Thursday, June 23, 2011

Mormons Are Square, Mormons Share

A variety of recent news about Mormons. Could be a great topic of conversation with your friends, family, neighbors.

They're here, they're square, get used to it!, The Economist
I like Mormons, as it happens, and here are some of the reasons why:

• Mormonism is the only major world religion that originated in the United States, and the religion reflects some of America's flagship virtues as well as some of the country's notorious flaws. Mormonism has an entrepreneurial ethos, a willingness to break with tradition, a restless tendency to travel and a focus on the world outside of America's borders, a healthy dose of hucksterism and audacity, and an anti-authoritarian stance to government that is sometimes obscured by its paternalism at the family level. I'll leave it to the commenters to sort out which are the virtues and which are the flaws.

• Most Mormons are unusually upstanding citizens and, correspondingly, you rarely catch a Mormon doing something horrible. Except for Ted Bundy, a convert, the worst person on this list of "infamous Mormons" is Butch Cassidy.

• They are, as a group, really nice.

 Mormon NYC Ad Campaign 'Very Savvy Branding', ABC News
Now splashed across an electronic billboard in the middle of Times Square, the ad includes photographs of individuals from different walks of life, all under a headline that reads "I'm a Mormon."

The campaign, which has also rolled out taxi toppers and subway advertisements, inserted the billboard blocks from the theater showing the Tony Award-winning musical "The Book of Mormon," which takes a satirical look at two Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints missionaries as they travel through Uganda.

Mormon Tabernacle Choir Flash Mob [video], LDSLiving.com

Yesterday at Williamsburg, choir members throughout the crowd of tourists, burst into song and then asked everyone to sing along with Yankee Doodle Dandy.

Who are the missionaries, Mormon.org

Has a reference form to fill out and explains what the Missionaries will do when they come to your house.

Sharing the gospel through Social Media, MormonTimes.com
I think one of the major appeals to these social networking sites is that they are short, simple and straight to the point. It really just requires you to sign up, find some people who share common interests and start a discussion.
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2 comments:

  1. The comments on the Economist article bugged me something fierce. Don't read them unless you are feeling oh so patient.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Great links! I hadn't seen any of these. And I'll make sure to avoid the comments on the one Em warned about. I'm not in the mood for people talking smack. :)

    ReplyDelete

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