Mormon Heretic
Salt Lake’s Cure for Homelessness
Salt Lake City has reduced homelessness in Salt Lake City 72% since 2005. How did they do this? Comedy Central recently highlighted Utah’s cure and it is pretty simple: they give homeless people homes. But doesn’t that cost a lot of money? Lloyd Pendleton, the director of the Utah Homeless Task Force says it costs […]
Church Ball
My son recently became a deacon and was invited to play ward basketball for the first time this week. We got there right at 7pm (in the middle of the prayer), and discovered my son was the 5th guy there for his team. Good thing he showed up! To my surprise, my 12 year old […]
Did you Meet the Mormons?
This past weekend, we noticed that Meet the Mormons was at the Dollar Theater (actually it is $1.50), so we went to see it. (I admit it–we don’t like to pay the higher prices.) I walked into the theater, and it was nearly sold out. A recent article said that Utah County is 84% Mormon […]
The Christmas Star in BoM
When I was a child, I was always excited about putting the Star on top of our Christmas tree. The story of the Christmas star is found in the Book of Matthew: Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the East came […]
Impromptu Sacrament Meetings
When I was a kid (approximately 8-10 years old), I used to get up every Fast & Testimony meeting and bear my testimony. I was so obnoxious, my family told me I didn’t need to get up every month. So, I took a few months off. One day we had Ward Conference (and I still […]
Uninspirational Missionary Farewells
I attended my nephew’s missionary farewell this weekend, and it got me thinking about missionary farewells in general. It used to be that a missionary family would invite his family to speak, there would be special musical numbers, often advice from an older brother, and bishop’s remarks about the missionary. While some meetings went long […]
Is it Time to Update the Word of Wisdom?
Fair warning: I know that Thursday is Thanksgiving, so this post will probably be a killjoy. The Word of Wisdom was written in Joseph Smith’s day and primarily concerned the major health problems of the day: alcoholism and and tobacco. These were industries of “conspiring men in the last days.” But obesity is turning out to […]
Is ISIS our generation’s version of Nazis?
Edmund Burke was an Irish political philosopher, Whig politician and statesman who is often regarded as the father of modern conservatism. His most famous quote: “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” How involved should the U.S. be? Hitler invaded Poland, Austria, and Czechoslovakia in 1939, and […]
The Crucible of Doubt
Many religions are losing adherents to atheism, or people a simply choosing to abandon organized religion. Mormonism is no different. Deseret Book has recently published The Crucible of Doubt by Terryl and Fiona Givens in order to address those Mormons who doubt truth claims made by the church. I liked some of the points that […]
Mormon Heretic 