By Common Consent, a Mormon Blog

So, here in Massachusetts, it’s starting to seem safe to put away the snowpants. Which means, of course, that (by the fashion industry’s bizarre calendar) the stores will soon be full of back-to-school fashions, and I’ve got to hurry to buy shorts and swimsuits for my kids. The boys are easy enough–plain t-shirts and longish, comfy shorts are easy to find. But shopping for my daughter is tedious and annoying as a practical matter, and downright infuriating as a philosophical and spiritual problem. Read the rest of this entry »

This is a tribute to Wilford Woodruff, on the 201st anniversary of his birth.

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I recently watched Wes Anderson’s film Life Aquatic again, something like an annual ritual for me now.

Every time I watch the climax, my eyes moisten. Steve Zissou (Bill Murray as an Andersonian Cousteau) is surrounded by the people he loves and who love him, straining to see an unimaginably beautiful creature that killed his closest friend at the beginning of the film. Then this “jaguar shark” swims overhead, so close it almost destroys the submarine Steve is piloting. Mourning lost friends and faded youth as he confronts Nature’s terrible beauty, Steve asks, “I wonder if he remembers me.” This line and the ensuing scene may be the highlight of Murray’s increasingly impressive acting career. Read the rest of this entry »

The ever-useful Urban Dictionary tells us that PLU is an acronym which stands for People Like Us. Every group has insiders and outsiders; the insiders are PLU, the outsiders are not.

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In case you missed it, there was a very intriguing article in the NY Times this past weekend dealing with household consumption. The argument is that household consumption is a far more reliable indicator of economic prosperity than household income, because raw income numbers don’t tell us how that money is being used and how the income disparities really pan out in terms of lifestyle disparities. In other words, just knowing how much you make in a year is not going to show the real differences between the have-s and the have-nots. I’m interested in hearing your thoughts on this article and the graphical data it holds — it would suggest that our lifestyle gaps are not as profound as we once thought, and that America’s consuming habits are homogenizing –and becoming increasingly ravenous — for both rich and poor.

I’ve never actually been to a Passover seder. I know the basic elements, though, because our regional Institute guy once held a seminary “Super Saturday” at which he demonstrated for a large room of kids what a seder is like, and he somehow persuaded me to learn and sing some traditional Jewish songs for the kids. So that is my very limited experience with a seder. But for years and years I assumed that the Last Supper had been a seder. But was it really? Read the rest of this entry »

Announcing (following Steve’s lead) a bloggersnacker in Ann Arbor Michigan! Read the rest of this entry »

How about we get together in Hong Kong next week?

I’m not making this up. Read the rest of this entry »

So last night I left my wife and three small children at home for three hours to go to the stake center to hear the message that I should spend more time with my family. (Irony level: 5.4 — surprisingly low because it happens about twice a year.) Read the rest of this entry »

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I freely admit to being a lazy home teacher. I suppose part of it is the realization that some of the families really don’t want me to come over, and even some of the active ones are indifferent at best about it. (I certainly don’t blame them, as I myself am indifferent about whether home teachers come over to visit me.) And the logistics can be a challenge. Normally I’m assigned to someone who doesn’t want to go, and it is hard to figure out how much effort I should put into getting him to go versus just going ahead and going by myself. So like a lot of elders, more often than not I just let this little duty slip by unperformed. Read the rest of this entry »

I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.

(Revelation 3: 15-16)

Discuss.

The need to build consensus among the brethren is often cited as an important reason behind the belated reception of the 1978 revelation extending the blessings of priesthood and the temple to all worthy Church members. Indeed, rule by consensus has become a hallmark of the legacy of President Spencer W. Kimball. Read the rest of this entry »

A small, mostly meaningless diversion from the U.S. primaries:

My cousin was set apart as bishop of his ward two weeks ago. I like this cousin. He’s a liberal academic, teaching humanities at a very cool university and he has excellent taste in TV, books and movies. We usually discuss this excellent taste over Diet Coke. Read the rest of this entry »

Announcing the inaugural issue of the British Journal of Mormon Studies: Read the rest of this entry »

You may not have heard of the film, The Book of Zombie. Let me try and encapsulate it for you: Shaun of the Dead meets Toxic Avenger meets Labor of Love. Read the rest of this entry »

In the days before the church had a 24 hour hotline, mission presidents from around the world who needed advice after 5:00 p.m. Mountain time would call the phone number at the Hinckley residence.  Marjorie Hinckley reported that their family’s dinner and her husband’s sleep were often interrupted by a request for advice from some worried mission president in some remote corner of the world who didn’t know what to do with a homesick missionary, or one who was found to be in transgression.  For several years, Gordon B. Hinckley served as an on-call 24/7 customer service rep for the entire missionary program of the church.

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Gordon B. Hinckley’s British mission has become the stuff of Mormon legend. Alongside the adventures of Wilford Woodruff at Benbow Pond and the boy Joseph F. in Hawai’i, expect future Mormon children to learn of his father’s rebuke (“Gordon…forget yourself and go to work”) and his soap-box exploits in Hyde Park.

How remarkable for modern English Saints to learn that President Hinckley was interred yesterday with a box of soil from the county of Lancashire where he began his mission in 1933. “Nearly 10 years ago,” explained President Monson, “President Hinckley was given a box containing genuine Lancashire soil, and that soil has been placed in the grave. Therefore, President Hinckley’s final resting place will not only be on U.S. soil, but on also that of his beloved England, where he served the Lord with distinction as a missionary.” Read the rest of this entry »

As I was looking at the new Joseph Smith manual for RS and Priesthood, I couldn’t help thinking how strikingly different the kind of instruction we teach in Young Women’s is from that found in the other organizations. Is the YW’s manual, which focuses significantly on homemaking, family, and other life skills in addition to church doctrine, an anomaly? I decided to check out the Young Men’s manual. Here are the table of contents first from the YW’s manual and then from the YM’s manual. What do these suggest about how we raise (and gender) our children?  Is this the kind of instruction that they need to follow Christ in today’s world?  Tell me what you think…

From the YW’s manual: Read the rest of this entry »

Usually an interesting article merits just a link on the sidebar, but due to Pastor Cecil Murray’s visibility, I wanted to draw attention to this interview by means of a regular blog post. Pastor Murray is featured prominently in the documentary Nobody Knows: The Untold Story of Black Mormons, including in this trailer of the movie.

Pastor Murray thinks that Mitt Romney has faced more prejudice in this election that Barack Obama.  he also says:

. . .if you would find a church as socially conscious as the Mormon Church, you would have done well. The outreach, the worldwide missionary outreach, young adults, youth, volunteering their time, everyone is a minister in a ministry of outreach, that would be a wonderful model for all of our churches to adopt.

This is an interesting inteview.  It is always helpful to understand how others see us, and on the day of President Hinckley’s funeral, it is appropriate to hear some Mormon love. Pastor Chip just went on my list of favorite people.

In summer 1844, shortly after Joseph and Hyrum Smith were murdered by a lynch mob, young Samuel Smith also died, probably from pneumonia unrelated to mob violence (contra the martyrology of many early LDS).[1] In eulogizing him for the church organ, the editorialist, likely John Taylor, had the following to say about the “highest point in the faith of the Latter Day Saints” Read the rest of this entry »

Thou, O king, sawest, and behold a great image. This great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee; and the form thereof was terrible. This image’s head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass, His legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay.

Thou sawest till that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces. Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshingfloors; and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them: and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth.

(Daniel 2: 31-35)

Discuss.

Folks, I’m from Canada. Like the Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer, your civilization puzzles and frightens me. I don’t really understand your Congress, or your system of checks and balances… because, as I said – I’m just a caveman Canadian! My primitive mind can’t grasp these concepts.

But there is one thing I do know… and that is, that I cannot believe that the USA is about to decide that it should be McCain vs Hillary. What is wrong with you people?!?

The smooth transition that we all currently take for granted following the death of the President of the Church, has not always been so. Much of the way we do things now has slowly been worked out over time. Consequently (and inspired by Justin’s fine post), I thought a nice potpourri of succession history would be nice. Read the rest of this entry »

It is something of a commonplace to note that the system of Apostolic succession all but guarantees that presidents of the LDS church are quite old by the beginning of their time in office. Thomas S. Monson (barring unprecedented changes in Apostolic succession) will be no exception; he is currently 80 years old. What this means substantively is a complicated issue. Medical developments stretch people’s lives substantially compared with past centuries, and they often also help people retain higher levels of physical and emotional functioning than would have been the case for people at a similar age in past generations. Read the rest of this entry »

Owing to the recent death of church president Gordon B. Hinckley, supreme ecclesiastical authority in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is currently held by the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.[1] The president of the quorum is Thomas S. Monson, who will soon be sustained by the quorum as the 16th President of the Church. He will then organise a new First Presidency, the Mormon church’s highest council. Read the rest of this entry »

Some of you may already know of the Mormon Artists Group and subscribe to their newsletter, Glimpses. To those who are unfamiliar with the MAG, I give them a hearty recommendation. I reprint with permission of the author, Glen Nelson, the latest installment of their newsletter.

In front of me are two hymnbooks of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. One is the 1927 edition. It is 8” x 5.5”. Its dark green bookcloth cover is embossed with the words Latter-day Saint Hymns and decorative scroll work of a harp and floral pattern. The front cover features a severe geometric border at its edges; the back cover has a small, round embossing of a harp at its center. It was published by the Deseret Book Company, copyrighted by Heber J. Grant, and printed by the Press of Zion’s Printing and Publishing Company. It is the hymnbook my parents grew up with.

The other hymnal will be familiar to anyone reading this newsletter. The 1985 book which includes 341 hymns, ending with “God Save the King,” sells for $16.95 for the coil-bound version I use at home. It has a blue-green cover with the word “Hymns” printed boldly in gold over an embossed relief of the Tabernacle organ pipes.

But enough of comparisons.

What will the hymnal of 2043 be like? Read the rest of this entry »