What do Mormons and Muslims have in common? A lot more than you might think. And a popular sitcom about Muslims living in a small Canadian prairie town offers Mormons good suggestions about how best to handle being misunderstood and sometimes mistreated by the “outside world”.
Count up all the liberal Mormons you know. Now, compare that number to the number you knew ten years ago. Now multiply the difference between the two by the number of liberal General Authorities, then subtract from that number the number of anti-intellectual General Conference addresses you have heard in the last three years.
Growing up in a fairly liberal Orange County town I was exposed to differing cultures and religions. Hindu, Jewish, Jehovah’s Witness, Church of Religious Science, and Alternative Spiritualities. I remember a girl who was Hindu who wore different types of clothes than the other girls. The inner dialog: She is Hindu. She wears the clothes of her religion. I’ve learned something about Hinduism.
If you spend any time here in the Bloggernacle, or leafing through the pages of any number of “alternate voices,” you are bound to encounter Eugene England. A founder of Dialogue, England — a former Bishop, LDS missionary, and BYU Professor — is a patron saint of the Mormon intellectual community, oft-revered as “our greatest essayist.” But for all of our lip service, we — as a Church and as an Internet community — could still learn a thing or two by actually putting his more challenging philosophies into practice.
Here are 3 videos (all together about 30 minutes) from a recent Oprah episode where she interivews Thomas Beatie about being the worlds first pregnant man.
Are Mormons really more persecuted than other faiths or do Mormons just perceive that because the criticism is aimed at us? Are there as many anti-[insert religion here] as there are anti-Mormons? I decided to take a very cursory, unscientific, yet interesting look at this question.
Today’s post is by Ghost Writer. Definitely Definitely Watch The Video Above – all will be explained later
Late last night as I was putting the finishing touches on my Monday morning blog post, I heard a faint knocking on the front door of my home. When I opened the door I saw no one there, but heard the pitter-patter of little feet fading off in the distance. Something caught my eye on the doorstep. It appeared to be a manifesto of sorts, scrawled on the blank insides of a flattened cereal box with crayons of assorted colors. I have no idea who wrote the message, but whoever did was pretty upset about the talk that Elder Ballard…
An open ‘nacle invitation: What were your favorite moments/quotes from General Conference?
Mention the word “Trinity” to a group of Mormons and the response you’ll get probably will be “I don’t believe that false doctrine of Satan!” [1] Mormons often even feel more kinship with religions like the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who also reject the Trinity doctrine, than we do with orthodox Christians on this topic. But do we Mormons even understand what the doctrine of Trinity really is?
An older friend of mine remarked that time seems to fly by now. She quipped that it felt like she was changing the sheets every morning. As you close on eight years old, a month is about the same part of your life that a year is in your nineties. At her age, changing the sheets once a week really has become subjectively changing them every morning in the time frame of when she was younger. That comment made me think about the way time would dilate for me if I was a couple thousand years old. Or how it…
I know this is really anecdotal, but almost everyone I know is serving a stateside mission. I have wondering about this situation and wonder (if its true on the aggregate) why this is the case. It would only make sense when you think about it to keep missionaries native. As the church grows and expands, I think it’s probably inevitable. Undoubtedly there are benefits to sending Elder Junior to Africa or South America (important optimal Americanism, and multiculturizing the missionary), but there are some benefits to staying home as well. Here are a few:
Look up there . . . . who’s that emceeing the Ward Roadshow? Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s the Mormon Answer Man!! Faster than a missionary speeding downhill towards a dinner appointment. Able to pull three heavy-laden handcarts at a time. Behold his breath-taking adventures after the jump, if you dare . . .
Outside of my own library and the virtual community I’m connected to through the internet, Mormondom has very little impact on my immediate environment in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The LDS Institute has a prominent place next to the university, but the LDS chapel is across the river in a part of town we rarely visit. The Community of Christ chapel is in the Old West Side historic district across the street from the home of our closest friends and there’s a Church of Jesus Christ (Bickertonite) branch out past Target. Once every six months or so we have a missionary…
Ben Stein is prominently featured in an upcoming documentary called “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” where he takes a stab a neo-darwinism, and seeks to bring increased legitimacy to the intelligent design camp. The creation vs. evolution debate is of course nothing new to Mormons, as the early and mid 20th century saw a good deal of postulation and debate on this matter among LDS Church leaders. Typically, Mormons seem generally untroubled by the issue, often finding resolution with “religion tells us why, science tells us how.” Mormons tend to be willing to accept the fossil record and the geological data…
April 1986: President Benson presides over his first General Conference. Did anyone listening to his humble little talk, called “Cleaning the Inner Vessel,” realize that it would send ripples through the Church and start a massive change in Church policy and doctrine?
Not long ago I was watching a Tyler Perry movie and found myself applauding an action of one of the characters. This was an action which would draw condemnation from Mormons. From the viewer’s omniscient position, it was the right thing to do. This was a world in which Mormonism for all intents and purposes didn’t exist. It got me thinking about other worlds where Mormonism didn’t enter into the equation, and about what kind of lives I would gladly imagine myself living in them… 10. Glasgow, Scotland: A Catholic of Irish descent, I work for the Celtic Football Club…
For the unindoctrinated, MBTI (Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator) is a psychometric that classifies people into one of 16 profiles. It is primarily used to help people get along better at work (along with staples like Wacky Bowling and Ropes courses). So, what is Jesus’ MBTI type? Does Jesus’ personality type create a subtle bias against religious leaders (or even followers) with different personality traits?
I was raised in a household of faith. My parents are believers who encouraged discussion of religion in their home. I’ve asked around and found that this isn’t the case in many LDS homes. My parents asked what we children learned in Primary and Sunday School and then what we thought about it!
“The idea of a forever forward is not more or less simple than that of a forever backward. Yet, in our culture, one idea is commonplace, the other startling, even unthinkable.” ~Truman Madsen I always find myself in a little conundrum when I’m teaching about the mysterious pre-mortal life (from the approved materials, of course!), and how we were all born spiritually. Spiritual birth discussions always lead to the Abraham scripture about intelligences, and everything gets stuck there. Who can really say what “intelligence(s)” is? Some have taken a stab at it:
Another chance to turn your brain off…and laugh.
As members of the LDS Church, we recognize that the Gospel was “restored” to the earth through the Prophet Joseph Smith and that he founded the Church on April 6, 1830. A question we might ask ourselves is: what is the actual purpose of the Church? Why does it exist? How does it help us? And, do we need it to exist to in order to achieve exaltation in the Celestial Kingdom, living with Heavenly Father and Jesus for all eternity?
If you’ll indulge me, I’d like to let Mormon Matters readers know about a recent interesting development in Mormon literature that I’m involved in as a publisher (definitely on a nonprofit basis): “The news that Coke Newell’s novel On the Road to Heaven won Best Novel at the new Whitney Awards could have interesting implications for the LDS market,” writes literary reporter Kent Larsen at Mormon culture blog A Motley Vision. “Since the novel also won the Association for Mormon Letters Best Novel award earlier this year, Newell’s work is clearly the consensus novel of the year.”
“Elders are agreed on the way and manner necessary to obtain celestial glory, but they quarrel about a dollar. When principles of eternal life are brought before them—God and the things pertaining to God and godliness—they apparently care not half so much about them as they do about five cents. Instead of reflecting upon and searching for hidden things of greatest value to them, [the Latter-day Saints] rather wish to learn how to secure their way through the world as easily and as comfortably as possible. The reflections, what they are here for, who produced them, and where they are…
In speaking of other faiths, Joseph Smith admonished early church members to “gather all the good and true principles in the world and treasure them up” or they would not be “true Mormons” [Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 316]. Are the true principles only the ones we have in common? Why principles (vs. doctrines or values or practices)? What are the true principles that are unique to other faiths, not encompassed in Mormonism, that we should gather and treasure up?
1 Kings Chapter 18 tells the story of Elijah and the priests of Baal. We read that Elijah and Ahab confront each other, and Elijah challenges Ahab’s new god, Baal, and his priests in showdown of divine power. After the priests are unable to summon Baal’s power to burn their scarified offering, Elijah succeeds in doing so by engaging the powers of heaven. Everyone learns a good lesson about not trusting in idols and the need to serve God, but a rather disconcerting detail about what Elijah does next is often overlooked.
Today’s post is by Ghost Writer. Coming to a theatre near you (if you live in Utah) March 28th
I don’t necessarily disagree with the points made by BYU law professor Lynn D. Wardle in his Salt Lake Tribune editorial regarding the Elliott Spitzer affair (“Infidelity by elected officials rightfully is a public issue,” March 21). However, I think it’s important to step back and acknowledge that it is within the realm of possibility for a political leader to be both a good leader and an immoral person in his private life.
Nauvoo was a mistake. At the close of the Missouri Mormon War in the winter of 1838-39, the Saints crossed the icy Mississippi. The people of Quincy, Illinois, were aghast at their condition and opened their hearts and their homes to the refugees. A new gathering place needed to be planted and the church soon found a hopeful location upriver from Quincy — approximately at the border between Illinois, Missouri and the Iowa Territory.
A chance to turn your brain off…and laugh.
Let me be clear about a few things. First, I have been diagnosed as a liberal Mormon. Second, liberal Mormonism has been discussed before in the Bloggernacle, with one site devoted entirely to it. Third, I’m not talking about politics. Finally, this means some Mormons have problems with me.
