April 2023 – Zelophehad's Daughters

Why no Christmas-and-Easter Mormons?

Ziff14 April 20236 Comments

My tween daughter recently asked me about people who attend church only at Christmas and Easter. She said that she likes going to church, but that if she ever quit, she couldn’t imagine still attending on these major holidays. At least in my experience, this is a common feeling among Mormons. I mean that I haven’t noticed ward members attending on or around Christmas and Easter who don’t also attend pretty regularly the rest of the year. Part of the reason, I think, is that the LDS Church is such a high-demand church. It’s definitely designed for, and expects members to be, either all in or all out. There’s not much room for people who are kinda sorta in, for whatever reason or at whatever level of activity.

But maybe a bigger reason is that we don’t as a church really do anything special for Christmas or Easter. I was thinking about this recently because there was extra discussion of even Palm Sunday and Holy Week at General Conference. And there was the First Presidency letter that canceled the second hour of church on Easter. At least in my area, there was also supposed to be some effort to invite non-Mormons to come, and to make sacrament meeting nicer than usual. This might have been passed down from the Area Presidency or someone; I couldn’t find a church-wide reference to it.

My ward did have a nice Easter sacrament meeting, with several musical numbers and some good talks focused on Jesus. But it struck me that it was still just a sacrament meeting, built out of the same usual building blocks of talks and singing and prayers and sacrament. Making a special effort at Easter (or Christmas) to make those building blocks better doesn’t change the fact that it’s still the same type of meeting. Other than the sacrament, which is of course the same every week, there isn’t any ceremony or ritual. Other than sacrament and singing (and the odd sustaining vote), there isn’t congregation participation. I think it’s telling even that we call it a meeting rather than a worship service or something like that that lots of other Christians would expect. It makes it sound very businesslike, which I think fits because we’re a pretty businesslike church.

In Fun, General Conference

A Heretic Reviews General Conference, April 2023

Ziff7 April 202317 Comments

Fastest hymn: “I Believe in Christ,” Sunday morning.
Slowest hymn: “I Stand All Amazed,” Sunday afternoon.
Best hymn: “High on the Mountain Top,” Saturday morning. This is frequently sung as a congregational hymn, which means a vanilla arrangement, so it was fun to hear a different version with stuff like organ interludes.
Worst hymn: “Keep the Commandments,” Saturday morning. This is a dull hymn to begin with, and the bland arrangement didn’t improve it.

Longest prayer: 270 seconds, Adeyinka A. Ojediran, Sunday afternoon benediction. This was the second-longest Conference prayer I’ve ever seen, being beaten out only by D. Rex Gerratt’s 274-second prayer in 2007. (My data does only go back to 1996, and is spotty prior to 2005.)
Longest prayer, honorable mention: 186 seconds, Thierry K. Mutombo, Sunday morning benediction. At the time he gave it, this was the longest prayer since 2010, but then he was upstaged by Elder Ojediran the very next session.
Shortest prayer: 45 seconds, Mark L. Pace, Saturday morning benediction.

Best title: Vern P. Stanfill, “The Imperfect Harvest”
Phoning it in title: Gerrit W. Gong, “Ministering”
Most overwrought title: Ahmad S. Corbitt, “Do You Know Why I as a Christian Believe in Christ?”

Good patterns:

With Russell M. Nelson, Dallin H. Oaks, and Neil L. Andersen focusing on different issues, and Jeffrey R. Holland and his musket sidelined with COVID, there was no mention of LGBTQ issues, which is so often an area where speakers say cruel things.
Some men in the Logan Institute choir (Saturday evening) and the BYU choir (Saturday afternoon) actually had facial hair! And hair touching or over the collar! (Yes, even the BYU choir. Don’t tell the Honor Code Office!)

Good/bad pattern: Russell M. Nelson gave only one full talk and the usual half-talk at the end to announce new temples, and the other First Presidency members gave only one talk each (like last Conference) leaving more opportunity for different people (especially women) to speak. Unfortunately, rather than getting more women added to the lineup, we just got an abbreviated Saturday evening session.
Bad pattern: Speakers capitalize even random titles for prophets (“Father Lehi,” “Prophet Joseph”), but of course still refuse to capitalize—or even mention—Heavenly Mother.

In Authority, God, Love

God the GA

Lynnette6 April 20236 April 20238 Comments

Growing up, I think I basically imagined God as being somewhat akin to a General Authority. In my mind, he (male, of course) was a generally benevolent older man. He wasn’t mean, necessarily, but he did have very clear expectations of how people should act, and would be disappointed if you didn’t meet those expectations. He would lecture when necessary, if he felt like you needed it. He would be patient, sure, but he also had a clearly defined plan for you, and wasn’t very interested in your opinions or ideas about how things were going, because you needed to get on board and follow the plan. God didn’t particularly care about your feelings, for heaven’s sake; he cared about accomplishing his grand purposes. I mean, he might listen politely and maybe even acknowledge what you said, but ultimately he wanted you to get with the program and get over yourself.

In Statistics

Revisiting New Children of Record Data

Ziff3 April 20232 Comments

I wrote a post last year after April Conference about the new children of record counts that the Church reports every April for the previous calendar year. In that post, I pointed out that, after the marked decline in new children of record the Church reported during COVID, the bounce back the following year was far less than would be expected if it were just a matter of clearing a backlog of children who weren’t recorded during the height of the pandemic. I speculated that perhaps this was evidence of a decline in activity level that wasn’t bouncing back.

Now that we have the 2022 data from the 2023 statistical report, it looks like I was probably too hasty in my interpretation. Here’s a graph with the new data.

In Fun

Church Announces New Cryptocurrency: WritCoin

Ziff1 April 20235 Comments

On the eve of its 193rd annual General Conference, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints made a startling announcement, through spokesman Brigham Orson Andreasson: the Church is getting into cryptocurrency. However, rather than involving itself with any existing cryptocurrency, the Church is introducing its own, a version to be called HolyWritCoin, or simply WritCoin. Andreasson explained that WritCoin is similar in some ways to other cryptocurrencies, but it also has its differences, and in fact technically fits into an entirely new category that is not cryptographic (hidden writing), but rather holygraphic (sacred writing, not to be confused with holographic). “It does not partake of the blockchain technology of the world,” he said, “but rather it uses a higher, holier technology known as rockreign. Rock refers to the rock of revelation upon which the Savior built his Church, and reign refers to the eternal reign of the Father and the Son.” He also likened the coming forth of WritCoin to the coming forth of the Church: “Just as inspired reformers of the Protestant Reformation paved the way for the Restoration, inspired creators of cryptocurrency have paved the way for the holygraphic WritCoin.”