This is so…Really, i don’t have words for it

Today’s assignment: Go to the lesson in the young women manual that all of our daughters are getting taught sometime right around now. Next, scroll down to the story that begins “It all began that first Sunday in March.”

Now swallow hard, and read the story. I expect there’ll be flinching, but make it all the way through.

And after that, discuss the following questions (and feel free to propose your own):

• What kind of drifted-away-from-someone friend rushes home from college for a weekend for no other reason than to, essentially, lecture their friend about a choice they made (and about something where the one rushing home hasn’t been faced with anything relating to the choice they’re giving the lecture about)?
• What kind of non-Mormons get engaged after two months of knowing somebody, and then get married one month later (even in the early 1970s, when these events allegedly happened)?
• Speaking of which, does anybody else doubt that these events actually happened? Hmmm, maybe i ought to rephrase that so that i can get an accurate count: Does anybody think that this actually happened even close to precisely as narrated?*
• It asks: If you were Emily’s friend, what would you say to her? I’m assuming you mean other than “Congratulations! Have you registered for gifts anywhere yet?”
• They read their vows while a flute played softly in the background? Filthy, dirty hippies!
• Did anybody else notice that when Emily surprisingly [sic!] stayed active in the church, she got called as assistant librarian? In the context of the story, does this feel utterly dismissive to anyone else, specifying that she got called as an “assistant” something?
• Emily, as a child, had wished that her non-member father would be able to baptize her, she wasn’t sure whether her father would go to Primary daddy-daughter parties with her, and he went golfing rather than attend her seminary graduation. Um, did the old Sesame Street “One of These Things Is Not Like the Other” song start going through anybody else’s mind? the first of those is a religious thing. The other two are just being involved in your kid’s life. Her father wasn’t a problem because he was a non-member, he was a problem because he wasn’t a fully involved father.
• So neither Emily’s husband nor father could give her child a name and blessing. Fine. But what’s up with her heavily-sobbed “Who is going to bless my baby?” They had home teachers in the 1970s, right? I’m pretty sure they had bishops. I mean, this is the ward she grew up in—she had to know somebody!
• Interesting assumption in this story, that “member of the church” means “worthy holder of the Melchizedek priesthood”. Hint: Those two sets are not identical. (And there are a lot of non-members i know who i believe are more worthy than a good number of holders of the Melchizedek priesthood i know—but that’s a somewhat different topic, really.)
• And finally, could the word choice throughout the story have been any more horrifically loaded? If your answer is yes, please describe in some detail, ’cause i can’t come up with anything.
• No, strike that, this is the and finally: This young women manual was written in 1992 (with a bit of a revision in 2002), and it was old-fashioned even then. Its outdatedness shows. Badly. Seriously, folks, if the youth programs are really all so important, isn’t it time we fixed stuff like this?

* One change that the church has made to its publications in recent years (that i approve of most vigorously!) is that all stories like this must be at least closely based on real-life events. Back in 1975, though, when this story appeared in the New Era, there was no such requirement.

An advantageous calling

So i’ve mentioned being a ward clerk before. Being ward clerk has one very specific advantage over all other callings in the church—about midway through sacrament meeting you get to get up and walk around. Okay, okay, so it’s walking around with a purpose, since you do it so that you can get a headcount of sacrament meeting attendees, but still, it makes for a nice break in the middle of things, you know?

Once i get released from this calling, that’s what i’m gonna miss.

We do it, too!

The next time i’m in a priesthood or Sunday school class and someone makes some comment about how they went to a Roman Catholic mass and that it was just weird, what with all the sitting then standing then sitting then kneeling then standing then sitting and so on and how that feels so “not reverent” or somesuch (something that doesn’t get said very often, but that gets mentioned more than i’m comfortable with), i’m going to stop stopping myself and simply mention standing for intermediate hymns.

Through which lineage?

So priesthood lineages are recorded through the person who ordained a priesthood holder to the highest office they hold. That is, if someone’s a priest, the priesthood lineage goes through whoever ordained them a priest; if they’re an elder, it goes through whoever ordained them an elder; and so on.

However, since an apostle is an elder (no, seriously—it’s canon), why are apostles’ lineages traced through whoever ordained them apostles, rather than whoever ordained them elders (and also, most likely, conferred the Melchizedek priesthood on them)?

Painful histories

So it appears that members of the church continue to submit names for temple work that they’re not supposed to, particularly lists of victims of the Shoah. (Evidence for this: The first presidency sent out a letter to be read to the members of the church. Again.) This leads me to two questions:

1. Will the members of the church ever learn?
2. Are members of the church allowed to submit names of victims of the Shoah for temple work if those people are their direct ancestors?

Tradition!

Easter weekend traditions we’re celebrating this year at the David B and family home:

• Having an Easter feast with, as its centerpiece, a pork shoulder brined overnight in a cola beverage (in order of preference, Dr. Pepper, Coca-Cola, or—the one we have to use this year—Pepsi, whichever we can most easily get in a made-with-real-sugar variety)
• Listening to a recording of David Sedaris’s reading of his own essay, “Jesus Shaves”
• Watching Jesus Christ Superstar

In other news, it’s fun occasionally making our fellow Mormons’ heads explode.

Long and short prayers

Reflecting back on general conference, one of the things i found most interesting was how short the prayers for the Saturday sessions were.

Point of trivia: The longest general conference prayer i am aware of (i'm sure there have been longer ones, but this is just from those i’ve listened to) was the nearly-eight-minute prayer given to open the solemn assembly at which George Albert Smith was sustained as president of the church (during the October 1945 general conference). Interestingly, even though general conference prayers back then were usually delivered by stake presidents, this one was delivered by David O. McKay, then the president of the quorum of apostles.

Sorta-liveblogging general conference: Sunday afternoon session

Saturday afternoon—time for everyone to relax, since we’re on a glide path to done.

As always for these, these are ordered bottom-to-top, with the first speaker at the bottom of the post and each succeeding speaker higher up.

Closing thoughts

• The internet video feed from the church continues to improve. This is the first time we didn’t have to drop to an audio-only feed due to video-feed issues, and even momentary hiccups were pretty rare.
• Lots of love for the MoTab tenors in the arrangements in the final session.
• No new temples announced.
• In fact, no big news at all.
• And no mention of pornography—that’s gotta be a first in how many years?

Thomas S. Monson (president of the high priesthood)

• Great, great, great Freudian slip: If you see conflict in your family, “I urge you to sell ’em—settle them…”
• A general closing of the sort he usually gives, with a little bit of an extended riff on not being contentious.
• Also, this will make no sense without the video feed, but what was that…thing he did with his hand?

Neil L. Andersen (of the quorum of apostles)

• (Did i get the spelling of his name right this time?)
• He’s giving an interesting wrap-up, making sure to tie stuff in to previous speakers’ themes.
• “Discipleship is not a competition.”
• “We may not be at our very best every day, but if we are trying” we’ll be okay.
• God makes up for what we can’t do ourselves.
• A straight-up statement that there are non-Mormon disciples of Christ!

Paul B. Pieper (of the quorums of the seventy)

• We need to remember times we get spiritual inspiration.
• He said we have to be careful not to attribute spiritual inspiration to things like reason or intuition. My question: Can't reason or intuition be the result of spiritual inspiration? Where’s the problem?
• We should keep a record of divine inspiration we receive.
• “The opposite of sacred is profane, or secular.” Um, i don’t think that secular actually means what you think it means.

David F. Evans (of the quorums of seventy)

• The growth of the church begins within our own families.
• Every one of us has the responsibility to share the gospel. Question: How is this different from the responsibility to share the gospel that the book of Doctrine and Covenants says is inherent in holding the Melchizedek priesthood?
• We can’t just hearken back to the glory days of our full-time missions, we have to share the gospel now.
• Alpine German-speaking Mission represent! (That’s my old since-renamed mission.)
• Sharing the gospel should be “natural and normal”.

Larry Y. Wilson (of the quorums of the seventy)

• Controlling other people is a Bad Thing.
• Interesting reason for unrighteous dominion being bad: It makes people feel incompetent.
• “Wise parents prepare their children to get along without them.”
• We need to allow children to make their own decisions, and learn their own lessons.
• Question: We have lots of stories about deciding whether to play in sporting events on Sundays. Why don’t we get as much hand-wringing over, say, musical events, or cooking big meals for family gatherings, or…?

O. Vincent Haleck (of the quorums of seventy)

• Another general authority with a non-member father!
• God has a vision of what we can become, even if nobody else (including ourselves) can see it.
• As we figure out the way God sees us, we will become better people.

M. Russell Ballard (of the quorum of apostles)

• He has a cell phone—that’s gotta be a pretty closely-guarded phone number.
• “Today we live in a time when much of this world has lost its way.” I fear that many in the church are going to remember that as “Today we live in a time when this world has lost its way”, and there’s an important difference.
• Is he preaching a prosperity gospel?!?
• So commitment leads to prosperity? I suspect the sort of commitment he’s talking about is a very specific one, but it goes beyond commitment to marriage, and i can’t figure out its boundaries.
• Those married in the temple have better marriages, and are better off temporally. I’m curious if i see the causation here the same as he sees it.
• This is the closest we’ve gotten to the “everybody get married right away” that it feels like we’ve heard over and over and over the past few conferences.

L. Tom Perry (of the quorum of apostles)

• Some of you wouldn’t believe how much discussion online there is of the general authorities’ ties and their changes between sessions. L. Tom Perry appears to have been reading those threads.
• And L. Tom Perry fills in for Dieter F. Uchtdorf with the airplane reference!
• God has power to deliver.
• Nice exegesis, really.
• Alma’s people were delivered because they were “peaceful and righteous”. Nice to have peace endorsed along with righteousness.
• ”Neither the Bible nor the Book of Mormon in and of themselves are sufficient”, though each is necessary. I like that.
• The Book of Mormon: “It’s a great book”, in great part because of its harmony with the Bible. Interesting reason, really.

W. Craig Zwick (of the quorums of seventy), opening prayer (hope i got the right name)

• Never mind my comment on the closing prayer of the last session—i think we’ve got our longest prayer right here.

Sorta-liveblogging general conference: Sunday morning session

Sunday morning is, as always, the big leagues of general conference—this is the one everybody watches. As a result, the internet feed is being slightly glitch as the church’s servers work to keep up with the load.

As a sidebar, the bloggernacle has been all atwitter with the lack of temple announcements so far. You know, it wasn’t really that long ago that temple announcements were rare, and it was exciting when we got one—how quickly we forget.

So anyway—the beginning of the session is at the bottom of the post, and then it runs from the bottom up, with each speaker’s (or event’s) entries arranged as you might expect. Basically, that means that if you don’t scroll down after this paragraph, you ‘ll be starting with the end of the session.

Didn’t catch the name, closing prayer

• The “keel of testimony”! Way to prove you were listening when the prophet spoke!
• Also, i think that was the longest prayer we’ve had at this conference so far.

Thomas S. Monson (president of the high priesthood)

• Times of crisis make us focus on the important things in our lives.
• The internet video has gone pixelated here—is that a glitch at our end, or are the servers getting hit hard now that the prophet’s speaking?
• A perfectly clean house is an ephemeral concern—a sitting prophet actually said so!
• We have the ability to discover good and evil for ourselves.
• We enter mortality with “the power to think, to reason, and to achieve”, which gives us the ability to make it through this life safely (in a spiritual sense).
• The resurrection is real.
• And anyone can come back to the church if they want to.

D. Todd Christofferson (of the quorum of apostles)

• We welcome academic-type research on religious things…but (essentially) get to ignore it. Is that actually what he just said?
• This is all (and i do mean all—it’s a bit repetitive, honestly) about the need for relying on revelation to clarify points of doctrine. I wonder what got his mind whirring along in that direction.
• The objective is not just consensus, but revelation (which requires the Spirit and reason).
• A bit on when prophets aren’t actually delivering prophecy. He didn’t give a clear line on how to tell when that happens (just saying that the Spirit tells you doesn’t give a yardstick for weighing competing claims for inspiration), but it’s nice to have a nod to the fact that it happens.
• A reminder that the core of our doctrine is Jesus and his atonement.
• And was that the first mention of the word “Easter” in the entire conference?

Julie B. Beck (just released as relief society general president)

• The relief society has power and authority, and is a vital part of the kingdom of God on the earth.
• How would this address have been different back when relief society membership was voluntary, rather than a function of sex and age?
• Preparation for relief society membership should begin long before a girl gets near the age of advancing into it. I’ve heard (anecdotally) lots of people say that there are difficulties for lots and lots of women as they move from the young women program into relief society—is this a reaction to that?
• Leading relief societies includes expounding the scriptures and such.
• The women of the church need to be seen as distinct from the rest of the world “in happy ways”. What exactly would those “happy ways” be—and that’s a serious question, ’cause i can’t figure out what that means.
• One last thought from me on this: Her rhetorical choice to quote only male voices in supporting her view of what the relief society should be is interesting, to say the least.

Ronald A. Rasband (of the Presidency of the seventy)

• We’ll end up having perfect bodies in the resurrection, even if we had an especially imperfect one in this life.
• I’m curious what exactly the chromosomal abnormality was that his grandson had.
• Praise for people who serve those who need it without having to be asked to do it.
• “Often…‘Let me know if i can help’ is really no help at all.” That’s gonna leave a mark in the morning.

Russell M. Nelson (of the quorum of apostles)

• So do the GAs draw straws or something to figure out who has to follow Dieter F. Uchtdorf?
• Is this an exegesis of the Proclamation on the Family?
• What does he think he is, a doctor or something? (And before i get indignant responses, yes, that was a joke.)
• We do not need a perfect body to house a perfect(ed) spirit.
• An open plea to folks speaking in church meetings, but especially in meetings archived in perpetuity: If you don't understand the Big Bang Theory, please don’t mock it, ’kay? As a (social) scientist, such rhetorical turns really annoy me. (Not to mention that it's possible to believe in the big bang and even—gasp and horror!—evolution and still believe that God's in charge.) Okay, end of rant.
• And now as he continues, he really didn’t need the anti-science turn—it was a throwaway part of the sermon. Why, oh why do people do stuff like that?
• We get judged on spiritual attributes, not physical ones (or, i think he’s also saying, not our deeds, at least not in the way they’re often thought of by members of our church).

Dieter F. Uchtdorf (of the first presidency)

• The opening leads to this question: If you were really angry with folks, and a general conference address told you to stop being angry, would you stop being angry or would you figure it must not have been meant for you, since your feelings are justified?
• “Of course, these words seem perfectly reasonable when applied to someone else.” Intense love for that line from me, and i think i heard a rumble (nervous giggling?) from the audience.
• Those who pass judgment on others are “inexcusable”.
• We’re required to forgive others, and if we don’t forgive, we’re condemned. This is the kind of call to repentance i really, really like.
• The requirement to forgive extends to ourselves, even (especially?) when that’s the hardest person to forgive.
• If you can’t forgive other people, apply the following (and i quote directly): “Stop it!”
• Quoting a bumper sticker: “Don’t judge me because i sin differently than you.” He’s right, there’s a pretty serious lesson there.
• This one’s edging past Jeffrey B. Holland’s address as my favorite sermon of the conference so far.
• A self-test: Do you harbor grudges? Do you gossip (even the truth)? Do you exclude others because of something they’ve done? Do you secretly envy others? Do you wish to harm others? If you answered yes to any of these: Stop it.
• A thought on that last line: A warning against even true gossip very cleanly undercuts several rationales i’ve heard given for gossiping.
• Vengeance belongs to God, not us.
• We’re not perfect, nor are those around us—but even so, we must let go of our grievances.
• Heaven is filled with those who are forgiven—and who forgive.
• And…that’s a wrap (and another sermon without a reference to airplanes).

Mormon Tabernacle Choir, opening song

• You know, purple’s my favorite color, but my eyes are totally not finding the choir’s robes happy.
• That said, “Praise to the Lord” is one of my three favorite songs in the hymnal, and as much as i’m not a fan of MoTab’s style, they can consistently knock this one out of the park, so i’m happy with that.

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

• It’s the fourth general session of general conference. That means that priesthood session counts—but none of the meetings before general conference do, including the young women or relief society meetings. This is a consistent way of counting sessions going back at least decades, for what it’s worth.

Sorta-liveblogging general conference: Priesthood session

And now it’s priesthood session, and so this comes from notes i took while i was sitting in a church building. Going in, I’d figured the over/under on dudes with no ties and dudes with non-white shirts (overlapping groups, but not perfect overlap) would be 5% of the audience—and we went over it on both, but not by much. (For the record, i was part of both groups.)

It’s always fun watching the pre-session conversations amongst the general authorities—some of them are very serious, even stern, but most are chatting, occasionally sharing laughs. The question, then: Why teach primary kids that reverence means silence?

Anyway, on to the comments. As with the others, you need to scroll to the bottom to get the first speaker, and then work your way up this post to get to the end of the session.

Salt Lake City institute choir, closing song

• Very nice arrangement of “Dear to the Heart of the Shepherd”—it got a little overly cute in one of the verses (the third?), but overall it was still quite pleasant.

Thomas S. Monson (president of the high priesthood)

• Cool quote: “When God speaks, and man obeys, that man will always be right.”
• We need to do our duty in the priesthood, which will lead us to joy.
• When he was a bishop, he wrote monthly letters to the twenty-three active military serving from his ward. He’s said in other addresses how he frequently visited all the widows in his ward. My question: Did the guy ever sleep?
• This has to be like the eighth time a speaker has quoted “Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only”.
• And a final thought, now that the final speaker’s done: There were really no speeches of the “I address my remarks to the young men of the Aaronic priesthood” type tonight (to which I say, good).

Henry B. Eyring (of the first presidency)

• The main thing to report from this one is a long one, his list of four things priesthood fathers should do: (1) Gain and keep a sure witness that the keys are with the church, and held by the president of the church; (2) love your wife, which requires faith to put her needs and happiness above your own; (3) enlist your entire family to love each other, including reassuring your children that they’re loved not just by their parents but also by their siblings, and so children should have the opportunity to pray for and serve each other; and (4) lead your family “in the Lord’s way” when discipline is called for, which he didn’t really explain, but he did quote from the unrighteous dominion bit from the book of Doctrine and Covenants.
• And he was really, really intense about the sealing keys being held in their fullness only by the president of the church. Is there some group that’s suddenly showed up (besides the ordinary background of the fundamentalist Mormons, of course) claiming to hold sealing keys outside of that structure?

Dieter F. Uchtdorf (of the first presidency)

• As a deacon, he and his friends joked about how old-fashioned his branch president dressed and acted; now he laughs, because he figures many of the youth of the church think the same of him now.
• It’s been nearly sixty years since he was ordained a deacon? Wow—the dude is well-preserved!
• Need to tell people not just what their callings are, but why they are.
• “Sermons that do not lead to action are like fires without heat, or water that doesn’t quench thirst.” Way to set the bar high, dude.
• Doctrines are only worthwhile when we put them to use. (Is that always true?)
• God understands that perfecting ourselves takes time and perseverance. Comforting thought, that.
• Okay, it’s finally ending—i’d thought he was finishing it off like four times before now.
• (And no reference to flying or airplanes? Um, i don’t know if we can accept this one as inspired, then.)

Congregation and Salt Lake City institute choir, intermediate song

• ”Ye Elders of Israel” really does have some nice points where the chords open up in very excellent ways.

Adrián Ochoa (of the quorums of seventy)

• He’s using “power” of the priesthood in exactly the same way that David A. Bednar defined it earlier this session.
• Basically, this is a standard “young men, be good” address.
• And a plug for the church’s youth website, and encouragement to use social media to declare the gospel.

Richard C. Edgley (just released from the presiding bishopric)

• All members of the church (regardless of position, or sex, or age, or whatever) share a calling to bring others to Christ.
• Fun story about calling an inactive woman as a stake missionary.
• He first realized as a stake president that it’s hard for inactive folks to come back into the church, even if they want to do so? Took him a while to figure that out, dinnit?
• ”The harvest is great, and the lab’rers are few”—except, he noted, the laborers are no longer few.

David A. Bednar (of the quorum of apostles)

• Wow—the dude’s visibly aged some in the last year or two. He still looks young for being an apostle, but not quite as young.
• Worthiness and willingness, not experience or education, qualify one to receive the priesthood. (I add: or any other church position.)
• Priesthood holders need both authority and power, where authority comes from the ordination and power comes from the actual righteous use of that authority.
• Yet another general authority talking about his non-member or inactive (or, in one case, absent) father. So does this mean the latest sure path to becoming a general authority is to not have an active father?
• Very, very cool that he talks about learning important gospel lessons from his non-member father.

Sorta-liveblogging general conference: Saturday afternoon session

Due to family commitments, i won’t be putting my comments on the Saturday afternoon session right afterwards—they’ll go up late Saturday or (more likely) Sunday evening. This is just here as a placeholder in the meantime, so that these posts stay in order.

On update, i’m leaving this link in, since it’s so, so very wrong that you must all go read it now.

And: Is it just me, or when they did the obligatory pan-through-the-general-authorities shots before the session began, did Russell M. Nelson look a little hyper-awake and overcaffeinated to anyone else? Yeah, it’s just me—that’s what i thought.

Anyway, as before, time to scroll down and read from the bottom to the top, as with all of these entries.

Missionary Training Center choir, closing song

• My oldest was thoroughly amused by the shot of the choir that caught one of the other cameradudes.
• My second-oldest thinks the male full-time missionaries should have had suits as bright as the women’s blouses. Jeanne tried convincing her that the men’s ties are bright and colorful, but the child was (rightly) having none of that.

Richard G. Scott (of the quorum of apostles)

• Wow—still feeling the death of his wife, some years later. His loss was palpable in that opening bit.
• And it turns out to be a lead-in to the actual body of his address, not just a throwaway intro.
• Anger, hurt, and defensiveness drive away the Spirit—the first one i’d heard, but the others are interesting.
• ”Inappropriate loud laughter” drives away the Spirit—makes me wonder whether he thinks there’s appropriate loud laughter. (I suspect yes, given his endorsement of humor right after that, but i’m not sure.)
• So if you’re sick and can’t feel the Spirit, don’t stress too much, just get better.
• This is more of a discussion of revelation through dreams than i think i’ve ever heard in general conference, even in the mid-twentieth-century ones I’ve listened to (which contained a number of topics you’d never hear nowadays).
• I’m liking this address, but i have to take issue with one part of it—it’s making it sound like we won’t feel the Spirit if pretty much anything is wrong with our lives. I don’t know that i agree—the Holy Spirit is a god, after all, and therefore can presumably show up wherever it needs to. That aside, though, this is some good advice.
• “The closer you follow divine guidance, the greater will be your happiness here, and in eternity.” I thought that if you end up exalted, you get a fullness of joy—basically, everybody who makes it gets perfect happiness, so it’s not a scalar thing. Or am i misreading what he said?

Quentin L. Cook (of the quorum of apostles)

• ”A unique confluence of factors has raised the profile of the church…” Insert chuckle here.
• “An aggressive scientific atheism”? I realize that that was a quote from someone else, but what does he mean by this? Is this going to be a slash back at the New Atheists?
• Love for the nursery leaders!
• We love and respect everyone in the world? Well, i’ll certainly agree that we’re supposed to, at least.
• Linguistic nerd happiness! He nearly monophthongized the /ɑɪ/ diphthong in righteousness!
• Did he actually say that we shouldn’t judge, or even worry too much about, our kids’ (and others’) mistakes that aren’t sinful? Why yes, i believe he did—really a revolutionary thought for a lot of us in the church, i’m thinking, which is scary, given how much sense it makes.
• Why, i do believe that he just made a backhanded swipe at the Broadway musical The Book of Mormon.
• Actually, my favorite Mark Twain joke about the Book of Mormon was calling it “chloroform in print”.
• Still more linguistic nerd happiness—he actually did monophthongize /ɑɪ/ in lives.
• Okay, the finger signals thing is kind of a fun idea, but those of us with tweens or teens might worry at times about the finger signals they would come up with, i’m afraid.

Ulisses Soares (of the quorums of seventy)

• So all we have to do is rid ourselves of malice, and evil speaking, and [insert half a dozen ills common to all mortals here], and all uncleanness. Well, if that’s all there is to it…
• “If our attitudes are good, they are inspired by God”—i like the focus on the internal in this address better than i like Robert D. Hales’s focus on the outward, i must say.

David S. Baxter (of the quorums of seventy)

• An address to single parents! There’s been a few of these lately, but they’re pretty rare—and few of them are this upbeat.
• Admit it, fellow North Americans—you’re having trouble focusing on this address, ’cause you’re so in love with his voice.
• “In the kingdom of God, there are no second-class citizens.” Lemme hear an amen from the people!
• Urging leaders to help out and not judge—we need another amen.
• A nod to the single fathers, too—good to hear, since we often forget they exist, and therefore have no idea what to do with them.

Congregation and Missionary Training Center choir, intermediate everybody-stand-up-for-no-reason song

• Yep, it’s “Called to Serve”. Like you didn’t see that one coming.

Robert D. Hales (of the quorum of apostles)

• Wow—his oxygen is loud. You’d’ve thought they’d’ve lined his microphone up better than that.
• Pretty standard stuff, but the condition of the speaker is giving it a decent bit of extra gravitas.
• Parents and leaders can help the youth understand the sacrament by providing them the opportunity to teach each other. Interesting, that.
• Kind of odd that his list of items making one worthy to attend the temple were pretty much all outwardly-visible things, rather than issues of actual belief and faith.
• ”It is difficult for youth to understand how present actions can qualify or disqualify them from future service.” (I’m sure i got a few words wrong, but the gist of it is right.) Leaves me wondering: What about repentance, though?
• The big final point: If you are worthy to take the sacrament each week, are worthy to hold a temple recommend (nicely phrased, so as to include those who, say, aren’t old enough or haven’t been members long enough), and sacrifice to do good, then you’re golden.

Jeffrey R. Holland (of the quorum of apostles)

• Interesting view of the parable of the laborers in the vineyard from the point of view of the last laborers, rather than the first (as is usually done).
• Nicely delivered argument against envy.
• Elder Holland, rockin’ four straight laugh lines!
• He’s getting into this one—general conference addresses are usually so mellow that a delivery like this gets your attention, you know?
• You know, a couple of the lines the audience just laughed at weren’t laugh lines. I think that there’s some nervous laughter going on out there—he’s delivering a pretty intense call to repentance here.
• Ah! Mercy presented as the practical opposite of envy—and nicely done, too.
• Nice attempt at peace with former members. Some will find it condescending, i’m sure, but i don’t think that it actually was (as opposed to some such attempts, which actually are).
• You usually get calls for the men in the church to shape up in priesthood session—nice to hear it in one of these, too.
• I think we have an early candidate for my favorite address of the conference.

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

• Nearly 3,000 stakes.
• Just shy of 14.5 million members.
• Around 55,000 full-time missionaries, just over 280,000 convert baptisms. This is a notably lower baptism per missionary rate than what you got in the late eighties and early nineties, but there’s more emphasis on retention efforts now, compared to more of a “baptize the world” mentality then. I wonder how activity rates have changed?

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

• Same script as always. Seriously, why do we even do this?

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

• Dissolving the presiding bishopric, and making them all emeritus—interesting.
• When he announced the release of Marvin T. Brinkerhoff (not sure of the spelling), he appeared to pronounce the name in German, including the middle initial.
• What percentage of the general and area authorities have middle initials? How much time would be saved in reading these lists if most of them just went by first and last names?
• Nice trilled r on Rivas!
• Releasing the relief society general presidency—pity we won’t get to hear from Julie B. Beck any more, she didn’t usually do stereotypical relief society president addresses.
• Is the Larry Echo Hawk that was called the head of the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs?!?
• Two of the names of the new presiding bishopric didn’t sound English, though it’s hard to tell with his accent—i’m gonna have to go look that up.
• My oldest points out that we have a Jesus as a general authority now (along with a Moroni or five, and a Toronto).
• Is the Burton called as the new general relief society president related to the Burton just released as presiding bishop? Something else to look up.

Combined choir from the Missionary Training Center, opening song

• The male:female ratio of this choir is much more balanced than what i’d’ve expected from the Missionary Training Center. Did they do that on purpose to make the harmonies work better?
• My kids very much approve of the multiplicity of colors the women in this choir are wearing, compared to the monochromaticity of MoTab this morning.
• I do quite like the song “Glory to God on High”, and the bit in the middle of this arrangement with the male and female voices working against each other was quite excellent.

Sorta-liveblogging general conference: Saturday morning session

So welcome to the Saturday before the first Sunday in April—or, as it’s known to Mormons, Sunday.

Anyway, here we are at general conference again, and as i’ve done for the past few years, i’ll be semi-liveblogging the conference sessions. (That is, i’m taking notes during the sessions and posting them afterwards.) I complain about this every time, but blogs run chronologically backwards, where they start at the bottom of the page and work upwards, but i’ve given up on that fight—so each of these posts will go from the bottom up, with the first speaker at the bottom of the post and the last speaker right after this introduction; i do this so that once everything is posted, you can just scroll to the bottom of the whole thing and read up through general conference in reverse chronological order. (However, each speaker’s entries are ordered top-to-bottom. Yeah, it’s confusing, but i can’t figure out a better way.)

So now is the part where you scroll to the bottom, and start reading up.

Henry B. Eyring (of the first presidency)

• Lots of talk about sacrifice and religious devotion this session.
• What i’m getting from this: Tedious preparation may be necessary to build faith.
• Integrity is necessary. I think i know what he means by integrity in general, but i’m curious what the specifics are.
• Lots and lots and lots of quotation of scripture in this address.
• Forgiveness leads not just to happiness, but hope. I like that.
• Hurrah! A straight-up statement that earthly suffering is not necessarily a punishment for wrongdoing.

Dallin H. Oaks (of the quorum of apostles)

• It occurs to me that he has a full and deep enough voice that he could probably do a really, really good Darth Vader impression.
• Shout-out and love to Roman Catholic priests and nuns!
• And recognition that other churches have lay ministries! (I don’t know that he’s actually correct that other religious organizations have less time spent by their members than we do, though—or maybe he simply hasn’t heard of the Jehovah’s Witnesses.)
• This leads to an interesting question: If a sacrifice isn’t actually a sacrifice in the end, is it actually a sacrifice?
• I’m curious what he thinks the limits of acceptable sacrifice for the gospel might be. (For example, Mormons don’t really actively seek after martyrdom or such, and i don’t think he’s saying we should.)
• Final thought from me: I’m still rather surprised (and, i’ll readily admit, somewhat disturbed) by him saying very directly that Mormons sacrifice more than any other Xian group. I'm actually curious whether that's going to make it into the printed record of the conference.

Paul E. Koelliker (of the quorums of the seventy)

• At least on my computer’s screen, this guy's tie looks like it’s rippling. It’s being way distracting.
• This address is covering a lot of topical ground. I’m curious where it’s going to end up.
• ”When we actually live the gospel…our ability to help others increases.” I think i got some of the words wrong, but the idea of it is there—it’s an interesting thought.
• I hereby promise to never, ever, ever described the day Jeanne and i were married as “the day my own family was organized”.
• This one had a lot of worthwhile stuff in it, but offered very little to comment on, actually. Very clear, very good, but certainly not exciting, you know?

Donald L. Hallstrom (of the quorums of the seventy)

• He started out by saying that the gospel is separate from the church—but at least in the couple minutes following that, he presented them as being pretty non-separate. I’m not sure yet which side of that particular discussion (argument?) he’s going to end up on.
• We have full-time missionaries comprised of “the young [slight pause] and the less so”. I admit it, i chuckled.
• Activity in the church does not equal activity in the gospel—i nearly fist-pumped when he said that. (The big question he didn’t address: Yes, one can be simultaneously active in the church but inactive in the gospel—but can one be simultaneously active in the gospel and inactive in the church?)
• Is he saying that anyone who leaves the church wasn’t actually fully converted? I don’t know if i buy that. (In fairness, though, it was delivered as a sort of throwaway line.)

Cheryl A. Esplin (of the relief society general presidency)

• She remembers the birth of each of her children? This is actually interesting, ’cause it appears to mean that the auxiliary general presidencies are now of an age that the women weren’t being fully sedated during childbirth.
• Why do Mormons have this idea that tears for no reason means that they must come from the Holy Spirit? I mean, they may, but that seems to be the default reading, and i don’t know that that’s warranted.
• This brings up a pretty deep (and important!) question: What does it actually mean to prepare kids for baptism?
• Learning leading to understanding leading to learning leading to… Not a new idea, but well delivered here.

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

• Interesting question: Is it acceptable to use sacramental bread to feed the needy?
• ”Neither man nor woman can bear children alone.” Depends on the meaning of bear these days, actually…
• So folks that can’t have children when they want to are lucky? Well, i guess so.
• Interesting discussion of his own family background, including the inactivity of his father—you don’t usually get that much personal detail in general conference addresses.
• So we should reduce the number of church activities and programs to protect families? Does this mean we’re going to reduce the number of extra-special bonus meetings (e.g., priesthood executive committee, ward council, stake general priesthood meetings) to protect families? (Hey, a boy can hope!)

Thomas S. Monson (president of the high priesthood)

• Pep talk time!
• And yep, that’s pretty much what it was—a pep talk to start us off with.

John B. Dixon (of the quorums of the seventy), opening prayer

• Hurrah! For short prayers!

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.

Was it real?

Whatever happened to the 1990(?) church-made movie What Is Real? I remember when it came out, and thinking that it was about time that the church made a film that had even remotely good production values. (Remember, this was back in the day when the only available church movies were things like the kitsch of Johnny Lingo and the stiltedness of Together Forever, and, perhaps worst of all, Pioneers in Petticoats.)*

Most all of the church’s movies (even the horror of Johnny Lingo!) are still available, but i can’t find What Is Real? anywhere—there are no DVDs of it on the church’s web store as far as i can tell, and it doesn’t even have an Internet Movie Database entry. (I mean, On the Way Home can be found both places, and i seem to recall not liking that one nearly as much.) I didn’t just imagine it, did i? Was there some sort of horrific doctrinal error that’s led the church to pretend it never existed?

* Actually, Man’s Search for Happiness was pretty good, but it wasn’t (and isn’t, as far as i can tell) really very widely available for viewing.

Is separate equal?

Why are the annual relief society and young women broadcasts separate events? I mean, the young men and the male adults of the church have theirs together (i.e., general priesthood broadcasts),* so why not do the same for the females in the church?**

* Insert obligatory snark about how they’re actually really only young men broadcasts, though, what with the number of addresses in them that begin, “I direct my remarks to the young men in the audience tonight.”
** Which would presumably give them two broadcasts, too.

Wisdom from the younger set

From my ten-year-old daughter, totally unprompted:

I think they call it “relief society” because you’re so relieved you don’t have to be with your kids.

Parenting: Clearly, we’re doing it right.

Do names make a difference?

So why did the church feel the need to add Another Testament of Jesus Christ to the title of the Book of Mormon? I mean, it’s not like we call the New Testament The New Testament: A Testament of Jesus Christ, you know? I still remember when it happened—it just felt (and still feels!) a little insecure to me, that’s all.

Trying to have it both ways on children

So with general conference coming up, i’ve been thinking about the last general conference—and what with birth control having been in the news here in the US during the past few months, it’s gotten me to think about Neil L. Anderson’s latest general conference address.

I’ve thought a lot about that address, and the comments i made during my semi-liveblog of that conference session still hold true, i think—basically, i think his message was rather muddled, and that he wasn’t successful at explaining whatever it is he wanted to say. This may be why i’ve heard and read his address used by Mormons to support claims that the leadership of the church wants its members to have as many children as physically possible (and perhaps not even stop there), and also that the leadership is cool with its members having however few children they want.

Consider the following lines (not next to each other, as it appears here) from the address:

When to have a child and how many children to have are private decisions to be made between a husband and wife and the Lord. These are sacred decisions—decisions that should be made with sincere prayer and acted on with great faith.

Many voices in the world today marginalize the importance of having children or suggest delaying or limiting children in a family…[Quotes from others went here, including a statement that “a biblical perspective on motherhood” requires having children]…As the world increasingly asks, “Are these all yours?” we thank you for creating within the Church a sanctuary for families, where we honor and help mothers with children.

(That last one was followed by stories of folks having children despite, e.g., still being in school—and this is all presented as a Good Thing.)

Sorry, but this just seems a bit of trying to have one’s rhetorical cake and eating it, too—everybody gets to make a private decision, but in the context that decision is always going to be to have lots of kids starting pretty much right away.

Y’all’s thoughts?

Pragmatic worship

So i’ve been away for about a week for business purposes (a research conference on language and aging), and i’d thought that i’d have a chance to post, but obviously i was wrong. Now i’m back, though, and having flown back home on a Sunday an observation, and a question:

Most of the research meetings in my field end on Sunday mornings, and as a result, when i’ve flown back from them, i’ve generally flown back on Sunday afternoons, after having attended job-related rather than church-related meetings. I’ve never seen this as a religious problem, as long as it occurs fairly infrequently. Further, during my exile in Utah, when i worked at Brigham Young University, the university’s travel agency* folks never batted an eye when i scheduled my return flights on Sundays (nor did the administration, when i submitted the paperwork).

I have friends in various other religions, though, who don’t do such things on their particular religions’ sabbath days.

So, the question: How is it that Mormonism is so pragmatic (for lack of a better word) about work-related stuff happening on the sabbath? What is it in our history that’s led to that view of the matter?

* Yep, a university with its own on-site travel agency. Kind of crazy, really.

A rambling man

I’ve had friends tell me that they miss LeGrand Richards (who was in the quorum of apostles until his death in the early 1980s), because late in life he lost his sight, and so he wouldn’t read from his prepared text, but would just kind of ramble about whatever he wanted to. (Some people have said the same thing about David B. Haight, more recently.)

Well, having listened to recordings of LeGrand Richards from the 1940s and 1950s, i have to say it had nothing to do with his sight—he was like that when he was much younger. Really, it was probably more that he came from an older preaching tradition, where you pray that the Spirit moves you to say something, and then just kind of go with it. I’m still trying to decide whether or not i wish we had folks in general conference who speak in such a stream of consciousness mode, rather than the hyper-prepared sound we generally get these days..

Church naming practices

All my decades in the church, i’ve heard the claim that when The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was organized in 1830, there were no churches already in existence that had the name of Jesus Christ in their names.

Even leaving aside the fact that that wasn’t the name of our church until a few years later, is that claim actually true? I’ve never seen any solid evidence for it.

Imaginary sinners

Serious thought: Yeah, there is greater joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over the ninety-nine who don’t need to repent. But you know what? The ninety-nine who don’t need to repent don’t actually exist.

There’s Marmons on the carner

So i just spent a little bit of time listening to L. Tom Perry, and i’m just wondering: Does anyone else want to work up a petition to get the Utah legislature to declare him a state linguistic treasure? I mean, i know we’ve got a pretty good case to make on his behalf…

Crypto-Christians

If you know followers of Jesus Christ “by their fruits”, and if the usual interpretation of that verse is correct (that those who truly do good are therefore true followers of Jesus), does that mean that we’re claiming that, say, atheists or Muslims who do great good are actually Christians? ’Cause if so, there’s all sorts of weirdness afoot.

Workers, unite!

You know, the first verse of “Put Your Shoulder to the Wheel” wouldn’t be out of place at a meeting of a cell of your local Communist Party, right after the singing of “The Internationale”.

Mixed messages

Absolutely true story: Right now, my 12-year-old daughter is at a stake youth activity. The fun part? It was advertised as a “casual church dress” activity.

So that means she was supposed to wear…what? Anybody care to parse that one 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.

More lockstep claims

So in my last post, i wondered aloud where the idea that Mormons are a lockstep people comes from. Wherever it comes from, though, it’s become a part of the narrative, and as evidence for that i give a line from one of Aaron Blake’s recent columns in the Washington Post,* this one about how the Mormon vote has helped Mitt Romney in the past, and how it was expected to help him in today’s caucuses. Here’s the line:

Because Mormons vote in unison and because they turn out in large numbers, a state like Nevada is virtually impossible for any of Romney’s opponents to win.

Did you catch that? “Because Mormons vote in unison…” Interesting phrasing there—it presupposes that Mormons vote in unison, rather than trying to establish whether that’s actually the case. It certainly is the case that Mormons have tended to vote for Romney at rather amazingly high rates in the past, but how would one know that Mormons voting for Romney at such high rates isn’t simply a case of identity politics, rather than the group voting as a (near-)monolithic bloc?

* I grew up near Washington DC, and a lot of the Mormons i grew up around were convinced that the Post was an ardently anti-Mormon newspaper. I never really got that, myself—rather, the newspaper, like very many newspapers, was intensely after the merest whiff of scandal coming from any large organization, and that occasionally meant they reported on negative stuff about the Mormon church. There is a difference between that practice and being anti-Mormon, though—if you’re an equal-opportunity muckracker, i don’t think the charge of being anti-anything-specific can actually stick, you know?

In lockstep

In a comment on my last post, Heather the Mama Duk raised the point that the sociopolitical term conservative is locally defined, really—so polls saying that most Mormons in the United States self-identify as conservative might well not be parsable. Of course, this won’t kill the narrative that Mormons are a lockstep-type people. So:

Why is the idea that Mormons are a monolithic block (socially, politically, religiously, and so on) so pervasive? I mean, anybody who’s talked about caffeine (or Mitt Romney, or traveling on Sunday, or cooking with a wine reduction, or…) with a cross-section of Mormons has disproved that claim by their own experience, so what’s up with the continued vector of this particular pop-culture meme?

Whence conservatism?

So Mormons are of great interest to political reporters here in the United States right now, what with a Mormon locked in a tight race for a major-party presidential nomination and all. One thing that’s frequently been reported is the result of an opinion poll that (supported the conventional wisdom and) found that a majority of Mormons self-describe* as conservative, and only a tiny sliver as liberal.** This leads to a bunch of assumptions about Mormons and their political leanings—but i’m wondering if this isn’t getting the causality precisely backwards.

I mean, a whole bunch of Mormons are from the central Rocky Mountain region, and that’s a pretty conservative region—even states there where Mormons don’t hold a majority (as they do in Utah) are pretty intensely conservative.† So is it that Mormons are generally conservative, or is it that people from the central Rocky Mountain region are generally conservative, and the Mormons from there†† are just along for the ride?

I’m thinking the latter, myself.

* It’s rarely clear whether these surveys mean to measure political, social, economic, or whatever attitudes, and that bugs me.

** That is, “liberal” in the United States sense, not the rest-of-the-English-speaking-world sense.

† In fact, i’d argue that Utah has only the third-most conservative electorate in the region, following Idaho and Wyoming.

†† And very specifically from there, not just living there—i’d expect Mormons from, say, Pocatello, Idaho to be likely to lean right, even if they happened to be living in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Comparison shopping

Heard a lesson on The Plan of Salvation (very definitely pronounced with the capitalization) this past Sunday. One of the things that was vectored was the widespread Mormon meme that Satan’s plan, in opposition to God the Father’s plan, was to involve forcing everyone on earth to behave correctly, thus getting everyone back to the presence of the Father sinless and ready to be saved.

Every time i hear this, i think: And this appealed so strongly to one-third of everybody?

There are lots of other possibilities that sound like they’d be more appealing, at least to me (e.g., making sure nobody ever received the laws of God, therefore meaning that everybody would be judged as having not lived under the law, and therefore be ready to be saved), and we certainly don’t know any of the details of Satan’s plan—so why is the one i mentioned in the first paragraph so widely repeated, as if we knew for certain that that’s what it was?

Praying to our families?

From a correspondent, lightly edited for style:

So Sunday in sharing time* they were doing some sort of game and they were presenting scenarios and the kids had to choose the right. They were things like “You are invited on a cruise that goes over Sunday, what should you do?” (Of course, the “correct” answer was don’t go; [my daughter] said that would be stupid, of course she’d go.)** One of the scenarios was that you are in bed trying to go to sleep and your parents call you down for family prayer. [My daughter] was utterly confused. She said she sat there with a strange look on her face trying to figure out what in the world “family prayer” is. She’d never heard of it. She was sure our family had never done it. She couldn’t figure it out. She laughed and laughed when I told her that family prayer is simply a prayer you do with your family. She was like “Then why didn’t they just say that?”

It reminds me a bit of my own experience with the term “family home evening”.

* For those who don’t know, this is a part of primary, the church’s organization for three- to eleven-year olds.

** My thought on this: Who’s inviting our kids on cruises, anyway?

A room full of men

Church disciplinary councils,* by their nature as something involving deliberations by a bishopric or stake presidency and high council,** consistently result in decisions pondered upon and delivered by men. It leads me to wonder: Is it just an accident of history that we exclude women from such decisions, or is there something else going on?

* I totally get why they’re not called church courts any more, but church disciplinary councils really does lack any punch, you know?

** Yes, i know there are other possible configurations—these are just the most widespread. My larger point remains valid for all possibilities, though.

Are Mormons weird?

So as many of you know, a Mormon, Mitt Romney, currently has the inside track for his party’s nomination for president of the United States. Some months ago there was a bit of a flare-up when some people close to Barack Obama, the incumbent president and his party’s presumptive nominee, called Mitt Romney “weird”. A number of people—including a lot of Mormons—objected to this characterization, saying that weird was being used as a code word for Mormon, and that calling Mitt Romney such things was merely a case of religious bigotry.

Folks? Mitt Romney has done things like taking his family on holiday with his dog strapped to the top of the car. Now, this sort of thing doesn’t really have much direct bearing on someone’s ability to act as president of a country, but it certainly is weird.

Really, Mormons, let’s not be quite that paranoid. It is quite possible for a Mormon to be weird without that weirdness being the result of being Mormon, after all.

Marking devotion

As some of you know, a part of my scholarly research deals with the relationship between religious affiliation and devotion on the one hand, and language use on the other. Right now i’m at the annual meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, and in discussing this topic with other researchers, an interesting couple of questions about ways Mormons mark themselves as devout or not came up, and i didn’t know the answer—so i’m crowdsourcing it.

We all know that devout Mormons don’t drink coffee or tea (as in infusions made from tea leaves). Some Mormons mark themselves as extra devout by abstaining from all caffeine-containing foods, but with chocolate (in both liquid and solid forms) excepted. So, the questions:

1. Are there any Mormons who mark themselves as hyper-devout by choosing to abstain from chocolate due to its caffeine content?
2. How do fundamentalist (i.e., polygynous) Mormons mark themselves in terms of abstaining or not abstaining from any of these food and drink items?

Blessing gowns

Why, when babies are given a name and a blessing in font of the congregation, do we usually dress them in white? Yeah, church policy requires white clothing for baptisms and for temple weddings, but it’s not required for every ordinance, even for every saving ordinance (e.g., confirmations). So why do we dress babies in white for their blessings?

Ringing in the new year, Mormon style

The church’s current policies are weird about New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day.

First of all, fast Sundays are never to be held on New Year’s Day—the stake president is supposed to reschedule fast days for a different day when New Year’s Day falls on a Sunday (as it does this weekend). I mean, even Easter doesn’t get that treatment when it falls on the first Sunday of a month—so what’s so special about the first day of the year? I mean, one would think that church policy wouldn’t be assuming we need good hydration due to fighting off hangovers, you know?

Also, when new Year’s Eve falls on a Monday, New Year’s Eve parties can be held in church buildings. This is, as far as i can tell, the only exception to the rule that church activities are never to be held on a Monday night. I mean, we don’t even get to have a church activity on Monday night when Christmas Eve falls on a Monday, and you’d think you’d want to have some church-based observance of that day before you’d have one for New Year’s Eve, you know?

So what’s the big (religious) deal about New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day? I mean, really, i don’t get it.

Tattoos, again

I’ve said similar before, but i’m saying it again ’cause i still don’t get it: If putting tattoos to decorate your body is a defacement precisely parallel to slapping paint on one of our temples (i.e., graffiti, it’s a Bad Thing), then why do so many of our temples (not least the one in the middle of Salt Lake City, arguably our flagship temple) have decorations and carvings and stuff? Kind of goes against the whole idea, you know?

Unless the idea is actually that it’s carvings and not paint, so tattoos are out but scarification is okay? I don’t think that’s what they’re after, but it’s the only way i can think of to keep the image consistent.

Happy Holidays!

Breaking from my usual practice of posting in the late afternoon or early evening to pause in the near-dark of a pre-sunrise Alaskan morning and enjoy the effect of the light coat of freshly fallen snow as it reflects the faint blue of the sunrise to wish you all a Merry Christmas—and, since the seasons overlap this year, to wish any Jewish readers a Happy Channukkah. Also, for any Muslim or Pagan readers, belated Eid al-Adha and Solstice greetings—and if you simply don’t care about any of those things, i offer my sincere hopes that this is one of the best Sundays you’ve ever had.

My nature is snark, but there are some days that i’m happy to put it aside.

What (and why) is truth?

So i spoke in church not this past Sunday, but the one before. Just ’cause i have a blog and therefore i can, i’m including the text of it here. (In writing this thing, i actually cribbed some of the lines from a sacrament meeting speech i gave about six years ago, also at Xmastime, but they seemed to fit nicely in this setting.)

Good morning. I was given an address from the latest general conference of the church to use as the basis for what I’m presenting today: Dallin H. Oaks’s address, which was titled “Teachings of Jesus”. I’d recommend giving it a read—it’s a good reminder of things we ought to already know, but sometimes forget. It discusses the importance of Jesus to not just our beliefs, but our lives—and it also, as the title suggests, discusses some of Jesus’s teachings and their importance.

This got me thinking: What has Jesus taught us, through his words and his examples? Well, thinking about this led me to a particular saying of Jesus, and since I’m old-fashioned enough that I use scriptural texts as springboards for my religious speechmaking, I decided to use this particular saying as my text: “…for this cause came I into the world…” This text is taken from the middle of the good news according to John, chapter 18 verse 37, and it’s from the middle of one of Jesus’s responses to Pontius Pilate at his final trial before being shown to the crowd. Introducing this as the text for my speech today, though, leads to a fairly obvious question: What exactly is the “cause”? Jesus says that he came into the world for “this cause”, but what might that cause be? To answer this, we need to look at the surrounding context.

In verse 33, staying with the eighteenth chapter of the Gospel of John, Pilate asks Jesus directly about criminal charges, trying to find out whether Jesus is actually guilty of treason, or at least fomenting rebellion: “Art thou the king of the Jews?” After a bit of back and forth, in verse 36, Jesus says, fairly famously, “My kingdom is not of this world”. He goes further and provides some evidence for this, explaining that his servants didn’t fight for him, which is of course what servants of an earthly king would do. Pilate repeats his question (we’ve come back to verse 37 now): “Art thou a king, then?”—though the text seems ambiguous, since some translations have Pilate questioning, saying “So You are a king?” and in some he’s shocked, not even questioning: “You are a king, then!”

Jesus answers, in part: “Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice.”

This is a simple yet dense statement—a set of statements, actually. First, Jesus announces his kingship: “You say rightly that I am a king”, as several translators have rendered the sentence. Having done that, though, Jesus announces something that is at first glance less impressive than kingship, but that I would say is at least as amazing: His purpose in coming to earth was, put simply, truth. “I was born into this world to tell about truth”.

Think about that for a second—and if you’ve been sleeping through the exegesis to this point, if you’ve been zoning out, if you’ve been analyzing the pattern on the shirt worn by the person in front of you, this is the time to come back. As Robert Young rendered it literally, yet poetically, “…A king I am, I for this have been born, and for this I have come to the world, that I may testify to the truth…” Jesus came to testify of truth. And he did testify! As the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews points out, Jesus the Christ was not just a good example for our lives, he was not just a religious figure—he was the testator of the new testament, the new agreement, the new covenant between mortals and God the Father. And as the testator, he died so that the new covenant could be put into effect, just as—according to the author of Hebrews—just as the maker of a will must die for it to be put into effect. Jesus’s supreme testimony was fulfilled by his death, his death which allowed—this is a quote—“that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance”.

But death! Why in the world am I up here talking about death? We’re in the middle of the season of Advent, when we celebrate the birth of Jesus, not Palm Sunday or Easter, when it might seem more natural to look forward or backward, as the case may be, to Jesus’s death, as celebrated on Good Friday. Sure, Jesus testified, and he testified most consummately through his death, but isn’t there something happier to talk about here?

You want happiness? There is happiness here, but I’m gonna warn you that we’ll have to stick with sadness for a while before we get to the joy. This is because I’ve talked about the supreme method, the incomparable manner of Jesus’s testifying, but I’ve pretty much ignored what he told us he was testifying of: truth. But “what is truth?” we must ask—along with Pilate, I would note, who asked the question before leaving the judgment hall. We, however, unlike Pilate, can be willing to remain and learn what this truth thing is, and why it was so important for Jesus to give everything for it.

The ninety-third section of the book of Doctrine and Covenants contains some spectacular teachings on the glory of God, and on our relationship to God. However, one of the most quoted verses in that section deals with something perhaps more foundational, and that is what I will quote here—the twenty-fourth verse, which says that “…truth is knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come…” Now, it’s easy to let your mind wander when people read verses of scripture that many in the audience have heard and even read themselves many times before, so let me read this again, slowly, with emphasis, and with the complete attention of everyone out there: “…truth is knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come…”

Rhetorical, but still very important, question: Can you feel the audacity in this claim? We have the answer to Pilate’s question right in front of us! What is truth? Truth is huge, that’s what it is! It would be big enough if it were just everything that is, was, and will be, but it’s much more personal than that. It’s not simply an abstraction hanging out there, something untouchable, something unreachable, it’s the knowledge of everything that is, was, and will be. The knowledge of everything that is, was, and will be. It’s something that each of us can experience personally—something that, as it says later in that same section of the book of Doctrine and Covenants, something that we can receive through communion with God.

Now hopefully, if my rhetorical skills are as good as I hope they are today, at least some of you are recognizing—or recognizing anew—the enormity of what Jesus was saying when he said his purpose for coming to earth was to testify of truth. He was testifying of everything—and not just an unreachable everything, but: everything and we can know it.

But everything’s a lot to deal with. If you try to take on knowledge of everything, if you try to take on truth all at once, it could potentially be overwhelming—or at least I know it would likely be so for me. So, a reasonable question: Where should I start?

Well, we can start by going full circle. Joseph Smith said that—quote—“The fundamental principles of our religion are the testimony of the Apostles and Prophets, concerning Jesus Christ, that He died, was buried, and rose again the third day, and ascended into heaven…” (end of quote). What are the fundamental principles of our religion? That the apostles and prophets were telling the truth about Jesus, basically—that Jesus died, was buried, and was resurrected. And how central is this? Well, it’s so central—let me give you the complete sentence the quote I just gave was taken from: “The fundamental principles of our religion are the testimony of the Apostles and Prophets, concerning Jesus Christ, that He died, was buried, and rose again the third day, and ascended into heaven; and all other things which pertain to our religion are only appendages to it.” It’s that important.

This brings us back to death, though—but it also brings us to truth. And although Jesus came into this world to be killed, his death testified of truth, and if we receive the knowledge that comes with receiving that truth, we will have no need to be saddened, no need to despair—we can rejoice in the birth of Jesus with Simeon, who, even though he prophesied of the death of Jesus, he had received of truth enough to rejoice at the birth of the Son of God, blessing God and saying what are to my mind the most joyous words in the Bible: “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word: For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people; A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel.”

For Jesus is a light to all nations, the Son of God revealed in the flesh. As we celebrate Christmas, as we celebrate the birth of Jesus the Christ, let us remember that although Jesus was born to die, even though he was born to give his life as an offering, the covenant he sealed with his death allows us access to that truth that will allow us to rejoice. And this is open to all of us! As Nephi tells us in the Book of Mormon, God invites all of us, “black and white, bond and free, male and female…Jew and Gentile”—and I’d add to that list any of the other lines we might separate ourselves along these days: rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, Mormon and non-Mormon, even believer and non-believer. God invites all of us, no matter how we may label ourselves, no matter how others may label us.

I offer my hopes that I, that you, that all of us in this room, that all of us in this world may receive of the truth that Jesus has offered us, and I offer this in the name of Jesus the Christ, the savior of the world. Amen.

Once there was a gadget

Has anybody else noticed that if you hum the tune to the Primary song “Once There Was a Snowman”,* it sounds really very much like the Inspector Gadget theme song?

* I would link to the tune here, but the entire lds.org domain seems to be down at the moment, so i can’t.

Who should count?

Can we stop calling the Relief Society “the largest women’s organization in the world”? It strikes me as a bit of a dishonest label, actually—i mean, just because you happen to be female, have been baptized into the Mormon church at some point, and have survived to your eighteenth birthday (or gotten married, whichever comes first), well, that makes you a part of the Relief Society.

Sorry, folks, that’s not an organization, that’s a convenient label for a group of people. If women actually consciously chose whether to be affiliated with the Relief Society,* like used to be the case, well, then i could see that being a meaningful claim. But how many of the women whose “membership” in the Relief Society supposedly makes it such a large organization are actually involved in it? If someone’s so far outside of it as many of those women are, why in the world do we count them?

* Which was one of Joseph Smith’s quite emphatic bars to entry into the Relief Society. (Actually living according to gospel principles was another, and i’ll note in passing that that’s not a part of the requirements nowadays, either.)

Prioritizing needs

Here's a meme i’d like to see us lose: “What people need most is a knowledge of the gospel.”

No, what people need most is oxygen. Once they’ve got that, well, that’s when we can start preaching the gospel to them, i figure.

Putting 5:8 odds on getting a firm answer on this

So the Mormon church has held a position against gambling for longer than any of us have been alive—and this is a radically consistent position against gambling in all of its forms, even for things like charity fundraiser raffles.

What i wonder: Is this position an outgrowth of canonical doctrine, or is this an outgrowth of Mormon cultural norms of somewhat over a century ago? If it’s the former, then i’d like to know the basis for it, since i haven’t been able to find it; if it’s the latter, then does that make it a position that’s subject to change at any point in time, should church leadership opt to do so? (And if not, why not?)

(Also, gambling isn’t part of the temple recommend questions, which makes for an interesting gap in its catalogue of orthopraxy.)

Anyway, just wondering about this particular one, and wondering if anyone out there has any insight on the subject.

In which David B reveals a pet peeve

Okay—sometimes Mormons just annoy me. Today’s issue? Mormons who get all superior by comparing fasting practices in Mormonism with fasting practices in other religions—or, even worse, saying that what folks in other religions do isn’t “real fasting”. You know the meme—saying followers of Islam aren’t really fasting ’cause the Ramadan fast lasts sunrise to sunset rather than twenty-four hours (while ignoring that these are people who are doing this for weeks at a time!), or that the Roman Catholic (among others) Lenten fast doesn’t count ’cause they’re not giving up all food and drink.

I mean, this is just wrong on many levels, not least because there’s no set definition of what would count as “real fasting”, anyway—there’s nothing magic about it involving food (let along food and drink), or about it being twenty-four hours at a go. And this is a meme i’ve heard multiple times in multiple places over the course of many years. Unfortunately, it’s considered impolite to throw an eraser at someone for saying idiotic things, or there’d be a lot of Mormons out there with chalk dust upside their heads.

Temptation as food processor

You know, the scriptures often talk about “stirring the hearts of men up to anger”. Is this as opposed to “pureeing the hearts of men up to anger”?

What happens when the world isn’t as bad as we say?

One thing that y’all may have missed in the excitement of Thanksgiving weekend and Xmas shopping was the news that the teen pregnancy rate in the United States declined last year. And when i say it declined, i mean it declined—it dropped to a record low rate for the entire time records have been kept (70 years!), and this isn’t just a little blip downwards, but a continuation of a long-term trend.*

And yes, some of this is due to an increased use of contraception, but the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s analysis (which is only available in PDF format, and i don’t like linking to PDFs, so no link here, but it’s googlable) finds that a lot of it is also due to teens simply choosing not to have sex.** Kind of runs counter to the common Mormon meme that the world is busily going to hell in a handbasket, and that we need to aggressively shelter our kids from whatever the rest of the world is doing, since everybody else is getting more and more evil.***

So i’ll just say that what i became very thankful for this past Thanksgiving weekend was that my children are growing up in a world that seems to be getting more and more moral in some very important ways, whether we care to notice that or not.

* I recognize that the unwed teen pregnancy rate is a more interesting statistic for this entry than simply the teen pregnancy rate, but those statistics turn out to be really hard to come by—or, at least, reliable ones are hard to find. Part of the problem is that the best numbers for my purposes would be teen pregnancies in which conception (not just birth) occurred outside of marriage, and that doesn’t seem to be well-tracked by anybody.

**And before anybody decides to pull out the abortion card, i’ll simply note that the teen abortion rate has been steadily falling over the past several decades, and that the stats i’m talking about are pregnancy rates, anyway, not birth rates.

*** As does the fact that the peak year for the teen pregnancy rate (in the United States) was 1957. You mean teen pregnancies have been lower than that for more than 50 years, and we still haven’t realized that maybe the world isn’t all that more evil a place for our kids to grow up than it was when we were kids?

Truth from the lips of a child

Thanksgiving is widely described as a “family holiday”, and so in honor of the day i give you a quote from a member of my family (my 10-year-old daughter) earlier today:

Hot chocolate is the Mormon coffee.

Wisdom and insight, straight from a child.

Translation theory in action

Has anybody else noticed a trend away from the idea that English is a perfect object language for expressing religious items coming from the church’s translation department over the past half-century?

Consider German: Full-time missionaries used to (up until sometime after the mid-twentieth century) be referred to as Älteste+[last name], because Älteste is the usual translation of the English word Elder. This was even sillier than the English Elder+[nineteen-year-old’s last name], though, since "Älteste literally means oldest. Now, though, the church in Germany uses Elder+[last name] for full-time missionaries, which in my opinion works much better, since Elder doesn’t have a preexisting meaning in German. (And this change wasn’t just a change in general use—it even extended to the nametags.)

Also, starting sometime in the eighties or so, Endowment started slipping out of use as the German word for the temple endowment, replaced by the much more descriptive-in-German word Begabung.

Maybe there’s some hope for the higher-ups someday recognizing that English might need some translations of its own, or at least a move away from certain archaic-but-found-in-the-King-James-Version terms…

Utah in Alaska

So our family took in a basketball game last night hosted by the University of Alaska Anchorage, one of our local universities.* It was unremarkable as college sporting events go, except when we looked at the program, only to find that the University of Alaska Anchorage—yes, Anchorage, Alaska—has a pretty sizable number of transfer students on the roster from Utah junior colleges (plus one player from Utah who came to Anchorage straight out of high school). Not only that, but they’re good—three of them started the game.**

Now, just ’cause these players are from Utah, it doesn’t mean that they’re Mormon†—but the odds are that most of them are.†† So, the question: What’s up with a recruiting pipeline from majority-Mormon Utah to majority-irreligious Alaska? It seems rather far away. I’m guessing there’s a story behind this, but i don’t know where to look for it.

* They currently have a nationally-ranked NCAA Division II women’s basketball team, and their early-season tune-up sacrificial lambopponent was the Dominican University of California Penguins—and if “Penguins” is an oblique reference to the school having been originally founded by nuns, they now have one of my very, very favorite school mascots ever.

** The other two starters were from other countries. We realized, as we looked at the roster, that the university could fill the floor with Utahns, and they could also fill the floor with non-North Americans. Yes, Alaska.

† Well, except for the one who Jeanne and i both agreed had the perfect look for a singles ward relief society president—ponytail don’t lie.

†† Only one of them is from Mormon-minority Salt Lake City, after all.

Whither the (sorta-)unbelievers?

Participating in temple worship is a necessary thing if one wishes to be a full participant in the Mormon religion. However, receiving a recommend requires not just adhering to accepted Mormon practice, but also believing in it.

This poses a problem for those amongst us who are affiliated with Mormonism, and self-identify as Mormons, but for whatever reason have not received a spiritual witness of some part of the faith—some, in fact, of as basic a thing as whether God actually exists.

So those who don’t have a testimony (as generally defined within Mormonism) of such things are stuck with something approaching a Morton’s choice: either participating fully as a result of lying by saying they believe when they don’t, or telling the truth and not participating fully. It seems to me that this is a problematic position to place those people in, and the sort of thing that might well drive them away rather than bringing them closer to the faith. I don’t know how to resolve this problem, but that doesn’t stop me from perceiving it as a problem, you know?

Ignoring the wrong book

Can we finally admit that the Song of Solomon is really pretty poetry, and that we don’t actually have a good excuse for ignoring it in gospel doctrine classes—well, or at least that we have no good reason for ignoring it as long as we continue to read bits from the clinically-depressed bit of scripture that is Ecclesiastes?

The evils of not having money

I was going through some old notes from church meetings, and i discovered a reference to a speaker saying that the early (as in late 1830s) Mormons were “evicted from Missouri”.

Evicted? Wow. I’d never known that the early Mormons had been that far behind on their rent, but Jeanne and i have been reading through the Documentary History of the Church, and the church and its leaders certainly had their share of cashflow problems, so i guess that makes sense as the reason all the unpleasantness of the time happened. Right?

Speculation! (the sequel)

So in my last post i said that there was a lot of speculation about what would be announced in the out-of-cycle stake conference that our stake had this past Sunday.

And so, you may ask, what was the big announcement? Well, the answer is [drum roll, please]…

Absolutely nothing.

Yes, that’s right, much to my surprise the big announcement matched precisely what i was hoping for, if only to teach people that speculation doesn’t work. There had been a number of general authorities in town to do some training for the stake presidencies, and the stake presidencies asked for them to preside at specially-called stake conferences. That is all.

I will, though, say that there was a bit of a bait-and-switch. A member of the quorum of apostles was in town, but he spoke at the next stake over—we got a member of the quorums of seventy (and the next stake over got a member of the presiding bishopric, and i think there was another stake with another member of the quorums of seventy present, but i kind of lost track). Of course, i was out of town the previous Sunday, so it may have been announced then—i don’t know for sure.

But the general authority who was present at our stake had a good sense of humor about so many people expecting some big announcement—he got up and told us he had one: “Keep the commandments.” It was delivered quite nicely as a laugh line, but i think the more serious point underlying it was both well delivered and well taken.

Speculation!

So our stake* has an extra-special out-of-cycle stake conference tomorrow, with the featured speaker being a member of the quorum of apostles.** Given this, there’s all manner of speculation about what this might mean, what’s going to happen tomorrow, and so on.

Therefore, i know that i’m wishing will happen: That he gets up and says something like, “I’ve heard that there’s a lot of speculation about what’s going to happen today. Really, i just wanted to see what Alaska looks like in snowy weather, and folks figured it would be good if i spoke to everyone while i was here. Have a nice day.”

Who knows—maybe it is some sort of big-deal event. But it’s always fun to see people’s speculations get punctured, and a boy can wish for that, can’t he?

* Actually, as it turns out, it appears that this is actually going to be a multi-stake thing.

** Yeah, i know, it’s bizarre that i always write quorum of apostles instead of the more usual (and church-approved) quorum of the twelve or quorum of the twelve apostles. I just feel like my phrasing is more transparent, given the way we generally refer to other priesthood quorums—i mean, not only do we not call elders quorums quorums of the ninety-six, technically a deacons quorum is also a quorum of (up to) twelve, and the ambiguity vaguely bothers me.

Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man, um, really annoying

While reading scriptures the other night, my family decided that Proverbs 27:14* is our favorite verse in all of the scriptures, and one that we intend to use the next time somebody tells any of us that the “right” time to do something holy is always the morning.

* Reproduced here in its entirety, so that you don’t have to click through: He that blesseth his friend with a loud voice, rising early in the morning, it shall be counted a curse to him.