Agency

If you were stranded on a desert island with only one . . . book of scripture . . . what would it be?  Clearly, this isn’t the usual desert island fantasy. Discuss.

A congruence of comments on my last post, and media broadcast/articles on this subject resulted in my selection of this topic. Hawkgrrrl commented: “Interestingly, we are now in a position to have to tell converts in countries that allow polygamy that we don’t allow it as we spread to African and Asian countries. India allows [...]

I recently took an online test to determine if I am a helicopter parent.  Ironically, it was a helicopter quiz!  After every question, it gave me immediate, condescending feedback about whether my opinion was right or wrong.  And with several of the questions, I didn’t like ANY of the options; they were all too helicopter-y [...]

How much is too much?  How much is not enough?  How often do you go to the temple?  Do you think you should go more often?  Why or why not? Discuss.

I considered myself unpopular at BYU.  My hair was very short, kind of a punk rock ‘do with bleached bangs.  I often wore tie-dyed jeans and a men’s thrift store blazer with a concert tee underneath.  In Pennsylvania, I never had a shortage of guys who were interested in me, including lots I thought were [...]

We’ve been cleaning the chapels in most areas (except where it is not feasible) for many years now, although most of us remember a day when the church employed professional janitors to keep the building sparkling.  With so many people out of work, should the church change back to professional help? Discuss.

People refer to weak apologetics as mental gymnastics, being willing to cling to the improbable or outright absurd rather than cutting through the crap to the logical (yet possibly faith-shaking) solution.  And yet, we are also told that truth is stranger than fiction and that with God nothing is impossible, which gives eternal hope to [...]

The ordain women movement is focused on asking why females should not be ordained.  Let’s flip that around and ask why males are ordained. Discuss.

Feminism makes some men very nervous.  They are afraid of saying or doing the wrong thing and being labelled a sexist.  They may feel like outsiders, unclear of their own standing as these conversations unfold.  Men and women alike may not be sure what feminism entails, but it can seem like a daunting list, one [...]

How much detail is appropriate in a confession?  When does a leader go from being helpful to being pruriently interested in the lurid details of a confessor’s love life?  Where do you draw the line? Discuss.

In January 2012, I did a blog post about topics women in the church were discussing.  I identified 10 practices that some women saw as unnecessarily discriminate or that were in other ways causing women to question their value in the church.  This was in response to a request Pres. Beck made of Mormon Mommy [...]

It’s tough to be the leader trying to fill volunteer assignments in the ward:  food to take to the sick or bring to an activity, helpers for a scouting drive, people to clean the church, people to feed the missionaries. It always seems like the same handful of people do all the work. Some leaders [...]

This past week, Peggy Fletcher Stack wrote an excellent article entitled ”How Beards Became Barred Among Top Mormon Leaders.” I encourage you to read it. In the end, I have nothing more to add to it than the personal observations that sre very near and dear to my face. I grew my beard during a [...]

In the 1980s, a talk counseled members not to attend R-rated movies.  Of course, they didn’t say anything about M16 or M18.  They didn’t mention M15 either.  Did this counsel affect your movie-going practices? Which R-rated movies do you consider “must see” if any?  What movies did you hate?  Which did you love? Discuss.

The Ten Commandments was one of the first Biblical epics to command a mass audience, and so my parents took me into downtown Detroit as a boy to be sure I saw it in its full widescreen glory in one of the few theaters capable of so screening it. The movie was well worth the [...]

Shenpa Warrior discusses evil from a psychological view In the 5th installment of the Psychology of Religion series.

I was exposed to this idea on a couple different occasions:  disaffected or disbelieving members share their experiences that led to their de-conversion in a group setting.  It made me really uncomfortable, essentially for the same reasons that Testimony Meetings make me uncomfortable. Here are a few hallmarks of both testimony and untestimony bearing: Pressure [...]

Mormons are often accused of having simple answers to life’s questions, answers that don’t hold up to scrutiny or that don’t fit all scenarios.  ”Correlation does not imply causation” (cum hoc non propter hoc, Latin meaning “with this, not because of this”) is a phrase used in statistical analysis to emphasize that correlation between two [...]

How should leaders contact the youth?  Through any means necessary?  Are parents overprotective or rightly cautious in their desire to protect their kids from personal contact with leaders?  Should we get with the times and use technology to perform our callings? Would your answer differ from how you think adults should contact each other?  Discuss.

For some people, coffee is a religion.  For others it’s a right.  Most Mormons have heard this joke:  A priest and a Mormon bishop were sitting next to each other on a plane.  The priest asked the Mormon bishop if he had ever in a moment of weakness tasted coffee.  The Mormon bishop confessed that [...]