June 2004

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Very cool. A few weeks ago the Church added a new resource for the auxilary groups, Serving In The Church including the interesting Military Relations Page.

However, the Church added (today I believe) the very cool Church Publications in Compressed Audio Format. I believe by “Compressed Audio” they mean mp3. The page includes links to mp3 downloads for the Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants, the last three General Conferences (sadly still sans the Priesthood sessions), Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Heber J. Grant, Church music, and the three Church Magazines for the year’s past issues(!). Now who says the iPod wasn’t divinely inspired to help spread the word? (The Church’s front page has a picture of earphone that look suspiciously like those from the iPod)

And those with PDAs can rest assured that the Church has also updated its page of resources for handhelds.

Oh. Kim already noticed this stuff. Oh well, maybe it was yesterday then, work has been crazy. Enjoy.

UPDATE: My apologies to dp.

If anyone is interested, I have a few more invites. Preference to those who I know or are on my blogroll. Regardless, feel free to email me.

Much ado was made a few weeks ago when President Bush gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom (the civilian equivalent to the Medal of Honor - but still not as cool) to the Pope. Well, last night it was announced that President Gordon B. Hinckley will be honored with the award among several others.

President Bush’s statement included the other honorees but had this about President Hinckley:

Gordon B. Hinckley has been President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints since 1995, and has served in church leadership since the 1930s. In those capacities, he has inspired millions and has led efforts to improve humanitarian aid, disaster relief, and education funding across the globe.

President Hinckley issued this reponse:

“I will be deeply honored to receive this prestigious award from the President of the United States. I am profoundly grateful. In a larger sense, it recognizes and honors the Church which has given me so many opportunities and whose interests I have tried to serve.

“To the Church, to my associates, and to our people everywhere I extend my gratitude and with each of you share the honor of this recognition.”

The ceremony for all of this years recipients (except the Pope, of course) will be at the White House this Wednesday - President Hinckley’s birthday. Congratulations!

No doubt many have heard the hype for the one of the most likely sleepers for the summer “Napoleon Dynamite” (if a movie is predicted to be a “sleeper hit” doesn’t that mean it wasn’t a “sleeper”?). Perhaps one of the true outbreak LDS films - in the sense that it was made mostly by Mormons - it has already garnered high praise at the Sundance festival and from critics.

While I would never consider MTV a worthy judge of pop culture, I can’t help but like what senior-hipster Kurt Loder had to say in his MTV review of Napoleon Dynamite:

“Napoleon Dynamite” is a high-school comedy with no gross-outs, no boozing, no sex, no drugs, not even any rock and roll, really. And it’s hilarious. . .

The radiant sweetness of “Napoleon Dynamite” — its absence of cynicism and ridicule and de rigueur profanity — may have something to do with the fact that the people who made it are mostly Mormons: First-time feature director Jared Hess (who cowrote the script with his wife, Jerusha), natural-born-star Jon Heder (who gives a one-of-a-kind wonderful performance as Napoleon) and Aaron Ruell, who plays the limply lovable Kip Dynamite, were all classmates at the Mormon-run Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. Whether or not the film’s becoming reticence — its disinclination to shock or hurt — is rooted in religious scruple, it’s an edifying demonstration of how hip — how almost avant-garde — a movie can be without resorting to such shopworn strategies. What a revelation.

Remarkable that a movie can be good, hiularious, and cool without being gross, oversexed, and profane. A novel concept.

My wife and I are going to try to catch a free screening of it tonight. Check out the movie’s homepage to see if you can catch a free screening of Napoleon Dynamite near you.

(Thanks to my bro for the pointer - I, on the other hand, would never be caught dead checking out MTV. Never.)

My brother just invited me to get a gmail account Wednesday (thanks bro!) and today I have some invites. If anyone would like an account, let me know.

UPDATE: Well, that was quick. Wish I could get that kind of response on my own I’m out of invites but I will keep any unanswered requests should I get more invites. I imagine that might be the case b/c my brother got his invite several weeks ago and didn’t get any invites to send out until week (at least that’s what he tells me). On the other hand, I got my account on Wednesday and had invites to hand out on Saturday. Perhaps Gmail is starting to ramp up their deployment to the public on a broader scale. I think its an interesting social experiment to see how gmail has been established along social networks. Lucky for a few I I practice my cyber-geekery in semi-anonymity so I didn’t really have any friends who cared for a gmail account.

Coming across a new LDS blog Dallas Robbins I was shocked to see there are upcoming plans a mainstream comic book based on the Book of Mormon, The Golden Plates: The Shape of All Things:

“Think ‘It’s A Wonderful Life meets Conan the Barbarian’!” Allred exclaimed. “There’s no other book that is so rich with adventure, action, romance, courage, beauty, and spiritual enlightenment; at least, none that I’m aware of. At the very least it’s a phenomenal story rich with visual power. So, if I pull it off. It’ll be the most significant thing I’ll ever be a part of”. . .

[T]his is an ideal resource for those in the Mormon community as another means of relating their scriptures. With churches all across the United States and the world, Allred’s work on The Book of Plates seems to have un-paralleled uses for Mormons in their work, especially with, but not limited to children. Mormons are called by their faith to spend at least a year doing mission work, spreading their faith (the LDS is one of, if not the fastest growing branch of Christianity in the world), and could easily see Allred’s work as a tool in that regard.

“Absolutely. Use it as a tool to make The Book Of Mormon itself more accessible,” says Allred. “My heart’s in the right place. I love this book like no other and have every intention of doing it justice. I hope [the Mormon community] embraces it.”

Wow. I used to be addicted to comic books when I was a teenager but haven’t picked them up for about 15 years. I loved Spider-Man, the X-Men, and the New Teen Titans among others and especially loved the artwork imcluding John Byrne, Neal Adams, Art Adams, with George Perez being my favorite. Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns is my favorite of all time.

Despite the nerdy reputation comics have, I feel like I learned a lot (vocabulary, mythology, and an appreciation for art) and don’t regret the many dollars I spent on them (even if it didn’t turn into the investment I thought it would).

Who knows how an adaption of the Book of Mormon comic book will turn out but I’m looking forward to finding out.

(Geek Alert - This scene of Nephi shocking his brothers is pure Jack Kirby)

According to the Deseret News the Church publicly launched today VisitTempleSquare.com.

The frontpage has a pretty cool interactive picture of downtown Salt Lake City with a menu to pick from tours, events, services (including WeddingsAtTempleSquare.com), Dining, Attractions, and News.

Worth taking a look.

Apparently, the Church has issued new rules for buying garments. According to Salt Lake’s Channel 2 News the Church will require a member to show a current temple recommend when purchasing garments. The story claims that this new policy was read in sacrament meetings yesterday. Perhaps it will reach those of us outside of Utah next Sunday.

No doubt this new policy is in response to recent eBay auctions of LDS garments as well as last October’s General Conference spat. I always wondered why a recommend wasn’t required to begin with.

Matt Drudge aired a speech last night given by President President Reagan at an ecumenical gathering in 1984:

There are, these days, many questions on which religious leaders are obliged to offer their moral and theological guidance, and such guidance is a good and necessary thing. To know how a church and its members feel on a public issue expands the parameters of debate. It does not narrow the debate; it expands it.

The truth is, politics and morality are inseparable. And as morality’s foundation is religion, religion and politics are necessarily related. We need religion as a guide. We need it because we are imperfect, and our government needs the church, because only those humble enough to admit they’re sinners can bring to democracy the tolerance it requires in order to survive.

A state is nothing more than a reflection of its citizens; the more decent the citizens, the more decent the state. If you practice a religion, whether you’re Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, or guided by some other faith, then your private life will be influenced by a sense of moral obligation, and so, too, will your public life. One affects the other. The churches of America do not exist by the grace of the state; the churches of America are not mere citizens of the state. The churches of America exist apart; they have their own vantage point, their own authority. Religion is its own realm; it makes its own claims.

We establish no religion in this country, nor will we ever. We command no worship. We mandate no belief. But we poison our society when we remove its theological underpinnings. We court corruption when we leave it bereft of belief. All are free to believe or not believe; all are free to practice a faith or not. But those who believe must be free to speak of and act on their belief, to apply moral teaching to public questions.

I submit to you that the tolerant society is open to and encouraging of all religions. And this does not weaken us; it strengthens us, it makes us strong. You know, if we look back through history to all those great civilizations, those great nations that rose up to even world dominance and then deteriorated, declined, and fell, we find they all had one thing in common. One of the significant forerunners of their fall was their turning away from their God or gods.

Without God, there is no virtue, because there’s no prompting of the conscience. Without God, we’re mired in the material, that flat world that tells us only what the senses perceive. Without God, there is a coarsening of the society. And without God, democracy will not and cannot long endure. If we ever forget that we’re one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under.

The First Presidency released the following statement in response to President Reagan’s passing:

“Ronald Reagan will be remembered across the world not only as the president of the United States who helped hasten the end of the Cold War, but also as a man of uncommon decency and dignity.

“The First Presidency expresses its sympathy and condolences to President Reagan’s wife, Nancy, to his children and extended family.”

The Mormon Blogosphere has exploded so much that while I stil hope to track it as best as I can I won’t be posting many updates spotlighting new additons as I have tried to do in the past. You can check my sort-of companion blog DeserNet (thank you James)or syndicate its updates here.

However, despite all that I was very pleased to get a blog submission from Jeff Lindsay for his new blog, Mormanity. Jeff has had a long LDS presence on the web with lots of great links and resources.

It’s great to see his blog is (as he puts it) “to defend the faith, discuss Book
of Mormon evidences, and so forth.”

Another must read.

As I have mentioned before we need a Mormon Snopes - a reference page to verify LDS urban legends. As many probably already have heard in sacrament meeting, the First Presidency issued a statement reminding members to not pass unverified statments from Church leaders.

From time to time statements are circulated among members which are inaccurately attributed to leaders of the church. Many such statements distort current church teachings and are often based on rumors and innuendos. They are never transmitted officially, but by word of mouth, e-mail, or rather informal means. We encourage members of the church to never teach or pass on such statements without verifying that they are from approved church sources such as official statements, communications, and publications. Any notes made when General Authorities, Area Authority Seventies, or other general Church officers speak at regional and stake conferences or other meetings should not be distributed without the consent of the speaker. Personal notes are for individual use only.

True spiritual growth is based on studying the scriptures, the teachings of the Brethren and Church publications.

While this is nothing new, of course, the Salt Lake Tribune claims the letter was prompted by some notes from an Idaho stake conference attributed to Elder Perry. Those notes - while a little weird and random - don’t seem controversial or enough to spark First Presidency statement. Perhaps it’s distribution was so widespread it was the straw that broke the camel’s back.