(Sung to the tune of “My Favorite Things“.)
Deification, pre-mortal existence
Grace necessary, but so is persistence
God is embodied, we’ll get ours back too
These Mormon doctrines are my favorite few.
Which Mormons doctrines are your favorites?
Showing all posts by Ziff
Fun With Models: Thinking More About Divorce
In his General Conference talk, Elder Oaks discussed divorce, expressing his concern that Church members are often too hasty to divorce. I agree with his general conclusion; there probably are couples who divorce who would be better off not divorcing and whose children would be better off if they did not divorce. But I’m concerned that the model of marriage and divorce he assumes is incomplete, and that following it could induce people to stay in genuinely bad marriages. Read More
Fun with Charts: Niblet Results
The 2006 Niblet results are available. Thanks to Dazzle for running them. I thought it might be fun to look at the results as bar charts.
Results of Poll on Feminist Concerns
A while back we put up a poll asking commenters to vote on their top feminist concerns with the Church. The table below shows a few results, based on responses from the 78 people who have voted as of today (although second and third concerns each received only 75 total responses). Note that the “weighted votes” column assigns votes for #1 concern a value of 3, #2 concern a value of 2, and #3 concern a value of 1. The “votes” column simply counts the number of times a concern was voted for without weighting.
The major result of this poll is that limited female participation in Church administration is by far the top concern of those who voted. Read More
On Outlawing Abortion: I Have a Question
The Utah state legislature is looking to pass a law that outlaws abortion. (Thanks to Matt Evans at T&S for the pointer.) In line with the Church’s position on abortion, it would allow for three exceptions. A woman could have an abortion if the pregnancy endangered her life (or her health, in a major and permanent way), or if it resulted from incest or rape.
If this law were passed, I wonder if this last exception might not be problematic. Read More
Changing the Words to Hymns
When I put my boys to bed at night, I often sing them hymns. One of their favorites is “There Is a Green Hill Far Away,” probably because it’s one of the few that I know all the verses to and can sing in the dark. But part of this hymn has always struck me as odd. In the first verse, it says that the green hill is “where the dear Lord was crucified.” The dear Lord? That sounds so impersonal. So taking a page from “Upon the Cross of Calvary,” I always sing this line as “where our dear Lord was crucified.”
So are there any hymns that you sing nonstandard words to, or any for which you would like to see the wording changed?
Solving the Mormon Man Shortage
There has been an interesting discussion at Feminist Mormon Housewives in response to a guest poster’s request for advice on how she, as a single Mormon woman, should deal with her strong sex drive. Tangentially, I was interested by a comment made by David on that thread:
Let me just state the obvious that no one seems to want to say:
There are more decent, inteligent, active, spiritual single women in the church than there are men.
I dont know how it all balances out in the end, but right now, thats just the way it is
Fun with Numbers: Is the Church Appealing to Women?
Commenting on Seraphine’s Healing the Breach post at Times and Seasons, bbell asked this question:
If as you claim the LDS church is so alienating for women then why does it seem from all I have ever read that there are more active women then men? It would seem to me that men are being more alienated.
This seems like a reasonable point. Read More
The Joy of Settlers of Catan
My impression is that the average Mormon plays more board games than does the average non-Mormon. I suspect that, just as we use ice cream as a substitute for alcohol, we use board games as a substitute for drinking games.
One of my favorites is Settlers of Catan. Read More
Why Family History?
When I was in Primary, many years ago, we sang a song titled “Genealogy- I Am Doing It.” The song has since been rewritten as “Family History- I am Doing It”. This change is just one of many indicators of a general shift in the Church in the past couple of decades from talking about genealogy to talking about family history. Read More
Asking for Change
I enjoyed Lynnette’s post on hoping for change, and the comments that followed. It got me to thinking about the next step after hoping, which might be asking for change. How can a member go about asking the Church to change?