Sunday, May 06, 2007

Take a Peek! (See Below)

Enough about my views on religion and my idle speculation already. But I wanted to talk a minute about Mormons, since a Mormon, Mitt Romney, is running for president as a Republican. I lived out in Montana for two years, and there are a lot of Mormons in that area. My ex's sister had married a Mormon and converted to Mormonism. She and her husband were lovely people and had several nice kids.

Here's a snippet on Mormonism from Wikipedia:

Historically, the church has distinguished itself from modern Christianity by its biblical practice of polygamy (officially discontinued in 1890), and by its other unique doctrines and practices such as the Endowment, baptism for the dead, and its views on the Godhead. The church teaches that it is "the only true and living church upon the face of the whole earth",[2] but it has cooperated with other churches in promoting humanitarian and moral causes. [Emphasis mine.]

You see what I mean about religions being divisive in our society. As do all other forms of "true believers," the Mormons believe they're better than everyone else.

On Mormon beliefs about Native Americans (there are a lot of Native Americans out west too):

Latter-day Saints believe in a covenant relationship between God and the House of Israel, as described in the Old Testament.[54] As stated in the introduction to the Book of Mormon, they believe that Native Americans are included in this covenant, and that some are descended from two groups of "Israelites" that migrated to the western hemisphere. The first group are members of two of the Lost Tribes of
Israel
, Ephraim and Manasseh, that migrated to the Americas shortly before the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE. The second group migrated shortly after the city's fall and the two groups eventually became integrated in the Americas. A portion of The Book of Mormon also contains the records of people that migrated to the western hemisphere shortly after the confusion of tongues resulting from the building of the Tower of Babel.

About the Book of Mormon:

The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ is also considered canon. The book is named after the prophet/historian Mormon, who, according to the text, compiled most of the book onto gold plates. It was first published by Joseph Smith, Jr. in March 1830 in Palmyra, New York. The book describes itself as being written by ancient prophets of the western hemisphere who traveled there from ancient Israel around 600 BCE. The church teaches that the gold plates were delivered to him by an angel and that Smith translated the record by divine inspiration with assistance from the Urim and Thummim and a seer stone. Smith said that upon completing the translation process, he returned the plates to the angel, identified as Moroni.

Also, the Mormons wear special, sacred underwear. For a peek, see Andrew Sullivan's blog here. And here's the link to a website on Mormon underwear. (I'm guessing you wear your bra under the underwear. I'll look that up.)

No, you wear your bra over the undergarment. (See full discussion here.)

Probably the worst advice given to women in the temple about garments is that they must be worn underneath everything else. This means women must wear their bras and panties on top of the garment.

Yikes! Enough about the Mormons already.

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Made beef shish-kabobs for lunch today, with Spanish rice.

From a NYT editorial on Reagan's diaries:

The lasting spellbinder proves to be Reagan the speech maker, not the diarist. "Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem," he once declared, setting one of the worshiped pillars of Reaganism. It was a facile turn of rhetoric that has so sadly been turned into fact by this administration.

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