In Church Policy, GA's

What President Nelson’s Talk Tells Us about Decision-making in the Q15

Author ZiffPosted on 18 Comments

President Nelson stirred up a lot of discussion with his Conference talk, “The Correct Name of the Church,” where he explained that the use of nicknames like “Mormon” for the Church or its members are a victory for Satan. As many people have pointed out (for example, Jana Riess), the arguments he made were similar to ones he made in an earlier Conference talk almost 30 years ago. As a relatively junior member of the Quorum of the Twelve, he found his arguments didn’t gain much traction, as President Hinckley gave a talk in the very next Conference where he embraced the use of the term “Mormon.” This time around, though, he’s in the top spot in Church leadership, so he’s getting things done. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir has been renamed the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square, for example.

One thing that really struck me about the comparison that shows that this issue has been on President Nelson’s mind for decades is what it reveals about the decision-making process in the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve. The D&C says that decisions made by these bodies must be unanimous. If this rule is followed, it means that then-Elder Nelson must have been on board with unanimous decisions made that followed President Hinckley’s approach of embracing and owning the term Mormon. It also means that all the Q15 members who were also on board with President Hinckley’s (and Monson’s) strategy have all changed their minds together, and are now on board with President Nelson’s view.

Read More

In Fun, General Conference

Two Is the New Three

Author ZiffPosted on 4 Comments

In a special press conference, President Russell M. Nelson announced a series of changes in the Church related to the shortening of its Sunday meeting schedule from three hours to two, which had been announced in this last weekend’s General Conference:

  • The afterlife now includes only two kingdoms: Celestial and Telestial. “We considered keeping Terrestrial, since it has the benefit of being an actual recognized word,” he explained, “but as I read the description of this kingdom in Doctrine and Covenants 76, it was impressed upon my mind that the Lord’s will is that any so-called ‘honorable men of the earth’ who can’t manage to see through the subtle craftiness of men be grouped with the wicked in the Telestial Kingdom.”
  • The triple combination has been renamed the double combination, with the de-canonization of the Pearl of Great Price. President Nelson noted that although the Pearl of Great Price contains “some inspired writings,” it may also be misleading, for example, in that the Articles of Faith purport to summarize the Church’s key beliefs, but make no mention of the importance of heterosexual marriage or of God’s eternal hatred of gay and transgender people.

Read More

In Uncategorized

Remembering Katie, A Year Later

Author LynnettePosted on 4 Comments

It’s been a year now since we heard the terrible news that our co-blogger Katie (Vada) had been killed in a car accident. I feel like a year should be long enough for me to believe that this horrific incident actually happened, but I don’t always feel like I’m there. Part of it is maybe the absurd awfulness of the whole thing—could the universe really be so cruel as to have this happen to a mother of six, driving home from seeing her twin girls in the NICU? I mean, really??? And part of it is maybe tied up with what it means to  have a relationship with someone when most of your interaction is online. I hadn’t seen Katie in person since her sister’s wedding in 2011. But it felt like I “saw” her all the time, because she was around on Facebook, and in our blog discussions. And yet—people disappear from the internet regularly. It doesn’t usually mean that they’re actually gone. It’s like I can’t get my brain to entirely process that the reason she isn’t on Facebook anymore isn’t just that she decided to take a break. That’s she’s not going to reappear. It’s still wrenching to grapple with the reality of what happened. Read More

In Fun, Scripture

Book of Mormon Stories that Get a Chuckle Out of Me

Author ZiffPosted on 12 Comments

I suspect I’m not alone in generally thinking the Book of Mormon isn’t particularly funny. But I must admit that there are a few passages that usually make me chuckle.

  • In Mosiah 11, Abinadi has to flee for his life after condemning the wickedness of King Noah and his people. At the beginning of the next chapter, he returns in disguise, and the first words out of his mouth are: “Thus has the Lord commanded me, saying—Abinadi . . .” So he had carefully put together his disguise so he could sneak in among Noah’s people without being recognized, and then in just one line, he blows it all. I imagine him saying that and then thinking D’oh! Should’ve used a pseudonym!

Read More

In Children, Church Policy

Let’s Support Breastfeeding Mothers and Children

Author ZiffPosted on

The folks at the Exponent have launched an action to request that Church leaders make a policy that  mothers are permitted to breastfeed their children publicly in LDS churches. I think it’s deeply unfortunate that so many women who want nothing more than to feed their children–something that you would think the Church should be deeply supportive of–are pushed to use terribly inadequate mothers’ rooms, shamed, told they need to cover up and that they’re contributing to the porn problem. Seriously, we’re a church that appears to not be able to get enough of the idea of divine gender roles. Let’s join this action to raise the issue with leaders, both general and local, to ask them to put their policies where their rhetoric is.

The action is called “Let Babies Eat,” and you can read more at the Exponent or at the website for the action.

In Fun, General Conference

More Conference Predictions

Author ZiffPosted on 11 Comments

Given my remarkable success at predicting things that would happen in April General Conference, I thought I would try my hand again with some more Conference predictions for October.

  • In a stunning rebuke of the murmurnacle, President Nelson will announce that not only will the three hour block not be shortened to two hours, it will actually be lengthened to four hours. Existing meetings and classes will not be changed in length. The extra hour will be used for a mandatory meeting where all ward members (including primary and nursery-aged children) sit in council and discuss the importance of Defending the Family. Meetinghouses used by three wards will follow the 8-12/10-2/12-4 schedule. Fifth Sundays will be celebrated with a special five-hour block, with each meeting lengthened by 25%.

Read More

In Wonder

Is there room for wonder in the Church?

Author ZiffPosted on 3 Comments

Earlier this year, I blogged about the Pew Religious Landscape Study and looked at some of the results, comparing Mormons to members of a few other groups. One of the questions in the survey asked people how often they felt a deep sense of wonder about the universe. Here are results for Mormons and the other groups I was looking at.

Mormons don’t have quite as many people answering “at least once a week” as do Jehovah’s Witnesses, Seventh Day Adventists, or agnostics, but like all the groups I looked at, we have more people answering this than any other response frequency. By this measure, Mormons are pretty middle-of-the-pack when it comes to experiencing wonder.

I was recently thinking about this question when I read Nate Staniforth’s book Here Is Real Magic. Staniforth is a magician, and the book is largely memoir, but he also spends a fair amount of time discussing the question of why magic is fascinating to him. The answer boils down to wonder: Performing magic often allows him to see wonder provoked in his audiences, and he treasures this experience because in his view, wonder is so uncommon and so precious. He even subtitles the book A Magician’s Search for Wonder in the Modern World. Here’s one point where he describes his experience of using magic to induce wonder:

From the students on the playground at recess to this man named Ahmed who worked in a terrible neighborhood in Kolkata, the response to great magic is the same: a mouth stunned open, widening eyes, fear, doubt, and then openly, nakedly, joy. Pure joy. The transformation is far, far more amazing than the trick, which is just a tool designed to create this moment. A moment of pure astonishment makes you forget to be cool. It makes you forget to be composed or distinguished. It make you forget to–consciously–be anything. The faces that are revealed when our masks of self-awareness are propriety are blasted away are, simply, beautiful [p. 100].

Read More

In Depression, Mental Health, Prayer, Revelation, Spiritual Experience

When Good Spiritual Practice Goes Bad: Prayer, Rumination, and Revelations of Damnation

Author LynnettePosted on 7 Comments

CW: brief mention of self-injury

I still have vivid memories of a particular day in December over a decade ago. I was in my second year of doctoral work at the time, and I spent an evening talking with some of my fellow students. We found ourselves disagreeing about a number of theological questions, including the topic of whether God’s justice would allow for universal salvation. I was the only LDS student in the group (in fact, I was the only LDS student in the doctoral program); the other participants represented a variety of religious backgrounds and theological outlooks. My memory is that people were trying to be respectful, but there was an undercurrent of tension, and I left feeling a little unsettled.

Read More

In Church Policy, Fun

Mormon Edits

Author ZiffPosted on 4 Comments

Joseph Smith taught that Mormon means more good. Taking this meaning, then, I’m wondering what Mormon edits we might get to see now that President Nelson has announced that God isn’t a fan of Mormon as a label for LDS (sorry, Latter-day Saint) -related things.

At a minimum, I’m hoping to see the following edits made to the scriptures:

Mosiah 18:8

And it came to pass that he said unto them: Behold, here are the waters of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (for thus were they called) and now, as ye are desirous to come into the fold of God . . .

3 Nephi 5:12

And behold, I am called The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, being called after the land of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints . . .

D&C 135:8

. . . their innocent blood on the floor of Carthage jail is a broad seal affixed to “Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints-ism” that cannot be rejected by any court on earth . . .

Read More

In Agency, Modesty, Sexuality

Modesty and Locus of Control

Author ZiffPosted on 12 Comments

The discussion over at the Exponent about the Utah woman who had her bishop and stake president refuse to renew her temple recommend because she refused to follow their counsel to cover herself while breastfeeding in church reminded me of a concept I remember discussing in psychology classes. That concept is locus of control. Here’s the first line of the Wikipedia article on the subject:

In personality psychology, locus of control is the degree to which people believe that they have control over the outcome of events in their lives, as opposed to external forces beyond their control.

People are thought to fall along a continuum from having an internal locus of control–those who think that what happens to them is primarily caused by decisions they make–to an external locus of control–those who think that what happens to them is primarily caused by other people or other things outside themselves. You can read the full Wikipedia article or look up any of a big pile of academic papers talking about locus of control, but the level I’m thinking about it is as simple as this brief description.

I think it’s clear that Church teachings are heavily focused on pushing us to have an internal locus of control. For example, Lehi tells Jacob in 2 Nephi 2:27: Read More

In Gay Marriage, Singles

How to Support Same-Sex Marriage Without Throwing Single Straight People Under the Bus

Author LynnettePosted on 11 Comments

When it comes to the topic of gay Mormons, I don’t even know how many times I’ve seen some variant of this conversation:

Defender of gay Mormons: “It’s unrealistic and unfair for the church to expect gay Mormons to give up all hope of companionship and remain celibate for their whole lives.”

Defender of the church: “It might be a difficult thing to ask, but it’s doable. Look at all the  single straight people who also have to live the law of chastity!”

Defender of gay Mormons: “Those two situations aren’t at all parallel, because at least straight people have the hope of marriage.” Read More

In Agency, Obedience, Revelation

On Not Being God’s Victim (or, Nephi is Still Responsible for Killing Laban)  

Author LynnettePosted on 9 Comments

An unsettling tendency among religious people, especially those with a strong belief in an interventionist God, is to throw God under the bus when dealing with decisions they or others have made that seem unwise or even immoral. The narrative goes something like this: “I didn’t personally want to do x. It wasn’t my idea. But God told me to do it, so I had to obey.” There are clear payoffs for the person who adopts this story: you don’t have to take responsibility for decisions you’ve made that might appear morally dubious, just so long as you can maintain that they were divinely mandated; and as a bonus, you get to feel extra righteous because you were so obedient, even in a situation where you ostensibly didn’t want to be. Read More

In Hymns, Music

Now Let Us Rejoice in the Hymnbook Revisions

Author ZiffPosted on 10 Comments

The Church has announced that the hymnbook and children’s songbook are both going to be revised. I have a bunch of random thoughts on this. I’ll put them in three lists to try to create some illusion of organization.

Good News

  • The Church is actually asking for our feedback for once! Here’s the survey. (I’m assuming they’ll do something to limit multiple responses from the same person. I’m actually surprised that it looks like they’re not requiring an lds.org account login to participate.)
  • From the FAQ on the project: “New and existing hymns and songs from around the world will be evaluated and considered for inclusion.” This seems like great news, and a welcome change from the English-only hymns we have now. In the Church News story, Elder Kopischke, who’s an adviser to the project, says “We hope that these new books will also include some of the best hymns and songs originating in other languages that will then be translated into English and the other languages of the world.”
  • Elder Curtis, another adviser to the project, says (in the Church News story) “As an extension to the new printed hymnbook and songbook, additional sacred music will be made available online, including music of local interest in each language.” This also sounds like very welcome news to me, as so much music in church is limited by what’s in the hymnbook, so if the hymnbook is expanded with these official supplements, this will give us much more music (potentially) to choose from in church.
  • Also from the FAQ: “Because the new core collections will be the same in every language, national anthems will not be included in the printed hymnbooks.” I am very happy at the possibility of a little more uncoupling of nationalism–particularly American nationalism–from our religion.

Read More

In Fun

Our Donald

Author ZiffPosted on 3 Comments

Evangelical Christians aren’t typically big on saying the Lord’s Prayer, but I understand that this revised version is gaining some traction:

Our Donald which art in the White House, Hallowed be thy name.
Thy tariffs come, Thy will be done in Congress, as it is by executive order.
Give us this day our daily tweets.
And reduce our taxes, but reduce moreso the taxes of our corporations.
And protect us from brown people at our border, as thou deliverest us from brown people kneeling at football games. For thine is the Presidency, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.

 

 

In GA's, Statistics

Do women really like Elder Uchtdorf more?

Author ZiffPosted on 5 Comments

Yes. Yes they do.

Or, at least it looks like they do more on Facebook. Here’s a list of the most common patterns of likes of Q15 members by women and men. In the second row, liking Elder Uchtdorf alone is done by 6% of women but only 4% of men. The two percentage point difference (in the last column) is the largest difference for any Q15 like pattern. (Perhaps he really does need to cover up to prevent the women of the Church from sinning in their thoughts!) The pattern men have most compared to women is liking all Q15 members but the three most junior, which 2.5% of men, but only 1.3% of women do.

Read More

In Mental Health, Personal Narratives, Therapy

Ending Therapy

Author LynnettePosted on 5 Comments

Next week, I’m ending work with a therapist I’ve been seeing for over a decade. This has caused me to reflect a lot on our years of working together, and what it’s meant for me. It feels like a strange thing to blog about this, maybe, but I don’t really know what the correct venue is for processing a relationship like this. I don’t feel like there are a lot of cultural scripts for talking about therapy that don’t involve poking fun at it (which I don’t necessarily object to; I’ve seen What About Bob? so many times that I can extensively quote it). But this is a big deal for me. Read More

In Conversion, God, Spiritual Experience

Finding God Again, Except Not Really;  An Overly Long Narrative of My Recent Spiritual Journey

Author LynnettePosted on 10 Comments

It was about two years ago that I decided I was done, that I was giving up on religion. This wasn’t just another predictable development in my on-again, off-again angsty relationship with Mormonism, which for a long time I half-heartedly claimed I was going to leave at least a dozen times a year. This was bigger than that. I felt done with religion altogether. After spending a huge chunk of my life absolutely obsessed with it, to the point of getting a PhD in the subject, I found myself thinking that maybe it was time to move on. I’ll find a new hobby, I told myself. This is over.

Read More

In Conversion, Episcopalians, Happiness

I Couldn’t Resist Happiness

Author LynnettePosted on 12 Comments

I’ve often seen the inoculation model proposed as a way to equip people to deal with challenging aspects of the LDS church. The basic idea is that if you initially encounter the difficult things about Mormonism in a context that’s friendly to the church, you’re much less likely to get freaked out when you run across them elsewhere. I don’t know how well that works for everyone, but for much of my life I felt that to some extent that dynamic had been true for me. Maybe not always the friendly context part, but definitely the finding out earlier rather than later part. At the very least, by the time I hit midlife, I felt that I was in some sense inoculated. I never had the experience described by many people I know of stumbling across major things as an adult about which they had previously been unaware, and that shook them to the core. Read More