Thursday I was taking in the best lunch-time entertainment that 35 cents can buy*, and there was the amazing news on page 2. Post writer Richard Morin wrote on a paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research entitled “The Church vs. the Mall: What Happens when Religion Faces Increased Secular Competition?” The researchers, Jonathan Gruber (MIT) and Daniel M. Hungerman (U. of Notre Dame), examined changes in states that repealed blue laws (prohibitions on sales on Sunday). They found that the portion of the population attending religious services dropped from 37 percent to 32 percent. Then it gets really interesting:

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I had actually started to write this about a half dozen times, only to delete each version. I wanted to have it up Sunday night in time for all the discussion about 9/11. But it never quite felt right. Plus, it seemed like overkill with everyone talking so much about it. I hope no one minds if I do so now.

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An article in yesterday’s USA Today contains results of a religion survey. The finding they found most findworthy? 91.8% of those surveyed say they believe in God, a higher power, or a cosmic force, but they had four distinct views of God’s personality and engagement in human affairs: Authoritarian, Benevolent, Critical or Distant.

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An AP news article found on page 2 of this morning’s Frederick [Maryland] News-Post:

Wild ginseng diggers are getting ready to trudge deep into the hills as the harvesting season opens Friday.

If West Virginia’s crop is anything like last year’s, more than $2 million worth of the perennial herb is lying ready in the soil. Last year nearly 4,800 pounds of ginseng were harvested.

On reading this, which person from Church history did I think of and why?

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I used to like Harry Reid. I really did. Lately his rhetoric has been quite over the top, but I figured “well, he’s just pandering to his base. Bush does that all the time.”

But now, now he has threatened censorship over a “docudrama” (no one expects docudramas to be 100% historically accurate, so the claim that some events in the movie didn’t really happen don’t work, since that’s an expected part of the genre).

What is going on?

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This is a guest post by Derek Christian Lines. If you have a guest post feel free to submit it. We try to get a wide range of voices here and enjoy hearing different perspectives.

My friends and I have long debated a bit of speculative theology concerning the plan of salvation. Namely, what percentage of Heavenly Father’s children on this earth will end up in the celestial, terrestrial, and telestial kingdoms? The question goes to the heart of God’s plan for us; how many of our Heavenly Father’s children will be with him again?

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Question: How should a faithful Latter-Day Saint view the conflict between literal and figurative readings and interpretations of scriptures? How far can one carry ‘figurative’ views of scripture before it becomes difficult to maintain a testimony of the gospel?

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This story seems to be making the rounds on the net (again - it first surfaced a few months ago, though I somehow missed it then).

The football committee of the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference, which governs high school sports, is adopting a “score management” policy that will suspend coaches whose teams win by more than 50 points.

This reminded me of two experiences in High School (one of which was a major life lesson to me), and got me thinking about the uses and abuses of competition.

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This article in the SL Tribune discusses M* at length re: the recent public affairs interview. BCC also gets a mention but note the comparison in number of comments!! ((((: Rosalynde is quoted at length for her usual insightfulness. Thanks to the posters on this thread who brought this to my attention. It’s also worth pointing out that T&S, a much larger group blog, was kind to refer its readers to our blog rather than discussing it there, where it would have probably gotten more than 1000 comments.

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The president met with the prophet for the fourth time on Thursday. Please see this article for some interesting tidbits. I’m interested in two things:

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