Posts Tagged ‘ marriage ’

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 [...]

Pending the birth of Princess Kate’s baby, Lady Cosima Rose Alexandra Windsor is currently 24th in line for the British throne. Lady Cosima is the nearly three-year-old great granddaughter of a grandfather of the current queen. I didn’t know that, and I really wouldn’t care, but I did easily look it up, and I could do [...]

Several years ago, before the movies and the hype, I somehow stumbled into The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.  After finishing it, I immediately read the second book in the trilogy, which had just been translated into English, but it ended in a cliff-hanger and wouldn’t be available in English for another 6 months or [...]

Look, dating blows! Dating over 30 really blows. Dating over 30 post-divorce is something like a cross between slicing open your jugular vein, and stabbing small needles into your eyes one at a time. Or at least that’s what one might infer from Tracy M’s post on the topic over at BCC a few weeks [...]

I was pleased to attend a book signing at Pioneer Book in Orem, Utah Saturday night. Brian Hales has put together a new comprehensive set of 3 volumes concerning the theology and history of polygamy in the early church. Initially the book was over 1000 pages, so the editors at Greg Kofford Books asked if [...]

Human brains naturally use locations in space and time to make sense of events. Why should we expect eternal spirits to follow that protocol? The question has always bothered me. What follows is speculation about a different way of looking at the relationship between the physical and the spiritual than the Restoration faiths adopted in [...]

Today’s guest post is by Hedgehog.  How do you feel about obedience?  Not so long ago ago this post by Stephen resulted in a brief discussion about obedience.  “Obedience is the first law of Heaven” is a phrase I have heard most of my life, it comes up fairly frequently in lessons about the subject [...]

Well, not really. However, with recent reports that the US birthrate has fallen to a level not seen since 1920, one starts to speculate. As Pew’s research organization reports: “The U.S. birth rate dipped in 2011 to the lowest ever recorded, led by a plunge in births to immigrant women since the onset of the [...]

Samira and Firas are a Muslim couple married in August 2009.  As I mentioned in my previous post, I’ve been watching the TLC program, Strange Sex (also available on Netflix.)  For Firas and Samira, it was love at first sight.  One week after meeting, Firas asked Samira’s father for permission to marry.  Muslims have even [...]

For me, as a conservative Mormon guy living in Washington state, the 2012 elections were rough in a number of ways, starting from the top down: Romney lost the election.  I had spent a year volunteering for his campaign and truly thought he had a good chance of winning.  He nearly pulled it off, but [...]

I’ve enjoyed reading about a recently discovered document scholars have dubbed “The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife.”  It’s just a scrap of papyrus that dates to around 150-200 AD, but it is causing a bit of a stir.  Dr. Karen King of Harvard University has recently translated the document and it contains the line, “Jesus said [...]

Some Mormon couples like to refer to professional or educational pursuits in the plural when one spouse is supporting the other one.  For example:  ”We are in grad school now, which has been challenging for us,” spoken by the spouse who is not personally attending grad school.  Does the husband ever state, “We are putting [...]

We’re in the home stretch of the US Presidential elections.  Hundreds of millions of dollars are being spent to try to pursuade voters to vote one way or another.  We have a Mormon running for the first time against a first-time African-American president.  We have multiple issues – massive debt, economic problems, wars and rumors of wars [...]

They don’t do it in Asia, where the thought is as reprehensible as rejecting your ancestors and heritage.  They don’t do it in Spain which makes it much easier to do genealogy. Discuss.

Is it better to preach the ideal or to make all feel welcome?  Is it even possible to do both?  Within the church, there seems to be a tug-of-war between encouraging people to live the ideal and trying to be welcoming to everyone.  A “come as you are” approach has merit if we want to [...]

Mixed orientation marriages aren’t new. So why is this one taking the internet by storm?

The Community of Christ has begun “crossing the Rubicon” on LGBT issues, and there can be no reversing the action taken. CofChrist is committed to the theological precedent that priesthood can be compatible with participation in a legally recognized same-sex sexual relationship. On June 2nd, the Australian National Conference approved the following recommendation to the [...]

At the end of April, Community of Christ released to the church at large a “Draft Statement on Sexual Ethics” for public review and invited comments to be made by e-mail to the First Presidency. This Statement will be considered by the International Leaders Council (which has no strict equivalent in the LDS) in May [...]

How can we explain our relationship with God in a way that doesn’t do injustice both human *and* divine relationships?