conducted by members of the bishopric with the young men and young women. In general, there seems to be some hand-wringing about this practice. In your opinion, is it appropriate for an older man to be alone with a young woman asking her questions about her sexual activity? Continue reading…
It might just be the posts that I read, but Boyd K. Packer is not the most popular of Apostles in the Bloggernacle (or 
perhaps among liberal Mormons more generally). I acknowledge that this is a speculative impression. At the very least, I have heard Elder Packer criticised at Sunstone and on the Bloggernacle on a few occassions at least. I was therefore surprised to find one of his sermons published in full in an issue of Sunstone. The talk was insightful, challenging and thought-provoking. As a result I wanted to reproduce some of his comments here that I found most interesting and/or inspiring. The address was originally given March 30th 1990, to a Regional Representatives Seminar. Continue reading…
If one searches around the bloggernacle, you’ll find a snarky comment about how the church traded polygamy for statehood, or that the church just wimped-out on polygamy. Such comments don’t seem to take into account how much pressure the US government was putting on the church–it was literally trying to snuff it out if the church didn’t back down from polygamy.
I’d like to get into some of these details leading up to the Manifesto. (This is a shorter version–more details are found here.) I talked about the Manifesto previously in the context of whether the prophet would ever lead the church astray. It should be noted that the church had been fighting federal anti-polygamy legislation for nearly 30 years, so I think it should be noted that the Manifesto banning polygamy in 1890 was not a spur-of-the-moment quick capitulation. I’ll be taking my quotes from 2 books: Forgotten Kingdom by David Bigler, and Great Basin Kingdom, by Leonard Arrington.
Thomas Vaughn Barlow really does not like the IRS. On June 8, 2007, he sent it a letter, which stated:
This means that if you do not answer me lawfully and take my money or property or in any way continue to harass me or fail to assure me of my being secure in my persons, houses, papers and effects, that I’m justified in acts of war to balance your terrorism. Do you get it? I will kill any of your agents I can find. I will blow up your buildings. This is war.
Barlow is a Mormon. Well, sort of. He was part of the Fundamentalist LDS Church, at least before he got kicked out. Was his letter not a little over the top? The jury thought so. He received a 21-month prison sentence [1]. Continue reading…
The phrase, “moderation in all things” is a euphemism usually (but not exclusively) associated (by Mormons at least)with the Word of Wisdom. It usually means that we should not go too far, one way or the other, in abstaining to the point of becoming an ascetic or in indulging to the point of becoming an addict. Of course, that leaves lots of room for interpretation and individual opinion, as well as plenty of opportunity for members to judge one another uncharitably. Continue reading…
At the Evergreen conference held September 18-19, 2009, Elder Bruce Hafen gave a talk regarding homosexuality. The talk was reprinted on the official LDS Church Newsroom website. I will not synopsize the talk here but I suggest reading it yourself. Within a very short time, for obvious reasons, the bloggernacle was dissecting and analyzing the speech. These actions generated some interesting discussions here, and one permablogger at FMH did a good job of challenging the less-than-spectacular research here. Continue reading…
John Remy posted an interesting blog/video where a man, speaking about his concern with the Church’s practice and policy during the Prop 8 debate, was asked by the Bishop to stop. The man protested and was allowed to finish but the Microphone was turned off. What would make you ask someone to sit down? Continue reading…
“To what degree should the principle of ‘respect for life” be extended to bird and animal creations? What do the scriptures, Joseph Smith, and other early Church leaders teach about the grand design and purposes of God’s non-human creations? Does having “dominion” over the kingdom of creatures mean we are their predators and exploiters or does it suggest a “stewardship” relationship in which we become their caretakers in order to help them “fulfill the full measure of their creation?” If the scriptures teach, “woe be unto man that sheddeth blood or wasteth flesh and have no need,” and “the blood of every beast will I require at your hands,” what rationale could be used to explain Church-owned, revenue-generating enterprises such as Deseret Land and Livestock and the Westlake Hunting Preserve? Do these operations constitute sacrificing principle for profit?”
- Sacrificing Principle for Profit: Church Wildlife Enterprises and Hunting Preserves, Sunstone Magazine
The chagrin would be immediate from reading these words in a law book:
For five years, in defendant’s capacity as a schoolteacher, neighbor, and secretary to the Bishop of the Mormon Church, defendant molested numerous boys in Santa Clara County. As charged in this case, he touched the private parts of four boys who knew him variously as a family friend from church, a teacher in kindergarten and grades two and three, and a home-school religion teacher.
So starts People v. Harward [1]. It’s no joke. This language, taken from a real court case, likely sent shivers down the spines of the Mormons who read it, not to mention Church leaders. Is there a reason to worry? Is Mormon leadership bound to contend with the same public relations nightmare that plagued the Roman Catholics over the last decade? Continue reading…
Since Eve is one of the most powerful archetypes for women, it’s not surprising that this story is at the root of many discussions of womanhood. Feminists have generally been dissatisfied with how the biblical Eve story has affected values and attitudes toward women over the centuries. Early exegesis of the creation story became the rationale for rules and regulations guiding women’s behavior. Because Eve was regarded as a source of sin, there was a perceived need to harness the dangerous energy represented by woman. LDS theology has attempted to redefine the symbolic Eve by picturing her as a free agent who recognized the need for a Fall and purposely “transgressed” the law in order to usher the human race into the mortal sphere. This is an attempt to connect the name of the first woman with life (Eve=Havvah=life) instead of forbidden knowledge, lust, temptation, sin, and death. Continue reading…
Some people know that my wife spoke one year at the conference. What they usually don’t know is that they found my wife because the person in charge knew us from the BYU law school, where the person in charge was an assistant dean. She was kind enough to spend time talking with us about the process, the conference and President Hinckley’s goals. I’ll discuss his most significant goal first.
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