Women
Sister Zone Leaders
Well, that’s not exactly the right term, but for those who have served LDS missions previously, that’s what the new announcement from the LDS Newsroom amounts to. The term “Zone Leader” is out, and the new term “Mission Leadership Council” is in, and it will include sister missionaries. It wasn’t announced in General Conference, but […]
Mormon Doctrine: Priestesses
There has been a lot of buzz in the bloggernacle lately. A Facebook group was created in February called Let Women Pray in General Conference. To the surprise of many, Salt Lake Tribune’s Peggy Fletcher Stack is reporting that women are scheduled to pray in General Conference for the first time next month. Is this […]
Brian Hales and Don Bradley Discuss Polygamy
I was pleased to attend a book signing at Pioneer Book in Orem, Utah Saturday night. Brian Hales has put together a new comprehensive set of 3 volumes concerning the theology and history of polygamy in the early church. Initially the book was over 1000 pages, so the editors at Greg Kofford Books asked if […]
Historical Accuracy in LDS Scriptures
The LDS Church has produced an update to the scriptures, following 8 years of work by historians on the Joseph Smith Papers Project. You may have heard about some of the changes, as our own Andrew S was the one that alerted me, but By Common Consent has some fantastic posts on the subject as […]
Toxic Perfectionism
Matthew 5:48 Be ye therefore bperfect, even as your cFather which is in heaven is dperfect. UVU Professor Kris Doty spoke last week at UVU. “In the (Mormon and Utah) culture, people have just taken it too far,” she said during the 2013 Mental Health Symposium at UVU’s Sorensen Student Center. “They think they can’t make a mistake […]
Abortion and Crime
I originally posted this on Wheat and Tares in August 2011, but wanted to add it here since I just talked about a Freakonomics podcast on Baptism for the Dead. A friend of mine introduced me to the Freakonomics podcast that you can download from iTunes. Â Two Steve’s (Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt) put together […]
Re-Evaluating Gay Scriptures
Reverend Dr. Laurence C. Keene, Disciples of Christ, “When people ask questions about homosexuality, almost always they follow with, ‘and what does the Bible really say about it?’ The preceeding quote comes from an interesting documentary on Netflix called For the Bible Tells Me So.  The documentary discusses traditional and liberal Christian beliefs about homosexuality in […]
Honeymoon Problems
Samira and Firas are a Muslim couple married in August 2009. As I mentioned in my previous post, I’ve been watching the TLC program, Strange Sex (also available on Netflix.) For Firas and Samira, it was love at first sight. One week after meeting, Firas asked Samira’s father for permission to marry. Muslims have even […]
Is Gender Really Eternal?
The Proclamation on the Family states that “Gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose.† We know that gender is related to genitalia, but sometimes that can be a bit confusing. I talked previously about Intersex individuals, and TLC has a show (also available on Netflix) called Strange Sex. […]
Realistically Curtailing Abortion
“Many laws permit or even promote abortion, but to us this is a great evil,†Elder Oaks said in Saturday afternoon’s session of General Conference. Oaks is just one of many religious leaders that call abortion evil, but are there more effective ways to curb abortions than to simply stand on a soapbox? A recent […]
