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By Gregory Taggart, November 3, 2012 10:41 am

So this morning, I followed a link on Twitter to a story in Politico and learned something about Mitt Romney (and therefore me) that I had never supposed. Apparently journalist and WSJ contributor Paul Levy doesn’t think much of Mitt Romney (and therefore me):

“It’s very simple: I think Romney [and therefore me] is a dangerous religious freak whose election [not mine] will cripple America,” said Levy, who has donated $225 to Obama this year.

In the early morning–I was still in bed, reading on my smartphone–that was bad enough. But then I realized that Levy’s was the only quote in the story wherein any of the people quoted gave a reason for their contribution. Worse still, that quote appeared in the 4th paragraph–just 14 short lines in even shorter paragraphs–into the story, with no similarly outrageous reference to President Obama being a closet Muslim to balance the tale. An in-kind campaign contribution to the Obama campaign if you will–in an article about journalists contributing actual dollars to campaigns. (I wonder if they can spell IRONY at Politico.)

Well, you can imagine how I felt. I immediately sought refuge among my friends on Facebook. Wrong move that. Quicker than a Mormon man jumping from one polygamous bed to the next, I stumbled upon the following gem on Joanna Brooks’s wall:

It seems that Lisa, apparently and entirely unaware of her audience, decided it would be nice to establish her street creds as one who can separate the wheat from the chaff. Speaking for those in Lisa’s version of chaff (I live in Utah Country), I’ll report that thresher she is not.

Anyway, I’m now awake, and even though I was awaken rudely, I am fine. I’m sure Paul and Lisa would want to know that.

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By Gregory Taggart, September 30, 2012 2:58 pm

Back in the summer of 1995, I was sitting on a grassy hill in the middle of UC-Berkeley’s campus with my daughter Caroline. It was new-student orientation week, and she and I were there to be oriented before she began school that fall. We had driven to Berkeley from Provo, Utah, our home for the previous four years and just 45 minutes down I-15 from Salt Lake City, the epicenter of Mormonism. Now if Mormonism teaches anything besides Jesus Christ, Joseph Smith, and the Book of Mormon, it teaches about the importance of families. We have Family Home Evening. We have the song “Families Can Be Together Forever.” We have temples where families are sealed together for “time and all eternity.” We have “The Family: A Proclamation to the World.” In short, Mormons like families. It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that some of us may actually believe Mormons invented the family.

So there I was sitting on that hill with my daughter in the middle of possibly the most liberal college campus in the United States, across the Bay from possibly the most liberal city in the U.S. and the second largest city in maybe the most liberal state in the Union–sorry Massachusetts. And what did I see? Hundreds of mothers and fathers sitting on the same grassy hill with their sons and daughters, eating box lunches before the afternoon’s activities. Their children, like my daughter, were about to separate from their family and move on. Then it hit me: Most, if not all, of those parents were not from Utah. Few were Mormon. Yet, like me, they were excited for their children’s future even as they were anxious for their safety. Like me, they were going to miss their children. Like mine, their family was about to be changed forever. I laughed because I realized that I had spent so much time in the Utah Bubble that I had almost come to think that Mormons had the corner on families. Seeing all those mothers and fathers on that grassy hill brought me back to reality.

Now Utah doesn’t have a corner on bubbles either. I’m mean count ’em: There’s the Beltway Bubble, the Liberal Bubble, the Media Bubble, the Conservative Bubble. Bubbles here, bubbles there, bubbles everywhere. The world is a virtual Lawrence Welk Show.

With that in mind, I’d like to step outside my Conservative Bubble for a moment to point you towards a blog post by Nina Camic, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She tells the story of her stint as an au pair to the daughter of Arthur Ochs Sulzberger. Upon hearing about his recent death, she wrote:

A pause for reflection.

I came to live in the States as an adult (if you can call 18 adult) because of the goodness of a person who died today. I was an au pair to his little girl. I learned through him and his wife how to transition from Warsaw to New York again. I came with barely a flight bag full of clothes and possessions and joined a household that had a staff of helpers and an extended family of cousins, aunts, nephews — all intensely close, bonded in ways that history sometimes bonds people because of unusual circumstances. That I was treated kindly is such an understatement that I can’t even quite say it. The father of my charge will always in my mind be the person who liked nothing better than to drive away from the city, to the country home, fire up the grill and throw some meats for an evening supper with just his little girl, his wife and the au pair from Poland. After dinner, he and I would clean up in the kitchen and if I learned how to wipe down every last inch of counterspace it was because he taught me well. He was too kind for words and his little girl was just like him, making my au pair duties about the easiest that could be.

So, my thoughts are very much with the kids he leaves behind. Kids… How oddly stated! Kids. We were that once.

Yup, we were all kids once, and we’re all grown-ups now, men and women. Most of us, most of the time, are even good grown-ups. In the last days of this never-ending and way overheated presidential election, it’s worth remembering that even the former publisher and CEO of The New York Times–that bête noire of conservatives everywhere–was a kid once and was, apparently, a very good, kind, and generous man.

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By Gregory Taggart, September 22, 2012 10:32 am

So Mormon author (and sometimes critic of Mormonism) Joanna Brooks is all a-Twitter about the need for a big-tent Mormonism.

Just don’t give Mitt Romney the address to the tent.

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By Gregory Taggart, August 1, 2012 10:32 pm

So what do we learn from the recent Chick-fil-A controversy and protests? Well,we learn that

1. We’ve turned 1/6th of our economy over to people who think it’s fine and dandy to use the considerable power of government to shut down speech they personally don’t approve of;

2. Many on the left has no scruples about maligning the right’s motives;

3. The Tea Party and other like-minded people will be out in force on Election Day (below, the line today at Chick-fil-A in Orem, Utah);

4. And thankfully, some on the left still believe in free speech.

About that free speech thingy, go here and read what the Volokh Conspiracy of law professors has to say about it. Eugene Volokh is one of the nation’s top Constitutional law scholars.

UPDATE: The author of the Facebook rant referred to in #2 pulled his post.

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By Gregory Taggart, April 8, 2012 9:06 pm

Christ, the Lord, is risen today, Alleluia!
Sons of men and angels say, Alleluia!
Raise your joys and triumphs high, Alleluia!
Sing, ye heavens, and earth, reply, Alleluia!

Love’s redeeming work is done, Alleluia!
Fought the fight, the battle won, Alleluia!
Lo! the Sun’s eclipse is over, Alleluia!
Lo! He sets in blood no more, Alleluia!

Vain the stone, the watch, the seal, Alleluia!
Christ hath burst the gates of hell, Alleluia!
Death in vain forbids His rise, Alleluia!
Christ hath opened paradise, Alleluia!

Lives again our glorious King, Alleluia!
Where, O death, is now thy sting? Alleluia!
Once He died our souls to save, Alleluia!
Where thy victory, O grave? Alleluia!

Soar we now where Christ hath led, Alleluia!
Following our exalted Head, Alleluia!
Made like Him, like Him we rise, Alleluia!
Ours the cross, the grave, the skies, Alleluia!

Hail, the Lord of earth and heaven, Alleluia!
Praise to Thee by both be given, Alleluia!
Thee we greet triumphant now, Alleluia!
Hail, the resurrection day, Alleluia!

King of glory, Soul of bliss, Alleluia!
Everlasting life is this, Alleluia!
Thee to know, Thy power to prove, Alleluia!
Thus to sing and thus to love, Alleluia!

Hymns of praise then let us sing, Alleluia!
Unto Christ, our heavenly King, Alleluia!
Who endured the cross and grave, Alleluia!
Sinners to redeem and save. Alleluia!

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By Gregory Taggart, March 25, 2012 9:20 pm

People get ready
There’s a train a-coming
You don’t need no baggage
You just get on board
All you need is faith
To hear the diesels humming
Don’t need no ticket
You just thank the Lord

People get ready
For the train to Jordan
Picking up passengers
From coast to coast
Faith is the key
Open the doors and board them
There’s room for all
Among the loved the most

There ain’t no room
For the hopeless sinner
Who would hurt all mankind just
To save his own
Have pity on those
Whose chances are thinner
Cause there’s no hiding place
From the Kingdom’s throne

So people get ready
For the train a-comin
You don’t need no baggage
You just get on board !
All you need is faith
To hear the diesels humming
Don’t need no ticket
You just thank, you just thank the Lord

Yeah
Ooh

Yeah
Ooh

Im getting ready
Im getting ready
This time I’m ready
This time I’m ready

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By Gregory Taggart, March 20, 2012 11:25 pm

Can’t wait to see this:

And I’m soon going to get to. Wherever I go, I take time to visit important religious buildings. For example, no visit to Washington D.C. is complete without a visit to the National Cathedral.

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By Gregory Taggart, March 19, 2012 9:54 am

I drove from Cody to Orem on Sunday and didn’t have time to post, so this is a make-up.

Nothing says peaceful better than a chant. This one by the Benedictine Monks will do just fine:

If you’re ever in Utah, take some time to visit the Abbey of Our Lady of the Holy Trinity, home to some very kind monks who make some great honey.

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By Gregory Taggart, March 8, 2012 3:31 pm

I support Romney. And I’ve tired of the ridiculous questions about his religion. Most I’ve read have betrayed more about the questioner than they ever will about Romney or his Mormonism. That said, there are legitimate questions. Sarah Posner, Senior Editor at Religion Dispatches, has an article at Salon.com where she asks some of them. What about Blacks and the Mormon priesthood? What about Mormonism and feminism, particularly in the 70s and 80s? And so on. Sarah’s tone is generally fair, as are the questions she asks. I’m interested in how Romney would answer them. Judging by what I’ve already heard about how he felt about the priesthood ban and by what I’ve read in stories like Peggy Stack’s 2008 article for the Salt Lake Tribune, I think he’d do just fine.

That said, the questions do present a problem that Posner fails to acknowledge. Responding to even these appropriate questions involves going deeper into Mormon belief than even the most interested journalist may be willing to go. And that might result in a poor, even unfair story being written by a reporter who tuned out as soon as she heard the bit she wanted to hear. To me, that’s one reason Romney may be reluctant to talk about his religion. Like me, he surely holds his beliefs sacred. Like me, he probably would rather that people understood how the Book of Mormon impacts how he deals with some of these difficult issues. Allow me to give an example of what I’m talking about.

I grew up in the 60s and served my mission in the Brazil North Mission from June 1971 to June 1973, before the 1978 so-called Revelation on the Priesthood. I supported the practice of not extending the priesthood to Blacks. Now, stop there, and I’m a racist. But that’s not even close to the truth. The truth is, I wasn’t a member of the Church because of the ban; I was a member in spite of it. And even that statement just scratches the surface of the story of me and the priesthood ban.

So imagine you’re a reporter, and you want me to go beneath that surface. Do you have the time and interest to hear me explain what I mean by what I just said? Are you ready for me to go into what the Book of Mormon means in my belief system and how it affects so much of what I do? Are you willing to listen to, then write fairly about, what the idea of living prophets means to me and why that belief would affect how I dealt with the priesthood ban? How receptive will you be to the evidence I would muster to demonstrate to you that I have always–always–treated people of color with love, that I have never condescended to them, that I’ve tried to treat everybody everywhere as equals, and so on?

If I were Romney and I could be sure that I’d get a fair hearing and that the writer would report my responses fairly, honestly, and without any mind reading, I’d jump at the chance to talk about the priesthood ban and any other Mormon questions they might have. But like Romney, I have doubts that would happen, and so I hold back. My sacred and deeply held beliefs don’t fit on bumper stickers. They aren’t made–aren’t appropriate–for 15 second sound bites. They just aren’t. Unfortunately, the political public seems to thrive on a diet of gossamer statements truncated to fit on the rear fender. And there’s the conundrum.