http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yt-IBJpE ... re=related

A beautiful song and so true ..and sung by Ruthie too :)

I reading a new book: The Politics of American Religious identity The seating of Senator Reed Smoot, Mormon Apostle by Kathleen Flake. "Kathleen Flake practiced law for fifteen years and is now assistant professor of American Religious history at Vanderbuilt Univeristy Divinity School"

I will post some of her thoughts on my blog:

this is from the introduction " the U.S.Senates resolution of the crisis articulated the political terms by which increasing diverse religions would be recognized and accommodated in America for the remainder of the century"

"nineteenth-century Mormonism seems to have little relation, except by contrast, to the twenty-first-century Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day saints (L.D.S. Church). Indeed, the church's present reputation, for good or ill, appears to be based on a reverse set of identity markers: idealization of the nuclear family, unapologetic capitalism, and patriotic republicism. It is if there were two Latter-day-saint churches, not one"

An important one:


"Between 1903 and 1907 a broad coalition of American Protestant churches, acting directly through thier ministers indirectly through various reform agencies, sought to expel Utah's new senator on the grounds that his ecclesiastical position made him a conspirator in the L.D.S. Church's continuing violation of the nation's antipolygamy laws. In the Smoot hearings, as in every other Mormon conflict of the previous century, the Protestants were the chief combatants."


"The smoot protest was essentially a Protestant endeaver. Fittingly, then those who forumulated the protest against Smoot were referred to as "protestants" (lowercased) in the hearing record."

..."because certain issues rallied Protestant schismatics to join with their more traditional neighbors, forgetting confessional differences in support of a common project to build a "Christian America" Mormons did not, nor were they invited to, participate in the effort to reform America social institutions. Indeed, they were at best the objects of reform and at worst deemed incapable of reform"

"Mormonism" "said the New York American in 1904 "is a repulsive anachonism, a dangerous plague spot, a gross offense to the nation's moral sense."

"Organized in 1830 and rooted in New England restorationism and frontier utopianism, Mormonism had early and always attracted the negative attention of its fellow citizens, but no more than when it claimed the right to restore Old Testament polygamy. Rumors of it contributed to the mob violence that chased Mormons from the Ohio Valley to the banks of the Mississippi and, finally, to the isolated Great Basin on the far side of the Rockies. By the middle of the nineteenth century, Americans were so aggravated by the Latter-day saints beliefs and practices that a sixth of the antebellum U.S. Army was stationed in the foothills overlooking Salt Lake City to police the Mormon Kingdom. After the Civil War, a series of anitpolygamy statutes criminalized the church's marital practices and sent more than a thousand of it's members to federal prisons, as well as disincorporating their church and confiscating it's property. After several attempts, statehood was granted to Utah territory in 1896, largely based on the church's 1890 promise to abandon its unique maritial pratcice. When the smoot hearing showed that Mormons had continued to practice polygamy, the national debate on Mormonism was reinvigorated and performed on a public stage of the U.S. Senate. The four-year Senate hearing created a 3500 page record of testimony by 100 witnesses on every peculiarity of Mormonism, especially its polygamous family structure, ritual worship practices, "secret oaths", open cannon economic communalism and theocratic politics.

"American's problem with the Latter-day saints was not simply or even primarily a matter of unlawful action, but of conflicting authority. The Latter-day Saints appealed to the law of their god, given through prophets, to justify their resistance to the law of the land. [u:bf7a26c7cf]When Latter-day Saints morality, effected by a priestly order, confronted American morality, effected by a Protestant legal establishment,[/u:bf7a26c7cf] the philosophical underpinnings of the First Amendment were made explict, and conflict arose between the nation with the soul of a church and the church with the soul of a nation. The Mormon Problem made it obvious that, by not establishing any religion, the Consitution had subordinated every religion's authority over believers to the state's authority over citizens.....

[u:bf7a26c7cf]
"More specifically, because Protestants had always enjoyed the liberty that comes from writing the law[/u:bf7a26c7cf], they were confident that no difference existed between one's duty to church and state" ..........."During the first decades of the twentieth century, however, Protestants were conscious only of the problem posed by nonconformist to America's dominant moral order"

" Most simply stated, I argue that the U.S. Senates solution to the nation's Mormon Problem was a compromise that required the Mormons to conform their kingdom to the most Protestant form of religion, the demomination, and creedal tolerance. In return, the Senate gave the Latter-day saints the benefit they sought by sending a represenitive to the Senate, namely that form of religious citzenship that provided them protection at home and abroad, for the propgation of their faith".

"Why the Senate succeded where the amry and criminal statute failed had as much to do with Progessive Era changes in the nature of Protestant and Senate power as it did with Mormon obedience loyalty and tolerance."

I have a forest green blog. I would like a blue suit, with dark brown suede shoes, and light blue shirt and a tie that has blue,brown and this green it it. It could be stripes and preferably would have very thin green stripes and larger light blue, dark blue and darkbrown stripes. It would be a match. The blue would bring out my eyes.

an interesting story. in january 2004 I was real sick and was selling my car for medication money. I owned a 1992 mustang coupe, five speed with a 5.0 engine. People that had fastbacks hated my car because they wanted the one with the small trunk. Well a neighbor asked if I wanted to sell it. It was classic but I neglected it and it was in poor shape. I was desperate so I told him I would sell it for 1200.00 He told me he would give me 400 and pay the rest later. Well, it never really came and I didn't push it. One day I said look, pay me what you can tomorrow and I won't come back again. His wife made some excuse that the bank was closed so they couldn't get money, so I told him he didn't have to pay the rest. I took the bus and rode my bike for 3 1/2 years. When I won my disability appeal they had to pay me a substantial amount from way back. I was tired of riding my bike because nobody wants to go out with a guy who rides a bike.(Hey, I would go out with Halle Berry is she rode a bike) I had a little money and I see a car on ebay that I really like: it's an 85 280SL mercedes. someone put a bid of about four thousand and so I bid five thousand and forgot about it because I figured it would go for double. About six days later I got an email that I won. I sent the guy a check and then took the train north to pick it up and he met me at the train station. This is a picture of another car but mine looks just like it. My carhas blue leather seats and a wood dash. My hard top is on but next summer I would like to drive to the fair conference in my car ; Likely wear a white suit too. Ralph Lauren said you need a good suit and a good car. I agree

[img:e16bca0727]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/14/Merc.280sl.arp.jpg/800px-Merc.280sl.arp.jpg[/img:e16bca0727]