Now that Mitt Romney is the Republican Party’s heir apparent, every day means more sunlight shining on the less-attractive bits of Mormonism. As you may have heard, a newscaster made an inaccurate (and insulting) claim about Joseph Smith (and then apologized for it, something a prophet wouldn’t do). This would have been the perfect opportunity for the CoJCoL-dS to take the high road, but instead they decided to release this statement:
His unbridled bigotry was not factual and showed ignorance of the fastest growing church in the world.
Just let the irony of that sink in. The positive part was coining the epithet “Limbaugh-like”, but personally, I’d thought that the whole “fastest growing church” claim had already entered the realm of “I don’t remember that we teach that, hey it’s not official doctrine!” — but no matter. Please, go on record making that claim again.
Then, Ann Romney re-ignited the “career women vs. SAHM” battle — which I’ve written quite a bit about, mostly to point out it shouldn’t be a battle because most of us are a little of each, and because other women’s choices aren’t the problem. Hint: check out the Easter Sunday lesson for LDS women (on sustaining the [male] priesthood hierarchy):
I like this Easter celebration better…
Fortunately, Mitt Romney is providing a good example of how to deal with all this unwanted scrutiny, which the Abbotsville Fourth Ward has condensed into simple-to-use talking points. President Paternoster has explained some advanced strategies that only the most faithful should use:
Our beloved Elder Holland is then asked if Mitt Romney would have sworn an oath saying that he would not pass on what happens in the temple, lest he slit his throat.
Once again Hollands reply is succinct and shows by perfect example precisely how to lie for the Lord when he states: Thats not true, thats not true.
And if that doesn’t work, you can always blast their eyeballs with a mass of catchy graphs of statistics.
In hot topics, the Evangelicals are again lamenting that so many of the people leaving Mormonism don’t switch to Evangelical Christianity, but rather go with agnosticism or atheism. Jared C figured out a lot of the reasons (interestingly, it’s news to some Evangelicals that “whether or not the Trinitarian perspective is supported by the Bible is a very open question”). But even if the ex-Mormons did agree with Evangelical interpretations of the Bible, atheism has its advantages. (To be fair, Mormonism has advantages too.)
Roger Hansen wrote some interesting pieces on Mormon economics, and some good commentary on Nate Oman’s piece (on not donating directly to panhandlers). Plus some tales of Mormon missionaries in Uganda.
And now for the grab-bag of topics!!! Dealing with Mormon parents when you leave the church. How is it that gay marriage harms my [straight] marriage — has anyone ever figured it out? It can’t be worse that Mormon girls being pressured to pressure boys into missions (for marriage). Bishop Flatlander announces his candidacy, Chicken Tender fertilizes some vegetables, Ms. Jack reviews “Tabloid”, the Peacewriters are celebrating 100 posts, Atom is celebrating four years of car-free living, and General J.C. Christian lost his Internet connection — but that hasn’t stopped him from supporting conservative and confederate causes!!
That’s it for this week — now it’s time for me to get to bed after a hard day of playing Minecraft with my kids. Happy reading!! 😀
I have a sneaking suspicion tscc is no longer the fastest-growing even in Utah, never mind the US or that ginormous “world” that is more imaginary space than geographical/demographic reality as far as LDS boosters are concerned.
I’ll bet you’re right.
The claim that the CoJCoL-dS is the “fastest growing church in the world” is obviously absurd. In absolute numbers, its growth is dwarfed by the growth of the biggies (like the Catholic Church). If they mean “relative to size”, small, new sects can often double and triple or more per year, leaving the CoJCoL-dS’s growth percentage in the dust. The best they can hope for is to be a relatively-fast-growing religion. Unfortunately, they’re not even that anymore.
From stuff people were saying about conference, I thought the leaders were already starting to “de-emphasize” the teaching that the CoJCoL-dS is the world’s fastest-growing religion — since shooting for faith-promoting growth numbers can lead to some really counter-productive behavior (see runtu’s piece linked above). But maybe the leadership and the PR department aren’t on the same wavelength as each other…
I think that’s actually just a letter to the editor.
@3 Ah, that would explain it!
I saw the page in Deseret News, and mistakenly assumed that it was a statement from the DN editorial board. Thanks for the correction, and my apologies to Deseret News (and to all the COB employees reading this) for erroneously attributing that quote to them.
The mistake is understandable. Do LTEs normally get published with a captioned photo of the target of the letter? The layout DesNews served up amounts to editorializing…
Hey, by the way, I’ve reached out to a few A-list blogging friends, and a good question has come back: Will Sunstone (or at least our top-draw exmo panels) be available as a webcast?
Also, there’s a budget for pre-Sunstone online ads for our panels. If we can brainstorm a few concepts, I’m cool with handling placement.
Excellent!!!!
I don’t think that Sunstone is normally webcast in real time, but the presentations are all recorded and available for download later. However, if we want to do a real-time webcast (especially if that might make a difference for attracting some A-list bloggers), it might be possible to arrange it.
I certainly can’t speak for the Sunstone organizers, but my impression is that they’re generally flexible, but they have limited resources. I think that if we offer to set it up ourselves, and if it doesn’t inconvenience anybody, they would probably let us webcast it.
Oh, I didn’t mean to suggest a real-time webcast. As long as there’s video, that would be perfect for post-symposium blogging fun. Never-Mo bloggers are politely declining my invites (it’s a stretch expecting them to fly out just to enjoy our exmo brilliance) but they’d be happy to post a YouTube clip of our panel(s) in action. You’ve certainly already assembled a great A-list of some of my favorite Outer Blogness personalities.