By Common Consent, a Mormon Blog

(Hey, it’s better than the original.)

The Holl and Oaks Session

President Uchtdorf conducting. Sister Stephens praying–no big deal; women pray all the time :)

Girls learning to fly.

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Choir in pink (!), Andrew Unsworth at the organ, Wilberg conducting.

First Presidency is sitting down. President Eyring conducting.

Whoa–it’s not just women praying this time, they’re even letting Democrats pray!!!

Crazy dudes out in force on Temple Square.

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By common consent at bycommonconsent.com

Let’s get ready for the releases and sustainings…

After the annual report, Elder Richard G. Scott is on deck.

We’re By Common Consenting as we speak! [Read more...]

Courtesy of HABBENINK // ILLUSTRATION at habbenink.com.

And we’re off on the 183rd Annual General Conference.

Up first, President Monson, followed by President Packer.

Invocation by Elder Randall K. Bennent

After Packer, then Bishop Dean M. Davies, followed by Sister Elaine S. Dalton. [Read more...]

So you say you want to watch General Conference? So do we. Here’s the deal for BCC’s coverage, and all the information you need to know. [Read more...]

Yesterday, emeritus church patriarch Eldred G. Smith passed away at 106. As Peggy explains “Eldred G. Smith, who served for 32 years as Mormonism’s ‘presiding patriarch,’ died Thursday evening in Salt Lake City. At 106, Smith was the faith’s oldest living and longest-serving LDS general authority.” [Read more...]

A letter written by German philosopher and anti-Christian gadfly Friedrich Nietzsche was recently discovered in a home near St. Moritz, Switzerland. The letter is one of a series of letters written to various friends and transcribed in the handwriting of his friend and occasional secretary, Heinrich Köselitz, dated March 27, 1887. Philosophers have called the letter the “most significant philosophical find of the last 500 years.” [Read more...]

More great news. Morgan Davis* (who has been our guest here on many occasions) has joined BCC as a permanent fixture. Morgan is a thoughtful blogger and all around great guy, and we’re immensely proud that he has agreed to be part of our merry band. Everyone, please welcome Morgan!

*Picture may not be representative of actual Morgan Davis.

When I first moved to this area, the EQP extended a call to me to be the Executive Secretary over HTing.  And I was all prepared to turn him down flat; no way did I want to get sucked into that morass.  But he had anticipated my reaction, and told me he had just come from Stake leadership training, in which they had authorized contact by any method necessary.  While in-home visits by two HTers still constituted the gold standard, casual visits in other locations, phone calls, letters (this was a little bit pre-email, I think) would all count.  So with that qualification I accepted the call.  And of course we had 100% home teaching every month.  Whoever hadn’t been visited (very broadly defined) by the last week, I’d just send letters to them to make sure everyone was covered. [Read more...]

What if the prophets are right and wickedness will cause the destruction of the last days? But what if it’s not indirect causation such that people are wicked therefore God looking down smites the Earth? What if the wickedness itself causes the destruction? What if the seas are heaving themselves beyond their bound** because the wicked are using up the resources of the Earth in wicked ways: selfish, unnecessary, greedy, used to adorn the flesh of a few, and to vaunt vanity? [Read more...]

I suppose that yesterday’s paper in Nature deserves to be more broadly known, because it has some implications for the faith/science debate. A brief outline is in order. Beardy Card’s lab at MIT has completed the most extensive dark matter (DM) analysis ever done. As we’ve learned dark matter (an unidentified form of matter) is found throughout the universe in great abundance. Dark matter detectors were pioneered by Card and this is the first analysis of the DM contained within our planet ever conducted. The results are stunning. In a news release Card says, “We are still reeling over this, but there can be little doubt that we’ve done the analysis correctly. It’s been confirmed in six independent labs and they are all reporting the same finding. [Read more...]

Keepapitchinin is Australia.

In the wake of the Bloggernacle-shaking series of wars between the BCC and FMH Empires last February, it has been revealed that Times and Seasons suffered devastating collateral losses. [Read more...]

And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.  Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost.  If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. (1 Cor 15:17-19) [Read more...]

We spent Easter Weekend in central Finland. On Good Friday, I left the family behind and went out skiing on a frozen lake.

We have had clear weather for the last few weeks with very cold nights and mornings and temperatures coming up just below freezing during the day. It has been a cold March, and although the spring solstice has come and gone, we are definitely still in the throes of winter for Easter.
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Having grown up with the stories, I tend to forget just how strange this Easter thing really is. I found myself thinking again this year about the incredibly perplexing central claim of Christianity. To the declarations of faith delivered by poets and prophets, I add the voices of two who decried the scandal of the cross. Their unbelief lends clarity to my belief:

“Obtuse to all Christian terminology, modern people can no longer relate to the hideous superlative found by an ancient taste in the paradoxical formula ‘god on the cross.’ Nowhere to date has there been such a bold inversion or anything quite as horrible, questioning, and questionable as this formula. It promised a revaluation of all the values of antiquity.”¹ [Read more...]

I wrote the following post in the wake of my son’s baptism, Easter weekend, two years ago.

I baptized my son yesterday. The coinciding of this event with the celebration of Easter was not deliberately planned. Isaac (my son) share his baptismal date with his cousin, so a time was selected that worked best for all the people involved. We met at a stake center in Spanish Fork, Utah, sang hymns and prayed together, witnessed collectively the performance of this sacred rite along with the conferral of the gift of the Holy Ghost, and then we shared a delicious meal of smoked pulled pork sandwiches, baked lasagna, and homemade cinnamon rolls. [Read more...]

On Monday, I visited Kings College Chapel in Cambridge, England to hear a performance of Bach’s St Matthew Passion. This piece was originally intended to be performed on Good Friday.  Seated in the choir section, between the ante-chapel and the chancel, I was moved by the confluence of place, music, and time. As a classical music neophyte, these reflections are unsystematic, ill-formed, and invariably personal.

For post-Easter Christians, Bach’s St Matthew Passion (MP) is dominated by the absence of the resurrection.  He alludes to it at points but the focal point is always Christ’s death.  Because of that absence, this recitation of Christ’s passion is particularly relevant to me personally because I have struggled with the resurrection. Most salient in Jesus’ movement toward death is the immediacy of his sacrifice for those who he loved then, at that moment, and, I hope, whoever would constitute the future kingdom of God. Yet, despite the unrealized resurrection it is impossible not to be swept up in the hope of two days hence. [Read more...]

It’s late. Everyone is asleep. I realize my life is in transition. Unable to sleep myself, I quietly get out of bed and cautiously leave the bedroom, hoping my wife will not be disturbed.
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There are old Eastern folk traditions that anyone who dies during Easter week is immediately ushered to paradise. [Read more...]

All four Gospels record that in the melee that surrounded the arrest of Jesus in the Garden, someone cut off the ear of the slave of the high priest. Mark records it thus:

Mark 14:47 One of the bystanders drew his sword and struck the high priest’s slave, cutting off his ear.

The gospels do not record this incident in the same way. In Matthew, the slave’s ear is cut off; Jesus then rebukes his disciples, calling for calm, and rebukes the mob for their clandestine malevolence. In Mark, the slave’s ear is cut off but Jesus only rebukes the crowd. In Luke, all three elements are narrated and a fourth is introduced: Jesus heals the ear. In John, Simon Peter is named as the one who wielded the sword and Malchus is named as the slave. Jesus only rebukes his disciples. There is no healing.

Here is a nice opportunity to do some source criticism, given the elements that are the same and those that are different. [Read more...]

Write your entries in the comments. Authors of the top two entries will get the opportunity to fight to the death as gladiators in the BCC Death Arena near the center of the earth. Multiple entries are allowed and encouraged.