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LDS congregations will soon have their annual Primary programs. This year, the theme song that the children will sing is The Family is of God. I love the catchy tune and clever rhyming pattern of this song, so I created this meme about it that you can add to your Pinterest boards or print as a scripture bookmark.
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Our blog content is always free, but our hosting fees are not. Please support us.
Exponent II provides feminist forums for women and gender minorities across the Mormon spectrum to share their diverse life experiences in an atmosphere of trust and acceptance. Through these exchanges, we strive to create a community to better understand and support each other.
25 Responses
Love it! I cringe my way through this song every Sunday.
How hard would it have been for the original lyricist to write that PARENTS nurture and provide for their children? I actually really like this song in this form!
Amen, exactly. I suspect in this form, it would have been less attractive to the correlation/curriculum/whatever department, though, since they wanted to be pushing divine gender roles and not just talking about God’s family.
MUCH improved. but alas, musically this song just doesn’t work. Reminds me of the scene in Amadeus when Salieri writes a song to impress the Prince, and Mozart swoops in to mock and then greatly improve the song. That is needed here as well
I have a long rant about this song, but I’ll just say well done, April.
Our ward is only singing verse 1. Thank heavens.
I love it, April. I didn’t like the idea of my kids singing the 2nd & 3rd verses of this song, but when I sat in on a practice this week, I saw that they were only singing the 1st and 4th verses. Yay! There is hope, even in conservative Bountiful, UT.
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We aren’t singing the song in our program at all. The chorister put her foot down and told the Bishop from day one she wasn’t teaching it. She also didn’t put “families can be together forever” in the program, which I very much support. As an adult I have come to love that song because I have an adult understanding of eternity and family bonds. However, as a child with parents who were not married in the temple, the song was heartbreaking and frustrating to me. I actually cried about it, not understanding how a loving God could make it so my family would NOT be together forever, even though I tried hard to be good and had absolutely no control over the circumstances of my parents’ marriage. The chorister had had a similar experience, coming from a complicated family background. Sometimes the songs we think are beautiful and teaching wonderful truths can be damaging to children whose view of the world is less complex, and who are less able to imagine solutions when the Gospel seems to allow no wiggle room.
I love that your chorister did this!
It did not go unchallenged. Ultimately the compromise was that the primary presidency could teach the song on their time if they wanted to, but she wasn’t going to do it. Somehow they never got around to it and here we are.
I declined a calling to be the primary chorister because I decided I couldn’t teach this song. I feel that its author took liberties with doctrinal interpretation, and I see the timing of its inclusion in the Primary curriculum guide as deliberate and calculated. Plus, I would rather teach kids about Jesus Christ than teach girls their place.
April, how about changing the last verse? It sets up children to expect to be parents. Statistically, that is not going to happen.
I mean, not all of them are going to be parents.
Amen about the heartache songs like this cause to children and adults. Why are there no songs about how we live in a fallen world but Jesus has the power to overcome it?
That song is really unfair to my wife. She does everything.
Deep Thoughts By Jack
I passive aggressively made this song poster for the chorister using only the first verse and now the kids don’t know the other verses which makes me feel not at all bad. If I’d had this version, I’d surely have included them all! Thanks for the rewrite!
This is perfect, April!
feminist are so good at finding things to complain about
Does it bother you that feminists can craft their own more meaningful and acceptable forms of worship, winifred? Or that they don’t do it the way that works for you?
most of what I hear from feminism is complain complain complain
I don’t know who you are listening to, winfred, but it isn’t feminists.
Much improved. I’m the primary music leader and we are only doing verses 1 and 4. Had I had these verses earlier I would have used them, too! Great work.
I love this, April. When this song was first out, the primary chorister asked my husband and I to sing the 2nd and 3rd verses as a duet together. I was working, and he was a stay-at-home dad and part-time grad student. It was so funny that they even asked. We politely declined, of course. 🙂
My grandma just died. Apparently this song is going onto the funeral program. Pretty sure she didn’t ever know the song.
I taught this several years ago when it first came out. This is a great improvement on the original. At the time we were going through Prop 8 craziness here in California, so I wasn’t thrilled with the song, but it wasn’t in the forefront of my mind. I was just incredibly grateful to be in Primary rather than Gospel Doctrine and Relief Society. And I could choose a bunch of other songs that I liked better to teach as well.
[…] as their annual theme. One of the set songs in particular has a problematic couple of verses, modified here. My ward primary had their presentation recently, and skipped those verses altogether. I […]