Author Profile: guest
Author Archive for guest
Bishop Bill with a situation that happens to probably every bishop. Read on. Continue reading…
Bishop Bill again, folks. Now for one that has nothing to do with the ward. Continue reading…
OK, Bishop Bill here again with a really difficult situation. Continue reading…
Before I was baptized LDS, I had a college boyfriend with whom I was sexually active. At the time, I was under enormous pressure from him and my 
entire circle of friends to be intimate with him. My friends told me that after a year of dating, he really “deserved” more intimacy from me than he was getting. But the fact was that I wasn’t attracted to him physically. After our first physical encounter, I cried for several days. This went on for some time, until I was emotionally numb from the experience. It was pretty traumatic, but I didn’t really think much of it at the time other than that I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. Continue reading…
Bishop Bill back with more. We’ve had fictionalized situations in the last two installments with a YW and a YM. Now, let’s have a situation with an adult. Continue reading…
Guest Post by Non-Arab Arab
BiV’s recent post “Sod, Seed, Salvation: Abrahamic Covenant and the Claim to Palestine” brought me out of my normal lurking. Modern Palestine and what I firmly believe to be the erroneous interpretation most members of the church have regarding events there always riles me up. Usually I do the smart thing and bite my lip, but every once in a while I choose to enter the fray in full combat mode. As I’ve found on most issues of debate, it doesn’t really matter how right I think I am the noise of the argument rarely does more than highlight who already believes what. So my wish here is not to re-argue the questions of Palestine which I’ve already done enough of on this blog. Instead, I’d like to talk about shoes. No, not the famous Arab shoes, rather walking a mile in another’s shoes. Continue reading…
Bishop Bill back with your next installment of “You’re the Bishop.” Just to be clear, the examples I am using have been changed enough that not even my wife or former counselors in the bishopric would recognize who I am talking about. 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…
Welcome to “You’re the Bishop,” a new installment at Mormon Matters. My name is Bishop Bill. Once every few weeks I’ll post a situation that I had while I was bishop, and let you decide how to handle it. Everybody gets to play, even the ladies out there. After a week, I’ll add a comment with what I did in the situation, and how it turned out. Let’s play! Continue reading…
A close friend of mine who wishes to remain anonymous recently saw in the shadow of the temple his story follows
In October, I was fortunate to attend the Portland, Oregon, screening of the movie, In the Shadow of the Temple. http://www.intheshadowofthetemple.com The screening was hosted by the producers, Karen Di Millia and Dennis Lavery. Prior to the screening Dennis and Karen spoke for 10 minutes and explained how they started this project. After the screening they took questions and answers for roughly 30 minutes.
Lavery and DeMillia, who are not–and never have been–LDS, originally planned to make a movie about people who had left the religion of their youth. They attended a meeting of the Portland Humanist Society, explained their project, and asked if anyone had such stories they would be willing to share. In the course of discussing the project with members of the society, they were told that who they really needed to talk to was Sue Emmett, who had left the LDS church. After talking with Sue and others with whom she put them in touch, they decided to re-focus their project on the experience of those who have left the LDS church. Continue reading…
Where do you see the Church in 20 years? Today’s guest post is by David Heap. Continue reading…
For anyone vaguely familiar with the Latter-day Saints, the many parallels between the Twilight Saga and the Church’s theology will be apparent.
As a mother of two and full-time secondary school teacher, I was adamant not to read the novels in spite of having been asked, begged and ordered a countless number of times this year, to do so, claiming I was far too busy. Nevertheless, as I have now seen both Twilight and The Twilight Saga: New Moon, I can not help but feel a slight sting of portentousness as I recognise I may have been somewhat rash to dismiss what is now a literary and cinematic phenomenon. Is it juvenile, hormonal, and pubescent diversion? Absolutely! However, its moral subtext is impossible to miss – more so in the sequel – and is a text worthy for analysis of how Christian ideology is portrayed in contemporary English literature. Having been subjected to serious doses of pathetic fallacy, Socratic irony and the author surrogate, through such literature as Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, it is refreshing to find a text which engages today’s youth to those same concepts while retaining an unquestionably cool, sexy image. Continue reading…
Today’s guest post is from Reuben Collins who also blogs at Single Speed. Continue reading…
Mormon Matters welcomes our newest guest poster. Kate Kelly graduated from Brigham Young University with a BA in Political Science. She served a mission for the church in Barcelona, Spain. She is currently in law school at American University’s Washington College of Law, the only law school in the nation world founded by women. She has had a career of various and sundry amazing jobs. She has been a mortgage counselor, an interpreter, an English teacher and spent last summer in Manhattan working at the Center for Constitutional Rights, as an Ella Baker legal fellow. She and her nurturing, gentle angel of a husband blog at www.kateandneil.com.
“Our Nation has had a long and unfortunate history of sex discrimination. Traditionally, such discrimination was rationalized by an attitude of ‘romantic paternalism’ which, in practical effect, put women not on a pedestal, but in a cage.” Frontiero v. Richardson, 411 U.S. 677 (1973).
BYU is closing its Women’s Research Institute, and I, along with many others http://supportwri.blogspot.com/, am distressed by this decision. My distress comes, not only because of the consequences of this shortsighted move, but because it is emblematic of the overall problem in the church of romantic paternalism. Continue reading…
Today’s guest post is by John G-W. 
LDS Church spokesman, Michael Otterson, downplayed the significance of the LDS Church’s public backing of gay rights legislation passed recently in Salt Lake City. He emphasized that the Church has already gone on record in support of civil rights legislation protecting gay individuals from discrimination. He also made it clear that the Church’s support for the specific municipal legislation in question – banning discrimination in housing and employment – should not be taken as a signal that the Church is shifting its position in relation to the question of gay relationships. The Church will continue to vigorously oppose efforts to legalize same-sex marriage. Finally, it is worth noting that the legislation in question only garnered Church support, ironically, after it was modified to exempt the Church (or any other religious organization) from the stipulations contained in the anti-discrimination ordinance.
Still, Brandie Balken, director of Equality Utah, and Valerie Larabee, director of the Utah Pride Center, are heralding this as “a historic event.” They have stressed the importance of dialog and of finding common ground. They hope it is a harbinger of a future, more positive, more cooperative relationship between the gay community and the LDS Church. Continue reading…
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