Showing all posts by Ziff

In Statistics, Temple

Utah Temple Utilization in 2023

Author ZiffPosted on 12 Comments

When I blogged last month looking at temple activity in Utah, and how patrons move between temples when their first choice is closed, several commenters asked about utilization: What fraction of endowment session seats are being filled? In this post, I’ll show some summaries from the same endowment session data I used in the last post.

But first, commenters also pointed out that I left out a huge disclaimer in that post: The data I have is only for people who schedule online. Online scheduling is still relatively new (maybe even only becoming available during Russell M. Nelson’s presidency if I remember right), and many members therefore have decades of experience just going to the temple for endowment sessions and counting on open space being available. So it wouldn’t be surprising if a substantial fraction of temple patrons don’t show up in my analysis because they didn’t schedule online. Also, to be complete, it’s also possible that people could schedule a place but then not show up for their appointment, although I’d guess that’s probably less common. In sum, the true attendance numbers are very likely higher, perhaps much higher, than what I’m showing. I’d love to hear from anyone who’s a temple worker or attender what their impression is of how many people attend without scheduling online or how many schedule online and then don’t attend. And thanks again to commenters on my last post who raised this issue and shared their experience with this.

While I’m offering that big caveat, let me tell you about two other smaller one related to data exclusion. First, in looking at utilization, I’m using only English language sessions. Utilization rates for sessions in other languages are affected by a second effect in addition to members’ general interest in attending the temple: the number of members nearby who speak the language the session is presented in. For English, there are presumably always plenty of members nearby who speak the language, so differences in utilization can be attributed more straightforwardly to differences in willingness to attend. The second exclusion of data is that I dropped all Monday sessions. Provo consistently had a few sessions on Mondays, but because it was the only temple open for endowments that day, I didn’t consistently gather the data. It’s only a small number of sessions anyway, so I just excluded all Mondays.

This first graph shows counts of total endowment session seats and seats used, aggregated across all Utah temples.

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In Sunstone

Sunstone Kirtland Memories

Author ZiffPosted on 2 Comments

The LDS Church purchased some historic sites, documents, and artifacts from Community of Christ last week. If you read Mormon stuff on the internet, you’ve probably already heard plenty of commentary on the exchange. I have little to add to the commentary I’ve read. I feel especially bad for people I know in Community of Christ for whom this blow came out of left field.

Of the historic sites sold, the Kirtland Temple is probably the most recognizable. It’s also the most important to me personally. My family moved to the Midwest about a decade ago, and since then I’ve gotten to visit Kirtland a number of times. I’ve always been more impressed with Community of Christ’s presentations and tours at the temple than the LDS Church’s presentations and tours up the road at and around the Newel K. Whitney store. This is a common complaint, but it’s true: LDS tours are typically designed to use history as a prop to wring correlated spiritual experiences and missionary referrals out of visitors. Community of Christ tours, on the other hand, are more like actual historical tours where the guides try to give an overview of important events that happened at the sites, leaving the interpretation up to the visitors. I don’t have high hopes that the LDS Church’s tours of the Kirtland Temple will be anything other than the carefully correlated bland stuff that’s our usual.

Image credit: John Hamer on Wikimedia.

Several of my Kirtland visits have been for Sunstone Kirtland conferences. These have always been generously hosted by Community of Christ at the visitor center next to the temple. I’m guessing the LDS Church won’t want to host such heresies there, so these conferences will likely be held at another venue, if they continue at all. I thought it might be fun, then, to reflect on some of the things I’ve enjoyed most at Sunstone Kirtland.

I do want to note that I’ve been to the main Sunstone conference in Salt Lake a few times too, and I’ve also enjoyed it a lot. It’s great that there are so many interesting people and different presentations. In Kirtland, I feel like we’ve rarely even had concurrent sessions, where you get to choose which you want to go to. But the small size is also a benefit in that it’s so much easier to meet someone if I want to. If I want to ask a presenter a follow-up question, or even just meet them, after a session at Kirtland, it’s always been easy.

Another aspect that was always great is that we’d start or end with a tour of the temple. These were always done by super knowledgeable people who could tell us all kinds of interesting things. At least once, Lachlan Mackay, a historian who’s on the Community of Christ Council of Twelve, did the tour. If you’ve been to the temple, you probably remember that the doors have been painted green because historical research indicates that that was their original color. If my memory is correct, Mackay told us on a tour that the exterior walls were originally slate gray, but he hadn’t been able to persuade everyone to go back to that color like with the doors.

Here are some conference sessions I particularly enjoyed. (To protect people’s privacy, I’m giving names of presenters and people I met at the conferences only if they’re public figures to some degree.)

  • A presenter one year explained how she had purchased Bratz dolls and then re-made them to look like each of Joseph Smith’s wives. She showed the collection during her presentation. It was a great demonstration of how a number (41, or whatever it is) fails to capture just how many women he married.

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In Music, Prophets

Nephi’s Blunder

Author ZiffPosted on 6 Comments

The Lord commanded Nephi to cut off Laban’s head.
After some reluctance, he chopped and made him dead.
Murder was good: Laban was a wicked man.
Nephi and his kin got brass plates as God planned.

Photo by Guilherme Stecanella on Unsplash

Chorus:
“I will go; I will do the thing the Lord commands.
I know the Lord provides a way; he wants me to obey.
I will go; I will do the thing the Lord commands.
I know the Lord provides a way; he wants me to obey.”

The Lord told Abraham he must kill his only son.
He took Isaac with him to get the Lord’s will done.
When ready to kill, at last his knife he drew,
Broke in then an angel: “God was testing you.”

Chorus

The Lord commanded Thomas to exclude kids of gays.
Never to baptize them in all their youthful days.
Thomas and Russell knew they were in a bind.
Finally years later, Russell changed God’s mind.

Chorus

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In Statistics, Temple

Do new temples bring new patrons?

Author ZiffPosted on 15 Comments

As the Church rushes to build ever more temples for a membership that’s now growing only slowly, the GAs must face the question of whether new temples are actually bringing in new patrons. Because that’s the goal, I would think: to make the temple accessible to members who couldn’t get to it before.

When a temple is first built in a place, a country or a region of a large country, it should draw in many new patrons who couldn’t attend (or at least couldn’t attend regularly) before. In large countries like Brazil or countries where travel may be difficult like The Philippines (I’m just guessing, with all the islands), it makes sense that building temples in different regions would make temple attendance accessible to more members. But at some point, when most members who want to go can go, a new temple is likely to just redirect temple patrons from one to another rather than actually bringing in anyone new.

Utah is the obvious place where this point of diminishing returns for new temples is coming, if in fact it hasn’t already arrived. I thought it would be interesting to take a look at attendance there as a preview for what might happen as more and more parts of the world approach a point of temple saturation.

Between April and December of last year, on a nearly daily basis, I checked the number of available seats for endowment sessions in each temple in Utah for the next day. I also checked the number of available seats for sessions a month or two in the future to get an idea of each session’s capacity. (And to account for the fact that a few seats are scheduled even a month or two out, I took the capacity for each session as the maximum of any capacity for a session on the same day of the week and at the same time on any day within 60 days of the day of the session.) I then took the difference between capacity and seats remaining the day before as the number of endowment session patrons.

I originally planned to show graphs of daily patron counts, but there’s so much variation within weeks that it’s hard to see trends, so I’m going to show weekly counts instead. Also, to make the data easier to look at, when a temple was closed for just one day (like July 4th) or for the few days when I missed gathering data, I filled the day in with the average for the same day of the week within 30 days in the past or future.

Because the question I’m interested in is the effect of one temple on another nearby, I’ll show a few pairs of nearby temples. Here are Jordan River and Draper.

Both temples show increased attendance when the other closed. In May, when Jordan River closed, Draper’s weekly counts went from about 2600 to about 3000. And again in October, its weekly counts went from about 1800-1900 to about 2800. On the Jordan River side, when Draper closed in July, its weekly count went from the range of 6000-7000 to nearly 8000.

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In Fun

Nacle Notebook 2023: Funniest Comments

Author ZiffPosted on 11 Comments

This post is a list of the funniest comments (and lines in posts) that I read on the Bloggernacle last year. Even among the comments, I’ve typically excerpted just a part of a longer comment. Each person’s name is a link back to the original comment or post, so you can go and see the larger context if you’re interested.

In case you haven’t read them yet, here are links to compilations for previous years: 2022 2021 2020 2019 2018 2017 2016 2015 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008.

Jack Hughes, commenting on Dave B.’s post “Next Up: New Testament” at W&T:

I believe in the basic Gospel teaching principle of “line upon line”, but not “repeat the 4th grade every year for the rest of your life”. That’s not what I signed up for.

Anna, commenting on Bishop Bill’s post “Love (terms and conditions apply)” at W&T:

See, most people base their idea of God on their parents because when we are infants, our parents are very God like. And sometimes we disobey and our parents don’t notice or simply fail to punish us. And so as an adult, we disobey God and go down to the honey tonk and take someone home to copulate like rabbits, and no immediate consequences follow, and hey that was fun.

Photo by Noah Buscher on Unsplash. Orange you glad I selected it?

Old Man, commenting on Elisa’s post “Royal Defectors” at W&T:

Some time ago I sought clarification regarding an apostle’s military record from the history dept. (The local seminary teachers were spreading some faith-promoting falsehoods.) The history folks forwarded my phone call and I ended up discussing the issue with that apostle. He laughed and shouted at me while his secretary held up the phone “Don’t believe everything you hear from CES.”

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In GA's

I’m thrilled that Patrick Kearon has been called to the Q12!

Author ZiffPosted on 10 Comments

The Church announced a few days ago that Patrick Kearon of the Seventy has been called into the Quorum of the Twelve to fill the vacancy created by M. Russell Ballard’s death. I’m very happy at President Nelson’s choice.

Image credit: churchofjesuschrist.org

First, I’m of course a complainer, so I do want to mention a few concerns I have. One is that President Nelson seems to be in a rush in not wanting to wait for Conference, and having Elder Kearon ordained already really makes clear that sustaining votes from the membership are 100% loyalty tests, and not at all what they originally were. Another is that it’s too bad the Q15 remains so white. And old. And of course you know I’d love to see women ordained and have a woman called.

But setting those issues aside as large ones that the Church is not likely to move on soon, like I say in the title, I’m thrilled with the selection of Patrick Kearon. Here are some reasons why:

  • He’s not an American. I think American GAs are more prone to thinking that American (or Mormon corridor) cultural norms are God-inspired.
  • He’s an adult convert. He was baptized in 1987 at the age of 26. I see this as a positive in the same way as I see not being an American as a positive, but I think being a convert might be even better. I feel like there are so many “unwritten order of things” ideas that float around the Church and someone who wasn’t raised in the Church would be so much less likely to taking these seriously just because he didn’t hear them or observe them off and on during his formative years. Ideas like this sometimes even make it into the Handbook, as Dallin H. Oaks recently illustrated with his right-hand-for-the-sacrament rule. I just think a convert would be more likely to see through this nonsense, and be unwilling to enshrine it in written rules.
  • He doesn’t use a middle initial. This makes two Q15 members in a row, after Ulisses Soares. I don’t know the history of the tradition of having GAs be referred to with their middle initials, other than that among Church presidents, it appears to date to Joseph F. Smith. For him, George Albert Smith, and Ezra Taft Benson, it seems like their middle initials or names had genuine value for disambiguation. But for most GAs, it just feels pretentious.
  • He gave one of the best Conference talks in recent memory in 2022, when he addressed abuse victims far more compassionately than any previous Conference speaker that I remember had.
  • In 2016, he gave another excellent Conference talk, urging compassion for refugees.
  • His kind approach is even more striking when considered against the backdrop of some other Seventies who appear to be auditioning for the Twelve by showing how harsh they can be. If one of these meaner men had been called, what kind of a signal would that have sent, versus the signal sent by calling Elder Kearon?
  • He’s 62, three years younger than Elder Soares, who’s the second-youngest Q15 member. This gives him a fair shot of making the top spot (eventually) and hopefully having even more of an influence for good in the Church.

What do you think of the call of Patrick Kearon to the Quorum of the Twelve?

In Church Policy, Patriarchy

When in doubt, leave women out.

Author ZiffPosted on 6 Comments

A few days ago, Peggy Fletcher Stack reported in a Salt Lake Tribune article that wards in the San Francisco Bay Area, where Relief Society presidents had been sitting on the stand during sacrament meeting, were told to stop this by the area president. She also reports that many women, both in the area, and in other places, are unhappy with the change. For example, over at the Exponent, Kelly Ann posted her letter to the area presidency, and pointed out that one of the people quoted in the Tribune article is also collecting letters to send.

I share the frustration of the women and girls quoted in the article. It’s sad that such a tiny step toward showing women in a position of authority was something that the area president felt the need to put an end to.

Photo by Josh Applegate on Unsplash

But I’m also utterly unsurprised at the area president’s response. It’s just another exhibit to add to the long list that shows that patriarchy is truly one of the core values of the Church. We might have documents like the Articles of Faith to tell us what our core values are, at least in theory. But what values does the organization of the Church exhibit? Statements like scriptures or proclamations tell, but our practices show much more clearly. And we have so, so many practices that show that the GAs have patriarchy as a default assumption. Men’s Church participation is assumed and requires no comment; women’s participation is unusual and requires consideration and explanation.

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In Church Life, Temple

Chapel vs. Temple

Author ZiffPosted on 5 Comments

The Church is unusual among Christian churches in having two different types of worship spaces, chapels and temples. Chapels are open to anyone, even if most people who participate are members. Temples are open only to members, and not even all members, but only those who have cleared hurdles of belief and commandment-following. Chapels are, at least potentially, at the center of community-building. We not only go to worship services there, but also to ward activities or activities run by organizations within the ward, like the Relief Society. There are even sometimes public-facing events in chapels, like blood drives or voting. In temples, by contrast, we largely do things “alone in one another’s presence,” to borrow a phrase from a BYU professor (who was advising us that movies didn’t make good settings for dates). Although there is a little more interaction in sealings and baptisms than endowments, for example, temples are far inferior to chapels as sites of building community.

As a heretic who’s on the outside of the temple, I still find a lot of value in the community-building possibilities of the Church. So I’m disappointed that since he’s taken office, President Nelson has shown himself to be far more interested in the church of the temple than the church of the chapel. For example, here’s something he said in Sheri Dew’s 2019 book about him: “The only buildings that are absolutely essential are temples. Stake centers and chapels are a luxury.” This was in the context of talking about making church more home-centered, so he might not have meant it to be quite as anti-chapel as it comes across here. But I’m still honestly struck in a bad way that he would refer to church buildings as a “luxury.”

To be fair, I can see why he might see less value in chapels. If his goal is to get people on the covenant path, only their baptism and confirmation take place in a chapel. After that, it’s all temple ordinances. Attending church in a supportive ward might be a nice to have, but it’s not going to make the difference in exaltation. President Nelson, like many of his fellow GAs, is also clearly deeply concerned with people’s loyalty to the Church. Chapel worship is all well and good in this area, as you’ll hear lots of rhetoric about how the Church is God’s one true organization, but the chapel doesn’t provide the opportunity like the temple endowment does for members to promise all that they have or ever will have to the Church. I can see how this makes the temple far better in President Nelson’s eyes.

And of course President Nelson isn’t just talk when it comes to valuing the temple over the chapel. He’s announced a huge number of temples, many of which have been started, and a few of which have even been completed. And on the chapel side, I was intrigued to see an analysis linked on the Mormon subreddit a few months ago, done by u/xanimyle, that shows the distribution of years the Church’s chapels were built. I’ve reproduced their graph below, and here’s a link to the original post.

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In GA's, Statistics

Church President Probabilities, Changes with the Death of One Q15 Member

Author ZiffPosted on 11 Comments

After I put up my last post, where I gave updated probabilities of each current Q15 member becoming Church president, a friend asked me if I had ever looked at sensitivity of these probabilities to the death of one Q15 member. So, for example, Russell M. Nelson is 99. If he died tomorrow, this would obviously have a big effect on the chances for Dallin H. Oaks, as he’d become Church president. But what about all the men junior to him? And you could ask the same question about each Q15 member. Like David A. Bednar seems a pretty good bet to become Church president at some point, but if out of the blue, he died tomorrow, how would that shuffle the probabilities for the men junior to him?

I recalculated all the yearly probabilities of being Church president for each of the 14 remaining members of the Quorum, with each current member being removed in turn. I used the same method and same actuarial table as in my last post. For simplicity, I didn’t do any of the health adjustments that I tried in that post; I just stuck with the base case of the unadjusted mortality table probabilities for each man (still depending on age, though).

To make the results easier to look at, I’m showing them organized by surviving member rather than by dying member. That is, I have one graph showing all the probability changes for Dallin H. Oaks if someone senior to him died (of course there’s just one man senior to him: Russell M. Nelson) and then another graph for all the probability changes for M. Russell Ballard if someone senior to him died, and so forth. Also, so you can compare the graphs to the ones in my last post, I’m keeping each man’s line color the same as in the last post and also keeping the scale of the Y-axis constant for all the graphs. In each graph, I’m making the original probability curve solid and then making dashed all the probability curves that would result if another senior member died. This might sound too messy to look at, but I think it turns out to not be too bad because the probability curves shift in regular ways, and don’t jump and cross each other all willy-nilly. Anyway, I’m hoping that even if this explanation of the graphs doesn’t make total sense, once you look at a couple of the them, it will be clearer.

There are a couple of other things to note about the graphs. One is that to avoid having the graphs for the more junior members be really cluttered, I’m only showing modified probability curves for a senior member’s death changes the member in question’s probability by at least one percentage point in at least one year. For example, Russell M. Nelson’s death would have a near zero impact on Ulisses Soares’s probabilities, as Elder Soares is already very likely to outlive President Nelson, and his chances of becoming Church president depend much more heavily on the life expectancies of men closer to him in seniority, like Gerrit W. Gong, for example. The other last thing to note is that because I only checked probabilities in yearly steps, pairs of Q15 members who are the same age as of the start date have exactly the same effects on probabilities for members junior to them if they (the members who are the same age) were to die. This means that there are two pairs of members, Jeffrey R. Holland and Dieter F. Uchtdorf (both 82) and Neil L. Andersen and Ronald A. Rasband (both 72), for whom the adjusted probability lines for men junior to both of them are identical, so I’ve just labeled them with both men’s names.

Okay, enough preamble. Here’s the graph for Dallin H. Oaks.

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In GA's, Statistics

Church President Probabilities, 2023 update

Author ZiffPosted on 18 Comments

Who among the Q15 will eventually become president of the Church? This is always an interesting question for a couple of reasons, I think. One is that the members of the Q15, even though they typically present a united front, clearly have different visions for what the Church should be. So it actually matters who makes the top spot and who doesn’t. Of course the most obvious example of this is that Russell M. Nelson was clearly fuming about use of the label “Mormon” for decades, and it was only after he finally became Church president that he could finally impose his idea on the rest of us.

The other reason I think this is such an engaging question is that it seems so tantalizingly tractable! There aren’t a million variables and unknown unknowns to account for. There’s just this very simple succession rule, and this well-defined pool of candidates, and so who gets to become president boils down to who outlives who. And it seems like we should be able to predict that, right? Right??

Of course the answer is no, but it’s fun to try anyway. I looked at this question the same way I have in previous posts (e.g., in 2015, in 2018). On the advice of an actuary friend of mine, I use a handy mortality table (specifically, the part for white collar males, employees up until the series ends at age 80, and healthy annuitant thereafter) provided by the Society of Actuaries. I’ll explain the details at the end of the post if you’re interested, but for now I’ll just say that I can use the table to work out each man’s probability of surviving to any particular future age, and from that and the probabilities of surviving for Q15 members senior to him, his probability of being church president.

When I’ve done this type of analysis before, commenters have asked the reasonable question of whether I couldn’t make an adjustment for the Q15 members’ health. I have had two concerns with trying to do this. First, it’s hard to know how to assign levels of health in any reliable way, and second, even if I did know how healthy each of them were, I’m not sure how to adjust the mortality tables in response.

But in this post, I’m throwing caution to the wind and trying an adjustment. I’m using a very crude health categorization: I’m adjusting mortality rates only for the two Q15 members who weren’t at October Conference in person, namely Russell M. Nelson and Jeffrey R. Holland. I worked around my second concern by trying a range of possible adjustments. I adjusted the yearly mortality rates for President Nelson and Elder Holland by increasing them by 10%, 20%, 50%, and 100%. (Note that it’s really easy to mix up percentage changes and percentage point changes. These are percentage changes. So for example, if a table mortality probability is 3%, then the adjusted rates for the various increases are 3.3% [adding 10% of 3%], 3.6% [adding 20% of 3%], 4.5% [adding 50% of 3%], and 6% [adding 100% of 3%].)

The graph below shows the probability of each Q15 member being church president for each year for the next few decades. The solid lines show the unadjusted probabilities, and the dashed lines show the probabilities with a 50% adjustment.

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In Fun, General Conference

A Heretic Reviews General Conference, October 2023

Author ZiffPosted on 22 Comments

Best hymn: “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing,” Saturday afternoon.
Worst hymn: “We Listen to a Prophet’s Voice,” Saturday morning. We can’t seriously claim to believe in fallible prophets while we sing this hymn.
Fastest hymn: “Arise, O God, and Shine,” Saturday evening.
Slowest hymn: “I’m Trying to Be Like Jesus,” Sunday morning.
Best tacit admission that the hymn is too long: The YA choir singing “I Believe in Christ” Saturday evening just skipped verse 2.

Longest prayer: 164 seconds, Michael T. Nelson, Saturday morning benediction
Shortest prayer: 49 seconds, Clark G. Gilbert, Saturday evening invocation

Best title: Robert M. Daines, “Sir, We Would Like to See Jesus”.
Worst title: M. Russell Ballard, “Praise to the Man”. Can we please just not with the prophet worship?
Title that sounds like a threat: Yoon Hwan Choi, “Do You Want to Be Happy?”. Well, do ya, punk?

Good patterns:

Bad patterns:

  • Multiple speakers used threats to get their points across. Dallin H. Oaks and Russell M. Nelson threatened people with lesser kingdoms in the next life if we don’t shape up. Carlos A. Godoy and Valeri V. Cordón warned parents that we’ll lose our children if we’re not devoted enough.
  • Joni L. Koch and Adilson de Paula Parrella felt like they still needed to make a big deal about the correct name of the Church. For Elder Kock, it felt particularly out of the blue, as he was talking about humility, and then brought the topic up as part of a “pop quiz” on humility. What?
  • It’s not good news when multiple speakers (D. Todd Christofferson and Russell M. Nelson) are quoting from D&C 132. Even if they’re not talking directly about polygamy and women as interchangeable objects, you can bet they’re talking about adjacent topics.
  • Two speakers (Yoon Hwan Choi and Gerrit W. Gong) talked about how Church members shouldn’t turn down callings.

Random interesting bits:

  • I appreciated that when he wanted a sports example, Gary E. Stevenson not only went for a sport not popular in the US (soccer), but he talked about women’s soccer.
  • Ulisses Soares compared the many groups of humanity to the Iguaçú Falls in Brazil that come from the Iguaçú River. This makes the second Conference in a row with a Brazilian river analogy, as in April, Dale G. Renlund talked about the pororoca in the Amazon, where the water flows backward under some conditions. I look forward to seeing which speaker will take up the baton and keep this topic going next April!
  • In talking about the afterlife, Dallin H. Oaks gender-neutralized the description of people in the celestial kingdom, quoting D&C 76:58 with daughters added: “they are gods, even the sons [and daughters] of God,” but a few paragraphs later, he didn’t gender-neutralize people in the terrestrial (“honorable men of the earth”) or telestial kingdoms (“he who cannot abide . . . a terrestrial glory” [ellipsis in original]). Honestly, I appreciate that he tried, as it’s often not obvious when scripture writers meant men as people and when they meant it as just men. But I also think this highlights the concern so many women have that they’re really not that important in LDS thought, except as tickets.

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In Church Life, Friendship

Friends at Church

Author ZiffPosted on 5 Comments

I was sitting in sacrament meeting recently and had a realization that while I’ve lived in my ward for a decade, and I feel like I know a fair number of people, if I stopped coming, there are only a tiny number who would notice. I don’t mean this in a woe is me way. More just I was thinking about making friends at church in general, and whether my experience is typical or not. Here are a few aspects of friendship at church I was thinking of, along with my brief thoughts. I’d love to hear your experiences, either related to these points, or related to points or issues I hadn’t even considered.

Separation — Church seems like a great candidate for being what sociologists call a third place, separate from the typical first two places where we spend most of our time, which are home and work. This aspect of church has definitely been a plus for me in making new friends beyond the people I already know in the first two places. Even though there has occasionally been a bit of overlap between people I know at work and those I know at church, it has always been small. And in some situations, I’ve even been fortunate to have church function as more than one place, in the sense that I’ve known non-overlapping groups of people in different church contexts. This has happened when I’ve known one group of (potential) friends through my ward and another group that I’ve played volleyball or basketball with. Also, I haven’t personally experienced this, but I know my wife has gotten to know people beyond our ward through book clubs and Relief Society enrichment groups (Is that what they were called, back in the 2000s?) that included women from multiple wards.

Breadth — One aspect of geographically assigned wards that I’ve seen discussed as a positive (I think originally brought up by Eugene England) is that it brings together people who might not otherwise choose to associate. A geographic area can include people of different ages, races, and income levels. In practice, though, I’ve pretty much stuck to getting to know people who are most like me. As a fairly educated middle-aged white man, I have mostly gotten to know other fairly educated middle-aged white men, even when my ward has included a greater variety of people. The people I’ve made friends with have been similar not only in age and race, but also in more peripheral characteristics, like the ages of our kids and our general income bracket. Of course, this pattern of who I’ve made friends with is clearly on me, as I’m hanging out with people I’m most comfortable with rather than pushing myself at all to know different people better, even when church at least opens the opportunity to me.

Depth — Of the people I’ve become friends with at church, I’ve only known a very few at any level of depth. I feel like in all the wards I’ve lived in, I’ve become friendly with quite a few people, at an acquaintance level, but like I was saying at the beginning, I’ve really only gotten to know a small number. I doubt that this is something specific to church, though. It’s probably more attributable to my general style of making friends, or perhaps even to people’s general experience of making friends. I feel like making new friends as an adult is hard, and this is something I’ve seen a lot of people comment on, in and out of the Church. One other point I think it’s worth making, though, is that I have enjoyed many of the acquaintance-level relationships I’ve had quite a bit. At least for me, it’s not a case of someone being a close friend or a waste of time. Acquaintances have made my life better.

I think the original source of this observation might be this tweet.

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In Fun

Unrelated people sharing GAs’ names who the Church will be condemning next

Author ZiffPosted on 3 Comments

From this Vice News story published on Friday, it sounds like the Church is distancing itself from Tim Ballard, founder of Operation Underground Railroad. Apparently, he had some connection with M. Russell Ballard (although the two aren’t related), but President Ballard now wants nothing to do with him. I can understand why, as Tim Ballard sounds pretty unhinged. I get why lots of Mormons have loved his books that read Mormonism into American historical figures like Washington and Lincoln. But at this point, as he’s using a psychic to contact Nephi and claims special intelligence on the Second Coming, he sounds like he’s about five minutes from declaring himself to be the One Mighty and Strong and declaring the time has come to put the Church in order.

Now that the Church is condemning Ballard, I wonder what other people or organizations who share Q15 members’ names they will also feel the need to explicitly distance themselves from.

Image source: Wikimedia Commons

  • Russell M. Nelson — President Nelson wants to distance himself from the 1990s band Nelson, although he did advise them to rewrite their hit song “(Can’t Live Without Your) Love and Affection” as “(Can’t Live Without Your) Chaste Love and Appropriately Distanced Affection.”

 

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In Happiness, Sexuality

You can be happy when you’re dead.

Author ZiffPosted on 15 Comments

Photo by Alexander Milo on Unsplash

I learned a pretty hairshirt version of Mormonism growing up. As I’ve blogged about before, I was a neurotic kid, and was probably extra sensitive to any harsh messages I read or heard from both GAs and local leaders. I realize this isn’t everyone’s experience, as the punitive, anti-happiness strain of Mormonism clearly isn’t the only one. But I also thought it might be interesting to think back and see if I could find some of the most influential bits of scripture and GA teachings that helped me reach the conclusion that the unstated commandment underlying all others was Thou shalt not have any fun.

  • Any mention of “recreation” was invariably preceded by the modifier “wholesome.” Although I couldn’t put this into words as a kid, this GA tic really sounded to me like they were suspicious of the whole idea of recreation, and maybe would prefer that we all just be working all the time. It seemed clear that they didn’t think we members could even be trusted to choose our own leisure activities without them reminding us that we shouldn’t have too much fun. Wholesome recreation just doesn’t sound as fun as just plain old recreation. Wholesome recreation is to recreation as the mildly humorous jokes told in Conference are to actual comedy.

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In Language, Missions

Missionary Slang

Author ZiffPosted on 19 Comments

When I first arrived in my mission, back a few decades ago, I remember being struck by how many new slang words I heard from other missionaries. I was actually interested enough that I kept a list that I added to periodically whenever I ran into a new word. Unfortunately, I long ago lost that list, so I’m working from memory in this post.

Here are a few slang words that were used frequently in my mission.

Don’t let President hear that we’ve been bucketing!

bucket — (verb) to waste time; (noun) a waster of time. This is what made photos like the one on the right the height of hilarity in my mission. “Are you just going to bucket all day, you freakin’ buckets?”

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In Blogging

What questions do you have for Feminist Mormon Housewives?

Author ZiffPosted on

fMhLisa brought her blog back from hiatus a few days ago to say that over the next year, which will be the twentieth since she launched it, she’ll be blogging about questions she’s often gotten about the whole project, and what she’s been up to since. If you have questions you’d like to ask her, or if there are particular co-bloggers you’d like to see if she can persuade to also post, head on over and let her know.

In its heyday, fMh was my favorite place on the Bloggernacle, and I’m so glad for all the cool and interesting people I met there. I feel really fortunate that I’ve even gotten to meet some of them in person here and there. And of course I so appreciate how much I learned by reading all their commentary. It has been years now since it was consistently active, but I’ll always appreciate what a great gathering place it was for Mormon feminists. I’m looking forward to Lisa’s (and other bloggers’) retrospective.

In Fun, Music

Ruin a hymn title by switching out one letter.

Author ZiffPosted on 13 Comments

I’ve often seen threads on AskReddit where commenters are asked to change the expected storyline of a movie by changing one letter in its title, or something like that. I thought it would be fun to try with LDS hymns. I’ve also added a note about what I think each revised hymn would be about. If you’re so inclined, please feel free to contribute your own in the comments!

Oh, May My Soul Commute with Thee – Wouldn’t your commute be improved by having Jesus riding shotgun? (He could probably take the wheel when needed.)

Amazing Grade – A student rejoices at passing a class they had expected to

Image credit: Clipart Library

fail.

Bark all Ye Nations – A celebration of Peter’s long-lost revelation about taking the gospel to the canines

Now Let Ur Rejoice – A celebration of Nanna, the patron deity of ancient Ur

An Angel Frog on High – Angelic frogs are the next logical step after angelic salamanders.

Oh, Code, All Ye Faithful – An exhortation for believers to learn to write computer code

The Wintry Day, Descending to its Clone – A complaint about how many identical dreary winter days a person may have to endure in a row

The Morning Freaks – A lament about how people who love mornings run the Church

Have I Done Any Goop? – A maker of slimy substances wonders at the value of their work

Rook of Ages – A hymn about the timelessness of chess

The Icon Rod – Lehi’s dream is reimagined with a rod made of religious icons.

Abide Sith Me! – A Jedi who has turned to the dark side of the Force encourages themself to hold strong to the evil they have chosen.

Sweet Is the Dork – In praise of socially inept but kindhearted people

Because I Have Beer Given Much – The next round’s on me!

Nope of Israel – A hymn of praise for people who leave the Church

In Church Policy, Sin

Harm by Individuals, Harm by Systems

Author ZiffPosted on 8 Comments

What makes a particular action a sin? A simple definition might be that it violates one of the two great commandments to love God and love our neighbor. Violations of the first great commandment are harder to see (if my heart is full of hatred for God, how could you tell?), but violations of the second are typically easier. If I do something to harm another person, it’s interpersonal. It’s out there in the world.

Of course this doesn’t capture everything that gets labeled a sin. Why is it a sin for me to drink coffee? I’m not harming someone else. You might say that this must mean that it’s harming my relationship with God because he said not to. This interpretation makes the first great commandment a catchall for any sin where there isn’t harm to another person. They’re wrong because God said so, not because they actually cause harm (making them kind of like the legal idea of malum prohibitum, where an act is wrong because it’s prohibited, not because it’s immoral). Or you could also argue that things like drinking coffee are wrong because they’re doing harm to me, and the second great commandment says I need to love myself too. But I think this boils down to the same line of reasoning. We would call an action self-harming if it’s labeled a sin and it doesn’t clearly harm another person. The old euphemism of calling masturbation “self-abuse” used in some Church talks and publications springs to mind as an example.

In any case, in this post, I’m mostly just thinking about sins that violate the second great commandment, where one person causes harm to another. Our discussion of these sins in the Church typically focuses on the person committing the sin rather than the person harmed by it. I think it makes sense, because harming another person is an action that we can choose to do or not, so we’re at fault if we do it, while being the victim of someone else’s actions isn’t blameworthy. (Of course in some Church rhetoric, the question of who gets harmed gets turned backward, like for example in discussions of rhetoric, where male viewers feel like female clothing choosers are attacking them, rather than the way Jesus had it, where the blame falls on lustful viewers.)

But here’s the question: what if there are sins that have victim without any corresponding person doing the harming? For example, what if someone with diabetes dies because they can no longer afford insulin after the companies that produce it have suddenly and dramatically increased the price? There’s clear harm. But who’s to blame? A company’s salesperson who communicated the new price to the person? A company’s executives? Its shareholders? The head of the government agency that regulates drugs? Middle managers in the agency? The politician who appointed the head of the agency? The voters who elected the politician?

Image credit: Clipart Library

Or consider a less dramatic example. What if your ISP bill gets messed up and you’re double charged? What if you have to chat with an infuriating chatbot for 30 minutes before it agrees to pass you along to a human, and then you’re passed around a labyrinthine organization of call centers before you can get to someone who can fix it? It’s far less dramatic harm, but it’s still harm. Who sinned, that your interaction with the ISP is so painful, the front-line workers or the executives or the shareholders or the regulators or the voters?

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In Church Policy, Tithing

Making Righteousness Easier

Author ZiffPosted on 15 Comments

In a devotional for young adults a couple of months ago, Dallin H. and Kristen M. Oaks urged them to, as a Salt Lake Tribune headline put it, “stop delaying marriage and start having kids.” They lamented that marriage is happening later, and that people are seeing having children as less crucial. They did bring up the problems of expensive housing and student debt that might be obstacles to early marriage and childbearing, but in response didn’t have much helpful other than to tell their listeners to have more faith: “Go forward with faith, and do the best you can in housing market circumstances less favorable than I and your grandparents encountered in our early years. And, especially, work to minimize student debt. In God’s plan we can have it all, but not in the sequence the world seems to dictate.”

I was thinking about this spiritual good of marriage and childbearing in comparison with a secular good, recycling. (I don’t know that I completely agree that marriage and childbearing are always a good thing, but just taking it as a given for now.) We’d all (hopefully) like to do what we can to save the planet’s climate and ecosystem so future generations can continue to enjoy the Earth. Recycling allows us to do a little part by simultaneously reducing the amount of new resource extraction that needs to be done and reducing the amount of space devoted to trash. Even if we want to recycle, though, unless we’re very wealthy, none of us can do it alone. We need social systems in place involving collection and processing of recyclables to make it possible. Laws and policies that facilitate recycling are making this secular good easier (or even possible) to do.

The Church doesn’t have the power of a government to make laws, but it does have power. It has the ears of its members, not to mention tremendous wealth. In the same way that government laws and policies about recycling make it easier to do, the Church could use the power that it has to make a spiritual good the GAs want to see happen easier to achieve. President Oaks mentioned the problem of expensive housing and education. Child care is also expensive. For the substantial fraction of Mormons living in the US, health care is also expensive, especially the process of delivering a baby, even if there are no complications. I appreciate that he acknowledged that things can be more expensive than they were for his generation, but I still think that without living it, it’s hard to fully appreciate. Heck, I’m in middle age, and I can’t even grasp the full weight of how expensive life is looking to be for my kids. There are a lot of economic disincentives to marry and have children, especially when you’re young. Anyway, my point is that waving at these issues with “faith” is little better than when people who love their guns wave mass shootings away with “thoughts and prayers.” The Church has the power to do something here to make righteousness easier.

Photo by Travis Essinger on Unsplash

The Church doesn’t have the option of using tax policy to change people’s incentives, but it does have a similar option in tithing policy. With the tremendous value of all its investments, the Church really doesn’t need to collect much tithing from its members to keep operating. GAs could easily re-define tithing. With a little creativity, they could do so even without having to back off from the 10% figure in the scriptures. They could explicitly ask members to tithe only on after-tax income. More radically, they could tell members to go back to the old version of just paying on their actual increase (and in times where their increase was negative, they would owe nothing). Or they could be more targeted and say if you have children in your household, you should reduce your tithing owed using some formula. (I’m sure they don’t want to get down in the weeds on this, but the formula could be super simple, like subtract one percentage point per child.) Most radically, they could just stop requiring tithing at all, and just tell members to donate what they felt was right, but that no minimum amount needed to be met to get a temple recommend.

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