Has anyone seen this video before? It is a young entrepreneur pitching her line of modest women’s swimwear. She obviously has a financial incentive here but her arguments are provocative and sound pretty compelling to me. She cites studies that claim that the more skin women show the less the male brain tends to see them as people. Some sort on evolutionary instinct thing I would guess. Check it out:

So what do you think? Do you find her arguments persuasive? (See her business site here: http://www.reyswimwear.com/)

I rarely use this forum to complain about Mormon culture, but today I make an exception. I will keep it short and sweet. It drives me crazy that we have created a culture which assumes that men and women cannot interact on anything more than a superficial level without great risk of fornication or adultery. This attitude is manifest in a hundred ways large and small. If I were to suggest introducing the possibility of mixed gender Primary or Sunday School presidencies, the “it is improper for men and women to work together” objection would come up almost immediately. From people I work with who are not members, I see examples of mixed-gender friendships which seem entirely appropriate. While there are easily discernible limits within US culture to what degree of friendship is acceptable among married adults of different genders, my perception is that the limits within Mormon culture are noticeably more restrictive. (more…)

For the past couple months the Bloggernacle has been ablaze with a spirit of activism.  For a variety of reasons, I have kept my participation in these threads to a minimum, but I thought it might be nice to weigh in with a few considerations which seem to have either been taken for granted or side-lined from discussion.  But before I get to these considerations, I probably need to address a few caveats in order to anticipate potential reactionaries, trolls and other replies which tend to bog down rather than forward the conversation. (more…)

A little more than a month ago I came across a BBC program on the subject of fasting. You can watch the whole thing here.

If you don’t have a whole hour to watch I recommend picking up around the 36 minute mark where they start discussing intermittent fasting, or alternate day fasting. The basic concept is to alternate between fasting days and “feasting” days. A fast day consists of 400-500 calories for women or 500-600 calories for men. (You are encouraged to drink all the water you want on fast days). On the feed/feast days you eat whatever you want.

What are purported benefits of alternate day fasting? All sorts of things according to the researchers interviewed. Here are some mentioned in the documentary:

1. Weight loss. It turns out that people doing this intermittent fasting don’t normally eat double their daily recommended calories on feed days. They are more likely to eat about 110% of recommended caloric intake so there is a net calorie deficit every week and that means steady weight loss.
2. Reduced blood sugar levels. Warding off diabetes is always a good thing, right?
3. Reduced levels of triglycerides, bad cholesterol, and blood pressure. They say this is a good thing. Reportedly reduces risk of heart disease and whatnot.
4. Improved brain function. Mice on intermittent fasting remain mentally sharp far longer than the mice that were fed well daily. The theory is that humans see similar benefits. Fasting reportedly causes brains to grow new brain cells. Researchers interviewed for the piece think that this is an evolutionary survival mechanism; as we fast our brains quickly get stronger to give us better odds of wrangling up some food to stay alive. (I’ve been told that other studies indicate fasting has been shown to improve student test scores as well.)

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(Authorial Note: This post looks long, but if you ignore the appendix section, it should be a fairly quick read.  )

Women and the priesthood, wearing pants, sexism, the place of Heavenly Mother, and so forth are all major issues on the bloggernacle these days.  The common thread in each issue is whether women are equal to men in the Church.  Some people take the apparent inequality as a given, while their critics argue that these people have the wrong perspective.  Men and women are equal in the church; these folks just need to look at the issue differently.  And so the debate rages.

Generally the discussion goes round in circles because the debaters share an actually unshared assumption: the meaning of equality.  I suggest that there are three forms of equality that this discussion invokes, and since discussion partners are often using one or two different forms of equality, they end up talking past each other.  We need to fix this if we are going to move the discussion forward.

So these are the three forms: equality in terms of responsibility, acknowledgment, and theology.

Responsibility equality: Women give service.  Men lead and give service.  Or, if we count leading as a type of service, men give more kinds of service.  More than that, the priesthood has a special kind of value with no strong female equivalent.  Usually we compare priesthood with motherhood, but a more fitting comparison is fatherhood with motherhood, which leaves priesthood something extra for men, a mark of worthiness, and a special dimension for spirituality in male lives (or also in female lives via worthy men).

Recognition equality: Women get acknowledged for their hard work, but priesthood camaraderie offers a kind of appreciation among men that keeps women feeling on the outside.  We have a very appreciative culture for young men making the next priesthood office and going on missions.  Young women are far less recognized.  And sometimes this starts even in the primary, anticipating the kinds of tracks these two sexes will go on once they reach twelve.  Furthermore, the recognition adult women get for their service is often demeaning or overlooked.  This would probably be much less of a problem if there were more women in leadership roles.

Theology equality: Men and women have equal access to the celestial kingdom.  They both receive revelation.  They are (supposed to be) equal partners in the home.  In this sense, there is a fairly undeniable equality between the sexes.  However, there are also a few theological inequalities.  Some women take issue with wording in the endowment.  Heavenly Mother remains a largely mysterious figure and therefore an ambiguous role model for women.  Nevertheless, on a theological level, the sexes are largely equal.  

So what?  I hope that this discussion shows that if women are equal to men in some ways, in other ways there are stark inequalities.  Does that mean that those inequalities are wrong?  That’s a topic for another time.  But in the meantime, if we accept that these inequalities are real, we can at least know in what ways they are real. (more…)

I just read an article/post by the always interesting and intelligent Kristine Haglund over at a site called ReligionAndPolitics.org. Kristine’s post is titled “Why Mormon Men Love “Church Ball” and Are Scared of Homosexuality“. Sounded interesting. And the article is interesting. But I have some questions and quibbles with it so I figured this would be a good place to bring them up.

1. Is being kind really “coded feminine”? I see this idea passed around as if it were some self evident fact but it just isn’t. Mormonism, like many other religions, teaches men (and women) to have self discipline, bridle our passions, and be generally good and productive members of our families, communities, and overall societies. I don’t really see what is particularly feminine about that.

2. Church ball is not really all that different than pick up ball anywhere else. Most church ball happens on weekdays either before work or after weekday activities. The games are pretty similar to any pickup hoops game you might get into at the local gym or YMCA. The fact is that men at church ball tend to be significantly less likely to get into fights or start dropping F-Bombs than the guys at the local gym. But perhaps the church ball gets its reputation because expectations for Mormons are extremely high, and yet those blowups, while rare, are not completely absent in church ball.

Also, we rarely bro-hug after ball. Who wants to hug some sweaty bro?

3. I’m not sure Mormon men cry more easily than any other men. Most men love their families intensely and given the proper circumstances would get choked up discussing them. I think Mormon culture just gives men a platform and reason to publicly discuss their loved ones more often than most cultures.

4. Why is effeminate being treated as interchangeable with gay in this conversation? Aren’t there a lot of non-effeminate men who are sexually attracted to other men and a lot of effeminate men who are only sexually attracted to women? Seems to me that treating these two as interchangeable further clouds an already cloudy issue.

(Anyone remember Dana Carvey’s “Lyle, the effeminate heterosexual“? (Warning: PG-13))

5. Mostly, the dots in your post just don’t connect for me. What exactly are you saying? It seems to me that you are implying that because there is a strong fraternal aspect to Mormon culture, that makes Mormon men “scared of homosexuality”. But there are lots of groups that have similar strong fraternal aspects — the military, firefighters, police officers, male sports teams, and so on. In my experience there is nothing about Mormonism that makes Mormon men more “scared of homosexuality” than anyone else. In fact in my experience on sports teams, Mormon men tend to be a lot less mean about the subject than others.

I guess the real problem I see is there is nothing in the article that indicates that there is any significant causal relationship between being a Mormon man and being “scared of homosexuality”.

What say you all?

Blair Hodges recommended recently the writings of N.T. Wright, and so I recently picked up his latest book, Simply Jesus, from audible.com. While I have a whole list of topics I could discuss from it, today while on my commute home, I listened to a bit about John the Baptist that got me thinking.

In Matthew 11:4, John the Baptist sends his people to ask Jesus. “Are you he who comes, or should we be looking for another?” Wright suggests some interesting context to this. The cultural expectation, as we all knew, was for the Messiah to be the King of the Jews, sent from heaven to free the oppressed and to save the Jewish people. John had been thrown in jail basically for calling out that Herod did not have the right to claim he was the king of the Jews. He was unfit for the role. Now John was being oppressed and called to Jesus to step up and fill the cultural expectation of liberating savior. In response, Jesus calls for these messengers to tell John what he’s been about, blessing, healing, and raising the dead. He states this as evidence that he is the Messiah, and then asks the John not be offended by who he is in actuality. He was not the Messiah that was culturally expected. He was and is the true Messiah.

While I could talk here about what it means to be the true Messiah, and how awesome that is, that isn’t my point. My point is that John the Baptist was a Prophet of God, and he didn’t understand what the true Messiah was. He was bound by his cultural understanding.

So here are a few thoughts:

1. Evangelicals claim Mormons are not saved because we worship a different Jesus. John the Baptist worshipped a different Jesus, it could be argued. Is John the Baptist not saved?

2. Many Mormons become disaffected when the see that someone like Brigham Young could believe something as odd as Adam being God. Why would we have higher expectations for Brigham knowing who God was than we do for John the Baptist knowing who Jesus was?

3. Many Faithful Mormons cling to statements by prophets and church leaders which now sound racist or sexist or homophobic. Can we call these things out as cultural understandings of the time? How do we gain clarity on what was cultural understanding and what was truth that is just now currently out of popularity?

Truly, we see through a glass darkly.

When I first joined the church, I learned that prayer works. I learned that we could talk to God as one person talks to another and that he can and does communicate with us as well. Almost 2 years later, I went to the MTC and while there, I was taught that good LDS people say thee, thou, thine, and thy in their prayers. (Not in any sort of negative way, merely in that it was innocuously mentioned that I should use thee,thou, thine, and thy in prayer). I personally found that this detracted from my prayers. I spent too much time thinking about what I was saying and whether I was saying the right things. This took away some of my ability to listen to the spirit, and from the ability to feel any sort of closeness to God. It emphasized God’s “Otherness” and made him feel farther away. Also, it emphasized what I was saying, rather than what I was listening for.

Making matters worse, as a new member, if I ignored this prescription, as it wasn’t working for me, it felt more like something was wrong with me, or I felt guilty because I was “breaking rules”. It labeled me “heterodox” to be outside the norm. So I kept at it, even though it made me feel farther from God. Making matters worse, it bothered me enough that I stopped using sentences which required the use of “You” or “Thee” in them, and so for a while, I was limiting my capacity to pray.

Over time, I have both grown more comfortable saying thee, thou, thine, and thy, as well as more comfortable not feeling heterodox if I do not use those words in prayer, as I have come to realize this linguistic effect is meaningless. I find myself saying “We are thankful for”, rather than “we thank thee” or “thank you for” as this is how my mind apparently has resolved the issue.

Which brings me to my point, it is my opinion that using the words thee, thou, thine and thy are merely a cultural affectation, and are spiritually unnecessary. Furthermore, they can cause unnecessary struggles for those who are converts to the church, creating an unnecessary additional barrier to entry into the family of the church, and in communication with God.

I am not asking members to stop saying thee, thou, thine, and thy, as I realize they are “used to it” and so being asked to not say thee, thou, thine and thy would make them feel a lot like I felt, all those years ago, when I was asked to use thee, thou, thine, and thy. That is not what I want at all. I am asking that we leave more room for you and your not being merely some juvenile form of prayer.

That’s my Opinion. Your Mileage may vary.

The title of this post is a play on Julie’s recent post over at T&S. I have been stirring up trouble over there so I figured I’d use this unusual lapse in my blogging apathy to continue over here. [Update: Because I was mirroring the title of Julie's post in my title people seem to be jumping to wild conclusions about what this post must mean. Please read the actual post and at least my comment #2 before concluding you know what position I am taking here. The title probably would more accurately read "Tell the YW to Be Modest because of the nature of men". But that would not have been as fun so I didn't use it.]

I actually don’t disagree with everything Julie says there. But I think the headline and much of the premise is misguided.

Here is the fundamental question: If there were no sex in the world would there be any reason for modesty? (more…)

My oldest daughter Samantha just finished 8th grade and is preparing to enter high school in the fall. She is brilliant and gorgeous. She is also sharp tongued and salty. The boys she has been going to school with for years know this about her. They also know she is Mormon. For those reasons they learned early on not to mess with her. Those who have messed have had their heads handed to them enough times to teach the rest of the kids to watch their steps.

But these boys certainly don’t mind messing with the other (non-Mormon) girls. You wouldn’t believe the amount of sexual harassment that these 8th grade boys regularly foisted upon their female classmates. Sam reported that groping girls, rubbing crotches on girls (sometimes in basketball shorts and aroused), and all kinds of other sexual harassment were basically daily occurrences in her school. The most disturbing part about her tales has been how much the girls encouraged and enabled this behavior. While it was traditional for the girls to superficially complain among themselves about the boys sexually aggressive behavior it was clear that many of these girls loved the attention. In other words, there was very little “Don’t!” and “Stop!” and too much “don’t stop” from these girls. It baffled and dismayed Sam and we spent may hours analyzing and discussing the situation with her.
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D&C 89:12-13 reads:

Yea, flesh also of beasts and of the fowls of the air, I, the Lord, have ordained for the use of man with thanksgiving; nevertheless they are to be used sparingly;And it is pleasing unto me that they should not be used, only in times of winter, or of cold, or famine.

Recently I heard that the comma after “used” is a later insertion done by James E. Talmage, so this verse should actually be:

Yea, flesh also of beasts and of the fowls of the air, I, the Lord, have ordained for the use of man with thanksgiving; nevertheless they are to be used sparingly;And it is pleasing unto me that they should not be used only in times of winter, or of cold, or famine.

Is there any truth to this? I could find very few references to such a change via the usual googling but all of them are pretty questionable in terms of veracity.

Interestingly, I’d say the norm is to practice the second reading, although the scriptures currently state the first.

There was a fascinating post over at BeliefNet this week on attitudes among Mormons about women receiving the priesthood. Here is the most interesting part, quoting studies found in the book American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us by authors Robert Putnam and David Campbell:

Yet the most remarkable finding is that within Mormonism itself, there is a significant split by gender on this question. The number that looks the most extraordinary to outsiders–that only 10% of Mormon women want the priesthood–seems pretty predictable to those inside the faith. But the finding that 48% of Mormon men say they favor female LDS clergy is truly startling.

The blog author, Grant Hardy, goes on to give a long list of possible explanations for these survey results. Most of them seem fairly plausible as contributing factors at least. All of them are pretty nice to Mormon men and women I thought.

The cynic in me thinks Hardy danced around one obvious explanation. That is that 48% of men wouldn’t mind letting the ladies do more of the heavy lifting regarding clergy duties in church. In contrast, 90% of the ladies like the fact that they can be completely guilt-free when it comes to those difficult and time-consuming clergy duties.

What do you think though? Certainly there is some combination of reasons why Mormon men are nearly five times more likely to favor women receiving the priesthood and serving in clergy duties than Mormon women are to favor such a thing. But what is your guess about the primary reason for these results? Something Hardy said? The more cynical reason I mentioned? Or something else entirely?

1. White shirts are cheaper than colored shirts, and thus more universally accessible

2. White shirts are easier to clean and maintain than colored shirts (just use bleach), so last longer and are therefore cheaper. They don’t fade. (They do become threadbare, but this is different)

3. White shirts go with any tie/suit/pants/shoes/belt.

4. A clean white shirt of any type (T-shirts in the Philippines) still can have a formal look to it in the right context.

5. Gandalf was more awesome when he wore white.

6. James Dean wore a white shirt.

7. Han Solo is more awesome than Luke Skywalker and he wore white shirts.

In all seriousness, if you are trying to be pseudo-rebellious by wearing a colored shirt to church, but are still wearing a tie, you are a schmuck. I’m not saying you can’t wear a colored shirt, as I don’t really care what color your shirt is, but if you think there is some sort of anti-establishment message there, you’ve got addled brains or are 12 (Is there a difference?) Did I really say “In all seriousness”?

That is all.

In hard numbers The Church is growing at a pretty healthy pace. But how is the growth rate relative to the population of the earth? Here are some back-of-the-envelope numbers:

Number of people on earth: Approximately 6 billion
Number of “active” Mormons: Roughly 6 million (I think there are about 14 million Mormons on record so I cut that a little more than half to make things clean here)
Active Mormons as a percentage of the population: 0.1% (Thus 99.9% of humans are not active Mormons)
Age of the church: 180 years

So at a growth pace of 0.1 % of the population per 180 years we should hit 100% in just under 180,000 years. (999×180).

Yes I know these are nonsense projections. But the fact that restoration has made such a tiny dent in the population of the earth is food for thought. It seems to me that for 99%+ of the population there is no significant religious difference between living now vs living in the “Great Apostasy”.

What say you?

I remembered to bring my temple clothes to work, but I forgot to bring dress clothes. I was planning to drive straight from work to the temple for youth temple night (because I work 20 minutes from home in the direction of the temple) and now I was in a pickle. I decided to simply change into my white clothes in the car and make the short walk from the parking lot to the temple in my white dockers, white belt, white shirt, and white tie. I made it to the lobby without incident. (more…)