Archive for the 'tesimony' Category
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…
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…
My home teacher (who is very cool) came by yesterday to drop off some starter cables for my car and as one does in that short interlude we discussed the celestial kingdom and being Gods after this life. He believed that those who don’t make it to the highest kingdom in the Celestial Kingdom won’t have any sexual relationships and if you don’t have sexual relationships their will be no need for sexual organs.
When I served a mission in eastern Canada in the early 90s, there were many things I was grateful for (warm boots, wool suits, fairly normal food). But above all, I was grateful that I was sent to a region with very few black people, as I was not looking forward to having to defend something in the Church’s past that had deeply troubled even a relatively immature teenager with a limited knowledge of Church history and doctrine.
Continue reading…
“The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health” (Add Health),
- Found that conservative and evangelical Christian teenagers are more sexually active than mainline Protestants, Jews, and even Mormons. On average, white evangelical Protestants begin having sex shortly after turning sixteen, which is sooner than most other groups. Continue reading…
“What do Catholics, Jews and Mormons have in common?” “Catholics don’t recognize birth control, Jews don’t recognize Jesus, and Mormons don’t recognize each other in Nevada.”
In 1993 there were 1.7 million Utah residents, 1.2 million of whom were Mormons. It was estimated that 90 percent of the 700,000 gamblers in West Wendover each year came from Utah. Continue reading…
BH Roberts predicted that if church leaders did not address the historical problems of church origins and possible anachronisms in the Book of Mormon, these problems would eventually undermine “the faith of the Youth of the Church.
Sometimes I recall nuggets of spiritual wisdom but cannot remember when or where I picked them up. One in particular has increasingly taken on new meanings for me as I’ve wrestled with some of life’s tougher questions. You might call it the “Parable of the Elephant.” This is how it goes, as best I remember, with a few adaptations of my own:
There seem to be a number of disaffected Mormons lurking the Bloggernacle these days.
I am not one of them.
Here is why.
Not so long ago I thought I knew certain things were true and wavering was a self-inflicted condition. I also really thought I was an independent thinker who had chosen to be a conservative Republican, and to believe that homosexuality was an illness, and that the priesthood ban was imposed by God for some reason we just couldn’t understand, and that polygamy was a holy practice when it was sanctioned, and that church leaders past and present were inspired in all things and represented the will of the Lord. I thought I chose those positions because they were simply the right, or true, things and I felt that it was of paramount importance to be right with God.
Something changed. Continue reading…
With this episode we begin a 3-part series dealing with the idea of “Inoculating the Saints.” This first episode hails from the 2007 Salt Lake Sunstone symposium. The abstract reads:
Would fewer members leave the Church if they were taught about the stickier issues of LDS history and theology in faithful, institutional settings rather than stumbling upon them on the Internet or from other sources? Perhaps fewer members would feel “betrayed” by the Church when they encounter troubling information after being in the Church for years without being taught about discrepancies. But were the Church to more proactively engage in “information inoculation,” would so doing better serve faith and spiritual growth? What should the role of the Church as an institution be in doing this versus that of LDS independent and apologist groups? In the lead-up to the 150th anniversary of the Mountain Meadows Massacre in September, 2007, we are seeing a few Church-directed efforts to teach members about this terrible episode. Are we seeing an institutional shift in the way they will engage challenging issues from now on?
The speakers on this panel include:
- CHARLES RANDALL PAUL, Ph.D., Panelist director, Foundation for Interreligious Diplomacy; board member, Society for Mormon Philosophy and Theology
- BLAKE OSTLER, attorney; author, Exploring Mormon Thought: The Attributes of God and Exploring Mormon Thought: The Problems of Theism and the Love of God
- KEVIN BARNEY, attorney; author of numerous articles on LDS scripture and theology; member, FAIR board of directors
- MIKE ASH, owner and webmaster, MORMONFORTRESS.COM; author, “The Sin ‘Next to Murder’: An Alternative Interpretation” (SUNSTONE, November 2006)
A big thanks, as always, to Clayton Pixton for providing the wonderfully inspirational bumper music for this podcast.
In the subsequent 2 Mormon Matters episodes, our panel will discuss this panel presentation, and the idea of inoculation.
If you enjoy this presentation, please check out other past Sunstone presentations here.
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