Sacrament – Zelophehad's Daughters

Reflections on the LDS Sacrament (Part I)

Lynnette20 July 202320 July 20237 Comments

This has gotten ridiculously long, so I’m going to just start with the first half.

How many times did I take the sacrament in an LDS church? Weeks. Years. The sacrament hymns were almost mindlessly familiar. When I was a kid, the deacons seemed so old to me; later on, of course, they were strikingly young. As a girl who never participated in passing it, I wondered about the logistics of how they set up who was going to go where. Sometimes the experience was dominated by the awkwardness of figuring out how it was going to work, if I were perhaps sitting in the middle of an empty row. In singles wards, it was almost jarringly silent. In wards with young children, it was a dull roar. Read More

In Fun, Sacrament

New Rules for the Sacrament

Ziff12 September 202212 September 202219 Comments

Now that President Oaks’s preference for people to take the sacrament with their right hand has been enshrined in the Handbook (see instruction #7), we here at ZD are excited to leak the following list of additional rules for the sacrament that President Oaks also proposed but that have been put on hold until he becomes Church President.

Materials

Homemade bread is preferred for the sacrament, but store bought may also be used in cases where the women in the unit have rejected their divine gender role.
Bread should be neither too sweet nor too savory, as either of these may detract from the simplicity of the ordinance.
Bread color should be as white as possible, to provide the most delightsome possible representation of the Savior.
The use of filtered water is encouraged, but not required. A water filter may be installed in the church building, but if so, it must be funded by the members in the units using the building.
The carbonation or flavoring of sacrament water is strictly prohibited.
The temperature of water should be between 45 and 55 degrees Fahrenheit (7.2 and 12.8 degrees Celsius).
The use of ice cubes in place of water is prohibited.

In Church Policy, Ritual, Sacrament, Sexism

When Institutional Sexism Infects My Home

Pandora17 March 20204 Comments

I am an infectious disease epidemiologist for a global diagnostic company that makes the leading test for respiratory pathogens, including a family of viruses known as Coronaviruses. You may have heard of them. It has certainly been an extremely stressful few months at work. But also just a stressful time, in general, for us all. There is a lot of uncertainty. We’re all anxious.

Around the world, individuals, families, cities, states and nations are taking action to stop the spread of the disease. People are staying home with hopes that the virus will be stopped at the door.

I am an active member of the church. My spouse and I both have callings and temple recommends. However, for many years our activity in the church has been dependent on our ability to stop the harmful aspects of the church at the door of our home. We are vocal feminists. We have different last names (gasp!). We will never hang the Proclamation to the Family in our home. My husband does not preside over me. We take turns picking who prays (anyone else think the tradition where the man picks the prayer giver is just the silliest thing?). We sing of and pray to both of our Heavenly Parents.(Among many other beliefs that would be eyebrow raising at best, membership-council-inducing at worst, to 99% of our ward.) Read More

In Music, Sacrament, Sacrament Meeting, Statistics

Sacrament Hymns, Ranked (by length)

Ziff1 September 20177 Comments

I have a priest-aged son, and seeing him administer the sacrament has made me pay more attention to the process than I had since I was a priest myself. One issue that I noticed last week was that the sacrament hymn seemed really short, and my son and the other priest hadn’t finished breaking the bread by the time it was over. Of course this isn’t all that unusual. The organist just played through the hymn again while they finished. It was only a matter of a few seconds, but it brought to mind that when I was a priest, I always worried about this happening, because I could feel the pressure of everyone in the congregation waiting for me to just hurry up and finish.

This got me to wondering, though, about how long the sacrament hymns actually are. I looked up the 30 hymns listed under the topic “sacrament” in the back of the hymnbook. (They are all grouped together between hymn numbers 169 and 197, except for #146, “Gently Raise the Sacred Strain.”) I calculated the length of each hymn given its time signature, number of measures and verses, and suggested tempo (I used the midpoint of the lengths implied by taking the fastest and slowest of the suggested tempos.) I included only the verses actually printed in the music because, at least in my experience, it’s typically only those verses that are sung. I didn’t make any adjustment for fermatas.

Here’s the result. It looks like most sacrament hymns are between 1:30 and 3:00 long. A few are shorter. A few are quite a bit longer.

In Grace, Ordinances, Sacrament, Temple, Theology

Worthiness

Lynnette7 April 20177 April 20177 Comments

My favorite Richard Dutcher movie, one perhaps lesser known than God’s Army or States of Grace, is a thought-provoking film titled Brigham City. It’s a highly suspenseful murder mystery set in a small Mormon community, and it deals head-on with some hard religious questions. The final scene is deeply moving. I won’t spoil it by giving too many details, but I will say that a crucial element of that scene is the question of what it means to be worthy to take the sacrament.

About eight years ago, when I was still a PhD student, I got to design and teach a Master’s-level class on Mormonism at my school. One week, I showed them Brigham City. The group of mostly Protestant students quite liked the movie, but they said something that has really stayed with me. They said that their take on that scene was different than mine had been, because they came from traditions in which there isn’t a worthiness requirement to take communion (or the sacrament, in Mormon lingo); in fact, one of them said that when you feel unworthy, that’s actually the time when you need it the most. I’ve thought a lot about that over the years. Read More