By Common Consent, a Mormon Blog

So I’m getting ready for church Sunday morning and I get a call from the ward mission leader. He tells me that the stake has set up a new uniform system for handling splits. They want guys to have a designated day during the month (say, second Tuesday), and to split-off with the missionaries every month on that evening. There will be an alternates list for those months where the brother is traveling or otherwise cannot make it. The idea is to do splits every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of every week of every month. Read the rest of this entry »

On Tuesday night while watching Veronica Mars, I saw a commercial for Mazda that had people looking in their rear-view mirrors and seeing an old fogey version of themselves. Their sedans made people believe these 30somethings were 70 and they must immediately buy a new car before something serious happened. On CarTalk, a 35-year-old woman asked for advice on hipster cars because she thought her current car was too old lady. I thought, these people are crazy or! Harvey Cox is right.

In the Atlantic Monthly, Harvey Cox published an article called “The Market as God”. He argues that there’s a new god in town. The Market. It didn’t kill God or fill up the hole left when He died rather we’ve converted whole-heartedly to a new religion and a new God.

Read the rest of this entry »

I recently read a book about an autistic boy, Christopher, who creates order in his universe by counting cars. If Christopher sees four red cars in a row on his way to school in the morning, he will have a Good Day, and if he sees five red cars in a row, he will have a Super Good Day. But four yellow cars in a row (he hates yellow) forebodes a Black Day, which means Christopher doesn’t eat lunch or speak to anyone.

Lately, I’ve observed similar ways in which people find order in their (own) universes. For example, if the Red Sox win, it’s a good day.  Read the rest of this entry »

On May 4th, 1842, Joseph Smith met with nine men in the upper room of his Red Brick store. He initiated them into a new order of the priesthood and established a new quorum in the Church. This quorum was intended to be secret during Joseph’s life and it was called by many names. Contemporarily, it is often referred to as the “Anointed Quorum” and is not well known among the Saints. While there is reason to believe that the Quorum still exists, it no longer functions as such. Read the rest of this entry »

I don’t know about you, but I have a hard time with the social kiss. Kissing girlfriends as a teenager, this I figured out fairly quickly, and, besides, it was done in the dark without witnesses. The social kiss, however … I’m still awkwardly working on that one. Maybe I should practice in front of the mirror. The problem is that social kissing techniques differ widely. My favorite is when women draw their faces closely together, careful not to touch, then they both say almost in unison,”muu–waaaA!” and slowly back away so no one gets hurt. When it happens to me–I view myself as an unwilling participant here, a victim–I kind of stare at bystanders with that desperate-plea-for-help look in my eyes, but they just stand there doing nothing. And to further complicate things, I go and read in the bible that this kind of thing was an early Christian ritual. Paul keeps reprimanding people all the time to “Greet one another with a holy kiss.”(see Romans 16:16; I Corinthians 16:20; 2 Corinthians 13:12; and 1 Thessalonians 5:26). Which leads me to my question: How come this ordinance was never a part of the Restoration of All Things? Read the rest of this entry »

File under: fanboy delirium
Any reader of comic books knows that the key to a good superhero is a secret. The secret is the source of the drama, the conflict, and the character motivation. Peter Parker, Barry Allen, Billy Batson, Tony Stark: they mean little without their secrets: Spider-Man, The Flash, Captain Marvel, Iron Man.

I believe the same is true of the great conflicts in the Gospel: secrets are powerful. Read the rest of this entry »

My friend Paul McNabb alerted me to the following article:

Troy W. Martin, “Paul’s Argument from Nature for the Veil in 1 Corinthians 11:13-15: A Testicle Instead of a Head Covering,” Journal of Biblical Literature 123/1 (Spring 2004): 75-84

which may be read here
Read the rest of this entry »