On Wednesday all of our family was arriving for Thanksgiving. We didn’t normally all get together for Thanksgiving, but after the fight that Mom and Dad had had with Rex when he was visiting over the Summer, they decided that they wanted to try to make a special effort to…
What can repair the church’s race relations?
I guess that is the ultimate question of today’s post. On Mormon Matters, Mormon Heretic (the Mormon part’s the dominant side of that name, btw) wrote a post trying to discuss positive black history in the church. And I guess, stinker that I am, I just had to approach the…
Sunday in Outer Blogness: Big News Edition!
Everybody‘s talking about the big news items this week: Secularism is rising dramatically in the U.S., and HBO is showing the Mormon temple ceremony! Let’s have a look:
religion = $$$
I know, it’s the most cynical interpretation of religion there is, but sometimes religions do things that just point so strongly to the money aspect that you can’t help but be cynical. Here’s a NYTimes article about religious leaders battling a bill in New York that would remove the statute…
a solution to the FLDS PR problem
I’m not sure why, but an idea has been floating around in my mind the last couple of weeks. I’m not usually in the mood to help a religious group survive, but I figured this thought was worth putting into the public domain for criticism at the very least. The…
movie review – American Mormon
Assumption: American’s are ignorant. Premise: I belong to a small religion, Mormonism, the members of which make up about 1% of the US population. Proposition: Because American’s are ignorant and I belong to a small religion, I bet Americans who don’t belong to my religion will be ignorant of my…
I can rely on myself (O.H. contintues…)
The next morning I called up Joe and Sam to ask them if they wanted to go to the mall. Mostly I wanted to get myself a Cat Stevens album after the movie I’d watched with Andrea the night before. It turned out that Sam didn’t have to go to…
Sunday in Outer Blogness: Back in Business Edition!
So, instead of cleaning my apartment yesterday as planned, I spent the morning going through the Outer Blogness list, updating and correcting it. There are still a few bugs to work out (explained here), but now the blogroll here and the Outer Blogness list have been synchronized, and they contain…
What was the straw that broke your belief’s back?
I’ve been reading an article at Mormon Matters about More Open Mormon History, and it seems to me there is a fundamental idea at play here: if you hear about “true Mormon history,” you’ll lose all hope and faith and then apostasize. OMG! The author, Mormon Heretic, tries to deflect…
two intriguing news stories on the homosexuality front
I caught this article about an email campaign that allegedly has the support of the LDS leadership to contact state representatives in Illinois on civil union legislation. I have to admit, it seems fishy to me. I don’t think the LDS leadership would sponsor an email quite like that. Does…