Zelophehad’s Daughters

They always say the same thing in Conference (Part 1)

Posted by Ziff

A few months ago, I was working on a project that required me to look through a lot of search results at the Corpus of LDS General Conference Talks. I was surprised to find that some speakers not only told the same stories and made the same points in multiple talks, they frequently used exactly [...]

The Virtues of Vagueness

Posted by Ziff

After President Dalton’s much-discussed “you . . . will see no need to lobby for rights” talk, Galdralag wrote a post in which she asked, “Why don’t our leaders clarify their remarks more often?” I think this is a great question. Church leaders frequently say things that sound vague to me, often intentionally vague. This [...]

Who Wrote the Proclamation on the Family?

Posted by Ziff

While the Proclamation on the Family was nominally written by all 15 men serving in the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve at the time it was issued, it seems likely that some of them were more central to the project than others. For some reason, I’ve always thought it was Elder Nelson’s baby, [...]

On Mission Hierarchy, Gender, and Organizational Communication

Posted by Galdralag

In support of RAH’s Sister Missionary Leadership Project over at fMh, here’s a post about my mission originally published at Both Sides Now in July of last year. In our mission we had APs and “Traveling Elders” who assisted with a lot of the nuts and bolts of mission organization (for a primer on the [...]

Distal Effects of Missionary Age Changes

Posted by Ziff

Kent Larsen at T&S has a great list of possible effects of the changes in minimum missionary ages that President Monson announced in Conference. Many of the effects discussed are straightforward and closely tied to missionary work (e.g. enrollment at BYU), but others are more weakly tied and more speculative (e.g., divorce rate). I want [...]

The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin

Posted by Ziff

. . . the more star systems will slip through your fingers. You probably remember Princess Leia saying this to Governor Tarkin right before he started trying to impress her with the size of his battle station. But I’m not here to talk about battle station size or who might be compensating for what. Instead, [...]

“Gotcha” questions for GAs

Posted by Ziff

A recent guest poster at fMh asked for suggestions about what question she might pose to a visiting Seventy who had agreed to a Q&A session with members as part of stake conference. In a post at Nine Moons, Rusty pointed out that many of the questions seemed to be “gotcha questions,” intended to make [...]

More Church President Probabilities

Posted by Ziff

As a follow-up to my last post discussing who in the Quorum of the Fifteen would likely be Church President at some point, I made some figures that show Quorum members’ changing probabilities over time for the last 60 years. (A description of where these probabilities come from is in the previous post.)

Predicting Who Will Be Church President

Posted by Ziff

Who among the current First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve is mostly likely to eventually become President of the Church?

Aging of the Quorum of the Twelve

Posted by Ziff

Mike Wallace: There are those who say, “This is a gerontocracy. This is a church run by old men.” Gordon B. Hinckley: Isn’t it wonderful to have a man of maturity at the head, a man of judgment who isn’t blown about by every wind of doctrine? [From a 1996 interview on 60 Minutes.]

Something Different in the First Presidency Letter?

Posted by Ziff

Yesterday a letter from the First Presidency was read in my ward’s sacrament meeting. It sounded like the standard letter that’s sent every so often asking members to please not write to Salt Lake about our concerns but instead to talk to our bishops or branch presidents. But at the end I thought I heard [...]

Contemporary Mormonism and the Magic General Authority

Posted by Eve

Because I have polygamous pioneer ancestors and am therefore related to an immoderate number of other Mormons, and because I grew up in Utah, attended BYU, and spent two months in the MTC, I’ve experienced more than my fair share of General Authority sightings. None were spectacular or even particularly personal, so “encounters” would be [...]