As part of our celebration of our ten-year anniversary here on the blog, each month we’ll post the ten posts that received the most comments each year. Because the most influential posts aren’t always the most commented posts, we’re also having bloggers post about an influential or game-changing post they wrote with a link to the original post, the effect of that post, and how their feelings on the topic may have changed.
If there’s a post that changed you over the past decade, we hope you’ll consider writing a guest post about it and emailing it to [email protected].
- “Our Heavenly Mother” by Jana: In this post, Jana asks our readers to comment on how they envision Heavenly Mother. These comments are beautiful.
- “Guest Post: Fighting at School and Abroad” by Cheryl Bruno aka Bored in Vernal: This piece opens with, “As the Christmas season progresses, some liberals have been asking why Americans tend to get involved in war so easily. Yesterday the answer became very clear to me: we teach our little ones to fight…”
- “Relief Society Lesson: Women and the Priesthood” by EmilyCC: This is a Teaching for Our Times lesson I did on President Beck’s talk, “An Outpouring of Blessings.”
- “Thoughts on Reverence–I Kid You Not” by Linda: This piece opens with, “Our ward has been talking a lot about reverence lately. I am of a mixed mind about this. The working definition for reverence seems to be “be quiet and think of Jesus.” They want reverence, but they also want children in the meetings. Hello! Children and quiet? When did that work?”
- “Intersexuality: What to do when babies are born with sexually ambiguous traits?” by Caroline: She write, “I’m intrigued by this occurrence of “intersexuality” and wonder how it fits into our Mormon mind frame.” The comments on this piece are fascinating (and show how blogging often functioned more like our Facebook groups today).
- “Exponent Classics: Requiem for a Typical Mormon Woman” by Lisa Ray Turner, republished from Exponent II, Vol. 18 No. 1 (1993): “She is Molly Mormon. Patty Perfect. The Typical Mormon Woman. Different names for the same woman. She sits quietly in sacrament meeting, dispensing Cheerios and quiet books with dignity. She teaches inspiring, non-controversial Relief Society lessons. “
- “Staking my claim/Claiming my stake: Mid-Singles” by Dora: “When I review my life, I can honestly say that I’ve chosen it over the marriage opportunities I’ve been presented with. I don’t view this as being selfish, or too career-minded, or noncommittal, just realistic about my capacity to love and be loved by, and to be happy with and foster happiness in certain people.”
- “Infidelity” by anonymous: “About six months ago I found some pictures on my computer of my husband with another woman. We are temple-married for 7 years and are active Mormons. My husband, H, travels with work a lot, and had, apparently, cultivated some relationships with women in other cities. In the pictures he and the other woman were at a tourist attraction, smiling.”
- “Missing Wives in the Presidents of the Church Manuals” by EmilyCC: “Every two years when I get my new Teachings of the Presidents of the Church manual, I go to the index to find the pages that talk about the prophet’s wife. I always hope to see a few pages devoted to her. But, there’s never as much information as I’d like to read.”
- “Donor” by Jana: “…I think this is crazy talk–to think that there is LDS doctrine that discourages Saints from donating organs because of the resurrection. Maybe I am just prejudiced because I am an amputee so my leg is already ‘missing’ and I’ve always imagined it would be with me in the hereafter no matter where its various molecules have ended up in the meantime.”
Do you have a favorite post from 2006 that isn’t here? Please link below and say why you enjoyed it.
2 Responses
Awesome! I love this reminder to go back and check some of the most-discussed posts from the past. I particularly liked your post on missing wives of presidents of the Church in the manuals. Particularly the point you made there about how when a Church president was polygamous, it was most likely that his wives would be mentioned at all. How depressing, but not surprising.
I think this is just another example if how damaging polygamy is to women. Looking back, we still remember male polygamists and study whole books about them, but we choose to forget the women, most of whom did not have multiple spouses.