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.