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25 August 2012
What to Expect at Church Services
August 25, 2012
If you are considering attending a local Latter-day Saint congregation, we welcome you! We appreciate you taking the time to understand our faith and our people better. Visiting our local congregations and seeing how a ward (what we call our congregations) works are key to understanding what Latter-day Saints believe and how that belief translates into our worship with and service to one another. Your visit will be reflective of Latter-day Saint worship around the world.
Please remember, however, that Sunday services are worship services. You will find an atmosphere of friendship and sociability as well as reverence. If you’d like to interview local members or leaders, or if you need photos or videos to accompany your story, please contact us.
http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/what-to-expect-at-church-services
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Humanitarian Aid and Welfare Services: A Breakdown of Donations and Resources
August 25, 2012
When the billion-dollar Teton Dam disaster struck Idaho in 1976, a force of 45,000 Latter-day Saints was deployed almost overnight to provide emergency relief. When Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, Mormon relief trucks arrived before the National Guard was even allowing relief through. Massive oil spills in South Korea in late 2007 found hundreds of volunteers handling the disaster with plans, supplies and manpower within days. The 2010 Haitian earthquake catastrophe was met immediately with 160,000 pounds of food and emergency resources, and a month later, when a devastating earthquake hit Chile, an airlift of tents, tarps, supplies and even diapers was quickly deployed.
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Mormon men as religious as women
August 25, 2012
Salt Lake Tribune (Utah)
In the general population, women go to church more regularly than men, pray more often, read scriptures more frequently and are more likely to describe themselves as “spiritual.” By any measure, women are more religious than men — except in Mormonism (and the more traditionalist wing of Judaism).
“LDS women and men have the same level of ‘religiosity,’ ” political scientist David Campbell said Saturday, while addressing more than 300 women — and a handful of men — at the Fort Douglas Officer’s Club on the University of Utah campus. “They are equally likely to describe themselves as ‘active,’ attend church, attend the temple, read the scriptures, pray … say that religion is important in their life, that they accept all church teachings, pay tithing and hold a calling.”
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/54764689-78/women-lds-mormon-church.html.csp
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Mormonism, Mockingbird and NBC
August 25, 2012
OpEdNews
Last evening’s [August 23, 2012] production of “Mormon in America” by the National Broadcasting Corporation [NBC] is a classic example of media control in our country. The production was prepared and delivered by NBC without any balance whatever. The only areas of negative contest were (1) the daughter of Jon Huntsman on camera saying she left the church because the church wanted to dictate to her about whom she could date or get interested in.
The second was an open gay who held some leadership position in the church but whom after many attempts to change his sexuality by order of the church was still an active member and gay; but should he ever become involved with another male he would have to surrender his church position altogether. The third was an actor in the New York musical “Book of Mormon” who was gay and left the church yet wishing he could still be a member. He likely discovered his sexuality while on a mission with a 24/7 male companion with whom he may have slept in the same bed with as did those of my era of mission early 1950′s and prior.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Mormonism-Mockingbird-and-by-Douglas-A-Wallace-120825-479.html
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Romney’s tithing
August 25, 2012
Salt Lake Tribune (Utah)
Mitt Romney wants voters to give him a pass on revealing the content of his tax returns because facts about his contributions to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints should remain only between him and the church. The LDS Church, after all, does not discuss the contributions of its members, even with other members, he points out.
There is just one — rather large — flaw in his reasoning. Other church members are not candidates for the office of president of the United States. Romney is.
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/opinion/54757731-82/romney-church-tax-tithing.html.csp
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LDS faith, Olympics to be big at GOP convention
August 24, 2012
Salt Lake Tribune (Utah)
Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith will be front-and-center next week, presented to millions of Americans watching as Romney accepts his party’s presidential nomination.
Romney’s biography presented on the closing night of the convention will feature speakers who have worked with Romney in his role as a lay leader in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Russ Schriefer, a strategist for the Romney campaign, said Friday.
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/sports/54757853-90/call-campaign-church-convention.html.csp
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Mormons buoyed by Romney run but church neutral
August 24, 2012
AFP
When Rudolf Hegewald left East Germany to join fellow Mormons in the US state of Utah more than five decades ago, he could only dream that a member of his faith would one day run for president.
But with Mitt Romney all but certain to receive the Republican nomination next week, Hegewald might even see one of his brethren in the White House.
Serving as a volunteer at a church welfare center in Salt Lake City, the 82-year-old retiree follows Romney’s campaign closely.
“The missionary work would be easier if you could say: ‘The President of the United States is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’,” Hegewald said, praising the “high moral principles” he says guide Mormons.
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Mormon church leader Romney became master of many keys
August 25, 2012
Charlotte Observer (North Carolina)
In the back office of his Weston, Mass., headquarters a quarter century ago, Mitt Romney, the chief Mormon authority in the Boston area, told the leader of his Spanish-speaking congregation that he would not directly pay for lawyers to help the growing number of illegal immigrants in his church.
Then he carefully instructed his subordinate on how to circumvent the Mormon church’s new hard line against such assistance and subsidize their legal aide.
“In those issues I cannot help you financially to pay for lawyers,” Romney said, according to Jose Francisco Anleu, a Guatemalan immigrant. “But what I can do is allow you to give them food assistance from the bishop’s warehouse,” a church welfare pantry. The money saved could be used to “pay lawyers.”
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/08/25/3476183/mormon-church-leader-romney-became.html
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Will Mormons respond to SB’s recall?
August 25, 2012
Contra Costa Times (California)
I wonder if we can get our Mormons back.
Really, San Bernardino hasn’t been the same since the Mormons left, and that was a long, long time ago. If only they were to return, it just might break the terrible spell of the last 150-plus years and enable the city finally to turn itself around.
You know the story, don’t you?
San Bernardino was founded in 1851 by Mormon colonists from Salt Lake City. Those good people worked hard and built a model community that thrived and prospered – for all of six years.
In 1857 they were recalled to Salt Lake City by church leader Brigham Young. Obediently, they abandoned San Bernardino in droves, selling their homes and properties at sacrificial prices. Scavenger opportunists moved in to take advantage. Almost overnight San Bernardino deteriorated into a Wild West town of the worst sort.
http://www.contracostatimes.com/california/ci_21400970/will-mormons-respond-sbs-recall
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Column: Railey on the Mormon faith under the spotlight again
August 26, 2012
Winston-Salem Journal (Oregon)
I have a few more questions about the Mormon faith, or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, questions I’ve explored ever since I visited the Mormon stronghold of Salt Lake City back in 1998. I also visited and met with several Mormons here. They’re good people.
Their history is much closer than that of mainstream Christianity. Mormons believe that in the 1820s in New York, an angel led the founder of the church, the young Joseph Smith, to a set of buried golden plates that Smith translated to The Book of Mormon, Another Testament of Jesus Christ. A central theme of the book is that Jesus visited America soon after his Resurrection. Mormons study The Book of Mormon in addition to the Bible.
Doubters skewered Smith’s stories of visions and the Mormons’ practice of polygamy. Smith said he based it on a revelation. Visions, revelations and polygamy are the stuff of many religions. But in America?
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Romney made lasting supporters with 2002 Olympics supplements deal
August 25, 2012
Los Angeles Times (California)
Much of the nutritional supplement industry is based in Utah, whose Mormon community has a long tradition of using herbal remedies and whose elected officials have helped fend off efforts to more tightly regulate the products.
Romney’s involvement with the industry began when he led Bain Capital, which invested in two nutritional supplement companies in the early 1990s. But it deepened in Salt Lake, where he defended the Nu Skin sponsorship as a controversy built over whether athletes should use supplements, which — unlike pharmaceuticals — do not require prior Food and Drug Administration approval.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-romney-olympics-20120825,0,6759582.story
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Joe Biden on Slavery vs Brigham Young on Slavery
August 25, 2012
The Moderate Voice
Wondered whether Biden’s ‘in chains’ remark that Romney camp land-heaved over- had any correspondence in Mormonism… re slaves and enslavement. Brigham Young took over as leader of Mormon church in mid and late 1800s.
This is part of Brigham Young’s 1852 speech (during immense struggle in US in which holding slaves had been turned down by Northern States. At the time Young lived in a northern state but held the idea… well, you see: about how Mormons ought see other ‘non-Mormons’, slavery, citizens, ‘mixing of the races,’ and so on. He begins by claiming that Eve was God’s first slave when she ate of the apple, and so became no longer free but a slave. Then Adam ate the apple, Young says, making him a slave too, and therefor slavery comes from God.
http://themoderatevoice.com/157150/joe-biden-on-slavery-vs-brigham-young-on-slavery/
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Scholar John G. Turner maps ‘Brigham Young’, the Mormon Moses
August 25, 2012
Cleveland Plain Dealer (Ohio)
Brigham Young, the Mormon Moses who in the mid-1840s led his flock to their Zion in Utah, was a quintessential representative of Jacksonian America. He embodied the good, the bad and the ugly: God-fearing, fiercely independent, restless, industrious, combative and utterly ruthless when challenged. John G. Turner, a professor of religious studies at George Mason University, provides an admirably balanced account of this complex man, and his little-understood and frequently reviled faith.
Young’s story, and that of his followers, is best understood within the context of two important mid-19th-century American impulses: westward expansion and evangelicalism. And, as the “Pioneer Prophet” subtitle to “Brigham Young” suggests, that’s where Turner situates him.
http://www.cleveland.com/books/index.ssf/2012/08/scholar_john_g_turner_maps_bri.html
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Utah NBC Affiliate Won’t Air New Gay Couple Comedy ‘The New Normal’
August 24, 2012
Deadline
GLAAD released a statement today about the Salt Lake City affiliate KSL-TV’s decision not to air The New Normal, and GLAAD president Herndon Graddick invited KSL CEO Jeff Simpson to meet with the group. In addition, the show’s star, Ellen Barkin, expressed her concern via Twitter, saying, “Shame on you @kslcom.” Here is GLAAD’s statement:
“Same-sex families are a beloved part of American television thanks to shows like Modern Family, Glee and Grey’s Anatomy,” said GLAAD President Herndon Graddick. “While audiences, critics and advertisers have all supported LGBT stories, KSL is demonstrating how deeply out of touch it is with the rest of the country.”
“We invite Jeff Simpson to sit down with GLAAD and local LGBT families. We know that if he would, he would see that not only are our families normal, but by citing ‘crude and rude’ content and refusing to affirm LGBT families, KSL and Mr. Simpson are sending a dangerous message to Utah. They should make that right.”
NBC’s Utah affiliate KSL-TV strikes again. The station, which is owned by the Mormon church, announced today that it won’t air the network’s new comedy series New Normal. Co-created by Ryan Murphy and Ali Adler, The New Normal stars Andrew Rannells and Justin Bartha as gay partners who are having a baby through a surrogate. “For our brand, this program simply feels inappropriate on several dimensions, especially during family viewing time,” Jeff Simpson, CEO of KSL’s parent company, Bonneville International, told local papers, including KSL sibling Deseret News. The New Normal is scheduled to air Tuesdays at 8:30 PM. Simpson cited “rude and crude” dialogue, scenes that “may be too explicit” or characterizations that “might seem offensive.” The show features provocative language mostly courtesy of the outspoken, politically incorrect character of the surrogate’s mother played by Ellen Barkin.
http://www.deadline.com/2012/08/utah-nbc-affiliate-wont-air-new-gay-couple-comedy-the-new-normal/
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