March 2004 @ 12:33 pm

The Illinois legislature passed a resolution last week apologizing to the Church for its treatment that led to the trek to Utah.

Last week, a resolution was quietly passed by the Illinois Legislature seeking “the pardon and forgiveness” of the Mormon Church for persecution that led to the expulsion of 20,000 members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1844 from Nauvoo, and the 1844 vigilante murder of Mormon leader Joseph Smith.

The resolution reportedly stunned Mormon Church President Gordon B. Hinckley, who was so touched by the apology he “had tears in his eyes,” said a source.

The official apology, which was introduced by state Reps. Dan Burke (D-Chicago) and Jack Franks (D-Woodstock), meant so much to the Mormon church a delegation from Illinois led by Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn has been invited to Salt lake [sic] City to meet with Hinckley. . .

“It was amazing to see how personally he took the state’s gesture,” Judge Burke added. “He was moved to tears. Three generations have come and gone since the Mormon expulsion, but to them it’s like it happened yesterday. Most have relatives who fled Nauvoo and they heard the story all their lives.

“When Nauvoo was settled it was the 10th-largest city in the United States,” she said. “It was a thriving community that was forced out and left in the dead of night to ensure their safety.

“We thought it was about time to apologize.”

And they will do so on April 7th — one day after the 174th anniversary of the church’s founding.

The text of the actual resolution is here. (Thanks to LDS Today)

Over the last month, the Church’s News site Newsroom.lds.org has started a new feature Voice of the Church. The first feature was President Packer’s recent talk about J. Reuben Clark and the need for good lawyers (I guess we’re not all bad – phew!), followed by comments from President Hinckley about debt. The new feature is President Faust’s comments on, “The Dignity of Self.”

Apparently the feature is updated every two weeks or so. Since it’s on the Church’s media page I suppose it’s an effort to expose the media to substantial messages in response to some of the issues of our time. Not necessarily to proselytize to them – but just to give a taste of what the Church is truly about, beyond the mere events of the day.

I found the following passage from the aforementioned Illinois resolution very interesting:

WHEREAS, During the period of their residency in Nauvoo,
Joseph Smith and his community of Latter-day Saints began as
political Democrats, transferring their political allegiance
to the Whig Party in both the elections of 1838 and 1840,
before once again transferring their affiliations back to the
Democratic Party in the election of 1842, until the
establishment of the Reform Party by Smith in time for the
election of 1844, when he began to seriously campaign for the
office of President of the United States; and

WHEREAS, The expression of political authority and power
within the community of Latter-day Saints was seen by many
citizens in Illinois as reasons for caution and concern, seeing
the control of local courts by Joseph Smith as autocratic, and
interpreting the leverage and influence of the Mormon
community’s voting strength as an over influential forceful and
voting bloc;

Yesterday I found an article from a sore-missed Ensign feature, “I Have a Question.” The second question asks, “Was Joseph Smith a serious candidate for the presidency of the United States, or was he only attempting to publicize gospel views on public issues?”

The election campaign of 1844 was complex, for divisive sectional issues, such as slavery, as well as the broader issues of economic depression and American expansion, were fragmenting both major parties. For Joseph Smith, national politics were especially frustrating. Since 1839 he had been pursuing a losing effort to get the federal government to respond to Mormon appeals for relief from their tragedies in Missouri. Having been driven from the state by mobs, having had their property confiscated, and having been unable to obtain redress from the state, the Saints had appealed to the federal government to intervene and somehow force the state of Missouri to honor and protect their rights. ?States? rights,? however, was a sensitive issue at the time, especially among Southerners, and there was strong public feeling that the federal government had no constitutional authority to intervene in the affairs of any state.

To the former U.S. president, Martin Van Buren, the issue was loaded with political danger, and for that reason he told the Saints as early as 1839 that he sympathized with them but could do nothing for them. Joseph Smith, dismayed at the injustices the Saints had experienced, could not accept the principle that the federal government had no power to protect victims of mob violence, and he began to advocate a constitutional interpretation that would demand the necessary intervention.

The issue had become so paramount to the Prophet by 1844 that he found himself unable to support any of the leading candidates for the presidency.

In light of this election year, I thought this was interesting. Read the whole thing.

Does anyone know how one could read Joseph Smith’s View of the Powers and Policy of the Government of the United States?

Our Elder’s Quorum just finished a Book of Mormon reading competition with the High Priests Group. It was a great experience and I really liked the convenience of my hardbound “investigator” copy of the the Book of Mormon.

However, I was disaapointed that as part of the convenience of the new slimmed-down edition, they didn’t include all the Arnold Friberg prints that the old missionary edition used to have. Getting nostalgic, I decided to search for the prints, and after some surprising difficulty, I was happy to find that Meridian Magazine has them with a nice article from a few years back.

They have some nice larger files of the prints which are suitable for using as a desktop – which I am wont to do.

This blog is turning into an art retrospective!

Scanning the paper this morning I was pleased to see that Tater-Tots are celebrating 50 years and one of their creators has a very interesting name.

Tater Tots were invented in 1953 by Ore-Ida founders Golden and Nephi Grigg, two brothers from Oregon who found a way to use leftover potato from their french fry business. The company was headquartered in Boise for 31 years until Heinz moved it to Pittsburgh in 1999.

Perhaps more intriguing than conclusive, but this googled site adds more support that Tater-Tots may be a proud Mormon contribution. (alas, Ore-Ida is owned by Heinz).

Move over green jello.

“Man Controlling Trade”

I love this sculpture at the Federal Trade Commission. Very art deco (is that right?) or whatever was popular during the ’30’s or 40’s. Like Hoover Dam oe the Empire State Building. The pinnacle of design.

It’s taken some time, but my wife has come around to appreciating the Simpsons. While my appreciation and adoration for the show (along with that of U2, Apple computers and a few other things) may go overboard, I try to limit my proselytizing so it doesn’t become the preaching of other gospels (regardless of how almost everything and anything in life can be linked to a Simpsons epsode – D’oh! there I go again).

Too often I hear people comlain of its lowbrow humor and such but they truly have not giventhe show the consideration it deserves.

Anyway, here is great proof in my book of the sheer genius and erudition of the Simpsons.

First, my apologies for yet another navel gazing post about the blogs, Mormons and the Mormon Blogosphere, but I had to thank The Revelator for the link noticing my blog as well as Times & Seasons. And thanks to Brayden King for suggesting my blog.

Kaimi at Times & Seasons beats me to the punch to ask what is a better name for the Mormon Blogosphere? Blogosphere does not sound great but I am not sold on anything that is catchy and captures something of our unique character like the Catholic’s St. Blog’s Parish or the Jews’ JBlog.

Or something like that. Just a periodical refeshing of the FAQ as I periodically revise the blogroll.

I have attempted to maintain a “blogroll” of Mormon bloggers. That can be a little delicate because I don’t mean to necessarily represent these as LDS-themed blogs, although some do contain subjects regarding the Church.

I have separated the list into two: (1) “LDS Blogs” which tend to focus on LDS issues and themes, and (2) “Mormon Blogosphere,” which are blogs of any sort maintained by those who consider themselves LDS. The distinction is pretty loose, so feel free to let me know what kind of blog you consider your site to be.

I have likewise been loose with those who consider themselves LDS (even including someone who mispelled “Mormon” giving them the benefit of the doubt – I make plenty of typos). Also, someone who didn’t consider themselves “active” was unsure if they qualified but I do not hand out temple recommends here. If (1) you consider yourself Mormon by faith or heritage and (2) do not include offensive content, I am more than happy to include you in the blogroll.

I think Latter-day Saints have a lot of good to share on the internet. I hope to do a small part by gathering a list of those sites. I also hope I am not being presumptious as I add sites that I come across.

If anyone wishes that I remove their blog from the list I will also be happy to do so, no questions asked.

If you haven’t already done so, I would also suggest that you submit your blog to the Latter-day Blogs Net Ring. If you are female you may also consider joining the LDS Women blogring

Questions, submissions, or removals, just click on “email” in the upper left of my home page.

Many thanks.

They just keep a’comin.

By Common Consent “A liberal minded, yet grossly intolerant Mormon thought blog. We tolerate dissent, but not stupidity.”

I apologize for neglecting to mention this excellent and funny (and yet liberal – wait, is that possible?) group blog last week. I am honored they give me the designation of the “Silver Plates?” and I find their link title to my beloved National Review equally funny (as long as it tongue in cheek, right?). Either way, I look forward to some friendly tussles.

Latter-day Saints for George W. Bush 2004

More in line with my political thinking is this relatively new blog, taking on this year’s presidential campaign and its isssues from a conservative LDS perspective.

The Baron of Deseret “Thought about all things secular and spiritual from a Latter Day Saint perspective”

The ‘Baron” is ‘The Baron’ “a 28 year old BYU graduate working as a software engineer in Pleasant Grove, Utah.” He includes a FAQ, Sunday school lessons, a promise of upcoming essays, among his political, social, cultural, and sports commentary.

Plus, you should have noticed that Dave has moved his Inquiry to a handsome TypePad site which I like very much, especially since it now has comments.

Well I was going to delete this post after I used it for a test, but Hugh pegged it with a comment. So it wouldn’t be fair to delete the post but I thought I would at least post what I am trying to do behind the scenes in case anyone else with Movable Type wants to implement the same on their blog and to give credit where due.

Although I think I have done everything I am supposed to do some are not “working” yet, although the blog doesn’t seem to be broken. Through trial and error it has been fun and I have learned a lot, but have just scratched the surface. I defer to those mentioned below for their expertise, and thank them for generously sharing it with the rest of us.

Changes:

1. “Future Proof” my URL so they are not tied to whatever code I may use in the future to generate my pages. Plus, I like using a date format rather than the sequential entries listing that is the MT default. M?r ?rlygsson explains“How to: Future-proof URLs in Movable Type”

2. Add URLs to each comment posted as well as make my comments “inline” as opposed to the popup windows which I dislike. TechBlog helped me to do the inline comments and I figured out how to do the comment URLs with the help of both M?r and Techblog and lots of trial and error.

3. Enable subscribe to comments. I found myriad ways to do this but I liked Oscar’s EZ Comments because it does not require PHP which I’m not ready to convert my page into. I have the plugin going but I have to do the subscriptions manually, I have tried to add the automatic do it yourself subscriptions into my comments template, but as you can see they don’t show up for some reason. But comments still work for whatever reason. Am I so bad at hacking, I can’t even break my blog? That may change later as I keep on tweaking.

4. I didn’t care for relying on Blogrolling to supply my blogroll as it can hang up the loading time of the page, so I was excited to find this simple and easy way to post categorized, and alphabetically sorted blogrolls by creating a new blog. Good Stuff.

Not exactly my first source for Mormon history (or Mormon commentary for that matter) but I wanted beat all my liberal counterparts to the punch.

Mormon Manifesto

I know the United Order/Socialism issue has been debated to death but this is an interesting angle, if true.

P.S.
I have mostly been buried under the hood hacking at the site’s MT code with not much success so far but at least nothing has broke (as far as I can tell), except for the random link on the left.

Update: Scratch that. Upon publishing, the blogrolls have obviously gone haywire as feared. Do not adjust your monitor, I’ll figure it out someday.

First, the Church is the fifth largest denomination the U.S.

LDS tend to have longer life spans than non-LDS.

Life expectancy was 77.3 for LDS males, 70.0 for non-LDS males, 82.2 for LDS females, and 76.4 for non-LDS females.

Although the study was geared towards measuring how tobacco affects longevity, it notes:

A comparison between LDS and non-LDS of the adjusted life expectancy estimates indicates that although differential tobacco use explains some of the higher life expectancy in LDS, it only accounts for about 1.5 years of the 7.3 year difference for males and 1.2 years of the 5.8 year difference for females. Higher life expectancy experienced among LDS not explained by tobacco-related deaths may be due to factors associated with religious activity in general, such as better physical health, better social support, and healthier lifestyle behaviors. Religious activity may also have an independent protective effect against mortality.

Also, Nate points to a study that claims Utah is the sixth least corrupt.

Food for thought (or maybe not).

Our Thoughts – “Commentary by Kim & Mary Siever on life, politics, religion and social issues.”

My favorite kind, Yay! Kim makes an interesting point about a sad case in Utah.

In response, I think it does make sense if you consider that the state legislature wants to protect an unborn fetus as much as possible without violating Roe v. Wade. The mother did not affirmatively seek to end the pregnancy but instead avoided getting the treatement recommended by her doctor.

Of course, this is reminiscent of last year’s Utah scandal regarding whether a doctor can require a life-saving treament of a child, even if it is against the parents’ will. I doubt last year’s parents’ rights advocates will be making the same argument with this situation.

I read elsewhere that the mother reportedly did not want the surgey because of the resulting scarring. She may not be able to be prosecuted in the end but I don’t fault the authorities for trying.

I have changed the permalink system to render them “future proof” and so they make more sense (at least to me). Unfortunately, however, something along the way has broken comments and trackbacks. This probably won’t matter a whit to anyone but me, as I desperately pore through the code to figure out what I have done. Just thought I’d say this.

Test trackback

. . . or what I neglected to teach my investigators.

What I wish to be back in Salt Lake to see the above billboard. PETA – specialists in hyperbolic ad campaigns that sucker chumps like me into more free press than they could ever afford – have given a new commandment unto the local Mormons. Apparently we are supposed to be vegetarians all this time and never knew it.

As you can see, PETA cites Doctrine and Covenants 89:15. I have wondered about why this isn’t emphasized as much as some of the other aspects of the Word of Wisdom. As I understand it, the Word of Wisodm wasn’t always a binding commandment and that not until fairly recently last century did some of the more negative aspects become binding.

Although we do live by high standards, many seem to think that Mormons live by some coded book of statutes without any discretion for personal judgment. Actually, we are not “command[ed] in all things; for he that is compelled in all things, the same is a slothful and not a wise servant.”

And the Church has responded likewise.

However, Mike Otterson, a spokesman for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said Monday that church members “do not regard Section 89 as a call to vegetarianism.”

But there are those who personally believe that the Word of Wisdom does recommend vegetarianism. More power to them.

LDSVeg.org
MormonVeg

But with regards to PETA, it’s obnoxious enough when someone is self-righteous about their own religion, much less when they’re self-righteous about yours.

Orson’s Telescope

Jeremy was kind enough to email me about his new page although he had the temerity to question whether I would link to it because it “it veers a little to the left” of mine. Well, I wasn’t going to but with a challenge like that I had no choice.

Besides complimenting someone’s employer, he has a very interesting post on Mormons and Environmentalism with a touch of political speculation that I love.

There have been occasional talks in Conference (one comes to mind by Elder Scott) about the Creation and the beauty of the world that should leave no doubt that we are responsible for caretaking this planet. What bothers me is the notion that conservatives are against clean air and water, as if we are out to pollute the world. I think rather than a difference in result, the disagreement is in how to best achieve the common goal of a healthy environment.

In fact, without veering into wacko doctrine (I hope), I have thought there have been enough parallels with the Earth receiving some ordinances and the promise that it will be resurrected to suggest that it is a living organism in some sense and we should treat it as so.

Something to be proud of. Normally, I’m wary of Utah statistics that show “such and such” because there are so many Mormons in Utah. But this is something to be proud of, regardless of the cause.

Best of the Web has made a chart comparing abortion rates and the ratio of abortions to live births by state alongside each respective voting margin from the 2000 election.

Politics aside (at least for a tiny moment) it is gratifying to see that Utah comes in last in both the abortion rate and ratio.

(The Roe effect is an interesting if morbid idea

National Review’s editorial on the best approach to the Federal Marriage Amendment. While the President endorsed such action he didn’t specify which language of the various proposals. There has been a lot of quibbling over what the different proposals actually mean (whether states could implement their own form of gay marriages, how the federal constitution could dictate states interpreting their own constitutions, etc).

National Review likes Senator Hatch’s proposal:

We are therefore pleased to learn that Sen. Orrin Hatch is introducing his own constitutional amendment. His version reads as follows: “Civil marriage shall be defined in each state by the legislature or the citizens thereof. Nothing in this Constitution shall be construed to require that marriage or its benefits be extended to any union other than that of a man and a woman.” This amendment would not only clearly allow civil unions to be enacted by legislatures; it would even allow legislatures to enact full-fledged same-sex marriage. But it would bar federal or state courts from imposing either.

While this may not be enough to stop all gay marriages, I think it at least addresses the perhaps larger, legal issue: judges and other officials flouting the law. I don’t mean to downplay the problem of gay marriage, but it seems that overreaching judges are even the bigger issue. We need to send a message that judges cannot get away with anything they decree as long as it’s “found” in the Equal Protection clause as they are so wont to do.

President Packer referred to this in his talk Saturday to the JRCLS. He even quotes Judge Robert Bork:

Judicial invention of new and previously unheard-of rights accelerated over the past half-century and has now reached warp speed. It is not just Grutter?s permission to discriminate against white males and Lawrence?s creation of a right to homosexual sodomy. The Court has created rights to televised sexual acts and computer-simulated child pornography and, in direct contradiction of the historical evidence, has continued its almost frenzied hostility to religion. …

In these and other judgements, the Court is shrinking the area of self-government without any legitimate authority to do so, in the Constitution or elsewhere. In the process it is revising the moral and cultural life of the nation.

(President Packer discusses the healthy skepticism the Church has had of the law but reaffirms the need to have righteous people involved in it nonetheless – whew!)

Perhaps there is a better amendment but the Hatch language appeals to me as a balance between the policy I want with keeping states’ rights intact.

Of course, the moral issue of gay marriage is another matter that needs to be debated as well. At least with an amendment such as Senator Hatch’s there will be a fair and democratic debate over one of the most important social issues not only of our time but of all time.

[Disclosure: I do work for the Senator, but have no involvement on this issue, and didn't even know he has his proposal.]

President Packer’s talk talk to members of the J. Reuben Clark Law Society the other night has been posted on the Church’s Newsroom site in a promising new section titled “Voice of the Church.”

“On the Shoulders of Giants”

I’ll be reading it on the Metro tonight.