blogger
Image via RNS/Election Day Communion 2016
The idea for an Election Day church service came to the pastor as he was pouring juice into little plastic cups.
Mark Schloneger was preparing for Communion that day in 2008, in the kitchen of Waynesboro Mennonite Church in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. The phone rang. It was a robocall from Sarah Palin, the GOP’s vice presidential nominee that year. She was imploring Christians to go to the polls, vote for her party, and take back the country.
Caleb Wilde is an undertaker with a media presence. Photo by Andrew Hostetler, courtesy Caleb Wilde.
Most days, Caleb Wilde is a funeral director, discreetly making burial arrangements and guiding survivors in a time of loss.
Wilde is an undertaker with a media presence seemingly tailor-made for the age of disclosure.
His blog, “Confessions of a Funeral Director” has more than 80,000 monthly readers, a Twitter following of more than 16,000 and a Facebook page that attracts well over half a million visitors a week.
Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City
SALT LAKE CITY — A Mormon blogger accused of apostasy for writing critical web essays about Mormon history, temple worship and contemporary issues, has been given a reprieve — for now.
The church disciplinary council set for today (Sept. 30) to decide whether to excommunicate David Twede has been postponed "due to scheduling conflicts," Allan Pratt, Twede’s LDS stake president in Florida, said in a statement Thursday. "It will be rescheduled for a later date."
Twede is managing editor of MormonThink.com, where most of his critical pieces, including ones about GOP presidential nominee and fellow Mormon Mitt Romney, have appeared.
On Sept. 16, officials in the church's Hunters Creek Stake in Orlando, Fla., gave Twede a letter, summoning him to a church disciplinary council for "apostasy," which they attributed to his writings.
![RNS photo by Carol M. Highsmith [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons](https://sojo.net/sites/default/files/styles/medium_square/public/blog/thumbRNS-MORMON-NUMBERS050412a_0.jpg?itok=KRwWmank "The Salt Lake Temple worship site. RNS photo by Carol M. Highsmith [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons")
The Salt Lake Temple worship site. RNS photo by Carol M. Highsmith [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons
A Mormon blogger who has written critical web essays about Mormon history, temple worship and contemporary issues — including about GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney — is facing church discipline for “apostasy.”
Initially, the Florida blogger, David Twede, managing editor of mormonthink.com, told news media Sept. 21 that the threatened church action was due to his comments about Romney. Later that day, he denied any political link. Then, on Saturday, he returned to “a feeling in (his) gut” that his Romney remarks triggered the possible discipline.
Twede did get a letter from his Mormon leaders in Orlando, summoning him to a disciplinary council Sept. 30 for “apostasy,” which they attributed to Twede’s writings.
In recent days, the blogger has blasted Romney as part of his critique of Mormonism, its beliefs about the nature of God and its temple ceremonies.
But, Twede told The Salt Lake Tribune on Friday, his LDS leaders never brought up Romney, a Mormon, in their exchange with him. Though not supporting the Republican nominee, Twede apologized to Romney, saying, “I didn’t mean for (the story) to go this way.”
Rick Perry was recently asked by a nine-year-old "If you were a super hero, what kind of super hero would you be?" His answer to the child's benign question was simultaneously predictable and profound: Superman.