by Mike Parker on March 5th, 2008
Over on By Common Consent, john f. has has started an excellent discussion on managing — or failing to manage — the “grey areas” of the gospel. Excerpt:
…I suggest that members who retain their faith/belief often do so by taking a nuanced view of Church life and policy — seeing many aspects of how culture or policy apply to real life situations as falling into a gray area that their flexible faith is able to accommodate.
By contrast, I have observed ex-believers saying that members of the Church view things as black and white and that things are really gray. But in taking this approach, I have seen some ex-believers attribute black and white type of beliefs to members of the Church that very few, if any, believing members actually hold.
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Posted in Doctrine | 5 Comments »
by Steven Danderson on March 3rd, 2008
While Latter-day Saints (I think) rightly claim that we are the “only True Church,” many of us forget that others have large amounts of truth that we can–and should–incorporate into our faith. As Joseph Smith put it, “We should gather all the good and true principles in the world and treasure them up, or we shall not come out true ‘Mormons’” [HC 5:517].
For example, there are too many Latter-day Saints who do not realize their need for a Saviour–in spite of statements from our “Standard Works,” and our General and local Authorities to that effect. There are even memos from the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles encouraging members to testify to this fact on Fast Sundays.
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Posted in Anti-Mormon critics | 2 Comments »
by Greg Kearney on March 3rd, 2008
I have been thinking how better to introduce the members of the Church to the issues surrounding church history and Masonry. One of the biggest issues here is that most Latter-days Saints know next to nothing about the subject and neither do their leaders.
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Posted in LDS History, Masonry | 95 Comments »
by Allen Wyatt on March 1st, 2008
FAIR has announced the dates for the 2008 FAIR Conference. It will be held August 7th and 8th at South Towne Expo Center in Sandy, Utah.
This is the tenth year for the FAIR Conference, and every one gets a bit better and bigger than the year before. The speaker lineup has not been announced, but is being finalized. (FAIR does take serious suggestions for speakers and topics, by the way.)
Additional information, as it becomes available, will be on the FAIR Conference page.
Posted in News from FAIR | 5 Comments »
