This year I received a Christmas card from the First Presidency. I have heard that Church employees get one, but it has not been my experience so far. Nor did it occur to me that I would get one. I received it with a DVD for the youth of our ward. I cannot tell whether it was to accompany the DVD or whether Bishops get Christmas cards every year (this is my first Christmas as a Bishop).
The 1960s was a time of turmoil in the United States. This turmoil extended to American college campuses. It focused on the Free Speech Movement and civil rights in the south, and gradually extended to the U.S. involvement in the war in Southeast Asia. Some American colleges remained unmolested by the times. One was Brigham Young University. This would not last. In the late 1960s, BYU became the focus of protests at its athletic competitions, over the LDS Church policy of barring blacks from the priesthood.
At 10:00am on a brisk August morning in 1844 Sidney Rigdon addressed the Saints. Brigham Young spoke briefly before the break and at length in the afternoon, at which point they voted for a new leader. Arrington notes that the response was almost unanimous, but the subsequent disaffection from the Church shows that not all was well in Zion. This experience raises interesting questions for me about the role of Common Consent in the Church. Seeing this is General Conference weekend (and we have just had a sustaining vote), I ask: Have we moved from a democracy to prophetocracy, and...
This is the next installment in my series about what gives Mormonism staying power and makes it an effective religion at winning and retaining adherents.
In a church that requires chastity but a world in which random hookups are the norm, what about the plight of single adults who are well past the average Mormon dating age? Or even more difficult, what about those divorced members who are committed to the law of chastity, but also facing the dating scene again? Today’s guest post is by Single Mormon Chick who also blogs at The Law of Chastity and the Modern Mormon Girl.
Alice Walker, who wrote about the heartbreak of female genital mutilation quoted an African proverb in the beginning of her book Possessing the Secret of Joy: “I have seen the axe, and the handle is one of us.” Are women our own worst enemy when it comes to reinforcing stereotypes and norms that limit women?
I wanted to do a series of posts on aspects of the LDS church that I consider to be sheer religious genius. These are religous practices or concepts that have given Mormonism its staying power, and when compared to other religions are “best-in-class” (to borrow a term from business). The first practice I will address is full-time missions.
In our current callings, my wife and I spend a lot of time digging through Church instruction manuals. I teach both the 12/13 year old Sunday School class (weekly) as well as Elders’ Quorum (once a month). My wife serves as the Laurels adviser, and is responsible for teaching at least a couple of lessons per month. Nearly everybody who has served in a teaching capacity can point to some instance in which they have viewed the correlated manual as lacking in some respect, be it too bland, too overly positive in its historical view, or just plain out...
Here’s the one lesson I learned from my 3.5 year stint as an Elders Quorum President: never, ever aspire to be a Bishop. Seriously, it is a thankless job. To put a finer point on it, being a Bishop is an honest-to-goodness, up-to-40-hours-per-week, full-time thankless job. Not to mention the fact that the pay (-10%) is really lousy. An evergreen subject here in the Bloggernacle, it seems, is the outing of “bad Bishops.” I cannot begin to count the number of posts and comments I have read over the past few years in which people have complained about all...
What is good leadership? How did Joseph Smith envision church leadership? How does that differ from the church today and how is it the same? Today’s lesson is from the Joseph Smith manual #24, Leading in the Lord’s Way.
How do we create and maintain unity at church while valuing diversity and avoiding conformity? Do we have to embrace the diversity of those who value conformity? Do we have to unify with those whose diversity gives us the heebie jeebies?
This week’s lesson might sound like a repeat from the previous lesson on Plan of Salvation, but it is much more specifically focused on one of my favorite aspects of our theology: the 3 degrees of glory.
This is the last installment of Our Foundation Stories, I promise! As a child, I heard the story of the restoration of the Aaronic and Melchizedek priesthoods this way: In May of 1829 Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery were praying in the woods about baptism and had John the Baptist appear to them, put his hands on their heads, and recite the following, currently found in D & C Section 13: Upon you my fellow servants, in the name of Messiah, I confer the Priesthood of Aaron, which holds the keys of the ministering of angels, and of the...
Tired of talking about gay marriage? How about women and the Priesthood? In all seriousness, let me share with you a recent experience that has had a profound impact on the way I view the concept of Priesthood, and that has convinced me, once and for all, that I am not the sole Priesthood bearer in my family. I believe it’s high time we recognized the service rendered by faithful LDS women as more than simply the fulfillment of a Relief Society assignment, or being a good visiting teacher. Such efforts constitute the righteous exercise of Priesthood power.
