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29 September 2012
Personal e-mail urging Mormons to fast and pray for Romney goes national
September 28, 2012
CNN
A Utah woman unwittingly started a grassroots campaign when an e-mail she sent to her five children and a handful of friends urging a day of prayer and fasting for Mitt Romney started making the Mormon rounds.
Mona Williams, a Price, Utah, member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, wrote last Sunday evening to tell people closest to her how frustrated she is with the state of the country.
“A lot of my frustration is because I feel I don’t know what to do to really make a change. Well, this time I do,” she wrote. “I am asking you to join me and my family on Sunday Sept. 30 by fasting and praying for Mitt Romney. That he will be blessed in the debates,” the first of which is next Wednesday.
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Some Mormons nostalgic about obscurity
September 29, 2012
Salt Lake Tribune (Utah)
This rhetorical question makes this Mormon weep for the by-gone days in which Mormonism was an obscure religion practiced in earnest by wild-eyed radicals in the mountainous hinterlands, who just wanted the stuffed shirts back East to mind their own business. They weren’t interested in a cluster of wealthy and TV-ready East-Coast wardrobes using their religious heritage to push a saccharine (and caffeine-free) social and political agenda.
Anyone who asks this Mormon if he’s as good as the Romneys will get an earful at J. W. Marriott’s expense.
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/opinion/54964998-82/mormon-mitt-mormons-mormonism.html.csp
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Disciplinary hearing delayed for Mormon blogger David Twede
September 28, 2012
Washington Post
A Mormon blogger — accused of apostasy for writing critical web essays about Mormon history, temple worship and contemporary issues — has been given a reprieve, for now.
The church disciplinary council set for Sunday (Sept. 30) to decide whether to excommunicate David Twede has been postponed “due to scheduling conflicts,” Allan Pratt, Twede’s LDS stake president in Florida, said in a statement Thursday. “It will be rescheduled for a later date.”
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‘Mormon Moment’ Marked By Mischief And Meanness
September 28, 2012
WBUR (Massachusetts)
In an email this week, Michael Otterson, head of public affairs for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, summarily dismissed suggestions the church would discipline anyone for his politics or religious doubts. “However,” he wrote, “all organizations, religious and secular, must be able to define where the boundaries begin and end.”
http://cognoscenti.wbur.org/2012/09/28/mormonthink-r-b-scott
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Some Mormons plan fast for Romney to give him edge in debates
September 28, 2012
Los Angeles Times (California)
If Mitt Romney wins the presidency on Nov. 6, consider the last of those. A group of his fellow Mormons is organizing a fast Sunday so “that he will be blessed in the debates” with President Obama, which begin on Wednesday. “I know that fasting and praying brings about miracles,” reads an email reportedly sent by a fast organizer. “I also know of no power greater than our Father in Heaven.”
Fasting is nothing unusual for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The church holds one fast day a month, usually the first Sunday of the month, and asks members to donate the money they would ordinarily spend on food that day to help feed the needy. Mormons often dedicate their fasts to asking God for special blessings. An organized fast for a presidential candidate, however, is more unusual, if not unique.
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-mormons-romney-debates-fast-20120928,0,2716920.story
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No, The Mormon Church Is Not Excommunicating Romney Critics
September 28, 2012
BuzzFeed
The Mormon Church has struggled throughout its history to decide how much doctrinal antagonism it will allow in its ranks, and it has long fielded charges of anti-intellectualism from its critics. So, when LDS leaders in Orlando confronted Twede about his writings in mid-September, he joined a long line of self-fashioned reformers who have clashed with church hierarchy over the years.
But when Twede took his story to The Daily Beast, he offered a very different angle, one that no reporter could could pass up: Local church leaders, he said, were “acting as agents of HQ leadership in Salt Lake” and trying to excommunicate him for the Romney-bashing on his blog. It was a serious charge, and one that, if true, would undermine the church’s longheld claim to political neutrality — and perhaps even threaten its tax-exempt status.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/mckaycoppins/no-the-mormon-church-is-not-excommunicating-romne
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Can Mormonism Save Mitt Romney’s Campaign?
September 28, 2012
Religion Dispatches
Time magazine’s October 8 “The Mormon Identity” cover story on Mitt Romney (complete with an image of Romney as a stained glass window) brings the spotlight back to the candidate’s religion after a month of news cycles dominated by unfolding “catastrophes” in his campaign. And it’s no surprise, really. Where better to go than faith for a little warmth and inspiration in what has been a rather flat and grinding 2012 campaign?
The candidate may have done well to make faith a bigger part of his campaign storyline. Without question, his Mormonism is humanizing–it’s a deeply, originally American faith, successful against the odds, loveable in its quirks (as the South Park creators have convincingly shown), and replete with the kind of everyday magic religion should deliver. The fact that Romney has refused to tell that Mormon story about himself, aside from a few throwaway lines at the Republican National Convention delivered with a classic Romney please-don’t-punch me guardedness, has contributed immeasurably to his failure to connect with American voters. The language of shared differences is, after all, our national cultural currency.
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Lowlife Harry Reid should resign
September 29, 2012
Southern Illinoisian
Now back to the universe we inhabit. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, participating in a unilateral race to the bottom, said just that about Mitt Romney. Highlighting an Internet item, Reid said he agreed that Romney “sullied” the Mormon faith, and that, in Nevada, voters would “understand that he is not the face of Mormonism.”
That is low, even by Harry Reid, “a little birdie told me Romney paid no taxes for 10 years,” standards.
Consider the deviousness. By calling Romney a bad Mormon, Reid draws attention to Romney’s (and Reid’s) religion for the benefit of anti-Mormon bigots who may not have heard about Romney’s faith. Reid doesn’t fear such prejudices himself because a.) He was re-elected to a six-year term in 2010, b.) He hails from Nevada, which boasts a large Mormon population, and c.) Religious prejudices rarely affect House or Senate races.
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Grassroots campaign urges Mormons to fast for Romney in debates
September 29, 2012
Global Post
A Utah woman’s personal email has sparked a grassroots campaign urging Mormons to fast and pray for Mitt Romney to improve his performance in the upcoming debates.
CNN reports that Mona Williams, a member of the LDS Church from Price, Utah, started the email chain, which was originally intended for only 10 close family and friends.
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Book of Mormon Coming to Dallas
September 28, 2012
TheaterJones (Texas)
We figured the Tony-winning hit The Book of Mormon would hit Dallas sometime; the tour is already booked at some theaters around the country (it’s in the 2012-13 season in Cleveland, for example). And now we sort of know when we’ll get it: The 2013-’14 season at the AT&T Performing Arts Center’s Winspear Opera House.
ATTPAC made the announcement today. The full release is below. Until then, you’ll have to settle for this video clip from the filthy musical (it is from the creators of South Park and Avenue Q, after all) with a strong message about faith. The below clip is of Tony-nominated Andrew Rannells singing “I Believe” at the 2011 Tony Awards. You might remember Rannells when he starred at Dallas Theater Center in the musical Give It Up!, which became Lysistrata Jones on Broadway; he’s currently in the new sitcom The New Normal.
http://www.theaterjones.com/stagewhispers/20120928155158/2012-09-28/Book-of-Mormon-Coming-to-Dallas
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Theologian questions how ex-Mormon bishop’s daughter casts church in book
September 28, 2012
Washington Post
Tricia Erickson’s writing betrays a knowledge of Mormonism that is so shallow, so juvenile, that one is forced to wonder how this kind of thing is legal. I’m disappointed that a respected publisher such as Thomas Nelson (of which WestBow Press is a subsidiary) would not have exercised an ounce of professional caution, even a pinch of scholarly effort before publishing something that is so out of touch with reality that it ought to be downright embarrassing.
I have taught LDS theology and history for 40 years, 30 of those at Brigham Young University. Let me briefly explain what Mormons really do believe in regard to some of Erickson’s more “colorful” conclusions and warnings.
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Innocence of Mormons
October 8, 2012
Weekly Standard
Cartoonish, cheerfully sophomoric, and often hilarious it might be, but The Book of Mormon is far more insulting to the LDS church than The Innocence of Muslims is to Islam. Its creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone (working with Robert Lopez), have said that they were moved to write the show because they were amused by the discrepancy between how nice Mormons are and how ridiculous their religion is.
In his equanimity, Romney expressed not a thousandth of the horror at the blasphemy tossed at his faith that has characterized the Obama administration’s reception of The Innocence of Muslims. The repetition of the words “reprehensible” and “disgusting” in relation to the YouTube video by the president and secretary of state and others suggests that there was, and is, something uniquely awful about The Innocence of Muslims that demanded their outraged intercession.
The Book of Mormon demonstrates that there was, and is, nothing uniquely awful about it. It’s just a sustained assault on people whom the creators feel no need to appease–in this case, a small number of Americans toward whom Barack Obama and those like him in the American cultural elite–aggressive in their demands that minorities be respected and honored–feel no commonality and no common civic responsibility whatsoever.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/innocence-mormons_653223.html
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Guest column: Latter-day Saints put faith in Christ into regular works
September 29, 2012
Memphis Commercial Appeal (Tennessee)
Charitable giving is high on the list of priorities for Mormons. Besides donating 10 percent of one’s income in the form of tithing and paying an offering after fasting, church members donate monies for humanitarian aid and welfare relief.
Perhaps this is why Salt Lake City, the headquarters for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the nation’s fourth-largest denomination, is ranked first as the most generous city in the nation.
Members of the church take seriously the Apostle Paul’s admonition “above all things put on charity”. In fact, the motto of the Relief Society, the Latter-day Saints women’s organization, is “Charity Never Faileth”. We seek to emulate the Savior in our lives, and what better way to do so than to give unselfishly of our resources, whether our financial means or, as important, our time? By sacrificing for others, we humble ourselves and become better followers of Christ.
http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2012/sep/29/latter-day-saints-put-faith-in-christ-into-works/
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Romney Appeals To Evangelicals Through ‘Judeo-Christian’ Values
September 29, 2012
Huffington Post
Mitt Romney angered evangelicals during his first White House run in 2008 by blurring the theological lines between their faith and his Mormonism. Lurching in the other direction, he irked them again by scarcely mentioning religion at all during this year’s GOP primaries.
But Romney has finally found some middle ground, evangelical leaders say, by sidelining theology and stressing the “Judeo-Christian values” that he shares with social conservatives.
“He’s made it very clear not to gloss over the theological differences that his faith has with evangelicals,” said Tony Perkins, president of the conservative Family Research Council in Washington. “As long as he talks about the shared values of our religious traditions, I think he’s good.”
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Washington Mormons would welcome Romney, though most are Democrats
September 28, 2012
Salt Lake Tribune (Utah)
“I hope he doesn’t end up making that move ⅛to the White House⅜, but if he does, I’d welcome him with open arms,” said Corban Tillemann-Dick, 26, who works phone banks for Obama’s re-election.
In fact, if Romney wins, Tillemann-Dick hopes he might be picked to be the new president’s “home teacher,” a designated person every Mormon has in their congregation as a go-to caregiver.
“If he needed a friend to talk to or a shoulder to cry on – I think it would be a wonderful opportunity,” he said.
A Romney campaign adviser said the Republican nominee, a devout former bishop, hasn’t made any decisions about his hypothetical D.C. spiritual life. But it’s unusual in Mormonism for people to go outside their assigned ward.
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/world/54988686-68/ward-romney-mormon-president.html.csp
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Ohio State’s Conn displays irrational Mormon bigotry
September 28, 2012
Examiner
In an article published Tuesday in the Huffington Post, Steven Conn, professor of history at Ohio State University slipped from rigorous academic moorings into murky half-truths and blatant religious bashing. What began as a discussion of the newly found historic religious fragment that opens the possibility of Jesus having a wife turned quickly and illogically, into a distasteful tirade against the Mormon Church. (It should be noted that the public affairs office at Ohio State University, when asked, was very clear that Professor Conn’s views are his alone and in no way represent the position of the university. Further they said that the university has a clear policy on respect, openness and inclusion and they do not condone religious persecution in any form.)
Whether he has disdain for all religions is unclear. Perhaps the Mormon Church is the object of his current bigotry because Professor Conn, an avowed liberal, dislikes the conservative presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, the Mormon. Is it possible that this Mormon attack is simply a pretense to influence voters against the Mormon Church and, by extension, Governor Romney?
http://www.examiner.com/article/ohio-state-s-conn-displays-irrational-mormon-bigotry
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What do the Mormon Utah Compact leaders have to say about Mitt Romney’s self-deportation ideas that affects Latinos?
September 28, 2012
Tucson Citizen (Arizona)
It’s weird. You can almost hear the crickets in the air — but what do the Mormon Utah Compact leaders have to say about Mitt Romney’s self-deportation ideas that affects Latinos?
We have applauded The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS / Mormons) for their compassionate views towards the undocumented immigrants. In fact, LDS their top leadership has embraced the Utah Compact which is modeled after the Plymouth Compact.
So what happened with their own Mitt Romney?
Why haven’t any of the Utah Compact leaders spoken against Romney’s self deportation ideas?
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NOTE: This is posted for those who are interested in keeping abreast what is being said around the world about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its members. MormonVoices cannot and does not guarantee the validity or truthfulness of any information reported. The responsibility for the interpretation and use of this information lies with the reader. As all information comes from other news sources and has not been independently verified, MormonVoices cannot guarantee or be responsible for the security of links in the clipping service. MormonVoices will attempt as much as possible to exclude news articles containing strongly offensive language or which lead to offensive images, but cannot guarantee that some will not slip through.
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