The Relief Society of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is one of the largest female organizations on the planet which is composed solely of women. It was established by revelation and given power and authority by His prophets to be one of the most powerful engines for doing good that the Earth has ever encountered. But I find that many members, men and women, don’t think of Relief Society as being anything other than that thing the women do on some Sundays. In this article we look at the teachings of Eliza R. Snow, founding member and record keeper of the Nauvoo Female Relief Society, the one who re-founded it in Utah, and second President of the Relief Society as she explains the organization of the Relief Society, its purpose, and the power it has to accomplish God’s work upon the Earth.
Category: LDS Church
The Truth About Mormon Culture And Why It Is Amazing
There is no end to the handwringing that and internet article posts made by members and non-members of the Church of Jesus Christ that claim to accurately diagnose problems in “Mormon culture” and then offer solutions. Claims of homophobia, sexism, racism, nativism, transphobia, hatred, cliquishness, and more are all laid at the feet of the Latter-day Saints, told their culture is to blame, and demand (or “suggestions”) are made that will supposedly banish these ills from Latter-day Saints society. But is this true? It is certainly true that Latter-day Saints do some of these things, but is the reason they do it because of the influence of uniquely LDS theology and cultural beliefs?
In a word? No. These problems exist among Latter-day Saints, but these problems are not caused by Latter-day Saint or Mormon culture. Rather, Latter-day Saints are made scapegoats for problems which exist universally in the worldly societies in which Latter-day Saints participate and the values of which they have absorbed. When a Latter-day Saint is sexist, racist, nativist, etc., he or she is acting out the prejudices and biases of his or her own national culture and not so-called Mormon culture. In this article I explain how Latter-day Saints are indoctrinated into the virtues and vices of their national cultures and end up repeating those errors which are then incorrectly blames on Mormonism’s influence. I also talk about how you can get down to what is an actual, true Latter-day Saint culture, providing some examples to support my arguments about what it is and what it looks like. Finally, I conclude by looking at how real Latter-day Saint culture is a manifestation of the culture of Christ, which we should embrace wholeheartedly while abandoning all the Babylonian cultures of the world.
President Oaks Taught The Principles of Anarchy at General Conference
This past weekend was General Conference and President Dallin H. Oaks delivered an address where he outlined five inspired principles of government which he taught are what make the U.S. Constitution an inspired document and why Latter-day Saints should feel some special loyalty to the document. Outside of the typical American culturalism in his talk, what really astounded me was that the five principles he outlined are not unique to the U.S. Constitution. They’re not even fully realized in the Constitution because of how the violence of statism limits or altogether prevents these inspired principles from operating to their fullest. But they do in consensual, non-statist government systems such as those found in libertarianism, anarchism, and voluntaryism. In this article I explore each principle individually, demonstrate how they are hobbled in the U.S Constitution, and how they are actually principles of consensual governments like anarchy, libertarianism, and voluntaryism because those forms of government allow these divine principles to operate at their highest and holiest potentials. In teaching these divine principles as the basis for righteous governments, President Oaks has inadvertently made the strongest argument for the rejection of the U.S. Constitution and the embracing of anarchy I have heard from any General Authority.
How To Achieve World Peace
Last weekend was both Pascha (Easter) and General Conference, making it a weekend doubly full of spiritual blessings. One of the most powerful talks given was Elder Jeffrey R. Hollands discourse “Not as the World Giveth,” he addresses the problems of the world – its violence, hatred, and contention, all of which originate in Satan and wicked influences – and explains how we can find solutions to these problems can be found in the Covenant of Peace – the concepts, teachings, and ordinances that can only be fully found in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In the world we find wars and rumors of wars, rape, murder, greed, anger, social division, isolation, oppression, mockery, corruption, riots, mobs, and every excuse humans can think of to despise one another, kill one another, and hate our blood. Elder Holland then goes on to talk about the solutions to these problems and mentions three Christian principles that, if fully realized, would end all the problems of the world. These are Faith, Hope, and Charity. In this article I breakdown each of these principles and doctrines of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and show how they hold within themselves the power to truly transform the world into the place of peace, love, and liberty that we all wish it was already. Within these three principles is the key to world peace, to Zion.
The Important But Forgotten Part of Easter
Holy Saturday is the day which most of traditional Christianity spends in a kind of solemn mourning in commemoration of the death of the Savior and in anticipation of His glorious Resurrection. Often overlooked is that while Christ’s body may have been laid low in the Arimathean’s tomb, His spirit was active and engaged in one of the most essential but overlooked aspect of the Atonement of Jesus Christ – the initiation of the redemption of the dead. This Holy Saturday I want to remember and celebrate Chist great postmortal ministry when He began the work of saving all people who have ever or would ever live, ensuring all would have the oppurtunity to have the eternal blessings of His Gospel and to be transformed by the power of its ordinances, so that all people could stand before God and be judged fairly and redeemed completely. This article explores His work in the Spirit World, what we know about the work that happens there, and how this can empower us to live live our faith in this life and in the next.
Remembering The Power of The Cross on Easter
It is well known within and without of Mormonism’s cultural bubble that Latter-day Saints don’t wear crosses, nor do we consider the Cross as the symbol of our faith. Why this is will have to wait for another time. This Holy Week I instead want to explore the symbol of the Cross not in our society but in our theology. Unlike our discourse, every book of LDS scripture is awash with the symbol of the Cross and the Suffering Savior, the Crucified Christ, as the symbol of discipleship and the focus of faith. What do the scriptures have to say about the symbol of the Christ and what does it mean for what we believe and how we should teach about the Atonement of Jesus Christ? What does it mean for our Christianity? How should Latter-day Saints look at the Cross, especially as we go into the Paschal/Easter season? This is what I explore in today’s article as I prepare my heart and mind for celebrating the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ the Lord.
How To Live The Word of Wisdom: The Complete Edition
This is the collection of articles which were written about the Word of Wisdom to address the many issues, misinterpretations, and misunderstandings we have about this revelation head on. By confronting them I hope to help correct the foundational errors in our understanding of the Word of Wisdom, which in turn helps us to explain why some of the apparent hypocrisies and contradictions of it (like why we can have Red Bull but not coffee) are neither contradictions nor hypocritical. I try my best to explore and explain the purpose of the Word of Wisdom by looking at the text itself and what it tells us it is, not what we have said it is, and how it actually tells us to live, not how we say we should live. I address the historical enforcement of the Word of Wisdom, how alcohol mas been treated by the Church, the many errors we make on the issues of drinking coffee and tea as well as eating meat. Finally, I hope to help set us on a better path of following the Word of Wisdom in a spiritually healthy way that will build and strengthen our faith in Christ and the Restoration through a better understanding and living of this great latter-day revelation.
How To Obey The Word of Wisdom: Meat & Vegetarianism
There is a lot of confusion over exactly what the Word of Wisdom asks in regard to eating meat. Some, argue that the Word of Wisdom essentially commands that we only eat meat when plants are scare, such as they were in winter in the early 19th century, or during times of famine and therefore we should not be eating meat regularly and should instead have an almost or completely plant-based vegetarian diet. Having studied the Word of Wisdom and the rest of the Doctrine and Covenants on this topic, I have concluded that those arguments are incorrect. In this article I will demonstrate that, while the Lord warns us not to waste animal life because He will hold us accountable for each one we take, there is nothing in the scriptures, once correctly understood, which tells us that we should only eat meat in times of winter or famine. Indeed, repeatedly in the scriptures the Lord announces that He is pleased when we eat meat and that He created animals to be used by humans as sources of food and clothing.
How To Obey The Word of Wisdom: Tea and Coffee
Have you ever heard that coffee and tea are prohibited in the Word of Wisdom because they contain caffeine or tannic acid, because they’re addictive, or because they’re unhealthy? Errors like these are very often sources of confusion among the Latter-day Saints and others about exactly what the Word of Wisdom demands of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Most of these errors do not come from the actual Word of Wisdom revelation, but from the additional rules Latter-day Saints have invented and added to the Word of Wisdom.
The result has been nothing but confusion, misunderstand, and apparent hypocrisy as so many of us have failed to understand what the Word of Wisdom teaches, why it teaches those things, and how to properly live it. I have undertaken here to hopefully correct these mistakes, and explain what are apparent contradictions and why they aren’t hypocritical or contradictory once you understand the Word of Wisdom and discard all the other rules that we have made up surrounding the Word of Wisdom.
Nonviolence in Early Christianity, Part 1
Some of the oldest and most affirmed truths in all of Christendom are that Jesus Christ commands us to love our enemies, to renounce violence, and to reject all other worldly loyalties – be they nation, empire, or people – for the Church, the Gospel, and Jesus Christ Himself. These truths can been in the writings of the earliest surviving Christian leaders and writers. What follows below is the first part in an effort to share a small sampling of these statements which I have tried to place within a rough chronological order. Hopefully they will help the reader, whether Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Calvinist, Pentecostal, Christian Scientist, Latter-day Saint, etc. to understand the role of what we now call nonviolence, civil disobedience, rejection of world powers -what we today call the State – and loving and serving your enemy as central beliefs in the long history of true Christianity, ancient and modern.