I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I suppose I am a card-carrying member, as I do actually have a card. I was neither raised in the Church nor in Utah. My exposure to the church was in college, abot six hours after I arrived at Eastern Arizona College in Thatcher, AZ. Link I fell in with a group of people who were LDS (the common and preferable contraction for the name of our church), and I started receiving regular visits from missionaries. We talked a ...

Hello all, Next month will be my 13th anniversary of completing my two-year mission to England for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints . I spent two years there, from November 1990 to November 1992. I lived in and around London; mostly out in the countryside, but spent about six or seven months in the City, also known as the "Crossroads of the World". So what is required to be a successful Mormon missionary? Let's break it down... STUDY "Missionary school" consis...

Thurgood Marshall, a good man. Accomplished many things and a pioneer for the black community. But a saint? Like in the official, apostolic kind of way? From Sunday's Washington Post : When Thurgood Marshall died 13 years ago this week, he left behind a life of historic accomplishments: Intrepid warrior against Jim Crow. Architect of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education desegregation case. First black Supreme Court justice. Now, some of Marshall's fellow Episcopal...

We don't like to think about the mortality of our leaders. Especially when they are our leaders for the remaining span of their lives. Gordon B. Hinckley is a wonderful man and a beloved leader. (Not in the sense of "Dear Leader" Kim Jong Il, more along the lines of "he's a high figure in our church and he has some endearing qualities".) Here is a man who has spent his entire life in the service of his God and his Church. He is incredibly personable, and wants to meet everyo...

In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints , we serve the church by holding "callings". We are "called" to serve in various capacities within our "ward" (congregation), all the way from childrens' Sunday school ("Primary") teacher all the way up to President of the Church (the head honcho in SLC). The time commitment varies with the level of the responsibility, but one can expect it to take about as many hours per week as an active hobby, like scrapbooking or sports. None of...

Today, December 23, 2005, is the 200th anniversary of the birth of the Prophet Joseph Smith. He was the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as the Mormon Church. From its start in 1830, it has grown from six members in New York State to over 12 million members throughout the world, in almost every nation. He translated the Book of Mormon, which was the record of a group of people who left Jerusalem in 600 BC and fled to the "promised land". This Promised...

This story is about a month or so old, but I did a Google search on JU and found that this little gem had fallen through the cracks. One of Sunni Islam's most prestigious institutions is to discipline a cleric after he issued a decree allowing women to breastfeed their male colleagues. Dr Izzat Atiya of Egypt's al-Azhar University said it offered a way around segregation of the sexes at work. His fatwa stated the act would make the man symbolically related to the woman and preclude any ...

In reading Locamama's excellent article , I started to respond. But then the short, spiritual, and resonant response became far longer and I decided to post it on my own page. I feel that everybody has to find their own path through life. Whether that path is towards God or away from God, that's one's own choice. Since I can't really speak for the atheist and agnostic of the JU audience, I will focus on my particularly circuitous route I took to God. I freely admit there are many ...

I found a very incendiary article yesterday on Wikipedia regarding the correlation between religiosity and intelligence. It copiously documents how the more religious you are, the stupider you are. And the smarter you are, the less likely it is that you are have religious feeling... From Wikipedia: In 1986, the magazine Sceptic summarized studies on religiosity and intelligence: All but four of the forty-three polls listed support the conclusion that native intelligence varies inv...