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I know that [the Word of Wisdom] contains God's wishes and directions for the welfare of His children, and I am sure that those who fail to heed the teaching of it will lose blessings of great worth, but I am not sure that we have not estranged many from the Church or at least contributed to their estrangement by attributing to the violation of our standards of health, harmful as it may be, a moral turpitude and sinful magnitude out of proportion of the real seriousness of the offense.
I am sure that many young people feel themselves ostracized from the Church by reason of the emphasis and the somewhat intolerant attitude some of us have shown toward the user, not the use of tobacco. I believe there are some good people in the Church to whom the use of tobacco is so repugnant and who are so offended by those who use it that they may actually develop a feeling akin to hatred toward the smoker. This state of mind, to my thinking is regrettable and dangerous - dangerous to the individual who harbors such thoughts because it tends to make him illiberal and intolerant dangerous to the unfortunate who succumbs to a bad practice in that he instinctively sets up a resistance to the man who dislikes him, and dangerous to the church because such people characterize it with a reputation for dogmatic intolerance that weakens its influence with its members and in the world.
Stephen L. Richards, "Bringing Humanity to the Gospel", April 1932 General Conference
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Jesus in his ministry forgave transgressors even of the major sins - lying and unchastity. Shall we be intolerant of those guilty of infractions of our counsel?
Stephen L. Richards, "Bringing Humanity to the Gospel", April 1932 General Conference
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excellent blog premise! are you going to include the many, many racist doctrines espoused by brigham young and other church prophets?
First, thank you for your ask and sorry that it took a while to answer!
Second, we might or we might not. It would depend on what we would share and, most importantly, why.
The purpose of this blog, as stated in our intro post, is "to create a resource that digs up hidden gems". The matter of race and racism within the church is not "hidden" and is most certainly not a "gem" either. In our opinion, a better way to tackle the topic would be to highlight the stories and the words of the personalities that went against those teachings in a way or another, assuming it is possible for us to do so.
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1962 Asahikawa Winter Festival
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We do not have a great body of set forms and rituals, I am glad to say. The very elasticity of prayers, ceremonies, and procedure is additional evidence to me of the adaptability of our religion to human needs, and therefore of its divinity. Some important changes have been made in recent years. In some instances they have considerably disturbed some members of the Church. [...] I am not afraid of change: it is the mother of growth.
But even more important than change of conception, form and procedure in our church as in any society is change of attitude. How do we feel about things? Have more education, more knowledge, and wider experience broadened our sympathies or contracted them?
Stephen L. Richards, "Bringing Humanity to the Gospel", April 1932 General Conference
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I hold that it is entirely compatible with the genius of the Church to change its procedure and interpretations as changes in thought, education and environment of people from time to time seem to warrant, provided, of course, that no violence is done to the elemental concepts of truth which lie at the basis of our work. I would not discard a practice merely because it is old. Indeed, I believe that one of the tests of worth is the test of time. But on the other hand, I would not hang on to a practice or conception after it has outlived its usefulness in a new and ever-changing and better informed world.
Old conceptions and traditional interpretations must be influenced by newly discovered evidence. Not that ultimate fact and law change, but our understanding varies with our education and experience.
Stephen L. Richards, "Bringing Humanity to the Gospel", April 1932 General Conference
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If we wish to see how far off we are from that standard [of celestial life], we have only to compare our lives, characters, and dispositions with those of our Savior. He is our examplar. Until we become pure in heart as He is, willing to give glory to God, and to love our fellow men, and to cease to backbite one another, cease to tear down and learn to build up, and comfort and bless and benefit the human race. Until we do these things we have a labor before us that we must perform, a journey that we must accomplish.
Orson F. Whitney, Funeral Sermon for Louisa Free Wells, June 20, 1886
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The same laws apply to the human body, both spiritual and temporal—(typical of the earth, and typical of the heavens)—the same laws will apply to the individual that apply to the earth upon which we dwell. We are of spirit and of body. Our bodies crumble away, because they are of the earth, earthy. They are a type of death, a type of the temporal; but there is that within us which can not die, which can only be disorganized by the Creator who formed it. It is His will that men should retain their individuality, that these spirits of our own should live, that they should regain possession of the tabernacles which are laid in the ground, crumbling away in mother earth, that they may be sanctified and celestialized like the earth upon which we dwell. For the earth itself has a spirit, just as we have a spirit within us, and that is the spirit world; and the world upon which we stand is the temporal world, or the body of the globe which we inhabit; and God will sanctify this globe and cause it to shine like a sea of glass mingled with fire. It will be celestialized because it transgresses not the law.
Orson F. Whitney, Funeral Sermon for Louisa Free Wells, June 20, 1886
I’m not sure if I buy this cosmology entirely, but this is a really fascinating cosmological outlook and elaboration of D&C 130—I’ve heard “the earth has a soul” as a early Mormon outlook before, but Whitney really develops that conjunction of body and spirit as a shared affinity between human beings and the earth. And the identification of the Earth’s spirit with the spirit world makes me really wonder how much the familiar Plan of Salvation chalkboard lesson outline had developed by 1886. If Whitney’s thinking about the same kind of spirit world when he’s saying this, then it’s really quite the statement! This passage also makes me wonder how we might carry the nineteenth century Mormon idea of the earth having a spirit and the earth’s existence being directly akin and parallel to human existence into a twenty first century Mormon ecological theology.
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The revelations of the new dispensation, as well as those of the Bible, were in the beginning and are now interpreted by men, and men interpret in the light of experience and understanding. A prophet can receive and deliver the express word of God in the precise manner in which God chooses to express himself, but the application of God's word in the lives of men is dependent on the wisdom of men. The spirit of God will influence the judgment of a good man and augment his wisdom, but the finest of human wisdom is to be distinguished from the word of God. One may fail, the other never.
No man lives or has lived whose judgment is perfect and not subject to error. to accept the doctrine of human infallibility is to betray gross ignorance of the divine plan of human life - the fall, mortal probation, repentance, and final election. There could be no election with perfect knowledge, omniscience. We walk in faith in mortality and by faith we exercise our agency.
Stephen L. Richards, "Bringing Humanity to the Gospel", April 1932 General Conference
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[Mormonism] calls for thoughtful disciples who will not be content with merely repeating some of its truths, but will develop its truths; and enlarge it by that development. Not half—not one-hundredth part —not a thousandth part of that which Joseph Smith revealed to the Church has yet been unfolded, either to the Church or to the world. The work of the expounder has scarcely begun. The Prophet planted by teaching the germ-truths of the great dispensation of the fulness of times. The watering and the weeding is going on, and God is giving the increase, and will give it more abundantly in the future as more intelligent discipleship shall obtain. The disciples of ‘Mormonism,’ growing discontented with the necessarily primitive methods which have hitherto prevailed in sustaining the doctrine, will yet take profounder and broader views of the great doctrines committed to the Church; and, departing from mere repetition, will cast them in new formulas; co-operating in the works of the Spirit, until they help to give to the truths received a more forceful expression, and carry it beyond the earlier and cruder stages of its development.
B.H. Roberts, Improvement Era (July 1906)
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Stained glass window representing the angel Moroni, originally located in the Columbus, OH branch.
The branch was built in 1930 and was the only Mormon building in the state until the 1950s. The building was sold sometime around 1960 and is now property of an Orthodox Catholic congregation. The window was saved and later relocated to the new meetinghouse that was built nearby. (x)
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We have seasons of great outward prosperity and also those of apparent adversity—when everything appears to be at a standstill and even dead; nature itself, declares it to be a necessary condition…It is as necessary for us to have cloudy weather and rainy weather, as it is that we should have sunshine, in order to bring about the objects of creation, the purposes of nature, and the best interests of the human family. Seeing it is so in temporal, is it strange that it should be the same in spiritual things? No, it is as necessary that we should have difficulties to contend with, in order to make intelligent provision for our spiritual concerns, as it is that we should have the winter frosts and stormy weather to enable us to make discreet provision for our temporal necessities.
Franklin D. Richards, “Opening Remarks,” April 1886 General Conference
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I interpret the gospel in terms of life. It was brought to humanity; it is our duty to bring humanity to the Gospel. Election, not compulsion is the genius of Christian philosophy. Ridicule and ostracism often amount to compulsion. I deplore their existence. I fear arrogant dogmatism. It is a tyrant guilty of more havoc to human-kind than the despot ruling over many kingdoms.
Stephen L. Richards, "Bringing Humanity to the Gospel", April 1932 General Conference
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The Mormon Tabernacle Choir in the Salt Lake Tabernacle feat. "a Great Organ," 1929
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Welcome!
What is this?
A place to store and share vintage quotes, pictures and information relating to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, with a particular interest in the time period from 1877 to 1971.
What's a "zibaldone mormone"?
It's Italian for "Mormon commonplace book".
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is also commonly known as the Mormon Church or LDS Church.
Commonplace books (or zibaldoni) are "essentially scrapbooks filled with items of every kind: recipes, quotes, letters, poems, tables of weights and measures, proverbs, prayers, legal formulas. Commonplaces are used by readers, writers, students, and scholars as an aid for remembering useful concepts or facts. Each one is unique to its creator's particular interests but they almost always include passages found in other texts, sometimes accompanied by the compiler's responses."
We thought the commonplace book was a good metaphor for the kind of collection/compilation of Mormon sources this blog would end up being and particularly liked that it’s the kind of resource someone in the time period we’re interested in here would have made to compile these sorts of quotes. We also liked the idea of a reference work created unsystematically, personally, and on the fly--just a place to copy down something you’d read and been struck by so you could find it again later.
“Zibaldone” sounds better in a URL than “commonplace,” so when we learned that Italian had that word for the concept, that’s what we ran with.
Why focus on 1877-1971?
It makes for a neat near-century that roughly overlaps with a stretch of church history that we feel too often goes unnoticed and is easily forgotten by many Mormons. The history of the Church through the presidency of Brigham Young gets a lot of play in the cultural and institutional memory; knowing that period is an integral part of knowing what Mormonism is, both for Church members and others. We know and retell stories, anecdotes, and sayings from and about this era of church history. We have a broad acquaintance with the characters from these first half-century or so of the Church. After that, our collective memory gets a lot sketchier and doesn’t really seem to bounce back until we’re comfortably in living memory again, somewhere during David O. McKay’s two decades as church president. 
Brigham Young’s death in 1877 gives us our starting point. Ending in 1971 lets us include all of the McKay years. But the real reason we end there instead of a round number is because, starting from 1971 on, general conference reports and church periodicals are all easily accessible through official church channels, tidily packaged in books and web pages. All the church history in between those dates takes a little more effort to gather; you’re not just going to stumble upon much of it by yourself. We want to create a resource that digs up hidden gems and can be a starting point to figure out what decades and figures.
We may occasionally stray a little further back or a bit ahead in time from that window--if there’s a really good quote from 1868 or a neat photo from 1975 that you want to submit, go ahead--but 1877-1971 is where our focus will consistently snap back to.
Asks and Submissions
We welcome both!
We would like submissions to follow the style of presentation of the blog, for consistency and to make managing them easier for us.
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