Search for "cheap airline tickets from aurora colorado to salt lake city utah round trip phone number 1-800-299-7264"

Mormon-Born Daya Mata Typifies American Yoga

By Andrea R. Jain

…otion to Yogananda as her guru. A member of a prestigious Mormon family in Salt Lake City, she was seventeen when she first heard Yogananda speak, and she knew immediately that she wanted to follow him as her spiritual guide. She moved to Los Angeles and joined his Self-Realization Fellowship, took vows of renunciation and became one of the first nuns in its monastic order. Having been renamed Daya Mata (Mother of Compassion), she would be one of…

‘Hardwired’ for Hetero Marriage, LDS Tension Mounts Over LGBT Rights

By Joanna Brooks

…uraging opposition to same-sex marriage legalization featured what veteran Salt Lake Tribune religion reporter Peggy Fletcher Stack characterized as a “new post-prop 8 tone and emphasis.” A second letter read to members in Church meetings in October, as Mother Jones’s Mencimer noted, had a more militant edge. Some sources suggest the second letter reflected stronger influence from local Hawaiian Church leaders. An old Proposition 8-style view of…

Did Mormon Morality Teachings Really Make it Harder for Elizabeth Smart to Run?

By Joanna Brooks

…on homes, on Sundays, and in Mormon-saturated cultural contexts. Even Salt Lake City middle schools like the one Elizabeth Smart attended. Mind you, such lessons are nowhere in the official sex education curriculum of the state of Utah. Nor are they to be found in the current handbooks or youth instructional manuals of the LDS Church. The most current LDS youth manuals (released in January 2013) reflect a steady effort on the part of LDS Church l…

Why is Huntsman’s Mormonism “Tough to Define”?

By Joanna Brooks

…way, I claim him as a member of the tribe. Editors’note: Joanna will be speaking about Mormon identity in the 21st century June 11 in Salt Lake City. More information is here….

NBA Player Jason Collins Comes Out

By Peter Montgomery

…e us to new things, religious and cultural. In Utah, we visited the Mormon Salt Lake Temple. In Atlanta, the house of Martin Luther King Jr. That early exposure to otherness made me the guy who accepts everyone unconditionally. Of course it didn’t take long for religious right leaders to bring a different Christian persepctive to the conversation. Liberty Counsel’s Matt Barber tweeted that it was “sad” that Collins was being treated as heroic for…

“Joseph Smith Himself Viewed Women as Priesthood Holders”

By Joanna Brooks

…, graduated from Brigham Young University in 2006, and married in the Salt Lake City Mormon temple. She is also an international human rights law attorney who, she reports, “graduated from the only law school in the world founded by women—American University.” This year, she helped launch a coalition of Mormon women and men who support women’s ordination in the LDS Church. As the Church’s semi-annual General Conference approaches this weekend, Kel…

How Mormon is Mitt Romney? Over 50 Jokes For Trump

By Joanna Brooks

…k another shot at the former GOP presidential candidate at a rally in Salt Lake City, Utah on Friday, asking the crowd, “Are you sure he’s a Mormon? Are we sure?” Responding to Trump rhetoric may be like feeding a Gremlin after midnight, but we at RD were lucky to have the following in the archives from the 2012 election season. — eds Earlier this week, Florida evangelical Christian leader John Stemberger endorsed Rick Perry’s campaign for GOP p…

The Mormon Moment?

By Joanna Brooks

…Mormon past. 4. The LDS Church has massive wealth it continues to develop through real estate and development projects. Lately, more LDS Church members are asking questions about the Church’s investment of $3 billion USD in a redevelopment project in downtown Salt Lake City in comparison to the Church’s reported spending of $50 million USD annually on welfare and humanitarian relief. Disappointed expectations. Global tensions. Historical controv…

How Many Ways to be Mormon and Gay?

By Joanna Brooks

…e to negotiate being gay in the Mormon tradition. And this weekend in Salt Lake City, Mormons from across the sexuality and orthodoxy spectrums will gather for what organizers are describing as a potentially historic gathering: the Circling the Wagons conference. The historic question at the heart of this enterprise: can such a diverse group of people find common grounds for mutual acknowledgement and respect? According to conference co-organizer…

Should Romney be Asked about Mormon Women’s Issues at the Debates?

By Joanna Brooks

…ange of Mormon women’s voices in this important August article in the Salt Lake Tribune. Ask Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and Mormon feminist Laurel Thatcher Ulrich who in Stack’s article calls the past decades in Mormon women’s history the “Great Disappearance” for Mormon women. When one recalls that Mormon women in the late 19th century were national suffrage activists and in the early 20th century were building hospitals and other major soc…