Official LDS iPhone/iPad App: Gospel Library

10 April 2010 @ 9:10 pm in Mormon | 3 comments

LDS Mormon Gospel Library app

Yesterday, the Church released its own official iPhone app that’s compatible with the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad, called Gospel Library (forgive the App Store’s typo “Gospel Lbry”).

I really like it a whole lot. I have tried most of the previously released third-party scripture apps that range from free to somewhat pricey (~$15) that have a whole range of features on my iPod Touch. Gospel Library may seem basic as a 1.0 release but it looks great and has everything I need. Not coincidentally, it looks like the most like the actual Church typeset scriptures. It also does a great job of getting the buttons out of the way, allowing the most screen real estate for just reading pure scripturery goodness.

Another feature I liked is that the newly downloaded app is basically an “empty shelf” which allows you to then download (and later delete) whichever books of scripture you want as well GC reports, and other Church books. There a lot of Church books and manuals already available and the App Store description promises weekly updates to the available library.

I’d love to see how it looks on the iPad.

A great effort from the LDS Tech team.

Check out Gospel Library.

𐐏𐐏𐐏

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Should have been watching conference instead.

Video after the fold.

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5 April 2010 @ 12:54 pm | 4 comments

Identity Theft? That’s nothing. Try Family History theft: “Scam Targets Genealogists.” Pathetic.

1 April 2010 @ 2:53 pm | 1 comment

LDS & Mormon Blogs is Dead

1 April 2010 @ 12:23 am in Bloggernacle, Mormon | 4 comments

For me anyway.

As some of you may have noticed, A Soft Answer’s sister site, LDS & Mormon Blogs has lain fallow for some time (yes, even more than here).

Since 2003 I have tried to keep track of LDS Bloggers, first here as a very long blogroll which it eventually spun off into its own site.

As much I have wanted to keep up with listing all LDS bloggers, real life keeps getting in the way and I have realized that I just can’t do it anymore. Overrun by lots of spam and unable to keep up with and process the submissions, I have let the site go, always with the hope that I would return to updating it. I now sadly realize that won’t happen anytime soon. But instead of continuing to let it lie dormant or pulling the plug entirely, an interesting opportunity has presented itself.

Recently a strange consortium of same-sex marriage activists and Mike Hucakabee-affiliated ministers have approached me about buying the site. To say the least, I was very hesitant. But their offer was very generous and with certain assurances, it was something that I couldn’t refuse.

I have to admit that I was suspicious of their intentions. I was afraid that they just wanted the URL to spread misinformation and discredit the Church. But my decision was made much easier when they guaranteed that they would maintain the site and continue to link to and promote the Bloggernacle. That made my decision much easier. After all, how bad could that be?

There may be some needed cosmetic changes in store, but rest assured that the new management (for whatever reason) is committed to continue showcasing the shining examples of LDS thought found in the Bloggernacle.

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When Utah imitates the Onion

31 March 2010 @ 5:39 pm in Politics | 2 comments

I understand sex education isn’t a cut and dried issue. But parents demanding that schools teach their children the facts of life and outsourcing their responsibilities to schools? One is parody and one is not, but both are much too real for my comfort.

Increasing Number Of Parents Opting To Have Children School-Homed

According to a report released Monday by the U.S. Department of Education, an increasing number of American parents are choosing to have their children raised at school rather than at home . . .

“Every year more parents are finding that their homes are not equipped to instill the right values in their children,” Miller said. “When it comes to important life skills such as proper nutrition, safe sex, and even basic socialization, a growing number of mothers and fathers think it’s better to rely on educators to guide and nurture their kids.”

Teens rally for sex education (via Our Thoughts)

But the teens and parents who marched to the Capitol had a much different take. They wore blue T-shirts proclaiming “Right to Know” on the front, and “Sex Ed” and a list of sponsors on the back. They carried signs saying “Teach me! I want to know,” and “Knowledge is power.” They ate sugar cookies and cupcakes decorated with the names of sexually transmitted diseases and phrases such as “health” and “sex ed” in frosting.

As they marched up State Street from Library Square to the Capitol, they chanted “What do we want? Sex education. When do we want it? Now,” and “One, two, three, four, ignorance no more.”

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General Petraeus’ Top 10 reasons BYU grads make great soldiers. Most apply to Mormons in general but pretty funny stuff.

7 — They never go AWOL. They just call it being less active.

26 March 2010 @ 1:56 pm | No comments

A Shady Craigslist Posting In Provo

21 March 2010 @ 11:24 am in Mormon | 6 comments

Provo Craigslist Buying Sacrament Talk

Helping my wife google for Elder Scott talks on the sacrament (the search on lds.org seems hopelessly broken) we came across this sad example of the underbelly of Happy Valley. In fairness, it’s someone from outside Utah trying to work the heretofore unknown black market of sacrament talks.

In case the posting goes down, click on the screenshot:

Provo Craigslist Buying Sacrament Talk

Short notice is no fun but I’m not sure that Craigslist is your best bet. It’s probably too late to help the guy but if you have something filed away, maybe you can help a brother out.

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Mormon Soprano traces the origins of “No other success can compensate for failure in the home.”

13 January 2010 @ 7:38 am | No comments

Taking a page from Disney’s DVD Vault or something, four retired merit badges are being brought back from the dust for this year only to celebrate 100 years of Scouting.

Too bad they changed the Stalker merit badge to boring old “Tracking.”

12 January 2010 @ 6:40 pm | No comments

Very scary: “Traditional Marriage.”

12 January 2010 @ 2:30 pm | No comments

Shocker: “Mormons Most Conservative Major Religious Group in U.S.”

11 January 2010 @ 5:43 pm in Mormon, Politics | 26 comments

Alternatively, “Confirmed: The Bloggernacle is in no way a reflection of what most Mormons think politically.”

Gallup has released a survey confirming the sharp conservative leanings of Mormons.

Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Mormons, are the most conservative major religious group in the country, with 59% identifying as conservative, 31% as moderate, and 8% as liberal.

Not too surprising but here are some interesting tidbits:

  • “The data show that these lapsed Mormons are substantially different in ideology from their fellow Mormons who remain active in the church (as defined by attendance at church services). In fact, lapsed Mormons are essentially no different from all other non-Mormons in terms of their basic ideology.”
  • Contrary to what I have assumed, Mormons seem to be generally of the same political stripe, whether they live in Utah or not. “The percentage of Mormons living in Utah who are conservative is little different from the conservative percentage among Mormons living elsewhere in the United States.”

These first point reiterates that indeed greater religious intensity suggests political conservatism. When church attendance and likelihood to marry are the biggest prognosticators of political affiliation, Mormons can’t help but be conservative.

(But don’t worry liberals, no one’s saying you can’t be a faithful member just because you aren’t on the big red bandwagon. Be a proud part of the 8%. Seriously, no sarcasm here.)

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Two Church-State Scrambles

23 December 2009 @ 1:06 pm in Mormon, Politics | 16 comments

I believe most of the “separation of church and state” rhetoric is overblown and unfounded (private presidential letters do not make good Constitutional doctrine). But for a church’s sake, it’s generally a good idea to keep the state off at an arm’s distance.

With that in mind, I’ll go out on a limb and say that this is not the best way to start a campaign.

Idaho gubernatorial candidate Rex Rammell will be mixing what he calls doctrines from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints into his gubernatorial campaign in a series of meetings slated for LDS elders only.

In January, Rammell will kick off a series of special meetings targeted specifically at “faithful priesthood-holders of the LDS Church” to discuss the so-called “White Horse” prophecy.

I’m not sure why a gubernatorial candidate wants to kick off his campaign by discussing a highly disputed prophecy when his own church doesn’t. While Idaho’s LDS population is a sizable 24%, isn’t he just asking to tick off that remaining 76%? I’m all for protecting the Constitution, but making a parochial appeal using folk doctrine does not make a winning campaign nor does it put the Church in the best light. (Here’s a copy of his flier, via Article 6 Blog.)

Bonus: Last week, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty signed the city’s same-sex marriage legislation in a church! I thought government recognition of same-sex marriage had nothing to do with churches and whether they did the same. Oh well.

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Arizona appellate court upholds clergy privilege for LDS Bishops.

17 December 2009 @ 11:17 am | 2 comments

The top 10 Religion Stories of 2009, including an uptick in church-state policy issues.

5. Mormons in California come under attack from some supporters of gay rights because of their lobbying efforts in the November 2008 election on behalf of Prop. 8, which outlawed gay marriage. Later in the year, Iowa, Vermont and New Hampshire approve gay marriage, but it is overturned by voters in Maine.

16 December 2009 @ 4:02 pm | 5 comments

Jimmy Stewart doesn’t make me cry. He’s just mandatory Christmas viewing (sniff).

16 December 2009 @ 2:30 pm | No comments

Stephen Covey, e-book pioneer.

Stephen R. Covey, one of the most successful business authors of the last two decades, has moved e-book rights to two of his best-selling books from his print publisher, Simon & Schuster, a division of the CBS Corporation, to a digital publisher that will sell the e-books to Amazon.com for one year . . .

The move promises to raise the already high anxiety level among publishers about the economics of digital publishing and could offer authors a way to earn more profits from their works than they do under the traditional system.

16 December 2009 @ 8:34 am | No comments

If it wasn’t for the great health care debate of ’09, I bet Romney would be the GOP frontrunner for 2012 (however dubious a title that may be in 2009). But since we have been debating health care “reform”, it’s inevitable to look at what Massachusetts did a few years ago under then-Gov. Romney.

So now, if Obamacare passes, Romney will be left telling angry primary voters that the only real difference between the two plans is that he implemented his policies at the state level, while Obama did it through the federal government. Sure, it’s clearly worse if the federal government is implementing bad policies, but it’s hard to see how such an argument would pass muster with anybody but those who are already ardent Romney supporters. It’s sort of like saying, “As governor, I raised state income taxes, but the thought of raising federal income taxes — that’s an outrage!”

A Romney spokesman counters:

There are some similarities. For instance, the concept of the “exchange” where people can shop for affordable health plans was pioneered in Massachachusetts. But Mitt’s Romney’s health care reforms are different in several important respects. First, the bill signed by Governor Romney did not raise taxes. Second, its focus was on strengthening the private insurance market, and I don’t think anyone believes that Democrats have given up on their dream of a public option. And finally, Governor Romney believes states should be free to come up with their own approach instead of having Washington create a “one-size-fits-all” solution for the entire country.

I think Romney gets unfairly blamed for some aspects that were done by the legislature or his successor. But when its become known as RomneyCare, that’s how politics rolls.

Regardless how HCR ends in Congress, it’s a debate that’s going to stick around for quite a while.

16 December 2009 @ 6:00 am | 5 comments

The music combo none dare name.

15 December 2009 @ 8:31 pm | 3 comments

Videos like this must keep the Church’s PR office up at night: A Song for the Mormons.



[via BCC's sideblog]

15 December 2009 @ 12:24 pm | 6 comments

Religious Intensity and Party Identification

11 December 2009 @ 12:53 pm in Mormon, Politics | 6 comments

Gallup takes another look at how religious intensity correlates with party identification and not much has changed.

Thus, Republicans are in the plurality among highly religious Americans. For each of the other three groups, Democrats are equal with or higher in number than Republicans. The Democratic edge expands as religiosity decreases. Among the not-religious group, Democrats have a 30-point edge over Republicans.

Ethnicity, however, adds a significant wrinkle, where this trend applies the strongest to non-hispanic whites and the least to African-Americans.

The pattern is quite different among whites. Identification with the Republican Party overwhelms identification with the Democratic Party by more than a 2-to-1 margin among highly religious whites, and by a still-substantial margin among those who are religious. Exactly the opposite pattern obtains among whites who are not religious, with a 2-to-1 margin in favor of Democratic versus Republican identification.

Maybe Mormons aren’t the freakishly conservative outliers they sometimes appear to be. Perhaps it’s more of a reflection of their religious activity and demographics.

𐐏𐐏𐐏

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Keepapitchinin looks at the history of the three-fold mission of the Church. It goes back much longer than I thought.

10 December 2009 @ 11:03 am | 1 comment

Caring for the Poor as a “New Emphasis” for the Church

10 December 2009 @ 10:26 am in Mormon, Politics | 9 comments

Picking up on an earlier post, the SL Trib confirms that caring for the poor as a “new emphasis” for Church

The LDS Church is adding “to care for the poor and needy” to its longstanding “threefold mission,” which is to preach the LDS gospel, purify members’ lives and provide saving ordinances such as baptism to those who have died . . .

The new group of phrases will be described as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ “purposes,” rather than missions, and will be spelled out in the next edition of the LDS Church Handbook of Instructions , due out next year, church spokesman Scott Trotter confirmed this week.

“Caring for the poor and needy,” Trotter said, “has always been a basic tenet of the [LDS] Church.”

Exactly. But could this also be a smart move to publicly establish the Church as the unequivocal force for good it has always been?

It seems that a good percentage of the Church’s Newsroom press releases are about various welfare and charity projects the Church contributes to. And on a smaller level, stakes and wards do all kinds of charitable activities that never get mentioned.

And yet, as is the nature of news, they get scant attention. Instead, the Church only seems to merit headlines when it takes the relatively infrequent political stand. I would hazard a guess that over half of the national news mentions the Church has received this year are from last year’s Proposition 8 involvement.

The Church and its members have always had caring for the poor and the needy as a focus (Heck last night, our Young Men and Women went Christmas caroling (on a very cold Utah night) collecting coats and clothes for the poor – even before this all becomes “official” in the handbook). So it’s nice to see this important principle gain greater recognition, but it’s not new.

UPDATE: Thanks to KSL for the link too. The original post is here.

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Sen. Reid sounds a little desperate for a guy who’s in charge of the Senate. Maybe just frustrated.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid took his GOP-blasting rhetoric to a new level Monday, comparing Republicans who oppose health care reform to lawmakers who clung to the institution of slavery more than a century ago.

UPDATE: Added video.



Do those bothered by Elder Oaks’ comparison in October feel the same about Sen. Reid? Elder Oaks merely said that Prop 8 Supporters faced voter intimidation as did those in the Civil Rights era. He didn’t suggest that Prop 8 opponents were like Jim Crow apologists, or in Reid’s case that Republicans are like slavery apologists.

7 December 2009 @ 12:00 pm | 7 comments

“To Care For the Poor and Needy”

5 December 2009 @ 11:55 pm in Mormon | 25 comments

Bishop Edgley strikes again. Tonight was the adult session of our stake conference, with Bishop Edgley presiding. As happened with Scott’s stake, Bishop Edgley requested that everyone be prepared to give a talk just in case they were called upon. I dodged the bullet tonight but we’ll see about tomorrow.

What was interesting was that at the end of tonight’s meeting, our stake president prodded Bishop Edgley to share with us that a new Church Handbook would be coming out soon (seems fairly quick since the last one) with a revision to the three-fold mission of the Church. He said they would no longer be called “missions” but “the purpose of the Church.” Most importantly, a fourth prong would be added, “to care for the poor and needy.”

I thought that was pretty exciting. Perhaps FPR was onto something.

𐐏𐐏𐐏

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Yes, the Church, its members, and especially its leaders get guff for looking too corporate and dressing plainly. But the next time you complain about wearing a white shirt or some Molly-Mormon dress, please consider the alternative.

23 November 2009 @ 2:33 pm | 1 comment

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