Just how big is the bloggernacle?
The “Only True” Church: Does “True” Necessitate “Only”?
For a project I’m working on, I’ve recently been re-reading the writings of Paul Knitter, a theologian known for his pluralist outlook. Knitter is skeptical of the notion that salvation can be found only through Christ. He observes that Christians frequently have some kind of encounter with Christ in which they experience his saving power, leading to a conviction that Christ is genuinely saving. However, he points out, the question of whether Christ truly has the power to save is a different question from whether he’s the only savior, and he thinks that too often the terms get conflated.
Why I Don’t Like Scouting
As a teenager, I didn’t like scouting because I didn’t like outdoor activities like camping, hiking, orienteering, and whatnot. So I did very little scouting related stuff, and that only after much arm-twisting by leaders and other boys (who, to their credit, were typically very nice about it). As I lived in Utah Valley, this made me borderline inactive. Read More
Swearing Survey
When the Giants beat the Patriots yesterday, and thwarted their attempts at perfection, I expect that a great collective curse was uttered by half the population of New England. Thinking of that got me to wondering about swearing in general. If you’re interested, I have a few questions.
n
{democracy:16}
Using Human Reason to Think About God
A question which often arises in theological discussion is that of whether we mere mortals are in any position to make sense of these kinds of topics in the first place. One common argument is that the things of God are incomprehensible to mortal understanding, and we shouldn’t expect to understand them with our finite brains. If particular religious teachings appear nonsensical or even morally problematic, then, this is merely due to the limits of human reason.
Who should have the calling?
Please answer gender-appropriately, as I’m curious if men and women feel differently about this. Also, if you’re single feel free to answer hypothetically.
n
{democracy:15}
Follow-up on Huckabee and “Chicken Patriarchy”
As a follow-up to ECS’s post on Huckabee and “Chicken Patriarchy”, I thought I’d link to this post which explains in more detail how “submit” is discussed in evangelical circles and how Huckabee’s recent explanations do seem to be either a substantial revision of evangelical beliefs or a deceptive way of making evangelical teachings more palatable to the masses:
http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/2008/01/huckabee-called.html
Here’s a quote that Majikthise takes from the official SBC website: Read More
Mormon Masculinity and Theological Blood Sport (Or, What We Mormon Girls Look For In the Boys We Date)
At this point in my life I happen to be pretty thoroughly acquainted with, and very fond of, two unrelated men able to recite myriads of scriptures and general-authority citations at the drop of a hat. Both are the uncontested theological authorities of their marriages; their wives might timidly pose questions or even more timidly offer their own ideas, often only to be ignored or shot down. When such men encounter one another, ritualized combat or mutual exhortation often ensue; either the combatants joust over some theological point or they join in denouncing the evangelicals, the secular world, or other unenlightened Mormons or Christians (to mention a few of the more popular targets). And as is so often the case in ritualized intellectual combat, the combatants often provoke one another into taking harder and harder stances, shoving softer, more moderate, and more considered, nuanced voices aside. We’ve all sat through a Sunday-school lesson or two that has followed this general outline. Read More
From the Children’s Songbook to the Hymn Book
If I understand correctly, several hymns in our hymn book appeared first as children’s songs. Isn’t this the case for Called to Serve, I Am a Child of God, and Families Can Be Together Forever?
So, since the precedent is set, I would like to see Beautiful Savior, which currently appears only in the Children’s Songbook, added to the hymn book. Every time I hear the Mormon Tabernacle Choir sing it, I wish that we could sing it in sacrament meeting.
Are there any other current children’s songs that you would like to see moved to the hymn book?
More Thoughts on “Raising the Bar”
The discussion of “raising the bar” in Steve Evans’s Friday Firestorm #24 last month at BCC got me to thinking about what the possible effects of this more stringent missionary screening policy might be.
The screening process that includes interviews with a missionary candidate’s Bishop or Branch President can result in two types of errors. A candidate can be approved to serve a full-time mission when he or she should not have been, or a candidate can be kept home when in fact he or she was qualified to serve. If the goal of the screening process is thought of as a medical test diagnosing “shouldn’t serve syndrome,” the first kind of error would be a failure to diagnose a true case (a miss), and the second kind would be diagnosing someone who isn’t a case (a false alarm).
So what does raising the bar mean for these two types of errors? Read More
Some New Year’s Thoughts
Usually sometime in January, I write down a list of the things I’d like to try and accomplish during the upcoming year. It’s usually not a long list, and I’m not very intense about it, and I usually only accomplish one or two things on the list (and this is often based on the fact that one to two things on my list are things that I think I will likely accomplish). However, I enjoy doing some thinking about how my life has gone for the past year and what I’m trying to envision for the upcoming year.
Except this year I’m not sure if I want to write up a list. Read More
Vada at Mormon Mommy Wars
Don’t miss Vada’s post about her son Spencer at Mormon Mommy Wars.
FMH Janet’s Worthy Christmas Cause
As we’re sure many of you are already aware, Janet of FMH is spearheading an effort to buy animals for those who need them through Heifer International. Her post, with further details, can be found here . As she explains, you can either make a General Team Donation to Team Bloggernacle, or, if you prefer, you can set up your own page for a mere $10 administrative fee.
Exploring a Misconception about Feminism: Women’s Superiority
One of the complaints I often hear about feminism (on the bloggernacle and elsewhere) is that feminists say that women are superior to men, or that feminism is about advancing women above or ahead of men (etc.).
When I hear this I am confused, since in all women’s studies classes I’ve taught and in all the conversations I’ve had with fellow feminists, we have focused on men and women’s equality (and what that means, how best to achieve it, etc.). Read More
The Trouble with Chicken Patriarchy
When it comes to patriarchy, the Church is all over the map. Husbands preside, but husbands and wives are equal partners. “While the husband, the father, has responsibility to provide worthy and inspired leadership, his wife is neither behind him nor ahead of him but at his side” (Boyd K. Packer). The two are “equally yoked” side by side, but the husband “provides leadership,” implying that the wife supplies the “followership”–not from a position behind him, but rather at his side: perhaps they are meant to walk sidewise? (This all sounds more awkward than a three-legged race.) Read More
Secular Usage of “Preside”
In a discussion last year at T&S about what it means for a husband to preside, Jim F. argued that it doesn’t really matter what preside means outside the Church because the word just isn’t much used outside the Church (and perhaps court). Kiskilili disagreed, saying that she thought that secular usage was more common.
At the time, it occurred to me that this would be a relatively simple question to get data to answer, but I put the thought on the back burner, so I am just now getting around to trying to answer it. I chose to search newspapers to attempt to answer the question, given that they tend to have a very broad target audience and are fairly widely read (although I know they aren’t read as much as they used to be).
1. Is preside ever used in a secular context? Read More
Enrichment Activities
I woke up today and for the first time in my life I actually wanted an Enrichment calling. Weird, I know.
I think one of the things that spawned this desire was the comment someone made recently on another blog (sorry, I can’t remember who or where) that they had activities where the pastor/priest/rabbi/whatever of another religion would speak to them about that religion, and then they would go and visit that leader’s church. I think this would be fascinating. Read More
Why I Don’t Want to Believe in Heavenly Mother
It’s high time I confess a heresy that may put me at odds both with many Mormons and with many feminists: I’m not really all that enamored of the idea of the divine feminine, of the doctrine that we have a Heavenly Mother.
I don’t recall when I first encountered the teaching that we have a Heavenly Mother as well as a Father—though I can say that the idea that Heavenly Father had multiple wives was one that rather horrified me (it still does). But even beyond the potential polygamy problem, the notion of an Eternal Mother was one that left me feeling a bit icky. I projected the kinds of saccharine rhetoric about women that I heard about church onto her, imagining a Mother who was always soft-spoken and dripping with sentimentality. I figured that if such a divine personage did indeed exist, I didn’t want anything to do with her.
Does Learning More About Mormonism Make You Dislike It More?
In a discussion of Romney’s “Mormon Problem” on a recent Bloggingheads video, Amy Sullivan makes the following observation:
What really interests me about Mormonism is it’s very different from the situation Kennedy faced in that with anti-Catholicism, a lot of it was based on misinformation about Catholics and misunderstandings, and there, learning more about it, hearing Kennedy talk about his relationship to his faith and the lines that he drew actually did put some voters at ease. Whereas with anti-Mormonism, it’s practically the only bias where learning more about it actually makes people who were opposed more opposed—because they have kind of a vague sense that Mormonism might be a little weird to them, and that they might not agree with things—but they don’t really know the specifics of it. Read More
Homeschooling Reservations
When it comes to a child’s primary and secondary education, parents have three choices: public, private, home. Each has both its peculiar advantages and its undeniable drawbacks. Read More