Posts Tagged ‘ LDS ’

51: The Dynamics of Guilt and Shame

September 14, 2011
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51: The Dynamics of Guilt and Shame

Many people–and Latter-day Saints are no exception– struggle with feelings of “not being enough,” worthlessness, or that they are unlovable by others, God, and themselves. Those who feel this way are caught up in the throes of toxic shame–a distortion and perversion of natural and healthy feelings of “guilt” over wrong choices or healthy types of shame that help moderate the ways we act in public and in interactions with others. The gospel teaches us of our infinite worth and of our Heavenly Parents’ unconditional love for each of us no matter what mistakes we make. So why do we…

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50: The Call to Be Peacemakers

September 6, 2011
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50: The Call to Be Peacemakers

The tenth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks provide an important moment for all of us to reflect on life’s most precious things and what we hold in our hearts about family, friends, neighbors, our wider communities, strangers, and those with whom we disagree about what’s most important for the world and how to bring it about. This sacred occasion also provides a good incentive for thinking about what it means to be called by Christ as peacemakers. In this podcast, Mormon Matters host Dan Wotherspoon and panelists Charles Randall Paul, Liz Shropshire, and James Faulconer reflect upon today’s world…

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49: Mormonism’s Messages about Motherhood

August 30, 2011
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49: Mormonism’s Messages about Motherhood

This panel discussion examines the wonderful gifts of Mormonism’s strong emphases and teachings about the divine role of motherhood as well as the external and internal pressures that come with these messages and how they sometimes work against the more basic gospel goal of helping women fully flourish and grow in godlike qualities. In this far-ranging and insight-packed conversation, panelists Chelsea Fife, Chelsea Strayer, and Jennifer Finlayson-Fife all maintain the utmost gratitude for their own role as mothers and for church emphases on motherhood’s many joys while also examining ways we as Latter-day Saints might change some of our messaging…

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48: Mormonism and Evolution

August 23, 2011
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48: Mormonism and Evolution

This year marks the one hundredth anniversary of the controversies over the study and teaching of evolution at Brigham Young University that resulted in the resignations or firing of three of Brigham Young University’s prominent faculty members and a significant blow to the university career of another. This Mormon Matters episode tells key elements in the story of those 1911 events, but it primarily uses them as a launching pad for a tour of the history of LDS views and approaches to evolution from then to now, as well as more specific reflections on the various tensions between Mormon scriptural…

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47: When Worldviews Go Haywire: Breivik, Jeffs, and the Religion/Mental Health Matrix

August 16, 2011
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47: When Worldviews Go Haywire: Breivik, Jeffs, and the Religion/Mental Health Matrix

The recent tragedy in Oslo and the Warren Jeffs trial provide two recent examples that remind us of the way various personality traits and/or mental issues coupled with isolation and the refusal to allow one’s own ideas to be challenged can lead to horrific acts of violence and depravity that the perpetrators claim to view as righteous. In this podcast, Mormon Matters host Dan Wotherspoon and panelists Joanna Brooks and Natasha Helfer Parker examine various angles into how distorted worldviews like these take hold, the influence of nature and nurture (including religious factors), as well as some of the things…

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46: In Memoriam—Sister Chieko Okazaki and Elder Marion D. Hanks

August 10, 2011
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The first week of August 2011 saw the passing of two giants in the Mormon universe: Sister Chieko Okazaki, a former counselor in the Relief Society general presidency and beloved author and speaker, and Elder Marion D. Hanks, a long-time general authority who many looked up to as one of Mormonism’s greatest champions for love, equality, and Christian service. This episode is a celebration and appreciation of their lives through conversation with intimate friends. Mormon Matters host, Dan Wotherspoon, first interviews Sister Aileen Clyde, who served from 1990 to 1997 as a fellow counselor with Sister Okazaki in the Relief…

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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 only”…

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44: A Vital Legacy of Independent Mormon Thought: Dialogue and Sunstone

July 27, 2011
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Sunstone cartoon

The Sunstone Symposium that begins next week (3 – 6 August) provides an excellent springboard into a discussion of the history and focuses of two of the longest-running and most important entities in independent Mormon thought: Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought and Sunstone (magazine and host of multiple conferences each year). In today’s Internet world with ever-increasing numbers of Mormon-themed websites, blogs, and podcasts, it is sometimes easy to forget that many of the most frequent topics under discussion in today’s forums have been debated and discussed in uncorrelated publications and gatherings for more than four decades, and that…

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43: Healthy Approaches to Teaching Modesty

July 20, 2011
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43: Healthy Approaches to Teaching Modesty

In today’s LDS youth programs, especially those for young women, modesty has become even more of an emphasis than in years and decades past. Of course modesty is important, but are some of the ways modesty is being taught today more harmful than helpful for youth who are undergoing important transitions in their lives? Is modesty being taught too often as an end in itself rather than as a fruit that flows from a life and self-image rooted in healthy spiritual, emotional, and physical confidence? Furthermore, is modesty being taught too early, becoming an emphasis far ahead of when it…

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42: Pros and Cons of Keeping Mormonism “Weird”

July 13, 2011
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42: Pros and Cons of Keeping Mormonism “Weird”

Recent decades have seen a decrease in emphases of and public and internal discussions of many of Mormonism’s most distinctive doctrines and practices–especially some that are often thought of as “weird.” Has this trend of downplaying Mormon differences from mainline Christian views, as well as many of Mormonism’s interesting and unique blend of views about human progression, the nature of God and humans, God’s power and goals for the world, the idea of a Heavenly Mother, and so forth, been a net positive or negative for the tradition? Clearly Mormonism is more publicly accepted today (with obvious exceptions), but would…

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40–41: Ritual within Mormonism

July 5, 2011
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40–41: Ritual within Mormonism

In this two-part discussion, Mormon Matters host Dan Wotherspoon and panelists Julia Hunter, Chelsea Strayer, and Chelsea Fife explore insights from myth and ritual studies and the ways these ideas help illuminate aspects of Mormon devotional and cultural experience. Can having a better understanding of ritual structure, how ritual functions in social life, and ritual’s intent to lead us out of everyday rhythms and ways of relating to each other and into new head and heart spaces in which we learn and feel things of significance in different ways help us gain deeper appreciation for Mormonism’s many rituals? In Episode…

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39: Intellectuals and the Mormon Tradition

June 28, 2011
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39: Intellectuals and the Mormon Tradition

In early June, the Deseret News published a list compiled by Leonard J. Arrington in 1969 of the “most eminent intellectuals in Mormon history.” As you can imagine, the feature generated a lot of discussion both on the newspaper’s website, as well as in many corners of the Mormon bloggernacle. Who among those listed still belong in the Top Ten? Who should be on there now? Why aren’t any women listed, and which women should have made that list then or if a new list were compiled today? <br /> In this Mormon Matters episode, host Dan Wotherspoon and panelists…

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38: Illegal Immigration and Religion

June 21, 2011
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38: Illegal Immigration and Religion

On 10 June 2011, the LDS Church released an official statement on immigration that calls for Latter-day Saints and others to honor families and treat each other, foremost, as children of God while at the same time calling for the federal government to provide strong border security and discouraging its own members from entering any country illegally. It also expresses strong concern for the nearly twelve million people who are already in the United States illegally, urging lawmakers and citizens to strive to keep families together and work toward these people being able to “square themselves with the law and…

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37: Why Are Mormons Seen as “Dangerous” by Some Evangelical Christians?

June 14, 2011
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37: Why Are Mormons Seen as “Dangerous” by Some Evangelical Christians?

A recent article at the Patheos website by evangelical Christian writer and publisher Warren Cole Smith made a big splash both on that website and in Mormon circles because of Smith’s argument that a Mitt Romney presidency would be “dangerous” for many souls who could lose their salvation if they were led astray by Mormonism’s false teachings about God and Christ. Smith hangs his case for a president’s religious beliefs being a strong enough influence for something like this to happen on several claims that many, including other evangelicals writing at Patheos, find dubious. Yet, according to Smith (and the…

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35–36: Moving Beyond the “Negro Doctrine”

June 7, 2011
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35–36: Moving Beyond the “Negro Doctrine”

This month marks the thirty-third anniversary of the 1978 revelation extending the priesthood to “all worthy males” in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Since that day, little has been said by Church leaders on any topic related to the ban, including the reasons for the ban, the doctrinal justifications for the ban, and the process by which the ban came into existence in the first place. Even without such clarifications, the Church has nevertheless successfully grown in Africa and in U.S. inner cities with large African-American communities. Mormon Matters is very pleased this week to for the…

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34: Self-Identifying as “Mormon”

May 31, 2011
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34: Self-Identifying as “Mormon”

Mormonism has always been a home to members with many different religious temperaments, levels of belief, attitudes toward authority, and commitment to and comfort within the community. Still, even with this diversity, Mormonism has often felt to many members (and certainly to most outsiders) as monolithic—if the diversity is there, it hasn’t always been easy to find those “like you.” Indeed, much of this sense and appearance of unity came as a result of the efforts of the institutional church to deliberately set and convey fairly rigid boundaries about what constituted orthodoxy and orthopraxis, and who was and was not…

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33: The LDS Church and Its Single Young Adults, Part 2

May 25, 2011
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33: The LDS Church and Its Single Young Adults, Part 2

Episode 31 provided a solid first framing of many of the issues faced by Mormon young single adults—of which group, some 80 percent are becoming inactive at least for a period of time, and many are deciding to leave the church altogether. This episode follows up on that discussion, but focuses on hearing the voices of those in this age group themselves, hearing in their own words about their spiritual journeys, their experiences in singles wards, the messages that are being taught from the pulpit, in classes, and through interactions with church leaders, and the ways these messages are being…

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32: Heavenly Mother in Today’s Mormonism

May 17, 2011
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32: Heavenly Mother in Today’s Mormonism

The most recent issue of BYU Studies features the article, “ ‘A Mother There’: A Survey of Historical Teachings about Mother in Heaven,” co-written by David L. Paulsen and Martin Pulido. (Here is a link to the article and also a blog post on it by Joanna Brooks.) The article presents an overview of research that attempted to find every printed or recorded mention of Mother in Heaven or Heavenly Parents by LDS leaders. It is a great piece of scholarship and much needed. In this podcast discussion, host Dan Wotherspoon and panelists Martin Pulido (article co-author), Tresa Edmunds, and…

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31: The LDS Church and Its Single Young Adults

May 10, 2011
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31: The LDS Church and Its Single Young Adults

Official statistics are hard to come by, but it has become clear over the past several years that Mormonism is seeing many of its 18- to 30-year-olds reduce their participation in the church or leave the faith altogether. Two recent actions confirm this trend and reveal the church’s initial responses in trying to stem the tide. First, in an effort to better track singles and help them feel connected to a local unit by providing new opportunities for callings and meeting other singles without “ward hopping,” the church has disbanded Utah student wards and reorganized them into singles wards in…

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30: Mormon Women and Equality

May 3, 2011
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30: Mormon Women and Equality

Michael Otterson, head of the LDS Church’s Public Affairs department, recently wrote a short piece for the Washington Post‘s “On Faith” blog titled, “What Mormon Equality Looks Like.” In his post, he cites three anonymous LDS women who assert their equality with men in terms of access to pulpits to teach and pray, their chances to preside over Church organizations, their equality “in the eyes of God, as equal halves of a divine pair and equal partners in his work, which includes the raising of families,” as well as equality in their rights to “direct access to God through prayer…

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