I was going to make a headline pointing out how so different LD$ sacrament meetings are from a typical Christian mass/worship, and that's when someone tells a story from the pulpit on a recently deceased loved one or family member, and recollect his/her life story. That's what's called a FUNERAL, and I don't know why The True Christian Church would not give out sermons about Jesus and how have cam to save sinners, but how someone helped build up the Morg by establishing a new ward in a small town in Ohio. But that's what you have to put up with.

So, a man introduced as the stake patriarch (a title I'm still confused as to what he does) gave that speech in sacrament meeting. Yes, it's sad that he lost his wife of over 50 years just two months ago, and regale us with stories as to how she helped build up Zion while battling cancer SEVEN TIMES or so in a faraway place, and how she believed the church was true, all that. I send my condolences to him. I'm not sure if I should make him feel better by letting him put his hands on my head and do a patriarchal blessing. I'd be amused as to what his predictions would be. I feel bad for the guy; I briefly introduced myself to him shortly after, and though he was friendly and soft-spoken, I can tell in his mannerism he was totally indoctrinated, even moreso than the past mission president when I met him.

Anyway, on a lark I Googled his name. Saw the newspaper obituary for his wife, thought to myself what a tough cookie she was to live that long despite cancer returning and beating it several times. But I now see he is listed as an incumbent member of the school board in a suburban school district. Remember, this is far from Utah. I'm not going to link it here so to not clue it in. Maybe it's not much of a deal, but to think, a guy who can make John Edward-like cold reading séances as a part of his church duties.....well, let's say there a Catholics, Lutherans and other Protestants on school boards around here, they don't do goofy stuff like that. When I graduated from high school, the town's most respected minister, a pastor at the town's United Church of Christ affiliate, presided over the invocations as he did for many years. I haven't heard anything controversial of that sort, but how will we know he isn't using his elected public office position to recruit new TSCC members? Does the fact there is a state law called "Misconduct in Public Office" safeguard us from the potential for religious proselytizing while in the public trust? Maybe so, but it's certainly worth talking about.

For what it's worth, the school board he serves on was involved in a legal controversy in which a Protestant non-denominational megachurch, the area's biggest church with a large sanctuary, was used for graduation ceremonies in the district's high schools. The LDS church building is way too small for something like that.......but what if it did? Seeing in Utah how strange it was to see these buildings called "institutes" alongside public high schools, almost on school property, could someone like him being thinking up something like that?

My constitution prohibits any kind of religious test for public office, and unlike some people I consider that an important part of the constitution, one well worth upholding.

In my experience, though, a fair number of mormons who run for public office can't put their religion aside and faithfully execute the duties of their office, and in so doing (anywhere but Utah) often sow the seeds of their own destruction when it comes to re-election. It's their actions that doom them, not their religion per se...but all too often their actions are driven by their religion, so the line is thin at best.

Case in point:
In my rural school district, the local mormon community (around 2-3% of the very conservative/christian population) decided a few years ago that they were going to "take over" the local school board. So for the 6 available seats, they put up 12 candidates, and campaigned heavily for all of them (these seats are usually not very hotly contested, and "campaigning" usually involves putting up a local sign or two and giving a speech at the Rotary Club). In campaigning, they were extremely dishonest about their motives, but nobody knew that at the time.

They got all 6 seats. And then they proceeded to try and turn our high-achieving, well-run school district into the worst Utah school imaginable. They tried to re-start "official" morning prayers (in the mormon style, of course). They tried to censor the biology textbooks regarding human reproduction and concepts in evolution. They tried to get "release time" for mormon seminary kids so they wouldn't have to get up early for seminary (because seminary attendance was falling off, and they figured if the kids could sleep, more would come in the afternoon). They tried all kinds of nonsense, some while trying to disguise their "mormon agenda," other times being right up front about it.

They managed to piss off EVERYBODY in the community -- the atheists/agnostics, the Jews, the christians, EVERYBODY. They even pissed off the hardest-core evangelical church in town, which normally would be all over the idea of official school prayers and such.

Less than 8 months into their terms, a petition was put together, had plenty of signatures, and they were all up for recall. In the recall election, all but one lost their seat, and that one didn't run for re-election. Locals still call it the "mormon takeover." And since then...at the now-back-to-normal Rotary campaign speech, every candidate gets asked if they're mormons. 'Cause our little town is very unlikely to ever elect another one to the board.

I wouldn't feel comfortable having a TBM elected to any public office where I live. There would inevitably be a time when he/she has to cast a vote and a TBM could not bring themselves to vote for something that goes against the doctrine of their cult. I don't trust them.

"In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards." Mark Twain's Boner.