I couldn’t help but laugh when I saw this “Mormonadz” (apparently one of the result images from Monday’s quiz). It reminded me of my infamous “why I hate church” article from the Student Review. But it makes me wonder: Does the Mormon church service have to be so boring? I…
Category: Culture
Monday fun: What Kind of Mormon Are You?
What kind of Mormon / non-Mormon / anti-Mormon are you? Are you a misfit Mormon? Jack Mormon? Intellectual? Fundamentalist? Ex-Mormon? If you’re not sure, this quiz claims to be able to help you figure it out! So far, three of our readers have taken it (here, here, and me), and…
The Nature of Sexuality
Todd just found a youtube video of the documentary Legacies about the treatment of Mormon gays by their church: Spencer Kimball’s attitudes about sexuality, unfortunately, can only be characterized as superstition. In the Mormon case, superstition is intertwined with claims to personal revelation. The latter is defined such that the…
Summum Goin’ On
Pleasant Grove City has won a battle in the legal war with Summum, Utah’s local pyramid/wine/sex cult. From what I’ve read, it appears that the matter is far from over, though, as this particular battle was narrowed in its scope to its free speech component. In essence, the Supremes have…
Why Mormons Are Not Conservatives
Andrew Sullivan makes an interesting point: Most Americans have a healthy respect for religious teaching but in their lives give greater preference to common sense and practical experience. That includes almost all religious groups as well – Catholics, in particular, show conservative tendencies. The exceptions? Evangelicals and Mormons and Jehovah’s…
On the church’s uniqueness
…Sometimes, these blog entries just take too much time to set up…anyway, I was reading Mormon Matters and getting into the discussion there, and Bruce had said something that I found intriguing: …John Dehlin suggested that it was a mistake for modern Mormons to down play what he calls “19th…
Your Sunday School Lesson: The First Vision
According to the philosopher Mircea Eliade, of whose work I learned at BYU, every community, tribe, or nation requires an origin myth. The account of a community’s or practice’s origin has far reaching consequences because it implies how they relate to the cosmos, which is necessary for human beings to…
Sartre’s Spirit World
Wry Catcher’s question whether the notion of spirit world addiction reminded me of Jean Paul Sartre’s Les Jeux Sont Faits, which is particularly interesting to Mormons because Sartre’s description of the afterlife happens to coincide with commonly held notions of the spirit world. Les Jeux Sont Faits is a wonderful…
How are the Mormons like the Jews?
It seems like whenever we talk about Mormons as a people and a culture, the first discussion point is always “How are we like/unlike the Jews?” It’s very natural for Mormons to see the parallel with this fellow tribe. It just hit me recently, though, that this connection might not…
We All Could Kill Children But What About God?
On the occasion of Ronan’s remembrance of the Coventry bombing, I am exploring theodicy with Jon and Right Trousers. I would agree with Right Trousers that the choices of the survivors can give meaning to the suffering of the victims. At least, we are taking responsibility for our actions. But…