Sorta-liveblogging general conference: Saturday afternoon session

Due to hanging out with family and friends (you know, the stuff Dieter F. Uchtdorf told us earlier today that we need to be doing more of, right?), this entry won’t be posted until i can put my notes into the computer, sometime Sunday (since i just barely got my priesthood session notes together, and it’s really late already). So until then!

Second general session! (Which reminds me—how many non-general sessions are there?

So, like with all of these entries, this post runs chronologically from the bottom and runs up the page by speaker, with notes for each speaker running top-down. It’s confusing, but i can’t figure out a better way to let people read all five general sessions in chronological order once they’re all up. So, then, scroll down to the bottom, and let’s begin…

Dallin H. Oaks (of the quorum of apostles)

• Doesn’t “i can’t talk about politics” usually actually mean “i’m about to talk about politics”?
• Abortion is bad, and then a pivot to endemic malnutrition and AIDS. I’m not entirely sure where he’s heading with this.
• And now psychological abuse and bullying. This is a rather sprawling address.
• Kids with various issues, explicitly including same-sex attraction, need to be protected from bullying.
• Ah! And now we get the Proclamation on the Family. I was wondering how long it would be ’til we got a quote from it.
• Interesting rhetorical strategy: He keeps quoting from people like “a Harvard law professor” and “a New York Times writer” without actually giving names. It bothers me, but i suspect i’m in the minority here.
• Okay, as a social scientist myself, i have to say that it bothered me when he said that we “should assume” that growing up in a same-sex-couple-headed household is damaging to children, although the research literature on the subject is “controversial” due to its politically charged nature—and then he backed up a claim about the research literature with a reference to “a New York Times writer”?!? Really, i’d suggest reading about social science research in social science research journals, not the New York Times.

Neil L. Andersen (of the quorum of apostles)

• Tragedy happens, but God can comfort us.
• Really, really good point: What is a simple test for one person might well be a fiery trial of faith for another.
• Interesting how he turned a general focus on tests and trials of faith into an address on the need to avoid nonmarital sex. It almost feels like he wrote one full address but also had the core of a second one, so he just dropped the one inside the other.
• You know, i have to point out that some of the information critical of the church on the internet is true. Implying that it is all false won’t help those who run across the true stuff to understand why they should still stay with the church.
• Wow—how long has it been since we got a salamander letter reference in general conference?

Scott D. Whiting (of the quorums of seventy)

• I recognize the importance of quality control, but some of this seems excessive. I mean, a ⅛-inch deviation out of two inches, and that could only be recognized with a measuring tool, on a window that was to be hidden? Requiring a lack of grittiness under wallpaper? Maybe we could have just let it be, and sent the quality control guy to make sure that folks were getting the right nutritional balance in the church’s humanitarian efforts.
• So the parallel turns out to have been that we need to rectify any issues of sinfulness in our lives, just like the contractors were required to rectify any issues of poor quality in the temple. Not really compelling to me, but i get it.

Robert C. Gay (of the quorums of seventy)

• “Would you sell your soul for a nickel?”
• Serious question: If any one little sin, or even a lack of doing good things, is just as bad as big sins, then what’s to keep someone from logically concluding that since they’ve done a little bit wrong, they might as well go full-bore down that road?

Larry Echo Hawk (of the quorums of seventy)

• Okay, let’s all admit it: This guy’s on all your all-name GA teams, isn’t he?
• Really, really fun story to open.
• His grandfather was born “in what is now Nebraska”. Nice little reminder that there was a there beforehand.
• Cool personal take on the Book of Mormon by an indigenous American, and then extending that to others.

M. Russell Ballard (of the quorum of apostles)

• And cue the bee pollen and honey folks in 3…2…
• Individual contributions, though seemingly insignificant, are a necessary part of the results of the whole.
• The takeaway: Service is good, and must be undertaken for selfless reasons.
• Specific instruction: Pray each morning that you’ll get a chance to serve someone, and then look for opportunities to serve.

L. Tom Perry (of the quorum of apostles)

• Dude’s ninety years old? He’s holding up pretty good for reaching that point.
• The big message: Families are good.
• I don’t think he’s saying this, but i worry that a good number of Mormons are going to read this as saying that Mormon culture (and, in particular, Utah Mormon culture) is utterly and completely right, and doesn’t have any problems at all.
• Interesting—he said allowances are a good thing, ’cause they allow children to learn to do things like save and pay tithing.
• Was the jab at “entitlement culture” a case of political code words, or something more benign? The sad thing is that in this day and age one can’t tell—though, unfortunately, i’m sure folks on either side will interpret them that way.
• Shout out to guys who are actually involved in their kids’ learning!
  

Henry B. Eyring (of the first presidency), sustaining of church officers

• Change in the presidency of the seventy, and in the office of church historian and recorder, plus the usual turnover in the quorums of the seventy. Overall, really, nothing headline-making.

Gerritt W. Gong (i think; of the seventy), opening prayer

• He called this the “Sabbath day”. Does this mean we’re merging with the Seventh-Day Adventists now?

Sorta-liveblogging general conference: Saturday morning session

So welcome to General Conference Saturday, the twice-yearly weekend when Mormons across the world convince themselves that they’re finally going to be able to get a decent amount of light housekeeping done, and then utterly fail to do so.

So it goes.

Anyway, this is also my twice-yearly weekend of sorta-liveblogging General Conference. As i s my complaint each year, blogging and social media have opted to go against centuries of English textual tradition, with the chronological order of stuff people write going from bottom to top, rather than top to bottom. Therefore, this post (after this intro) will begin chronologically at the bottom, with entries ordered by speaker or event from the bottom up. (Therefore, once conference is done you’ll be able to go to the bottom of the entries for the five general sessions and read through everything in one long bottom-up sweep.) However, any entries under a speaker will be ordered as one would normally expect them, from the top down. Confused yet? Good. That means it’s time to scroll to the bottom of this post and start reading backwards.

And one final note

• Lots of upbeat arrangements of songs offered by MoTab this morning, and nice key changes in the closing song.

Dieter F. Uchtdorf (of the first presidency

• How in the world does he make “we’re all gonna die” sound so happy?
• Busy-ness is not a sign of a good life, said directly by a member of the first presidency! Cue happy dance.
• Slam at social media, then explaining to say that trivial interactions aren’t fulfilling in the way that deep personal interactions are.
• This is actually a pretty intense call to repentance address, but he’s coating it in a presentation style that sweetens it a bit.
• Doing is better than desiring.
• We need to let ourselves be happy. (Does this extend to people talking about the evils of the world around us?)
• He called his wife Harriett rather than Sister Uchtdorf! (And he reports her calling him Dieter!) Cue another happy dance.
• “We will not be truly ready to die until we have learned how to live.” (Not sure if i got the precise wording right, but the basic meaning is correct.)

Russell M. Nelson (of the quorum of apostles)

• Directing comments to the non-members watching. How many non-members actually watch general conference?
• Interesting approach in talking to non-members, though—talking about the service of full-time missionaries, rather than basic gospel principles.
• Way to thread the needle on calling the church The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or the Mormon church.
• Fun story about a non-member receiving direct and specific revelation.
• Interesting suggestion, to ask the missionaries for help in things beyond just preaching the gospel. (Gotta put all those new younger missionaries likely to put in their papers this week to good use, eh?)
• If you want to help us in humanitarian work, even if you’re not of our faith, that’s cool, and the missionaries can help you figure out how to help out.

Shayne M. Bowen (of the seventy)

• Talking about the deaths of children? Heavy.
• Good (as far as i can judge) description of survivor guilt, and the problems related to it.
• “When did you get over it?” His answer is not yet, and never in this life—but one has to look forward to the fullness of joy in being reunited in the resurrection.
• “Wouldn’t it be tragic if we didn’t feel sorrow when we lose a child?” Heavy.
• I wasn't liking this at the beginning. He drew me in. Beautiful address.

Intermediate hymn

• Please promise me that we will never have to hear this arrangement for the organ of this song (“We Thank Thee, Oh God, for a Prophet”) ever again. Low-end dissonance is okay, but only in limited circumstances.

Craig C. Christensen (of the presidency of the seventy)

• The phrase “sacred feelings” to refer to the influence of the Holy Ghost has always felt a little weird to me.
• “The Holy Ghost loves us and wants us to be happy.” Interesting to hear that in phrasing usually used to refer to God or Jesus Christ.
• You don’t often get an entire address specifically on the Holy Ghost.
• I’ve never actually grokked the “influence of the Holy Ghost” vs. the “gift of the Holy Ghost” thing. He’s explaining it as extra benefits from the gift; is that what it is?

Ann M. Dibb (of the general presidency of the young women’s organization)

• Sidebar: Sister Dibb is President Monson’s daughter.
• The idea of a faith statement on a T-shirt would be silly from anybody other than a member of the young women general presidency. From that group, it’s both fitting and (in a good way) cute.
• An increase in gospel knowledge lets us apply the gospel in our lives. (There’s a lot packed into that, really.)
• Snark: She’s giving Quentin L. Cook’s address way better than he did.
• So does anybody else think that the odds are pretty high that there’s already been a bunch of orders placed for “I’m a Mormon. I know it. I live it. I love it.” T-shirts for sale online? Welcome to the newest Mormon pop-culture phenomenon!

Quentin L. Cook (of the quorum of apostles)

Good point, that a reduction in full-time missionary age has happened before.
• I’m always happy when general conference addresses include bits from non-Mormon theologians (here, a Baptist)—it’s good for the church to be reminded that we don’t hold a monopoly on religious insights.
• He includes a lack of respect and civility in with abuse—a heavy concept, if you think it through.
• He said there’s no real pushback in the world at large against pornography (as there is against, say, smoking)? Part of me thinks that he needs to start reading more anti-porn feminism.
• Yes, i’ll say it: I’m tired of the Eric Liddel story. Find another Sabbath-keeping story for us, please.

Thomas S. Monson (president of the high priesthood)

• Foreshadowing of topics in a later address—you don’t actually get that very often.
• Two new temples: Tucson, Arizona and Arequipa, Peru.
• A reduction in the minimum age of full-time missionary service for men to age eighteen…and women can serve full-time missions at age nineteen now! High-fives from my daughters!
• Seriously, though, how often is there an address from the prophet where the throwaway line is that there will be two new temples?

Opening prayer (didn’t catch the name)

• Wow, that was a short prayer!

Before everything starts

• Why does everybody stand when the current President of the High Priesthood walks in? I mean, i know it’s a sign of respect and such, but when and where did the tradition start?
• I’m not a fan of MoTab, but i have to admit that they do the switch into a capella better than anybody else. (And really, “How Firm a Foundation” is one that they pretty much nail every time.)

Unintended consequences

Not original to me, but courtesy of a Facebook friend: Even if you want Romney to win the upcoming presidential election, don’t you worry just a bit that he will and that that will cause certain Mormons amongst us to become just a little more insufferable?

A questionable fast

So over the weekend i became the latest proud(?) recipient of the email going around asking all the Mormons in the country to spend Sunday, 30 September fasting and praying for the presidential candidacy of Mitt Romney.

Can i just say how utterly wrong that is? Or even if it’s not wrong, it’s at least icky. And it’s icky and wrong—or at least it should be—no matter what side of the recent political debates you’re on. (That is, if you even care—and with that, a big Hello! to what the Blogger dashboard tells me is the occasional reader from Germany.)

I mean, c’mon, folks. Get real. Especially when the email contains lines like God loves the United States of America and he wants us to be successful as a nation, followed immediately by If we do all that we can through our hard work and prayers in behalf of Mitt Romney miracles will happen. (I have to admit that when i read that, my first thought was “What, we’ll suddenly be presented with a candidate who’s better than either of our choices? That’d be cool.” But then again, i’m pretty much an unreformed cynic, so you might not have thought the same thing.)

I mean, sure God loves the United States of America. I’m pretty certain about that—just as i’m certain that God loves Canada, and Mexico, and Germany, and Russia, and Kenya, and Djibouti, and Fiji, and India, and Pakistan, and Iran, and Israel, and Syria, and Uzbekistan, and [continue the list for nearly 200 more names of countries]. So why is our presidential election suddenly such a big deal to God? I’m pretty sure it isn’t, at least no more than elections in, say, Rwanda are. God loves all of us equally, after all.

And besides, we’ve already got Mormons in positions of power in the United States, anyway—isn’t Harry Reid, senator from Nevada, the Senate Majority Leader?

Oh, wait—that’s right, i think we can guess from the tenor of this email that since Harry Reid’s politics are (very slightly) left of center, he quite simply doesn’t count. Nope, we apparently need Mitt Romney.

Well, maybe we do—it’d be fun to see a pair of Mormons at utter and complete loggerheads, using every parliamentary trick in the book to stymie each other’s political plans. Maybe then we’d finally get people (and by “people” i’m including a lot of Mormons, too) to realize that we’re not as socially and politically monolithic a group as they think we are.

But back to the email, and another bit of ickiness: We are so excited to be a part of this time in history, to have this special opportunity to stand for liberty. Liberty? Huh? It seems to me that folks on both sides (most all sides, for that matter—let’s not forget the minor candidates) are fans of liberty. It’s not like we’ve got the Archangel Gabriel running against Benito Mussolini here, after all.

The absolute worst part, though, was the bit urging recipients to Please contact all your friends and family everywhere and ask them to join with us in this special day of fast. Ask them to contact all of their friends. Take this message to the churches.

Nuh-uh. No. Absolutely not. The Mormon church is, after all, very fond of its tax-exempt status in the United States, and (at least partly) as a result, this advice is simply against current church policy.

You can take such a message to other members of the church, but to take it to your entire congregation (which is what i get from to the churches)? Not in a Mormon church—if the bishop has been reading his leadership Handbook at all lately, you’ll get smacked down hard and quickly.

And so, on second thought, maybe i actually do wish people had done that—that would have been fun to see.

On sabbaticals, and emerging from them

So i haven’t posted here for a few weeks.

It’s not ’cause i’ve been unwell or anything, and it’s not that i haven’t missed posting stuff, but i’ve gotten tired of public Mormonism—you know, all the stuff in the news and other bits of the public sphere lately, most likely as a result of Mitt Romney’s candidacy for the president of the United States, about Mormons and Mormonism. And no, i’m not talking about attacks on the church and its members—i’m a big enough boy that I can handle that. It’s just the sheer volume of mentions of my faith that i keep hearing. It’s simply tiring.

To be honest, i don’t know how the evangelicals have managed to deal with it for so long.

(And the fact that my computer meltdown meant that i couldn’t get on to post for a few weeks this summer just made it easier to go with my feeling of being sick of my religion having so many mentions, too.)

I mean, i even stopped in the middle of a series—my recent posts on home teaching experiences were originally planned to be the first two of a three-parter.

But i’ve decided that it’s time to get back on this, not least because general conference is coming up in less than a week, and i really do enjoy posting my thoughts on that event each time. So—sometime this or (much more likely) next evening i’ll start posting again. I’m thinking that my posts over the next couple months are pretty likely to deal with this newly public face of Mormonism, if only because i’m trying to work through that. We’ll see how it all shakes out, though.

Adventures in home teaching, part 2

Another home teaching story, from the same ward as the last one:

So we’d gone a few months without home teachers, but that didn’t really stress us out, so we didn’t think about it much.

We were about to start to think about it a bit more.

So our ward had the schedule where sacrament meeting came last, which has advantages and disadvantages, but one of the biggest advantages accrues to the ward choir director: you can corral people into choir practice a lot easier when everyone is in the same place at the end of the meeting block, rather than scattered around a bunch of different classrooms.

Therefore, as you might expect, sacrament meeting was followed immediately by choir practice. Well, neither of us were in the ward choir, so at the end of sacrament meeting the choir members headed to the front of the chapel, and we headed toward the back.

As we were about to leave the chapel, a man who we’d seen before but hadn’t ever properly met stopped us and asked, “Are you the B—s?” We said we were, and he said, “I’m your new home teacher—i’m Brother—” and at that moment there was a loud burst from the organ, drowning out his name.

Now, looking back on things, we realized that we should have asked him to repeat it—but we didn’t, instead just setting up an appointment for him to come by later that week.

Well, he came by, but at that point we couldn’t very well ask what his name was—i mean, he’d told us and we were even letting him in our house—so we listened carefully to see if he told us his name.

Nope.

So next Sunday we listened carefully to see if he or anyone else would say his name.

Nope.

Or rather, lots of people said his name, but he was well-known enough in the ward that everyone who talked to him used his first name, and it was a very, very common name.

Which means that for several months, we had monthly visits from a very good home teacher…whose name we didn’t know.

Adventures in home teaching, part 1

True story: Back when Jeanne and i were first married, we had a very good home teacher. He (and his companion, when his companion chose to come along) came every single month, taught good lessons, and provided excellent emotional and spiritual support.

No, that’s not the surprising/amusing part, believe it or not. <rimshot />

So anyway, at one point early one month, we had someone come up to us and introduce himself as our new home teacher, and he set up a time to come over. We weren’t necessarily thrilled to switch home teachers, but we weren’t really sad about it, either—that’s the way it goes, and we figured that our previous home teacher was needed somewhere more pressing than visiting our active selves. No worries.

So our new home teacher came over, and it was a good visit—the first of several good visits, as he (and his companion, when his companion chose to come along) ended up coming every single month, teaching good lessons, and providing excellent emotional and spiritual support.

And then later that month our previous home teacher called to set up a time to come visit, and we were cool with that—one last visit from a good home teacher isn’t something to be avoided, after all.

So our old home teacher came over, we had a good visit, and we got to the next month.

And, once again, our new home teacher set up an appointment with us—and so did our old home teacher.

Now, we might should have told our old home teacher he didn’t really need to come any more, but he actually seemed to enjoy his visits with us, and it’s kind of awkward to tell someone they don’t need to hang out with you any more, at least when there’s no reason for it other than what you think the elders quorum president has done, but forgotten to tell anyone.

So for six months, until our old home teacher moved away, we had two home teachers (along with their companions, when their companions chose to come along) visiting us every month, teaching good lessons, and providing excellent emotional and spiritual support.

And most people i know have trouble getting just one home teaching companionship to come by even once in a while. Go figure.

Marriage, or not?

Here’s a puzzler for everyone out there: The church insists that sexual expression is only acceptable within the bounds of marriage. However, there are a number of jurisdictions in the United States (among other countries) that offer not just marriages, but also civil unions—a legally binding parallel to marriage that is, effectively, the same thing. It’s primarily set up as a marriage-like institution for same-sex couples, but it’s also available as an option for mixed-gender couples.

Therefore, i wonder: Does the church accept civil unions for, say, a couple desiring to be baptized? I can’t easily find anything definitive on that, but i may just be looking in the wrong places. Anyone out there know?

Please stay tuned…

…we are experiencing technical difficulties.

Basically, moving to a new place, a failed logic board, and the local internet service taking a few unexpected extra days to get set up have created a break in posting. I should be back into it properly in a couple or three days, but until then, thanks for your patience.

What do you want from life?

The following is an excerpt from a conversation last evening between Jeanne and our 11-year-old daughter. They’d made a social visit to a woman who Jeanne’s assigned to as a visiting teacher, and she (the woman they visited) shared some cookies she’d just baked with them. On the way home, the conversation apparently turned to goals, and what our child wants to be like when she grows up:

	11-year-old:	Those cookies were really good.
	Jeanne:	Yeah, she bakes really well.
	11-year-old:	One day i want to be just like that.
	Jeanne:	You want to learn how to bake?
	11-year-old:	No. I want to visit teach someone who makes good cookies.

Teaching our children priorities and goal-setting: We’re doing it right.

Advantages of not fitting in

True story from our exile in Utah: Our then-4- and -2-year-old children would often play with groups of similarly-aged children outside, but we’d never have to worry about knowing whether our children had wandered away and gotten lost or not—we’d simply look at the gaggle of children, count to make sure that there were two heads of brown hair amidst all the blondes, and happily continue on.

Seriously, the number of people there who were stunned to find out that children are sometimes born with hair colors other than blond and eye colors other than blue…

Differences

Something i have learned: The most important difference between a ward’s executive secretary and its clerk.

When the ward clerk roams the halls during church, he’s generally trying to get statistical information, and so the leaders of the various organizations run away from him and hide. When the executive secretary roams the halls during church, he’s generally trying to set up interviews with the bishop, and so it’s everyone else that runs away from him and hides.

Falling in love with Uncle Sam

So the recently concluded Fourth of July celebrations led me to wonder why in the world Mormons* have become such a hyperpatriotic people. I mean, this is the country that tried to litigate us out of existence less than a century and a half ago, and that we had to leave to survive less than two centuries ago.

Anybody got any explanations?

* In the United States, at least. I don’t know what the situation is like in other countries.

Triumphant harmonies

I do have to say that i absolutely love the fact that even though the hymnal says to sing the chorus of “Called to Serve” in unison, congregations everywhere i’ve ever heard it sung still sing the line “as a triumph song we sing” in harmony—it sounds way cooler that way.

Practical clothing

I wish to submit that whoever it was that came up with the idea that female people should always dress in one-piece swimsuits* was never involved in toilet-training a girl.

That is all.

* It has long amused me that every time requirements for church activities involving swimming say that all of the girls and women must wear one-piece swimsuits, any of them could, technically, fulfill said requirement by wearing a monokini.

Scary sex!

A discussion on the wonderful Keepapitchinin blog has brought to mind what, to my mind, is one of the most troubling aspects of Mormon culture: the degree to which sex, and particularly the fear of sex, consumes us.

Consider the following:

• Full-time missionaries aren’t allowed into the homes of single women* (which means that, say, a 70-year-old woman can’t serve lunch to the missionaries in her own home unless she goes through the trouble of getting a chaperone).
• Mixed-gender couples who are married but not to each other, as well as mixed-gender couples where one is married and the other is single, aren’t allowed to ride in the same car to and from church events or meetings. (And this one’s even enshrined into church policy in the Handbook!)
• A home teacher isn’t supposed to go into the home of a single sister he home teaches until the other home teacher is there, leading to the absurdity of guys waiting in their cars in the cold or stifling heat instead of going inside and being able to fellowship with the saints (and, in fact, the particular saint they’re assigned to fellowship as a priesthood responsibility).
• There is a strong social pressure on romantically involved couples to get engaged quickly, and to have a very short engagement, rather than taking time to get to know each other a bit better.
• Relatedly, there is pretty strong pressure brought onto young Mormons to get married pretty young (for the men, very soon after their return from a full-time mission), even to the point of being taught in general conferences.
• There is a strong social stigma attached to the sight of perfectly sexually innocent patches of skin, such as bare shoulders on women. (Or even prepubescent girls!)
• …And so on.

Basically, many (maybe most, but even i'm not that cynical most days) faithful Mormons seem to believe that nonmarital sex is something that human beings have no ability to resist, and therefore we have to build fences around the law—really, really horrible fences, in some cases.

I don't really get it, myself, but it's there—and i find it remarkably unhealthy. Not sure what to do about it, though. Thoughts?

* This rule wasn’t enforced in my mission when i was a full-time missionary twenty or so years ago, or at least all or most of us full-time missionaries in that mission weren’t aware of the rule. I’ve met others who served around the same time who report that it was an incredibly firm rule for them, though, and it’s been a pretty intensely-taught rule for the full-time missionaries in every mission i’ve lived in since then, too.

What does it mean to be baptized?

As seen recently on Facebook, as posted there by a reader of this blog (and reposted here, anonymized, with permission):

The situation: a parent talking to her child just before he turns four years old, saying that then he’ll be halfway to his eighth birthday.

Parent: What happens when you are eight?
Child: I get baptized.
Parent: What does it mean to be baptized?
Child: I drown.

I’m thinking that maybe they’re going to do a bit more teaching on that subject—but if they don’t, i totally want to be at the baptism to see his reaction.

Reducing the impact on…something

So when the new church handbooks* came out a while back, there was a bit about how multiple members of individual families shouldn’t generally be given “significant” callings, so as to reduce the impact of those callings on families.

In my observations of the past few weeks, i’m thinking that the real reason for this policy suggestion is so that a ward doesn’t have to, all at once, come up with replacements for (to pick three callings utterly at random) the executive secretary, young women president, and beehive class president.

* Now titled Handbook, to contrast with the previous Church Handbook of Instructions, which replaced the earlier General Handbook of Instructions. I actually heard someone say at the time that the change of title to Handbook is evidence that the church is led by actual prophets. You know, there may well be evidences that this church is led by prophets, but i’m going to go out on a limb here and say that i’m pretty sure that that ain’t one of them.

On going to the temple

So i got tripped up by an interesting bit of Mormon terminology yesterday afternoon. Consider this:

I’m going to the temple means that you’re going to perform ordinances of one kind or another (with a default of an endowment session, i think) inside a temple.

I’m going to the temple means that you’re going to the grounds of a temple, perhaps as part of a sightseeing event when you’re on holiday.

This isn’t the first time that this particular ambiguity has caught me. I’m not sure what to do about it (my personally preferred solution, replacing to with through in the ordinance-performing reading, isn’t likely to ever be widely adopted, i don’t think), but one would think we’d be a bit more precise about one of the distinguishing practices of our religion, you know?

Let’s argue about this

Question: When did Mormons redefine the word contentious to mean “involving even the vaguest hint of disagreement”? I’d like to know.

Offensive!

So, just as some of you may have, i heard the news yesterday that Idaho’s liquor stores won’t be stocking Five Wives Vodka, made by Ogden’s Own Distillery, because it is (quoting from the newspaper article about it here) “offensive to Mormons who make up over a quarter of Idaho’s population”. And this isn’t just the reporter editorializing—the letter sent from Idaho’s regulatory commission actually used the word “offensive”.

And you know, i think they’re entirely right! You can’t have state-controlled liquor stores carrying products that are offensive to segments of the population that…aren’t remotely likely…to walk into…any of those stores…

Oh, wait.

Daughter effects?

So the “daughter effect” has been well-documented in the business world—if a company’s chief executive officer (or similar) has any daughters, and particularly a daughter as an oldest child, that company is more likely to have policies and practices of the type that are generally seen as being friendly to women.

So this has gotten me wondering—is there a similar sort of effect among Mormon leaders (bishops, stake presidents, mission presidents, general authorities)? If one of them has daughters, especially an oldest child who’s a daughter, is he more likely to, say, listen to women in stake or ward or whatever councils, or focus on young women equally as much as the young men, or promote visiting teaching as vigorously as home teaching, or whatever else one might come up with? Also, how would one measure this?

Utah Valley University has a decent and growing Mormon Studies program, and Brigham Young University has a lot of folks interested in the social scientific study of religion, and the University of Illinois has a history of research into Mormonism, so there’s got to be somebody out there who has the desire and training to look into this.

Tired of the cold

Resolved: That the women of the church be the ones to set the temperatures in Mormon sacrament meetings, and if the men of the church want to be so deucéd cold, they can just take off their suit coats!

If you’re running late, just admit it

Fair warning: I’m gonna go totally postal on the next person who excuses their lateness by claiming that it’s no big deal, they’re just working on “Mormon Standard Time”.

Turn this mutha out

So can somebody tell me when Mormon celebrations of Mothers Day stopped being about Mothers Day and started being about Every-Female-Person-Over-Eighteen Day?

Parent(s)?

Here’s a question: The church’s records have spots for each member’s mother and father. However, there are plenty of family units out there where children are legally the children of two mothers or two fathers. So how do the church’s records deal with this, given that they enforce mothers as female and fathers as male?

Round robin reading

A comment on my last post got me wondering: Where did the tradition (for lack of a better word) in Mormon teaching come from where people are asked to pass around the manual and read from it a paragraph or so at a time? Sometimes this is the way stories get read, but i’ve really seen it most often where the entire lesson consists of everybody reading a piece of the lesson from the manual in turn.

I mean, whoever came up with the idea that this is anything even remotely approaching sound pedagogical practice?

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?