By Common Consent, a Mormon Blog

In my Relief Society class today, women recounted how although they had a testimony that they should belong to the LDS church and of The Book of Mormon, they often struggled to have a testimony of Joseph Smith.  This begs the question, what do we mean when we claim to have a testimony of Joseph Smith? Read the rest of this entry »

The New York Times posted an article today on the complications that often result from fertility treatments.  Under current fertility treatment practices, patients are likely to implant multiple embryos, which leads to an increased risk of twins, premature babies, and other serious complications.  The estimated expense of caring for premature babies that were conceived through IVF was $1 billion last year, with the bulk of that expense being passed on to businesses and other consumers.  In cases where children suffer disability, society pays further costs in the form of services like special education. Read the rest of this entry »

Whatever choice you make, a teacher told me, is bound to be disappointing.  Even if you get precisely what you want, your satisfaction with that choice will never be as exciting as the possibility of having options to choose from.  He was right of course.  And consequently I struggle with decision-making, because each necessary decision forecloses as many opportunities as it opens up. Read the rest of this entry »

Wandering through our new ward building today as I took my shift on the cleaning crew, I found it hard not be impressed by how well the new building caters to the needs of families.  The cutest part of the building is in the nursery–there is a tot-sized bathroom, filled with a miniature toilet and sink.   There are diaper changing tables in both the men’s and women’s bathrooms (a change, my husband tells me, from the old days), a beautiful mother’s room, storage areas for toys, and a slew of energy saving devices.  In many ways, this building gives physical expression to the desirability of incorporating family life into our public interactions. Read the rest of this entry »

During the nineteenth century, courts within the United States began to move towards a system of liability based on “negligence.” Rather than being liable for all damaging actions that people caused to their victims, people would now often be liable only for damage or injury that they caused while not behaving in a way that was sufficiently careful and appropriate for the activity in question.  Some historians attempting to explain why this shift to negligence liability solidified during the nineteenth century have pointed to the needs of the dawning industrial world: industry and modernization would be impeded if people were liable for all the injuries their dangerous new machines, factories, and pursuits would foreseeably inflict in this busy new world.  So in order not to impede the development of these new activities, we would now often just be liable for the harm that we negligently caused, accepting as a price of modernity that some of our actions would result in harm that society would choose to not hold us responsible for at the expense of those we hurt.  Whether or not this thesis is accurate, its core idea that people would be liable for the consequences of some of their actions and not for others should be interesting to Mormons who put “agency” at the center of our theology. Read the rest of this entry »

Recently, I reviewed the May 4, 2007 LDS Church statement that gave the news media and members guidance on how to interpret what constitutes church doctrine. Amongst other assertions, the statement indicates that GA opinions made on single occasions are not meant to be binding.  The statement helpfully narrows the scope of where media and members should search for doctrine: “With divine inspiration, the First Presidency … and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles… counsel together to establish doctrine that is consistently proclaimed in official Church publications.  This doctrine resides in the four standard works of scripture (the Holy Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price, official declarations and proclamations, and the Articles of Faith.” Read the rest of this entry »

Each fall new families move into our university ward, and inevitably the husband stands up, introduces his wife, and then says that “we are here for law school” (or for some other medical, business, or graduate program). Read the rest of this entry »

Sometime around now, we have had or will have the Sunday School lesson on the priesthood.  If it is like my Sunday School class, then someone (in my case, an elderly man with a walker!) will raise the inevitable question of why women don’t hold the priesthood.  I am not sure whether or not women should have the priesthood, and, ultimately, it isn’t my decision to make.  But I am sure that as much as I would like to see gender issues remain alive within the church, raising the question often produces institutional anxiety and reveals that women themselves are divided on the issue.  Read the rest of this entry »

Last Sunday, I had the lesson that spoke about Thomas Marsh and his apostasy. Being an informed reader of BCC, when the subject came up I whipped out my iphone, reviewed John Hamer’s excellent post on Thomas Marsh, and then proceeded to explain to the class that the story told in the manual was in fact incorrect. The moment the words came out of my mouth, I regretted them. I had put the teacher in a bad spot.  But, still, I KNEW the manual was dead wrong, and I felt I would be an accomplice in perpetuating slander if I didn’t speak up. Read the rest of this entry »

Although it pains me to admit this, it seems that Christ was not a writer.

Although he quotes scriptures in order to position himself within history, establish his credentials as a teacher, parry attacks, and occasionally radically reinterpret or restore meaning to those texts, he never appears to express any interest in recording (or asking others to record) his ministry and teachings in a written form.  He responds to humans’ questions more than he lectures; he is an interpreter rather than a writer.  His utter disinterest in controlling his legacy, teachings, and image through a written work becomes, in fact, somewhat astonishing when compared to stories and commandments within The Book of Mormon that highlight the vital importance of record keeping for posterity. Read the rest of this entry »

Although I have attended many baptisms for eight-year olds, today I attended my first adult baptism.  As an eight-year old, I recall seeing baptism through the lens of duty and right and wrong moral decisions.  I didn’t see baptism as an opportunity to enter and serve in a community, because I was already part of the Mormon faith.  I saw it as a duty to check off if I wanted to be exalted and free of sin.  But the adult baptismal service I attended emphasized being welcomed into the community more than duty, which caused me to see baptism in a new and refreshing light. Read the rest of this entry »

Let me start with an admission that I have never publicly made: I didn’t want to get married in the temple.  At the time of my marriage, I had only recently had my endowment, and I was still struggling to absorb the ceremony.  I wanted my marriage to be a time when I could focus on my spouse and family; I didn’t want to relive a temple experience that I found more secret than sacred.  Although I ceded to my family’s desires that I be married in that only acceptable place, my memories of my temple marriage are primarily ones of panic, because I didn’t feel that I  could in good faith go through the ceremony and make covenants that I wasn’t ready to make. Read the rest of this entry »

For the past few days, I have been reading surveys about youths who reside in an affluent suburb of DC.  Although residents of this county are overwhelmingly happy with the schools and think that the county is an excellent place to raise children, they constantly cite two problems: youth have no relationships with adults and they have no place to constructively gather together. Read the rest of this entry »

In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the question of who said a statement is often more essential than the merit of the statement’s contents in determining whether or not that statement will be received as authoritative.  Our prophet is authorized to receive revelation for the church in a way that individual members are not, and while many of the things he says and we accept as doctrine are inspired and thus have high content merit, it is probable that we also canonize comments that he did not intend to be accepted as doctrine.   Due to the potential for each of the prophet’s words to take on doctrinal weight that can impact the course of Mormonism, the prophet and other authorities whose words carry similar degrees of weight must necessarily be restrained in their speaking in order to prevent the canonization of mere speculation, personal opinion, or off the cuff remarks. Read the rest of this entry »

I don’t especially want to hie to Joseph Smith’s Kolob. The vision of Kolob in the Book of Abraham with its firm hierarchy of planets and intelligences does not appeal to my ego as fully as the other Mormon view that emphasizes how we can progress to become like God in power and knowledge. But, Joseph Smith’s vision of Kolob, along with its song and its latest off-shoot, Battlestar Galactica’s Kobol, thrill me nevertheless, because each of these works played or plays the crucial role of helping people bridge the gap between the world they see and their understanding of God, a role that contemporary Mormonism often largely cedes. Read the rest of this entry »

When people press you to begin your long-neglected genealogy work, they typically remind you that you have hundreds of ancestors just waiting for their temple work to be done. However, my experience with what I believe to be one of the Church’s most brilliant initiatives, New Family Search, has lead me to a different conclusion, which I had not previously entertained since I am the child of a parent who is the only member in her family: maybe I have no ancestors whose work has not yet been done. Read the rest of this entry »

After several years of living in a roach-infested, non-air-conditioned, 5th floor walk-up apartment in a bad area of a NYC, I rejoiced at the opportunity to move to to a more suburban setting.   Sure, I had met my closest friends and had my biggest learning experiences while in the city, but the poor quality of life and thoughts of eventually having children there were making me depressed.  My dreams became suburban: I wanted plenty of space, a home surrounded by nature, and a car so that I no longer had to use public transportation.  But now that I have lived that suburban dream for a year, I understand that some of the things I enjoyed most about life in a NYC were tied to the same cramped living conditions that I had come to abhor. Read the rest of this entry »

I know, of course, that children and infants frequently died in our past. As a former student of Victorian literature and history, I am comfortable with the fact that perhaps most children in the history of the world have died young and unpleasantly.  And I’m sure that heaven will be centered around the under 8 crowd – just like church!  I have sometimes even thought that perhaps the single most significant development in allowing women more life choices was scientifically advancing to the point where they did not need to have many children to ensure that at least some survived to adulthood.  But I didn’t realize how many infants are still dying – and how many women still struggle to conceive them at all. Read the rest of this entry »

In Fall 2006, BYU announced a policy that would ban YouTube from campus.  BYU spokeswoman Carri Jenkins explained the decisions in The Daily Herald: “We use the filtering process for two reasons.  First to protect students from inappropriate material. The other is because of our limited bandwidth. That bandwidth is used for academic purposes.”  Read the rest of this entry »

“But it is not given that one man should possess that which is above another, wherefore the world lieth in sin” (D&C 49:20).

Mormons, it seems to me, are uneasy with the law of consecration.  Although it is something that we covenant to live, it is also something that we struggle to understand.  When Mormons discuss the law of consecration, within moments we are typically discussing how the law of consecration is not just a temporal law, but also a spiritual one.  This law is spiritual in the sense that real financial sacrifices are required for the gospel to thrive.  But I am concerned that we shift attention to the spiritual side of the law, because this helps us rationalize our real failures to grapple with the temporal side of this commandment.  Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, I was preparing a mailing for an organization where I volunteer, and I saw that one of the intended recipients was an action-group that contained the word “family.”  For a few seconds, I caught myself wondering if this group would be an appropriate recipient for this particular mailing, because the word “family” attached to an action-group instantly brought to my mind associations with social conservatism, Prop 8, and the Republican party.  Now, I realize that this initial response was silly on multiple levels, but it is indicative of another reason that makes it so difficult to speak productively about gender: the vocabulary surrounding gender and families has become too politicized.  Read the rest of this entry »

One day, a man in my family who I love and admire offered the opinion that I simply had a “personal” issue with gender in the church and that I should deal with it.  I’ll skip over my immediate reaction to that comment and go directly to the thoughts that followed that conversation.  Why, I wondered, do both men and women have such a difficult time speaking about gender and the expectations that we associate with it, especially amongst the people we care about most?  Why do almost all attempts to discuss gender in blog posts disintegrate into traffic-garnering exchanges of unproductive emotion (anger, hurt, etc.) and even accusation?  This post is my attempt to offer one explanation and to open a debate not on gender, but on how we can talk about gender more productively. Read the rest of this entry »

Ever since my calling in Young Women’s ended a year ago, I have enjoyed the lessons on Joseph Smith that we are studying in Relief Society and Priesthood.  I appreciate this attempt to understand our founding prophet’s life within a historical context, and, until recently, I felt touched and awed at hearing the prophet’s own recorded voice.  What changed?  Well, it suddenly dawned on me that I wasn’t actually hearing his voice. 

Read the rest of this entry »

“Luck,” a Korean friend explained to me, “does not just represent mere chance in my culture.  It is a concept designed to further the idea that everything that happens must have had a motivating cause.”  Read the rest of this entry »

Everyday human morality – the kind of morality based on our instincts and our common sense rather than on theorizing – is quite often rooted in our response to the physical or emotional suffering of other living creatures.  But, in a recent post on eating animals, I confess that I was surpised to discover how many of us share the belief that the most ethical way to honor an animal’s sacrifice is to witness or imagine that animal’s death and suffering.  This post attempts to make sense of my confusion as to whether or not it is valuable to live with such attention to suffering and death as a means of being ethical. Read the rest of this entry »

Meal times are uncomfortable at my house.  For the past few years, I have rarely been able to cook without realizing that every time I select meat from the grocery store, I am participating in a slaughter of animals that takes place far away from sight and all too often from mind.  I am not a vegetarian, which would be the easiest solution to my guilt.  Currently, I’m the “eat meat sparingly” kind, though I do it in times of summer and plenty as well as winter and famine.   But our Word of Wisdom and scriptures make it clear that we should eat meat sparingly and that we have stewardship over the earth.  So, my question is, excluding the possibility of vegetarianism, how exactly should we decide which animals die so that we can live?  I’m taking it as a given that we should only buy meat from those who treat animals ethically. Read the rest of this entry »

Recently, I have noticed that while I blog about problems (they’re just so much more interesting), I rarely blog about the reasons I appreciate my Mormon faith.  Yesterday, my ward had an open house for the community, and I had ample time to think of things our church does really, really well.  Here is a partial list: Read the rest of this entry »

When I first read the sensational young adult book, Twilight, certain parallels between the book and Mormon culture caught my attention.  The heroine, Bella, longs to join the eternal family that her vampire boyfriend belongs to, she drinks Coke (not coffee) to stay awake, she longs for a perfect, immortal body, and her sensual relationship with Edward is technically chaste.  But after I posted on Twilight, some readers wondered if I would still feel these books have Mormon parallels once I read books three and four.

Book three, Eclipse, continues to focus on Bella’s desire to join her eternal family, but I would agree with those who suggest that as the series continues its parallels to Mormonism, if extant, are less obvious.  In a refreshing reversal of gender roles, it is the vampire Edward who insists on marriage and chastity while Bella wants just one thing.  Such a frank discussion of sexuality is uncommon in Mormon culture, even if the conclusion the characters reach, that sex must wait for marriage, is utterly in-line with a Christian worldview.  But while the plot of Eclipse is by no means a direct reflection of Mormon culture, it raises questions that are applicable to us.  In particular, Eclipse queries a worn idea in an insightful way: what exactly does eternal love mean and how does the idea of it influence our choice of partners? Read the rest of this entry »

In the community where I am currently privileged to live, many churches abound. These churches fill various niches: some serve students, some serve the low-income community, others are historically black, some are conservative, and others are liberal. Many are Evangelical, but there is a large diversity of brands. While having a diversity of churches in an area might seem unsurprising, I have recently been startled by the perspectives of many people who attend these churches. Read the rest of this entry »

The following summary of a study on Mormons and beards recently appeared in The Atlantic’s “Quick Studies” page.

Although Brigham Young wore a beard, today’s Mormon leaders insist that a clean-shaven face shows piety and obedience. But some bearded Mormons are resisting: they say they feel shame and resentment when told to shave, because their beards express “deeply felt, even intimate, identities.” Appearance is a “highly charged” marker of loyalty in the church, and growing a beard is increasingly becoming “a serious breach that sets in play a uniquely Mormon social drama.”

—“Men’s Grooming in the Latter-Day Saints Church: A Qualitative Study of Norm Violation,” Mental Health, Religion & Culture Read the rest of this entry »