Hey folks, on Sunday I’ll be visiting Milan — hanging out with my sister who is on vacation in Italy — and I have a day-trip planned for next Sunday as well. So I’d like to do a middle-of-two-weeks edition on Wednesday to make up for missing these two Sundays….
Sunday in Outer Blogness: Delicious magic rocks edition!
The news of the Seerstone has been out for more than a week, and it has led to quite a bit of reflection and information on seerstones and church history. Also some fun stuff, like old-timey temple recommend questions and a glimpse into the future. Someone even found an old…
Sunday in Outer Blogness: Seerstone Edition!
What will the CoJCoL-dS think of next? Just a few days ago, they released pictures of the rock that Joseph Smith used along with the “Urim and Thummim” (also rocks) to “translate” the Book of Mormon: If the above makes you go “Wha…? What are you even talking about?, this…
Dare to Do Wrong: Alex Hansen’s “Their Works Shall Be in the Darkness”
What’s the fun of having a little power if you don’t abuse it? Especially if you’re a teenager. If you’ve served in one of the youth presidencies in a Mormon ward, you probably think they don’t really have the authority to shape policy in any original or interesting way, but…
The latest from the marvelous pen of Johnny Townsend!
If you like short stories and you’re interested in the lives of Mormons, you should be following the work of Johnny Townsend. Since he writes from an ex-Mormon perspective, believers often dismiss Townsend’s work as biased — or as a priori “an attack on the church” — but I think…
Sunday in Outer Blogness: Boy Scouts Edition!
Peeved about the inclusion of gay scout leaders, the CoJCL-dS is toying with dropping the Boy Scouts as a component of the church’s official youth program for American boys. (I guess it’s not good enough that they still allow discrimination against atheists and women.) The LDS Newsroom released the following…
Why Mormon Spectrum?
When my husband went through a faith transition, in the Mormon church we were each raised in, we lost friends and a sense of community. Many of the people we had developed close relationships with pulled back from us. Some of our family members struggled to navigate this unexpected change…
A Desire to Help
I have heard hundreds of members of the LDS Church, when they encounter someone who has left the church who is now critical of the church, say, “You can leave the Church, but you can’t leave it alone” or, more confrontationally, “Why can’t you leave the Church and just leave…
Jesus Repositioned
In the 1970’s for reasons yet unexplained the Mormon Church suddenly found itself under scrutiny by mainline Protestant denominations. The basic charge was that the Mormon religion is a non-Christian cult. The Mormon’s response was to reposition Jesus in the Mormon display case. There emerged a Jesus consciousness that was…
Sunday in Outer Blogness: Summer Fun Edition!
This past week we’ve celebrated two of the most favorite holidays on the exmo calendar: Pie–N-Beer Day (a.k.a. Pioneer Day) and Mass Resignation Day!! Regarding all the resignations: don’t worry, the CoJCoL-dS has an awesome plan: When asked how they planned to cope with the fact that as many as…