politics

45: The Mormon Practice of Bearing Testimony

August 2, 2011
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Testimony image

In this episode, Mormon Matters host Dan Wotherspoon and panelists Brent Beal, Brian Johnston, and Jana Riess explore various aspects of one of Mormonism’s most regular (and sometimes it seems regulated) rituals: the monthly opportunity for church members to bear testimony. The discussion ranges from the nature of the expectation that those bearing testimony, including children, will focus on particular truth claims, to the peculiar way Mormonism encourages members to extrapolate from experiences of feeling “the spirit” within a gospel context to conclude that all other LDS claims are therefore true (and even that this is the “one and...

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The Latest in the Prop 8 Fight

August 6, 2010
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This past week, Judge Vaughn R. Walker in a U.S. District Court ruled California’s Proposition 8 was unconstitutional because it violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th amendment of the US Constitution in that “Proposition 8 harms the state’s interest in equality, because it mandates that men and women be treated differently based on antiquated and discredited notions of gender and that fundamental rights may not be submitted to a vote.” (Excerpts from the federal court decision, from the Los Angeles Times Website)

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Elder Brown Defines Political Extremism

August 3, 2010
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There are a large majority of Mormons (especially here in Utah) that think the Church is wedded to the Republican Party.  A very interesting letter was read here in Utah on Mar 22, 2010 as Utah prepared for the upcoming Caucus Meetings. Let me quote something very interesting from the letter.  (The full text from the LDS Newsroom can be found here.) “Principles compatible with the gospel may be found in the platforms of various political parties.” (Emphasis mine.) Why does it seem that many Mormons don’t seem to believe this, despite the church’s oft-quoted emphasis that the church...

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Pyramids-R-US

July 31, 2010
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Last week I spent a supper hour (it took that long) reading an article called “America’s Ruling Class – And the Perils of Revolution” by Angelo Codevilla. The overall article is well worth reading to better understand current political debates, but that wasn’t what called my attention to it as a possible subject for Mormon Matters. Rather, the following paragraph toward the end of the Article startled me: “Nothing has set the country class apart, defined it, made it conscious of itself, given it whatever coherence it has, so much as the ruling class’s insistence that people other than...

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Joseph and Sidney: A Strained Friendship

June 22, 2010
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Joseph and Sidney: A Strained Friendship

The friendship between Sidney Rigdon and Joseph Smith is very fascinating.  Sidney was one of the earliest, and most impressive converts, joining the church in December 1830.  His training as a Baptist minister was especially helpful to Joseph, and he often preached many wonderful sermons.  As time wore on, there were some really interesting issues between Joseph and Sidney.  Richard Van Wagoner wrote a biography called Sidney Rigdon: Portrait of Religious Excess.  The Missouri and Nauvoo periods were especially tumultuous. With Sidney running the church in Quincy, Joseph and others were still in the Liberty Jail.  Through the first...

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Prayer and Politics

May 30, 2010
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A few years ago, I read a book by Larry King (yes–the one you are familiar with), called Powerful Prayers.  It is one of my favorite books!  Larry discusses prayer with politicians, actors, athletes, atheists, theologians, and celebrities.  There are some fascinating insights from many people.  Two people I really were fascinated with were President Jimmy Carter, and Ralph Reed, former head of the Christian Coalition.

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Joseph Smith’s Presidential Platform

May 25, 2010
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Joseph Smith’s Presidential Platform

So, I came across an interview of Richard Bushman at the Pew Research Forum, about both early and modern Mormon politics.  I’ve also been reading a book called The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power by D Michael Quinn on the early leadership of the church.  I want to combine the 2 sources, and talk about Joseph Smith’s presidential plans of 1844.  First, let me quote Bushman.

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Reflections on Mormon May Day

May 21, 2010
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by Jason B. (Mormon May Day was an international response to recent statements by latter-day McCarthyist Glenn Beck that social justice was a code word for communism; and that anyone involved in a church that preached such a deceptive perversion of the Gospel should leave their congregation and find a new place to worship. Participants in Mormon May Day held teach-ins and discussions around the topic of Social Justice and the Gospel on May 1, participated in a fast, and then bore testimony on May 2 in wards around the country.)

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Radical Retention

April 2, 2010
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Our guest poster, Jason M. Brown is a life-long ‘Niblian’ Mormon who grew up in Southern California. He served an LDS mission from 2001-2003 in the Dominican Republic, Santiago Mission. He attended Brigham Young University where he studied anthropology and international development. He is currently working on two master’s degrees at Yale University in Forestry and Theology. Jason is also regular contributor to The Mormon Worker Blog, www.themormonworker.wordpress.com and The Mormon Worker Newspaper, www.themormonworker.org. He can be reached at jason.brown@yale.edu I’ve been kicking this post around in my mind for a while now so it came as no surprise when...

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Wired World Views: Preserving the Other’s Truth

February 23, 2010
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In a February 2, 2008, cover story in New Scientist, Jim Giles asked whether political leanings were genetic: "Across the land, liberals and conservatives are slugging it out, trying to convince each other that their way of thinking is right. They may be wasting their breath."

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A Plea To Mormons: Walk A Mile In Palestinian Shoes

February 13, 2010
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A Plea To Mormons: Walk A Mile In Palestinian Shoes

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...

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Sod, Seed, Salvation: Abrahamic Covenant and the Claim to Palestine

February 10, 2010
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Sod, Seed, Salvation: Abrahamic Covenant and the Claim to Palestine

OT SS Lesson #7 Sod, seed, and salvation — it’s how I like to describe the Abrahamic Covenant. There were three promises in the covenant. The first was a land promise, where the Lord gave Abraham and his descendants the land of Canaan for an everlasting possession. The second was the promise of a great and numerous posterity. And the third was the blessing of the everlasting Gospel: the priesthood and the promise of exaltation, to come to the world through Abraham’s lineage. (see Genesis 17)  But just look at how often the covenant was renewed!

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Nuclear Disarmament Meets Mormon Patriotism

September 29, 2009
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Nuclear Disarmament Meets Mormon Patriotism

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...

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Trading Polygamy for Statehood

September 27, 2009
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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...

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An Outsider’s Look at the United Effort Plan

July 29, 2009
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An Outsider’s Look at the United Effort Plan

If you were in downtown Salt Lake City today, you may have noticed a large rally of over a thousand peacefully protesting polygamists. What is happening to the financial affairs of the FLDS right now seems completely inexplicable, but I need to try to understand what is going on.  And it seems to me to behoove every citizen of the United States to do the same.

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Will the Real Heretics Please Stand Up?

July 22, 2009
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Will the Real Heretics Please Stand Up?

David W. Bercot, a Texas attorney and Evangelical Christian, embarked on a quest to discover what Christians believed and practiced before the Nicene Creed. What he learned caused him to seriously re-evaluate his beliefs, to eventually change his religious affiliation, and to present his findings and analysis in his book Will the Real Heretics Please Stand Up. Although the book represents a critique of mainstream Evangelical Christianity in light of the teachings of the Early Church Fathers, Bercot’s analysis has surprising and thought-provoking application to Mormonism as well. While some may see Will the Real Heretics Stand Up as...

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Dancing Through the Sidebar

July 11, 2009
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Comment on any of the following articles – or anything else from the sidebar – or any other article of interest to this forum that we missed. There is no such thing as being normal If Kaimi were in dire straits, he would prefer to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s Apparently, marriage is hard work Gayby Boomers? Silly name, interesting phenomenon An explanation for Utah bankruptcies I don’t think PETA would approve of this Aren’t you glad we have calculaors? Even Orson Scott Card realizes that Mormonism is a culture Another reason to have more kids – Placenta...

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Learning and Understanding Vs. Winning Arguments

June 17, 2009
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Why do you read and comment on blogs? What is your goal? Do you want to make points and debate with others? Is it more important for you to reach mutual understanding and learn from each other? Can both happen at the same time? This is an adaptation of a post my good friend Ron wrote. He is Catholic, so with his consent I have modified some of it to fit the audience here, as well as added some of my own thoughts. It was inspired by some of his encounters with a “rather nasty Fundamentalist Christian” who was...

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CA Supreme Court Upholds Prop 8; Gay Couples Remain Married

May 26, 2009
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The link to the article summarizing the CA Supreme Court decision is in the sidebar to the left.  In summary, the court allowed Prop 8 to stand (keeping marriage in CA defined as being between a woman and a man) but also allowed all homosexual couples married prior to its passage to retain their married status.

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Joseph Smith and Wealth Redistribution

April 23, 2009
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This article by a guest blogger originally appeared at Gospel Doctrine Underground. We want to thank the author for allowing us to re-post it here. The Law of Consecration offers a lot of interesting discussion topics and ideas. To me, a political junkie, one of the most interesting concepts tied up in consecration is the idea of equality. The Book of Mormon has some interesting passages regarding equality; I cannot help thinking that they got Joseph thinking about economics and righteousness. Or, the impact of temporal things upon righteousness, anyway. So, when the Lord gives the newly organized Church...

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