Quick Quiz:

1. Do you believe polygamy should be legal?
2. Do you believe polygamists should be allowed to vote, own land, and hold a job?

And one last question:

       3.   Do you believe it is hypocritical and inconsistent to have different answers to (1) and (2)?

BYU (and its affiliated schools in Idaho and Hawaii) tend to get a lot of flak from Church members--some of it justified.

Many question the need and utility for Church-sponsored universities, especially considering how much is subsidized through tithing dollars. It’s a fair question to ask what purpose BYU serves and whether it is accomplishing that purpose or not.

As a BYU graduate (2001), let’s take a brief look at some of the good and bad with BYU and other Church universities.

Last month we had a typical testimony meeting, but for some reason the bishopric decided to do some enforcement on 'improper' testimonies.

One Good Man

(Comments can be left in the article itself--other LDS film articles can be found here.)

...came from my wife, after listening to Elder Richard D. Scott's talk on Saturday.

Two arguments that shouldn’t be used when discussing religion and policy…

(1) “Jesus never said anything against ______ in the Bible (or Book of Mormon).”

[Yes, another post on gay marriage…if your eyes glaze over at the very mention of the subject, you’ve been fairly warned…]

MormonMatters asked in a post last month what would happen if the Church ever “allowed” gay marriage.    This answer largely depends on how we define “allow”.  Like most issues, gay marriage policy within the Church does not have to be an ‘all-or-nothing’ proposition—let’s look at some potential ‘middle ground’…

One Man's Treasure

(Comments can be left in the article itself--other LDS film articles can be found here.)

At the recently concluded Sunstone conference, writer Holly Welker criticized the popular LDS short “Johnny Lingo” (not strictly speaking an LDS film as it has no true LDS content, but was produced by BYU in 1969)
 
(This post will assume readers are somewhat familiar with the content of the Johnny Lingo short—featuring Johnny, his future wife Mahana, and eight cows.  Summaries of the plot can be found in the linked article above…  The 2003 movie about Johnny Lingo is similar in details but not quite the same story—this article focuses on the original 1969 short)

Thomas Cathcart & Daniel Klein examine philosophy through jokes in their book “Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar”. They call it ‘philogagging’. My exploration of the ‘nacle using humor could be called religigagging.*

Geoff J. is known for his strong beliefs regarding God’s omniscience and free will (scroll through his comments on Eric’s recent post & browse the foreknowledge category at New Cool Thang).

When I read the following joke, I immediately thought of him.

" ...At first encounter you either like them or you don’t."

So yeah. I was digging through old copies of the Deseret News, and I found that. Having never eaten artichokes before, but having seen them on the Food Network recently and wondered "My heavens, who would EAT that?" I think it's a fair analogy. I personally have never tried eating a Mormon, but with a little ketchup, who knows?

MormonMatters has a post about "Doing Right For the Wrong Reason".  As a corollary, I'd like to discuss a related topic--doing the right thing for the right reason...but in the wrong way.

[One obvious problem: people disagree on what the 'right' thing is in the first place, but for today let's take the decisions made at face value...]

According to experts, the only reliable way to choose the gender of a not-yet-conceived baby is to use invitro fertilization, analyze the resulting embryos for gender, then implant the proper embryos back into the uterus.  Such procedures can cost upwards of $20,000.

I have been participating on LDS blogs for about four years now, and over that time I have changed my mind about a few things. One of those things is the compatibility of free will and God's absolute foreknowledge. I now view them as incompatible, and there is probably no turning back.

Out of Step

(Comments can be left in the article itself--other LDS film articles can be found here.)

When Jesuit missionaries first introduced Christianity to Japan in the 16th century, they found a surprisingly fertile harvest among the Japanese people, with rapid growth.

A little too much growth, perhaps...

Is it possible that Prop 8 passing was the worst thing that could have happened to the Church?

Individuals and organizations don’t always lose by being part of a losing cause, of course.  Sports teams gain great motivation from being viewed as the “underdog”, often going out of their way to play the “disrespect” card before their opponent can. (“Nobody believed in us.  No one believed we could do it…”)

Nobody Knows: The Untold Story of Black Mormons

(Comments can be left in the article itself--other LDS film articles can be found here.)

“True” and “Truth” are two of the most commonly used words within the LDS lexicon.  And yet, as with most all abstract terms, they are subject to differing interpretations.

I do not personally believe in literal omnipresence. I believe that God has a body of flesh and bones. I believe that the spirit and the body, inseparably connected, bring a fullness of joy. I believe that God is enthroned in yonder heavens. These things seem incompatable with literal omnipresence to me.