By Common Consent, a Mormon Blog
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Some of our groups had only 4 girls, and the carts had metal on them and were very heavy.
Our stake just completed its first ever Pioneer Trek activity. In our fast & testimony meeting this weekend, most of the speakers talked about their experiences as leaders or participants. I would have thought these contrived experiences wouldn’t be as touching as they were, but some of their experiences were moving and instructive. [Read more…]
Audio recordings of talks from the symposium are available here, with video of Clayton Christensen’s plenary here. Symposium organizers Matt Bowman and Sharon Harris share their thoughts below in a mock interview. We are glad to welcome them once again as guests at BCC.
On May 16, we held a symposium in New York City. Called “Of One Body: The State of Mormon Singledom.” It was designed not as a typical Mormon singles conference (planned to encourage flirting and courtship), but as a serious discussion about the growing numbers of single Mormons and the falling rates of marriage within Mormonism. Both of these trends reflect broad patterns in American culture, but we wanted to discuss what they mean for Mormons in particular. We invited a number of speakers: In the introduction Matt Bowman outlined these demographic trends and talked about the meaning of the title (drawn from the apostle Paul). Sharon Harris discussed the history of singles wards. Clayton Christensen offered thoughts on how we think about the place of single people in the Church. A panel of those in leadership callings gave their perspectives on working with single people in their flock. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife talked about the law of chastity and how singles of a wide variety of ages grapple with it, and Kristine Haglund delivered a closing homily on the place of single people in the body of Christ. We are grateful to the Manhattan stake for its sponsorship.
[Read more…]
The church officially—and in fact—ended its experiment with polygamy more than a century ago.
Yet polygamy and its effects remain with us today. And no, I’m not talking about D&C 132; we’ve officially read polygamy out of the the section, replacing it with our modern concept of eternal (monogomous) marriage.
What I’m talking about is the fact that a man (and, in certain limited circumstances, a woman) can be sealed to more than one person, and that those additional sealings can and do happen without the consent of the first sealed spouse. [Read more…]
Attention muggles:
We recognize that you don’t have amazing magical families like so many of us do, but we are still glad you are here at Hogwarts [1]. Some of you have demonstrated real promise on your Newts and Owls despite your lack of inherited magical blood! [Read more…]
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich has kindly shared with us a preview of her Presidential Address, “Runaway Wives 1840-60,” to be delivered next weekend at the Mormon History Association conference in Provo. In 1995, Ulrich joined the history department at Harvard University, where she is now 300th Anniversary University Professor. Register here for the conference if you haven’t already.
Recently, at the General Women’s Session of April Conference, several talks where given on the theme of “defending the family.” There have been a number of responses to this session already (including two very good ones here at BCC), so we can safely say that this is a topic that has been covered. So, why bother talking about it some more? Because I think that I have found, hiding inside President Bonnie Oscarson’s talk, a message regarding marriage and family that is practically progressive in its outlook. [Read more…]
We’re pleased to promote this event planned by friends of the blog Sharon Harris and Matt Bowman (bios below), and featuring our own Kristine Haglund.
This is not your regular singles conference. While singles conferences have adopted more educational, service-oriented, and think-tank approaches in recent years—with Silicon Valley, Boston, and Northern Virginia singles conferences as notable examples—most of the time the idea of a singles conference conjures up either the spring break vibe of hundreds of singles scoping each other out at Duck Beach or the awkwardness of singles getting together in a gym to try to meet a special someone while dancing and drinking fruit punch. Basically, singles conferences revolve around creating situations in which singles are encouraged to meet, flirt, and date, and that underlying motive often seeps into all the other activities. [Read more…]
Finally! A talk about something I love: men. As a person who has sometimes struggled with opposite sex attraction, I can relate. In The Sound of Music, the Baroness von Whatsername wisely said there was nothing more attractive to a man than a woman who was in love with him, so right now, Sis. Burton is looking pretty good. [Read more…]
Elder Perry’s talk reflects on his visit to the Colloquium on Marriage and Family held at the Vatican last November. This event gathered representatives of 14 different faiths—and as such, the participation of Church leaders raises once again the question of whether Mormonism is a world religion. Elder Perry does not address this question directly, but his use of the word “world” in ways that both harmonize with and run counter to usual LDS usage suggests that answer might be “yes,” albeit not for reasons we might usually suppose. [Read more…]
Taking a cue from Doctrine and Covenants 6:28, I thought I’d pull together and transcribe some of the recent discussions about whether or not members can support same-sex marriage and still remain in good standing.
And, if you need it, here is a temple-recommend, wallet-sized printable that you may want to laminate for easy reference:
Now for the longer versions of the answer to the post title. [Read more…]
We caught up with the wagon train at the California Trail interpretive center.
I live in Vienna while the rest of my side of the family remains scattered across the western United States. Thanks to a confluence of favorable factors, we are able to make an annual visit to the old homestead each year for several weeks, which has led to a tradition of a trip within a trip–we fly home, spend about a week moving from couch to couch paying our respects, then take a week to be tourists and travel somewhere I never got around to visiting while growing up , and wrap things up by cooling our heels at the parental roost for a few days.
This post is an honest and personal admission of my raw feelings about attending the temple as a woman and my budding concerns as the mother of a daughter. [Read more…]
Nor with a caveat.
There has been a lot of talk about apologies lately. First E. Oaks, channeling Fox News or possibly Clint Eastwood, claimed that the church neither seeks nor gives apologies [1], prompting a lot of discussion about what constitutes an apology, and whether or not the church should apologize to gay people for their ostracism and mistreatment throughout the years. [Read more…]
Good clean family fun. Until grandpa’s ruthlessness emerged.
Nearly from its inception, the Proclamation to the World has been a controversial document as people have different ideas about how to have a successful marriage and family when God only approves of one way [1]. At the heart of this controversy: so-called wholesome recreational activities. Just what is a wholesome recreational activity? [Read more…]
York Minster, the largest gothic cathedral in northern Europe (source: http://tinyurl.com/o3je4gm)
November’s Friend Magazine has a remarkable entry that cultivates an attitude transcending mere Toleration in favor of genuinely accepting the religious pluralism that is essential for true religious freedom to exist in democratic societies. That is, the article takes the step from Toleration, or merely tolerating the differences around us (in the case of the Friend essay, religious difference), as the lowest common denominator necessary for a free society to accepting and even appreciating people’s differences on their own terms. Such a perspective strengthens the robust and beneficial pluralism that the Church has argued before the European Court of Human Rights “has been dearly won over the centuries” and is “indissociable from a democratic society.”[1] [Read more…]
We’re grumpy, but attractive.
In September, I blogged about The Myth of Traditional Marriage, reviewing studies from Stephenie Coontz’ book Marriage, A History: How Love Conquered Marriage. As a follow up, I wanted to explore how we as Mormons can build stronger marriages.
The world is changing, and if we want to strengthen marriages, we need to deal with the reality that exists. A few things have drastically changed in the last fifty years. [Read more…]
I’ve been reflecting a lot on E. Quentin Cook’s talk called “Choose Wisely.” This was the opening talk of the Priesthood session, so I suppose that makes me not the target audience, and yet it’s clearly a talk with universal application. [1] I won’t let that stop me.
E. Cook begins by talking about the problems when we rationalize our failures to act heroically. He uses the example of Lucy not catching the ball in the Peanuts comic strips.
While always humorous, Lucy’s excuses were rationalizations; they were untrue reasons for her failure to catch the ball.
He then goes on to talk about the eternal ramifications when we rationalize our failure to prepare for our eternal goals. [Read more…]
It seems to me that one of the major challenges of the 21st century involves figuring out how to be present to other people. Technology has given us so many ways of connecting with others, but with these opportunities come some obstacles as well. Part of the value of social media is the way that it can help us keep connected regularly with distant friends, but these connections can often be fairly shallow. For that person who sat across the room from you in middle school math class, this might be okay, but with closer friendships it can feel like a hollowed-out version of something once solid. And in rare cases, social media can foster real friendships with people we’ve never met in real life. Conversely, social media and other forms of technological connection can distance us from the people with whom we are (or ought to be) present all the time, especially our families. Given Joseph Smith’s teachings about friendship as “the grand fundamental principle of Mormonism” and about the eternal potential of family relationships, I believe that figuring out how to be present to other people is a pretty powerful theological imperative. In a recent post I thought about these questions in terms of heaven; for this post, I turn to the here and now. [Read more…]
Ooh, baby.
According to the song, love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage. But when it comes to the history of marriage, pairing marriage with love is putting the cart before the horse. If we look at why people used to get married, traditionally, we’ll quickly see why marriages today are less stable. And why that may not be a terrible thing.
The phrase “traditional marriage” [1] is currently in vogue to describe opponents of gay marriage. Just what does marriage look like over time? Why do people marry and why is marriage changing so much? [Read more…]
Many of us have recently participated in the “Eternal Marriage” lesson from the Joseph Fielding Smith manual. The lesson’s final section carries the heading “As a husband and wife faithfully observe all the ordinances and principles of the gospel, their joy in marriage grows sweeter.” The paragraphs in the section, however, lean toward defining this joy negatively, in terms of avoiding divorce. This tendency can have the effect of making our divorced sisters and brothers seem “less than” those whose marriages are currently working.
This is a relatively good path in the swamp
In the comments to Russell’s missionary post, there seems to be a strong consensus potential missionaries need to learn to work hard. And I agree; missionary work demands hard work. A corollary, according to many of the comments, is that kids these days do not, in fact, learn to work hard.
That assertion I find a little more problematic. Partly, it’s because I teach Millennials professionally and, in my experience, many of them do, in fact, work hard. And partly it’s because the accusation of laziness is an evergreen one; every generation, it seems, considers the subsequent generation the laziest ever (conveniently, it seems to me, forgetting their own youthful laziness). [Read more…]
I send you as sheep among wolves. Or in this case a lone wolf among sheep.
“Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.” Shakespeare wrote that in All’s Well That Ends Well. Is being trusting a virtue or evidence of lack of discernment? Are Mormons more gullible (as is often asserted or at least implied) than the average person? [Read more…]
I had assumed that Mother’s Day was a greeting card holiday invented by Hallmark to turn filial guilt into revenue. I was surprised to discover that Mother’s Day has a history longer than Christianity! Ancients celebrated Isis (Mother of the Pharaohs), Rhea (Greek Mother of the Gods), and Cybele (The Great Mother). The worship of these ancient goddesses is similar to the reverence we show to Mary, Jesus’s mother as these Mother Goddesses are often depicted with a baby in arms. They also represent the reverence we should feel toward our own Heavenly Mother, symbolizing the care the earth provides to us all physically and the divine protection we receive. [Read more…]
In a well publicized pre-emptive move, the church issued a statement last week that women seeking tickets to the April 5 Priesthood session would be relegated to the “free speech zone,” traditionally the purview of anti-Mormon protesters. Kate Kelly, founder of the group Ordain Women, was characteristically gracious in her reply. From the article:
“We are disappointed that we weren’t granted tickets,” says Kate Kelly, one of the founders of Ordain Women. “But it is a positive step that public affairs is responding to us, indicating that one day maybe the higher authorities will be able to hear our concerns.” [Read more…]
BYU Hunger Banquet 2014, Co-hosted by The Kennedy Center for International Studies at BYU (source: http://tinyurl.com/lfz42t3)
Ku ku kachoo, indeed.
One recent afternoon, two new elders were visiting our neighborhood. There is another Mormon family up the street, and after stopping in to see them, they came by our house. For all I know, missionaries have been doing these drop ins for years. I’ve never been home during the day before, but since my husband and I are starting up a small business, we are now both home during the day until our new office is open. This was a new experience for me. [Read more…]
When I returned to my office after winter break, I found two large brown boxes (with “Joe Christensen” written on the sides) waiting for me in the mailroom. I was pretty sure I knew what they held and, sure enough, upon opening them, I saw copies of Taxing Polygamy, my (finally published!) article dealing with the difficulties that a regime of legally-recognized polygamy would present to the U.S. tax system.
And, in celebration of its finally being published, I thought I’d do a little polygamy-blogging, starting with this broad introductory post. [Read more…]
This post was submitted by MikeInWeHo, a longtime Bloggernacle participant and friend of BCC.
Since Judge Shelby’s decision, I’ve seen discussions about the history of traditionalists’ agenda against gays, suggesting that traditionalists were never anything except compassionate and nice to gays. I read it and thought, “Have I been living on another planet?” No, but there are two conflicting narratives. It’s very different from the conservation I remember:
Traditionalists in the 60s: “Homosexuals are criminal predators who recruit our children, which is why homosexuality is a crime. We must close the places they gather and jail them if they refuse psychiatric treatment for their mental illness.”
[Read more…]
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