mordorbund

Margaret Barker says this and other changes took place with the deuteronomist reforms under King Josiah. She has since been introduced to The Book of Mormon and she framed Lehi as a sort of retrenchment prophet against the redacted changes. She highlights a love of books based on prophets suddenly out of favor (“The Deuteronomists wrote the history of the kings in Jerusalem, compiling it from sources about ancient kings and heroes… [as opposed to] lost sources … [which] were all prophets—Samuel the Seer, Nathan the Prophet, Gad the Seer“), loss of plain and precious things (“The people of the Apocalypse of Weeks, however, considered that the people who rebuilt Jerusalem were apostates and they rewrote the histories”), a focus on the tree of life as a symbol of the mother of God (“in the time of Josiah, her tree, the Asherah, the Menorah, was finally removed from the temple … Why such hatred? Hostility to Wisdom was a hallmark of the Deuteronomists and due to their influence the Mother and her tree have been almost forgotten. Her son was the Lord.”), etc. Related to your post:

Ugh. All these rich people with all their tax loopholes….

Bruh, storm just got real.

It’s because they were all clapping instead of laughing isn’t it. ‘90’s kids were so mean…

You're crossing the bishop's ecclesiastical role with the youth leader role. Walk through this hypothetical with me. A young man tells his scout master, who also happens to be his pastor, that he needs to meet with him in order to earn his religious emblem. The scout master says, why don't you meet with me this Sunday before services. When Sunday arrives the young man meets one-on-one behind closed doors where the pastor determines if he's living the religion's moral standards. Will the pastor get removed from his scouting position? I dare say he won't. When bishops go on campouts or carpool to youth activities they follow the 2-deep rule. When they meet with the youth in an ecclesiastical role he follows the rules outlined here: More on that later. Again, mandatory reporters are defined by States. Especially if you're claiming scouting leaders will be charged for failure to comply. BSA can say what they will, but if the State doesn't require youth leaders to be mandatory reporters there will be no charges. If a church member fails to report an incident, I don't know what the consequence would be. You've escalated to a possible excommunication, but I would think a release would be more likely. Given that different States have different requirements and that the bishop knows the local members better than I do, perhaps that's why they have a legal line to call as well as counsellors. By the way, I've been looking through BSA's various pages and FAQ's on youth protection (a lot of them looked like this). I'm having a difficult time finding a standardized penalty for failure to report (or any penalty really). From what I can tell, the penalty for this (as well as the penalty for near-misses) is left up to the local Council. Yes... And as we look into it, I think you might need to re-read it because you're arguing against claims that aren't there. She's not extrapolating why 30% should be the correct number. She's going off of a number the BSA negotiated and got. Are you saying the number should be different? So is she! Are you saying that the 30% actually represents something else? Then what?! Actually she argues that background checks have limited utility. Please take a moment to recognize the difference before continuing. Background checks have huge holes in the backgrounds getting checked. They're good for weeding out the most egregious offenders (where egregious is defined as "caught and convicted", not as "did really bad stuff") but if you don't know about the blind spots it can fill an organization with false confidence. The Church doesn't have background checks like BSA, but it does have a system to help weed out serious baddies. Even NT concluded: One advantage of calling the helpline first is that the bishop would know if he's revealing privileged information. There's legal and social reasons for that confidentiality. Yes, it's difficult to know the rate of abuse in the Church of Jesus Christ if we base it solely on self-reporting and helpline data, but that's not what's happening here so I don't know why you're bringing it up. FairLDS provided their source: the P-files kept by the LA Times. Kosnoff also claims to use the same source. FairLDS tells us what their methodology is and how they got that number. Kosnoff (in that article at least) does not. Even if we assume Kosnoff's estimate is more accurate than FairLDS's, the Church is over-paying by 30-50%. FairLDS uses 95% of the files across the entire 80 years that they've been kept. I don't know where you're getting it from that they only used recent numbers. I agree that we would get a more accurate percentage if we compared against % representation of any given year, but as a ball park I think this at least shows that the actual amount is less than what the financial burden suggests. I haven't compared youth programs here, and if this is your main point then I encourage you to stick to it. I am only raising an objection to the provably false statement that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints does not use 2-deep leadership in its youth program. Don't repeat it and I'll return to my lawn.

This does not directly address the OP, but for the general issue of what should and shouldn’t be discussed about temple ordinances, I’ll provide the following snippets from section 27 of the handbook of instruction: And speaking of related sacred things, this is what section 38.5 of the Handbook has on the garment: There’s a brief segment here about what should and should not be shared, but I included more because I think it’s worth considering the Church’s own example in this matter.

Typing with my thumbs today so I won’t be providing references. If you want some be sure to ask and I’ll provide them when I get to a proper keyboard. <img src=“cat playing piano” /> Talmage The House of the Lord points out that the contains imagery of the history of our first parents, a panorama of the various dispensations, and a personal salvation epic all within the same narrative framework. I see the same thing with Lehi/Nephi’s accounts of the tree of life. Lehi takes from it a personal application of his immediate children. He also seems to see the scattering and gathering of Israel in it based on Laman and Lemuel’s questioning (I think Nephi makes some allusions to it, but then builds on it as he studies Isaiah). Nephi also sees a family story, but it extends down to the destruction of his descendants. And he sees a personal salvation narrative (I think he also builds on this later at the end of 2 Nephi). And he also sees a panorama that takes him through apostasies and restoration and all the way to the end of the world (John finishes this for him). in John’s vision the whore of Babylon sits on many waters, so the waters filthiness makes sense. Nephi also shares how the record of the Jews was pure when it came out of the mouth of the Jew but later was corrupted. This suggests a river that started clean but turned filthy. For the salvation narrative, there is a gulf dividing the righteous and the wicked. The depths of the filthy river are the depths of hell. Perhaps this suggests that the first step of rebellion is indeed a step to hell (in contrast to being lost from wandering in strange roads). In the life of Christ (oh yeah, he also see the life of Christ. This can be part of the panorama or part of the salvation narrative or its own category — make of it what you will). In the life of Christ water shows up again in the condescension of God: Jesus is baptized. Presumably his followers are baptized as they take the path to fall down at his feet and worship (tree imagery). Again, I am of the opinion that Nephi explicitly ties the action of Christ to the action of his followers in his sermon on baptism. For this the water would need to be clean. The scattering/gathering I think has more to do with an olive tree, and since this image and the explanation got cut Nephi (Lehi included it briefly in his explanation), and since I’m not seeing a water connection I’ll skip it here. Unless it’s also part of Nephi’s family story, in which case… In Nephi’s family story he sees that the Old World and the New World are separated by water and it gets traversed. I don’t see how filthiness or purity is involved in this, or how/when the river was crossed in the dream. I mention it because of the water connection. From this I gather there is pure water, and there is filthy water. The apostasy motif has me thinking there is a river that becomes corrupted, but I could entertain the idea that there is a second river (flash flood!?!) that is only filthy.

I thought about that too. This has been different from my experience as an adult. Every ward I’ve been in has had its share of low-income housing or welfare recipients. They have also been in some affluent areas. So I would expect to see some income disparity in the data. The fact that it doesn’t tells me that either (1) in the wards I’ve been in the haves vastly overshadow the have-nots, or (2) the saint density in the Wasatch front is so tightly packed that the other US wards aren’t making a dent in this study (I never lived in a Utah family ward).

From what I can tell, this is the primary difference in the two organizations preventative steps. I’m not sure how substantial it is. I certainly don’t think it’s significant enough to warrant the extensive praise you heap on the BSA (but that’s just a difference of opinion). Do you know who else has two-deep leadership? As long as we’re misrepresenting requirements, the Church calls for two “responsible adults”. The BSA does not require responsible leaders. For what it’s worth, I specifically posted the link so you would see that the Church requires two-deep leadership. Please stop saying it doesn’t. Do you know what it means to be a mandatory reporter? That is a legal term for people who may be charged with a misdemeanor if they keep their mouth shut. The State determines that, not the organization. Now, the organization can require someone to report abuse, but the worst they can do is kick out the person who failed to report. It’s good that the BSA tells its leaders to report abuse when they see it. Do you know who else does? “If you learn of abuse, you should immediately contact legal authorities” @NeuroTypical may be able to shed some light on the annotations on Church records. NT, if someone is known to have an abusive past would that show up in the records? Also would other criminal charges (such as fraud) make it there? Yay!!! I didn’t know about this BSA requirement. It looks like the differences between what the Church requires and what BSA requires is BSA has more frequent training and separate tenting for large age differences. As you note though, “the two deep leadership (meaning you ALWAYS should have another witness of what is happening, and hopefully at least one sane adult is there) and background checks, it does a LOT to curb situations where bad things could occur.” And the Church has this or something similar in place. So the Church does a LOT to curb bad situations where bad things can occur. As needed the two differences can be tweaked. Funny you should say that. An analysis of the BSA’s P-Files shows that The Church of Jesus Christ has a rate of abuse far below average when compared to other religions in Scouting. So would I, but because there are evil people in this world it’s good to know the Church has instituted safeguards to protect children and youth.

First pagers then walkie-talkies. They’re throwing out their telegraphs as we speak!

Huh

Did you ask her how she stores her ketchup?

What was she supposed to do — rub the muffin directly on the butter? They’re not Cornish Muffins you know.

Ever been covered in kisses by emotional support leeches?

Put on a few more pounds first to guarantee you won’t run out of canvas.