As a prelude to my main point, imagine groups of earnest Utah and Idaho Mormon farmers sent to school and college for the first time in their family’s history. This particular group, you should be imagining, is bright, though intellectually inexperienced. They do very well at the small colleges springing up or gaining root in Utah and Idaho in the early 1900s and decide to attend law school. They apply to all the big shot schools: Harvard, Columbia, Penn (this is the early 1900s after all).

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It’s not everyday that NYU and Columbia see eye-to-eye.  But within a day of each other, they seem to have come to a consensus: mormons have arrived in New York, and they’re an odd bunch.  Read the Columbia article and the NYU article.

Question for those in the know: was this a coordinated effort of some kind?  The similarity of the articles and the timing seems a little too neat to be coincidental.  Just curious.

I originally started this post as a look at the new correction on the Church’s website under the "Mistakes in the News" category. It’s one of the few places where we can see official Church reaction to how the Church is portrayed around the world. This month, after over a year without an update, a new correction appeared involving polygamy. After touching on a few subjects, only to erase what I’d written, I thought I’d focus on Joseph Smith as polygamist.

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Editor’s Note: shortly after I sent around the question for Round Two, a certain Gaia burst on the scene.  We all took a breather and recommenced with Round 2.5.  Also, pinch-hitting for Claudia Bushman this round is Laurie DiPadova-Stocks.  As with the previous round, prepare yourself for some interesting, long and fun conversations.

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One topic that doesn’t seem to come up in the Bloggernacle is the virtue of physical exercise. Is it that we are all desk-bound lardies who wouldn’t dream of consuming a coffee-cream chocolate, but imagine that our expanding girths are of no consequence to God? Or is it that we simply do not equate exercise and physical fitness with religion and thus not worthy of discussion?

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To: Bloggernacle
From: Steve Evans

re:  Reaction to the Terry Schiavo case

Dear Bloggernacle,

You should be ashamed of yourself.

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Many of us who blog in the esteemed bloggernacle have profited from the incredibly low cost of a BYU education. Whether we attended ourselves and personally paid the low tuition, or a spouse or child attended. But is BYU tuition too cheap?

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We have spent some serious time on this blog discussing how unsatisfying our jobs are, how they fail to challenge us in the ways we desire or how they stand as an impediment to our other pursuits in life, such as family and church service.  My work is  difficult, especially these days, but I am happier than ever with my job.  Can we have a conversation about the things we LIKE about our chosen careers?  I’ll go first.

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This weekend, while rearranging our DVD collection, I
decided to conduct a little experiment. Just for fun, I wanted to know how many
movies we had of each rating under the MPAA. The results and follow-up
findings, while not shocking, started me down the path of, you know, thinking.

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For sale: Historicity and the Latter-day Saint Scriptures.  Missing a few chapters.  $10.00.

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I’ve just returned home from a lovely ten day southern holiday with my family.  As well as being a respite from this year’s unending Canadian snow, the vacation afforded some much appreciated time to catch up on some fiction reading.  My favourite book of the bunch was Yann Martel’s award winning novel, Life of Pi .

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At Get Religion, the best religion journalism blog on the Net, two stories on the the latest spasms in the Anglican Communion. First, Broken Communion notes how some Anglican clergy now “refuse to share Holy Communion” with their diocesan bishop. The equivalent in Mormonism, I suppose, would be a Bishop refusing to shake hands with the Stake President. You know, serious disagreement. Second, Everyone Loves Justice notes that the Episcopalians (the American branch of the Anglican Communion) have voted a one-year moratorium on the election of new bishops, the best way they could think of, it seems, to honor the Anglican request to avoid approving any “noncelibate homosexual bishops” until the Anglicans of the world can figure out where they stand on this troubling issue. Why should Mormons care?
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Last month I wrote to several friends and Bloggernacle acquaintances and began a round table discussion on women in the Church.  Over the course of several weeks we wrote each other with questions and thoughts about this ever-interesting topic, and now we’d like to post the content of those exchanges here for you.  This will be the first of three (long) installments.

Round Table participants were:

1.  Me, the gadfly of the bloggernacle;
2.  Christopher ‘Grasshopper’ Bradford, inventor of the Bloggernacle
(an Al Gore-ish claim if ever there was one);
3.  Lisa L., who puts the
Fem in Feminist Mormon Housewives;
4.  Jim Faulconer, whom we all look to for
credibility and reasoned answers;
5.  Kris Wright, up-and-coming BCCer and
Canadian;
6.  Heather Pitts from Explorations, woman, sister, and
Latter-Day Saint;
7.  Melissa Proctor, T&S super-blogger; and
8.  Claudia L. Bushman, celebrated author.

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I had a very interesting experience this week. An acquaintance of mine who is an artist asked me to pose as his model for Jesus in several scenes he is painting for the interior of a church. My first thought was: I can’t believe this is the first time such a request of me has been made, I mean the similarities are apparent. Ok, so that wasn’t really my first thought. My first thought was: what an intriguing idea. What will it feel like, if anything, for me as an imperfect mortal to pose as deity.

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I know it’s a few weeks old by now, but I found this Newsweek article very interesting.  It talks about how even though women are doing a lot of amazing things professionally, as they become mothers they find that both jobs and motherhood are both full time endeavors.  According to the article, many, many women are being driven crazy trying to do both well.

I’m not sure what can or should be done on a societal level to fix this problem.  For all I know, it may not even be much of a problem.  But if it is I am deeply skeptical that the solutions are the things suggested by the article’s author (who actually wrote a book on this same topic) like government-provided daycare and "progressive tax policies that would transfer our nation’s wealth back to the middle class".  (Just because we’re liberal Mormons here, it doesn’t mean we’re all on the left politically.)  Of course, a discussion on public policy isn’t what I intend with this post.  The thing is that my wife and I will one day have kids.  Is she doomed to be one "of the mothers [who] appear. . . to have lost nearly all sense of themselves as adult women"?  Does being Mormon offer any insights into this issue?  Maybe the Proclamation on the Family affirms that this is just the lot of women.  (I sure hope not.)

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Tennis Shoes Among the Nephites, Iron Rod key chains, Captain Moroni action figures, Seven Habits of Highly Effective Poorly Written Books… All priestcraft. All of these are objects that take what is sacred, cheapen it, and sell it to the Mormon masses. Members of the Church who take the sacred and sell it for a quick buck. If this isn’t modern-day priestcraft, what is? As McConkie defined it: "when their interest is in gaining personal popularity and financial gain." (Mormon Doctrine, 593)

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Last year around this same time, the Church announced that it would pay its part-time Church interpreters for General Conference. In the past, if you had skills with a particular language, generally you could work with the Church in the interpretation department in one of three ways:

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Happy International Women’s Day! One of my favorite holidays that no one in America celebrates…which is a shame.  I think that International Women’s Day has such potential–it’s a celebration of women without the guilt and angst associated with Mother’s day.  Plus, in my mind, because I discovered it while living in Russia, it has slightly vague socialist overtones…celebrate the women, heroes of our great progressive culture. 

So, BCC readers, as celebration of this great heroic day of progressivist good is basically a blank slate here in America, I solicit your suggestions.  How should we celebrate International Women’s Day?  (Can’t think of anything buy flowers for the women you love…Russia still does some things right…)

When I was in Vancouver getting laser eye surgery, I stole a copy of The Teaching of Buddha from my hotel room nightstand.  Surprisingly, there is little in the book regarding theft.    My previous exposure to buddhism was fairly limited: a comparative religions class at the Y, some buddhist friends growing up, and some literary references here and there.  So, I plunged into my newly-pilfered book with gusto, and highly enjoyed it.

It wasn’t long before my mormon-centric POV started to draw parallels and make associations between buddhism and mormonism.  Most of the associations were banal; many were stupid and wrong.  But there was one aspect of buddhism that particularly resisted correlation with mormonism: the Four-Fold Noble Truth.

Let me explain (standard disclaimers of ignorance apply).

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The major players at BCC have grown tired of fetching their own Sanka and herbal teas, making their own copies of Sunstone and composing their own snarky replies.  The liberal machine must roll on — but how?

We got ourselves an intern.

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A couple of posts in the bloggernacle have got me thinking about children and Mormonism. Currently at Times and Seasons, Russell Arben Fox has a beautiful post about his niece, a stillborn child. A few months ago BCC’s own Kristine Haglund Harris posted the topic "On Spiritual Education" at the same blog.

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There is one calling I secretly wish for. Prophet? Too much responsibility–and I can’t stand Larry King. Apostle? Fly more than a McKinsey consultant and no hope of retirement? Only in my nightmares. Seventy? Like playing second string on the football team. Bishop? Sobbing youth, "special" moments and an EQ full of p0rn addicts? No thanks. Mission president? Now that sounds like fun.

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You may notice a new icon on our right-hand sidebar: LDSBlogs.org is the home of the Mormon Archipelago, an affiliation of quality LDS blogs.  We’re proud to link to their central site, which has some great features.  Keep it up, guys.

I’m way behind on my life — so behind that I’m only now getting around to reading that most precious of texts, the latest issue of Sunstone.  I’m actually even more behind than that because I am going to borrow ideas from a panel discussion at last year’s Sunstone Symposium that is printed in the issue.  Holly Welker’s introduction to the panel, "Doing Things that Change Us: Mormonism as Praxis," relates a conversation between Karen Amstrong, a former Catholic nun who was writing a documentary series on Saint Paul, and a Jewish scholar Armstrong consulted, Hyam Maccoby. 

Maccoby contests the New Testament description of the Pharisees and argues that Jesus could himself have been a follower of Rabbi Hillel, a Pharisee, because Jesus taught a version of Hillel’s Golden Rule. He shares the following with Armstrong: "Some pagans came to Hillel and told him that they would convert to his faith if he could recite the whole of Jewish teaching while he stood on one leg.  So Hillel obligingly stood on one leg like a stork and said, ‘Do not do unto others as you would not have done unto you.  That is the Torah.  The rest is commentary.  Go and learn it.’"

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CNN — the Cult News Network — brings you all the latest cult news, complete with hokey icons identifying each hot topic. Their categories include all the notorious cults of our day: Satanism, Al Qaeda, Scientology, Madonna (with Kabbalah), Neo-Nazis, Waco Davidians, Jews for Jesus, and (of course) Mormons. I imagine Tom Cruise and Madonna might be interested to know they could jump from their current cults to the Mormons and still be on the CNN cult list! I’m sure Gladys Knight would make a spot on the choir for Madonna. Tom too, I suppose. Can Tom sing? Let’s see, I recall an impressive lip-synch in Risky Business and a hummed tune in Rain Man, but no real singing. Fine, he can lip-synch.
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I am a FARMS Hugh Nibley Fellowship recipient (as are other Bloggernaclers Ben and Melissa). The Nibley Fellowship, "named in honor of Hugh Nibley…provides financial aid to students enrolled in accredited PhD programs in areas of study directly related to the work and mission of the Institute, particularly work done under the name of FARMS—studies of the Book of Mormon, the Book of Abraham, the Old and New Testaments, early Christianity, ancient temples, and related subjects."

I just looked at the list of recent recipients and find their subject areas to be quite instructive:

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