The Mormon Harry Potter. The Mormon Nancy Drew. The Mormon [Whatever].
After seeing the latest Nancy Drew movie (which was an amazingly excellent movie, BTW – I may post a review later just because I liked it so much) with my wife, I had a conversation with some members of my ward who were also there.
Several of my friends at Church have recoiled in horror after visiting Church blog sites like T&S and BCC. When I tell them I am a fan, their response is, “how can you read stuff that basically promotes apostasy?”
Now, let me make this extremely clear: I do not share these opinions. I repeat: I do not share these opinions. I think many, many posts on both T&S and BCC are incredibly faith-promoting. And they are clearly better blogs than M*.
However, I would like to make one small attempt to try to explain to some of my friends (and I do consider them friends even though I don’t know them personally) in the Bloggernacle why many people in the Church respond this way.
This story has everything the Bloggernacle could ever want: Romney, the Marriotts and sex! Unfortunately, in my opinion, it’s mostly hot air.
To summarize: some people are saying Romney as a member of the board of the Marriott chain should have done more to prevent the hotels from making money on X-rated movies. Or R-rated movies. Or something.
OK, Economics 101: most public company board members deal with only the biggest issues. Operational issues like what kind of movies are seen in hotel rooms would not be appropriate to even bring up in a board meeting.
If you want to find a Mormon villain in this story, aim your wrath at the Marriotts themselves, who have indeed allowed pornography to be a significant part of Marriott hotel revenue streams. But keep in mind that some of the Marriott hotels have separate ownership and are franchisees.
I’d like to quote some of our modern-day prophets, seers and revelators in anticipation of Independence Day.
But before I do, I spent Sunday with a Canadian who is pretty sick and tired of all of the July 4th stuff she has to put up with in Church. I pointed out to her that I heard just as many comments (if not more) on Brazilian patriotism in Church when I lived in Brazil for four years. It seems patriotism for the country you live in is compatible with the Church. And, by the way, Brazilian patriotism didn’t bother me a bit.
First, M Russell Ballard’s talk “Religion in a Free Society.”
LDS Living has a nice profile on Glenn Beck and his conversion to the Church. Anybody interested in a long discussion we had at M* regarding talk radio can find that post here.
With his CNN gig and the growth of his talk radio show, Glenn Beck is becoming one of the country’s most famous Mormon media personalities. His conversion story is very similar to mine — we both tried a lot of churches before deciding on the LDS church, we both were baptized in 1999, we both have gotten our lives together after joining the Church. And we even share initials.
Seems to me Glenn is a truly good guy.