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Dealing with the “gray areas” of belief

March 5, 2008 by Mike Parker

Over on By Common Consent, john f. has has started an excellent discussion on managing — or failing to manage — the “grey areas” of the gospel. Excerpt:

…I suggest that members who retain their faith/belief often do so by taking a nuanced view of Church life and policy — seeing many aspects of how culture or policy apply to real life situations as falling into a gray area that their flexible faith is able to accommodate.

By contrast, I have observed ex-believers saying that members of the Church view things as black and white and that things are really gray. But in taking this approach, I have seen some ex-believers attribute black and white type of beliefs to members of the Church that very few, if any, believing members actually hold.

We can learn from each other!

March 3, 2008 by Steven Danderson

While Latter-day Saints (I think) rightly claim that we are the “only True Church,” many of us forget that others have large amounts of truth that we can–and should–incorporate into our faith. As Joseph Smith put it, “We should gather all the good and true principles in the world and treasure them up, or we shall not come out true ‘Mormons'” [HC 5:517].

For example, there are too many Latter-day Saints who do not realize their need for a Saviour–in spite of statements from our “Standard Works,” and our General and local Authorities to that effect. There are even memos from the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles encouraging members to testify to this fact on Fast Sundays.

Restoring the Nauvoo Lodge room

March 3, 2008 by Greg Kearney

I have been thinking how better to introduce the members of the Church to the issues surrounding church history and Masonry. One of the biggest issues here is that most Latter-days Saints know next to nothing about the subject and neither do their leaders.

FAIR Conference Dates Announced

March 1, 2008 by awyatt

FAIR has announced the dates for the 2008 FAIR Conference. It will be held August 7th and 8th at South Towne Expo Center in Sandy, Utah.

This is the tenth year for the FAIR Conference, and every one gets a bit better and bigger than the year before. The speaker lineup has not been announced, but is being finalized. (FAIR does take serious suggestions for speakers and topics, by the way.)

Additional information, as it becomes available, will be on the FAIR Conference page.

Thoughts on the media and Church discipline

February 24, 2008 by Mike Parker

Yesterday I read in the Salt Lake Tribune the sad story of Peter and Mary Danzig, a Utah couple who have resigned their membership in The Church of Jesus Christ rather than face Church discipline.

The Danzigs were both volunteer members of the Orchestra at Temple Squar e, a Church-operated orchestra that is the instrumental equivalent of the Tabernacle Choir. In June 2006 the Salt Lake Tribune published a letter from Peter Danzig opposing the Church’s effort to pass a federal Constitutional amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman only. Danzig’s letter also expressed support for Jeffrey Nielsen, a BYU adjunct professor whose contract had not been renewed after he had publicly opposed the Church’s support for the amendment. In his letter Danzig accused Church leaders of exercising “intellectual tyranny” in the Nielsen case, and called Church efforts an “injustice.”

Following the publication of his letter, Peter Danzig was suspended from his position in the Orchestra at Temple Square, apparently at the behest of Church leaders. Mary Danzig later resigned; the Tribune article says she “felt unwelcome in the orchestra.” Over the next year and a half the situation apparently rose to the level of local Church discipline. Rather than face that, the Danzigs resigned their membership in December 2007.

In the wake of this tragic event, I’d like to make a few comments about Church discipline and how stories like these are portrayed in the media. [Read more…] about Thoughts on the media and Church discipline

John Sorenson rocks Olivewood

February 22, 2008 by Keller

Arriving late at a venue whose existence I was unaware of until just a week ago, I joined a standing room only crowd to listen to the pioneering Book of Mormon archaeologist speak. The atmosphere at the Olivewood bookstore in Provo was electrifying for a student of all things FARMS like myself. There was nary a saccharine, fluff-filled book to be found on any of the shelves, in contrast to the typical fare offered at Deseret Book. Art depicting scenes from the Restoration riddled the walls and was a welcomed relief to the poor quality stuff I have been subjected to from a recently publicized antagonistic website. What caught my attention most was the very enticing Neil A. Maxwell Institute reading room.

New FAIR videos on our YouTube site

February 21, 2008 by Mike Parker

We’ve recently posted some new videos to our YouTube channel, including clips from forthcoming FAIR productions, Hugh Nibley talks, and previous FAIR Conference talks.

If you haven’t seen our YouTube channel (or haven’t seen it lately), please take a look!

http://www.youtube.com/user/fairldsorg

The more ratings, comments, and subscriptions we have, the closer to the top we’ll be when someone does a genereal search for words like “Mormon”. So please leave a comment and rate them!

Better Dead than Unchaste

February 20, 2008 by awyatt

In what some undoubtedly view as a hard-hitting video on YouTube—complete with sinister music—a critic of the Church asserts that Mormons belong to a cult because we teach that “DEATH is better than any form of immorality.” (Yes, the capital letters are in the video. Perhaps the video’s producer is doing his best to channel Jerald Tanner.)

Biases everywhere….

February 16, 2008 by Steven Danderson

It appears that “Finn” may become the GOP nominee for vice president of the USA.
Such a ticket, though, would lose to the Democratic nominees–big. To some Evangelicals, those “bigoted Mormons” would be the scapegoats, since they don’t see “Finn’s” anti-Mormon cracks as the reason for the lack of LDS enthusiasm. Moreover, I imagine that these and other Evangelicals would see this loss as yet another instance of being persecuted.

Unlike militant Evangelicals who claim that Latter-day Saints lie about being persecuted, I categorically affirm that Evangelicals are also victims of persecution. As Glenn Beck might put it, “Here’s how I got there:” [Read more…] about Biases everywhere….

FAIR in Religion News Service

February 15, 2008 by Keller

Book of Mormon translation Recently Menachem Wecker contacted FAIR, at the referral of the Church’s PR department, for a reaction to a blog that has re-envisioned scenes from Church history through a critical lens. A lens that focuses on the sensational and weird under the self-justifying guise of correcting mistakes that have cropped up in Church published art. Scott Gordon, myself, and others provided Wecker with our individual takes on the revisionist blog’s artwork. Greg Smith created an illustrated wiki article that combined the contributions of FAIR members and his own to treat the subject with much more clarity than my own response to Wecker**, a portion of which is included below. First let me note that Blake Ostler and I (more Blake than me) addressed this topic on the Mormon Stories blog as well.

**Update 2/26/’08: See Greg Smith’s comment below. My original wording is in error. Greg had already had most of his article independently conceived/written to respond to general art-based criticism levied much before being aware of the art blog in Wecker’s article.