Sorta-liveblogging general conference: Saturday morning session

Welcome, welcome, SabbathSaturday morning. As i’ve done for the past few general conferences, i’ll be semi-liveblogging each conference session, by which i mean that i’ll be jotting down thoughts during each session of conference and posting them after the session ends.

An explanation of the way these are ordered: The entries are arranged the same way as the last couple times i did these, which may be confusing at first. This is because blogs arrange things chronologically from bottom to top, despite millennia of Western writing practice, so that if you visit this page after conference is over, the final session will show up first, followed by the Sunday morning session, then the priesthood session, and so on.

I’m going with the same ordering within each post so that readers don’t have to do quite so much scrolling. Therefore, each session’s post is written bottom-up (i.e., first speaker at the end of the post, preceded by the second speaker, and so on, with the final speaker at the top of the post). However, each speaker’s entries are given in the order i write them. This is probably confusing, but so are any of the other alternative i’ve come up with (and certainly less confusing than a true live-blogging format, i think). Anyway, this means that this is where you scroll to the bottom of this post, and then start reading upwards.

Henry B. Eyring (of the first presidency)

• Interesting that all three members of the first presidency (including even Dieter F. Unchtdorf in his brief opening remarks) made direct reference to the need to work toward the temporal salvation of others, while everyone else in this session, if they dealt with the topic, did so only indirectly or as part of a larger focus.
• He quoted a good chunk of the song ”Have I Done Any Good in the World Today“—i started to wonder if he was going to quote the old lyrics (that is, the stark line “only he who does something is worthy to live”). No such luck, though.
• Interesting arguments for the importance of involving children in temporal service (if not an outright plea for people to do so).
• The story of the family that returned from holiday after the Teton dam burst was interesting—this is where i start wishing i had primary sources to find out more about the people involved.
• Nice twist on the term “self-reliance”, with the implication (if not outright direct statement) that what follows true self-reliance is actually giving one’s surplus to others. (Insert spooky music and mutterings about “sharing the wealth” here…)
• He pointed out that we’re commanded not just to help the poor, but also to seek them out to help them. That’s actually a tough command at times.
• A churchwide day of service later this year? Interesting.

Quentin L. Cook (or the quorum of apostles)

• I find lists of qualities that women have to be interesting, given that one finds the same qualities as men. (Of course, the sociological training i have leads me to hold that the minor differences in the way those qualities manifest themselves are at least primarily the result of differences in socialization. I guess that means that i’m irredeemably evil, then. Oh, well.)
• The story of the purse had really nicely amusing moments. (Of course, part of my mind kept thinking, “Wow, that girl knows how to accessorize for church functions in case someone looks in her purse. Talk about being prepared!”)
• Another thought from the sociological side of my brain: I wonder to what extent the satisfaction that Mormon women (and men, though he didn’t focus on that) have with their religion is the result of church policies and procedures, and to what extent it’s the result of self-selection among women.
• Bishops are supposed to delegate more. Does this mean that one day they’ll be able to skip out on leadership meetings, too?
• What’s that? Men who skip out on serving full-time missions still have all of the saving ordinances available to them? Heresy!
• Actually, from the statistics i’ve seen, it’s not so much that fewer people are getting married so much as that people are opting to get married at later ages—you know, closer to the average age of first marriages, say, 500 years ago.
• Wow! A blunt, direct statement telling people not to judge families where the mother works outside the home—that’s something i don’t think i’ve ever heard in a general conference (or even a stake conference) before. Telling people bluntly not to judge couples who don’t have children, yes, that i’ve heard before (and there’s wider social recognition of the impoliteness involved there, too)—but this is a potential first.

Kent F. Richards (of the quorums of the seventy)

• Kent F. Richards was a surgeon. I wonder if him talking about medical stuff is the equivalent of Dieter F. Uchtdorf talking about airplanes.
• Interesting that he implicitly assumes that we earn forgiveness.
• Is direct revelation actually different from personal experience?
• Interesting approach, so closely equating physical pain and spiritual sin.

The choir sang “I Know That My Redeemer Lives” here. It’s not a bad song to sing, really, but listening to it—wow, it’s really repetitive, isn’t it?

Walter F. González (of the presidency of the seventy)

• There’s a lot of interesting stuff in the first half to two-thirds of this address, but it’s being hard to pull out single specific items to comment on (either snarkily or seriously).
• His statement that loving Christ results in receiving the strength to follow Christ is an interesting one, since one could also say that following Christ results in loving Christ. The issue then becomes how one can jump into the cycle, you know?
• Interesting idea that our covenants are inherently stronger than our challenges. That’s one to mull over.

Jean A. Stevens (of the general primary presidency)

• She gives the story of “a general authority” who went on assignment to Hong Kong, and what came of his counsel. Why didn’t she name the general authority? The construction reminds me of the awkward way so many stories in the lesson manuals opened when i was a kid. (That sort of construction didn’t bother me when she said stuff like “a ten-year-old boy”. Maybe it’s the difference between referring to minors and adults? Or maybe between celebrities of whatever sort and non-celebrities? I’ll have to think about this.)
• One interesting thing is that this is an address by a member of the general primary presidency that’s unambiguously directed toward the adults in the audience. Yes, it’s about children, but members of primary presidencies very often aim for dual audiences (adults and children).
• “Behold” is a semi-archaic word meaning, quite simply, “look at”. Due to its archaic nature it sounds more impressive, but it really only means that. Yeah, it doesn’t mean to just glance at or whatever, but we really shouldn’t try to make individual words mean more than they really do.

L. Tom Perry (of the quorum of apostles)

• I always like addresses that talk about the importance of the Bible—yes, we have unique scripture with stuff like the Book of Mormon (well, nearly unique—there are other religions that accept that as scripture, after all), but it’s important not to forget the stuff we share widely with others, too.
• This whole discussion of the sacrament raises a question that i wonder about occasionally: Why is priesthood authority necessary for the blessing and passing of the sacrament? (I suppose that’s a question particularly for the “and passing” part of the question.)
• He quoted the scriptural passage that says we’re to go to church and take the sacrament, and do “none other thing” (and he gave special emphasis to that phrase). I’ve always found it interesting that that’s immediately followed by an exception: We’re explicitly allowed to prepare food.
• Ah! The claim that outward appearance necessarily reflects inward attitudes! Maybe sometimes, even often, but as a blanket statement?
• He said that we should avoid amusements (to use an old-fashioned term) on Sundays, and followed that by quoting the line from the New Testament that the Sabbath was made for people, not people for the Sabbath. I got a bit of mental whiplash trying to follow that argument, to be quite honest.
• Can y’all of my generation imagine using glass cups for the sacrament? The handwashing requirements would have been annoying, to put it mildly.

Thomas S. Monson (president of the high priesthood)

• It always surprises me when general authorities said they didn’t think they’d fill the Conference Center. (I remember the original public announcement saying that they didn’t expect to fill it at first.) I’m actually surprised they underestimated the demand so strongly, given that, e.g.,  Brigham Young University’s Marriott Center fills for visiting general authorities, and sometimes large stadiums (stadia?) get filled by church members for visiting authorities.
• Three new temples: Fort Collins, Colorado; Meridian, Idaho; and Winnipeg, Manitoba. Of those, Winnipeg fills in the most obvious and glaring hole in the map. Actually, given Winnipeg’s traditional role as the transportation hub of the Canadian plains, i was surprised when Regina got one before Winnipeg did.
• Some people say that the church shouldn'’t announce like this when we’re providing humanitarian service (you know, the whole don’t trumpet your good deeds before the world thing). I disagree, actually—letting members of the church know that good works are being done is a way of getting them to feel like it’s simply a normal thing to do, and therefore to make it more likely that they’ll do such stuff in the future.

Allan F. Packer (of the quorums of the seventy)

• He prayed that we’ll live so that we can merit blessings (i didn’t get the exact words). The tension over the primacy of grace vs. primacy of works tension really is alive and well within Mormonism, you know?

Dieter F. Uchtdorf (of the first presidency), opening remarks

• This conference is the 75th anniversary of the church’s welfare program. Given his personal history, he may well feel the importance of that more intensely than many others of the general authorities.

Well, it is the beginning of April

Given the day, i figured i’d come up with a story about how this blog was being discontinued, and i’d be working on a regular dead-serious column about the perfection of mainstream Utah Mormon culture for LatterDayConservative.com from now on.

But i couldn’t keep a straight face even while i was trying to start typing it up, so i figured it wouldn’t look at all convincing to y’all.

Sorry. Maybe i’ll do better next year.

Proper citations

So speaking of “If You Could Hie to Kolob”, i’ve been in sacrament meetings a few times now where we’ve been told that ward member X was going to play a solo instrumental rendition of that song.

Really? Wouldn’t it have been more accurate to say that she (and it’s always been a she, for whatever reason) was going to play Ralph Vaughan Williams’s arrangement of the Christmas carol “Dives and Lazarus”? I mean, it seems a bit presumptuous of us to claim Williams’s work as our own, as if putting our most space-doctrinish hymn to that piece of music meant we were the only ones that happened to recognize its existence and use it.

And who hies anymore, anyway?

So yesterday my ward sang “If You Could Hie to Kolob”.* It brought to mind something one of my missionary companions once mentioned when i was a full-time missionary in Germany. He said (paraphrasing from time-hazed but still strong memory)

You know, i hope they don’t ever translate “If You Could Hie to Kolob” into German—if they did, half the German LDS would leave the church. [pause] Well, and the other half would sing it every Sunday!

(It’s probably only amusing if you’ve spent much time around Mormons in Germany, but for those of us who have…)

Anyway, i haven’t gone through the 1996 Gesangbuch (the German hymnal) page by page to check on this (and they didn’t provide an index of authors, like they did in the English version), so i may be wrong, but as far as i can tell from a quick scan, a translation of the song isn’t to be found in there—so my companion’s prediction will have to wait a few more decades for testing, i suppose.

* Yes, my two oldest spontaneously sang “there is no end to this song” along with me in place of “there is no end to being” in the final verse. I feel that i can rest easy in the sure knowledge that i have raised them well.

Advantages

I’ve mentioned a few times that i have all daughters and no sons, and sometimes i feel like i’m the only active Mormon guy around in that situation.

There is one very, very big advantage that this gives me, though, you know. Specifically:

I will always have an easy out when it comes to father-son campouts.

All you guys out there with sons can feel free to be jealous now.

In which David B pretends to be a deep thinker

I’ve read a good number of mainstream Xian critiques of the Mormon view of God from various sources, and they generally leave me with a simple question, based on the common claim that the mainstream Xian view of God entails a God who/that is absolutely perfect in every possible way and exceeds in all things, namely:

What's so great about absolute greatness?

This probably sounds like a joke, but it’s a serious question. If a critique of the Mormon conception of God is that the Mormon view entails a God who is not as wondrous as the mainstream Xian view entails,* then why is that supposed to be such a huge criticism? I see no inherent reason that that should be a valid critique; it seems to me that it’s a critique simply and only because it goes against some people’s underlying assumptions about the nature of deity, not because it somehow is a problem with a conception of deity.

And remember, an argument like “Isn’t it better to worship an absolutely great deity than a limited though still great deity?” won’t hold for this—i want concrete arguments here, not arguments in the abstract. It might be better if life here on earth didn’t involve the ebola virus, for example, but proposing an earth without ebola doesn’t make reality any different. I’m looking for arguments that speak to reality—and i haven’t found any yet.

* Something i’m not ceding, but which i offer as a basis for rational discussion on this issue.

Choosing friends

Every once in a while, the youth of the church get told (generally at the local level) that they should only date members of the church, and in fact that they should preferentially make friends with members of the church.

Beyond the fact that such advice makes me wonder whether we really are as missionary-oriented a religion as we tend to think, i suspect that such advice actually stems from people porting in ideas from the jello belt areas where Mormons are found in relatively large numbers.

Consider: If the number of youth who are Mormon nearby is larger, it’s easier to have Mormon dates/friends who are good influences selected from the total pool. If you’re a youth who lives near three other Mormon youths and two of them are, um, not quite living according to the principles of the gospel, your good-influence options for friendships among Mormons are terribly restricted. If, however, you can choose from thirty nearby Mormons, even given the same ratios so that twenty of them would be bad influences, that still gives you ten good-influence Mormons to hang out with.

(Of course, this leaves out the fact that the sort of clannishness that advice offers isn’t healthy at all, and also that one has to wonder who’s supposed to be a good influence on people who aren’t themselves good-influence types, but i’m guessing anybody who regularly reads this blog either already knows that or already loathes me enough that they wouldn’t believe me on such points anyway.)

General conference and local television

When i was young enough that i can barely remember it, Washington DC’s channel 5 carried some of the general sessions of general conference, but they stopped that at some point while i was growing up. Anyone know why? It’s not like the number of Mormons in the DC area (and, therefore, the number of likely potential viewers) went down during that time.

Weighing options

When i was in high school, i was heavily involved in extracurricular activities. Some of these, particularly drama, required me to stay after school until rather late in the evening. Since for me to attend seminary i would have had to get up at or before 4:00 in the morning, the only year of high school i attended seminary was the one year my ward offered it Wednesday evenings (and even then i missed several classes).

I’ve mentioned this to some members of the church over the years, and have actually been told by a few of them* how horrible it was that my family didn’t make the “sacrifice” to get me to seminary. For some reason i still think it was important that i got 7–8 hours of sleep a night, and i also think it was important for me to be involved in the activities i was involved in. (Sometimes the choice is between good and good, after all.)

* Usually folks without high schoolers of their own who would have had to get up at 4:00 am, of course.

Why we hate each other

My last post got me thinking about regionalism in the church, and something i’ve often heard from Utah Mormons: Why do Mormons from places outside of Utah hold a grudge against Utah Mormons? Why is there so much Utah Mormon bashing?

Well, i suspect that it’s largely more of a perception thing than anything else, to begin with. I tend to think that it’s simply a case of Mormons having stereotypes about the various cultural subgroups (often geographically based) within Mormonism, and whatever group you’re part of seems to you to be the one that gets slammed the hardest.

That is, Utah Mormons are sensitive to (and notice) jabs at Utah Mormons ’cause they’re Utah Mormons, California Mormons are sensitive to jabs about California Mormons, Eastern [US] Mormons would be sensitive to jabs about Eastern Mormons except that we know we’re evil, &c.

According to my own perception, though, i think there’s also a cultural trend among Utahns (not just Mormons from Utah, by the way) to talk about Utah as if it’s necessarily the greatest place on earth, and everybody’d better agree with that claim—and i would expect a backlash against that sort of thing.

Consider that, while i was growing up in Southern Maryland, i had to listen to Utah transplants go on about how it was too humid (never thinking that some of us might think that the air is actually pleasant in Maryland, but that it’s too dry in Utah), our mountains were just “baby mountains” (completely missing the point when i’d respond “Yeah, but our mountains have trees!”), that it took too long to get to church (40 minutes on Sunday morning for my family before they improved the roads, an hour and a half for some families in the ward), and the like. I feel that, faced with such, it would only be natural to expect a certain amount of backlash.

So i’m sorta sorry, Utahns, but i feel no sympathy.

Sometimes being a missionary is fun

Completely true personal story: Back when i was a full-time missionary (i was sent to Germany and Austria), i had a missionary companion (a Utahn) who, when introducing himself to people, would go on and on at length about how Utah was the greatest place on earth—and one of his “proofs” of this was that Utah has every sort of landscape possible: there's desert, mountains, forest, &c. I dealt with this for a while until i as a born-and-bred Marylander couldn't take it any longer and i broke in (in German and as innocent-sounding as i could manage it) with “Really? I didn't know Utah had any ocean coastline.” I still think that the minimal cruelty was entirely worth it for the expression on his face.

Should it be a classic?

I recently ran across an old copy of Spencer W. Kimball’s The Miracle of Forgiveness that was sitting on the wrong shelf, and i flipped through it. I didn’t do a close rereading of it or anything, but it reminded me that i’ve never understood the appeal of the book.

So what’s up with it? What am i missing about it that makes it such an allegedly wonderful thing?

What if most of us can’t sing all that well?

So musical numbers in sacrament meetings are supposed to be of the highest quality possible, and then we encourage everyone to participate in ward choirs. Doesn’t anyone else see a looming contradiction here?

Attending to…who?

Is Doctrine & Covenants 123:11–14 a complete sentence? It’s punctuated as if it was one, but i can’t find an actual predicate anywhere in there. Maybe it’s actually that i can’t find an antecedent for verse 14’s these.

A bit of light demography

Self-identified Mormons make up 2 to 2½ percent of the United States population (depending on survey methodology). About 25 to 30 percent of the United States population has had personal contact (even briefly) with someone they know was Mormon. (This includes things like chatting with the full-time missionaries at the door.)

This means

1. we’re doing a pretty good job at contacting people and being open about our religion, and
2. we’ve got a whole lot of work left to do.

Wherein David B falls back into his natural habitat, the pun

A speaker in a church meeting i was in recently was talking about food storage, and pointed out that you need to rotate through food and water in your storage so that you don’t end up throwing stuff out as waste after you keep it past its shelf life. To aid in this, the speaker suggested dating your food and water supplies.

Date ’em? I hardly even know ’em!

That’s not the way it works

“Let Us All Press on in the work of the Lord,” goes the song, “that when life is o’er we may gain a reward”.

Um, no. Deity is not a vending machine. You don’t gain a reward ’cause you worked hard, you gain a reward because the grace of God is sufficient for your salvation. Sorry about that.

Another awkward song

“Sweet Is the Peace the Gospel Brings” is one of the more awkward musical settings for a song in our hymnal, and the whole problem actually comes from a single small flaw—it’s entirely the fault of the second and third notes in each verse. Throwing things like “is the”, “laws and”, and “we who” into eighth notes while everything else in in quarters (plus extended time for the end of each line)? No, not good at all.

Modesty, yet again

My oldest is approaching twelve years old, so she recently attended the “New Beginnings” event for girls entering the young women’s program during the coming year. As part of my ward’s program this year, the entire (rather small) group of active young women put on a semi-improvisational skit designed to teach about various gospel values.

(It wasn’t that bad, either—and it had a decent amount of natural and un-self-conscious humor to it. Gave me a flicker of hope for the future. But i digress.)

Anyway, one of the girls’ had, as her character, someone with a problem with modesty. When another girl prompted her to give ways she could be more modest, she gave answers like not wearing so much jewelry and not trying to draw so much attention to herself.

That clearly wasn't what the other girl expected, so she tried again, asking whether there was anything that might be changed about her clothes. This actually seemed to puzzle the first girl a little bit, but she eventually came up with something along the lines of maybe not wearing clothes that were quite so bright and flashy.

Clearly, this girl has been raised by parents who use the same definition of modesty as me (and the same definition as, according to a plain text reading, the writers of the Book of Mormon)—a lack of ostentatiousness.

It’s good to realize i’m not completely alone.

Comparative love

So i heard a speaker in church recently say that if we commit sin, that means that we love that sin more than we love Jesus Christ.

Is that claim actually true? I have some serious doubts about it, but i’m not absolutely certain one way or the other. Others’ thoughts?

More than a stonecutter

The story of John R. Moyle is amazing. It’s incredible. It’s inspiring. It’s mind-blowing, in all the positive senses of that word.

And yet as it develops into a mainstream bit of Mormon folklore it runs the risk, i fear, of becoming as bleached of nuance and detail in favor of sappiness and simplicity as the story of the Willie and Martin handcart companies became before it.

Sometimes we do our stories a grave injustice as we tell them.

What we’re ashamed of

This is normally a text-only blog, but the following recently came across on GraphJam, and i just had to post it here:

Yeah, that seems about right.

A tisket, a tasket…

Sometimes, after a particularly grueling Sunday of meetings (and, it seems, more often on testimony meeting Sundays), i feel like i’m the only person in the church who believes that the world is not going to hell in a handbasket, or in fact in any other reasonably sized conveyance.

Sealings in less than a year!

As is widely known, the church requires members who were married civilly without being sealed in a temple at the same time* to wait one year from the date of the civil marriage before they can be sealed.

It’s not as widely known that there are a few exceptions to this, the most interesting (in my opinion) being that if one or both of the members had been a member of the church for less than a year at the time of the civil marriage, they’re eligible to be sealed as soon as both of them have been confirmed members for at least a year.

For example: If someone got baptized this past 1 January, and another this past 1 February, if they got married this coming 1 June, they wouldn’t have to wait until the following 1 June to be sealed, but rather only until the next 1 February. Also, as i read things, even if a lifelong member married the person baptized this past 1 February on 1 June, they’d only have to wait until the next 1 February for their sealing, not the following 1 June.

So if you’re going to require waiting periods to enter the temples, i like this policy for a number of reasons. (And, contrary to what one might expect from reading this blog, i actually do like finding church policies that i like.)

* For those countries that don’t recognize a temple sealing as a valid marriage, substitute “as close together as possible” for “at the same time”.

Beyond serifs

What is it with hyper-cheesy fonts in materials created by young women’s leaders? Is there something in the handbook that mandates superfluous curlicues? ’Cause if there is, i missed that line somehow.

Relative scriptures

I feel the presence of God’s love much more intensely in the Old Testament than in the other parts of the standard works. People often look at me strangely when i tell them that, but it’s true.

Men on this side, women on that side

So why do primary presidents have to be female, while Sunday school presidents have to be male?

I mean, i guess i can kind of (but only kind of) understand why primary presidents are female, ’cause there’s the whole women-taking-care-of-children thing. But Sunday school presidents having to be male, that i don’t get at all. Seriously, that requirement seems like it was simply made up to give some guys something to do. It’s not like a female Sunday school president wouldn’t be able to be in charge of male Sunday school teachers, since female primary presidents are in charge of male primary teachers, so it’s not even something that can be explained away by appealing to stereotypes of sexism and authority. So what’s up with the policy?

How young is too old?

Where did the widespread Mormon cultural imperative for (comparatively) young marriages come from? I mean, it’s not like terribly young marriages were the historical norm throughout human history and age of first marriage has just recently started to rise*—so it has to have started sometime. Did it get ported in from some other group? Is it of relatively recent vintage, at least among Mormons?** More interestingly (for me), why is it such a taken-for-granted thing nowadays?

* For example, according to Stephanie Coontz’s Marriage: A History, the median age of first marriage for women in England between 1500 and 1700 was 26.

** Looking at age of marriage for general authorities throughout church history, i actually do suspect it’s a relatively recent cultural development.

Deciding who speaks when

Is there actually a church policy that someone who holds the Melchizedek priesthood (or at least a man) must be the closing speaker for sacrament meeting? (Or maybe that a woman can’t be the closing speaker?) There actually is, as far as i can find, no direction on this, which presumably would mean that it doesn’t matter—so why have most of the wards i’ve lived in treated things (sometimes explicitly, even!) like that was the rule?

One word, different worlds

You know, it occurs to me that the abbreviation “WoW” means very different things to Mormons and non-Mormons.

I have a dream (that sacrament meetings will sound interesting)

So yesterday was a holiday here in the United States in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday. As a result, i heard a bunch of archival recordings of Dr. King on the radio, especially of his most famous speech.

Listening to that, i wondered why our church speechifying is so, well, boring. I mean, not necessarily in terms of content, but in style—even when the speaker is saying something stirring, there’s almost never any prosodic shifting going on, there’s no serious attempt to bring the congregation into the flow of the words.

And it’s not like this flat delivery is something inherent to Mormonism—if you listen to old general conference addresses, the old-school speakers (those who came of age in the nineteenth century) got into it. So apparently it used to be part of Mormon preaching—but now it’s not. So what happened? Why did we move away from interesting-sounding sermons to monotonous-sounding ones?

People are weird about blood

(So i’m back from Pittsburgh, and fully settled back in. Good trip, though intensely sleep-depriving. But enough of that—on to content.)

Something i’ve been thinking about a good bit lately: In at least some temples, girls who go to do baptisms for the dead are asked beforehand if they’re on their periods, and those who are aren’t allowed to participate.* Why is this done?**

In fact, one woman i know very well*** had her ward’s youth temple trips coincide with her period often enough in her early teen years that she simply stopped going on them. This highlights an unintended and rather serious consequence of this tradition (i’m assuming it’s not a formal policy)—teenaged girls are being excluded from participating in the highest level of religious rites that they can at that age, due simply to factors they have no control over. Yeah, that’s useful priming for these girls’ future activity in the church.

* I come by this knowledge via conversations with several women over the years. Yes, i have a history of having had lots of conversations with women i’ve known about menstruation-related issues. No, i don’t see this as in any way strange.

** And when giving your answer, please remember that public pools seem to have no problem with menstruating women being in the water.

*** Who i doubt would mind being identified by name, but she’s not here right now to ask for permission.****

**** Gratuitous footnote, just so there’s one more.

Gifts and influences

I’m off on a business trip for the next several days, and so i doubt i’ll have the chance to post again until sometime next week—so, then, a question i’ve been trying to figure out the answer to for a long time now:

     → What in the world is the Gift of the Holy Ghost, anyway?

The Gift of the Holy Ghost is generally described* as entitling the recipient to the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost, as long as the recipient remains worthy of it. This is contrasted with the influence of the Holy Ghost, which allows those who have not received the gift to feel the influence of the Holy Ghost in their lives as long as they’re worthy of it.

Sorry, but i don’t see a difference here. This is especially the case when you look at how “companionship” and “influence” are described, and you discover that they’re describing the same thing.

Yeah, it often gets described metaphorically as a “flashlight” (the gift) vs. a “flash of lightning” (the influence). This presumes, though, that those with the gift will remain constantly worthy, and those without the gift won’t—and i really don’t think you can make that claim with any validity.

So what’s the difference?

And, to add an additional wrinkle, i have to say that i’m not certain that the Gift of the Holy Ghost actually has anything to do with receiving inspiration from the Holy Ghost (in the usual ways we talk about it, at least), anyway—i mean, the Gift of the Holy Ghost is generally described as a saving ordinance, which means that there’s something way beyond experiences in mortality going on with it. Receiving inspiration from the Holy Ghost doesn’t seem to be quite comprehensive enough to have it have that sort of effect, you know?

So, i repeat: What in the world is the Gift of the Holy Ghost, anyway?

(And now i think i’m gonna have to break out the “serious” tag on this one.)

* In the current edition of the Gospel Principles manual, even!

Not preventing teen pregnancy

I’ve read a few things lately that have noted that a teenage girl who wants to have children rather than not wanting to have children is at higher risk for teen pregnancy.* However, we spend a lot of our time in young women’s lessons and activities talking about how marvelous and glorious motherhood is, and how a girls’s highest calling will be that of a mother.**

It seems that we’re sowing the seeds for teen pregnancies with that—or rather (more likely, i’d say) we’re at least counteracting some of the protective influences against teen pregnancy that active Mormon girls tend to have.***

So, then, why do we push the whole baby-making thing? I mean, it’s not like women who aren’t raised in contexts where their religion goes on and on about the glories of motherhood automatically refuse to ever conceive children, so why do we cling to our rhetoric on childbearing when it may actually even be harmful?

* For “teen pregnancy”, read “unwed teen pregnancy”. Also, the studies i’ve seen have shown no difference between girls who want to have children and those who are ambivalent about it—basically, the only protective effect comes from actually actively not wanting to have a baby.

** Which annoys me, actually, if for no reason other than that some of them will not be mothers. Way to set ’em up for an emotional fall, folks!

*** Strong religious belief, familial and community support, and such—not that all active Mormon girls have all of those, but the likelihood of any given active Mormon girl having those is comparatively high.

The primacy of family home eveningNew Year’s Eve

According to the official handbooks, the church does not allow any church activities to take the place of Monday night family home evenings. Ever. Under any circumstances.

Well, except…

If New Year’s Eve occurs on a Monday, church activities may be held that evening.

This is actually a longstanding policy—so, i have to ask, why? What’s so special about New Year’s Eve as opposed to any other holiday that’s frequently celebrated with late nights (like, for example, Independence Day in the United States)?

Youth dances and hair

A couple weeks ago, i chaperoned a church youth dance for the very first time.

It was a weird experience, being the grown-up. But that’s not the aspect of it i want to talk about today.

Here’s what really caught my attention: There’s a dress and grooming code for attending dances in my stake. (As far as i can tell, there’s such dress and grooming codes for church dances at least nearly everywhere, though the details of what they are may be different.) Here, the dress and grooming standards are, essentially, the same ones that Brigham Young University requires of its students.

For the most part, this isn’t a problem, because my stake allows youth who come to the dances but aren’t following those dress and grooming rules to change their appearance on the spot, and then they’re allowed in. So, for example, a girl with more than one pair of earrings (or a boy with any earrings, or anyone with any visible non-ear body piercing) can simply remove the piercing and they’re good to go.

This even goes to the clothes the kid is wearing—if, say, a girl comes in wearing a skirt that’s too short, the stake holds a bunch of teen-sized clothing in reserve that they can change into so that they’re then following the rules. (In my opinion this is good, by the way—if you’re going to have rules on appearance that have somewhat subjective boundaries, providing a way to adhere to them on the spot seems only reasonable.)

There are, though, a few rules that don’t lend themselves to on-the-spot changing—and there lies the problem. For example, one of the rules in my stake forbids youth with multiple colors of hair (you know, like bleached ends or a streak of color)* from attending youth dances.

Fine. You can make whatever rule you like. But i wonder about whether this is actually a good sort of rule to have, one where the so-called “problem” can’t be fixed on the spot. (Basically, if someone shows up with multiple hair colors, they’ve got to go home—there’s no good way to cover it up, especially with hats not being allowed.) What, though, if a non-member who has, say, blue and blond streaks gets invited to a youth dance here? They’re not allowed to enter—if they show up, they get barred from going in. Of course, if that happens they’re less likely to show any interest in the church in the future, i would expect.

And there we have a real issue (and not necessarily the one you’d immediately think of). The big problem: Our expectations start to feed our reality—i mean, a kid with blue and blond streaks clearly isn’t the sort of person who would ever have any interest in the church, anyway, right? After all, they never seem to want to come to our dances, so their hair color must just be a reflection of a hard heart and spiritual weakness, right? And we wouldn’t want someone like that in our church, would we?

* Of course, the enforcement of this rule doesn’t extend to girls with blond highlights. I suppose they can’t really enforce that one ’cause if they did, they’d have to ban some of the youth leaders from showing up. Amazing how the practices of the ones holding more power are acceptable, even if it goes against the literal statements of those in power, isn’t it?

Holidays and meetings

As much as i loathe extra-special bonus meetings, i do wonder why we don’t do Xmas Eve meetings, like so many other Xian faiths do. I mean, if you’re gonna have one extra meeting, you’d think that’s the one you should have.

(Of course, not having a bonus meeting on Xmas is, i suppose, better than what we do with Easter, which is to have the regularly scheduled meeting anyway but pretty much ignore the specialness of the day while we’re meeting.)

Looking at the calendar

Can we stop it already with the repeated claim (over the pulpit sometimes, even!) that we’re special because Doctrine & Covenants 20:1 tells us that Jesus was born on 6 April, 1 bc?

I mean, especially since it appears to be simply not true, what with the reference to the year most likely being just a hyper-flowery way of saying ad 1830? (Not to mention the issues of mapping a solar calendar to a lunar one, and the fact that each solar year isn’t always the same length anyway, and…) Also, it seems especially impolite to make such unsupported-by-scriptural-text statements right around Xmas itself.

Yeah, i know, we won’t (stop, that is). A boy can dream, though, can’t he?

Mormons and persecution

The next time somebody starts going off in a church meeting about how persecuted they are as a Mormon,* i’m going to direct them to the recent NPR story on Iraqi Christians being singled out for death threats and even actual killing simply because they’re Christian.

That’s persecution, folks. People look at you weird or won’t vote for you or laugh about your beliefs ’cause you’re a Mormon, that’s simply life. Get over yourself. Mormons in the 1830s and 1840s were persecuted. Mormons in the 1880s were persecuted. Nowadays? If Iraqi Christians had the time or energy to spare, they would scoff at your delusions—and they’d be justified in doing so.

* A surprisingly common meme, really. Occasionally it’s blatant (the “somebody laughed at me at school because i’m Mormon” sort of thing), but usually it’s more subtle, and couched in terms of “attacks” on religion or the family or somesuch, but set up with a clear attack-on-Mormonism sort of spin.

Missing sleep

Can somebody explain to me how it’s healthy for our church’s teens to have weeknight church activities once a week that go until (in most places i’ve seen) 8:30 or 9:00 pm, and then have to get up early in the morning the next day for seminary? Seriously, what’s up with the logic? Have we decided our teenagers are superhuman, and don’t need sleep for healthy functioning?*

No, really—i don’t get it.

* And y’all in the Mormon Dominance Area, where you don’t have early-morning seminary, you don’t get off easy on this one. What i want to know from you is how it helps our youth to pull them away from their academics in the middle of the day, instead of putting gospel study in the home, where all the rhetoric we use says it rightly belongs.

Decorum and performance

I have, not infrequently, heard members of the church talk about how horrible and apostate—yes, the “A” word comes up occasionally—certain other faiths are because they allow things like drums and electric guitars and such into their meetings, and members of the congregation do things like dance or or shout or cheer.

All i can say is that if you don’t sometimes want to get up and dance or cheer in sacrament meeting, well, then your ward’s choir isn’t doin’ it right.

Why these meetings?

Can somebody explain to me the purpose of the priesthood executive committee at the ward level? I mean, why is there such a group that has to meet quite so often, as opposed to just doing everything through the ward council?

Changing rules

Unless i read it wrong, the most recent version of the church’s administrative handbook* says that the wearing of white shirts and ties should be encouraged among those who are asked to conduct the administration of the sacrament, but that—and this is the interesting part—white shirts and ties aren’t to be required of those who administer the ordinance.

I wonder if the widespread local de jure rules on white shirts and ties while administering the sacrament will actually go away, or if they’ll simply be replaced by de facto versions of the rule.

* Now called just Handbook, though it’ll always be the GHI to me!

Padding

What’s with padded folding chairs where the relief society meets, but hard chairs everywhere else (at least in most meetinghouses i’ve been to)? Are women’s coccyges really that much more delicate than those of males?

Politicians as leaders

So my stake was reorganized Sunday before last, and the new stake president is Sheldon Fisher. Interestingly, he has a political past—he unsuccessfully challenged Congressman Don Young in the most recent Republican primary here, running to Young’s right (which, really, is pretty hard to do).

In my memory, political figures in ward and stake leadership tend to be better at keeping politics, even to the level of code words, out of the pulpit than those who aren’t political figures.* (Maybe they know the game, so they know how to avoid it.) I’ll be interested to see if this observation continues to hold true.

* I use the phrase “in my memory” on purpose—i do realize that this hasn’t always been the case (see Benson, Ezra Taft and Roberts, B.H., among many others). My personal memories of these sorts of things, though, only go back to the early 80s or so.

Quads

Why is it that, as far as i can tell, the church only publishes quadruple combinations with leather (or at least leather-like) binding? What if i want a hardbound copy of the scriptures? I’m limited to separate volumes for the Bible and everything else. Why not let those of us who prefer to have everything in one book have them in cheaper options?

Mormons actually vote in other countries, too, you know

There’s a general perception that Mormons in the United States are, by and large, sociopolitically conservative.* Certainly, more of the Mormons in Congress are Republican than Democratic—i’m curious, though, whether Mormon politicians in other countries are generally affiliated with their countries’ conservative parties. (The only list of currently serving Mormon politicians from outside of the United States i can find doesn’t give enough information to figure that out.)

* Some say that that’s evidence that Mormonism necessarily leads to a sociopolitically conservative outlook, but that’s not a defensible position as long as the potential confound of region isn’t factored out—and i haven’t yet seen a study of Mormon sociopolitical leanings that does so.

Nylons and the oral tradition

The overreliance of Mormons on what i sometimes call (for lack of a better label) the “oral tradition” troubles me. This is particularly the case for a religion like ours that leans so far to the orthopraxy side of things.

Specific case:

When we lived in Florida, most of the women in our stake didn’t wear nylons to church. In fact, it was generally regarded as a silly thing to do—we were in Florida, after all, and nylons are a rather warm bit of clothing.

Now that we live in Alaska, as far as i can tell, nobody cares one way or the other—some women wear nylons to church while others don’t, and it’s not a big deal.

I know women who live in other locations, though, who have been taught over the pulpit by bishops and stake presidents that it’s a moral sin—yes, that’s not made up—for women not to wear nylons to church.

Sorry, folks, but i’d have to think that if it’s not a sin in Florida or Alaska, it’s also not a sin in Maryland or even Utah.

(Of course, i still remember a post from a while age on the Spanish Fork 401st Ward blog where the question was posed whether nylons are a “spiritual requirement for sisters, or old-men fetish?” Well, given that there really apparently is a word in Japanese porn for that, i know what my guess is…)

Glurge

Why do so many speakers feel the urge to pepper their speeches in church with glurge? Particularly when a quick trip to Snopes could demonstrate the falsity of much of what’s out there—scroll through the list on the glurge page, and you’re bound to see a lot of thing you’ve heard before in sacrament meetings, i’d wager.)

It’s a serious question—especially since i have to wonder whether the Holy Spirit is going to testify to the truth of something that quite definitely isn’t.

Counterintuitive elections

So it’s election night here in the United States, and ABC News has just projected that Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leader, will retain his seat (which hadn’t been at all a given before today).

This means that, to what i assume is the annoyance of lots of Mormons in this country, the most powerful Mormon elected officeholder in the United States will continue to be a member of the left-of-center Democratic Party.

Who does what?

A follow-up to my last post: While going through the theses and dissertations i’ve found on Mormon cultural patterns over the past few months, i found reference to a study* that found that Mormons express more intolerance for nontraditional gender roles in household labor (e.g., a husband doing the cooking, or a wife setting up a computer) than Catholics or Protestants, but that Mormons actually don’t differ from Catholics or Protestants in the way household labor is actually divided. Intriguing difference/non-difference there.

* Necessary disclaimer: The summary here is from a secondary source, i haven’t read the original, so i can’t vouch 100% for what’s here. The article that this comes from is referenced in the thesis as Bahr 1983—and then it isn’t listed in the works cited! Grrrr…How am i supposed to find it without a full citation? Well, i’ll be looking for it, definitely…

Researching Mormonism

So i was looking for some scholarly work on Mormon culture, and i ended up at the Brigham Young Universisty’s online library of BYU master’s theses on Mormonism. I spent more time than i should have allotted there, ’cause it really was fascinating.

One thing i discovered: Back in the 50s and 60s (and to some extent in the 70s), the theses in the collection take pains to toe the line of Mormon culture (so that, for example, even if the data pointed in a direction that went against Mormon cultural norms, there was generally a discussion of why the data was flawed or why it actually went along with those norms—even when it clearly didn’t—or somesuch). In more recent work (which includes stuff found in the general collection, now that all of the school’s theses and dissertations are online), though, there seems to be a general tendency to go wherever the data leads, even if that goes against Mormon cultural norms.*

I’ve often heard the idea (mainly from con-Mormons**) that believing Mormons can’t do serious scholarship on Mormonism ’cause it’s impossible for a faithful Mormon to run the social risk of going against the intense normativity that is involved in being Mormon. It may be that that was once true, but that that idea is now outdated.

Or, at least, that’s my hope.

* I, for one, see this as a positive development.

** “Con-Mormon” is a term that Craig Olson came up with to describe someone who isn’t anti-Mormon (that is, they aren’t after tearing down the Mormon church at any cost), but has reasoned or at least reasonable arguments against some aspect(s) of Mormonism and the Mormon church. The crucial difference between an anti-Mormon and a con-Mormon is that rational (well, as rational as religious debate can be) debate leading to a worthwhile exchange of ideas is possible with a con-Mormon.

What’s valuable?

You know what bugs me about the young women theme? the “values” that it lists aren’t all actually values. I mean, divine nature? How in the world is that a value? A nice thing to think about, sure—but not a value.

And, of course, there’s the fact that the logo creeps me out for some reason.

Anyway—that is all. Just a brief vent for tonight.

Why missionary efforts are doomed

I’m tired of being told i have to be careful about teaching my children correct gospel principles, because otherwise they’re guaranteed to be lost (in the religious sense) forever. I mean, it just doesn'’t work logically—consider:

1. Assumption: If children aren’t taught correct gospel principles, they won’t live according to them when they grow up.
2. The only reason that assumption could work would be if there’s no way someone who’s not taught gospel principles in childhood would follow those principles when they’re older.
3. Therefore, the church’s missionary efforts are doomed because conversions to the church are completely impossible, since the missionaries’ efforts largely target those who weren’t taught gospel principles as children.

Or, in other words, reductio ad absurdum.

More seriously, i still don’t get why we have so much trouble coming to terms with the idea that people make their own decisions about their spiritual lives, even those who were raised in the church.

Partial truths

Some primary songs really bug me. Take, for example, the song “The Family Is of God”, which includes the lines

A mother’s purpose is to care, prepare,
To nurture and to strengthen all her children.

Are you kidding me? How about telling the truth: The purpose of human beings is to care, prepare, nurture, and strengthen children. (And not even just their own children, at that.)

So why the need to present this partial truth as a contrast to a previous verse describing a “father’s place” (which also only gives a partial picture)? This whole cultural need within present-day Mormonism to try to place mothers and fathers (well, maybe actually women and men) into neatly separated boxes strikes me as weirdly wrongheaded, and possibly even dangerous. So how did we get into it?

Timing

My last post, and particularly the exchange following it between Heather and me, led me to wonder something about general conference: Since the written report is the official record of the conference and effectively overrules what was spoken there, and since the written report is freely available, why are we encouraged so strongly to actually listen to the could-be-changed speeches when they’re given?

Ch-ch-ch-changes

So the bloggernacle is abuzz with the report that Boyd K. Packer is revising his general conference address in a couple of not insignificant ways before it’s published.

There’s a lot of discussion on various fora about what this might mean for Mormon dogma with regard to homosexuality, but that’s not what really caught my attention about this. What caught my attention is that this pokes a bit of a hole in the idea a lot of Mormons have that every time a prophet or apostles sneezes, then it’s automatically church doctrine.

Age and leadership

A question that i posted during my general conference semi-liveblogging sessions, but one i want to highlight separately, ’cause i really do wonder what people’s answers might be:

Joseph Smith was a teenager when he was first called as a prophet (though he was in his twenties once his ordination occurred). The original quorum of apostles was made up of fairly young guys. Why don’t we have notably young people in the highest levels of church leadership any more?

Knocking doors

So i heard about a friend of mine who’s really, really annoyed at the Mormon church because a pair of our missionaries rang her doorbell, not just invading her space but also waking up her son, who had just unwillingly gone down for a very, very much-needed nap.

It’s not just the Mormons her ire is directed against, though—it’s all groups or businesses or whatever that intrude on her privacy* by coming to her door without permission.

There’s got to be a better way. In fact, if you read church history, knocking on doors isn’t mentioned—it seems that the preferred methods were along the lines of street preaching or renting a hall and preaching.** And yeah, i know the whole thing about member referrals, but i’m talking about finding through missionary efforts here—isn’t there some worthwhile way for missionaries in the United States to use their finding time that doesn't involve bothering people who are relaxing at home?

* As she perceives it, at least. Of course, having—like her—grown up in the urbanized part of the eastern United States, i completely understand and actually feel pretty much the same way.

** What ever happened to renting a hall for preaching? Was it the victim of social changes? It’s not like it was an ineffective method back when it was used.

Sorta-liveblogging general conference: Sunday afternoon session

So we’ve finally gotten to Sunday afternoon, where the speakers can relax properly ’cause they know that everyone’s attention span has been used up by now.

As with all of these, i’ve written this post bottom-up, with the first speaker at the end of the post, preceded by the second speaker, and so on, up to the final speaker at the top of the post. My thoughts on each speaker, though, are given in the order i write them. Therefore, to get a chronological view of the session you’ll need to scroll to the bottom of this post and read upwards.

Closing thought

• If they cut out all of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir bits, i’m thinking we could get general conference over and done with in something like two sessions instead of five.

Thomas S. Monson (president of the high priesthood)

• So he requested that people read the conference addresses. Leads to the interesting question of why we’re requested to listen to all of them live, too.
• Kind of a mellow benediction, overall. I have to admit—and here’s more proof that i’m evil—that near the end some of what he said reminded me of the philosophy Bill and Ted (of the pointless eighties movie Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure) provided for the world: Be excellent to each other.

M. Russell Ballard (of the quorum of apostles)

• So i’m guessing Elder Ballard is into trout fishing.
• Addiction is bad. (I suppose that at this point i should disclose my own struggles with my addiction to oxygen.)
• Wow! I don’t think i’ve ever heard a list of specific drugs like that in a general conference before—one may have been delivered, but i don’t recall it. (Of course, this makes me happy largely because i’m a fan of specificity—some parents may have been horrified that such things were mentioned where there kids could hear about them. As is so often the case, your mileage may vary.)
• It’s sort of sad that he had to give a disclaimer that prescription medications (including painkillers) are a good thing—but i’ve seen people take statements by general authorities in similar weirdly wrong ways, so i guess it’s a sad necessity.
• Hey! I’ve texted my wife when we were in the same room! Good way to keep the kids from overhearing our conversation, you see…
• Interesting to hear the source of LDS Family Service’s addiction recovery program cited as Alcoholics Anonymous’s twelve-step program.

Mervyn B. Arnold (of the seventy)

• A family of nine in a two-bedroom house, with an enclosed porch being pressed into service as a makeshift bedroom? What with the whole enclosed porch thing, i’m assuming he didn’t grow up in Alaska. (Quick googling: He was born in Maryland, but grew up in Arizona. That makes sense.)
• He called For the Strength of Youth an “inspired pamphlet”. What did he mean by this? Did he mean that the contents are divinely inspired, or that its simple existence is inspired? It’s certainly not canon, and it’s subject to revision at any time, so the first of those possibilities doesn’t really work, at least not completely—but i suspect that’s closer to what was intended. Anyway, this leads to a deeper question: What does it actually mean for something to be “inspired”?

I didn’t have a hope of getting this name from the audio feed (of the seventy)

• If sin is a willful disobedience of God’s laws, what about passive (but not ignorant) disobedience? I suspect it’s sin as well, but i’m not certain.
• What does it mean to go to bed early and not sleeping in? I realize that it’s mentioned in the book of Doctrine & Covenants, but what were sleep patterns like back then? Most of what i’ve seen leads me to think eight hours a day would have been very low for back then.

I didn’t have a hope of getting this name from the audio feed (of the seventy)

• It occurs to me that his metaphor of the hollow tree is a warning that we shouldn’t let ourselves become spiritually “hollow”, but i find it interesting that the tree was still able to stand with support from other sources—maybe there’s another lesson in the metaphor, which is that we ought to support others, no matter their weaknesses?

Larry R. Lawrence (of the quorums of seventy)

• (I’m not certain i got who it was precisely correctly—we’re listening on the audio feed, not on video, so i don’t get to see their names on the screen.)
• He’s speaking to the parents of teenagers. We don’t have any teens, only tweens—does that mean we get to take a nap now?
• Actually, what with my oldest being who she is, telling her to get off the train tracks might get her to stay on more stubbornly…
• The example of Alma correcting Corianton versus Eli not correcting his sons was well-done. There is another important situation to remember, though: Lehi, who corrected his sons but was unsuccessful in reaching all of them.
• Interesting that he says that if either parent feels uncomfortable about their children doing something, they should support each other in their limits. This, of course, means that the most restrictive parent would always win; this isn’t necessarily a problem, i suppose, as long as the parents talk about their limits in private—it’s always possible for someone to be worried about something that isn’t worth worrying about, after all.
• A well-placed warning about the dangers of sleepovers, and how they can lead to children’s first experience with various dangerous practices. Of course, sleepovers can also lead to a child having experience with a family praying together, or reading the scriptures, or doing other good things—but that doesn’t make for good headlines, i guess.

David A. Bednar (of the quorum of apostles)

• Listening to this discussion of the Holy Ghost leads me to wonder what else, if anything, it does aside from acting as a messenger. You’d think a god would have more to do, but maybe not—maybe it’s an actual full-time divine job.
• We can’t command the companionship of the Holy Ghost. That leads to an interesting question: Can we command the Holy Ghost to leave us?
• Interesting definition of the word living in “true and living church”: essentially, that we have the gift of the Holy Ghost.
• So if you have no malice, strife, or evil in your heart you have the Holy ghost with you? I’m not sure i got the details of that quote (of Joseph Smith) right upon hearing it, but it certainly sounds reasonable.

L. Tom Perry (of the quorum of apostles)

• Lots of discussion of “traditional values” today. If my generation and younger haven’t been taught them, though, i’m thinking it’d be worth telling us pointedly and explicitly what exactly that phrase means. As it is, i think i know, but i can’t be certain.
• Interesting that he said the exercise of the ministering of angels will add wisdom and such to one’s life. That’s not the way we usually think of that sort of thing, i think.
• This address exhibits an interesting tension in Mormon rhetoric. There’s a lot of despairing of the youth of today, but then there are lots of stories about how wonderfully and excellently they’re acting.
• I’m starting to think that what Elder Perry had really wanted was a speaking slot in priesthood session.

Dieter F. Uchtdorf (of the first presidency), opening remarks

• Yes, this is the fifth general session of this general conference, making the priesthood session a “general session”. One would normally think that a session with restricted attendance like that wouldn’t count as “general”, but that’s the way these have always been counted as long as i’ve been watching them (and, as can be verified by listening to the recordings, for some decades prior). I wonder why?

Sorta-liveblogging general conference: Sunday morning session

The big leagues! Yep, it’s Sunday morning, the the session of conference anybody who watches conference watches if they only watch one session.

Time to see who got the prime speaking slots.

As with the rest of these, this post is written bottom-up, with the first speaker at the end of the post, preceded by the second speaker, and so on, with the final speaker at the top of the post. My thoughts on each speaker, though, are given in the order i write them. Therefore, if you want a chronological view of the session, you need to scroll to the bottom of this post now and then start reading upwards.

Thomas S. Monson (president of the high priesthood)

• Interesting that he refers to becoming president of the church as his “appointment” to that office.
• Hurrah! A reminder that there is much that is good in the world! It’s altogether too easy for people, perhaps especially religious people, to dwell on everything that’s non-good in this mortal realm. Good to have reminders not to do so coming from the top.
• So does my habit of seeing the good in the world around us mean that i’m a grateful person and never realized it? That’d be nice, wouldn’t it? Always good to have something going for you, i suppose.
• Given that we believe in the immortality of the soul, is it ever too late to express gratitude to someone?
• Nice indirect reminder that it’s altogether too easy to get used to what we have, and therefore feel that there’s no reason to be thankful for it.

Dallin H. Oaks (of the quorum of apostles)

• He’s dealing directly with one of the inherent tensions of Mormon doctrine—that there is a hierarchical structure directing the affairs of the church and the behaviors of church members, but that there is also revelation to direct individuals’ lives that is available to all. Interesting terminological coinage he comes up with, calling these sides of revelation respectively the “priesthood line” and “personal line” of communication with God.
• If the personal line of inspiration is primary over the priesthood line in family governance, does that mean that such issues as how families determine who says prayers, when family scripture study is held, and so on aren’t subject to the directives of bishops and stake presidents? I know some people who may be surprised to have just learned that…
• So, Elder Oaks, tell us what you think about nondenominational Xianity. I’m sorta getting the feeling you’re not impressed, maybe?
• He pronounced the word shew as [ʃo] (i.e., the same as show), which is actually the pronunciation of that word. Cue the happy dance.
• Summary: He didn’t eliminate the tension i referred to above (which might be an impossible task, actually), but he did do a nice job of outlining some of the relationships involved that make it less of a tension than one might think. Nice job, really—like i wrote about one of Dieter F. Uchtdorf’s earlier addresses, it’s nice to hear addresses by general authorities who have had decent training in rhetoric.

Mary N. Cook (of the general presidency of the young women)

• Yet another reference to Joseph Smith’s leg infection! The meme lives…
• I’m going to have to review what she just said about the baptismal covenant. I haven’t been able to find it written down anywhere (and yeah, i know, i know, there’s Mosiah 18:8–10, but i’m not convinced that’s the baptismal covenant so much as it’s the qualifications for baptism), so i want to see if she gave any concrete pointers.
• Spending long periods on the internet or watching television is bad for us? You know, like spending eight or ten (depending on sex) hours listening to the internet this weekend?
• What she’s saying about clothing styles brings to mind a real question: Are current devout Mormon standards of clothing something that we should wish the rest of the world would adopt? I ask because, for example, current devout Mormon standards of clothing require the covering of shoulders, but are uncovered shoulders an inherently evil thing? I’m not certain of that.

Jay E. Jensen (of the presidency of the quorums of seventy)

• My linguist self must offer the following observation: He exhibited tooth-sucking a few times early in his address. This is interesting, because that feature is generally associated with African-American Vernacular English.
• “Take away the Book of Mormon and the revelations and where is our religion? We have none.” Actually, quite seriously, that’s not true. Most other religions don’t have the Book of Mormon, and many (most, if you don’t count such things as the Bible or the Qur’an or the Bhagavad Gita) don’t claim revelations, and yet they still exist as religions. Would our church be very different without those things? Yes. Would we have as strong a claim to correctness? I believe the answer is no. But that’s not what was stated, you know?

Boyd K. Packer (president of the quorum of apostles)

• There’s a lot of stuff in here, but at least so far (several minutes into it) there’s nothing really to remark on here—it’s essentially saying “Obey the law of chastity”. Probably pretty good, though, to use as a foundational text for a family home evening lesson for families with teens/tweens like ours, though.
• There’s a lot of jumping from topic to topic here that’s making it semi-hard for me to follow—it’s all dealing with law of chastity stuff, but it’s hopping from, say, premarital sex to pornography to extramarital affairs to whatever else without a lot of signposting. This address, i think, is intended primarily for the written record.
• There’s code words in this right now—he’s talking about the pointlessness of legalizing evil things by the ballot. I’m curious why he isn’t stating outright at least some of the issues that this is referring to. I mean, i figure it’s likely that that was a statement against legalization of same-sex marriage, but one can’t be certain without it being stated directly. So—and this is something i’m quite seriously curious about—why all the indirection?
• ”Forgiveness means forgiveness.” Nice reminder.

Henry B. Eyring (of the first presidency)

• The members of the first presidency traditionally speaks in priesthood session plus in one other session (and the president of the high priesthood traditionally gives additional brief opening and closing statements). That’s a lot of speechwriting.
• Interesting that all three of the Biblical examples of people who didn’t trust/have faith in God (Jonah, Naaman, and Peter) ended up finally getting better at it. (Well, Jonah still had issues at the end of the book, but at least he had done what was asked of him by then.) He mentioned that about Peter, but it’s worth noting that the others figured out their errors, too.
• His story of paying of their mortgage included a nice example of something that could be called a coincidence but worked to strengthen faith—it is, i suppose, the nature of such things that they could always be taken as either miracles or coincidences, and the crucial difference is how they’re perceived by those participating in them.
• An acknowledgement that there are the honest in heart among those in power! Too often, i fear, Mormon culture (well, and Mormon history, really) leads us to be unhealthily distrustful of governmental authorities.

Opening prayer

• Didn’t catch the name of who said the prayer, but he clearly was working to prove he was listening at priesthood session last night—i think he repeated all of the buzzwords from each address.

Sorta-liveblogging general conference: Priesthood session

Due to stuff my family is doing, people we’re hanging out with for conference, that sort of thing, my notes for the Saturday afternoon and priesthood sessions aren’t going to go up until i can transfer my notes from paper to an electronic format. This is a placeholder post until i can put my notes for the priesthood session up (probably Sunday evening), so that things stay in order.

Priesthood session, the weird in-between session. It’s called a general session, but it’s only open to less than half the membership of the church (male members twelve years of age and older).

As with all the rest of these posts, this is presented bottom-up, with the first speaker at the end of the post, preceded by the second speaker, and so on, up to the final speaker at the top of the post, with my thoughts on each speaker given in the order i write them. This means that to get a chronological view of the session you’ll need to scroll to the bottom of this post and read upwards.

Closing thought

• Yet another bit of evidence i’m evil: I’m really curious what an “Auto-Tune the General Conference Speakers” (along the lines of “Auto-Tune the News”) would be like.

Thomas S. Monson (president of the high priesthood)

• Lots of stuff about choices. I was particularly gratified to see that he made it clear that there are some choices that really don’t matter in the eternal scheme of things.
• Wow—he said “In closing…” and there was an immediate rustle of people sitting up a bit throughout the room. Rather amusing. (Especially since he went on for a few minutes after that.)
• He said not to make exceptions to obeying commandments for extenuating circumstances, because life itself is a series of extenuating circumstances. There’s one to ponder on for a while.

Henry B. Eyring (of the first presidency)

• What is the gift of the Holy Ghost? It’s central to our religion, but it’s not nearly as well-defined as, for example, the sacrament or even sealing.
• He said that if we’re called to speak in a meeting in the name of the Lord, we should banish all self-doubt. Hurrah! Now nobody will ever start a sacrament meeting address by apologizing for their lack of speaking skills, right? Of course!

Dieter F. Uchtdorf (of the first presidency)

• He noted that after Ezra Taft Benson’s 1989 sermon on pride, it became taboo for members of the church to say that they were “proud” of anything (their children, their country, their work, or whatever). I remember that, and i remember thinking that that was taking things a bit too far. I’m glad that Elder Uchtdorf and i agree on that point.
• He said (though in different words) that social darwinism is bad. My social welfare-fan self gave a little internal cheer at that sentiment.
• He said that sports fans who vilify opposing teams and fans are exhibiting the sin of pride. Interesting. Has the Brigham Young University-University of Utah rivalry been particularly nasty lately?
• He said that such vilification also spills over into politics, ethnicity, and religion, and that it’s equally sinful in those spheres. Well, at least there’s little to no vilification of political opponents going on these days, so we’re okay there. Right? Right?
• There’s yet another reference to James E. Faust. Interesting—there’s been at least three so far today, at least that i’ve caught.
• It took a long time for this address’s first mention of flying airplanes.

Juan A. Uceda (of the quorums of the seventy)

• ”Only the home can compare to the temple in holiness.” We hear stuff like this a lot—but what does it actually mean?
• Yet another bit of evidence i’m evil: All the repetitions of “I am sorry” as something we need to say started Elton John’s “Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word” looping in my head—probably not what was intended.

Patrick Kearon (of the quorums of seventy)

• Not much to really report on here, except to say that i think this guy is actually a superhero, MetaphorMan! (However, his full name is English Accent MetaphorMan!, so it’s all okay.)

Russell M. Nelson (of the quorum of apostles)

• He asked all of the full-time missionaries, wherever they might be in the world, to stand. You don’t get audience participation like that very often in general conferences.
• He repeated President Monson’s call for every worthy young man to serve as a full-time missionary, and said he hopes that counsel will be followed in every home in the church. Well, for those of us who are in homes without any sons, that’s going to be an interesting one to try to follow…
• Do people really not know they’re welcome to visit our church meetings? I thought it was generally assumed that the default is that religious meetings of all types are open to all who wish to drop in unless there’s some sort of signage stating otherwise.
• Interesting news: You can now create a personal member profile at mormon.org for nonmembers to view.
• This address was a fun listen—he was on tonight, even though the subject was fairly pedestrian.

Opening thoughts

• Dieter F. Uchtdorf was conducting. He read the order of service from paper—you could hear it rustling—and not from the teleprompter. I though that was interesting.
• ”Hark All Ye Nations” still sounds better in German than in English, no matter how it’s arranged.
• People were still filing in during the opening song. I’m mildly surprised that they didn’t have everyone seated a few minutes before the meeting began.

Sorta-liveblogging general conference: Saturday afternoon session

Due to stuff my family is doing, people we’re hanging out with for conference, that sort of thing, my notes for the Saturday afternoon and priesthood sessions aren’t going to go up until i can transfer my notes from paper to an electronic format. This is a placeholder post until i can put my notes for the Saturday afternoon session up (probably Sunday evening), so that things stay in order.

Saturday afternoon is kind of a weird session—it’s stuck on a Saturday and therefore not what people are likely to default to watching if they don’t watch all the sessions, but some years it’s kind of a must-see, what with it being the session with the sustainings (and therefore the announcements of who the new apostle is during conferences with an opening in that quorum). Not this year, though.

As with all of these, i’ve written this post bottom-up, with the first speaker at the end of the post, preceded by the second speaker, and so on, up to the final speaker at the top of the post. My thoughts on each speaker, though, are given in the order i write them. Therefore, to get a chronological view of the session you’ll need to scroll to the bottom of this post and read upwards.

Closing thoughts

• This closing song, “Home”, is…Let’s just say i vote no on the lyrics. That is all.
• Wait—the women are singing about fathers and the men about mothers? Heresy! (Well, at least the children sang about the children, so maybe lightning won’t strike.)

Richard G. Scott (of the quorum of apostles)

• He has two basic speaking modes: the really quiet, mellow, and frowny one, and the really quiet, mellow, and almost-but-not-quite-smiley one. He seems to be in almost-smiley mode today.
• Jeanne just whispered to me “I’m finding this very hard to follow.” Amusingly, that’s pretty much what i was just about to type. That makes two votes—anyone else?
• Satan has no ability to take away blessings. I’m not sure that Job would agree—maybe he means that Satan has no ability to do that without clearance from God?

Neil L. Andersen (of the quorum of apostles)

• Good warnings against taking offense and having that push you away from the church. Part of the problem, though, is that it’s difficult to see the difference between reasonable and unreasonable reactions when you’re in the midst of them (or, for that matter, reasonable reactions with ultimately unreasonable effects).
• I don’t know that we’re actually all that different from other people—it’s just really easy to recognize differences rather than similarities.

Gerrit W. Gong (of the quorums of the seventy)

• Fresh-baked bread in the Missionary Training Center? Man, do you realize how much you could sell that stuff for in some of the side hallways of that place?
• Okay, the thank-you notes from the missionaries was one of the best general conference opening jokes i’ve heard. I’m normally not a fan of trying to open with a joke, but for this guy i’ll happily make an exception.
• Okay, but i didn’t get the “Blackberries, when read in church, make green bishops blue” joke. Why green? (Still, one for two is better than a lot of these get.)
• It took me a while to get the “temple mirrors of eternity” thing—i must have somehow missed the first mention of it, or at least the context for it.

Kevin R. Duncan (of the quorums of the seventy)

• Is this the first extended riff on the Mormon pioneers of this general conference? We’re past the halfway mark in the second general session—that may be a new record.
• I’ve always been curious whether Jim Bridger ever paid up on his challenge about corn grown in the Salt Lake Valley.
• Having lived in the Utah Valley (immediately next to the Salt Lake Valley, i have to say that whether the Salt lake Valley has actually “blossomed” is somewhat debatable. You see, i grew up in the southern mid-Atlantic, where we actually have a reasonable amount of vegetation…
• I wonder if this guy heard the address given this morning on Ezra Taft Benson’s “14 fundamentals” about prophets, and had this intense sinking feeling, figuring he’d been preempted. (Fortunately, as a Mormon you can always get away with saying “Because this is so important, i’ll repeat it now.”)

Richard C. Edgley (of the presiding bishopric)

• “Yes, faith is a choice” and, by extension, a lack of faith is also a choice. I’ve known people, though, who wanted to have faith, desperately wished to have it, but found that it eluded them. How are they choosing to lack faith? Or are they? Can lack of faith simply be a simple trial of life?
• I like the admission that there are things in his religious beliefs he can’t explain or doesn’t understand—it’s something we don’t here much from church authorities (or rather, we hear it but we don’t usually hear it quite so bluntly).

Quentin L. Cook (of the quorum of apostles)

• I have to admit that when i hear the name Vera Lynn, all i can think of is the brief song of that name from the Pink Floyd album (and movie) The Wall. This, of course, is proof that i’m evil.
• He mentioned attacks on morality and religious liberty. I haven’t noticed any significant attacks on religious liberty lately in the United States (aside from some protests against the building of mosques), so i’m curious what exactly he’s referring to.
• My oldest was thoroughly confused by his metaphor about “blacking out” attacks on the home and such—she thought he was trying to say we need to live in spiritual darkness. Lesson: Be really, really careful with metaphors, especially when they rely on images much of your audience has no experience with.
• A straight-up naming of human trafficking as a significant evil practice! That may be a first in general conference.
• He keeps talking about “Judeo-Christian” values and such, but the values he’s talking about are found throughout non-Judeo-Xian religions, as well, and even in non-religious traditions—and he acknowledges that. I’m curious, then, why he keeps coming back to Judeo-Xian traditions. (It’s clearly being used for some rhetorical purpose, but what the purpose is is being utterly opaque to me.)

Robert D. Hales (of the quorum of apostles)

• It’s good for Mormons to learn that a lot of the words we use (agency, in this case) don’t mean to other people what we think they mean.
• By using one’s agency, one can lose one’s agency. There’s a bit of irony there (possibly classical irony, even).

Henry B. Eyring (of the first presidency), presenting the general authorities and officers of the church

• He gave Neil L. Andersen’s name as “Neil Andersen” (no middle initial). It was almost jarring to hear it without the L.

Opening thoughts

• The music is being given by a “family choir”. What in the world is a family choir? I’m assuming they’re not all part of one big family, since they’re pretty much filling up the choir seats. Maybe it just means kids are allowed in?
• And how do they pick the non-Mormon Tabernacle Choir choirs for general conferences, anyway? Is there an application process? Auditions?
• Okay, so i kind of understand the rationale behind those whose native languages aren’t English having to give general conference addresses in English (though i really think we have the technological ability to make that unnecessary), but can we let people at least pray to God in their native languages one day?

Sorta-liveblogging general conference: Saturday morning session

Welcome, welcome once again to general conference. As i’ve done for the past few conferences, i’ll be semi-liveblogging each conference session. By “semi-liveblogging” i mean that i’ll be jotting down thoughts during each session of conference and posting them after the session ends.

A warning about a scheduling snafu for today: Due to stuff my family is doing, people we’re hanging out with for conference, that sort of thing, my notes for the Saturday afternoon and priesthood sessions aren’t going to go up until i can transfer my notes from paper to an electronic format. I’ll put up placeholder posts for them until they’re up, just to keep things in order.

Also, a note about the way these are ordered: I’m going to be arranging these the same way i did last time, which may be confusing at first. This is because blogs arrange things chronologically from bottom to top, contra millennia of Western writing practice. Therefore, if you visit this page after conference is over, the final session will show up first, followed by the Sunday morning session, then the priesthood session, and so on.

That said, just to make things less scrolling-intensive, each session’s post will be written bottom-up (i.e., first speaker at the end of the post, preceded by the second speaker, and so on, with the final speaker at the top of the post). However, each speaker’s entries will be given in the order i write them. This may be confusing, but i think it works. Anyway, this means that this is where you scroll to the bottom of this post, and then start reading upwards.

Closing thought

• The Mormon Tabernacle Choir’s arrangements were, for the most part, crazy slow and mellow in this session. (Not the closing song, though.) Must have annoyed the sort of people who get annoyed by sacrament meeting songs being sung slowly.

Dieter F. Uchtdorf (of the first presidency)

• Very, very nice opening play on his own public speaking habits.
• In all seriousness, listening to this address is forcibly reminding me of Mohandas Gandhi’s famous line that “there is more to life than increasing its speed”. Good thing to be reminded of, whether it comes from a Gandhi or an Uchtdorf, i have to say.
• I like listening to general conference addresses by people who have clearly had some decent rhetorical training along the way.
• It takes a confident speaker to take a glitch like your voice catching and weave it into your overall narrative.
• Serious question: If we’re supposed to place that much emphasis on time spent with our families, does that mean, say, bishops will be expected to cut the time spent on church service each week to just five or six hours, max (and even that would be a bit much)? I mean, either that or limit the office to those who are properly retired (or maybe it’d be a good use of the male halves of senior missionary couples).
• Note to self: Play bits of this address for a family home evening lesson or three. (Can you tell that i really, really liked this one?)

D. Todd Christofferson (of the quorum of apostles)

• What’s up with the widespread use of first-name initials among general authorities? It seems more widespread among them than among the general population. I wonder where that practice comes from?
• “…all honest work is the work of God.” Interesting meshing of the divine and the profane right there.
• Can i hear cheers for his endorsement of the humanities and (especially) arts?
• He draws a contrast between those who believe that our mortal bodies are the result of evolutionary chance and those who believe our bodies a a creation of God. Such a construction pretty much ignores, though, the fact that there are a lot of people who believe both at once—and that would be an interesting tension to explore. A general conference address probably isn’t a good forum for that sort of analysis, though.
• So the ends don’t justify the means? But how in the world are all of Utah’s Amway sales droids going to make a living now?

David M. McConkie (of the Sunday school general presidency)

• Wait—he’s saying it’s important for teachers to prepare? Well, at least he’s in the Sunday school general presidency, so that sort of a drastic change clearly isn’t expected in elders quorum teaching.
• If you listen to general conferences of sixty or more years ago, the offices held by the speakers usually correlated directly with the content of their general conference addresses. (For example, the presidency of the seventy—there were no other general authority seventies at that time—generally spoke on missionary work, the presiding patriarch—that office was filled at the time—spoke on blessings and especially patriarchal blessings, members of the presiding bishopric spoke on the needs of those holding the Aaronic priesthood and the physical facilities of the church, and so on.) By thirty years ago, though, that was no longer the case. Now that members of general presidencies are no longer drawn from the general authorities of the church, we seem to be going back to the future.
• He said that it’s “contrary to the economy of heaven” for God to let us know individually what we’ve already been told collectively (in the scriptures). To be completely honest, i don’t think i agree with this idea.

name not caught due to audio glitches (of the quorums of seventy, i’d guess)

• He said that the “We believe…in…prophets…” in the sixth article of faith means that we believe what they say and follow their directions. Is that really what it means? I mean, there’s a lot of ellipsis marks needed to render that verse that way. (The full verse reads: “We believe in the same organization that existed in the Primitive Church, namely, apostles, prophets, pastors, teachers, evangelists, and so forth.”)
• What does it actually mean that the living prophet can never lead the church astray? I think that we tend to have an overly simplistic view of that idea.
• Joseph Smith was a teenager when he was first called as a prophet (though he was in his twenties once his ordination occurred). The original quorum of apostles was made up of fairly young guys. Why don’t we have notably young people in the highest levels of church leadership any more?
• A lot of this was presented as, in his words, “obedience to the prophet”. I have to wonder if obedience to the prophet or obedience to God is a more basic daily guiding principle. (Certainly the latter overall, but i’m wondering about day-to-day life here.)

name not caught due to audio glitches (of the general primary presidency, it sounded like)

• It wasn’t her point, so no criticism of her, but it bothers me when the story of Joseph Smith’s childhood operation and his refusal of brandy as an anesthetic gets held up as a great example of following the Word of Wisdom—there was no Word of Wisdom at that point to follow, to begin with!
• “The world will teach our children if we do not.” Well, actually, it’s more that the world will teach our children no matter what we do—and you know what, i don’t think that’s a bad thing. Of course, i also tend not to think that the world is going to perdition in a handbasket.
• In the story she told about the woman whose children prayed for safety while she was driving though a blizzard, i suspect that the greatest answer that came to the prayer was the road being closed.
• A sports celebration as an instance of the strait and narrow path? I think it’s now officially possible to make anything into a gospel metaphor.

Jeffrey R. Holland (of the quorum of the apostles)

• Some discussion about the sustaining of church authorities and officers that’ll be done in this afternoon’s session. Leads me to sort of idly wonder when the last time was that the body of the church in conference assembled rejected a proposed name. I mean, i realize that it’s not a vote in the electoral sense (but rather a vote for ratification, like at a business board meeting). Still, you’d think there would be more frequent negative votes than there are.
• He mentioned funeral potatoes! I seriously hadn’t heard that term before my exile in Utah. (Potato casserole is what i’d heard it called, on those rare occasions i’d heard it called anything.) Regional lexical variation in the public sphere makes me happy.
• I like the story he told about how his parents paid for his mission so that his money would still be there when he got home. What i really like about it is that they didn’t tell him about it—they allowed him to focus on his work then so that he wouldn’t be distracted by the need to thank them until later. There’s something in there about why we’re generally not supposed to trumpet our good works before the world, i suspect.

Thomas S. Monson (president of the high priesthood)

• Did anyone else have issues with the audio feed on the internet here? I have no idea what he said, even though i could see the video perfectly. Hint to the techies running the church’s website: General conference video feeds are candy—it’s the audio that’s important.
• Anyway, a few minutes into his address (read: about a minute before he was done) we got the audio-only feed going. (We had to fire up Windows to get that to work, and then later got the video to—sort of—work with the audio under WIndows. Was the audio problem a Mac-only issue, perhaps?) Anyway, we got to hear the end of a pep talk on how older couples should serve as full-time missionaries, which is always a nice subject to hear about, ’cause we don’t have to worry about feeling guilty about that one for a couple decades yet.

Opening song

• So why is it that the men in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir wear business suits, but the women wear crazy tent dresses that no businesswoman in her right mind would ever wear?

Opening credits

• I’m watching this on the internet, so i don’t know if everyone else saw the same opening credits video montage as i did, but it really just didn’t work for me. Sorry. Better luck to the church’s audiovisual department next time.
• Our stake is really into the idea that people coming into meetings should be deathly silentreverent, and people shouldn’t speak to each other as they’re waiting for the meeting to start—any greetings or discussion need to occur outside the chapel in the foyer. Odd, then, that the general authorities of the church greet each other as they walk to their seats, and as they sit next to each other they pretty frequently lean over and exchange quiet words with each other. Hmmm…Might it be that reverence actually doesn’t mean silence?