Recently I drove up Little Cottonwood Canyon with my brother and nephew. This is the canyon in which many of your ancestors pulled out the granite for the construction of the salt lake temple. As soon as we passed the granite facings on the side of the canyon my nephew played a song on his iPod by Corb Lund Brother Brigham Brother Young and it brought mental flashes into my mind of men working on the side of the mountain blasting granite out of it. It made me think of the struggles that men and women had even back then with the faith in many ways very similar to our day. From what I have read Mr Lund isn’t LDS but has relatives that are. Im assuming one of his relatives is a historian buff? Its probably safe to presume this song will never be played in a chapel 
but I can’t help liking it! You can listen to his song Here Continue reading…
Archive for the 'excommunication' Category
In today’s economy, you have to be really sharp to stand out over all those other applicants competing for the job you want. For example, I’ve heard that the following was a question used as part of a job application, designed to test good judgment:
“You’re driving down a winding, rain-slicked road on a dangerous, stormy night. You pass a bus stop where three people are waiting for the bus. One is an elderly woman who appears to be very ill. The second is someone you recognize as a friend who once saved your life. The third is someone who you, in hindsight, recognize you should have married years before. (They later revealed that given the opportunity, they would be now open to your entreaties.) You have room in your sports car for only one other person. Which one would you offer a ride?”
Before clicking through, think about how you would answer this question. Continue reading…
Jeff Breinholt is a lawyer with the U.S. Department of Justice, and a hobbyist legal researcher/writer on cultural issues, including modern American religious movements. We welcome him to Mormon Matters for a series of guest posts on legal issues in Mormonism.
Those who follow Mormonism and who worry about its treatment of dissidents might be excused for thinking that the LDS Church stands alone in its use of excommunication. I must admit I was one of them. I was wrong. Continue reading…
The message of the Gospel of Christ could be encapsulated in a few adjectives, such as: love (Charity), repentance, forgiveness and service. But how should we forgive? Should we follow the example of God, who promises his saints that when they repent he will remember those sins no more (D&C 58:42). The Church as an institution does not seem to think so as it seems to have a pretty good memory when it comes to the sins of its members. Is this consistent with the Gospel message? Continue reading…
From a mythological perspective, why does our religion have such a powerful and detailed “Sons of Perdition” 
element? I asked myself this recently after observing other members talk about this theme in length during separate conversations. They were so passionate about discussing this state of being, going on and on about it, even though it was only tangential to the conversation at hand. I watched them go deep within themselves as they pulled out all the information they knew about Sons of Perdition and reviewed it out loud. It prompted me to ask myself “why is this important to them?” They were emphatic about how difficult and rare it was to reach a level of knowledge and spiritual enlightenment that one could even make this conscious choice. If it is nearly impossible to become a Son of Perdition, why does it matter? Continue reading…
A whistleblower is someone internal to an organization who alleges misconduct. So, what if the organization is the church? Does the church handle whistleblowers effectively or not? If so, how? If not, why not? Continue reading…
I had a job a long time ago as the Training Manager at a company that was going through the ISO 9000 certification process. For those who are unfamiliar with that process, it is an auditing system that focuses on the internal working of a company – looking not at whether a company is involved in “best practices” but rather whether a company is articulating and following clearly defined practices and procedures. I summed it up at the time as being able to do three things:
1) Say what you do.
2) Do what you say.
3) Prove it. Continue reading…
Many consider The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene to be the quintessential Great Catholic Novel: a book written about faith and doubt with great courage. So far, no one has written what one would call “The Great Mormon Novel.” Continue reading…
And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God[...] and another book was opened, which is the book of life[...] And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.
-Revelation Ch. 20 (vs. 12-15)
Love is a burning thing and it makes a fiery ring. Bound by wild desire, I fell into a ring of fire.
-Johnny Cash
In the LDS church, members are written into the book of life with their baptism and confirmation. For some, the love affair with the gospel can truly become a fiery passion. That passion produces its greatest defenders, but sometimes the fire consumes its lover. So the stage is set for the most intense crime of passion, the greatest act of violence… the blotting out of a name from the book of life. Continue reading…
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