Awards
Lists of Brodie award winners:
X-Mormon of the Year 2012: David Twede
X-Mormon of the Year 2011: Joanna Brooks
X-Mormon of the Year 2010: Monica Bielanko
X-Mormon of the Year 2009: Walter Kirn
A Community for Anyone Interested in Mormonism.
He Puts Us in a Shark Suit
My last post asserted that God is a jerk. I think the evidence supports that assertions pretty well. But maybe he’s a jerk with a really great sense of humor? Maybe everything seems so ridiculous to us because it amuses him to watch us run around and be scared and look utterly goofy? Maybe we are to him what a cat in a shark suit on a roomba terrorizing a duckling is to us? Anyway. Just turn off all other media, turn the sound up on your computer, enlarge this video to full screen, and Read more [...]
Posted in Humor
Once You Figure Out God Is a Jerk
So, I heard some years ago that religious people tend to be happier and healthier. It didn’t especially jive with my experience, but hey, it’s what the scientific data say, right? Here’s an interesting piece from the NY Times, corroborating and explaining some of the benefits of “religious attendance — [or] at least, religiosity” the reasons for which are “not entirely clear”. Some of the benefit derives first from “social support [which] is directly tied to better health” and second from Read more [...]
Posted in church attendance, God himself, Sacrament Meeting, Science, secularization
Maybe Conservativism Is Hurting Religion After All….
Given that the “liberal churches are losing members because they’re liberal; conservative churches are growing because they’re conservative” argument is invoked every so often here at MSP, I thought people would be interested in this article from Religion Dispatches analyzing some of the problems with that claim. An excerpt: Hout and Fischer released a study this year with Mark A. Chaves, which seemed to show that the trend continues. Their original findings have been partly confirmed by the Pew Read more [...]
Posted in Catholicism, conservatism, demographics, liberalism, Politics
Mormon Trolls, Gorgons and Orcs, and Being Tired of Good People
Currently the most posted story in my Facebook feed is this excellent NY Times op-ed from Ta-Nehisi Coates, entitled “The Good, Racist People.” Coates uses the recent frisking of Oscar-winning actor Forest Whitaker as an opportunity to analyze the racism of “good” people: In modern America we believe racism to be the property of the uniquely villainous and morally deformed, the ideology of trolls, gorgons and orcs. We believe this even when we are actually being racist. In 1957, neighbors in Levittown, Read more [...]
Posted in discrimination, Feminism, Homosexuality, LGBT, Sex and Gender, Uncategorized
The Tree-Hating Insane Inorganic Alien Trying to Destroy the Earth
Several years ago, at the recommendation of a friend, I read Not in His Image: Gnostic Vision, Sacred Ecology, and the Future of Belief by John Lamb Lash. It was a very, um, interesting book. Actually I guess outlandish might be a better term, but it certainly held my attention. In the weeks after I read it, I talked about it to anyone who would listen, because it was so provocative and downright odd, and made for fun conversations. Basically, it argued that the god of monotheism aka Yahweh Read more [...]
Posted in ecology and nature
LDS Knickers in Knots Over LDS Sisters in Pants
A Facebook group called All Enlisted (as in “we are all enlisted until the conflict is o’er”) states on its about page that It is intended to be a place of action where active LDS men and women can engage in acts of peaceful resistance to gender inequality in the LDS church. Drawing inspiration from suffragettes and civil rights leaders, we aim to display a respect for personal revelation and community strength as we seek to build Zion, a place where we fully realize and embrace the truth that all Read more [...]
Posted in Gender, Uncategorized
Unrighteous Dominion and Coca-Cola
A link with the headline BYU caffeine movementfizzles has been appearing in my Facebook feed. Apparently there was a facebook page calling for caffeinated versions of sodas to be sold at BYU, but its creator shut it down because it generated “heated opinions on both sides” as well as “general animosity.” To explain the sort of reactions the page generated, the news story linked to above included this: “If they dont serve caffeinated drinks in the temple, then Heavenly Father obviously doesnt Read more [...]
Posted in BYU, Word of Wisdom
Additions to the Post-Mo Lexicon
A couple of conversations I’ve been in lately have yielded terms I think people on this blog will find useful. the first was coined a month or so ago by Chino Blanco and defined by me: Joe-ha-dist n. An excessively ardent and bellicose defender of Joseph Smith: Joehadists rarely have much sympathy for Emma. I coined this one today: priest-splain v. to mansplain, as when a man presumes to educate a woman on a topic she already understands, with the additional characteristic of being done Read more [...]
Posted in Feminism, Language, Mormon Culture
It Even Gets Better for Straight Spouses
Here’s an “It Gets Better” video made by a group of straight spouses in MOMs: OK, I can’t make the embed code work, so here’s the link to the youtube page: http://youtu.be/xkKoD1uVbrE The “about” page of the website of the group that produced the video, Straight Spouses, states We started as an informal group of LDS women with children, on a journey to find peace with our religion and our lives, the center of which seemed to always be the fact we are or once were married to a gay or bisexual Read more [...]
Posted in Divorce, Family, Homosexuality, It Gets Better, LGBT, Marriage, Mixed Orientation Marriage
Weirdest Mormon Story Maybe Ever
Links to a very strange Mormon-related story have begun appearing in my Facebook feed, and I must share here. The SL Trib Headline reads “LDS branch leader booted after sexual assault charge.” Turns out that Efrey Guzman, a 46-year-old president of a Latino branch in Sandy, “allegedly groped girl, attacked her mom, bit her brothers penis.” As one of my FB friends put it, here’s a sentence I really did not expect to read today: As the son was trying to pull Guzman off his mother, Guzman attacked Read more [...]
Posted in Utah, Weird. Plain Old Weird
-
-
Other Cool Sites!
Podcasts and Video Channels
