Thirty years ago, long before the CES letter (heck, long before Facebook), I sat beside my brainy boyfriend* as he asked probing questions of two earnest nineteen-year-olds from Utah. He’d been reading the Book of Mormon but not feeling its spirit. How could there be elephants in America, he wanted…
Category: Testimony
Symbolic beliefs can counter cognitive dissonance, but at a cost
Testimony
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Still Sharing It With Our Husbands
Some thirty years ago, not long after I’d quit going to church, Mark and I moved out of the Dallas suburbs and into town. The move brought a dramatic change in both neighborhood and church dynamics. In the suburbs the directory for our highly active Mormon ward was a tidy…
Feminism
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It’s the Community, Stupid
It was over thirty years ago but I remember it like yesterday. Our daughter was sitting with us in the pews, watching the administration of the sacrament, when it dawned on her: Only boys were participating! That same day she asked her Primary teacher why girls weren’t also permitted to…
Public Relations
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In My Day it was Paul H. Dunn
Recently Mormonland has been crowded with stories about Tim Ballard, the LDS founder and former CEO of Operation Underground Railroad (OUR). Once a model Latter-day Saint and possible candidate for Romney’s senate seat, Ballard is now excommunicated and facing charges of sexual assault. Reports also reveal he frequented bars and…
Testimony
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#ThinkRespectful: the Talk I Wish Had Been at General Conference
Sometimes inconvenience bring insight. Earlier this week, the San Francisco Public transit system made my best option for getting from Point A to Point B a 40-minute walk, almost enough time to listen to a podcast episode titled “What do I do if listening to Conference hurts?” It was the…
Testimony
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How Mormonism goads fiction writing
Sometimes, for family home evening, we brainstormed about the end of the world. That’s the first thing I thought when I saw an article in the New York Times on why Mormons have such a prominent place in YA fantasy fiction. Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series and Orson Scott Card’s…
Testimony
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Leaving the Mormon machine, I struggled to find community without conformity
Years ago, on a cross country road trip, an LDS friend of mine broke an axle in the middle of Nebraska. He found a payphone, called his father in Utah, got the phone number of the region’s stake president, and called the man, a stranger. Then the Mormon machine…
Mormon Doctrine
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Mormonland!
Saw Barbie the other day. What a delight. It was cute, sparkly, hilarious, deliciously subversive, inspiring, relevant, and above all, PINK! Plus it made me nostalgic. Not so much for the doll. Although I did have a Barbie, also a Ken, a pre-pregnancy Midge, and a Skipper (flat-chested model). But…
Jews
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The Impossible Things a Mormon Can See at a Bat Mitzvah
There’s no clear Mormon equivalent of a bat mitzvah. When I turned twelve in the 1980s, I stopped going to the Merrie Miss class in Primary and became a Beehive in Young Women’s. I traded the shouty chorus of “We are a Happy Family” and the mock-Indian gestures of “Book…
Testimony
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What Crafting-as-Ministering Can Miss
There’s a joke among Mormons about shoving a cookie through another Mormon’s mail slot on the last day of the month. Actually, I’m not entirely sure it’s a joke. I grew up with my family getting regular visits from ‘home teachers,’ men assigned to my family to check in monthly…