Zelophehad's Daughters

Chad Nielsen’s recent post at T&S on updates on the hymn book revision process reminded me that there are a couple of songs that I’m really, really hoping don’t make it into the new Children’s Songbook. The first isn’t even in there now, but from Chad’s post, it sounds like it’s a strong candidate. It’s “If the Savior Stood Beside Me.”

If your ward loves this song like mine and you’ve been in Primary in the past couple of decades, you’re probably familiar with it. Its lyrics begin with its title, and then has the singer ask if they would do various things differently if the Savior stood beside them. “Would I do the things I do?” “Would I think of his commandments and try harder to be true?” “Would I say the things I say?” “Would I try to share the gospel?” “Would I speak more reverently?”

I understand that this might just be because I’m a neurotic Mormon, but the tone of this song strikes me as very much shaming kids and reminding them that they need to stop having so much fun and return to the grim, joyless path that Jesus wants them to be on. And yes, I know there are scriptures and statements by GAs about how the gospel means living joyously, but I think for kids in particular, what they often learn in Primary is that Jesus is most concerned with having them shut up and stop wiggling. So having them sing a song where they question whether they would do this or that or the other thing if Jesus were standing there seems to me to be very much a reminder that having fun is for places other than church, and when we’re at church, we’re quiet and miserable.

In Church Policy, Doctrine, Temple

(Tinkering Intensifies)

Ziff17 May 201911 Comments

When my sisters and friends started ZD way back during the Hinckley administration, I had an idea of how the Church worked that turned out to be false. I thought that the Church was clearly a slow-moving organization that would make a serious change only every generation or two. I figured that most of what they (we, as I joined only later) blogged about would be long-term issues on which the Church hadn’t changed its approach for decades.

My view turned out to be wrong because it turned out that Church leaders are tinkering with policies all the time. Just a few examples: They raised the bar on missionary service, making it harder to go on a mission, and then later they lowered the missionary ages. In response to Ordain Women, they started broadcasting the priesthood session of Conference. They added some of the women leaders to the Church-level committees. In response to (or in spite of?) Let Women Pray, they started having a few women pray in General Conference. In response to organized agitation from folks at BCC and fMh (and others, I’m sure), they clarified the policy on allowing young women to do baptisms for the dead while on their periods. In response to the Obergefell decision, they modified the Handbook to add the Exclusion Policy.

One thing I’m still unsure of is whether Church leaders were always tinkering with policies like this, or whether it was a new thing where they considered changes more quickly in the new sped-up internet-powered world. I’m kind of guessing the former, but I suspect people who know more Church history than I do will have a more informed answer.

Image credit: This is a combination of two images from clipart-library.com.

But what I really want to talk about is the accelerated tinkering of the Nelson administration. To me, he seems obviously far more willing to change things that he doesn’t think are working than any of his predecessors in my lifetime. Just last week, the Church released news of the latest change: the end of the one-year waiting period between civil marriages and temple sealings in countries where temple sealers are authorized to perform marriages. Of course before that there was the ending of the Exclusion Policy, the temple ceremony changes at the beginning of the year, the deprecation of the use of “Mormon” as a name for the Church or its members, the relaxed rules on missionaries calling home, the combining of priesthood quorums, and the revision of visiting and home teaching into the ministering program. And I’m sure I’m missing others.

In Depression, LGBT Issues, Statistics

A Look at Crisis Text Line Data on LGBT Issues and Suicidality

Ziff2 May 20191 Comment

Crisis Text Line is a support service for people in crisis. It’s like a suicide hotline, but more general in that the service has crisis counselors trained to respond to a broad range of crises. Also unlike a traditional suicide hotline, it’s reached by text rather than by voice. As a result of this, according to a New Yorker story from 2015 about the service, most who use it are teenagers.

Of particular interest to me, the organization also publishes aggregate data about what types of crises its clients contact them about, and from what states, as well as trends by day of the week, time of day, and across historical time (since 2015). I thought it would be interesting to look at these data to see if there were evidence of the particular stress that LGBT people are put under in Mormonism, particularly after the November 2015 exclusion policy came to light.

Unfortunately but not surprisingly, the Crisis Text Line data doesn’t include information about clients’ religious affiliation, so I’ll just use the rough approximation of using Utah data as a proxy for Mormon experience. On the up side, though, a big advantage of these data is that they summarize reports of clients’ crises by type–where I’ll just be looking at LGBT-related and suicidal thinking–rather than having only completed suicide counts to go on. Distress over one’s sexual orientation or gender identity and suicidal thinking are surely far more common than suicide itself, so these data are potentially richer than data on completed suicides alone.

Here’s a map that shows US states ranked by frequency of clients texting about issues of gender or sexual identity as a percentage of all texts received from the state. Utah ranks number seven.

In Faith, Personal Narratives, Prayer

Praying Like a Mormon

Lynnette28 April 201928 April 20195 Comments

I’m in something called Education for Ministry, which is a four-year program run by the Episcopal church in which you study the Bible, the history of Christianity, and theology. (It’s somewhat confusingly named; it’s actually for laypeople. The idea is that everyone is called to a ministry of some kind, and this is supposed to help you discern and develop it.) My group has eight people, who come from a fun variety of religious backgrounds, and we meet every other Sunday afternoon. The others frequently express curiosity about Mormonism, and ask me lots of questions. One week they wanted to hear me pray like a Mormon, so I obliged and offered a closing prayer that would have sounded perfectly normal over the pulpit in a sacrament meeting. My classmates were underwhelmed, perhaps expecting something weirder. They said that I’d just sounded like a Baptist. (This amused me because I suspect neither most Mormons nor most Baptists would appreciate that comparison.)

In Easter, Good Friday, Liturgy

And It Was Night

Lynnette19 April 20195 Comments

“So, after receiving the piece of bread, he immediately went out. And it was night.” (John 13:30)

At the Maundy Thursday service last night at my parish, our visiting Quaker (because we have a visiting Quaker for Holy Week this year, which has been a fascinating experience in and of itself) gave the sermon, and talked about what the Last Supper, and indeed all of Holy Week, might have felt like for the disciples. Intense. Unsettling. Confusing.

I, of course, like all of you, know the end of the Easter story; I think I likely knew the end, the Resurrection, before I knew the beginning or the middle of the narrative. And that knowledge of what is to come inevitably shapes our perspective on the rest of the events. But the sermon called our attention to the fact that for those who were having these experiences, they didn’t know how it would turn out. The disciples at the Last Supper didn’t know it was the last. And they were likely rather confused as to why Jesus was adding an unfamiliar ritual to the meal, instructing them to eat bread and drink wine in remembrance of him. Read More

In Church Life, Conversion, Faith

A Faith for This Life

Lynnette14 April 20194 Comments

My decision to convert away from the LDS church was undeniably overdetermined. So many different factors; so many different threads. Some of them, I suspect, could have sparked the decision all on their own. And like so many life narratives of momentous events, already I note that I tell different versions of it at different times. The story is never quite the same. I imagine that I will continue to make sense of it all in new ways and with other perspectives as time goes by. So I can’t really say of any particular factor, this is the one thing that led to it all. However, when I look at major issues, one that I see being very deeply rooted is that I hit a point where I desperately wanted a religious tradition that had something to offer in this life, and not just the next one. Read More

In Authority, Church Life, Personal Narratives

Finally Leaving

Lynnette7 April 20197 April 201919 Comments

I still remember a Sunday when I was a young teenager, when the bishop felt impressed to get up at the end of sacrament meeting and share some counsel. I don’t remember any of the specifics of what he said. But I remember how he concluded his talk: in a voice of utter certainty, he said, “This is the will of the Lord for this ward.” And I loved that he said that. It made me feel so safe. God was aware of and interested in our ward, so tiny in comparison to the great vast world. God would send direction through priesthood leadership about even small decisions and issues. Weren’t we lucky to have that, while other people had to deal with uncertainty and doubt. We had a sure connection to God. Read More

In Fun, Satan

Are you ready for four times as much Satan?

Ziff7 April 20195 Comments

President Nelson said in Priesthood Session last night that Satan is quadrupling his efforts against LDS members. But what exactly does this mean? I have some theories.

In addition to riding on and controlling the waters, Satan now also controls three additional liquids: chocolate milk, mercury, and blood. Missionaries will be prohibited to consume, swim in, or ride in a boat on any of these.
Satan now leads away four thirds of the host of heaven rather than merely one. This requires him to lead some stubborn host members away more than once. (The fact that he has to do this explains why any host members remained on God’s side at all.)

In GA's, Nov 5 Policy

Some Thoughts on the End of the Exclusion Policy

Ziff4 April 201911 Comments

The Church announced today that the exclusion policy of November 2015, which branded people in gay marriages as apostates and denied blessing and baptism to their children, is ending. I have a bunch of thoughts on this that I’d like to share (most of which I’ve probably borrowed in one form or another from discussions with friends on Facebook).

First, I’m thrilled! The exclusion policy was terrible from the beginning. It was bad in its direct effect of exclusion, but perhaps even worse in the signal it sent to LGBT people that they are seen as uniquely wicked by the Church, requiring a special bit in the Handbook to outline just how awful they are. I am therefore very happy to see the Q15 decide to drop it.
I am honestly shocked–in a good way–that President Nelson allowed this change to happen during his presidency. He’s widely seen as its architect, even though it was put in place during President Monson’s tenure. I am impressed that President Nelson is willing to let go of something he once defended as being revelation, rather than leaving it for the next Church president to undo.
All the above notwithstanding, I think it’s awful that Church leaders still absolutely refuse to say–or even imply–either that they were wrong or that they are sorry. It’s great that the policy is being taken back, but with no admission of wrong or apology, where does that leave all the people who were hurt during the three and a half years it was in place? Do Church leaders seriously expect us to believe that it was just the will of God that they suffer, but that now God has changed his mind? This change feels similar to the changes made in the endowment ceremony just a couple of months ago. It was great that the hierarchy-imposing structure was reduced, but it was awful that there was not even a mention of the pain that had been caused to so many women by the the “hearken” and “obey” covenants and the resulting power differential they were put under.

In Fun

Prepentance

Ziff1 April 20191 April 20191 Comment

ZD is pleased to share the following press release from the Mormon Newsroom. The release is scheduled to be run immediately following General Conference, but it has been leaked to us on an exclusive basis by the Three Nephites.

After President Nelson’s inspired announcement of the Church’s move from a focus on repentance, which looks backward at sins that have already been committed, to a focus on prepentance, which looks forward at sins that have not yet been committed, he has directed that the creation of the following FAQ about prepentance.

Q: How can I know what things to prepent of, if I haven’t committed the sins yet?

In Missions

I Hope They Don’t Call Me on a Mission

Ziff24 March 20199 Comments

I have an 18-year-old son who recently started his mission. He’s not going anywhere, though; he’s doing a service mission. He lives at home, and he works every weekday (and occasional Saturdays) at a nearby bishop’s storehouse and a community food bank. Between the two, he does lots of physically moving stuff around to organize it and to fill people’s orders, and he also gets to do things that he finds far more entertaining, like fiddle with the record-keeping and reporting processes at the storehouse to try to make them more efficient.

My son decided near his eighteenth birthday that serving a two-year proselytizing mission would be too anxiety-provoking for him. He still wanted to serve a mission, though, so he approached our bishop and told him he wanted to do just one year and do a service mission. Happily, our bishop was on board, and he’s been very supportive through the whole process. The process of getting my son officially called was long and drawn out because the way the Church was handling service missions was in the middle of a major change when my son went to the bishop. So it took a while, but he’s finally official and doing his work. He seems to be enjoying it.

In General Conference, Statistics

References to the New Church President in Conference

Ziff25 February 20195 Comments

In a comment here at ZD last year, Leonard R suggested that it seemed to him that speakers in Conference have become more prone recently to refer to or quote the President of the Church in their talks. Now that President Nelson has two Conferences under his belt, I thought it might be interesting to look at how often recent Church Presidents were referred to or quoted in their first two Conferences.

I used the ever-handy LDS General Conference Corpus. I looked up references to each new Church President’s last name only (to be sure I wasn’t missing any mentions where he was referred to as simply President [last name] rather than in the usual way, as our beloved prophet and leader, even President [first name middle initial last name]). Since this is just a first pass, I didn’t even check through the results to be sure I wasn’t accidentally including references to other Nelsons, Monsons, Hinckleys, etc., although I suspect that if such references do occur in the data, they are likely to be few.

Here are the results.

I’ve put an asterisk on Howard W. Hunter because he was only President for one Conference before passing away. One solution to this might have been just to double his references, but I decided against doing this because I suspect there is probably a dropoff between a new President’s first and second Conferences.

Anyway, this doesn’t actually get at Leonard R’s question terribly well because we typically have a new Church President only once a decade or so, but the trend for the last few Church Presidents certainly does look hopeful. Perhaps when I have more time, I’ll come back to this question and look at it in more detail.

In Fun

The Most Correct of Any Valentines on Earth

Ziff12 February 201912 February 20196 Comments

In Depression, Hope, Positive Thinking, Theology

Abandoning the Quest for a Positive Attitude: Thoughts on Hope

Lynnette9 February 20199 Comments

At the residential crisis place where I landed a few weeks ago, we had occasional groups. One day, we did some basic mindfulness practice. Mindfulness is very trendy right now, but I’ve found it to be useful, and don’t mind (see what I did there) going over the basics again. As part of the exercise, they had us look out the window and just observe something for a little while. We then reported back on the experience. I was fascinated to note that everyone in the group except for me, with no prompting to do this, didn’t only talk about the experiencing of observing; they turned it into an inspirational message. For example, they saw the dead leaves on the trees, but realized that there was new life underneath. Or they noticed how a tree continued to grow despite obstacles. I found myself wondering—are people in other cultures this well-trained to relentlessly find inspiration in everything?

In most of the psych wards I’ve been in, they have you rate your mood every day on a scale of 1 to 10. I struggle with the quantification aspect of this, but usually do my best to accurately assess how I’m doing. One day I looked around at the papers of the people sitting around me, and saw that they’d all marked 10. I was mystified. I mean, you don’t get into a psych ward without being in fairly significant distress. Such a rating might have made sense if a person had been hospitalized during a manic episode, but that was clearly not the case for any of the people there that day. My guess was that they were reporting high numbers in an attempt to get released, which is usually the primary goal of people who are locked in a psych ward, but I also wondered whether it was connected to cultural expectations about making the best of everything and having a positive outlook. There’s a certain virtue in circling that 10. Sure you might be having a complete psychological breakdown, but you wouldn’t want to not be positive about the situation. In another group in the residential place I mentioned above, I listened to a fellow patient share that he knew that he could accomplish anything if he would just put his mind to it. The group leader enthusiastically agreed. I realize I’m probably overly cynical—it’s taken me much of my life to realize that it’s not necessarily delusional to try to stay generally upbeat, and that relentlessly negative people can actually be pretty exhausting—but it’s hard for me not see this sort of thinking as problematic. Because the dark side of the equation is that if you haven’t accomplished something, no matter how unlikely that thing may be, it’s because you just didn’t put your mind to it. Read More

In Uncategorized

[Lesson Outline] Women and Gospel Learning In the Home

Petra30 January 201930 January 2019

President Eyring’s Women And Gospel Learning In the Home talk, from October’s General Conference, has been a popular pick for RS lessons over the past few months, at least judging my social media activity. Up until recently, I was a Relief Society teacher, and I chose this talk for my lesson in November. I’m sharing my lesson outline below, with some commentary in case it helps anyone prepare to teach or participate in a class based on this talk.

In Church Life, Depression, Episcopalians, Liturgy, Mental Health

Evensong

Lynnette29 January 201929 January 20195 Comments

When I was in the hospital a few months ago, I missed church on Sunday. Obviously I didn’t have a lot of choice in the matter; I have yet to see a psych ward that would let you out for a few hours to catch a church service. (They’d probably be especially nervous about Episcopal services, come to think of it, with all those candles.) But I was a little surprised at how sad I was to miss even one week. Since I’d walked into my local parish in February 2017, thinking at the time it was just for a temporary change of pace, I had not gone a single Sunday without attending Episcopal church somewhere. Even when I turned into a somewhat manic church-hopper later that year, and tried to visit at least one new church every Sunday, the possibility of skipping Episcopal services was simply never even on the table. It had become too much an essential part of the rhythm of my life.

That Sunday in the hospital, I tried to look on the bright side—I’d been wanting to see a religious service in the psych ward, and indeed I got to go to one. It was very low key. A chaplain came and had a small group of us read a few things, and then talk about them. The predictable result was that we spent a lot of time listening to the not always coherent thoughts of two patients who always had a lot to say. I was sorry I didn’t get a chance to talk to the chaplain more; she was warm and thoughtful, and seemed like an interesting person. I definitely appreciated her efforts. But I also thought about how only a mile away, my parish was holding its usual Sunday services. It was a blunt reminder of how much you’re cut off from the rest of the world in a place like that. The next Sunday, when I walked into church, being in the familiar building again actually made me emotional.

In Fun

Mormon Titles, Very Slightly Revised

Ziff24 January 201924 January 201911 Comments

I’ve seen threads on Reddit where people slightly alter movie titles to completely change what the story is about. I thought this might be an entertaining thing to try with some Mormon-related book and movie titles. This post has my attempts. Please add yours in the comments if you are willing.

The Work and the Gory — This series tells a dramatized version of early Mormon history, with special focus on the Danites.

In Depression, Mental Health, Mental Hospital

Writing in Crayon: A Night in the ER

Lynnette20 January 201920 January 201911 Comments

I’m in a hospital room with almost nothing in it. A bed, with a single blanket and pillow. A chair. One of those narrow little tables you can pull over the bed, where they put meals. They let me keep two paperback books, and my notebook. I’m glad I remembered to get a notebook before we went to the ER. I asked my brother if he happened to have anything around without any wires, and he found me an old green composition book. 100 pages, college-ruled. That should last me, I hope.

I ask if I can have something to write with. Sometimes they let you have plastic pen-like things. I saw a box of them once, and it said that they were for maximum security prisons. Sometimes instead they offer pencils. In one hospital I was in, I got frustrated with the regular pencils, which were those tiny golf-sized ones, and started writing in colored pencil instead. One of the other patients got mad when she saw me doing it, because she felt that the colored pencils should only be used for coloring. She took coloring very seriously.

The nurse says that he can get me a crayon. This is new; I’ve never been to a place that didn’t allow either pencils or pens. I say, okay. He asks what color, and I say that black would be best, but I’ll take whatever they have. He comes back with a black crayon. It’s at least new and sharp, though of course the sharpness doesn’t last long. After a while it breaks in half, making it even more difficult to use it for writing. It’s slow, and tedious. For a person used to typing, which I imagine is pretty much all of us these days, any kind of writing by hand can feel slow, but doing it in crayon is definitely an extra challenge. I find myself only writing on every other line in the notebook, because I can’t write very small. It’s easy to smear the letters, so I have to not rush, and take my time with each letter. But for all that, it’s good to be able to write. No matter how bad it gets, I’ve learned over the years, it helps me deal if I can just put it into words somewhere. Read More

In Fun

Nacle Notebook 2018: Funniest Comments

Ziff13 January 201913 January 20197 Comments

This post is my annual compilation of the funniest comments I read on the Bloggernacle last year. In case you missed them, here are links to compilations from past years: 2017 2016 2015 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008.

Most of what I’m quoting here is excerpted from longer comments or posts. I’ve made the commenters’ names links that point back to the original source in case you want to read more. I’ve put the comments in roughly chronological order.

Em, in her post “Mercia Second Ward” at the Exponent:

Recently a remarkable cache of documents has been discovered that shows just how much medieval saints resembled modern day wards! . . . . The moment [the ward librarian’s] back was turned some breezy teacher would waltz in to make a few copies, ignoring the “library demons only” sign on the scriptorium and wouldn’t you know it, the parchment would get stuck or start unravelling uncontrollably. Oh look, there it goes again. “This is so typical,” she thought as she heaved a giant tome of “church illustrations volume 7” onto the checkout desk. “At least I get to miss Sunday school and talk with my friend.” Despite its drawbacks, the Ward Librarian was a plum job even back then.

In Statistics, Temple

Is there more temple attendance since the changes?

Ziff11 January 201911 January 20197 Comments

I’ve heard anecdotally in discussion on Facebook that people attending the temple since the changes in ordinances that came to light last week have found it much more crowded than usual. This seems like it shouldn’t be too surprising. That changes were coming was rumored at least in December, and I’m usually not the most plugged in to such things, so if I heard rumors in December, other people probably did long before that. Given the typical sameness of the temple from one visit to the next, people might be extra interested to go to see when they know it will be different. Add to that the fact that the changes may make the temple more palatable for feminists and other egalitarian-minded folks (although many also understandably feel deeply ambivalent about them), and a whole swath of people who might be on the fringes of temple attendance might want to return.

But of course what I’d love to have is some hard data to see if I can find evidence that this is really happening. Of course I don’t have actual temple attendance data, but what I do have that might serve as a very rough proxy is counts of the number of endowment sessions in each temple. I got these by looking at the individual temple pages on the Church’s site, all linked from this page that lists all the temples. Counts of sessions aren’t as good as counts of temple patrons, but the reality is that there’s zero chance that I’ll ever get anything like that, so I’ll just be happy with what I do have. Even more fortunately, I started taking monthly samples of endowment session counts in the middle of last year, so I have a little bit of past data to compare to. I haven’t counted all sessions for every day in each month, but what I have done is pick two days in each month–always a Saturday and the following Tuesday near the middle of the month–and count sessions on those days. (I chose Saturday and Tuesday because they’re the beginning and end of the temple week.)

This graph shows the total number of endowment sessions across all temples on the two sampled days for each month from April of last year to this month. (Note that the sampled days for this month haven’t even occurred yet; I’ve tried to take session counts in the week before the sampled days so I can get the most up-to-date information if the folks at the temple decide to make a late addition or deletion of a session.)

The total number of sessions looks pretty flat across time. It looks like January has a little dip from December rather than an increase. So, no evidence for the idea that temples are busier?

Not so fast! The situation is complicated by the fact that the totals are not coming from a constant set of temples. New temples open. Old temples are closed for renovation and then re-open later. Every temple (I think) is closed periodically for a few weeks at a time. This last issue means that I couldn’t just solve the problem by showing counts only for the set of temples that were open constantly through the entire period.