October 2020 – Zelophehad's Daughters

Captain Trumponi and the Title of Biglity

Ziff29 October 202029 October 202013 Comments

Utah Senator Mike Lee faced some backlash after he compared Donald Trump to Captain Moroni at a rally yesterday. In response, his office released the following passages of scripture about Captain Moroni to show that, with only a little tweaking, Trump is a perfect fit.

Alma 46:11-13

And now it came to pass that when Trumponi, who was the commander in chief of the armies of the Americans, had heard of these Democrats voting by mail, he was angry with Obamakiah.

And it came to pass that he rent his coat, which was a fur coat, the very finest; and he took a piece thereof, and wrote upon it—In memory of my mammon, my power, my owning of the libs, my wives and my affair partners and my affair partners who became wives and my one-night stands and my prostitutes and my porn stars and the victims of my assaults, and my children, Ivanka especially (and here, behold, he did add a winking emoji)—and he fastened it upon the end of a nine iron.

And he brushed on his majestic skin of orange, and his blue suit, and his red tie, and he girded on his holy MAGA hat about his head; and he took the nine iron, which had on the end thereof his rent coat, (and he called it the title of biglity) and he gathered his advisors and they all bowed themselves down unto him, and he charged them to pray to their God for the blessings of appointing judges and enriching the rich and punishing those with dark skin or an unknown tongue to rest upon him, so long as there should a band of white supremacists remain to possess the land—

In Doctrine, Family

By Divine Design

Ziff27 October 202024 November 20204 Comments

In one of the most often-discussed passages of almost-scripture on the Bloggernacle, the Family Proclamation reads:

By divine design, fathers are to preside over their families in love and righteousness and are responsible to provide the necessities of life and protection for their families. Mothers are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children. In these sacred responsibilities, fathers and mothers are obligated to help one another as equal partners.

I’m sure you won’t be surprised to hear that this isn’t one of my favorite parts. I don’t like the attempt to box women and men into prescribed gender roles. I especially don’t like it when these gender roles are attributed to God’s design, when it seems pretty obvious to me that they’re actually attributable to what the 1995 crop of GAs got comfortable with growing up. I think the opening phrase “by divine design” actually kind of signals this, as to me it suggests that the writers knew they didn’t have a scriptural leg to stand on when arguing for gender roles, so they figured they’d better just go big and claim that they (gender roles) came straight from God.

Thinking about this phrase more, it got me to wondering where else in Church rhetoric it had been used, because I swear I had heard it in contexts other than FamProc quotes. I thought these contexts might be interesting to look at. Because if I’m right that use of this phrase signals a speaker who’s grasping for authority but has nothing to cite, then it’s interesting to see where else Church leaders might want to assert things but realize they have no authoritative backing. (I realize that this is a big if, because even I realize this interpretation might be a bit of a leap. I’ll understand if you stop reading here.)

In General Conference

A Heretic Reviews Conference, October 2020

Ziff13 October 202018 Comments

Best visual aid: Carlos A. Godoy shared a picture of himself and his sister at the time they first investigated the Church as teenagers. I think it’s fun to see pictures of GAs back when they were younger, especially when they had long hair.

Most carefully vague visual aid: Dallin H. Oaks talked about the right to peacefully protest as a good thing, and accompanying his talk is a picture of some people protesting. The picture is very carefully taken to not actually show what cause the people are protesting about, though.

Weirdest visual aid: W. Christopher Waddell mentioned a Church-published pamphlet on personal finance that has been translated into a number of languages. The only image accompanying his talk is a picture of copies of this pamphlet in several different languages. I think it definitely would have been better to just have no image accompany the talk at all, as this one is pretty useless.

Best story: Dale G. Renlund told a story of two doctors discussing a patient who needed to be admitted to the hospital because of an ailment related to his consumption of alcohol. One doctor expressed frustration that the patient had brought his trouble on himself. The other reminded the first, “you became a physician to care for people and work to heal them. You didn’t become a physician to judge them.” I feel like Elder Renlund reinforced what he was saying with the story by describing both the patient and the first doctor in sympathetic terms. The patient was “a courteous, pleasant man,” and the first doctor’s frustration he attributed to “grueling training” and “sleep deprivation,” and he pointed out that after being corrected, she “diligently” cared for the patient.