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5 May 2012
Mormons gird for campaign
May 5, 2012
Honolulu Star Advertiser (Hawai’i)
As 20,000 Mormons streamed from the church conference center, a ragtag group of protesters stood across the street shouting that the Latter-day Saints were going to hell. Mormon families, who had gathered here for two days of speeches and spiritual guidance called General Conference, ignored the hecklers or laughed and kept walking.
This, after all, is a church accustomed to worse.
http://www.staradvertiser.com/features/20120505__Mormons_gird_for_campaign.html
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What would a Mormon president mean?
May 4, 2012
ABC 4 (Utah)
In just six months, Americans will decide whether a Mormon shall lead our country.
This represents a remarkable turn of events for a religion which once knew persecution and prosecution.
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Race, religion collide in presidential campaign
May 5, 2012
Fox News
How unthinkable it was, not so long ago, that a presidential election would pit a candidate fathered by an African against another condemned as un-Christian.
Yet here it is: Barack Obama versus Mitt Romney, an African-American and a white Mormon, representatives of two groups and that have endured oppression to carve out a place in the United States.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/05/05/race-religion-collide-in-presidential-campaign/
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How Did Mormons Grow So Fast? They Changed How They Counted
May 5, 2012
Huffington Post
If you suspected the newly released U.S. Religion Census overstated the Mormons’ growth rate, you were right. That’s because, this time around, the Utah-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints changed the way it reported its membership to the researchers.
The once-a-decade study was assembled by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies, which included self-reported data on adherents for 153 participating bodies.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/05/how-did-mormons-grow-so-f_n_1479579.html
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Race, religion collide in presidential campaign
May 5, 2012
Associated Press
How unthinkable it was, not so long ago, that a presidential election would pit a candidate fathered by an African against another condemned as un-Christian.
Yet here it is: Barack Obama versus Mitt Romney, an African-American and a white Mormon, representatives of two groups and that have endured oppression to carve out a place in the United States.
How much progress has America made against bigotry? By November, we should have some idea.
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Local Mormons committed to their faith
May 5, 2012
Akron Beacon Journal (Ohio)
Trevar Dahl spends an hour before school each morning studying the Bible with seven other teens.
“It’s the best way to start the day, and it helps us with a pretty good knowledge of scripture,” said Trevar, a 16-year-old junior at Cloverleaf High School near Lodi. “We attend classes for four years. We call it seminary.”
Seminary, or the study of religious history and scripture among high school students in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (commonly known as the Mormon church), includes courses on the Old and New Testaments, the Book of Mormon and church doctrine, covenants and history. The seminary program has been part of the Mormon tradition for 100 years and has grown from 70 students to nearly 370,000 in more than 140 countries.
http://www.ohio.com/news/local-news/local-mormons-committed-to-their-faith-1.305067
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Cult is the Wrong Word to Describe Mormonism
May 5, 2012
Caffeinated Thoughts
Many Christians through the years have designated “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints” (LDS) as a “cult.” In the past, when used by evangelicals, the term had a fairly general meaning: any religion, which professed to be Christian, but which denied certain foundational doctrines of the church: Jesus Christ and his uniqueness as the only Son of God (fully divine and fully human), the Trinitarian Godhead, and the sufficiency of the Bible as our only Scriptural source of religious Truth.
Today this presents a problem, not because the Bible has changed, but because the connotation of the word has changed. The problem with using the word “cult” now is that Mormons currently have none of the latter characteristics associated with the word cult. They are not “strange” in the ways often associated with cults (in its new definition). And they make Evangelicals look silly when they use that word. So how should Christians identify Mormonism, if not as a cult? Instead, I suggest we should use phrases like “false religion” or “false doctrines” and call their leaders “false prophets”.
http://caffeinatedthoughts.com/2012/05/cult-wrong-word-describe-mormonism/
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Volunteers from Lodi, Galt clean up parks, other public places
May 5, 2012
Lodi News-Sentinel (California)
Some 300 volunteers from Lodi and 300 more from Galt helped beautify parks and other public locations in both communities on April 28.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints helped paint, pull weeds and perform other maintenance in Lodi and Galt. The event was called Mormons Helping Hands, but in Galt, several other church members joined the Mormons, dubbing the event Love Galt.
http://www.lodinews.com/religion/article_e70e5046-f280-5af4-a217-493bf9ee39d1.html
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Their View: Reflections on Mormons and religious conscience
May 5, 2012
Las Cruces Sun-News (New Mexico)
Most people have not heard about the Mountain Meadows Massacre, which occurred in southern Utah in 1857. A wagon train of settlers from Arkansas was surrounded and besieged first by Paiute Indians fronting for local Mormons, then by the Mormons themselves. The siege ended when, under a flag of truce, a small number of Mormons entered the Arkansans’ camp, assured the Arkansans of safe passage if they disarmed, escorted them out of their camp, and let the larger body of Mormons in ambush attack and kill all adults and children older than seven. Scholars debate whether the Mormon leadership, including Brigham Young, instigated the massacre, but the Mormon Church refuses to open its records to them. So signaling one thing and doing another is no more alien to Mormons than to others.
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Race, religion collide in presidential campaign
May 5, 2012
San Francisco Chronicle (California)
How unthinkable it was, not so long ago, that a presidential election would pit a candidate fathered by an African against another condemned as un-Christian.
Yet here it is: Barack Obama versus Mitt Romney, an African-American and a white Mormon, representatives of two groups and that have endured oppression to carve out a place in the United States.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2012/05/05/national/a084435D54.DTL
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Twin boys bring Mitt Romney’s brood of grandchildren to 18 (but Mormons aren’t happy about the surrogate birth)
May 4, 2012
Daily Mail (United Kingdom)
This is the second time the couple, who are Mormons like Mitt and Ann Romney, has used a surrogate. Their son Jonathan was born in 2010 using a surrogate mother.
Surrogacy is strongly discouraged in the Mormon church, according to LDS church spokesman Michael Purdy. He said, however, that the decision is left to individual members.
An aide to the Romney campaign said Tagg spoke with the Mormon church about his family’s plans before the children were born.
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Tagg Romney has twin boys through surrogate
May 4, 2012
Politico
It’s not a rare practice for much of the country, but it could raise some eyebrows with parts of the anti-abortion movement — and some in the Mormon church.
And the handbook of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints does not rule out IVF for a married couple. It does say the church “strongly discourages surrogate motherhood.”
That single sentence, however, doesn’t explain how the church is defining surrogacy, or necessarily how it would regard this particular case.
Michael Purdy, a spokesman for the LDS Church, told the Associated Press that, while the church discourages surrogate motherhood, it leaves the decision to individual members.
A campaign official said the babies were born Friday and that Tagg Romney “made the bishops in his church aware of his family’s plans.”
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0512/75939.html
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Is being Pro-Choice Racist?
May 5, 2012
Texas GOP Vote
Most recently, I had a left wing writer in a series of exchanges accuse me of race-baiting, writing racist materials and pandering to racists. The reason? I wrote a piece making the case that Romney, even as a member of the 1%, was closer to many Americans than our President. As the Wall Street Journal James Taranto noted, “The truth is that Romney and Obama are both products of distinctively American subcultures–respectively, the Mormon Church and the academic left. The difference is that whereas the Mormons, for more than a century, have aspired to join the American mainstream, the academic left is aggressively adversarial. It’s true that there is much about Mormonism that seems odd to people of other faiths. But a contest over whose opponent is weirder is one Obama cannot possibly win.” So where is the racism in Mr. Taranto’s statement or my own thoughts which ran similar to Mr. Taranto?
http://www.texasgopvote.com/restore-families/sanctity-life/being-pro-choice-racist-004126
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Electoral College Projection: The race to 270 gives Romney the May win
May 4, 2012
Washington Times
Any state Barack Obama lost in 2008, he will lose in 2012. He will not flip any new states. So everything John McCain won will be won by Mitt Romney. The theory that Southerners will be too bigoted to vote for a Mormon is insulting and wrong. Southerners loathe liberalism, and Mr. Obama is a liberal.
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LDS Rock Music
May 5, 2012
Android Apps
There are many good, faithful members of the Mormon church who like to rock. There are those that love to just listen to good rock, and there are others that love to make good rock. This app is all about getting those two groups together. So, whether you’re a fan or an artist, or both, welcome!
Some artists are all about making music that’s all about trying to live the Gospel in difficult times. Others want to simply make good music for the world. This space is for those that want to sing to the church, as well as those that want to shine their light to Babylon.
http://android-apps.com/applications/music-audio-applications/lds-rock-music/
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