Monthly Archives: May 2011

34: Self-Identifying as “Mormon”

May 31, 2011
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34: Self-Identifying as “Mormon”

Mormonism has always been a home to members with many different religious temperaments, levels of belief, attitudes toward authority, and commitment to and comfort within the community. Still, even with this diversity, Mormonism has often felt to many members (and certainly to most outsiders) as monolithic—if the diversity is there, it hasn’t always been easy to find those “like you.” Indeed, much of this sense and appearance of unity came as a result of the efforts of the institutional church to deliberately set and convey fairly rigid boundaries about what constituted orthodoxy and orthopraxis, and who was and was...

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33: The LDS Church and Its Single Young Adults, Part 2

May 25, 2011
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33: The LDS Church and Its Single Young Adults, Part 2

Episode 31 provided a solid first framing of many of the issues faced by Mormon young single adults—of which group, some 80 percent are becoming inactive at least for a period of time, and many are deciding to leave the church altogether. This episode follows up on that discussion, but focuses on hearing the voices of those in this age group themselves, hearing in their own words about their spiritual journeys, their experiences in singles wards, the messages that are being taught from the pulpit, in classes, and through interactions with church leaders, and the ways these messages are...

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32: Heavenly Mother in Today’s Mormonism

May 17, 2011
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32: Heavenly Mother in Today’s Mormonism

The most recent issue of BYU Studies features the article, “ ‘A Mother There’: A Survey of Historical Teachings about Mother in Heaven,” co-written by David L. Paulsen and Martin Pulido. (Here is a link to the article and also a blog post on it by Joanna Brooks.) The article presents an overview of research that attempted to find every printed or recorded mention of Mother in Heaven or Heavenly Parents by LDS leaders. It is a great piece of scholarship and much needed. In this podcast discussion, host Dan Wotherspoon and panelists Martin Pulido (article co-author), Tresa Edmunds,...

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31: The LDS Church and Its Single Young Adults

May 10, 2011
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31: The LDS Church and Its Single Young Adults

Official statistics are hard to come by, but it has become clear over the past several years that Mormonism is seeing many of its 18- to 30-year-olds reduce their participation in the church or leave the faith altogether. Two recent actions confirm this trend and reveal the church’s initial responses in trying to stem the tide. First, in an effort to better track singles and help them feel connected to a local unit by providing new opportunities for callings and meeting other singles without “ward hopping,” the church has disbanded Utah student wards and reorganized them into singles wards...

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30: Mormon Women and Equality

May 3, 2011
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30: Mormon Women and Equality

Michael Otterson, head of the LDS Church’s Public Affairs department, recently wrote a short piece for the Washington Post‘s “On Faith” blog titled, “What Mormon Equality Looks Like.” In his post, he cites three anonymous LDS women who assert their equality with men in terms of access to pulpits to teach and pray, their chances to preside over Church organizations, their equality “in the eyes of God, as equal halves of a divine pair and equal partners in his work, which includes the raising of families,” as well as equality in their rights to “direct access to God through...

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