Mormon

Abraham for Liberals and Conservatives

By Mormon Heretic April 19, 2014 10 Comments

The story of Abraham’s attempted sacrifice of Isaac is one of the most perplexing moral dilemmas in all of scripture.  It has long been held up as an example of Abraham’s faithfulness.  Orthodox members do not question the traditional interpretation of the story.  They seem to reason that if God wants you to do something, you […]

Jabari Parker Announces his Decision

By Mormon Heretic April 18, 2014 1 Comment

I wanted to post this excerpt from the most recent Sports Illustrated article. Today I sent my letter of intent to the NBA. That makes it official — my days as a Duke basketball player are over. But my days as a Duke student are not. I intend to graduate from Duke while I’m in […]

Outsourcing Morality to Hollywood

By Mormon Heretic April 13, 2014 6 Comments

The LDS Church has asked church members to avoid R rated movies for quite some time.  (For a little more background, here is my post that discussed the documentary Cleanflix.)  As I reviewed that post recently, some ironic things struck me. Hollywood often gets cited as having questionable morals, producing filth, and contributing to the […]

Oaks Lights up the Bloggernacle

By Mormon Heretic April 7, 2014 6 Comments

Facebook was ablaze with comments about Elder Oaks General Conference talk on Saturday night.  Disappointed that the church website didn’t have a transcript, I created one so that we could better discuss what he actually said.  I decided to let that post stand on its own without any commentary.  But in this post, I will […]

Elder Dallin H. Oaks: ‘Keys and authority of the priesthood’

By Mormon Heretic April 6, 2014 5 Comments

Elder Oaks’ talk has seen the most reaction from the bloggernacle. Since the church takes a while to transcribe these, I have decided to transcribe his talk from yesterday. You can also see it on the official church website by clicking below. What are your thoughts? https://www.lds.org/general-conference/watch/2014/04?lang=eng&vid=3436246697001&cid=3

Temple Prep Suggestions

By Mormon Heretic April 5, 2014 4 Comments

This post originally appeared at Wheat and Tares from Guy Templeton under the title Are We Properly Prepared to Enter the Temple?  I thought it was worth sharing, along with some insightful comments. —- I’ve been reading a book, Your Endowment by Mark A. Shields. The book claims to be from “an experienced gospel teacher, […]

Defending Male Hegemony

By Mormon Heretic March 30, 2014 7 Comments

Fiona Givens was part of an interesting interview on Mormon Matters with John Dehlin.  She spoke about a conference talk on priesthood power vs priesthood authority, and said that women already have priesthood power. (These comments appear in the interview about 8:15 in.)

Agitating for Change

By Mormon Heretic March 24, 2014 1 Comment

There has been a lot of chatter on the Bloggernacle this week about whether it is appropriate for Kate Kelly and proponents of female priesthood are employing proper methods in seeking to bring attention to female ordination.  Kate has organized the group Ordain Women. According to their website, “Ordain Women aspires to create a space […]

British Judge Blasts Tom Phillips

By Mormon Heretic March 20, 2014 Leave a comment

The Deseret News is reporting that a British judge has rejected Tom Phillips’ lawsuit against the Church, and called the lawsuit “an abuse of the process of the court.”  Tom’s lawsuit alleged that the Church committed fraud because it lies about its origins in order to obtain tithing receipts. “I am satisfied that the process […]

Land of the Free Imprisoned

By Mormon Heretic March 16, 2014 4 Comments

We like to complain about human rights abuses in Communist China or North Korea.  However, it is the United States with the highest incarceration rate in the world, and it is more than 6 times larger than Communist China.  (The U.S jails 743 per 100,000 Americans; China jails just 122 per 100,000.)  It seems that […]