Are Mormons evil?

Lots of people think Mormons are somehow inherently evil—and Mormons, for their part, have been running from such claims since before the church was even organized in 1830. However, it’s time to come clean on this—and so here, finally, is the truth about Mormons in the United States, in convenient field guide format:

• Utah Mormons are evil and know it, but cover it up frantically.
• California Mormons are evil but don’t know it.
• Mormons in the rest of the US West are evil and know it, and would cover it up if only they knew how.
• Mormons in the Midwest are evil and know it, and are constantly ashamed about it.
• Mormons in the deep South are evil and know it mainly ’cause everyone else tells them they are, but they cover it up to the extent that they can to keep the neighbors quiet.
• Mormons in the East are evil and know it and glory in it!

Hope this helps.

Yes, i’m an easterner. Why do you ask?

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.

Sorta-liveblogging general conference: Sunday morning session

So we’ve arrived at Sunday morning, the big leagues of general conference—the one that people actually watch, if they’re going to watch a session of conference.

As with all of these that i do, the entries for the session are arranged bottom-up, with the first speaker at the end of the post and the final speaker at the top of the post—but with each speaker’s entries given in the order i write them. This means that the start of the session is down by the bottom of this post.

Thomas S. Monson (president of the high priesthood)

• So he’ll conclude this session and (if tradition holds) the next session? Interesting.
• A reference to Elder Hales as “Bob”. Always nice to see humanizing language.
• You know, ancient warfare techniques involved the regular killing of absolutely everyone in a defeated city, or at least the (often sexual) enslavement of the population. I’m not convinced the world is more immoral (or even amoral) nowadays—the locus of the immorality may have changed, but has the degree of it?
• Now this, though, i can fully get behind—that we can each do our individual part to create moral character in our own selves.
• A five dollar bill when he was ten? I just checked, and that’s $75.10 in 2010 dollars—a serious amount of money to lose, especially amidst the Great Depression.
• ”I’m always humbled and grateful when Heavenly Father communicates with me”—not a surprising line, but a memorable one.
• “Elder Hawkes, who was known to drive rather rapidly…” I continue to like moments of humanity in general conferences.

M. Russell Ballard (of the quorum of apostles)

• It sounded at first like he was going to call it evil to use the word “Mormon” to mean anything other than the father of Moroni, but it seems like it’s settled more into a discussion of why the full name of the church is a good thing—much better.
• So it’s okay to use “Mormons” to refer to members of the church, but not “the Mormon church” to refer to the church as a corporate entity? Is this an attempt to strike a middle ground as they recognize that nobody’s really listening to general conference addresses about the word “Mormon”? (Sidebar: As a professional linguist, i feel the need to point out that top-down directions on language use are almost never successful.)
• Let’s see if i’ve got this right: Mormon church is a problem because it creates confusion with fundamentalist Mormons, but The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints doesn’t because there’s no possible confusion with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints or the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. (I think my head hurts.)
• My opinion: Just because the name of a church has “Jesus Christ” in it isn’t going to convince anyone that that church is a Xian religion.

Elaine S. Dalton (young women general president)

• As a father of daughters, no sons, i have to say that i like mentions of fathers and daughters—it’s a relationship that in my experience gets short shrift in church addresses, both general and local.
• I have to admit that i never had a “How do i raise a daughter?” reaction. If i’d had any sons, on the other hand, that’s what would have freaked me out.
• So wait a minute—it’s my job to make sure my daughters are righteous, not their own job? I don’t think i agree, actually—my job is to make sure my daughters can make decisions, not to make decisions for them.
• Why do general conference speakers get visual aids to buttress points of cuteness, but sacrament meeting speakers don’t?
• I don’t entirely follow the logic—she said the best way to raise (good) daughters is to love their mother, then went on a whole long thing about guarding daughters’ virtue, and then summarized it by saying the best way to raise daughters is to love their mother. Huh?

Tad R. Callister (of the presidency of the seventy)

• A repetition of the meme that there is no middle ground between good and evil. I have to admit that i remain unconvinced, but he’s giving some interesting evidence.
• We really ought to be careful of saying that the using Bible and the Book of Mormon together means you only get one interpretation. His claim conveniently ignores the existence of, say, the Community of Christ, or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (a.k.a. the Strangite church), or others—not to mention doctrinal disagreements (caffeine, anyone?) among members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-days Saints themselves.

Robert D. Hales (of the quorum of apostles)

• Elder Hales is seatbound, like President Packer? Is this new, or had i just missed or forgotten about it?
• This all brings to mind a thought i’ve had before: Jesus was convicted of treason and sedition, and we revere him as the Son of God; Joseph Smith was in prison awaiting trial on similar charges when he was assassinated. We of all people really need to be careful about rushing to judgment based on human concepts of justice (including, to the point of this address, when we see divine-punishment-looking things happen to people), you know?
• It always gets me a bit when the more elderly of the general conference speakers get emotional talking about the deaths of family and close friends—you know they’ve experienced it, and it’s rather brave, i think, to talk about it in public, even briefly.
• Good reminder that one of Job’s trials was a loss of personal reputation—we tend to forget that one when we talk about that story.

Henry B. Eyring (of the first presidency)

• His description of the ward “day of service” project transforming the grounds of a church makes it sound like it wasn’t a Mormon church. (He mentioned the “ministers” of the church.) I’m hoping we had a good number of those, where we helped out or worked with other denominations—the perception people (including a number of Mormons, like me) have that we’re hyper-ourselves-directed can’t be healthy.
• What kind of university invites a religious leader to speak at its graduation without thinking ahead of time that said religious leader might talk about religion a little bit?
• Just letting everyone know: If I’m a terminal case, don’t bother to buy new shoes for me. Go ahead and polish the ones i already have, but i wouldn’t be able to take the shoes with me—save the money for a party for the living, i figure.

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

• He called this the “fourth session” of conference, which is interesting—usually this is called the “fourth general session”, which has led me to wonder what non-general sessions there are during the week previous. I figure that what he used is simply a shorthand for the longer form, but it’d be interesting to know what the actual full general conference schedule is.
• We get a song, then opening remarks, then another song, then a prayer, then a song. This is kind of a normal opening, but couldn’t we do with fewer songs? I mean, the people who are twisted enough to really like MoTab just got a half hour of that all to themselves with the “Music and the Spoken Word” program. If the purpose of general conference is actually for the membership of the church to learn from the general authorities and general officers of the church, then you’d think they’d cut a couple of the songs and squeeze another of the shorter speeches in, you know?

Sorta-liveblogging general conference: Saturday afternoon session

Second general session! (Speaking of which, i wonder how many non-general sessions there are? Priesthood session is technically a general session, since Sunday morning is the fourth general session, but the relief society and young women’s sessions aren’t included in the general session count. There used to be welfare sessions, but they’re gone now, unless attendance at them is a lot more restricted than it used to be.)

Anyway, a reminder: The entries for the session are arranged from the 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—but each speaker’s entries are given in the order i write them. This means that this is where you scroll to the bottom of this post and start reading upwards.

Closing prayer (i didn’t catch who said it)

• I caught direct references to at least three, maybe four of the addresses this session. Nothing like proving your were listening, eh?

L. Tom Perry (of the quorum of apostles)

• Four apostles (not counting the first presidency member) speaking in one session—seems a bit of an overload. This plus the temple announcements this morning feel like an attempt to reward the people who are actually watching today.
• Lots of discussion of the church’s place as a topic for discussion and comment in the public sphere.
• Okay, i’m an academic linguist, and i’ve published a number of articles on the card-cord merger—that is, the ability of speakers of certain dialects of English to pronounce the or in words like cord as an ar, like in card. L. Tom Perry exhibits that merger a lot—and it’s distracting me, on a professional level.
• I’ve heard other Mormons characterize this blog as evil and a horrible public face for a member of the church to present, and i’ve also heard other Mormons characterize this blog as a quite positive and humanizing public face for a member of the church to represent. I’m curious how L. Tom Perry would categorize it.
• Good to hear a general authority explicitly say that it’s good to have a two-way conversation about religion with non-Mormons, contra the occasional Mormon meme that our job is to teach others, not to be taught by others.
• We need to be civil in our discussions of religion, no matter the tone others adopt when engaging us or discussing our religion. I think we tend to do that anyway, but it’s good to hear such direction from high levels occasionally.
• Interesting statement: When talking about the church, we shouldn’t try to make it sound “better than it is”. Very nice indirect acknowledgment that even though we believe that we have the truth, we can’t claim to be using that truth perfectly. (And so maybe L. Tom Perry wouldn’t mind this blog, after all.)

D. Todd Christofferson (of the quorum of apostles)

• What exactly is entailed in a “call to repentance”? He’s presenting it in a way that seems slightly different from what i expected, and i’m not entirely certain what exactly he means by that phrase.
• His reference to the baptismal covenant didn’t really parallel Mosiah 18:8–10 (which i’m not certain is actually the baptismal covenant myself, no matter what lots of gospel doctrine teachers have taught me). I’m going to have to look for his description of it in the written report.

LeGrand R. Curtis, Jr. (of the quorums of seventy)

• Cool—i thought for a minute he was going to talk about the importance of avoiding big sins and such. Yeah, that’s important, but he went in a more interesting direction—that it doesn’t matter whether our sins are big or little, since they’re all sins, and we all have them.
• I really, really, really like his story of being told cascading stories about reactivation.

Carl B. Cook (of the quorums of seventy)

• He’s doing a very good, focused job with his message (we need to remember to “look up”—that is, look toward Jesus), but there’s really nothing here i can hook into to comment on about it.

Ian S. Ardern (of the quorums of seventy)

• This is some of the most measured, slow pacing of speech i’ve heard in a general conference address in a long time (aside from, occasionally, Richard G. Scott). There’s sort of an irony about having that in an address about the importance of using time wisely.
• Contrasting prayer with things like texting very seriously popped my brain over into imagining what it might be like to text a prayer. (I then realized i don’t have any phone numbers of deities on my phone, so it wouldn’t work. At least for now.)
• Angry Birds mention!

Neal A. Anderson (of the quorum of apostles)

• He’s working at walking a really, really fine line here: Saying that married couples should make their own decisions on the timing and number of their children, and also saying that married couples should make sure to have children (if they’re physically able, as he mentioned in passing), while criticizing limiting the number of children a couple has. I’m not sure he’s doing it successfully.
• Sidebar: What’s the birth rate among Mormons, and does it vary by region?
• Serious question: What if God tells a couple to delay having children?
• Another question: What does it actually mean to “multiply and replenish the earth”? He’s presenting it as meaning to have lots of children. Jeanne and i have lots of children (well, well above the national average, in any event), and i’m not certain that’s what it means.
• He’s doing a much better job of highlighting the problems inherent in judging people who don’t have children.

David A. Bednar (of the quorum of apostles)

• If he’s right that nobody on earth had the sealing authority from Elijah’s ascension until Elijah’s appearance on the Mount of Transfiguration, does that mean the Nephites didn’t have the sealing authority (until, presumably, Jesus’s appearance to them)?
• Genealogical research is a calling of children of God, and is not limited to those who have reached a particular age. (Nice point.)
• Interesting job of drawing a line from skill in social uses of technology to potential skill in using technology for genealogical research.
• Ah! An announcement (re-announcement?—i don’t know if it’s been previously mentioned) of a web site on family history directed toward the youth of the church.
• On a related personal note, when Jeanne and i were in our late twenties, Jeanne was called as the ward family history consultant. We used to joke that she was the youngest family history consultant in the history of the church—rather certainly not true, but sometimes it felt like it was.

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

• A full set of sustainings in October? I thought this was an April thing, not an every conference thing. Am i just misremembering past practice?
• So Gary J. Coleman’s address in the previous session was a valedictory.
• Yoshihiko Kikuchi has been made an emeritus general authority. There’ll be a lot of people in the church who miss having him around, i think.

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

• A primary choir? Interesting—not something you see that often in meetings like this. (I do have to wonder—what sort of sedatives did they give them to keep them from fidgeting up there?)

Sorta-liveblogging general conference: Saturday afternoon session

Saturday afternoon is generally my favorite session. There’s the sustaining of church officers and authorities in the April running each year (and i always like to actually listen to that, not just let it gloss past like i suspect many Mormons do), and the speakers generally seem to be more relaxed in this session (along with the Sunday afternoon one).

Anyway, to remind: The entries for the session are arranged 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—but each speaker’s entries are given in the order i write them. This means that this is where you scroll to the bottom of this post and start reading upwards.

M. Russell Ballard (of the quorum of apostles)

• Interesting claim, that we’re only able to love our neighbor (the second great commandment) if we first love God (the first great commandment). Is this actually true? (Also, is that actually what was intended by what he said?)
• I had to look up “silage” online. (Can you tell i didn’t grow up as a farmer?) Yeah, cleaning up a silage pit isn’t a job i would have found pleasant, either.
• Nice brief reminder to avoid gossip.
• Nice brief reminder to do missionary work with our friends.
• Nice brief reminder to generally be nice.
• Part of me feels like his main point in this address is all the various brief reminders, and the general topical matrix they’re embedded in is almost incidental.

Dallin H. Oaks (of the quorum of apostles)

• He’s presenting human behavior as very, very rational.
• And yep, that’s really the main thing i’m getting from this whole address: People develop a hierarchy of desires and then operate according to them, so we need to develop righteous (hierarchies of) desires.
• Specific ideas on how to apply the principles being taught! (That’s unfortunately pretty rare in general conference addresses.)

Cecil O. Samuelson (of the quorums of the seventy)

• I’m liking this address, but am not finding individual items to pull out for highlighting.
• Here’s kind of a weird parallel that occurred to me: He said that with a testimony, if you give some away, so to speak (i.e., you share it), you end up with more. In the previous session, Henry B. Eyring said that your will increase in temporal terms if you give away of your substance to help others.
• It’s always nice to hear the occasional general conference address that’s brimming with optimism for the future, rather than talking the position that everything around us is dangerous and trying to destroy us.

Richard J. Maynes (of the quorums of the seventy)

When i was a full-time missionary, i found that the idea of an eternal family unit wasn’t actually all that appealing to a lot of the people i met. Why is it so frequently presented as out missionary ace in the hole?
• Lots and lots of stuff about families and their importance—but not much that stands out as different from most general conference addresses on families.
• So i get that countering the false traditions of “the world” with teaching in the home is important. How do we know, though, which traditions of the world are false, and which are correct? I mean, it’s not like everything that’s widely popular in the world is evil, or even not entirely good.
• So families are strong because everyone has different strengths? I’m cool with that—and i think i’ve got my superpowertalent of sarcasm going pretty good, so everyone else in my family can feel free to provide the other talents we need.

Russell M. Nelson (of the quorum of apostles)

• That was a blunter mention of death than you usually get in public addresses (not just general conference addresses).
• I so have the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young song “Teach Your Children” looping in my head now.
• There’s an interesting question this whole discussion of obedience leads to: If we gain blessings from obedience to individual commandments, what blessings are those who choose to obey only certain commandments entitled to?
• He didn’t mention this in his discussion of tithing, but excommunicants are not allowed to pay tithing. That’s an interesting counterpoint to the claims of some who argue that the church preaches tithing only as a way for the church to amass wealth.
• Linguistics nerd note: He pronounced the word “Melchizedek” as [mɛlkɛzədæk]. I’ve been observing (maybe better: noticing) that [æ] in the final syllable more and more often.

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

• I think it’s actually cool that we have an actual president of the quorum of the twelve apostles who’s functioning in that role—i remember that for years and years the president of the quorum was in the first presidency, so the quorum was headed by an acting president (for many years, actually, Boyd K. Packer).
• Interesting that “Latter-Day Saints” is given as a preferred short form for items referring to the Mormon church, rather than something closer to “Church of Jesus Christ“—you’d think that if we’re worried about people perceiving us as non-Xian, we’d go more in that direction.
• And yes, i just referred to the church as the “Mormon church”, thus providing further evidence that i’m evil.
• Interesting bit of logic: Others don’t have to accept that revelation exists, but anyone who wishes to understand Mormons and Mormonism has to accept that we accept it.
• This is an amazingly wide-ranging address, going from topic to topic rather suddenly. I mean, the topics progress in a logical pattern, but there’s no single overarching theme that i can figure out.
• The counsel to forget slights and offenses and move on is good advice, i think, but the specifics of how exactly to do that are needed, too—and knowing how to do that, that’s where people run into difficulty, i think.

Brook P. Hales (secretary to the first presidency), church statistical report

• We’ve passed 14 million? How’d i miss that?
• It’s interesting how long we’ve been holding at just a bit over 50,000 full-time missionaries.

Robert W. Cantwell (of the auditing department), church audit report

• Why do we even take the time in general conference to present these any more? Back when the church gave accounting for funds (sometimes down to the penny!) it made sense, but nowadays? What’s the point?

Dieter F. Uchtdorf (of the first presidency), presentation of church authorities and officers

• Interesting that effective dates that weren’t today (1&mnsp;May 2011) were given for the releases. I wonder whether the calls were immediate, or effective as of a date?
• One of the new members of the first(?) quorum of the seventy has the first name LeGrand. Gee, i wonder whether he was named after a very specific former general authority…?

The guy who gave the prayer said that we’re participating in general conference because we have complete faith (trust?—memory is a faulty thing). That’s assuming a lot of his listeners…

With Quentin L. Cook’s address this morning in medium-term memory, i ask: Has a woman ever given a prayer in general conference?

The choir sang “How Firm a Foundation”. I’m not a fan of choral music like you get in general conferences (as i’ve mentioned a number of times on this blog), but this is a song that really does work well in arrangements for large choirs. Best of all, though, they sang the last verse—and we really ought to sing that verse more often in our congregational singing, in my very vocal opinion.

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

• No welcome to the folks on the internets—i think that that may mean that we’ve finally arrived, and it’s not weird enough to rise to the level of remarkable any more.

Gardasil

Our oldest child has reached the age where we need to decide whether she gets the Gardasil shot or not.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, it’s a shot that provides some immunity to a number of strains of HPV, which is probably the most widespread sexually transmitted disease out there. This is a big deal healthwise, because these strains of HPV are the main causes of cervical cancer.

A number of people out there—most of the voices out there are mainstream Xians, but there are some Mormons among them—are vehement in saying that girls shouldn’t be vaccinated against HPV. There are a number of arguments raised, and some of them are outside the scope of this blog (for example, the whole Vaccinations Are An Evil Communist Plot Against America nonsense), but one is clearly worth mentioning here: The idea that HPV (and, by extension, any cervical cancer that results) is a punishment for the sin of sexual promiscuity, and we shouldn’t be immunizing kids against the effects of sin. Also, there’s some worry that girls will be more likely to be sexually promiscuous if they know they’re not in danger of one of the possible drawbacks to such promiscuity.

A number of people have pointed out that kids don’t necessarily think of the drawbacks that go with having sex when they have sex, so that last argument has flaws. However, i’d like to take issue here with the other one, which i think is much more insidious.

Should we be preventing people from experiencing naturally-occurring punishments of their sins? It’s an interesting question. However, it doesn’t really work as an argument against vaccinating girls against HPV. Consider the following ways in which a woman may have contracted HPV, neither of which involve sin on her part:

• She, as a virgin, marries a guy who isn’t a virgin and is a carrier of HPV.
• She is the victim of a rape, and the rapist is a carrier of HPV.

In addition, arguments against Gardasil on the basis of HPV being a punishment for sin seem to make the claim that repentance really shouldn’t be allowed to be as complete as God promises, and they don’t deal with cases like, say, a woman who was never taught to limit her sexual activity, but then repents and is baptized and lives a sexually sinless life after that. She gets to be punished because she was raised in ignorance? Really nice thinking, folks.

We’re vaccinating our daughters against HPV—we actually trust our kids to make decent decisions, and if they don’t, we’re evil enough that we believe repentance should be allowed to actually work.

Sorta-liveblogging general conference: Sunday afternoon session

So here we are for the final general session. (Worn out yet?) As with all of these entries, if you want to get these entries in chronological order, you should go to the bottom of the post and scroll upwards. And with that…

Thomas S. Monson (president of the high priesthood)

• “Let us not be critical and judgmental—let us be tolerant.” So does this put a fork in sacrament meeting speakers using the “we first endure, then pity, then embrace” line ever again, then?
• “None of us is immune” to an unexpected calling. Uh-oh…
• And we’re done—ponder on what’s been taught, be good, and be better than you were before.

David A. Bednar (of the quorum of apostles)

• There is a relationship between receiving a testimony of Jesus Christ and being converted to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
• Any honest seeker of truth can gain an testimony and become converted.
• Speaking of which, given the way he just pulled out textual parallelism in his use of the phrase “honest seeker”, i suspect that he is, as is so often the case, delivering an address that's intended to be read more than heard.
• Testimony is the beginning of full conversion.
• Testimony is important, but insufficient to give us enough spiritual strength—we need to be converted.
• From my oldest: “Didn’t he give this exact same talk last year?”
• I know this makes me evil and all, but strained interpretations of the parable of the ten virgins really do nothing for me.

Don R. Clarke (of the quorums of seventy)

• What do we think about during the sacrament? Well, when i’m taking the sacrament, i’m generally thinking about whether my youngest is taking the opportunity to crawl under the seats.
• We should care about the sacrament—it’s not just a chance for a (really, really tiny) snack in the middle of church.
• By cleansing yourself through the sacrament each week, you ensure that after you die, your spirit will be clean.

Daniel L. Johnson (of the quorums of seventy)

• We need to become like Jesus, which is not easy (though necessary).
• Trials aren’t limited to things like death of a loved one or the loss of a crop, but can include worldly popularity, artistic or athletic talent, or such.

Marcus B. Nash (of the quorums of seventy)

• What is it about Mormons and faith/mountain analogies?
• How long has it been since we’ve had a Martin and Willie handcart company story in conference?
• Wait a minute! “The Lord’s antidote for doubt is” [drum roll] belief? I mean, isn’t that kinda tautological?

Russell T. Osguthorpe (general president of the Sunday school)

• And here’s the official rollout of the church’s new youth curriculum. (And it’s about time, i say.)
• Teaching as an active work, not a semi-passive pursuit.
• The one who learns has to decide to learn, but they have to be taught by those who can teach.
• “We want our youth to understand.” (May have gotten a word or two wrong, but the content is correct.)
• Someone online just pointed out that a new curriculum is absolutely needed, what with Missionary Training Center stays being shortened.

Richard G. Scott (of the quorum of apostles

• Wow—Sunday afternoon, and this is the first extended mention of temple work?
• Interesting idea, that doing both family history work and proxy temple work for those you find brings you “both halves of the blessing”.
• Don’t selfishly hold on to names for proxy work, let others help out.
• I love it when he talks about his wife. You can hear the love and pain and joy in his voice. It’s always a good reminder that these aren’t just guys in suits, they’re real people.

Robert D. Hales (of the quorum of apostles)

• Is it just me, or is he looking a lot healthier than he did last conference?
• The grace of God is important, don’t ignore it!
• This is sounding like it’s going to be the obligatory general conference “no, we are Xian, so there!” address.
• Good question: Given that we are Xians, “what kind of Xians are we?”
• He’s framing this as a call to repentance for all Xians, not just Mormons. Interesting.
• I’m quite liking this address. That makes four favorites by now.
• Lots of explicit calls to (temporal and spiritual) service this conference, aren’t there?

Opening couple of choir songs

• Okay, what’s with the amazingly slow arrangements? MoTab was all upbeat and cheery yesterday, and today they’re trying to put me to sleep.

[didn’t catch the name], opening prayer

• Okay everybody, admit it, you all said “amen” after the first time he said “in the name of Jesus Christ”, didn’t you?

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, reader(s). As has become traditional for this blog, i’m going to be “sorta-liveblogging” (that is, jotting down notes during the session and then posting them in a chunk here, session by session) each session of general conference—it only seems like a sensible thing for a Mormon-oriented blogger to do, you know.

Those of you who have read these in the past probably remember the odd-but-it-works format i use for these, but here’s a reminder: Since blogs arrange things chronologically from bottom to top (contra millennia of tradition in Western writing), so 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. Given that, i’ll be ordering things the same way within each post so that you don’t have to do quite so much scrolling. This means that 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, especially if you read one of those during an event).

In any event, this means that this is where you scroll to the bottom of this post, and then start reading upwards.

Dieter F. Uchtdorf (of the first presidency)

• I like that he’s highlighting the simultaneous nothingness and glory of human beings. It’s a common enough meme in some other branches of Xianity, but we don’t seem to focus on it nearly so much in Mormonism.
• So the qualifications for exaltation are personality attributes, really—so why do we focus so often on checklists of our actions rather than our attributes?
• He taught elders quorum and Sunday school in a small Texas branch back when he didn’t know English very well? Baptism by fire, i suppose—and a really, really good way for him to learn a second language, too.
• Speaking of which , who would have thought that the person who would take Neal A. Maxwell’s place as the general conference speaker most prone to memorable bouts of alliteration and rhyming couplets (not to mention similarly intricate thematic structures) would be a non-native speaker of English?
• I really like the looping topic structure of this address—it appeals to me more than the story-based structure that, in my observation, most Mormons seem to prefer.

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

• He repeats the common (not just among Mormons) claim that “standards of morality” are lower now than they used to be. This is leading me to wonder how broadly that definition goes—given where he goes later, he’s using it to include sexual things, but does he also include things like, say, charity or willingness to share or issues like war or social justice?
• Interesting—unless i’m seriously misreading his intent, his claims about the way the Holy Spirit inspires us seems to be directly going against what Barabara Thompson said earlier (that is, she said inspiration comes in any of a large number of ways, while he says it comes via feelings). I have to admit that i’m more on her side than his here, given my own experiences.
• You know, i’ve met some of the apostles, and they’ve tended to have very strong personalities. That the first presidency and quorum of the twelve have to function in unanimity, and then actually make decisions, really boggles my mind.

José L. Alonso (of the quorums of the seventy)

• To help people who are spiritually lost “it is not necessary to create any new programs”. This sort of thing has been repeated over and over in general conferences for some years now—i think the message may finally be getting through to local leadership, given my observation.

Thomas S. Monson (president of the high priesthood)

• This seems an odd speaking slot for the president of the high priesthood, but maybe i’m just recalling wrong.
• I suppose that the opening laugh line won’t make it into the printed record—rather a pity.
• Ah! He’s going to be announcing temples this morning—fun.
• They’re rebuilding the Provo tabernacle, with full restoration!—and doing it as a second Provo temple. I’m betting there’ll be a lot more wedding photos taken at that one than at the existing one…
• Other new temples: Barranquilla, Colombia; Durban, South Africa (a friend of mine served here mission there—she’s probably smiling right now); Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo; Star Valley, Wyoming. The Kinshasa one is really interesting—the church is placing a bet on the ultimate stability of the country, it seems.
• He said the church is “moving forward” on plans for a Paris, France temple, which is an intriguing way of phrasing things.
  
• And a blurb for the general temple patron assistance fund—it’s existed for a good while, but it hasn’t really been well-publicized.

L. Whitney Clayton (of the presidency of the seventy)

• Elder Clayton was here for stake meetings a while back, and this opening story? He was test-driving it then, apparently.
• What does it actually mean for the church to “fill the earth”?
• Interesting thought: Our primary job is to spread the message that there is a Savior throughout the world. Here in the United States you wouldn’t think that’s a big deal, but worldwide? Yeah, it bit more interesting.

Barbara Thompson (of the relief society general presidency)

• Point of trivia: Barbara Thompson is only the second unmarried woman to serve in the relief society general presidency (after Sheri L. Dew).
• It makes me happy every time i hear someone in general conference mention that revelation isn’t limited to low-level feelings and the like, but can include hearing a voice or somesuch.
• Is she reading this from paper? Her eyes don’t look like she’s using the TelePrompTer.

Choir, “We Ever Pray for Thee”

• I see that we’re back to the game of panning through the choir in ways to make sure to attract focus to the one or two non-pale faces singing. <sigh />

Richard G. Scott (of the quorum of apostles)

• The scriptures are useful for backing up religious statements “when cited correctly”. Did i get that right, and he said cited, not quoted or interpreted? I’m going to want to see how the written record of this speech reads on that one.
• I realize that i’m evil and all, but he’s advocating the usefulness of memorizing scriptural passages pretty intensely, and memorizing scriptures doesn’t really do anything for me—it just makes it so i know the words, but i focus on their form to the exclusion of their content.
• ”Do you use all of the scriptures?…I love the Old Testament.” Folks who like reading the Hebrew scriptures, represent!
• I’m curious what the ratio of quotes from canon to original text is in this address.
• His late wife served as a young-adult full-time missionary? That’s what it sounded like, but i couldn’t be certain from the phrasing, and a quick round of googling doesn’t turn up anything unambiguous on it. Either way, i’m curious how many of the general authorities are married to returned full-time missionaries, and how that compares to the Mormon male population as a whole.

Gary J. Colman (of the quorums of the seventy), opening prayer

• A fairly short prayer, but admit it: A lot of you got faked out and almost said “amen” a couple times before he actually got to the end.

Opening thoughts

• Canned opening video of the Conference Center and Salt Lake Temple that includes dark clouds! Is that a first? It actually works quite well, in terms of visual aesthetics.

Sorta-liveblogging general conference: Sunday afternoon session

And now it’s time to chill with Saturday afternoon, the session that all the slackers members of the church with very harried lives tend to skip out on, so the speakers tend to be a little bit more mellow, or at least toned down.

I like that.

Anyway, as with others, the entries for the session are arranged bottom-up, with the first speaker at the end of the post and the final speaker at the top of the post, but with each individual speaker’s entries given in the order i write them. This means that the start of the session is down by the bottom of this post.

Thomas S. Monson (president of the high priesthood)

• Lots of thankage.
• We all have a part to play, and with the help of God we can play our part well. My part, i’m thinking, is court jester—though one day i hope to be promoted to Shakespearean fool.
• And that’s it, closing us off (after what was easily my favorite session of this running of general conference) with a really, really mellow pep talk—so ’til April, folks!

Quentin L. Cook (of the quorum of apostles)

• Do i sense a problem of evil sermon? Oh, i do think so!
• A passing reference to September 11, 2001—you don’t get those very often in general conference.
• A reference to the sinking of the Titanic. Do i get to bear a grudge against Elder Cook for pushing that horrible, horrible Celine Dion song into my head?
• And a second September 11 reference!
• I wonder when general authorities stopped interviewing prospective full-time missionaries.
• This address is doing a good job of softening some of the rough edges of the preceding one.
• This seriously is one of the best problem of evil general conference addresses i’ve ever heard. (And i’ve listened to a number of them, going back to 1936.)
• So Harper’s magazine relatively recently made the claim that Mormonism preaches a prosperity-type gospel. I think Elder Cook is having fun sticking a fork in that one, you know?
• I think i still like Brother Richardson’s address better, but this one’s a really, really close second.

J. Devn Cornish (of the seventy)

• Okay, this guy gets my vote for best general authority middle name.
• I have to admit that “God answers little prayers, and that proves he loves us” arguments bother me, when people don’t always get prayers answered (even for big things, like say “Please don’t let me get stabbed right now”). Is a prayer not being answered evidence of God not loving us? I don’t think so—so why do we preach the opposite?
• That said, i have to say i like his exegesis of the Lord’s Prayer, both because it as pretty well done and because you don’t hear nearly enough exegesis in Mormon sermons.
• He included a quote from yesterday in his address. So much for the Mormon urban legend that states that the content of every general conference address has to be approved weeks in advance.

Randall K. Bennett (of the seventy)

• Things i already knew that this address has reminded me of: Remember, if caught by a rip current, don’t try to swim directly toward shore, but rather on a diagonal relative to the current. (Of course, “swim only sort of against dangerous currents” isn’t probably what he wanted us to remember from this.)
• And another: Small children don’t react well to clear logic.

Kazuhiko Yamashita (of the seventy)

• Some family traditions i just don’t understand. Yeah, it was a sweet story, but i wore out my mission coats pretty thoroughly—and i wore out the last one i had during the year or two following my return. I can’t imagine having stored a coat for long enough to have one of my children wear it, in any event.
• I don’t remember my own baptism. In a way i sort of feel some jealousy for people who can tell stories of their baptismal experiences like this.
• Proud parenting moment: He says he wants to speak to all of the future missionaries, and my daughters shush each other and start listening. (The six-year-old even says “I am a missionary in training!”)

Matthew O. Richardson (of the Sunday school general presidency)

• A male non-general authority speaking in conference!
• You know, watching this guy, i’m suddenly struck by how few of the speakers in general conference wear glasses.
• “We may need to change our way of teaching to emulate the way the Holy Ghost teaches.” (I may have a couple words wrong, but the content is right.) The Holy Ghost is non-corporeal, and can dwell within us—i’m not sure i get what he’s asking us to do.
• As he’s going through the address, i think i’m starting to get what he meant (and i think i like it), but it’s going by so fast that i don’t have time to really figure it out. Part of me feels like he figures this is his one general conference speaking chance, so he’s going to pack as much as possible on his topic into the address and let people digest it from the written report.
• Now that it’s done and i’m catching my breath, i have to say: Quite possibly the best address of conference so far—and there’s not a lot of chances left for people to top it.

Dallin H. Oaks (of the quorum of apostles)

• Interesting opening swipe at a decent-sized (though, i expect, not majority) chunk of mainstream Xianity.
• This is an interesting rhetorical method—he’s framing it as directed in part (largely, even) to those who don’t agree with him, but the claims he’s making assume more shared assumptions than you’d expect from such disagreement.
• ”We return to the Father by doing his will.” Nicely succinct, that.
• He notes that we should have no more disputes concerning points of doctrine. I can only assume that this means that, from this point on, nobody will argue about caffeine ever again.
• Absolutely true story: My four-year-old goes up close to the computer screen, stares at Elder Oaks, and asks, “Daddy, is he mad?” I had to answer, “No, he just usually has that expression.”
• ”We should not use a visa to visit Babylon.” That’s because they only take American Express. (Sorry, couldn’t resist.)

Russell M. Nelson (of the quorum of apostles)

• Wait a minute—a description of a religious concept in legal terms? You’re stealing Elder Oaks’s fire, dude!
• Is the usual Mormon definition of a covenant as a contract actually accurate? Are covenants actually usually binding quid pro quo agreements in the same way that Mormons tend to describe them?
• Serious thought: If someone can’t (by canon, even!) be punished because of the actions of their ancestors, why can blessings from covenants with God be inherited? There’s something deeper going on here, i think.
• Children of the covenant have a right to the fullness of the gospel. That’s a pretty heavy claim, really.

Opening thoughts

• I see that the MoTab women are still rockin’ with the pinkaliciousness! (Sorry, but that shade really isn’t doing it for me.)

Watching movies

So this past weekend my family sat down and watched the movie The Singles Ward. (Jeanne and i had seen it before, but it was the first time any of our kids had seen it.) If you haven’t seen it before, it’s not world-shatteringly great but it’s also not a bad little movie, and you should watch it if for no other reasons than (a) it has a really fun soundtrack that would drive some of our more, um, intensely artistically conservative church members absolutely insane* and (b) the rest of this post assumes you’ve seen the movie and at least somewhat remember it.

Anyway, as i watched this movie for the first time in several years, i was struck by two things. One is that the Discman shown at the beginning and end of the movie certainly dates it, even though it’s only just over a decade old. The other is more substantial: The big important turning point of the movie involves the female lead becoming severely angry and hurt because the male lead makes jokes about Mormons in his stand-up routine.

This reminded me of what i thought was the really, really major flaw of the movie:** Was the female lead character really worth chasing after? I mean, anyone who would be offended by such mild jokes, well, i don’t think such a person is worth it, you know?† But no, she gets held up as this amazing ideal, and we’re supposed to feel empathy for her. Sorry, folks, but if someone can’t watch others poke fun (mildly, even!) at a group they’re a part of, they really need to grow a thicker skin before they’re such the ideal.††

* Seriously—find Rooster’s version of “Popcorn Popping” from the movie’s soundtrack and download it now. You will be happy.

** Also, in the same sequence, a minor flaw: The evil female character’s use of the verb “to play” in a way that i’m still trying to figure out—it almost but not quite matches any of the (slang) meanings i’ve ever heard, or that i can find even on Urban Dictionary.

† There’s an irony of sorts, too, in that one of the stock characters that the movie uses to make fun of singles ward folks is a woman who is offended by patently non-offensive things.

†† I think i’m going to use the rare “Mormon-oriented literature” tag on this one, just to annoy the kind of people who don’t think literature departments should teach courses in film.

Who presides over what?

Another one that comes from thoughts during general conference:

Mormons generally say that the father (when present, of course) needs to preside in the home. However, given the discussion of parental stewardships in the document generally but slightly improperly called the Proclamation on the Family, i wonder whether it’s actually the mother (when present) who should preside in childrearing decisions.

(Of course, Jeanne and i are evil, since we operate by consensus rather than by one or the other giving direction, but what else do you expect from pinko commie liberal hippie types like us?)

On turning 500

So this marks the five hundredth post on the Latter-day Snark since the blog began on 31 July 2008. That’s actually a pretty impressive milestone for a less-than-every-day blog, and so it’s a chance to look back at a couple interesting things i’ve learned, and to play with some statistics.

First, posts about testimony gloves (particularly when you’re not in favor of them, as is the case for me, as you can read here and here) get people’s ire up. I’ve been called nasty things in a lot of different fora, but the amount of venom (including a handful of really vicious responses from people who decided pseudonyms weren’t enough, they had to take it to non-public email) in response to my position that testimony gloves are most emphatically not a divinely inspired idea is kind of scary.

Also, stuff that i really expect to draw comments rarely does. Interestingly, though, much of what draws views (according to Blogger, at least) doesn’t draw many comments. So, for example, my post declaring that i won’t ever put ads on this blog? More views in the last week than any of my other posts. Yeah, i don’t get it, either.

Over the past couple months, a much more likely post led the pack: My post asking whether Mormons are Protestant—that one apparently links high enough on a number of Google searches containing the words Mormon and Protestant that it drives traffic to me.

(Speaking of Google searches, searches containing the words Mormon and evil apparently also drive traffic my way. Not necessarily surprising, i suppose.)

The all-time leader in views here, though? My original testimony glove post, of course—over a thousand views in a bit over three years, which isn’t a lot, but for a not-really-widely-publicized blog, it’s actually somewhat frightening that that many people would drop by.

Of course, my twice-yearly semi-liveblogs of general conference (next one this Saturday morning!) result in a spike in traffic, but that’s mainly ’cause people do searches for various addresses by speaker name rather than anything specific to my blog, i figure.

Finally, by far most of those who come to my blog come from the United States, as you might expect, but a strong second showing comes from the United Kingdom. The next few are bunched together, led by Germany; i don’t know if the relatively high number of German readers is because i’ve mentioned serving as a full-time missionary in Germany and Austria occasionally, but that’s the only explanation i can come up with.

Oh—and my youngest sister’s blog (which is largely but not exclusively her stories of homeschooling her kids) drives a lot of traffic this way, so here’s a link to see what might go the other way.

Chloroform in print

There is a certain set of Mormons who like to get all annoyed at Mark Twain for slamming Mormonism. I think we should be honored, myself—it’s not every religion that got to be satirized by one of the greatest snarks of the nineteenth century.

No, wait, he did satirize pretty much every religion.

In any event, i really think we ought to see what he wrote for what it really is—brilliance. If we can do that, we can move one step closer to being able to laugh at ourselves, always a great hurdle for a people known for taking themselves a bit too seriously.

Anyway, here’s the opening paragraph of the sixteenth chapter of his classic travel narrative Roughing It:

All men have heard of the Mormon Bible, but few except the “elect” have seen it, or, at least, taken the trouble to read it. I brought away a copy from Salt Lake. The book is a curiosity to me, it is such a pretentious affair, and yet so “slow,” so sleepy; such an insipid mess of inspiration. It is chloroform in print. If Joseph Smith composed this book, the act was a miracle—keeping awake while he did it was, at any rate. If he, according to tradition, merely translated it from certain ancient and mysteriously-engraved plates of copper, which he declares he found under a stone, in an out-of-the-way locality, the work of translating was equally a miracle, for the same reason.

(This is followed by a bunch of stuff showing that Twain actually did manage to keep awake while reading the Book of Mormon, actually. Not that he was impressed, but still.)

I have to admit to adoring the “chloroform in print” line. I mean, he manages to go from a book that contains a section called ether to that phrase—it’s obvious in hindsight, but the brilliance is in managing to be the first to see the connection.

I guess this provides simply more proof that i’m evil. Not that that’s a surprise to anyone, of course.

Playing cards

It’s not as big a thing as it was when i was younger, i think, but as i recall a lot of Mormons got really into the idea that face cards are evil, so that not just games like poker and blackjack are out, but also go fish and war.

Myself, i simply adhere to a religious prohibition against number cards, thus saving me from the evils of Skipbo and Uno.

Sorta-liveblogging general conference: Saturday morning

A couple final thoughts

→Interesting how short the prayers in this session were.

→And speaking of prayers, one last thought before moving on to the next session: Why don’t women ever give prayers in general conference sessions? I mean, it’s not like they have to be offered by general authorities (not too many decades ago the tradition was to have stake presidents offer general conference prayers)—so why not open it up a little?

Dieter F. Uchtdorf

→Interesting unasked question: Does one need a reason to love someone or something?

→He said that the closer we get to God, the more we love God. This raises another interesting question: If perfect love casteth out all fear, then does that mean that if we fear God (in the sense of being afraid, not the semi-obsolete sense of giving reverence), then we don't properly love God?

David A. Bednar

→I went googling for the text of an address of David A. Bednar’s a few weeks ago, and i discovered that he’s pretty intensely hated by a very vocal group of people out there. One of the most common charges? He’s bland, and therefore a stealth public-relations scheme to make Mormonism look reasonable to non-Mormons. Now, aside from this being paranoid on way too many levels to count, i don’t think they’ve been watching the same person by that name that i have.

→Nice use of the ambiguity in the term “bear testimony”.

→How long have general conference addresses been attempting to purge testimony meetings of travelogues and such? I’m starting to think that if they really want this to change, they’re going to have to change the format of those meetings somehow.

→Why do general authorities nearly consistently refer to their wives in public as “Sister X”? It’s always felt vaguely squicky to me.

→I’d like to say that i like the example of brushstrokes working together to create a painting.

Russell T. Osguthorpe

→“Osguthorpe” is officially the coolest name of the day so far.

→This guy’s the Sunday School general president, and he’s talking specifically about religious instruction—brings to mind the way the presidents of the Seventy used to nearly always talk about missionary work (which makes sense, given their charge in the book of Doctrine and Covenants).

L. Whitney Clayton

→Serious question: Do bad things ever happen simply because bad things happen? He’s dealing with trials/burdens that happen to us because we are evil (punishments) or to teach us lessons (blessings in disguise)—is he treating this as a conprehensive list, or as two possibilities out of many?

Vicki F. Matsumori

→We live in a skeptical age. I’m actually comfortable with this, but it does seem to have crept into our preaching, you know? The Holy Spirit is a God—so why do we focus so much on the tiny “feelings of peace and warmth” manifestations of this God, rather than the great and powerful manifestations that a God is capable of?

Richard G. Scott

→As someone who sometimes uses “obscure references” when i teach, i do think i should point out that some of us simply have those rattling around in our heads, so it’s natural to use them—from us, it’s not an attempt to impress people, it’s just what we do. (Now, that said, i do agree that some people use obscurity in weird ways.)

→Grapes and jalapeno peppers together—yummm!

→Strong emotions can block out communication with the Spirit? So does this mean those whirlwind BYU engagements work against the Spirit? Just wonderin’.

→I’m gonna have to go through Elder Scott’s conference addresses since he was called to the Twelve—has he ever not included an at-least-oblique reference to pornography?

→ General conference addresses that deal with pornography seem to assume it’s all about the men, but women can be pretty ardent consumers of porn, too. Do women and girls get similar messages in Relief Society and Young Women’s general meetings? I’m gonna have to look thatt up.

Thomas S. Monson opens us off:

→Temples in Brigham City, Utah (pretty close to existing temples) and Fort Lauderdale, Florida (read: Miami, not terribly far from Orlando but far enough to create logistical headaches). Russia still gets bupkis.

Yet another Mormon blogger?

Yeah, i know, there’s way too many Mormon-oriented blogs out there already. I hope I can make this one different enough, particularly by starting out with one guiding principle:

We Mormons do a lot of things that can be made fun of. In fact, we do a lot of things that should be made fun of.

Therefore, i intend to make fun of them. Every few days, i’ll post an observation, many collected from years of being evil and passing notes about the weirdnesses that occasionally go on in sacrament meetings and various Sunday classes.

Really, none of what i’ll be posting here is going to be very serious (hence “snark” as part of the blog’s name). My hope is that you’ll see a little bit of yourself and your ward in these postings, and that you’ll smile—and if the old joke about God’s people being a peculiar people in the most modern sense of the world rings true, well, that’s fine. After all, if we can’t see the humor in ourselves, why should we expect anyone else to enjoy our company?

Sorta-liveblogging general conference: Saturday afternoon session

The Saturday afternoon session of conference: When we get to find out who got released.

To remind, the first speaker is at the end of this post, and the most recent speaker is at the beginning. However, within each speaker’s entries the various bulleted comments i have made are in top-down order.

So now you scroll down to the bottom of the post, and start there…

Closing prayer, J. Devn Cornish, of the second quorum of seventy

• So does that give us a new record for shortest ever general conference prayer?

Closing song

• This is slow. I guess they didn’t want to finish up ten minutes early, like the last session.

Russell M. Nelson, of the quorum of apostles

• Encouragement to apply to colleges before missions, because many institutions of higher education will grant an 18- to 30-month admissions deferral. Really? As someone who’s in higher ed, that seems like a really long deferral to grant. One year, sure, but two or more?
• We preach the gospel because God wants everyone to achieve immortality and eternal life. (And yes, he used the word wants, which was kind of fun to hear.)
• This was a wide-ranging address, and thus is really hard to summarize.

David A. Bednar, of the quorum of apostles

• Straight-up mentioned at the outset: This will be an address on chastity.
• “And Eve became Adam’s wife and helpmeet.” He said that like he was quoting scripture, but helpmeet doesn’t occur in the scriptures. Was he quoting something or was that original text, then?
• The church only accepts sexuality expressed within the bounds of heterosexual marriage—or at least that’s what he just said in about twice as many words.
• Our goal is to overcome the “natural man” and to “bridle all of the passions of the flesh”, and the atonement can help us do that.
• Interesting idea, that part of Satan’s motivation is based in jealousy at a bodily resurrection.
• The greater the sin, the rougher the road to repentance.

John B. Dickson, of the first quorum of seventy

• This is a pretty straightforward “we are a missionary church, just like the early Christian church” address.
• Ah! Here’s the turn—moving from the 1978 revelation extending the priesthood to those of African descent as a parallel to Peter’s revelation extending preaching the gospel to the gentiles, to the state of the church in west Africa.

Stanley G. Ellis, of the first quorum of seventy

• He says he’s wearing his “virtue tie” (it’s solid yellow). It got a laugh, but i didn’t find it funny. Different strokes, i suppose.
• He grew up as a farmboy in Burley, Idaho. Hasn’t that town produced a few other general authorities? Seems like Burley may be overrepresented.
• He says that if we do what the Lord says, the Lord “is bound to bless us”. Is that actually what the scriptures say? It’s not how i read it, i have to say.
• I hear stories of people buying a house to be in a particular ward, and i don’t get it. Having just bought a house last year, how would you do that? It really quite honestly boggles my mind.

Quentin L. Cook, of the quorum of apostles

• He delivered the eulogy for one of the children killed in the recent Newtown, Connecticut shootings. I hadn’t known that.
• This is being a straightforward “Why do bad things happen to good people?” address.
• If we do good, even with all the evil around us, “we can achieve the peace that is the promised reward of righteousness.”
• The peace promised by Jesus Christ is not only desirable, it is a gift from God (quoting John Taylor).
• About those who say they feel spiritual but not religious: Feeling spiritual is “a good first step”, but the church gives us more (including not just fellowship, but saving ordinances). Interesting that he still mentions such partial progress as worth appreciating—we get faced with all-or-nothing judgments more often than not, you know?
• Sidebar: Since an apostle has talked in general conference about how horrible the Newtown, Connecticut shooting was, can all the Mormons i know online who have been going on and on about how it’s actually just a conspiracy for the government to take away their guns simply stop now? Please? Pretty please?

Richard G. Scott, of the quorum of apostles

• Did he just basically say that if you’re not marking off all the family practice checkboxes (family prayer, family home evening, &c.), then you won’t make it? Depressing, if that’s what he meant.
• Technological advances can be improperly used, but they can also be a great help for spirituality if “used with discipline”.
• “Become friends with your children’s friends” and be a good example to them.
• “Reach out to those living in adverse circumstances. Be a true friend.” I like that, and especially the linkage he makes between the two thoughts.
• “Recognize the good in others, not the stains.” Even if you need to help someone with those stains, that shouldn’t be what you focus on.
• “We can’t simultaneously do all the things the Lord has counseled us to do” and that’s okay. There’s some comforting words right there.
• This one started out slow, but got most excellent—and early contender (along with Henry B. Eyring’s) for my favorite address of the conference.

Conducting remarks, Henry B. Eyring, first counselor in the first presidency

• He specified that everybody should stand once we get to the intermediate hymn—not something that gets mandated all that often at general conferences.

Statistical report, Brook P. Hales, Secretary to the first presidency

• All figures as of the end of 2013,
• Total membership a quarter milling shy of fifteen million.
• Over 22,000 church service missionaries—cool to hear that number reported separately.

Auditing report, Robert W. Cantwell, managing director of the auditing department of the church

• Seriously, why do they even do this? It made sense back before the church closed its books, but now? No point now that i can see.
• Though i gotta say that he at least put on a non-boring tie for the occasion, so there’s that.

Sustaining of general officers and authorities, Dieter F. Uchtdorf, second counselor in the first presidency

• It’s gotta be weird to say your own name during this ritual—or maybe by the time they’re at this point they’re used to it. I know i would find it kind of odd to be presenting my own name for sustaining, for sure.
• One change in the presidency of the seventy.
• Lots of releases among the area seventies.
• One advantage of being Dieter F. Uchtdorf, as a native speaker of German presenting non-English, non-German names in an English-language broadcast is that nobody expects him to pronounce them “right”. (Of course, he gets to—i think it was—Manfred Schütze, and there were no questions about it.)
• Release of the young women general presidency and board.
• New members of the first and second quorums, including one called from being a counselor in the young men general presidency.
• And here’s the corresponding large number of calls to being area seventies. I wonder how long before they move these out of the general conference sustainings, so as to save time.
• Hugo Montoya? I would have been so tempted to call him Inigo.
• New young women general presidency. Don’t recognize who they are, but the names (McConkie, Marriott,…) are certainly Mormon aristocracy, you know?

Opening prayer, Russell T. Osguthorpe, president of the Sunday School organization

• Not a general authority (he’s a general officer), but he spoke in the last general conference and is praying in this one. Interesting, that’s all.
• “We thank thee that all the priesthood keys have been restored…” All of them? Is that true? Or does God reserve some of them? (Serious questions—i don’t actually know the answer.)

Modesty’s unintended consequences

I was going through old email, and i found something that i posted to USENET a few years ago, after i moved from my exile in Utah to Florida. It’s a bit long, but i think it deserves a place here. (There were a few other things i found that’ll probably go up in coming weeks, as well.) Anyway, it was in response to

…When women are required by culture or custom to keep everything covered but their face, then a glimpse of an ankle may bring forth “strong desire” but when women are dressed as many now dress, bare midriff, almost bare breasts, bare except for the “bikini area” which gets smaller and smaller, is the lustful desire greatened?…

Going in what i think is a somewhat different direction than what the previous poster intended, this ties in to one reason i so desperately wanted to move away from Utah—and it’s a reason i don’t think i’ve mentioned here before: The local emphasis on modesty (in the current usual Mormon sense) was pushing me to some sort of immodesty (at least in thought).

I have always taken pride in the fact that i can look at an attractive human being and appreciate their attractiveness without any sort of lust taking over.* Therefore, seeing a woman in a miniskirt might lead me to the thought “Nice thighs”** but without anything sexual attached to it.

However, living in Utah County, Utah and surrounded by BYU students adhering to a strict dress code as i was for four years, this ability started to slip away from me—if i saw attractive legs shown by a miniskirt or short shorts, or a well-muscled or well-breasted*** chest shown by a low-cut top, or whatever, my sex drive and therefore tendencies toward lust would start to kick in.

This bothered me greatly—and i recognized the connection between not being constantly surrounded by bits of attractive skin^x on the one hand, and the tendency toward inability to appreciate those bits of skin dispassionately on the other. This was an ability i did not want to lose, so it gave me another reason to want to move to an area where skin is more often visible.

So i’m now in Florida, where skin is much more visible, and i find myself much more able to appreciate what i see without my sex drive/lust kicking in.^xx This is (in my opinion) a Good Thing.

It has led me to think, though—and here i think i circle around to what the original poster was after, though in a somewhat different way—that the call for modesty^ you often hear among Mormons may arise out of a recognition that looking at attractive people, and particularly attractive bits of their bodies, may lead to lust. However, getting people to cover up those bodies may well, for people like me, make the fight against lust more difficult, not easier.^^

In other words, a push for modesty (in that sense) may well have the effect of saving some people from condemnation due to their lusts at the expense of leading some people (like me) toward condemnation.

I don’t think a happy medium is likely to emerge, given current rhetorics and such, but i know i’m not alone in this—it’s just that you don’t hear from my side very often on youth standards nights (or whatever the equivalent is these days). I just wanted to put it out there for people to think about, and maybe to get some reactions, particularly from those who disagree with my take on things.^^^

* My appreciation for this trait is probably related to my deep appreciation for incongruency—i have a very high sex drive, but i’m able to appreciate sexual items without my sex drive kicking in. That’s worth serious points in my reality.

** Or, alternatively, “Someone with thighs like that shouldn’t wear a miniskirt” or “Not a good cross-dressing choice”—but i’m dealing with attractive people (or at least features) in this discussion.

*** Depending on the sex of the chest, of course. ☺

^x Not always visible—a well-cut pair of jeans, after all…

^xx Making it less likely that i’ll be condemned for lust, i think. Of course, if you don’t have the same semi-paradoxical tendencies as i do, Florida may not be the place for you.<sup>xxx

xxx</sup> Especially if you’re a leg man. If you’re a leg man in Florida, you’re on the express train to hell. ☺

^ Once again, in the usual Mormon sense, even though that means we have to ignore what i feel is the more important part of modesty (not to mention the definition the Book of Mormon uses): a lack of ostentatiousness.

^^ Leading to a vicious cycle, really—lustful desires at visual stimuli leads to a push for reducing those stimuli, which leads to less such stimuli, which leads to stronger lustful desires at visual stimuli, which leads to a push for reducing those stimuli, which leads to less stimuli, which leads to stronger lustful desires at visual stimuli…

^^^ And yes, i recognize that this simply proves (once again) that i’m evil. No need to mention that one.

Sorta-liveblogging general conference: Sunday morning session

Sunday morning session—time for the big leagues!

Before going further, i’d like to express gratitude for Sunday morning sessions of general conference. Not, not for any of the usual reasons, but rather because it preempts all the extra meetings that might occur before regular church meetings (bishopric meetings, priesthood executive committee meetings, missionary coordination meetings, ward councils, high council meetings, and so on—not that any one unit has all of them before church starts, but there’s always a few of them.) No one person has to go to all of them, of course, but for those of us who have to go to some of them, even with the timing of general conference here in Alaska (first session of the day at 8:00 am, being able to roll out of bed at the “late” hour of 7:00 am, shower, and still make our first meeting is enough reason to love this day.

Also, yesterday after i got back from priesthood session i discovered that Faith-Promoting Rumor has an open thread for comments on conference sessions, and i’ll be (minimally participating and) hanging out there, as well. (Multitasking!)

Anwyay: The entries for the session are arranged 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—but with each speaker’s entries given in the order i write them. This means that the start of the session is down by the bottom of this post.

Thomas S. Monson (president of the high priesthood)

• When i was growing up, one of my goals was to visit all of the church’s temples. Since the church starting its temple building boom in the 80s, well, i don’t have that goal any more.
• A cool contrast between the journey to and from the temple—both were difficult and bumpy and all, but the return was coupled with the joy of having received those ordinances.
• He’s not asking it directly, but underlying this whole address is the question: How much is the temple worth to you?
• Oh—never mind, now he’s asked it directly.
• Does this mean going to the temple to do early-morning baptisms is a valid excuse for missing early-morning seminary?

David A. Bednar (of the quorum of apostles)

• The spirit of revelation is available to everyone in the church, not just the presiding authorities.
• Revelation can occur either suddenly or gradually. I like that he’s allowing for both possibilities in the same address—we don’t get that very often.
• We can know the truth as God knows it, and act according to the truth as Jesus does it.
• Doubts are normal!
• All this talk about sunrises and such is really resonant if you've experienced subarctic midwinters and midsummers, by the way.
• We can receive revelation suddenly, gradually, or even so gently that we don’t realize that we’re receiving it (even as we act according to it).

Silvia H. Allred (of the relief society general presidency)

• From someone on Faith-Promoting Rumor: “Another talk on welfare. Now if only we could get this without a welfare anniversary.”
• Love as a motivating force for church welfare actions. What a radical concept!
• How does one live up to the story of the widow and her two mites when one actually has abundance? She didn’t directly raise the question, but this address has sent my mind in those directions.
• God sending acts of service as a form of reassurance. Interesting.
• I wish she’d had one of the longer slots they give to certain other positions—it would have been nice to hear that one a little less rushed.

We’re already at the halfway point? That went fast!

H. David Burton (presiding bishop)

• I’ve long believed that temporal salvation must precede spiritual salvation. Nice to see that idea given a shout-out in general conference. (Makes sense it’d be the presiding bishop to do so.)
• Why do we insist on trying to say that we’re not helping people, we’re helping people help themselves? There’s political code words in there, and that bothers me a little.
• We are under condemnation if we don’t help the poor.
• Flying to the relief of the stranger! It’s not just our fellow Mormons we need to care about (though he didn’t say that directly).
• I have to admit it—the story of the Willie & Martin handcart companies has been told so often and in so many ways that the hugeness of it has been bleached for me. I find this unfortunate.
• “Be kind to the poor” as final deathbed counsel. That kindness (not just helping them, or even helping them help themselves) isn’t something we focus on very much these days, i’m afraid.

Paul V. Johnson (of the seventy)

• What does it actually mean for something to be “consecrated for our gain”?
• I don’t know why, but analogies relating to hiking through the mountains never really work for me.
• Joseph Smith (and Moses, though he didn’t mention him) was nearly overcome by evil, but called on God and was saved. Was the important thing the calling on God, or the exertion to do so?
• Growing up, i felt like a lot of people in my ward were in competition to have the biggest trials. Maybe they were thinking that brought them closer to Jesus’s ultimate trials?
• You know, this is all making me think that the stories (are they just urban legends?—one can hope) of early Xians trying to get martyred is a rational, though in my opinion wrong, reaction to the idea that trials are Good Things.

Dieter F. Uchtdorf (of the first presidency)

• I was busy multitasking enough that i missed Henry B. Eyring’s announcement of the first speaker. Fortunately, the first speaker’s voice is recognizable enough that i didn’t even have to look to see the identification banner.
• This is a very classically-structured address. This is making me happy.
• If you’re playing a general conference drinking game, we just had the use of “beloved prophet”, pronounced as one word—that’s two shots of Diet Dr. Pepper.
• Interesting pivot, switching from the need for people to move forward in their individual spiritual lives to the need for people to move forward in their service to others.
• He referred to his wife by first name. This makes me happy.
• Self-deprecating aviation meta-joke FTW!
• I like St. Francis of Assisi, and he just gave one of my favorite St. Francis lines. I like having a member of the first presidency who uses pre-Restoration religious references at the rate he does.

As the song started, i got to thinking that only the Mormon Tabernacle Choir could make “Hark, All Ye Nations” sound like a dirge. It got better as it went along, but really only because the organ carried it at times.

Henry B. Eyring (of the first presidency), opening remarks

• Another mention of the anniversary of the church welfare program. It’s almost like the first presidency is trying to make sure nobody forgets it today, even if it got ignored by everybody else yesterday.