We talk about our Heavenly Father loving us, and our leaders say they love us, but sometimes it feels like they mean “us” in general, and not “me” in particular. We are told that almost any righteous man and woman can have a successful marriage if they are both committed, if both of them have enough faith to do everything right. [fn1] The particulars of the individuals, the quirks and preferences that make up our personalities, don’t much matter. And many couples in contented arranged marriages can testify to the viability of this idea. In the same way, any given community of saints within any arbitrarily drawn ward boundary has the potential to foster Zion within it. We don’t choose our wards, not really. We serve and worship where we are assigned. We learn to love each other in our particularity as we serve together through years. We are not just numbers, we are fellow saints who struggle and celebrate and mourn together. As we come to know each other, we develop compassion and charity. We learn to love. But we cannot allow ourselves to forget how arbitrary are those boundaries that foster these relationships. On Sunday the ward boundaries were changed throughout my stake. I’ve never experienced this before, and I was surprised at how devastated, how bereft I felt about being cut off from my ward family, the ward I have served in for the last three years,…
Category: Life in the Church
Mormon Life – Family – Personal Reflections
Missions, 15 Years Later
Today is the 15th anniversary of the end of my mission. (Note that I can’t entirely remember what I mean by that—I’m pretty sure that August 5, 1997, was my last day of proselytizing, the 6th I got on an airplane, and the 7th I arrived home. But it has been 15 years, and I’m not 100% sure.) And what does that two years mean to me, 15 years later? On one level, not a whole lot. I don’t think about it a whole lot; my days are much more likely spent occupied by the Internal Revenue Code. Or my kids. My wife. My calling. Blogging. But although its explicit significance has diminished in my life, I still feel fallout from my mission’s underlying repercussions. (Fallout in a good way, naturally.) Principal among these is that my commitment to the Church and the gospel solidified over those two years. This is not to say that, without a mission, I wouldn’t be active and involved in the Church. It is to say that those two years allowed me to build a foundation I could attach to. The subsequent 15 have allowed me to continue building that foundation, to the point where I won’t be surprised or shocked out of the Church. I’m invested in it, I believe its truth-claims, and I’m happy that way. My mission provided me with a shared experience common to many Mormons. Which is to say, even…
Dam Comments
Too much attention to those awkward stones just adds to them and makes a dam, and I seriously don’t want to have to bring out the dynamite and blow it away.
The Way We Teach Our Children Modesty
At the age of two, my daughter Axa could point out an immodest outfit in a shop window. At five, she added sleeves to the dress on the princess picture her babysitter had drawn for her. Although I don’t recall making any special effort to teach her about modesty, I was surprised and gratified that she understood the concept at such a young age. However, lately I’ve been having disquieted feelings when she brings up modesty, as I realize that something in the nuance of what I’ve taught has gone awry. And then just a few weeks ago, something happened that disturbed me. Axa (who’s now seven) was reading the Book of Mormon out loud to me. She hadn’t interjected a word until we came to this passage (from the Testimony of Joseph Smith, describing the appearance of the angel Moroni): He had on a loose robe of most exquisite whiteness. It was a whiteness beyond anything earthly I had ever seen; nor do I believe that any earthly thing could be made to appear so exceedingly white and brilliant. His hands were naked, and his arms also, a little above the wrists; so, also, were his feet naked, as were his legs, a little above the ankles. His head and neck were also bare. I could discover that he had no other clothing on but this robe, as it was open, so that I could see into his bosom.…
On Stephen Covey and Self-help Books
As most readers here no doubt know, Mormon academic and author Stephen R. Covey died earlier this week. Covey was best known for his highly popular self-help book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, which earned him fame and fortune, as well as some detractors. His death, together with the fact that my bookclub is currently reading Viktor Frankl’s influential book Man’s Search for Meaning and that I came across an old conference talk drawn from a self-help book, led me to ponder a bit about Covey’s influence and self-help books in general and the influence that these books have had on me.
Imagining Mormonism
So after several recommendations, I finally got around to reading Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities. The book examines a simple question: how do institutions or nations (the book’s focus is on nationalism) create a sense of identity in their membership or citizenry? It’s one thing to feel a sense of identity with a group whose membership one knows personally: an extended family, a village, a small company. But what about churches or corporations or countries whose members, workers, or citizens number in the millions? The more you ponder that question, the more interesting it becomes. In that light, let’s talk about the strong identity that Mormons seem to feel.
Globetrotting, Mormon-Style
One of the things almost sure to be heard in testimony meeting after someone has traveled (whether it’s across the ocean or just to the next town over) is an expression of gratitude that “the Church is the same no matter where you go.” To a certain extent, it’s true. We all sing the same hymns, although every ward congregation seems to have its particular favorites. We all read the same scriptures. Sunday meetings follow the same general format, even if the meetings are in a different order. Thanks to Correlation, Sunday School and other lesson manuals are standardized and translated into over a hundred languages, and on any given Sunday the whole worldwide Church is studying the same lesson (give or take a week or two depending on how organized the local Sunday School teacher happens to be). We’ve traveled and moved around the world quite a bit, and I’ll admit that I do appreciate the general “sameness” of Church meetings. It’s nice for my children (and for me!) to know that no matter how different the country where we live may be, when we go to Church it will feel familiar. But I also deeply relish the little differences. For example, in Italy when I arrived at Church I was greeted not with a handshake, but with kisses on both cheeks (and sometimes the top of my head too). There is nothing like being kissed thirty times in…
The Boundaries of Independence
As my children have grown and started to leave home, I find myself conflicted by the idea of Independence. Of course I want them to be independent, to go off on their own, make their own choices and even, to be frank, to require less or none of my support and effort. Its not that I’m not willing to give them support and effort, but more that just as they need to be independent, my wife and I would like fewer requirements. We, too, would like a bit more independence.
Practical Apologetics: Help, I want to go back to church
Seismic changes at the Maxwell Institute have prompted reflective blog posts on the fate of FARMS and Mormon apologetics in general (The Rise and Fall of FARMS | The Legacy of FARMS | Explosive Tensions within MSR). My view: the FARMS approach has become outdated. Mormon apologetics will become more decentralized and more social as people (both LDS and non-LDS) turn to Google and Facebook rather than the bookstore, the library, or journals to get answers to their Mormon questions. Apologetics will therefore become more personal and more practical. People still want answers. Mormon.org, blogs, and Mormon Stories are the shape of the future for apologetics: diverse, personal, interactive. [Disclaimer: I’m not endorsing the agenda of Mormon Stories, whatever it is, just noting the popularity of the format.]
Gendered Unity
Every ward or branch I’ve lived as an adult has struggled with the dilemma of how to increase a sense of unity among the Relief Society sisters. In some places, demographics have dictated a natural split between the transient (a few months to a few years) young college and graduate age students, wives, and mothers and those who live in the ward on a more permanent basis: more established families, families with grown children, and retirees. We’ve also lived in a branch split by language differences in which about half of the members spoke English as a native language, about half spoke some form of Spanish, and a few spoke other languages like Portuguese and Tagalog. In all cases, there was an obligation felt by the Relief Society presidencies to increase unity among the sisters. We tried planning enrichment meetings that would encourage cross-generational and cross-cultural interaction. Some things, like potluck dinners with recipe exchanges worked pretty well. But we couldn’t ever make it stick; women naturally segregated themselves by common interests or backgrounds, and always a few women were left out. Those lonely women were generally not actively excluded, but because there was no strong sense of inclusion, they often felt rejected and unwanted, or worse, completely anonymous. (There is something to be said for personal responsibility here: if you want to be included, you need to make an effort. But it may be that for some people that…
Taxing Churches: A Response
Oh no—somebody on the Internet is wrong while I’m on vacation! But duty calls. Recently, Ryan Cragun, a sociology professor, along with students Stephanie Yeager and Desmond Vega, argued that the government subsidizes religion by about $71 billion a year. He thinks this is wrong, and that religions should pay their fair share. I have no problem with his making this argument—tax exemption costs the government significant revenue (though his $71 billion is based on really, really poor assumptions—more on that later), and should be examined carefully and critically. But Prof. Cragun’s analysis is not the careful and critical examination that the tax treatment of churches deserves. His piece has a number of significant problems. I’m not going to address all of the problems, including the fact that he appears unaware that there is an extensive academic literature that explores the place of a tax exemption for churches,[fn1] but I am going to address a handful of his assertions. In the end, though, what bothers me most about Cragun’s piece is that he’s taken an important topic and made it into a polemic. Those who agree with him now have “facts” to bandy about, while those opposed have a specious argument they can treat as an easily-dismissed straw man, and can ignore engaging in a valuable tax policy discussion. Before I get into my specific criticisms, though, I want to make a couple points upfront. First, although I find lots…
Church Centers: Multi-use Buildings?
When we lived in La Jolla, the kids and I were members of the La Jolla YMCA. There was a child care center that would watch my little preschoolers for a couple of hours while I exercised and showered. I worked with a trainer and learned to use machines and free weights. I took aerobics, tai chi, yoga and pilates classes. My kids took swim, dance and gymnastics lessons. They went to preschool. I volunteered at the preschool, got trained and taught kids and adult yoga classes, and helped in the annual fundraising efforts that provided reduced membership and class fees for low income families like ours. That Y was great because there was a true sense of community. The early morning aerobics class had a core group of women who had been working out together for 20 years. On Thursday afternoons, the ballet class parents held a potluck dinner in the courtyard, while the children danced and played. We were all together, young and old, each with our own place and purpose. I still miss those kind and supportive people who helped me through the years of young motherhood and postpartum depression to become physically strong and confident in a way I never had been before. For many members, the YMCA was their community center. Though they came with the individual purpose of exercising or taking a class, they stayed because common friendship. They were needed, missed in their…
O My Father
“My father, thou art the guide of my youth” (Jeremiah 3:4). We turn to him for guidance, for help and counsel as we age and learn our own fallibilities. It is Father’s Day. Today, we recognize the important role that men play in loving and caring for children. Too often, I get caught up on a few words in the Proclamation on the Family and the idea that “fathers are to preside over their families.” It sounds distancing to me; that the father is somehow uninvolved in the day to day work of family and home life; he is, at best, a benevolent administrator. It makes me think of my paternal grandfather’s generation, who were not allowed to be in the hospital at the birth of their children, who were shaped by the culture of their time to not be overly affectionate; to be the authority figure in the home. There was no “My daddy is my fav’rite pal” type of dynamic possible (Children’s Songbook #211). As time went on, my grandfather, who I remember as large and strong and gruff, was able to melt somewhat, to enjoy his grandchildren more than he could his children’s childhood. Society is changing. These changed expectations are reflected in the Proclamation. Yes, it says that the father presides: it also says that husbands and fathers are to love and care for their children, “to rear [them] in love and righteousness, to provide for…
Urban Mormonism
As the sacrament was passed in the rural ward we attended today, my younger daughter looked at the deacons passing the sacrament and asked, “Why are those kids doing that?”[fn1] (My wife tells me that my older daughter noticed the same thing.) — [fn1] Just in case it’s not clear what my daughters are talking about, there is one teenage boy in our ward (but another turns 12 in a month or so!). And that’s not a significant outlier in my perhaps limited experience. So my daughters have rarely seen a bunch of 12- and 13-year-olds get up after the sacrament is blessed.
A Mormon and an Evangelical in Conversation: Idaho Falls Edition
I took the two-hour drive to Idaho Falls last night to hear Greg Johnson and Robert Millet present their friendly conversation on Mormons and Evangelicals to an audience of six or seven hundred. Johnson is an Evangelical pastor who runs the Standing Together ministry in Utah; Millet is a Professor of Ancient Scripture at BYU. Together they coauthored Bridging the Divide: The Continuing Conversation Between a Mormon and an Evangelical back in 2007. Their live presentation covers some of the same ground as the book, but also takes questions from the audience.
Single Moms and Adoption — Another Perspective
I have been fascinated by the idea of adoption for a long time. Growing up, I knew a few people who were adopted, and the idea of bringing home your baby from Korea or the Ukraine always seemed exotic to me. But my obsession really took off when I got my Patriarchal Blessing. After gushing about the children that would be born to me, a totally out-of-the-blue paragraph began with the words, “I bless the love of your family to extend to other children . . . ” Suddenly, adoption was part of my envisioned Mormon “happily-ever-after,” and I embraced the idea delightedly. When my husband and I were newly married and trying for a baby, I recall telling him that if we didn’t have a baby before we went on our field study to the Philippines the next year, we were adopting one there. Two biological children later, my compulsion to adopt has only increased, and we’re finally preparing to start the process. For various reasons, we are planning to adopt internationally, so I’ve been doing a lot of research into processes and requirements. Not surprisingly, each country has different rules for financial resources, how old the prospective parents must be, how many children can already be in the home, etc. While noting and comparing these various criteria, I came across one that surprised me: many countries allow adoptions by single women. In retrospect, I’m a little embarrassed that…
Not Ready for Naptime
Tomorrow, the Chicago Tribune is hosting the Printers Row Lit Fest.[fn1] If you like books, there are all sorts of cool things to do. What am I going to do at the festival? Two words: Justin Roberts. In my opinion, he’s the best kids’ musician out there.[fn2] This will be the third Justin Roberts and the Not Ready For Naptime Players concert that my family has seen. Plus, we’ve been to WBEZ’s So Many Ways to Tell a Story twice, and he wrote songs with the kids at both of them. But wait, you say, this is a Mormon blog. Is Justin Roberts somehow Mormon? No.[fn3] But lots (though not all) of us have kids, and our kids should listen to music, and there is a lot of really cool kids’ music out there these days. I know, if you grew up when I did, you’re mostly aware of the backlash against Barney’s repetitive and simplistic songs, or the over-synthesized Wee Sing Silly Songs, or other cloying and annoying music. Or maybe you’re of the school of thought (which I’ve heard a number of times) that asks, Why not just play the Beatles? To which I answer, sure, play the Beatles. My kids hear Miles Davis and the Beatles and Beethoven and Bruce Springsteen and the Beach Boys. They think Regina Specktor’s “Fidelity” video is the funniest thing in the world. But adult musicians are rarely silly (“Yellow Bus” is…
Forbes List Update
I’m a bit behind in putting together my lists, so I won’t analyze this too much. As I’ve done with each of the major Forbes lists of the wealthy, here is a summary of the Mormons who appear on the list of the world’s billionaires that Forbes published last month. While there is certainly a bit of churn on the overall list, the Mormons on the list have remained relatively in the same place since I last looked at them in October.
More Than Christian?
Two recent essays provide a new perspective on the never-ending discussion centered around the question, “Are Mormons Christian?” Mormons claim to be Christian, while at the same time denying divine authority and full legitimacy to all other Christian denominations. Consider the specific topic of rebaptism. Previously baptized Christians who join the LDS Church are required to be rebaptized by an LDS priesthood holder, which seems quite natural to Mormons. Baptized Mormons who later choose to join another Christian denomination are generally required to be rebaptized by that denomination because, in their eyes, Mormon baptism doesn’t count, which rather incongruously strikes most Mormons as wrong. We seem to think everyone else should accept our baptism as valid while we are free to reject anyone else’s baptism as invalid. Obviously, we haven’t adequately thought through this question of Christian identity and Mormon identity.
Internet Radio and the Church
I recently bought a couple wireless speakers so that I could listen to my music collection away from my computer, without earphones. It turns out that these speakers not only play music off my computer, though: they’ll also allow me to listen to, among other things, podcasts, Pandora, and any number of radio stations, as long as the radio station broadcasts online.
Mother’s Day, 1996
I sit, waiting for the phone to ring. I haven’t spoken to my parents since December and, though I love what I’m doing, I love them, too. But I’ve been sitting here for almost an hour. I’m not 100% sure of the time zone difference between eastern Brazil and the western United States, but I’m pretty sure they’re late. In this area, none of our members have phones. One of our member’s father has a phone, but, in order to call, I’ve promised that it won’t cost him anything. It’s a party line, something I’d heard about in the U.S. but never actually experienced. (The way it works is, 10 households share a line. Calls come to the first house in the group. That person directs the call to whomever it’s for.) I told the person at number 1 that, when she got a call she didn’t understand to put them through to me. But, after the hour, I decide to call my parents to give them a phonetic way to ask for me. It takes some doing to figure out how to call the U.S., but eventually I succeed and, 15 minutes later, I am talking to my parents. I ended up paying about $15 for the instructional call home, but it was worth it. I got to talk to my parents, then return to the missionary work I was in Brazil to do. — I spoke today with…
Adventures in Family History, part 2
One Sunday evening, several months ago, I was playing around on FamilySearch, clicking back through my father, his father, his mother (or something like that), etc. After twists and turns—twists and turns I recorded so that I could get back there again—I discovered that I have ancestors from Jersey.[fn1] No, not that Jersey, the one famous for Bruce and the MTV show. Its namesake, the one in the English Channel. Through my clicking, I learned that my great-great-great-grandmother was born in Jersey in 1838 and died in West Bountiful in 1912. For most, this probably wouldn’t be remarkably meaningful. I didn’t do the work to get back these generations, and I have absolutely no knowledge of these ancestors’ lives.[fn2] But . . . . . . but Jersey is a tax haven.[fn3] And I’m a professor of tax law, a researcher of tax law, and, frankly, pretty darn interested in most things tax. And so, learning that I’m descended from residents of what has now become a tax haven is just cool. Way cooler than pretend being descended from royalty. And now I’m curious. I’m curious about when and how the Church moved into Jersey. I’m curious what life was like in Jersey (which, I assume, wasn’t a tax haven in the 19th century). And I’m curious what the Church was like in Jersey. My relationship to Jersey is more attenuated than the relationship that Ardis suggests careful family history research…
Mahana, You Ugly!
Let me tell you a little story. Not long ago, we moved to a new ward. After a few weeks, my husband and I were invited to come early to church to meet with a member of the bishopric. We figured, of course, that he wanted to extend a calling to one or both of us. When we arrived, he asked my husband to come in and speak with him first. So I assumed that my husband was getting the calling. To my surprise, after I was ushered into the room, the bishop’s counselor extended a calling to me. He explained that it was church policy to obtain the husband’s permission before his wife even found out about the calling. When my husband remarked dubiously that this is the first time he’d ever encountered such a policy, the counselor said (somewhat defensively) that they had been instructed to do it that way by the stake president. According to him, it’s part of an ongoing effort to “help the brethren step up to their responsibility to preside in their homes.” He didn’t go into the details of how exactly being given control over whether their wives get the opportunity to serve at church helps men to be better husbands and fathers. Needless to say, I found the exchange depressing, not to mention insulting. To my later chagrin, I didn’t say a whole lot other than accepting the call, partially because I…
The Same 10 Families
With the exception of student wards, every ward or branch I’ve attended seems to rely on a few families to fill all of the major callings. We’ll call them “the same ten families.” In our Long Island branch, there were about six families that carried the load. The branch president was married to the young women’s president. The young men’s president was married to the Relief Society president. The Elder’s quorum president was married to the primary president. We weren’t president level material there: my husband was a counselor in the young men’s presidency and the gospel doctrine teacher while I was a Relief Society counselor. Even so, we were exhausted by church and looked forward to moving away just to get a break on Sundays. (It was hard to leave, and we still miss the people of our branch.) So we moved to Provo. We thought that here, in the middle of happy valley, we would be extraneous and possibly ignored. We looked forward to settling down into an anonymous calling like nursery leader. But it turns out that by purchasing a home in an area that is mostly occupied by students and renters, we got fast tracked into the same ten family status in our new ward. As soon as our records arrived, I got called to be the primary president. A year later, my husband was called to be a counselor to our new bishop. He’s over…
The Implied Statistical Report 2011
Over the past few years I’ve put together an analysis of the cumulative information in the Church’s statistical reports. Three years ago I posted The Implied Statistical Report, 2008, and last year I titled my analysis The Implied Statistical Report, 2010. Over this time I’ve tried to improve my methods and the data available, collecting data from a few different sources. This year I’ve again looked at the data and discovered something unexpected: The Church’s real growth is actually faster in the U.S. and Canada than it is in the rest of the world.
Taxing(?) City Creek Reserve, Inc.
The other day, Nate responded to many of Jana Riess’s criticisms of the City Creek mall in Salt Lake. As I read her piece, one sentence jumped out at me.
Just Say No?
We have had horrible luck while traveling with finding church services through Mormon.org. On one trip, the address it gave didn’t exist. (How do I know? After nearly an hour of looking, asking people in the shops nearby, meeting up with friends who were also looking, well, we never found it.) On another, church started an hour after Mormon.org claimed it did. So I’m gun-shy about trusting Mormon.org when I’m looking for church services. Which is why, last summer, on vacation, when my wife saw an older couple wearing missionary name-tags, we decided to confirm when and where the church met. Turns out that they weren’t assigned to that particular area.[fn1] Still, we started talking. At one point, the husband mentioned something he’d been asked to do, and said, “You don’t say no to a Seventy.” Let me interrupt myself right here to emphasize that it was a throw-away line. They had been asked to report on establishing some program or committee or something. He was not implying that, if a Seventy asked him to do something immoral or illegal or even questionable, he would mindlessly obey. I assume that, if pressed, he would admit that he would say no in that situation, except that he couldn’t imagine that situation actually happening. But we were in a pleasant social situation, he was a pleasant missionary, and there was no point in pressing him on a laugh-line. I’d been thinking about…
Mormonism: A religion of the head or of the heart?
That question is not as straightforward as you might think. Garry Wills’ Head and Heart: American Christianities (Penguin Press, 2007) reviews these two different approaches and uses them to structure his history of Christianity in America. It is an effective format that helps the reader follow developments, in contrast to most histories of religion in America which are often overloaded with doctrinal and denominational details that have little interest for most contemporary readers.
Adventures in Family History, part 1
Sunday night, I was at a meeting, the intent of which was to help us each get a name to take through the temple. Bandwidth problems significantly detracted from our ability to do so, but, as I was playing on FamilySearch, I discovered something incredible: I’m descended from royalty! Don’t believe me? Check it out: See? Proof irrefutable. Mrs. Joan Brownson, my great-great-great-etc.-grandmother was the daughter of the King and Queen of England.[fn1] Except that it didn’t feel quite right. So I dug a little deeper. Under “Parents and Siblings,” I saw this: So it turns out I’m doubly awesome. Not only am I descended from Edward III King of England and Philippa Queen of England, but my particular ancestor was born almost 200 years after her mother died![fn2] — [fn1] It does, however, bring up a skeleton in my ancestral closet. It appears, based on somebody’s genealogical work, that Richard Bronson married his mother. Because his wife and mother not only have the same name, but the same dates of birth and death. So maybe that kind of relationship undoes the coolness of being descended from royalty.[fn1.1] …..[fn1.1] Yes, I’m being sarcastic; I know[fn1.1.1] that he didn’t marry his mother. ……….[fn1.1.1] Okay, because I only discovered these names tonight, I guess I don’t technically know he didn’t. But I’m pretty confidant he didn’t, at any rate. [fn2] I’m going to put the only serious part of this post in a…
