Every 5th Sunday in our ward, the Young Women started a tradition where a member of the Bishopric comes in and the Youth can ask them any questions they have. By Way of Contrast, here are some example questions:

Young Women:
-Who is Heavenly Father’s Father, and why Don’t we worship him?
-Why is there Suffering in the world when there is an all loving God?

Young Men:
-If you could pet a panda, would you?
-Which is your favorite Star Wars Movie?

Is this just my ward, or is it churchwide?

Click over and read this short article by Eamonn McCann from the Belfast Telegraph.

Every now and then someone I would never expect jumps in to say the obvious in it can be very refreshing. I’m not worried that his description of baptism for the dead is light on the word “proxy.” I’m not too concerned about his describing our baptisms for the dead as happening in “batches.” Misconceptions like that are widespread and increasingly I think they are not a big deal. When it comes to the main points of his article McCann is right on the money and I was thrilled to read it. Personally, I like it even better coming from an atheist since I can imagine that he has less built in religious bias than your average Catholic or Mormon commenting on the situation.

Hat tip to my mother in law for forwarding me the link.

P.S. Blake made some related comments in this post back in Feb 2007.

I frankly find this disturbing.

President Clark, you have a problem.

So, I have noted that my typical habit of buying books and giving them away has once again depleted my inventory. So I have been shopping the internet tonight, and I started thinking about the fact that I should buy books that help people with their issues, which got me to thinking about what all the issues are that my lds and other friends are going through, and I thought I would posit to the group what the best “faithful”* books are that deal with these issues:

So what is the best book(and you can’t answer the scriptures) that deals with:
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Football season is upon us.

Woohoo!

As I have in years past I will be posting on the BYU football team this season and recapping the games. But before I kick off my own posts on the Cougs I figured I would give you some links to the best day to day BYU football resources I have found: (more…)

So I have to teach the Young Men a lesson this Sunday on choosing an Eternal Companion, and while I was going through the lesson, I noticed a sort of lacunae.

Why do we want to get married?

The only thing the manual provides is that old chestnut “Men can’t be exalted without being married”.
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Someone asked me recently why the LDS church still uses the King James Version exclusively. My answer was probably a parrot of something I read in the bloggernacle at some point in the past, but I don’t really remember where I got my current view.

My answer was to this effect:

Q1: Why do we use the KJV in the first place?

A1: Because the KJV was the Bible in widespread use at the time of the restoration. We just picked up the KJV by default because it was the Bible used by Joseph Smith and his contemporaries.

Q2: Why do we still stick to the KJV tenaciously after all these years, even to the point of disallowing other translations from use as the basis for Gospel Doctrine classes etc.?

A2: Because the Book of Mormon uses KJV language and we don’t want to do anything to the Book of Mormon language. It would be weird if we started using a plain English translation of the Bible but had a Book of Mormon that still used the KJV English. Since we are not about to “translate” the Book of Mormon into modern English, we can’t officially do it to the Bible either. I don’t think it has anything to do with the KJV being the best, or even a particularly good translation by modern standards. (more…)

Can someone give me a solid definition of “the Lord’s anointed”? Does it mean any saint? Any saint who has been to the temple? Any person who holds an assignment at church? Does it refer exclusively to the top of the church hierarchy? Something else? What say ye?

(Whoever it is, we’re not supposed to “evil speak” them — which could probably use some defining as well…)