LittleWyvern

Here's a very rough outline of a baptismal program. It's very customizable: only the baptism part really needs to happen. The rest can vary depending on you and the missionaries think is best. 1) Those at the baptism will sing a hymn and someone will give an opening prayer. 2) One or more short talks may be given. These will almost always be about baptism 3) You'll be baptized by someone. 4) As you are drying off and changing, a Church movie or something might be played. 5) Once you are back, one or more talks may be given, usually about the Holy Ghost. It's also traditional for the Bishop or Branch President to speak here. 6) Those at the baptism will sing another hymn and someone will give a closing prayer. You'll generally get the Gift of the Holy Ghost the first Sacrament Meeting after you are baptized. As far as white clothes go, you might not need to bring your own: sometimes the ward or stake will keep white baptismal clothes (freshly washed, of course) to provide to people who are being baptized. Ask your missionaries about this. Regardless, make sure you bring some Sunday Dress clothes to change into after your baptism. Anyway, congrats! It's a happy occasion, so don't be afraid to invite your friends: everybody is invited to baptisms. :)

I think there's a gradient here, rather than a binary condition. There's an entire range of how much your own hard work can get you ahead, and how much you get a head is a function of many variables which may vary from country to country. Ideally, it's a 1:1 ratio or at least a low ratio: 1 unit of work should get you 1 (or slightly less) unit of social mobility (with a very loose definition of unit, of course). Keeping this ratio as close to 1:1 as possible is definitely an American value, but it's not simply inherent: keeping that ratio low is hard, and doing so takes constant effort (and there's many differing schools of thought on exactly what keeps that ratio low, but that's a conversation for another thread). In the United States, whether your 1 unit of work gives you any social mobility depends on a lot of different factors: social class, race, gender, and so forth. I think the USA isn't doing as good with social mobility as it has been in previous years. Regardless, simply assuming that 1 unit of work gives you 1 unit of social mobility because we're America and America does that is a harmful oversimplification, because it hand-waves away the reality of poverty and social class in the United States. With that in mind, it is also important not to forget that this idea is still a strong social value in the United States, far more than many other countries.

Promoting a good work ethic: good! Assuming that a good worth ethic necessarily leads to being rich: not good! EDIT: genius commercial, though. It's definitely targeting the demographic that would probably never consider buying an electric car.

I'm taking a class on marriage at BYU that delves into a lot of family science research. Here's some recollections from what I've read that I think are relevant: There's two forces at work here. Research does show that later marriage age of the wife does decrease the chances of divorce later in life, but only up to a point (this trend ends at 21-24 depending on who you ask). There is then a range of ages where the chances of divorce flatline as well as reported marital satisfaction. Past a certain age (around 25-28 depending on who you ask) marital satisfaction declines while the chances of divorce stays flat. These two forces suggest that the errors lie at the extremes. Marrying young isn't bad intrinsically: many people marry in their late teenage years and do well. My past two points were simply statistics. However, marrying young may be a sign of incorrect models of thinking about marriage, such as "soulmate" thinking or the idea that "we felt the spirit together so we must be meant for each other." The reasons, then, behind being married are of utmost importance. In summary, age is a factor in marriage success, but research shows that other factors, such as personal maturity, effective communication, mature love, and good couple processes affect marital success far more than age past the age of 20 or so.

The Church has been writing a lot of interesting essays lately. There's this one, one entitled "Book of Mormon and DNA Studies," and one entitled "Race and the Priesthood." They're all well written and very timely.

Oh, that controversy is old now. The real controversy now is that if you play Frozen backwards, it subliminally tells kids to worship Al Gore.

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Here's the Hebrew version. The phrase in Hebrew consists of two words: "qodesh Yĕhovah." The meaning of the second word is obvious, while Strong translates qodesh as "apartness, holiness, sacredness, separateness." This to me suggests that the phrase is meant as a description of Gods qualities more than a bestowal of those qualities. Perhaps the KJV rendition is a way of speaking that is lost on 21st century English? EDIT: The 1599 Geneva Bible also renders it the same, and adds this as a footnote: Perhaps "Holiness to the Lord" can also be taken to mean the kinds of attitudes and behaviors we bring to the temple, and hence, to the Lord.

I am graduating this semester.

One more thing: I'm a non-Utah Mormon (from Oregon) attending BYU right now. lm0913, if you have any more questions about BYU specifically, don't be afraid to private message me. :)

Well, sure, I wasn't alive during the passage of the Civil Rights Act, so my statement was based on what I know about the rationale behind it. I'm not a history student, so I'm sure I'm inaccurate in places. There's a weakness, though, in assuming that there's always some other place to go: if you are a member of a small and unpopular group in Walsh's world, it may be time to move to a different country. I'm sensitive to the plight of small unpopular groups with no recourse to seek to right wrongs, as the Church was once a small and unpopular group. Right, "if men were angels no government would be necessary." I generally agree with not having more nondiscrimination legislation than strictly necessary, but I don't think striking down all nondiscrimination legislation (as Walsh seems to hint at but never says directly) will make anything any better. Men are most certainly not angels in this society. That's a good point, and while I don't think societal morals need to be enshrined into law, it does allow society to enforce these morals. The laws themselves definitely should be developed from the bottom up, but I think these laws are what keep societal morals from being just optional. And I would agree with you here if I trusted people as much as you do to "do the right thing."

Wingnut, you may be looking for Epicureanism rather than hedonism.

This solution strikes me as a "throw out the baby with the bathwater" approach. The reason I think that is clear by considering the reasons behind the passage of things such as the Civil Rights Act and other nondiscrimination laws. The sociological reason behind the passage of the Civil Rights Act was because society found that discriminating based on skin color was morally reprehensible, and thus society would be benefited if it prohibited such actions. Similarly, society felt that discriminating based on religion and other factors was morally reprehensible. Walsh's solution, in a pure libertarian fashion, dispenses with the idea of societal morals altogether and essentially states that society should not have any morals. Morals, according to Walsh, should only be held by individual people and should not contribute to society. As much as I think Walsh's solution is simple, I still think that social morals are something that benefits society as a whole and thus I am reluctant to completely eliminate them as Walsh calls for.

I live in Utah, so... political parties? What's that?

It does cover the "gay issue," but in an indirect way which by consequence allows discrimination for any religious reason whatsoever. Sexual orientation isn't mentioned explicitly, so the scope of the law goes far beyond just the "gay issue." I don't think sexual orientation could be mentioned explicitly without running up against the current interpretation of the 14th Amendment. Nope. According to the law JaG posted, you don't have to be against gay sex in particular: you could think redheads are of the devil and discriminate against them in your business and this law would protect you just as much as if you discriminated against sexual orientation, so long as you mention the magic words "religious belief."

How does this Arizona law define "religious belief," though? If I say that it's my religious belief to refuse service to redheads, skinny people, or men who speak with a New York accent, what verification is there? Do my religious beliefs have to be in a religion recognized by the state, or do I just say the magic words "religious belief" and I'm allowed to do whatever I want? That's what worries me about this law, because either answer to this question makes me nervous. I don't like a verification process for religions or requiring religions to be recognized by the state, because Church history teaches us that we can't depend on that. At the same time, I don't like there being no verification process either, as in that setting what else is a determining factor on "religious belief" than "I told you I believe it?" People can say they believe anything. EDIT: I've looked at the law JaG linked to and it doesn't seem like it has any operational definition of "religious belief" at all. Definition 2, which defines "exercise of religion," uses the term "religious belief" without defining it. That's an awfully large gray area.

I hope you're only joking, but in all seriousness I wasn't trying to accuse you of anything...

I post this here against my better judgement, knowing full well that if recent trends hold this post will be picked apart and used to debate my honesty. Regardless, because I was actively participating in that other thread, I thought it would be good to at least put something here for the sake of dispelling any doubts about what I feel sustaining is. To me, sustaining a leader is to support them: thus, sustaining involves praying for a leader and helping them in any way that I can. Sustaining also involves recognizing and honoring the position that person holds, and prayerfully listening to their counsel and determining how to bring that counsel into my own life. I do this, however, with a caution not to deify those I sustain or forget that they are human beings. If a leader says something that makes me uneasy or seems weird, then I make an effort to study it further or discuss it with fellow Church members: sustaining is a group effort as well as an individual effort after all.

That's because you have been going through my posts with all the nitpicky-ness of a prosecuting attorney. I'm at a complete loss of words here. I do not see how it's logically possible to go from what I have clearly stated many times to thinking that I'm trying to say something logically equivalent to "Disagreeing with Elder Callister's word choice does not make one a baboon!" Regardless, let me try one more time. We were talking about 1) disagreeing whether Elder Callister's words were always 100% right and 2) claims of apostasy using vague language. I wanted to point out that disagreeing that Elder Callister's words were not universally applicable did not constitute apostasy. I had nobody in mind: the conversation seemed to be heading in that direction. Claiming that stating a personal opinion about how two main subjects of the thread didn't fit together is "random" defies all attempts at logic. Hm. A false implication. That's odd... EDIT: in case this isn't completely clear, my feelings certainly are not hurt. Thanks for caring! Nope, just the people who nitpick my posts and repeatedly miss what I'm trying to say in favor of trying to claim some sort of moral victory over a logical "gotcha."

Of course you are. That's not at all what I meant, but I'm sure you knew that anyway. I never even remotely asserted that somebody suggested exactly that. My follow up to your first response made it absolutely clear that I asserted that such an event could have happened, but the language we were using regarding those who do not completely agree with Elder Callister's remarks is so vague that such a conclusion may have been made or may not have been made, and that it was difficult or impossible to tell. My post #35 was meant to point out how that conclusion, if someone had made it, seemed unreasonable to me. That is all. No more, no less. You may continue your cross-examination if you wish. Asking me if I think it's fine to say evil things about Prophets and Apostles? Some softball, indeed. Would you mind quoting the post where I "claimed hurt feelings?"

Since when did this turn into an interrogation? Fine, people may have used slightly different wording than I put in my post, but I do not think you so blind as to not see the big picture of what I'm trying to say just because you can't find a certain quoted string when you CTRL+F the thread. Post #35 is exactly what I was trying to say. I'm getting the feeling that you're trying to wrest or trick my words into something that they're not, otherwise why would you ask me if I think it's ok to speak evil against the Lord's anointed?

Well, we're using terms like "distrusting the Church," "speaking evil of the Lord's anointed," and "[insert label here] Mormon" so broadly and vaguely in support of claims of apostasy that I'm honestly not even sure.

I don't think it unreasonable for a person to hold that some of the advice given in Elder Callister's talk can be harmful to some people in certain circumstances without that person suddenly becoming apostate or needing to leave the Church.

There's been a lot of hyperventilation going on on both sides of this. I don't feel knowledgeable enough about the subject to comment on the controversy directly, but I did find a somewhat sane article from a member of the Church who is also a licensed clinical marriage and family therapist explaining, on a professional level, how some of the things Elder Callister said can give some people, depending on their situation, harmful ideas about their own personal worth. In other words, the article is not completely wrong, but like the "not even once club" controversy a few months ago this advice certainly isn't for everyone.

As far as I know, there's no set waiting period for getting your limited use recommend: as soon as your Bishop knows you're ready, you can get one. Contact your Bishop to get the process started. That probably depends on how busy the temple is, or whether or not they do open baptism sessions. I'd call the temple and ask.