Dave's Mormon Inquiry

Newsroom on the Sidebar

While poking around the LDS Newsroom yesterday I discovered they now have an RSS feed, which I promptly loaded into my right sidebar (and anyone else can easily do so too). Any other nifty features that any readers have stumbled on lately at LDS.org or at the Newsroom? And as long as I'm being experimental, I'm going to try embedding (love that term) one of the Newsroom videos, an excerpt from Elder Ballard's "New Media" talk at BYU-H a few months ago:

Monster in the Mirror

There are 467 posts from 63 blogs in my Google Reader, with three new LDS blogs added in the last cycle: Keep-A-Pitchinin (by Ardis from T&S), The Mormon Organon (by a BYU biology prof), and Lehi's Library (by some guy named James). Below is my favorite post of the week and a few other notable posts.

My favorite and post of the week was Mormons as Monsters by Natalie at BCC. "Imagine my horror when [my students] decided they wanted to write on Mormons as examples of contemporary monsters." Not what we like to hear from the up and coming generation. Natalie notes, with admirable understatement, that this "indicates to me that as a church we are still failing to win the PR battle," and suggests a more open and public treatment of troubling historical issues as a partial remedy. I suppose the student opinions also indicate something about the students, the power of popular culture, and the ubiquity of scapegoating. Or projection. Or the Other. Or whatever it is that makes people see groups they regard as being different somehow equivalently being undesirable, detestable, or simply evil. Anyway, the post is a nice reminder about how some people still view us Mormons.

Intelligent Design: Coming to a Theater Near You

Get Religion has a nice post on the new documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. It stars Ben Stein, the face you instantly associate with the following phrase: "Bueller? Bueller?" The point of GR's post is that the media is largely ignoring the documentary despite a strong showing at the box office — apparently because the message of the documentary doesn't resonate with the left-leaning media, whereas any stupid thing Michael Moore or Al Gore puts out gets instant coverage and even critical acclaim. I'm no fan of ID, but I think rabid evolutionists that want to shut down discussion of alternative ideas don't deserve the deference they get from the media. Anyone seen this movie yet?

MSM Meets the FLDS

I confess — for me, the most interesting reading in the Bloggernacle this week has been the steady stream of mainstream media articles popping up in my FLDS News sidebar, as the MSM struggles both to get the facts (no small feat) and to figure out the story (which, honestly, will take years). In coming years there will be a stream of books on this whole bizarre episode, and if Krakauer doesn't write a sequel to Under the Banner of Heaven called Under the Texan Sun he will have missed a fine opportunity.

Anyway, here are a few links to ponder:

Back From the Brink

"Study says near extinction threatened people 70,000 years ago" at Yahoo News. Apparently nasty African droughts pushed the taxed human population down to about 2000 struggling souls. So were God and His angels on high thinking, "Get it together people, or we're going to have to send down five billion spirits as cats?" Or was this all just a part of the Plan? Makes me want to go dig up The Seven Daughters of Eve from my backroom bookshelf and read it.

ACLU Joins the Debate and FLDS Media Updates

The judge's ruling to let Texas retain custody of 416 children has raised the stakes in this legal contest and also raised media interest. Now the ACLU of Texas has issued a statement in response to the massive custody hearing in San Angelo. It's not clear whether an ACLU attorney will choose to represent any party in the case, but this sort of statement will force the mainstream media to avoid the condescending tone that some stories have taken and instead look at the case and the snowballing issues more carefully. Here are a couple of quotes from the ACLU of Texas statement:

• "While we acknowledge that Judge Walthers' task may be unprecedented in Texas judicial history, we question whether the current proceedings adequately protect the fundamental rights of the mothers and children of the FLDS," the Executive Director of the ACLU of Texas is quoted as saying.
• "[W]e are concerned that government may not be complying with the Constitution or the laws of Texas in the execution of its mandate, from how the raids were conducted to whether the current process protects basic rights," said the Legal Director of the ACLU of Texas, who observed the hearing in San Angelo.

Here are other recent mainstream media stories, which I'll update putting the most recent story at the top:

Bloggernacle Minute, 4-19-08, highlighting ZD, WoM, and BCC

The Bloggernacle OD'd on FLDS this week (see DMI, T&S, M&A, FMH, MoMent, MoMatt, Mormanity, and even 16SS), so I'll skip those posts in my comments below on my personal favorites from the 225 posts in 60 blogs in my Google Reader.

The End of a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day in Texas

At least if you're an FLDS kid (named Alexander or not). The judge in Texas has issued a ruling giving CPS everything it wanted — basically temporary custody of every FLDS kid in the county and DNA samples from both FLDS children and adults. See Sect's Children to Stay in State Custody for Now at the NY Times. And: Polygamous-sect children ordered to stay in Texas custody at AP. Here's the paragraph from the AP story summarizing the judge's ruling:

State District Judge Barbara Walther heard 21 hours of testimony over two days before ruling that the children would be kept in custody while the state continues to investigate allegations of abuse stemming from the teachings of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Friday Media Links to FLDS

Media liveblogging: Live from the courthouse, Day 2. With court hearings resuming in Eldorado, Texas at 9:30 a.m. this morning, it's the big story of the day — except, of course, for the visit to America of the leader of that billion-member cult whose priests have committed actual abuse against thousands of actual children [as opposed to hypothetical abuse of hypothetical children, the FLDS scenario]. It's obvious the Catholicism of the parents indoctrinated them to place excessive trust in Catholic priests, which set their kids up to become sexual victims. So, following Texas CPS reasoning [see this story], Catholic children should be removed from Catholic homes. Right?

Here are links to Friday's media stories:

Media Links to the FLDS Story

Update #3: Here's a running update of Thursday's court proceedings from San Angelo, Texas, and reports from a media liveblogger. In addition, I put two newsfeeds with FLDS stories in the far sidebar (from Google News and from Topix) so y'all can follow the breaking news.

Notable mainstream media stories, most recent at the top:

• Children of the Cult by Rod Dreher, asking some tough questions.
• "Polygamist sect hearing in Texas descends into farce" at AP. Unless Texas has been holding your kid for two weeks, then it's a tragedy.
• "Texas custody hearings under way" at the BBC.
• "When the Polygamists Came to Town" at Time.
• "Chaotic Hearing in Polygamist Case" at NY Times.

FLDS, Remember the F

Working together, Texas and the FLDS have managed to create a major news event that makes everyone look bad. And the worst part is that the mainstream media can't get enough of the story, which has been getting almost daily coverage in places like the little Yahoo newsbox and my local newspaper. The RLDS changed their name ... could the FLDS maybe do the same? I'd like to suggest "We Are Not The Mormon Church" as an option. How about the "Sorry We Moved to Texas Church." Or maybe the "If We All Become Baptists, Will You Give Us Our Children Back Church." There are endless possibilities.

The Bloggernacle Minute, 4-10-08

My Google Reader shows 323 posts from 60 blogs (I pared the list down a bit), swelled perhaps by Conference blogging. That's about 45 posts a day. Wow. I'm going to change the format to commenting on just three or four posts I really like, with maybe a half dozen extras listed by link alone. Featured this week for comment are posts from HI4LDS, Mormon Insights, and T&S.

Death and Mormonism

I finally dragged myself through to the end of The Mormon Culture of Salvation: Force, Grace and Glory (2000) by Douglas Davies, an English scholar of Mormonism. Odd subtitle, as there was precious little discussion of force, grace, or glory in the book. The author's focus was on Mormonism as a religious system providing an assurance of death transcendence to believers, which didn't turn out as downbeat as one might expect. The last two chapters (weighing Mormonism as a possible world religion) were fairly accessible, but the first six were pretty tough going. An eclectic mix of religious studies and sociology of religion terminology and "models" makes the book feel more like a collection of essays than a book.

Charlton Heston Slips Away

While everyone was watching and blogging General Conference over the weekend, Charlton Heston quietly slipped away on Saturday. Seems like someone around here ought to put up a post about it. Get Religion has some nice thoughts with reflections on the religious aspects of Charlton Heston's public persona. Many will remember him as Moses, but I'll stick with his role as Henry Hooker, taking over the screen for five minutes toward the end of Tombstone. The bad guys were happy to shoot up the Earp brothers, but they wouldn't mess with the big guy. We're in debt to you, Mr. Heston.

And the New Apostle Is ... Elder D. Todd Christofferson

Update: The new apostle is Elder D. Todd Christofferson, who previously served as one of the Presidents of the Seventy. See this biographical sketch for his personal and professional background; another one here. The "D" is for David. Professionally, he worked as an attorney. That's two attorneys in a row called into the Quorum of the Twelve.

Some of his talks and articles:

• "A Sense of the Sacred" (CES fireside, 2004)
• "Let Us Be Men" (Conference, 2006)
• "When Thou Art Converted" (Conference, 2006)
• "Justification and Sanctification" (Ensign, 2001)
• "Becoming a Witness of Christ" (Ensign, 2008)

The Bloggernacle Minute, 4-3-08

My Google Reader shows 389 posts from 69 blogs. I'm just going to go blog by blog, top to bottom, and pick the Sweet Sixteen posts of the last two weeks (where does the time go?). You'll have to select your own Final Four.

Coming Soon: Emma Smith

An interesting article at BYU NewsNet talks about the LDS Motion Picture Studio (fka the BYU Film Studio). That's where a lot of scenes for LDS films get shot. It's in Provo, down by the Provo River — the camouflaged entrance is right next to the Taco Time near University Parkway, or at least it used to be. Anyway, the article states that the new LDS film Emma Smith: My Story will be released April 11, 2008. I have a hard time believing they will actually tell Emma's story, but we'll have to wait and see.

More books on Reed Smoot

I just read through the careful transcription (posted at the Juvenile Transcriptor) of a recent presentation by the authors of two recent books on the Smoot hearings. The Smoot hearings are getting some historical attention lately — I suspect Kathleen Flake's book gets some of the credit for this.

And JI deserves kudos for posting other recent transcriptions as well: a Robert Millet presentation at a book signing event talking about his new book Bridging The Divide, The Continuing Conversation Between a Mormon and an Evangelical, and a Richard Bushman presentation given at Weber State entitled "Rough Stone Rolling and the Intellectual Prospects for Mormonism." It's great that presentations like these can be made available to a wider interested audience.

Where Are They Now?

From Wednesday's Deseret News, on George P. Lee, formerly an LDS Seventy: "Prosecutors in southern Utah have dismissed criminal charges against an excommunicated general authority of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints." See full story here.

The Bloggernacle Minute, 3-19-08

I'm looking at 336 posts from 70 blogs in my Google Reader (the wages of procrastination). Here are some of the more interesting posts I found in a quick tour of a third of a thousand B'nacle posts from the last ten days.