In one of the fMh Conference threads, Elisothel said that Wyoming gets a mention in every Conference. This got me to wondering how often any of the US states are mentioned. So I looked it up. Read More
Showing all posts by Ziff
The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin
. . . 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, I’m interested in Leia’s point about unintended consequences: sometimes pushing directly for some outcome can actually make that outcome less likely.
Doctrinal Density of the Scriptures
We just finished talking about the war chapters at the end of Alma a couple of weeks ago, in my ward’s Sunday School anyway. Discussion of these chapters sometimes brings up an argument about whether all scriptures are equally valuable, since of course if you don’t believe they are, these chapters are perfect examples to cite.
I got to thinking that it might be fun to try to answer this question empirically. To do so, I looked at how much time the Sunday School manuals spend on each chapter of the scriptures. This can tell us how doctrinally important each chapter is. Of course it’s a pretty crude measure and it’s just one class in church, but at least it’s a starting point.
Chicken change: A step forward or a sidestep?
How has the Church’s view on homosexuality changed over time? In a post at T&S last year, Kaimi gave an overview of some of the major changes, and summarized them as follows:
Over the course of the past three decades, the church’s stance has evolved from virulently anti-gay and homophobic, to its current soft-heterosexist approach of “love the gays, hate the gayness.” It is a limited sort of shift, as the changes have largely involved rhetoric and attitude, while many of the underlying church doctrines have remained relatively constant.
I haven’t systematically examined Church statements about women, but I think there may be a similar change going on in this area. My impression is that it used to be that women had their own roles and their own sphere and that’s just how it was, but now there are General Authorities reassuring women at every turn that they’re incredible and important. But like the change in views on homosexuality, like Kaimi said, it’s been mostly in rhetoric and not much in practice. Borrowing Kiskilili and Eve’s term, it could be called “chicken change.”
Pewferences
I’ve just moved into a new ward, and I got to thinking about how people pick where to sit in sacrament meeting.
Why are Mormons so . . .
A recent article at Slate described blogger Renee DiResta’s idea of looking at what people think of different states by typing the question beginning “Why is [state] so” into Google and checking what the top autocomplete search suggestions were. I thought it might be fun to try this with religions.
Describing Women’s Participation in the Church
How do we describe women’s participation in the Church to non-Mormons? There have been a few recent published statements that have all attempted this and have, in my view, all gotten it wrong in the same way.
Nacle Notebook 2011: Funny Comments
Here are some of the funniest comments I read in the Bloggernacle in 2011.
“All Lanes Open”
While driving back from a wonderfully enjoyable Thanksgiving visit with my sisters, I saw an electronic billboard by the side of the highway. It was the kind typically used to announce construction ahead. But this one wasn’t doing that. Instead, it said, “All lanes open.”
A Modest Bit of Data
Over at Doves and Serpents, Heather Olsen Beal recently blogged about a Friend article in which a four year old girl learns the importance of not wearing clothes that show her shoulders. The article was also discussed at fMh, and Heather, Erin Hill, and Chelsea Fife were guests on a Mormon Matters podcast, where they used the article as a jumping off point for discussing how modesty is taught (and could be taught better) in the Church.
In the discussion, following Heather’s post, she raised the question of whether this focus has changed over time, whether the practice of drilling even prepubescent children on modesty of dress is a new thing:
I think the rhetoric we were getting from church leaders and publications 20 years ago was much more sane and reasonable. I feel like it’s gotten ratcheted up to the nth degree. It’s no longer a modest position; it’s extreme.
That modesty is being pushed harder and with more detail now than it used to be is my impression too, but I wondered whether I could find any data that would support or refute this conclusion.
You Talkin’ to Me, Mormon?
I’m in favor of modifying the scriptures to give them gender-inclusive language. I’ve always thought that the strongest argument for this is that gender-exclusive language makes them insulting to women. But I recently encountered another argument that I also find quite persuasive: women find it more difficult to read the scriptures as addressing them.
Don’t Google “Mormon”
My ward’s high councilman warned us recently not to Google “Mormon.”
Obedience Is the First Law of Earth
Reading Lynnette’s excellent post about obedience got me to wondering a little about whether the Church has always been as obedience-happy as it currently seems to be.
Data Deniers’ Delight: The Mormon Gender Gap Is Unremarkable
Pew’s 2007 Religious Landscape Survey (of the US) found that 56% of respondents who identified as LDS were women. Is that a lot?
General Conference Stories Where the Subtext Speaks to Me
Often what I remember best about General Conference (other than controversial bit that are later argued in the Bloggernacle, of course) is the stories speakers tell. This probably isn’t surprising. A vivid story is likely more memorable for most people than an abstract discussion of Church doctrine or practice. But what might be unusual is that I’m frequently more struck by the subtext of a story than by its text. (By subtext, I just mean what is implied by the story’s content, or what is conveyed without being explicitly said.) Read More
Nacle Notebook 2010: Funny Comments
Below is a list of some of the funniest comments I read in the Bloggernacle in 2010. Note that in most cases, I’ve taken excerpts from longer comments. Each commenter’s name is a link to the original comment (except for comments at Mormon Matters, which are no longer displayed at the site).
Warning: Reading this post may make you dumber
Reading this post may make you dumber. Not (only) because of bad arguments I might make, but because you’re reading it on a computer.
How to Name Your Devil [updated]
What name do Mormons most often use to refer to Satan? A few months ago, Julie M. Smith suggested in a post at T&S that we might be cutting back on naming him specifically as being responsible for evils in favor of blaming “the world.”
Hymn Humor
Not very good humor, mind you. Remember that I have a talent for dumbness. Consider yourself warned.
Does the design of our scriptures make them more difficult to read?
LDS scriptures can be difficult to read. One reason is that their language is unfamiliar. The argument has often been made that we should quit using the KJV Bible, or at least supplement it with a more recent translation (for example, here’s Steve Evans, here’s Julie M. Smith, here’s DKL, and here’s Grant Hardy on the topic). But I’m thinking of a different reason our scriptures can be hard to read: their design.