Calm

That would depend on what kind of Christian theology they have. My guess is those most vocal about the need for Christian Nationalism would likely include a good percentage of those who exclude LDS from the Christian community.

Liberal in the classical sense (I am pointing that out because I know people who define “liberal” solely in terms of the current more extreme members of the Democratic Party and for whom it is a negative label).

added: For ease of access, streaming ticket link here… https://fairlatterdaysaints.org/store/product/august-2025-fair-conference-streaming/ ———— Just a reminder for those interested that it’s coming up in two weeks (edit: one week now, 2nd edit: it’s tomorrow) https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/conference/august-2025-fair-conference Keynote speaker is Aaron Sherinian, Fluent in Our Faith: Identifying Evidence of the Glad Tidings of the Gospel in Our Everyday Reality

Yes, people need to remember their decisions affect others besides themselves, sometimes in dangerous ways even if there is the smallest of connections…especially when someone is just looking for an excuse to justify their own actions. You may be willing to destroy your own life in the service of a great cause, but what about destroying the lives of others, especially those you consider part of your community?

While some of the things he says are on point, imo, I disagree in his equating the Religious Right with Christian Nationalism as well the “language and theology” of Christian Nationalism with the imposition of Sharia law by extremists, except at a very superficial level (privileging religious laws in government). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_right I would say Christian Nationalism is a subset of the Religious/Christian Right, though describing the two as overlapping might be more accurate given there are likely some concerns of the Christian Right that Christian Nationalists in general ignore. Neither group is monolithic, one size fits all, so determining the amount of overlap is problematic.

I haven’t consider this before and I think I agree with you, but would like to know your reasoning for this to make sure I am understanding you.

Here’s another possibility generated when I asked for a nonreligious version of the Ten Commandments: Treat others as you wish to be treated. This is a common ethical principle found in many cultures. Seek truth and understanding. Strive to learn and understand the world around you through evidence and reason. Be mindful of the consequences of your actions. Consider how your choices affect yourself and others. Take responsibility for your actions. Acknowledge your role in the outcomes of your decisions. Promote well-being. Act in ways that foster happiness, health, and a positive environment for yourself and others. Respect individual autonomy. Recognize and respect the right of others to make their own choices. Be open to new ideas and perspectives. Be willing to change your mind when presented with new evidence or different viewpoints. Strive for justice and fairness. Work to create a society where everyone has equal opportunities. Cultivate empathy and compassion. Try to understand and share the feelings of others. Leave the world a better place than you found it. Contribute to making the world a more positive and sustainable place for future generations

If it was solely the content of them that matter, then posting a version that combined the ‘obvious’ laws of the most common religious faiths in the US while leaving out the religious laws would be sufficient. A statewide or national honor code could be created. But it has to be the Ten Commandments instead? The Buddhist version is useful as well and is more comprehensive, imo. Here is the AI summary provided with me trimming off anything that leans towards what is often seen as religious, even when it isn’t. 1. Right View/Understanding: This involves understanding the Four Noble Truths, which state that suffering exists, is caused by attachment, can be overcome, and has a path leading to its cessation. Me: given this is a religious perspective, I would change this to something more generic like ‘be aware that actions have consequences’ 2. Right Resolve/Intention: This refers to cultivating intentions based on non-violence, compassion, and renunciation, rather than harmful thoughts like hatred, greed, or ill-will. 3. Right Speech: This involves abstaining from lies, gossip, harsh language, and idle talk, and instead speaking truthfully, kindly, and constructively 4. Right Action: This means acting ethically, avoiding harmful actions such as killing, stealing, and sexual misconduct, and instead engaging in actions that benefit others. 5. Right Livelihood: This entails earning a living in a way that does not harm oneself or others, avoiding trades that involve violence, deception, or exploitation. 6. Right Effort: This involves actively cultivating positive mental states and abandoning negative ones, striving to prevent unwholesome qualities from arising and to nurture wholesome ones 7. Right Mindfulness: This is the practice of being aware of one's thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations in the present moment without judgment. 8. Right Concentration: This involves developing focused attention and mental discipline through meditation.

This is a PS to my previous post. While Christianity Today spoke favourably of patriotism, I personally am less inclined to straight out thumbs up approval as too often I have seen “I love my country” morph to “I love my country best” to “my country is the best” and the latter two are prone to leading the individual to diminishing and even ridiculing other countries because of the need to justify those feelings or in the last case prove the statement of fact made. Call my view a more nuanced, reserved opinion about patriotism. I thoroughly approve of “I love my country”, I support even gushing about it; but am mildly cautious about someone who feels the need to state “I love my country best” and am very concerned when I hear “my country is the best” if said in anything but a immediate way like telling someone “you’re the best” meaning at that moment rather than all the tIme and for everyone. Can you imagine telling a neighbour that one’s own family is the best on the block and not in the way that means it’s the best just for you, but in comparison to everyone else as well? Would your neighbours feel welcomed in your home or even wanted? And what would the community be like if everyone had that attitude? I would find a study comparing the version of patriotism with desire to travel to other countries as well as one’s opinion of one’s travels quite interesting. Iow, would someone who holds the view “I love my country” enjoy their travels more than someone whose view is “my country is best”. I can see someone with the “is best” view needing to look for negatives in their experiences to support their belief their home country is better than the country they are traveling in and they would therefore not only tend to focus more on what’s wrong than what’s right about their experience, but also hold themselves back or keep a distance because they are at least in part in critiquing mode rather than just being able to embrace or immerse themselves in the experience.

I believe it only shows your identity to you as it opens up for each person in their own profile if it’s like Facebook. Why don’t you PM it to me and I can test if I can see your actual name or not. Pretty sure you have told me it before, but since I think of people typically with their alias, I often forget actual names unless I use those as well…so chances are I will forget it again and even if I don’t, I won’t share it.

I like this discussion of Christian Nationalism. It also has a good, imo, discussion about the inherent problems with nationalism (very simplified, a nation is made up these days of more than one social/culture group—groups which overlap, have fuzzy borders, may be poorly defined or be defined differently by different groups such as many excluding Saints from the Christianity culture group—and the government privileging one group over the other creates inequality and eventually oppression) https://www.christianitytoday.com/2021/02/what-is-christian-nationalism/ My bold ——— At the very least, imo when christian nationalism is capitalized, it is the name of a particular ideology…one that is riddled with problematic political ideology. (Capitalizing something turns it into a proper noun, proper nouns refer to specific persons/groups, places, or things. For example, “psychology” could refer to a person or group’s pattern of behaviour or the psychological factors of a situation as well as the study of the mind, but Psychology is obviously just the study of the mind/psyche). I think there is enough baggage attached to the term even “christian nationalism” should be avoided unless referring to that particular political ideology, especially in verbal dialogue where one can’t see the lack of capitals. I see nationalism as always problematic anyway as it’s not simply patriotism or a love of and desire to protect one’s country, it’s much more. To avoid confusion, one could go to the effort of defining every time one talks about one’s own version of christian nationalism, but since there are other ways to discuss Book of Mormon teachings than using a label that has been attached to something quite different in other people’s eyes. It’s like arguing since we (LDS) believe there are three people in the Godhead, everyone should feel okay if we use “the Trinity” instead of the Godhead to talk about it. After all, “trinity” can be defined simply as three in unity or even just “group of three people or things” (google’s first definition of the term) and that fits the Godhead if the unity is in ideals, purpose, etc. The fact that those we would be discussing would be so confused and probably less informed about the Godhead afterwards due to likely attaching at least some wrong ideas to our beliefs on this subject because of misuse of the term “Trinity” is a very, very good reason not to adopt the term even if we are trying to ‘talk their language’, pointing out similarities of belief, just like the sound of the word “Trinity”, or whatever. Not trivializing anything here as I prefer lots of words based on primarily sound. If it wouldn’t lead to great confusion I would choose to use Trinity over Godhead anytime. However, if I adopted to use “the Trinity” because of my personal preference, I would have to add with practically every use an explanation such as “in this case meaning three persons who are three beings, not three persons who are one being) and even then the conversation would often be a mess and being constantly derailed with “Trinity, why are you using Trinity here? I thought you were LDS?” and other variations as well as me having to correct assumptions by others like “no, I don’t believe in the Catholic view of the nature of God” or “no, I don’t believe in three persons in one being…unless of course that is a social unit like family”….just as every time you (longview or teddyaware or anyone else) use the term Christian Nationalism the conversation gets derailed and assumptions are made about your political ideology that are likely untrue.

It could be him, but it is not that unusual for someone to play these types of games of cherry picking and avoidance.

That is the mentality (mixed in with the obsession to categorize that was the Enlightenment, categorizing that often included defining what was more evolved/superior) that created the idea of race, so I am not sure it can be unstuck. English literature from those time periods often depict the Scots and Welsh as more primitive, less intellectual, more emotional than Englishman as well, othering to justify oppression. An interesting discussion on Reddit (some language) on the different view of race and discrimination/prejudice in Europe as opposed to American. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEurope/comments/18yzk0c/comment/kgfu908/ Treatment of the “lower classes”, meaning less economically fortunate, mirrors in some ways treatment of nonwhite “races” in America.

This is an excellent starting point.

And what would the purpose be for this and how did it come to pass? And what is this ethnic background as it exists in eternity? Are there cultural differences between these ethnicities? As in each ethnicity celebrates the birth of a spirit child differently? Are there the material differences? If so, what purpose do these material differences serve? Is one racial group taller than others? Does one racial group have different hair color than others? Different skin color than others? If God the father is of one ethnicity and his wife another, what ethnicity do their children belong to? In this world if people of different ethnicities marry, after several generations the ethnicities do not become better defined, but more blended. The great great grand children tend to carry a mix of physical characteristics from their ancestors (for example, while my outer appearance seems to follow more my maternal grandfather’s makeup, based on how my body reacts/health, I appear to internally have a stronger physical resemblance to my paternal grandfather, where my sister externally takes after our paternal grandmother and internally maybe our maternal grandmother to some degree, but also very different from her, so quite a mix). Why would it be different in the eternities? Are the eternal ethnicities/races required to only marry others of the same race? If not, if what ethnicity does a child belong to, that of their father or mother and how is this determined? Assuming spiritual DNA functions identical to physical DNA, what characteristics do spiritual genes determine? Personality? Spiritual strength? Just cosmetic and if cosmetic, what would be the eternal significance of being locked into one appearance we did not choose for eternity? Have more questions, but need to stop for now…

You have already done that, lol. I started the thread and in this case don’t mind derails.

I don’t have any either, but I believe in most cases a victim who is not a minor should have the right to not give evidence if they so choose. It is one way to give them some sense of control in their lives. With minors, situations can be difficult. It is not always better or even safer to put victims in foster care. We need to do better with foster care before making it the automatic solution in cases of child abuse, imo. Children need to be evaluated to see if separation from both parents will add more significant trauma or not (I believe there should be no unsupervised contact with their abuser, but if the other parent knew and did nothing, it needs to be evaluated why and if harm will continue in some way). I am fine with supervision always being required with suspected abuse, not so much isolation of child from parents (a close relative as a toddler was taken away from his parents when they took him into the hospital because of weird bruising, it later came out it was the babysitter hitting him with a hairbrush when he cried; it is likely the separation from any familiar person while the investigation took place contributed more to his severe anxiety and depression as a child and youth and I view it as unnecessary as the parents could have been allowed to stay with him at least part of the time under supervision rather than him thinking they had abandoned him).

They are being taught to seminary and institute kids. My memory is this has been happening for a couple of years. I think it’s been discussed here, but it’s possible I first learned of it when talking with a friend who teaches institute. Eventually those exposed to the essays in class will be most members. Converts who were older when they joined may not be intentionally exposed, but since they will be in classes with members who did learn about the essays when they were younger, chances are the info will come up in discussions since it will be seen as standard knowledge. See here for an example: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/doctrine-and-covenants-seminary-teacher-manual-2025/453-doctrine-and-covenants-132-1-2-34-66?lang=eng

So victims who don’t want a family member, friend or whoever to be arrested for whatever are equally guilty of their own abuse/rape?

How can they be not be off the mark if hell, the focus of the ad, is not described with literal flames in LDS theology? How is the second coming relevant to hell (since any burning if it is literal occurs prior to hell)? Using irrelevant evidence does not establish an argument.

Also as a pretense that one actually engaged with the other when they didn’t as in when this gets pointed out “agree to disagree” is their excuse to leave the conversation. This is not to say it is always or mostly used this way. There are valid reasons to use it…as in when arguments starts getting repeated.

Then you are off topic because we are talking about the ad which is about hell, not the second coming.

Do you think God laughs when he sees his children taking paths he doesn’t want them to take?

If they choose to accept the Gospel fully in the next life, they are exalted in the same way any Saint must choose to fully accept the Gospel or they will be unable to receive exaltation.

They have published several opinion pieces by him. As long as they give the opportunities to other politicians of differing views, I see that as a good thing. https://www.deseret.com/authors/mike-lee/ There was also these ones: https://www.deseret.com/politics/2025/07/15/elmo-grok-and-anti-semitism-online/ https://www.deseret.com/opinion/2025/07/14/utah-public-lands-indigenous-native-american-history/ https://www.deseret.com/politics/2025/07/10/mike-lee-urges-supreme-court-hear-religious-freedom-football-case/ https://www.deseret.com/politics/2025/07/08/utah-senator-mike-lee-has-the-youngest-chief-of-staff-in-the-us-senate/