Dave's Mormon Inquiry

Comments and Mormonism

Nothing like riding shotgun on comments at a Mormon blog to learn that people either love us or hate us, and they're not shy about broadcasting their opinions on the subject. Thus in the recent "Commenters, can't live with 'em ..." post at Get Religion, the best example the author could come up with of the ubiquitous difficulty of managing comments on a busy website was the GR posts on Mormon media stories. Well, at least someone out there understands the challenges of Mormon blogging. My admiration and gratitude to the GR bloggers for their excellent coverage and discussion of Mormon stories in the media.

How to Get Rich Using Clever Blog Post Titles

Hey, I just write the text; some guy in editing writes the headlines. There are 435 posts from 63 LDS blogs in my Google Reader. Since I don't have 18 hours to invest at the moment, I'm going to pick the post titles I like best. Titles really matter in this business. Be clever.

The best of the batch: We kill because we care at BCC. Awesome title; okay post.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

The Bloggernacle Minute, 3-8-08

I have 196 posts from 67 LDS blogs in my Google Reader. Here are some of the posts I really liked, with a few oh-so-brief comments on each. There's a lot of good material popping up lately -- my rule of thumb is to choose only one post per Big Blog and to favor newer and smaller blogs when possible.

The Bloggernacle Minute, 3-1-08

I have 256 posts from 65 weblogs in my Google Reader for the last ten days. You'll notice I add a blog every week or two (check the "New LDS Blogs 08" list about 5 clicks down the right sidebar). Below are a few of the highlights, with a couple of extra newsworthy links thrown in.

The Bloggernacle Minute, 2-21-08

My Google Reader collected 261 posts from 64 LDS blogs over the last 9 days. Below are links to my favorites from this oversized batch of posts, taken from

The Bloggernacle Minute, 2-12-08

My Google Reader collected 139 posts from 63 LDS blogs over the last 5 days. Notable posts are highlighted below (with a few random comments added by me) from the following blogs: Adventures in Mormonism (AIM), Clean Cut, LDSSR, Mormon Wasp, 16SS, The Sunday Page, BCC, FMH, Mormon Matters, Mormon Mentality, and Segullah. If you like your highlights in audio form and have like 40 minutes to burn, check out the competition at the BCC Zeitcast. But if you're a purist with a day job and only 60 seconds to spare, read on. For full text of these posts, check out the highlights feed.

The Bloggernacle Minute, 2-7-08

127 posts dropped into my Google Reader in 3 days. Don't you people have anything else to do? When my reader queue hits triple digits, I run through it and pick about 10 posts to highlight and comment on. You can browse my list and be gone in 60 seconds. In this batch I will not select any Romney posts -- we're all a little burned out on that topic. Limit one post per blog. Featured on today's list: Clean Cut, Dwelling in Possibility, FPR, Joel Dehlin, LDS Science Review, Mormanity, The Sunday Page, BCC, Mormon Matters, and T&S.

The Bloggernacle Minute

I was offline for the weekend, so there were 131 posts in my Google Reader today (from 60 blogs, basically those listed on my sidebar). The better posts -- well, the ones I like, they may or may not be "better" -- make my Bloggernacle Highlights feed, an easy way for me (and you) to read them. The titles are posted in a list on the right sidebar, too. Below are the top ten posts, along with my short comments. You can read them and be gone in 60 seconds, or you can linger and follow the links. If I inexplicably left out your favorite post from the last 72 hours, you can bring balance back to the Force by posting a link in the comments.

A Flood of New Blogs

In the wake of Elder Ballard's "Proclamation on New Media" (I'm sure that's what later generations will call it) I have noticed a lot of new LDS blogs and bloggers. Welcome to the neighborhood, everyone. No sidebar list can possibly keep up, but I'll post the 15 blogs that presently appear on my "Newer LDS Blogs" list (right sidebar, 8 clicks down), many of which are "Ballard blogs." Anyone with a new blog that isn't on my list is welcome to post a link in the comments.

Highlights I

Having been offline for a few days, there were 196 posts to review in my Google Reader (which follows 61 B'nacle blogs). Amazing how much gets posted, isn't it? I select some for my public Bloggernacle Highlights feed; when I have nothing else to blog about, I'll pick two or three recent posts from that feed for a "highlights post" like this. I try to favor solo or newer blogs, since group blogs have a fairly large group of readers to start with. Your highlights may differ from mine, but here are a few posts from recent days that I liked:

• On Romney, the Fall, and forgiveness, a talk from Ronan at BCC.
• The saga of Werner Goering, brother of Herman Goering, LDS convert, US bomber pilot in WWII, by John M. at M-Star. This was a really fascinating post.
• A couple of posts on the Garden of Eden, the Mormon view of which has been in the news lately: Joseph Smith and the Missing Garden of Eden by Jared* at LDS Science Review, and Finding the Garden by Sam at BCC.
• Reflections on the new Joseph Smith manual, by JNS at BCC.
• Haun's Mill in Mormon Memory, by guest-blogger David G. at T&S.
• I put close to a dozen B'nacle posts talking about Elder Ballard's low-key endorsement of LDS blogging in my public highlights feed. I wonder if his next Conference talk will be on the theme of Mormonism and the New Media?

Mormons Encouraged to Use New Media

As noted by Geoff at New Cool Thang, the Newsroom at LDS.org highlighted a recent talk by Elder Ballard encouraging graduating LDS students at BYU-Hawaii to participate in online conversations about the LDS Church. Here's the actual passage from Elder Ballard's talk:

Now, to you who are graduating today, along with the other students at this wonderful university, may I ask that you join the conversation by participating on the Internet, particularly the New Media, to share the gospel and to explain in simple and clear terms the message of the Restoration. Most of you already know that if you have access to the Internet you can start a blog in minutes and begin sharing what you know to be true.

Spotlight on the Bloggernacle

The Sunstone Symposium starts Wednesday. The most interesting talks might be by Helen Whitney, the producer of the PBS series "The Mormons," including one session recounting her experience over several years putting the documentary together, and another showing footage on a section entitled "Faith and Doubt" that did not make the final cut and was not aired. Other interesting program items:

• "Inoculating the Saints: The Pros and Cons of Proactively Teaching Church Members About Difficult Issues," featuring BCC blogger Kevin Barney and frequent commenter Blake Ostler on the panel.
• "Staying in the Church After Becoming Disaffected," with John Dehlin of Mormon Stories (and Sunstone's new Executive Director) arguing for a "middle way" in Mormonism, a judicious mixture of faith and doubt.
• "How Effectively Does the Bloggernacle Represent Mormonism?", featuring Sunstone Blog's Matt Thurston (as a stand-in for ABEV's John Fowles, who couldn't make it) as moderator and a panel of four bloggers (two from T&S and one each from BCC and FMH). [Note: the audio of this session was subsequently (and generously) provided for free at this link by Sunstone.]
• There's a paper on reparations presented by Kaimi of T&S, and I saw pretty much every blogger from the Sunstone Blog on the program somewhere.

Let's talk about that Bloggernacle topic a bit.

The Busy Bloggernacle

I was offline for five days last week -- no Internet, no email, no Yahoo. How did people live like this? Anyway, when I finally accessed my Google Reader there were 100+ posts in my "Bloggernacle" queue. Granted, 90% of it is trash, but, as writer Theodore Sturgeon once said, 90% of everything is trash. It's that other 10% that makes the world turn. So what'd I miss? What happened in the Bloggernacle this week?

Shadow of the Blogs

The Spring 2007 issue of Dialogue arrived yesterday. I notice an increasing number of references to familiar LDS weblogs and bloggers in the letters and articles in this issue. The shadow of the blogs is growing longer. Just one more reason for bloggers to subscribe.

Blogger Exed

Yes, an LDS blogger was exed this week. While using labels is sometimes controversial, this was clearly a DAMU blog, not a Bloggernacle blog. It started with a short post last month here, an update followed here, then it ended with a touching narration of the final events here. Having read the recent posts of said blog, I think it's a good illustration of just how obnoxious a person has to become before formal discipline enters the picture.

Internet Mormonism: Threat or Opportunity?

The recent BCC post has shamed me into posting on a few of the articles from the new Winter 2006 issue of Dialogue. One of the reasons I subscribed, after all, was to get an additional source of good blogging material. Time to get my money's worth. The following article is posted online at the Dialogue site, so it's a good one to start with: Perserverence Amid Paradox: The Struggle of the LDS Church in Japan Today. The author, who is LDS and Japanese, is a university English prof in Japan. The article is a pointed reminder of what it is like to be a Mormon outside North America, in a country where Mormons are still considered an oddity rather than a fixture. But the issue from the article that I want to address is the troubling challenge that Internet information about Mormon history presents to LDS members in Japan and, by reasonable extension, in many other countries.

Bloggernacle as Middle Ground

J. posted about the angst of Mormon dissenters over at BCC and a mild kerfuffle ensued when DAMU visitors took exception. JDC may have revved it up a bit with "My enemies list" (an odd title for a post that supposedly tried to explain why there was really nothing to argue about). Since DMI came up in the first post, I thought I would reply and announce a couple of related blogroll changes here.

First, I eliminated the controversial "Borderlands" typelist from my sidebar. Several entries were defunct anyway. Of the three survivors, Sunstone Blog is now a full-fledged link in Group Blogs, and the other two are now in my newly rechristened "Solo Blogs" (see well down the right sidebar). Solo Blogs has B'nacle blogs, non-B' nacle LDS blogs, DAMU blogs, secular blogs, Christian blogs, even an anti-Christian blog. Like ebony and ivory, living together in perfect harmony, right there on my sidebar. It's not intended to be a comprehensive list of solo blogs, of course. Try MA for the B'nacle and Equality Time for DAMU if you want longer lists.

The Mother of All Tip Jars

See here. So now I don't feel so bad about hosting Google Ads and Amazon links. Say, have you checked out the DMI Bookstore yet? My thanks to the three people who bought Between the Testaments: From Malachi to Matthew using links from this site over the last two weeks. Sign in and take a bow. All three of you paid less than half of what I did (got mine new at the BYU Bookstore).

Mormon Blogs Get Recognized

In a recent SL Trib article about Dialogue's 40-year anniversary dinner, the current editor of Dialogue was quoted as follows about the "graying" of the Dialogue audience:

"Mormon blogs are where young people have gone," Peterson said from his home in Washington. "It's where they get their intellectual stimulation."

Well, on a good day there's some intellectual stimulation. Still, I feel bad that so many of us are wasting our time blogging around but not pitching in to keep Dialogue afloat. I felt bad enough last year to kick in for a 3-year subscription. If you feel bad too, click here to ease your pain. You can't put the Bloggernacle on your coffee table to impress the home teachers.

Brother, Can You Spare a Link?

He may be on vacation, but John at Mormon Stories ("MS") can still manage to kick up some dust, now complaining that he has been "de-listed" from the Mormon Archipelago's handy blog aggregator, which bills itself as the "Gateway to the Bloggernacle." [Disclosure: I am part of the committee that runs MA sites, including the aggregator, but was not involved in the discussion about the MS post in question, nor in the decision to temporarily "de-list" the Mormon Stories site.] Since John specifically discussed DMI in his post and invited MA-listed blogs to respond, I will do so here. I'm speaking for myself, not for anyone else. Many of the points relate to issues raised by commenters rather than by John in his original post.

Defining the Bloggernacle

The Bloggernacle is bigger than it used to be. Once upon a time there were just a handful of Mormon blogs posting and commenting on topics related to Mormonism; now there are hundreds. Once upon a time you could list every Bloggernacle site on your sidebar; now there are just too many to keep track of. LDS lists or portals like Mormon Archipelago and LDSelect work in a general sense and there's even an index of the Bloggernacle out there, but it's not like there's a recognized application process that confers official membership in the Bloggernacle.

So here's the problem: How does one talk about "the Bloggernacle" with someone who is unfamiliar with it? How would you explain to someone who is not a blogger that Times & Seasons (a website where lots of people trade online comments about Mormon topics) is in the Bloggernacle but Exmormon.org and the FAIR message boards (websites where lots of people trade online comments about Mormon topics) are not? I'll try to answer these questions below. I hope this will be a post that can be used as a link by anyone needing to explain to other Mormons what "the Bloggernacle" is.

Over At the Iron Rod

If you're looking for entertainment and can't find the latest episode of Ultimate Fighting Championship on your cable menu, you might consider hopping over to The Iron Rod to read Lou Midgley's response to Roasted Tomatoes' rebuttal to Lou Midgley's FARMS Review review of Grant Palmer's book An Insider's View of Mormon History. Midgley's post is actually fairly restrained; the punching and kicking doesn't really pick up until the commenters enter the cage. Allow me to give a blow-by-blow commentary on the match.

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

Intrepid Bloggernauts are on the road to Casper for the MHA meetings. Or maybe it's actually a clever new reality show — Survivor: Wyoming. I sense a real opportunity for MHA to boost their attendance next year. Oh, and they gave some awards when the contestants finally arrived.

A Thousand Comment Thread

All visitors are hereby invited to make one short entry in the comments to this post. I get over 6000 visits per month at this site, of which about 3000 are unique visitors as opposed to repeats. I want to know: Who are all of you? Here's your chance to say, "I was here." In a short comment to this post, please share the following: (1) What brought you here to this site; (2) what post(s) you read; (3) your religious affiliation [practicing Mormon, cultural Mormon, former Mormon, anti-Mormon, Protestant, Evangelical, Catholic, Orthodox, UU, Buddhist, Hindu, Islam, French, Scientologist, Wiccan, agnostic, or atheist]; and (4) any comments you'd like to add about yourself, this blog, or the post you read here.

I will leave the comments open until exactly 1000 comments are logged, then close it. Limit one comment per visitor.

Links to this post from other sites:

• Only 945 Comments Shy of Success! (April 18, 2006, comparing Dave to an infamous overachiever)
• Dave Slays A Thousand Commenters With The Jawbone of an Ass (April 18, 2006, a highly edited link in Notes From All Over)

Blogs as an Open Forum

At "Bloggernacle Night" last week, Nate proposed the idea that LDS blogs represent a "public space" where LDS issues can be presented and discussed, giving due credit for the general concept of a public space (where free discourse can flourish) to Habermas. I'll give a few links where one can read about that general concept, then note how I think LDS blogs fit the schema in some ways but not others. I'll sometimes use the term "open forum," which does a little better job of capturing whatever it is that LDS blogs as a group represent vis-à-vis the larger LDS community.

Free Bloggernacle Tour

For all those who attended one of the recent Miller-Eccles meetings in Southern California this weekend and are gingerly poking around the Bloggernacle, welcome! Here's a quick guided tour — just follow the links. The presenters were Nate and Kaimi of Times & Seasons and Caroline of Exponent II. Other blogs referred to by name in Kaimi's presentation include Feminist Mormon Housewives and By Common Consent (group blogs), Dave's Mormon Inquiry (right here, my solo blog), and Mormon Archipelago (not a blog; an aggregator displaying links to posts from many other Bloggernacle blogs). But wait, there's more!

Topix Hits

All of a sudden my site log is picking up hits from the Topix.net LDS channel, about ten or fifteen per day. They have apparently added blog posts to their input sources. In addition to a couple of DMI posts, I have seen posts on their feed from BCC, from Mormon Wasp, and from the Religion News Blog. Great — it's like free advertising! You might have noticed the news posts displayed on the BCC sidebar; that's the Topix.net LDS channel, configured to display on a blog. Anyone else getting hits from Topix or other news sites? Anyone have a clue what kind of algorithm they run to select which posts from a blog make their feed?

Blog Train Wreck

It was quite a spectacle yesterday. While the rest of the blogosphere was opining on the withdrawal of Harriet Miers, the Bloggernacle was transfixed with a blog train wreck: Bannergate. It was painful, but you just had to watch. It was grotesque entertainment, strangely out of place on the computer screen. The accusations happened here, here, and (most effectively) here; the groveling confessions (and one pathetic non-confession) appear in glorious and ongoing detail here. What to make of this bizarre episode? Here are a few abbreviated observations.

BT Renaissance

I'm pleased to announce that The Bloggernacle Times is back online: the www.bloggernacle.org URL now points to a spiffy new WordPress site designed by J. Stapley and his MA crew (who also join as new contributors). The format is a little more open, but expect some of the regular features you came to know and love at the old site to reappear at the new one.

Going, going, gone

An M* permablogger blogged his last earlier this week. It happens; they come, they go. To commemorate his voluntary passing, I'll appoint his highlighted article, Alternate Voices, an April 1989 General Conference talk by Elder Oaks, as my online essay of the week. The talk could be subtitled "Why the Whole Church Should Be Correlated." On the other hand, that was 1989, when GAs were really worried about these "alternate voices," whereas things have mellowed out a lot since then on both sides (except for our friends at FARMS, who still see anti-Mormons behind every tree). It's problematic to rely on dated counsel from the last century to guide current actions.

An Embarrassment of Riches

The "big box blogs" have really been hitting on all three cylinders this week. T&S rolled out a new guest blogger, who will be sharing the author's perspective on the hottest new Mormon book of the year. M* posted a "let's get to know each other" invitation, to which a couple of dozen commenters contributed wonderfully entertaining short bios. I read them all with considerable enjoyment. Good news: B'nacle visitors are bright and interesting. Dull and boring people must spend their online time somewhere else. Finally, BCC debuted its own Special Guest Blogger, who presented the Mother's Day talk that thousands of women who aren't yet (or may never be) mothers deserved to hear, but didn't. While you're there, don't miss my post A is for Agency, which spurred a long and continuing discussion with 68 comments and counting.

New Link

I notice that Dialogue added a weblog section to their links page and was kind enough to include a link to DMI — thanks! It's nice that By Common Consent caught their eye as well. For Bloggernacle trivia buffs, it's worth noting that DMI was doing the blogging thing for months and months before BCC arrived on the scene. Here is my post dated March 14, 2004 welcoming BCC to the Bloggernacle. For a short excursion into early Bloggernacle history, read this short summary by the talented folks over at T&S. And yes, I was around before T&S appeared, too — here's my post from November 20, 2003 welcoming Times & Seasons to the big show. How time flies.

The Soul of a New Machine

Once upon a time in graduate school, I read The Soul of a New Machine, by Tracy Kidder. It was an account of how Tom West, a project manager and "a good man in a storm," assembled a design team and created a new personal computer -- "the machine." The soul of that machine, of course, is a much trickier concept, and one I don't believe I really confronted when I first read the book.

Nor will I confront it now -- you'll have to go read the book yourself, which I heartily recommend. This is just dramatic prologue to introduce a new weblog, The Bloggernacle Times, a joint creation of myself, co-editor Steve Evans, and a host of talented contributors. We are, I suppose, the soul of the new weblog, but we are attempting to represent the Bloggernacle as a whole in the enterprise. Furthermore, and contrary to early reports, this is not just another group blog but hopes to be something more. Of course blogs evolve quickly so there's no telling how this project will turn out, but the initial response seems promising. And just wait until you see the second issue! It will hit your virtual newsstand on Monday Feb. 21.

The LDS Blogging Community

What is the Bloggernacle? I have tried to answer that question a time or two recently, and thought I might post my notes so other LDS bloggers could add their thoughts as well. I'll retain the Q&A format that I originally used to formulate my replies.