Mormon Culture

My son was recently admitted to BYU for the upcoming fall semester.  Here are some things about BYU we discovered in the application process: BYU is incredibly cheap.  It is about a tenth the cost of other universities he applied for and twice what we would have to pay for an in-state tuition assuming we [...]

Home is where the heart is.  But should we be giving birth there or is it too risky?  What’s your view?  And would you eat the placenta?  With or without fava beans? Discuss.

What does it mean that the church is a restoration?  As I grew up in the church, I always thought of restoration as implying stuff fell out that had to be put back in.  Things that fit into this category included: the role of prophets and apostles, translation capabilities (including that pesky Urim & Thummim that someone mislaid a [...]

Some people don’t want their kids to be vaccinated or consider vaccinations to be invasive and unnecessary.  American public schools disagree, but kids who are home schooled don’t have these restrictions.  If schools think it’s too risky to let these children attend, should we worry about them at church? Discuss.

This is a condensed version of  a sacrament meeting talk given few weeks ago. I was asked to use President Uchtdorf’s address at the the recent General YW Meeting. Back when I was a youth in the church, I often felt frustrated by the prescribed roles we seemed to be taught in YW, and in [...]

In an amazing OP written by John Gustav-Wrathall of Young Stranger:  On Unfairness and “Spiritual Reinforcements” he discusses the injustices polygamy heaped on early Mormon women like Emma, and compared those to the indignities and heartache suffered by gay Mormons in the wake of Prop 8: And as the sense of anger and betrayal welled [...]

There was a recent article in Sunstone [1] studying the prevalence of avoidance as a conflict strategy among Wasatch front Mormons (students at Weber State specifically).  Organizational leadership courses have been teaching these concepts for decades.  Avoidance is generally considered the least effective conflict strategy; rather than addressing the conflict by making one’s own needs known and [...]

In my living room, I have an oil painting of the grove in Palmyra where Mormonism’s First Vision occurred. It is a family heirloom painted by the wife of a well-known RLDS Seventy of my parents’ generation who befriended them when they retired to Independence. Since Joseph Smith is not shown in the picture, nor [...]

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 enjoyed my experiment with Mormonism and sexism so much that I decided to do the same with Mormonism and racism. The results were remarkably similar. One thing making this video got me thinking about was the light of Christ. In LDS scripture, the light of Christ is characterized not only as the force that [...]

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.

The headline is clear. Community of Christ will provide sacramental ordinances of marriage, commitment ceremonies, and ordination independent of sexual orientation in the USA. Specifically, after two days of discussion, the USA National Conference formally approved by a required 2/3rds majority the following recommendations to the First Presidency and Quorum of Twelve: The 2013 USA [...]

The week from 17 March saw the inauguration of both the new Pope, Pope Francis, and the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby. To mark that historic occasion the BBC broadcast a debate entitled Christianity at the Crossroads. The panellists were: Matthew Parris (MP) – former Conservative MP; Dr Anna Rowlands (AR) – Catholic theologian; [...]

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 [...]