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The Year in Mormons: Top 7 Stories of 2012

By Joanna Brooks

…hunch, not a scientific observation: we’re still waiting for the Pew Forum numbers on this one. But can you really talk Mormons in 2012 without saying the names Jimmer Fredette, Manti Te’o, and Jabari Parker? Te’o, a linebacker from Laie, Hawaii, finished his senior season at Notre Dame as the most decorated defensive player in collegiate football history. Shooting guard Fredette finished his senior season at Brigham Young University as the leadin…

Gun Owners of America Celebrates Defeat of Gun Control Amendments

By Sarah Posner

…all the rest. Since registration has never solved a crime in Canada, or in Hawaii, where they have registered handguns since the ‘30s, I wonder what they want that registration list for. I think most of the rest of the world has experienced what they want it for. It’s a grab list when the government decides that the subjects are getting a little uppity. A rifle is the emblem of a free man. So what does that make the guy that had his rifle taken aw…

BYU Skinny Jean Controversy: Sexism, Sizeism, or Standards?

By Joanna Brooks

…righam Young University campuses in Provo, Utah, Rexburg, Idaho, and Laie, Hawaii have long had dress codes requiring students to dress conservatively, prohibiting shorts, skin-baring cropped tops, and “form-fitting clothing.” The popularity of leggings, jeggings, and skinny jeans (even Mitt Romney has a pair) has produced new attention in LDS communities to how those dress code boundaries are enforced and who bears the brunt of the enforcement. B…

What’s Wrong with the Controversial Businessweek “Mormon Money” Cover?

By Joanna Brooks

…hopping mall, own stock in Burger King and open a Polynesian theme park in Hawaii that shall be largely exempt from the frustrations of tax…” The profoundly irreverent tone of the cover illustration is totally out of joint with Winter’s story, which offers a generally balanced and straightforward assessment of LDS Church finances and enterprises. Winter depicts LDS Church-owned enterprises as extensive, diverse, competitive, professionally managed…

The New York Times Sunday Review has a Mormon Problem

By Joanna Brooks

…n Indian nations in the Church’s earliest years. LDS missionary efforts in Hawaii and the South Pacific followed soon after. (Today, between 20 and 30% of the nations of Tonga and Samoa are LDS.) People of Asian, Asian Pacific, Latin American, and indigenous American descent have never been restricted from ordination, a fact Siegel blithely ignores. Church membership in the U.S. is still predominately white, a reflection of the ethnicity of the re…

Every Republican Candidate Should Have to Address Gay Rights Face-to-Face

By Joanna Brooks

…ibute to anti-marriage equality efforts across the nation, from Alaska and Hawaii to Maine. But after watching the video of Vietnam veteran Bob Garon (who is gay and married) having a direct conversation with Romney about gay rights in a New Hampshire diner, I want to see every single Republican candidate sit down with Garon and answer his question face-to-face: “You do not feel that everyone is entitled to their Constitutional rights?” Because th…

Argue-by-Number: A Suggestion for the Church

By Mark D. Jordan

…n our side. Number 1 could be “God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.” Number 2: “God doesn’t discriminate.” Number 3: “Sex is only for procreation.” And so on. We could get clever, of course, and assign separate groups of numbers to arguments pro and con or to thematic clusters. I can even imagine some seminary librarian proposing a sort of Dewey Decimal System to organize the arguments. This would allow long series of arguments to be cited b…

The Sacred and the Dead: Operator, Can You Help Me?

By Maren Haynes

…connection, once burning with possibility and joy, began to cool, as cell phone calls dwindled and numbers eventually changed or were disconnected. As our shared realities drifted apart in their likeness, like Pigpen, I also turned to technologies that promised connection to try to tamp down the yearning and temper that sense of loss. Where Pigpen called up the trusty telephone operator, I did my pining alone, with only the camaraderie of a searc…

In the Aftermath of the “Himalayan Tsunami”

By Luke Whitmore

…(first as Uttaranchal) in 2000, the region has seen a massive rise in the number of visitors to the region, especially by the growing Indian middle class. Roads widened and hotels and visitor services grew exponentially. Building a new hotel or a restaurant by the side of the road felt like a smart investment—even when the road was near a river. Kedarnath saw the building of new cell phone towers, a railway reservation office, helicopter landing…

“Giving Godhead”: A Bloody Vision of Religion’s Deepest Influence

By Spencer Dew

…armed against. War in the name of faith is a recurring theme, as with cell-phone videos of beheadings. Krieger reads such rage within a dichotomy of “fundamentalist repression” and its opposite, freedom. Alhough she prefers the phrase “over-pervy libertinism” as, for her, the dichotomy is spread wide, with ISIS on one end and the antinomian carnival of de Sade’s vacation home at the other. That’s a freedom worth fighting for, she implies, but it i…