I want to let everyone know of a very unfortunate situation in Romania. According to this Deseret News article, Elder McKay Choy Burrows, 20, of Highland, Utah, and Elder Jace Edwards Davis, 20, of Logandale, Nevada, died from accidental natural gas asphyxiation due to a gas leak in their apartment sometime Friday night in Romania. It’s terrible that such a seemingly preventable tragedy happened to these 2 young men.
Archive for January, 2010
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Some time ago, as a guest I wrote a post entitled ‘Academic freedom in the Church‘ which tried to explore some of liberalizing tendencies seen in LDS culture since the September Six, but particularly over the last decade. Having recently read an excellent (as usual) article by D. Michael Quinn on the development of the ‘Sacral Power Structure‘ of Mormonism, I wanted to re-visit this issue as a result of some of the reasons he gives for the increasing authoritarianism and conservatism in the Church. Quinn argues that the expansive growth of the Church during the 1950-1970’s led the hierarchy to emphasize an ‘unquestioning rank-and-file obedience to Church directives’ which is rooted in the ‘inherent fear of centrifugal tendencies of enormous Church growth’[1]. Continue reading…
A recent post by Cr@ig on Main Street Plaza caused me to reflect on the strength of interfaith marriages. I had hoped to generate a follow-up post on 
this topic at MSP. However, since the comments on the Cr@ig’s post devolved into a blame game of whether the believer or non-believer was more responsible for marital dissolution, I decided it was probably best to avoid a second opportunity for mud-slinging.
Differences in religious belief can be the death knell to a marriage. For that reason, many organized religions strongly advocate against being “yoked with unbelievers”. This is not only a Mormon phenomenon; you see this in any faith tradition that teaches that they alone have exclusive access to God. Even before marriage, it is rare for the unmarried, devout Mormon to even consider dating (let alone marrying) a non-Mormon; most LDS women raised in the Church are taught from an early age to make a temple marriage to a returned missionary their primary goal. Continue reading…
Squaring the Circle is a geometry problem and a spiritual puzzle. It dates back at least 4,000 years. All of the great cultures that expressed advanced mathematics and philosophy approached this problem and had a mythology to give it meaning. On one hand, it is a practical, geometric exercise exploring approximations of PI and Phi. On the other hand, it is a philosophical puzzle to combine opposites and find the perfect balance. Can a human find their way through the maze of different extremes that we encounter in our mortal experience? We must navigate between light and darkness, health and sickness, pleasure and pain, life and death, good and evil. The greatest minds in history have expressed pleasure and enlightenment from this geometry exercise. A famous Greek philosopher included a statement in his work “On Exile” referring to one of his fellow countrymen who worked the squaring problem:
“There is no place that can take away the happiness of a man, nor yet his virtue or wisdom. Anaxagoras, indeed, wrote on the squaring of the circle while in prison.”
-Plutarch
According to the recent lesson manuals, the founding fathers, including Benjamin Franklin, were inspired. All things denote (not connote) that there is a God, and, to quote Mr. Franklin, beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
Discuss how your discussion of the first lesson in the manual went.
While there are moral truths that all religions tend to share (don’t kill, don’t steal, be nice to people, etc.), religions also include “bizarre” differentiators to distinguish each religious community (often in food prohibitions, clothing choices, or supernatural beliefs). These “bizarre” elements hedge up the community and create borders between the religious group and those not in the religion. Without these “fences,” a church would cease to be a community. But a negative byproduct of these “bizarre” elements is that they are indefensible on grounds of logic or “truth.” So, what elements of Mormonism are “true” and which ones are merely “bizarre”? Continue reading…
OT SS Lesson #5
I have often thought that had I not joined the Church at age 19 I would have liked to have joined a kibbutz in Israel, or to have lived on “the Farm” in Tennessee (back when it was more hippie-like), or at least to have been a part of an intentional community. As I began investigating the LDS Church, and in particular reading the passages in Moses under consideration in our Sunday School Lesson #5, I was drawn to the strong emphasis on cooperative community which began under the direction of Joseph Smith and continued in Utah under Brigham Young and survived even to the present day. I expected to be instructed in the principles of consecration and called upon to live them more and more as the “latter day” rolled on.
Thirty years later, I’ve been disappointed. Continue reading…
An article from the Salt Lake Tribune listed in the Mormon Matters sidebar sometime ago noted the official elevation of “care of the poor and needy” to the status of a “purpose” of the Mormon (LDS) church. Church news sources are noting how LDS resources are being mobilized from both the United States and the Dominican Republic, in coordination with partners such as Islamic Relief, CARE, Food for the Poor, and Healing Hands for Haiti.
All of its missionaries are reported to be safe, and the church is using nine meeting houses to provide shelter for members and an even larger number of non-members. There have been casualties among the membership, however.
The immediate need in Haiti is, of course, for emergency supplies and medicines, which the church is attempting to help provide. Continue reading…
Michael Ash in a Sunstone article entitled ‘The Sin “Next to Murder”’ has argued that Alma’s exhortation to his son Corianton (who had ran off with an woman of ill-repute), that ‘these things are an abomination in the sight of the Lord; yea most abominable above all sins save it be the shedding of innocent blood or denying the Holy Ghost’ (see Al 39:5), is not speaking about breaking the law of Chastity. Ash argues that Corianton’s sin is ‘causing the spiritual death of others’[1]. Aside from this being an interesting article, it raises the question of what is spiritual murder? Continue reading…
Hello again, Mormon Matters readers! Last Monday, the first edition of Ask Mormon Girl answered an inquiry from L.M., a 15 year-old Christian boy with a crush on a 16 year-old Mormon girl. Well, it wasn’t long before a second query from L.M. arrived in our askmormongirl@gmail.com inbox:
Hello Mrs. Brooks,
Thank you for your advice, I found it very helpful. I don’t know who she hangs out with, but I would like to get to know them…. If it turns out that she’s not interested, at least I will have made a few friends in the process. I’ll let you know what comes of it. By the way, what are some of the differences between Mormon and Christian beliefs that I should know about? The last thing that I want is to offend someone, especially such a nice girl as her.
Thanks again,
L.M.
Continue reading…
Voting is now closed.
Voting for the 2009 Niblets has begun. You may click the selections to view the links as many times as you wish. Then make your final selection and click the “vote” button. Once you click the “vote” button on each category, you cannot change your vote. You may make one selection for each poll except the last one; for the write-in category, you may choose up to three selections. Each person may vote one time. Polls will close at the stroke of midnight on January 31st.
Here we go . . . Continue reading…
I wish I could claim credit for the title of the post, but it actually comes from this MSNBC article. Apparently the Pope is encouraging Catholic Priests to blog. It reminded me of Elder Ballard’s admonition back in 2007. Even though the pope doesn’t love computers, he said, Continue reading…
I recently came across this story on the BBC Website and felt that I had to return to Mormon Matters to write a few comments about it.
High Cost of Leaving Ultra-Orthodox Judaism
Over the years I have noticed many similarities between Mormons and other religions, but I never thought I would see a similarity in this context with Judaism. This article addresses some of the main issues that people at Mormon Matters find challenging. Perhaps we, as doubting Mormons are not as alone as we feel.
28 year old, Chani Ovadya, is interviewed about her experience. She does not give an explicit disgruntlement with the community but she does make mention of the fact that she felt more feminine then the community let her be. She says that:
“It was the hardest year of my life, and I didn’t have my parents and family who I love with me, so it was even worse…As a religious woman, the most you can be is a teacher, now I am following my dreams.” Continue reading…
Nominations for the Niblets Awards are now in. A few minor changes have been made to screen for category, and to avoid duplication. Nominations that did not fall under 2009 were eliminated. New blogs were accepted if they had a very small bit of introductory posting before 2009. When an author had two or more posts nominated for the same category, one representative post was chosen. The order of appearance is alphabetical; however, when links are included they came out alphabetical by link.
A few more nominations have come in by email and will be added as soon as possible.
Voting will start on Monday. Until then, enjoy perusing these Bloggernacle favorites for 2009 and let us know if there are any problems, questions, missing or wonky links, etc. Continue reading…
I recorded my first Mormon Stories podcast in some time w/ professor, author and mother Joanna Brooks, and thought it might be nice to discuss these episodes here on Mormon Matters.
For some background, Joanna was a very important figure in the uber-controversial BYU Academic Freedom days of 1990-1993…and is now a writer on Mormon topics for Religion Dispatches (along w/ being the Dept. Chair of English at SDSU). She was also recently featured on RadioWest to discuss the phenomenon of Glenn Beck. As you may remember from her post earlier this week, Joanna has recently started an advice-column blog entitled “AskMormonGirl.com“, and cross-blogs here on Mormon Matters.
You can listen to these episodes directly from this page (below), or you can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes and listen on your iPod (click “Continue Reading” below for instructions).
Part 1:
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Part 2:
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Please give a hearty Mormon Matters welcome to Dr./Sister/Mommy Joanna Brooks! And please let us know what you think via comments below!
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