Why the Protestant Church Needs Another Ninety-Five Theses

[The Nehor]

53 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

Economics? Before "the pill" couples had children regardless of economics. My mother's parents had seven children in the face of the Great Depression. 

Children were still (eventually) expected to provide an economic return at the time. It was “New Deal” policies taking children (and many of the elderly) out of the work force that created a labor shortage that helped to alleviate the depression because it made wages rise. More children to an extent was a boon in the United States when the majority of the people were farming. The US could handle more farmers because there was plenty of land for them to expand into. In other places like Europe subsistence farmers having really big families was often a bad idea. Sure you had more labor but if you couldn’t divide the land you worked to support more than one family only one son (or daughter) can have a family. The rest either work the farm for the benefit of their brother’s family or they hope to marry someone with land or they try to take up being a soldier or head to the city or town and try to survive there. All risky.

Big families were also a boon post-war because industrialization had accelerated and there were a lot more jobs and the United States had a big advantage in being the only major industrialized power in the world to have not been destroyed by bombing and fighting and/or losing a large portion of their population as casualties. Plus the United States did a lot of the structuring of the post-war economic order and designed it to advantage the US and jobs were everywhere.

We don’t have either of those situations now.

Edited March 11, 2025 by The Nehor

[Stargazer]

On 3/9/2025 at 11:00 PM, Calm said:

That does make it slanted, but I don’t think that is what he is saying. If there wasn’t child or mother death after his ancestor was born in those families as well as little to no death in the extended families he traced, which is what I think he was referring to, this would be an unusual statistic, I believe.

Yes it would be an unusual statistic if there were no child deaths. But The Nehor was claiming that it was common for mothers to die in childbirth. My data showed otherwise (but of course I was totally biased and cherry picking because I survived LOL). But as for child mortality, oh yes, there was more than enough of that. One of my great great grandmothers had 12 children, and flipping HALF of them died in infancy, and one of them only survived a day or so. Made me cry for her. This kind of thing happens today of course. One of my granddaughters died at 3 months of age from SIDS. That was the reason her mother, my stepdaughter, decided she wasn't going to go down that path again. And I don't blame her. 

On 3/9/2025 at 11:00 PM, Calm said:

There were a lot of child and infant death and stillbirths in my family records (grandmas paid for professional genealogists plus my mom’s side is Scandinavian so they go back quite a way except for my dad’s dad’s dad’s who was a German Jew, we have the ship he left Germany on and names of his siblings and father and general birthplace location and that’s it).  I don’t remember maternal deaths as well, but quite a few second marriages iirc for the European families.  I know one of the plural wives of my great greats lost a child at birth and almost died, she became an invalid.  I wonder if GGM’s care of her was why she got selected by church leaders as a midwife as supposedly it was legendary (Brigham Young even visited and commented on what an example it was).

One of my great grandfathers had a son with his first wife, but the boy died at 2 months, and his mother a few months after that. No idea why. Another great grandfather had two daughters with his first wife, but first the girls died from typhus, and then the mother. After that, he remarried with a widow who already had six or seven children, and they had my grandfather. The overwhelming majority of my ancestors married only once. The same was true of my ex-wife's, late wife's, and current wife's lines. And not one divorce. I don't know if they were all happy together, but my maternal grandparents had a very rocky marriage because of his alcoholism, and though they never divorced, my eldest aunt got fed up with her father when he returned home after one final binge, and told him to leave and never come back or she would end him. She was apparently scary enough that he believed her!

[Calm]

55 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

do not reduce woman's existence to that.

I have no doubt you don’t, but you are in this discussion.  I was protesting the overly simplistic construction of the issue and dismissiveness of women’s concerns and by extension the family’s concerns in this discussion, not your treatment of women in your daily life or your general attitude towards them.  Explaining how you treat and view women personally does not explain your choices in how you phrased your analysis in the discussion.

While this last post had points that could lead to worthwhile discussion, like the Psychology Today article, this is mostly repetitive now and I have said what I wanted to say.  Whether later my mind reengages with it or not, I couldn’t say.

[Calm]

1 hour ago, Stargazer said:

English is one of the few languages to imagine itself tripped up by a double negative. Spanish doesn't care, for example! Two negatives doubles down on the negative in that language.

Took me 5 minutes of going back and forth on that one to decide…it was obviously wrong when rephrasing it as the two ‘canceling’ each other out, but it sounded so much more correct the original way.  It would have been useful if we were bilingual on the board and I could alternate between English and Spanish at will.  I love English for a lot of reasons, double negatives are not one of them.

Edited March 11, 2025 by Calm

[Calm]

1 hour ago, Stargazer said:

So why don't you sign on to FamilySearch yourself and try to find all the mothers in your line who died in childbirth.

We do have stats already on maternal mortality, why would he need to check family search? (Serious question)

Anything anecdotal isn’t worth much for predicting actual rates because you can’t know if it’s an outlier or typical.  When it’s all we have (say in some ancient places without a lot of burial sites or records), that is one thing.  But if a family has enough data out there to be in FamilySearch, chances are there are maternal mortality rates for the time and area they lived in.

Edited March 11, 2025 by Calm

[manol]

7 minutes ago, Calm said:

 I love English for a lot of reasons, double negatives are not one of them.

I remember reading about an English teacher's lesson on double negatives.  He said that in English a single negative is a negative; and a single positive a positive; and a double negative can be either a negative or a positive; but that a double positive can only be a positive and never a negative.  To which one of the students (probably @The Nehor) replied, "Yeah, right."

[Stargazer]

On 3/9/2025 at 11:09 PM, The Nehor said:

Have faith. With the plans for the current reorganizing (meaning gutting) of the Social Security Administration we might see benefits be cut off temporarily or permanently due to simple lack of resources to process them.

Oh, yes, can't pass up a chance to spout political nonsense. Of course if we cut off the SSA out checks going out to the 16 million people aged 115 and over, they might become homeless! Except that they are all quite well-homed. And six feet under.

On 3/9/2025 at 11:09 PM, The Nehor said:

And with the whole post-WWII economic system being flipped over and the markets already tanking the pension may not last either. So I am even more pessimistic and think it might collapse even sooner than you think.

Now that's a cheery thought!

Which markets are tanking, actually? I just checked, and there's nothing unusual going on. DJIND, SPX, and NASDAQ are a bit down over the past 2 weeks, but the only international looking down is Nikkei (Japan). But even it's doing much better now than it was doing back in August. In general, I'd say it might be a good time to pick some bargains at the Nikkei. The rest, UK, Canada, France, Hong Kong, and Germany are all looking pretty good, especially Hong Kong. If this is tanking, what do you call a bull market? There's a bit of shakiness brought on by the exaggerated fears being stimulated by the US media, but it's actually all looking pretty decent. I fully expect things to pick up soon. Maybe Nancy Pelosi can double her portfolio value! With her kind of insider knowledge there's plenty of opportunities available!

[Stargazer]

On 3/9/2025 at 11:34 PM, Devobah said:

Man I leave for a few days and the thread goes completely off the rails. It’s like seeing my ADHD brain on a screen right now 🤪

I resisted coming back, but finally succumbed.

[Stargazer]

On 3/10/2025 at 4:51 AM, ZealouslyStriving said:

🤨 More politics?

Of course!

 

47 minutes ago, Calm said:

I thought he was referring to the fertility rate in Russia where they have been quite unsuccessful with their attempts to raise it by offering incentives.

[Benjamin McGuire]

4 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

Economics? Before "the pill" couples had children regardless of economics. My mother's parents had seven children in the face of the Great Depression. 

I think you have it backwards. The general consensus among demographers is that the pill provided an inexpensive way to prevent unwanted pregnancies. The statistic that correlates most closely with the decline of fertility rates is the age at first pregnancy. Most of us think that the reduction in teen pregnancy in the last 30 years of almost 80% is probably a good thing. But the delays in that first pregnancy are linked primarily to advancing education and increased work force participation. One of the studies that I have someplace shows that the subsidization of hormonal birth control and family planning only contributed to a 1.4-2 percent decline in the fertility rates - with the uneven legalization of "the pill" in the US, there wasn't huge differences between the areas where it was legal and the areas where it wasn't. There are several really good studies that document this. I can provide a couple if you want. One of the more interesting pieces of evidence in all of this is the fertility rates in Japan, where "the pill" was not legalized for use until 1999. And yet, Japan saw the same precipitous decline in fertility rates as other industrialized countries. Additionally, the major drops in fertility rates started in the late 40s and early 50s, suggesting that while the Pill made things easier for couples (there were fewer unwanted pregnancies), people were pretty good at preventing pregnancies if they wanted to. Focusing on "the pill" is an easy (but wrong) way to understand what is driving the drop in fertility. And when we reduce it to something like this, it becomes problematic in trying to address the issue. Clearly, if all it is, is the pill, then making contraceptives illegal should somehow, miraculously, reverse the fertility rates right? Except that it won't. Instead we need to work on addressing the things that lead to successful families, we need to reduce the economic impact on women who have children (highly skilled women who give birth see a decline of almost 25% relative to their peers a decade after giving birth).

Now, my grandmother was number 12 of 13 kids. 4 died in infancy. The family had a farm where they grew and sold produce. Children were an economic boost. It is hard to compare a few generations ago with today because our lifestyles have changed so much.

So - economics is a much bigger deal than you suggest, and "the pill" - not so much.

[Stargazer]

39 minutes ago, Calm said:

I have no doubt you don’t, but you are in this discussion.  I was protesting the overly simplistic construction of the issue and dismissiveness of women’s concerns and by extension the family’s concerns in this discussion, not your treatment of women in your daily life or your general attitude towards them.  Explaining how you treat and view women personally does not explain your choices in how you phrased your analysis in the discussion.

I don't dismiss women's concerns at all. The only thing I dismiss, with great prejudice, is the modern attitude that we are here to enjoy ourselves without a care in the world for bringing children into it. Which far too many people (and certainly not just women) are into. And by the evidence, it is born of selfishness, however one wishes to dress it up as my body, my choice, or eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. The great prophet of the Adversary, Korihor, once said, "every man fares in this life according to the management of the creature; therefore every man prospers according to his genius, and every man conquers according to his strength; and whatsoever a man does is no crime." And that attitude, too, prevails in the world.

As for my rhetoric, yes, it can be severe when it comes to this topic, because I fear for the consequences. I am sorry that it offends. 

39 minutes ago, Calm said:

While this last post had points that could lead to worthwhile discussion, like the Psychology Today article, this is mostly repetitive now and I have said what I wanted to say.  Whether later my mind reengages with it or not, I couldn’t say.

Yeah, me too. Again, my apologies for stirring you up. 

[Stargazer]

18 minutes ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

I think you have it backwards.

Of course you would.

18 minutes ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

The general consensus among demographers is that the pill provided an inexpensive way to prevent unwanted pregnancies.

Really? I didn't know that! 🙄

[Benjamin McGuire]

3 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

Really? I didn't know that!

I probably meant to suggest that it was a highly effective way. We already had reasonably effective means for birth control, and they were regularly employed. The pill didn't suddenly introduce the concept - it just made it a bit more effective. In any case, the pill itself doesn't seem to introduce the shift in fertility rates.

Edited March 11, 2025 by Benjamin McGuire

[Peacefully]

2 hours ago, Stargazer said:

So obviously the solution to stop having children. Who needs 'em?

If that is what you got out of my quote then I can’t help you understand a woman’s POV. 

[Stargazer]

44 minutes ago, Calm said:

We do have stats already on maternal mortality, why would he need to check family search? (Serious question)

OK, because he called my small sample of maternal death in childbirth cherry-picked. So maybe he could cherry pick some of his own, if he felt so sure about it. And yes, we do have stats. So why didn't he go and get them? I suppose I could have gone to get them, instead, but I was digging in FamilySearch that day for other purposes and the question got me curious. I was pretty sure I hadn't seen any of my grandmothers dying in childbirth, at all, which I was able to verify back to 1788.

I try to back up at least some of the things I write here by checking sources, but he seems to prefer limiting himself to assertions that he doesn't bother checking. Like his claim that the markets are tanking -- which anyone with a Google could check and verify, but he didn't. Or he did check, but decided a that the small 2-week downturn in US markets portends an economic collapse, destroying my SocSec and pension. The sky is falling! The sky is falling! All three major US indexes are well above what they were April 2024. They hit peaks after Trump's inauguration and seem to be undergoing a correction -- which is not at all unusual. I was going to post the graphs for his delectation, but decided I would be wasting my time. 

44 minutes ago, Calm said:

Anything anecdotal isn’t worth much for predicting actual rates because you can’t know if it’s an outlier or typical.  When it’s all we have (say in some ancient places without a lot of burial sites or records), that is one thing.  But if a family has enough data out there to be in FamilySearch, chances are there are maternal mortality rates for the time and area they lived in.

I had four family lines from diverse countries. Two US, one Germany, and one England. Not claiming the sample was scientific, but it was far from cherry-picked. 

I keep posting in this thread, and I should stop. But then I see someone responding to me or someone who responded to me, and darn it my ADHD brain goes right at it. MUST.RESIST.READING.THIS.THREAD! STOP IT, MIKE! <- that's my name.

[Stargazer]

3 minutes ago, Peacefully said:

If that is what you got out of my quote then I can’t help you understand a woman’s POV. 

By some lights, it is impossible, try as we might, for a man to understand a woman's POV in any case. Even with poetry.

I got that she felt really oppressed. And maybe she was. The poem felt quite depressed, too. To this point I'd never heard of her.

I haven't lived her life, but I did have a look at her Wiki article. She seems to have done rather well for herself, despite whatever she feels was holding her back. She's delightfully more successful than I have been, I will say that. And talented, wow!

Here's Broken Horses, a really rockin' number put out by Brandi:

 

[Calm]

1 hour ago, Stargazer said:

f the SSA out checks going out to the 16 million people aged 115 and over

If this is serious…

https://fox59.com/news/national-world/is-social-security-money-going-to-millions-of-people-listed-as-old-as-149/

Quote

As of September 2015, the agency automatically stops payments to people who are older than 115 years old.

Quote

The data reported in the media represent people who do not have a date of death associated with their record. While these people may not be receiving benefits, it is important for the agency to maintain accurate and complete records.

https://blog.ssa.gov/social-security-addressing-aged-records/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=smt-blog-25&utm_content=awareness

PS:  it took me less than a minute to find this info

Edited March 11, 2025 by Calm

[Calm]

2 hours ago, Stargazer said:

Again, my apologies for stirring you up. 

I don’t correct or protest because I am offended or stirred up, but because I prefer accuracy and precision over vagueness.  Conversations are more like putting puzzles together for me and getting the right pieces in the right places, which also requires figuring out if a piece is out of place (irrelevant) or defective (incorrect).

Edited March 11, 2025 by Calm

[Calm]

59 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

But then I see someone responding to me or someone who responded to me, and darn it my ADHD brain goes right at it.

I don’t have ADHD (or at least I am pretty sure I don’t), but I have the same compulsion usually.

[Stargazer]

27 minutes ago, Calm said:

If this is serious…

https://fox59.com/news/national-world/is-social-security-money-going-to-millions-of-people-listed-as-old-as-149/

https://blog.ssa.gov/social-security-addressing-aged-records/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=smt-blog-25&utm_content=awareness

PS:  it took me less than a minute to find this info

Well, I wasn't looking so it took me forever!  I just figured we'd find out more eventually. As a retired data processing professional, let me tell you: having 16 million records indicating ages over 115 is a serious red flag as regards data integrity. Regardless of whether they stopped paying them.

I sure hope to heck that they were stopping payment after 115 -- but the oldest person in the country who is still alive is 114. So it does seem like they were stopping payments way too late. "As of September 2015, the SSA began to automate terminating benefits once people reached age 115..." but how many millions were being paid out to dead people before then?

This is one of those cases where one might feel relieved it wasn't as bad as it seemed, since they stop payment after 115, but who was letting those payments going out to probably dead people who were less than 115 years old?!  Yeah, well, instead of mailing checks to 16 million dead people, they were thank goodness only mailing checks to... what? 1 million? 2 million? 3 million dead people? You inspired to do some checking of my own, and it turns out that they have been occasionally identifying mispayments to dead people before now. A March 2019 article said they had "identified that nearly $42 million was paid to about 500 dead people in three states." On 15 January 2025 the "U.S. Department of the Treasury announced it prevented and recovered more than $31 million in fraud and improper payments during a five-month pilot with the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) Full Death Master File." "A 2023 audit by the SSA Office of the Inspector General found that 18.9 million Social Security number holders born in 1920 or earlier were not marked as deceased, due to technological changes. However, most of these individuals were not receiving benefits."

They've known that this data integrity issue has existed since 2015, and they still haven't fixed it? I am only slightly mollified by the fact that they've fixed a few of these bad records. Slop in data used to be one of my biggest peeves as a programmer.

[Stargazer]

1 hour ago, Calm said:

I don’t correct or protest because I am offended or stirred up, but because I prefer accuracy and precision over vagueness.  

Yeah, I prefer that, too, but sometimes I get too sloppy for my own good.

1 hour ago, Calm said:

Conversations are more likely putting puzzles together for me and getting the right pieces in the right places, which also requires figuring out if a piece is out of place (irrelevant) or defective (incorrect).

Indeed.

Thanks for being kind to me!

[Calm]

23 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

having 16 million records indicating ages over 115 is a serious red flag as regards data integrity. Regardless of whether they stopped paying them.

This argues against the Church keeping records of anyone not currently participating as that contributes to data integrity. Seems like the same issue.

Not seeing a problem storing past expiration date names and info, especially since it can be used to check possible identity theft (ripping off names and locations and possibly SS numbers and altering dates is much more likely to come from another source than the SSA database, I am guessing).

I assume the SSA database I’d used for more things than just sending out checks.  It likely is a good source for research.

Edited March 11, 2025 by Calm

[Calm]

27 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

t who was letting those payments going out to probably dead people who were less than 115 years old?! 

You aren’t reading the sources I linked to, are you?

They say they look at anything over 90.

If they aren’t paying out benefits, what is the problem when the complaint category is inappropriate benefits paid?

Edited March 11, 2025 by Calm

[Chum]

20 hours ago, Stargazer said:

Yeah, but it wasn't child deaths at birth that I was cataloguing. The Nehor was talking about deaths of mothers in childbirth, not deaths of babies in childbirth.

I was discussing both to highlight scenarios where ignorance of the newborn's/stillbirth's existence leads to wrong assumptions of the cause of the mother's death.  

Last month, I helping someone with their (well researched) line and turned up an unknown birth that coincided with the mom's death.

The moral of the story is that assumptions we make about our lines have strong potential to be wrong and routinely are.

[Teancum]

On 3/6/2025 at 11:30 AM, Devobah said:

Here

You should be able to read these without needing a Linkedin account. I have one but was able to access it without needing one. Overall this is an interesting article written by Mark Bernard, a Facilitator for Blessing Point Ministries. The group is not a church in itself (from what I understand, but I could be wrong) but a group that is designed to help with church healing and unity.

The article, originally written back in 2021, presents 95 Theses for the Protestant Church pointing out flaws and concerns that this Reverend is starting to see within the Protestant Church. I think that we, as church members, could learn from and be better about. 

Some of my favorite theses or ones that I find most intriguing:

6. Whereas Protestants rejected extra-biblical authorities and appealed only to Scripture, we quickly made idols of our own favored teachers – repeating the pattern we once condemned.

7. Entire schools of theology arose from our chosen teachers, whose followers became as unbending as the group from which we originally parted.

16. Protestant leaders have overlooked the fact that how they handle a controversy is as important to God as the controversy itself.

17. We have behaved as if every doctrine, no matter how obscure, requires us to proclaim, “Here I stand; I can do no other!”

20. Protestantism infused “being right” (our convictions about “the truth”) with Papal primacy, elevating it over every other Christian virtue.

21. The Protestant need to always “be right” flowed from our insecurity over the pain we experienced (and caused) as the Reformation unfolded.

26. Some of our children witness us devouring each other and flee the church rather than joining our cannibalism. Generations have thus been lost.

27. Others of our children witness our divisiveness and inherit the same brutal spirit.

28. A layman could observe our behavior and astutely ask questions such as, “Where is discernment? Where is wisdom? Why have Protestants been so inclined to make war against brethren who disagree with them? Why wield the sword against one’s own?” (1 Kings 12:24)

30. Again, an observer could ponder, “Perhaps, after 500 years, it’s time for the Protestant Church to ask the question Gideon posed, ‘If God is with us, why has all this happened to us?’” (Judges 6:13)

34. Though we have been unable to stay unified for long, the Gospel has gone forth from us, but it has been tarnished by our divisions.

37. If God reaches anyone through such hostile divisions, it only reflects God’s mercy, or sense of humor.

42.When Paul wrote to the Corinthian church “For there must also be factions among you, so that those who are approved may become evident among you,” he acknowledges the presence of divisions threatening their spiritual health, yet the church retained its singular corporate identity. (1 Cor. 11:19)

I'll stop there for right now. But I encourage the reading of this piece. I found it intriguing. It's caused me to ponder the reformation, the Church, and the purpose of the Restoration of the Gospel as a whole. There's plenty of other good points about the Protestant Reformation that could also be used for the Church as well. The phrase "always reforming" is something that is said in many Protestant Circles, but seems to hardly be really practiced outside of mentally excommunicating other churches for not believing the same thing as their particular church. 

Which one of these theses do you think most applies to our Church? What are your thoughts on the Protestant Reformation as a whole. I would love to get a Non-LDS understanding of it.

Interesting. I will think about your question as it applies to Mormonism.