John_Pack_Lambert

I'm surprised to not see any more comments. I hope some of the new submissions of hymns not yet written turn out to be really good. I think that is where some of the best chances of new and exciting developments are.

I submitted a hymn. I am not sure it is even quite up to being a hymn. I have another idea that I wrote down as a teenager, than I think I will run through my mind a bit longer before submission. It appears that they want some of the judging on the hymns to be done with generally no knowledge of the composer. The works I submitted are just texts. They have tunes in my mind, but I know not how to write them down.

This leads me to think all current hymns need to be considered for revisions to see if any of the texts are not in harmony with Church teaching. This is why the hymn that used to be called "From Greenland's Icy Mountains" needs to go.

I could pull statements by Phelps in regards to the treatment of African-Americans that a modern person would find troubling, but this is true of most 19th-century people who we have large number of their statements recorded. Even Joseph Smith who ran on a plank to abolish slavery had not always been keen toward the cause of abolitionists, and since he would have compensated slave owners for the value of their slaves, instead of paid the slaves reparations for being slaves, his policy would be disliked by many moderns, including BYU's leading expert on the history of slavery in America, Matthew Mason. However whatever Phelps meant by "There is no end to race", the way the term race is used today in America makes the line troubling. Of course if it is just the line, we could change it to "grace", and have a non-problematic song. No longer in "Praise to the Man" do we say Joseph Smith's blood will "stain Illinois".

You may be right. On the other hand in some wards they only sing about 10-15 songs. I like "I Believe in Christ", although have to say I am very glad that "Mormon Doctrine" is out of print, but it was a bit much when two weeks in a row my ward sang it as the closing hymn. I also want to see more Easter Hymns. We have 3 and one is in a hard to do minor tempo. We also should sing them more than just one Sunday a year, but that is an issue that is not directly connected to the hymnal. "Ring Out, Wild Bells" also gets a strong vote from me to be ousted.

Much of the particular complaints about how hymns are sung and played comes from people currently ignoring what the hymnbook at present says. There may be some room for revisions and simplifications that would make hymns more singable, but Now Let Us Rejoice is supposed to be sung at a tempo of 100-120, although 100 seems a bit low for that hymn. Many times hymns are sung below tempo in wards. A new hymnbook on its own will not fix these problems.

I have to admit I want to for sure see "If You Could Hie To Kolob" go, its line "There is no end to race", at least on its face is just so wrong. I also am not sure of the doctrinal soundness of the hymn overall. Another group of hymns I want gone most exemplified by "Our Mountain Home So Dear". These are hymns to Utah. I want us to introduce a few hymns that have as their cultural roots being African-American spirituals, although I know how that will lead to cries of cultural appropriation.

Entering into marriage with someone of the same sex is grounds for excommunication. Seking in any way to get a second spouse is also grounds. So in almost all cases is sex outside of marriage by a married man. Violating the law of chasity by an unmarried member is not often grounds for excommunication, unless the person seems to be truly non-repentant, does so in a way that is deemed predatory, or is just rebellious about it. To be baptized one must 1-committ to regulary attend Church, and have attended Church a few times, the exact number varies with location 2-declare a belief that Joseph Smith restored the same Church that existed anciently, and a belief that Jesus Christ is the Savior and Redeemer, 3-comitte to live the Word of Wisdom and Law of Chastity. How long these principals should have been abided by is not fixed. Generally though the Word of Wisdom should have been lived at least a week, and wise missionaries will at least want those who have dealt with addictive behavior to have began a process of earnestly trying to quit. The law of chastity is general thought to have been needed to have lived a month, but if you married someone you had been cohabitating with, there is no time generally imposed. If you reside with a non-related adult of the opposite sex, you generally either have to move out or have them move out before baptism. If there was never a sexual relationship with that individual, the mission president or his counselor may make an exception, but that is very rare, and it has to be done at that level. If there was every a sexaul relationship, at all, ever, than you must either end the coresidence, or marry, before baptism. The Church will also not baptize anyone who is in jail, or currently on probation or parole. There are no exceptions to this rule, although wise missionaries will teach and fellowship a person on probation or parole until they get off it. I have sadly known some missionaries more obsessed with mission baptism statistics than bringing all unto Christ. 4-An individual committs to make themself a witness of Christ. While the exact perameters of this are less than clear, one should consider what this means before baptism and not rush into baptism without a firm witness from God that it is the right action.

I served in a ward on my mission where one member had had her husband leave her to run off with a woman who served as an assistant clerk while he was ward clerk. This makes me think that doing such is a very bad idea. This is also why I think the Church should close a lot of the samll family history centers that were set up in the days of Temple Ready. While official policies say that there should always be 2 staff members present, at least one of those should be a baptized Church member, and that if only two staff are present they must either both be of the same sex or spouses/immediate family members, I have seen every one of those rules broken and always in small family history centers. I have also seen non-mmeber FHC staff take way too condescending approaches to members starting family history with only a little knowledge to feel they should be used as staff at all. Since the main purpose of family history centers is to advance temple work, we should at least have staff who understand the importance of temple work.

But the boys program cost way more money without providing clearly greater benefits. It also involved way more unjustified shaming of those who had not achieved a rank that inehrently was set up so only a few boys could achieve it, and clearly not set up to allow those of us with Aspergers Syndrome to ever have a chance to get it.

I think Jane Doe is onto something when she says that Boy Scouts programs have different values in different places. There may also be an issue with the latitude various scout organizations give to sponsoring organizations in running the program per their values. There is also an issue of how much scouting promotes values of nationalism. While in the Church we teach to be good citizens, some argue that scouting in some ways teaches valuing the nation you live in too much. I think the inherent difficulty and oddity of the LDS Church sponsoring an organization not controlled by the LDS Church is in and of itself reason enough for the Church to leave scouting. This is the only non-LDS controlled outside organization that the Church sponsors in this way. While the Church does support and work with outside organizations in some other contexts, those do not invovle the Church giving people callings to work in those organizations.

To me, especially his secretive approach makes it sound very much like he is dealing with an addiction. I think the best thing for him is to get him into the Church's 12 step program.

I am so glad I do not live in Euope where it is part of their values to let the government regulate everything.

Clearly you do not know everything, because the camp I mention was a fully functional summer boy scout camp at the time, yet there was a full contingent of girls right by our camp site. Scouting is a lot bigger than what you know of.

One can also find links from either the Engisn or the Be One Page to stories of many of the Black pioneers of the LDS Church, those who so often waited long times for the realization of the blessings of the gospel. People like Victor Nugent in his family in Jamaica who for about two years after the American expatriate members who first tuaght them the gospel moved away, kept meeting each Sunday even though they could not even administer the sacrament. Or Joseph W. B. Johnson in Ghana who for years built up the Church, named his son Brigham, and waited on the Lord. He heard of the LDS Church coming to Liberia, but on going there realized it was the RLDS Church, and they did not have the true gospel. Brother Johnson lived in Accra, and occasionally members, such as Merril J. Bateman, visited. He one time when Brother Bateman was visiting told him that he was going to Cape Coast to prepare a people for the Lord. Brother Joshson had actively built up the Church for over 10 years by the time he was baptized in 1979. However that was not the end of the dark times. In 1989 the government of Ghana banned the Church. There is another story from a woman who had been part of one of the congregations started by Johnson. Her husband took a few years after 1979 and the arrival of missionaries in Ghana to join, he deeply distrusted white people. He was ordained to the priesthood by 1982. However she did not see her husband bless the sacrament until 1989. During the dark days of the freeze members were authorized to hold sacrament meetings in their homes. Most missionaries in Ghana when the freeze began were reeased. Many of these were Ghanaians, but any missionary activbity on the part of the Church was illegal. There was an exception. William B. J. Johnson and his wife served as missionaries. They went and met in the homes of members to strrengthen them thorugh the time of darkness. In late 1990 the ban on the Church was lifted by the government of Ghana. In June of 1991 in one day two stakes were organized in Ghana. One was in the capital and largest city of Accra. The other in Cape Coast, where Borther Johnson had prepared a people. Brother Johnson was the stake patriarch. When a temple was dedicated in Ghana by President Hinckley with Elder (now President) Nelson also participating in the ceremony in 2002, a temple the groundbreaking ceremony for which had been done by President Nelson, Brother Johnson was among those set apart as temple workers.

The June 2018 Ensign has 5, 6 if you count online only content, articles that at least somewhat mention Official Declaration 2, that are written by members of African descent. One is by Elder Edward Dube, a general authority seventy who is the father of the Church Educational System in Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi, and was the first stake president in Zimbabwe and the first Zimbabwean to serve as a mission president. Somehow EWlder Dube did not hear about the past preisthood restriction until he had been a member about 2 years and was serving a fulltime mission. It caused a day of struggle for him. Another is by Elder Fred Parker, an area seventy who is African-American and a native of Atlanta, Georgia. He met his LDS ethnic Samoan wife in Missouri (the Samoans jump started the final gathering to Jackson County). He mentions that the past priesthood restruiction was a hold up to his baptism in the early 1980s. Another is by Darius Gray, who was a counselor in the Genesis Group presidency when it was formed in 1971. He actually says a lot less about the history issues involved than one might expect. He more speaks of unity for the future. In the online verison of his article he gives some specific examples of things not to say. Kirstie Stenger-Weyland, who is almost certainly under age 25 (although because compiling the Ensign takes about a year, it is hard to judge for suce) illustrates that we need to not judge on outward appearances. Stenger-Weyland was adopted at or near birth by a white family, and got into a top notch university (I think BYU, but she never actually says) based on good grades and taking AP classes. Still a woman she at that time considered her best friend who didnt get in that same school, responded that Stenger-Weyland got in "because she was black". Other issues Steger-Weyland brings up is people asking her husband "what is it like being married to a black woman" as if somehow this is a class apart where one can stand for all. She also, as a lifelong member and returned missionary takes exception to people asking her if she is a recent convert. To be fair, a general profile of those baptized in the LDS Church in the last 24 months would show that a high percentage look like Steger-Weyland, but of course she is right that we should not assume based on something as ephemeral as skin color. For what it is worth when I went to EFY in Ohio in 1998 my roommate was the one black person in attendance, although one morning we did have devoltional speakers who were a balck couple, who met while they were both part of BYU's young ambassadors, and the husband was a professor of dance at Ohio University, one of the few Mormons on the factulty there. About 10 years ago an African-American youth from my fiancee's branch went to EFY. He felt very much in the minority, although maybe not the lone black. Of course the film "Sisterz in Zion" that covers a group of inner-city young women from New York City going to EFY in 2003 gives interesting insites. It shows how these youth who start out feeling they have little in common with the country music listening to suburbanite whites who dominate EFY, come to feel a oneness with these other youth. Yet in the afterward we see that power to transform is limited. While we do have one of the black women who goes on to marry a return missionary (who is also white), we also have another one who has become a single mother although she had apparently at the time of her last meeting decided to go back to regularly attending Church.

Still my favoriate is the story of Samuel and Amanda Chambers. It is from I believe a New Era Article published in 1975. It was in some ways clearly written as a message of how to be a faithful non-priesthood holding male member, in the days before Official Declaration 2. Some of its language feels a little dated, although luckily it was the 1970s and not the 1960s, so the term negro is not used. Samual Chambers is super cool. He was a 13-year-old slave baptized in Mississippi in 1844. The next time anyone in the Church had contact with him was when he showed up in Salt Lake City in 1970, bringing not just his wife and son, but his wife's sister, her husband and three children. Chambers had spent the four years since being freed from slavery earning the money to gather to Zion. This despite the fact that Chambers had so little contact with the Church he makes men like Vincenzo di Francesca and Anthony Obinna look almost like fully fellowshipped people in the heart of Zion. Francesca and Obinna actually had period letters from Church leaders during their time of waiting for the blessings of the gospel. Chambers had no contact of any kind with any other member of the Church for the 26 years from his baptism until he went to Salt Lake City. Event though Chambers was not ordained to the priesthood, he was very heavily active in the actions of the Deacons Quorum in his ward. In those days that meant cutting the wood for meetings and cleaning the chapel. He was also a leading agricultralist in the Salt Lake Valley.

The BeOne website also has links to some stories of early African and African-American convets. Green Flake, who was with the original pioneer company of Brigham Young, and technically a slave at the time, is one covered. One of Green Flakes' owners descendants is married to an African-American woman and they named their first child Green Flake. Another person chronicled is Eliza Manning James, who was briefly mentioned and even pictured during President Ballard's talk in last October general conference

I have been going to my Fiancee's branch which includes much of inner-city Detroit for the last month or so. They have announced this event in both sacrament meeting and priesthood opening exercises. Some of the materials published with this announcement are really good. It amazes me that I still come across those who have not read the "Race and the Priesthood" Gospel Topics essay. I would urge everyone to read it. I have also talked to people within the last year who thought that early ordianations of those of African descent to the priesthood were abberations of what Church policy was then. Elija Able clearly was ordained with the acceptance of Joseph Smith. He not only was made an elder, but also a seventy. To be fair my grandfather was ordained a seventy immediately before he started on his mission in 1941 at age 21. However for his third mission in the 1870s Elder Able was set apart by Joseph F. Smith, then 2nd counselor in the first presidency, and possibly the man most responsble for later pushing a hard line of no ordination of people with African descent. Although my grandfather also told me that in the 1930s in his ward in Filmore, Utah they received first presidency approval to ordain members of a family of known African descent to the priesthood. I also had an African-American friend who went to the Provo Temple and did baptisms for the dead in 1975. From what he said I got the impression his bishop and stake president were told they should not have given a limited use reccomend to a man who did not hold the priesthood, but the people running the temple let him do baptisms even though there is no way they didnt realize he was or African descent, and if his leaders got chided for their irregular actions they were clearly not realeased from their callings for such. There was a case of someone excommunicated in 1976 for ordaining a man of African descent to the priesthood. However this was probalby more because the individual performed both a baptism and an ordination without authorization from the key holders than any factor related to the person they ordained.

I have to admit I can see a European nation wanting to punish the LDS Church for our vies on homosexuality. However since our views are virtually the same as the Catholic Church at present, this is much more a threat in Scandanavia than any where else in Europe. In fact it may be a big threat in Scandinavia and the Netherlands. That said, for a lot of reasons, I doubt this punishment would be in the form of trying to ban activities by individual members. It much more likely would involve revoking tax exempt status (something MormonLeaks and their attempts to quantify the investment holdings of the LDS Church and Karcher's attempt to claim the Church engages in tax evasion is clearly aimed at). Another possiblity would be attempting to stop missionary visas. This is why it is key that the EU become missionary self-sufficient. The radical, try to portray church leaders as dishonest, group will stop at nothing though. I once read something where someone was trying to portray the directive to mission presidents that they not claim the residence they are provided as income for tax purposes as something the IRS would object to. This is the most uninformed attack on the integrity of LDS Church leaders I have ever seen. The home of a mission president clearly is a parsonage, not even a parsonage allowance. The ownership of the home is retained by the Church, so there is no way at all it could come under tax provisions. Even if the parsonage allowance is declared unconstitutional, which would be a clear travesty of justice, the mission home is an assest of the Church, owned by the Church, and could never be taxed to the mission president. Add to this that the mission home is clearly used for the benefit of the mission. Generally the first and last meal of a missionary in the mission is held at that home. In many cases missionaries will stay a night or two at the beginning and end of their mission. What next, will we tax full-time missionaries for their mission cars? That would make as much sense.

If the concern is with terrorist attacks, laws like this are the worst possible response. Same with laws banning government officials from wearing hijab on the job such as France passed, banning hijab in school and on and on. Laws like this do not lessen the behavior, they increase it. They also, but declaring societal war on such behaviors, make those who engage in them feel more isolated from the larger community, and fuel the very feelings that lead to terrorism. To be fair, much of what leads to violent terrorist acts is related to narratives of greivance, some of which are false. Some of the cartoons used to spur the mass hate of Denmark when a newspaper there published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad were not in the original set of cartoons. These were the most disrespectufl and vicious, while the real ones were more true political commentary. The cartoon that portrayed Muhammad as a pig was created by a Muslim Imam deliberately to increase the level of anger and invective spurred by the incident. In a similar vain the craven abandonment of religious freedom and freedom of speech by US government officials to attack the pastor of a small independent Pentecostal Church who dared to burn the Qu'ran did nothing to stop the terrorist attacks half a world away and in many ways fueled them by creating a false sense that the government had any control over private action and by fueling the belief that US officials were weak willed and would respond to violence. To properly talk about the violent actions by Muslims since about 1980 on, we need to speak of them as what they are, hate crimes. Some are hate crimes against political oppoents. Some are hate crimes to advance a cause. Some, especially in France, are hate crimes aimed at the people the Muslims hate the most, Jews.The same is true of many of the hate crimes that have happened in Sweden. Lastly, it should be kept in mind that most of the rhetoric about anti-Muslim crime is just plain false. In southern California there was a killing about 5 years ago that was initially claimed to be motivated by the woman wearing hijab. Eventually that story unraveled and the anti-hijab actions were shown to be a cover lie, invented by the husband, who killed his wife to stop him leaving her. This is not the only such lie crime, over and over agin for the last 40 years there have been hoax racist incidents. Even more disturbing is the coverage of these incidents by the anti-hate lobby, such as the SPLC, usually avoids admitting how many are hoaxes. This leads to the last lie of the SPLC. They will call "hate groups", individual (odd in its own right) former Muslims who speak out against the negative aspects of Muslims culture. Yet they do not include in their hate group list ISIS and other groups that actively seek to kill people. If the SPLC was consistent it would call the LDS Church a hate group because we excommunicate people who enter same-sex marriage and other similar policies. However SPLC is not yet bold enough in their lies, and will only call hate groups marginal religious sects. Thus they call the Apostolic United Brethren, a splinter polygamous sect that claims to follow the teachings of Joseph Smith a hate group. Their evidence, a report by an ex-AUB member of arguably racist remarks made in a religious class of the AUB sometime in the 1980s. I can however site explicit statments agianst inter-racial marriage made by a BYU religion professor in the summer of 2002. Does that make the Church racist? To be fair that professor didnt explain how he reconciled his statments with Spencer W. Kimball's 1956 statement "interracial marriage is no sin" and I was not bold enough then to confront such ill informed statements. With one of the members of the quorum of the 12 having a wife of a different race, such statements would seem to have even less credence now than they did in 2002. Although the first general authority who had a wife of a different race was possibly Jacob de Jager called I believe in the 1970s. Due to race being an inprecisely defined social construct, I can not gaurantee that was the earliest case of such. In the 1850s Brigham Young openly advocated to missionaries sent to Native Americans that they should take Native American wives. Spencer W. Kimball did in 1956 duiscourage inter-racial marriage while declaring it "no sin", but that was purely from a sociological standpoint, and mainly in the context of white men raised in suburban American marrying Native American women raised on the reservation. Although I had a classmate at BYU whose stake president father had done exactly what President Kimball discouraged. Being a white man who grew up in the Detroit suburbs, my high school graduatng class of over 300 had one African-American, and I would deal with more African Americans at stake youth events than at high school. Despite the fact that I would regularly dance with the one female African-American senior in the whole stake at stake youth dances, it was my supposedly liberaly high school councilor who once discoursed to me on the ills of inter-racial marriage, not any of my Church leaders. This may or may not have been a reaction to my having written two stories for my creative writing class involving a wite man marrying a black woman. My high school was not overwhelmingly white by any measure, we had lots of Indians (from India, or children or immigrants), Pakistanis, Filipinos, Chinese, Vietnamese and Korean students. We had a handful of Hispanic students, most with one non-Hispanic parent. We also had a huge number of Chaldeans and Arabs who no one but the census thinks is white. Our Albanians and Macedonians did not self-identify as white, and even some of our descendants of immigrants from Greece and Italy didnt self identify as white, but that was a bit more borderline. Back to my stories of inter-racial marriage, One of them involved our main protagonists being students at BYU in June 1978. Anyway next month I marry in the Detroit Michigan Temple an African-American woman who grew up in (and still resides in) Detroit. She got a GED, but if she had graduated high school it would have been in a virtually all black class with a few Hmong students, whose families have all since fled to the suburbs, although dwarfed by black flight to the suburbs in the last 25 years. Me and my fiancee clearly come from different cultures, a little less because she has been a Church member since 14, although her activity rates have not always been high, she was not endowed until she was 36 or so. It also helps that I have taught mainly in Detroit for the last 5 years, mostly at schools where 95% or more of the students were at least partially African-American. I think the stat at the last school I taught at was 100% of the students were African-American. Even at BYU I had more blackclassmates than in high school. I finished my undergrad at Wayne State, with its disturbing racial polarization but tried to overcome it. Wayne State is a university in the heart of Detroit. Lower level undergrad classes had lots of African-Americans, but many were not ready for university level work and dropped out. I had some upper level classes with no Afircan-Americans in them. This may also be because African-Americans were more focused on majors that clearly lead to jobs, and so chose nursing, mortuary science and engineering over history, my major. Most history classes had some African-Americans, but they were never close to a majority, which was the case for some general ed classes I took. I tried my hardest to bridge the campus race divisions, but didnt feel I made much progress. There are exampkles that call for even more thought. Such as Kirstie Stanger-Weyland who is one of the authors of an article in the June 2018 Ensign. She is phenotypically black, but was raised by her adopted white parents, has a white husband, and if I read between the lines right is a BYU student and for sure a returned missionary. From most cultural perspectives she probably has more in common with her white husband not just than most African-American males, but even than most African-American male members of the LDS Church.

Considering the actual reasoning for this, I highly doubt a ban on endownment clothing would work. Despite the fact that Pennsylvania and Nebraska ban public school teachers from wearing religious clothing on the job, I highly doubt this has ever been used to restrict endowed Mormons from being teachers there. However I think both those laws and this one are clear violations of religious freedom. The fact that the Pennsylvania and Nebraska laws have never been declared unconstitutional, although they have existed for 90 years, were passed to make sure Catholic nuns could not teach in public schools (back then all nuns worehabits, not as much so now), and ban Sikhs and Muslim women from being teachers at present, is itself disturbing. The fact that the ACLU advocates for such laws shows to what extend it is an enemy of individual freedom. I work as a substitute teacher,. In some of the schools I work at in metro-Detroit I can have a class where all the students are girls (these are charter (public) schools that have sex specific classes), in one school I subbed at by my count of the probably 150 girls in that middle school only one didnt wear hijab, and about 20% wore burkhas. Whatever one thinks of Brukhas you should realize banning them is a huge violation of religious freedom. It is also probably the worst move for those who feel they are a step too far in covering a person. The best way to make someone cling to an item of clothing is to pass laws against it.

I have to admit this new policy makes me wonder why the Church is waiting through the end of 2019 to leave the BSA. It also reinforces my decision from this year not to donate one cent to friends of scouting. On the other hand I continue to believe the number 1 reason the LDS Church left BSA is its desire to develop a unified world-wide program. That said, I also have to say I have yet to see a satisfactory explaination of why this move is needed. The line spewed by some "scouts do not exist in msot of the world outside the US" is just plain false. The national with the most scouts, several times the US number, is Indonesia. India has more scouts than the US, but probably fewer per capita, especially for the eligible age range. In India scouting and guiding (more or less like girl scouts in the US) merged into one nationwide body, but individual local units remain single sex. On the other hand Canadian scouts have been fully coed since the late 1990s, and started going coed in the late 1970s, yet the LDS Church has sponsored scouts Canada units to the present and will through Dec 31, 2019. I think there are real reason the LDS Church does not sponsor scout troops in Britain and many other countries, but the reasons remain unclear. I believe the LDS Church did sponsor scouts troops in Germany before the rise of Hitler, but the Church was forced to end them when Hitler destroyed scouting and started the Hitler Youth. I am not sure if the LDS Church ever sponsored scouting in post- World War II Germany.

But putting the 11-year-olds in with the other scouts could not work for the LDS program. That is not doable, we have to have the 11-year-olds seperate. You can gripe all you want, but it is one of the many reasons why scouting does not work structurally for the LDS Church. So stop acting like the LDS Church is flawed because of this. It is a non-conforming reason, and a key one for the Church to have left scouting.

I take back my last statement. I once went as an adult leader to one day of cub day camp.