Nauvoo Neighbor

Dialogue With Polygamy Truthers

The following is a composite sketch of conversations I and others have had with people in the polygamy-truther movement, which rejects the idea that Joseph Smith ever practiced any kind of plural marriage. Their questions are in bold, followed by my answers.

Life is Hard; Use Common Sense

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This is the 455th week, and we’re covering the Saturday morning session of the October 2006 General Conference.

When I read Elder David S. Baxter’s talk, Faith, Service, Constancy, I thought I had found the one talk that I would write about from this session. In fact, I was even tempted to skip reading the last three talks of this session (there were eight!) because of how busy I always am. But so far I’ve never done that, and I didn’t want to start now. I’m very glad I didn’t, because Elder M. Russell Ballard’s talk O Be Wise ended up being one of my all-time favorites from the entire General Conference Odyssey so far.

He That is Greatest

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This is the 454th week, and we’re covering the General Young Women session of the April 2006 General Conference.

This was a great session, and it was easy to forget that it was a Young Women session in between the references to the young women in the audience because the lessons were so generally applicable. I especially loved the first talk, “I Am the Light Which Ye Shall Hold Up”, by Sister Tanner.

One theme that often resonates with me is the reminder (which I seem to need to hear again and again and again) that there is a huge gap between what the world appreciates and what matters to the Lord. So when Sister Tanner says “some of us would rather help with hurricane relief than home relief. Now both are important, but home relief is our primary and eternal responsibility,” I’m here for that. It’s something I believe passionately, but is never easy for me to accept.

May the Lord’s People Be at Peace One with Another

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This is the 453rd week, and we’re covering the Sunday afternoon session of the April 2006 General Conference.

It’s not that often that I get so excited by a talk during the General Conference Odyssey that I feel inspired to start live-tweeting it, but that’s exactly what happened when I read Instruments of the Lord’s Peace by Elder Robert S. Wood. It’s hard to believe the talk was given eighteen years ago, because it feels so incredibly relevant to our world today. Truly, this is one of the most prescient talks I’ve ever read, and it starts right in the first paragraph:

God Doesn’t Play Zero-Sum Games

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This is the 452nd week, and we’re covering the Sunday morning session of the April 2006 General Conference.

I started the General Conference Odyssey back in 2015, and now it’s 2024. That makes this pretty much the longest project I’ve ever worked on in my life. Back when we got started, we were covering General Conference talks from the 1970s, before I was born. Now we’re covering 2006, which is a few years after my mission and for the most part with the General Authorities that I feel like I grew up with, especially President Hinckley.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean that I remember these talks. I don’t. I never had a faith crisis or anything like that (not about the Church, anyway), but in the years after my mission I was pretty uninterested in General Conference in particular. While I was on my mission, I would devour the General Conference talks when they came out in the Ensign (as it was called back in the day). Some of it was that I was desperate for anything to read, of course. I’m the kind of person who reads compulsively, up to and including a cereal box if that’s all I’ve got handy. My whole family is like that, pretty much. We’re book people.

But there was more going on than that. I really cared about spiritual things in a deep way on my mission, and so I invested myself in the talks. Before my mission, I’d always watch General Conference with my family on TV, but most of us would inevitably fall asleep, definitely including myself, and it felt like they were always just saying the same things. After my mission, at least for a few years, that’s what I went back to. But during my mission? During my mission I could read the talks and get epiphanies.

It’s like (then) Elder Oaks said in his talk All Men Everywhere in this session: “What we get from a book—especially a sacred text—is mostly dependent on what we take to its reading.”

So I wish that I had memories of listening to these talks back when I was a newlywed and could contrast them with how I feel about them now as a middle-aged dad, but the truth is: if I listened to them at all I have no memory at all. And I’m pretty sure that I would remember, because a talk like President Hinckley’s Seek Ye the Kingdom of God is not one that I would forget.

Be Kind

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This is the 451st week, and we’re covering the priesthood session of the April 2006 General Conference.

This session is a good followup to last week’s session, where I talked about Latter-day Saint masculinity and it’s emphasis on the welfare of women and children. Patriarchy, at its best, is not about policing women. It’s about men policing other men for the benefit of women. Such as when you have the leader of an organized religion lament “hatred… closer to home” with one and only one concrete example: “fathers who rise in anger over small, inconsequential things and make wives weep and children fear.”

Latter-day Masculinity

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This is the 450th week, and we’re covering the Saturday afternoon session of the April 2006 General Conference.

There are very, very strong stereotypes of what a social conservative, patriarchal, hierarchical religion like the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is supposed to teach about masculinity. And those stereotypes cannot survive contact with what our prophets and apostles actually teach us. Case in point: Nurturing Marriage, by then-Elder, now-President Nelson.

He opens the talk with this anecdote:

New Game: Ridiculous Fundamentalist Apostate Scripture Interpretation

Our objective in this game is to become what Joseph Smith called “accusers of the brethren.” We are going to apply fundamentalist logic to scripture so that we can formulate accusations against God’s ordained servants.

On polygamy-denial and autism

One of my favorite YouTube content creators is nuclear physicist Kyle Hill, and some time ago he posted a great video about his autism:

Years ago I listened to a psychologist’s review of autism markers, the lengthy questionnaire that psychologists use to assess whether someone is on the autism spectrum. I was amazed at how many of the markers applied to me, though many significant markers didn’t. I’ve never personally gone in for an assessment, but if I did, I imagine I would be told that I have a significant number of traits in common with autistics, and if I’m not on the spectrum then I’m very close to it.

Another Advantage of Church Government

Dan’s recent article referencing the Chad Daybell/Lori Vallow trials makes some excellent points, and one of them is how the Church council system helps moderate and focus leadership, especially how the seniority system acculturates any Prophet-President into this system to moderate any cult-like behaviors that we do see in certain Evangelical and even non-Christian communities. (See: James Jones’ People’s Temple, Heaven’s Gate, Antifa—all “secular” religious cults, in my opinion.) But there was an additional point that occurred to me when I was talking with a friend this morning who was closely following the trial.