If you find the Book of Mormon a hard read and difficult to use for finding out about the Mormon Church, why not pick up a copy of Mormonism for Dummies?
The book sums of the Church's history in six pages and approaches issues such as "blacks [and] the priesthood,...roles of women, birth control, homosexuality, and involvement in politics."
View chapter 1, the index, and the table of contents.
On page 16, I came across this statement: Some Mormons joke that LDS really stands for "Let’s drink Sprite," in reference to many Mormons' decision to keep away from cola. Now I have lived in three provinces and served my mission in Utah, Arizona and Nevada. I never once heard anyone say "LDS" stands for "Let's Drink Sprite". Has anyone heard of this usage?
17 comments:
Nope. Foreign to me. (Minnesota, Utah, France, Chicago.)
Ben S.
Honestly, I have lived in Texas, Connecticut, Utah, and Arizona, as well several places in England and Europe, and I have never heard that.
The questionable nature of this claim, by the way, should raise questions as to other "information" set out in the book.
Add Los Angeles, New Mexico, Michigan and Maryland to the list.
Nope. (Utah, Chicago, upstate New York.)
Like john fowles, something that minor being wrong raises red flags for me.
I wouldn't be so quick to discredit it entirely quite yet. The first chapter seems to be relatively accurate if no somewhat convoluted and Mormon-centric. I don't see how this could be considered a book for "dummies", but I suppose they did what they could for a religious book.
Here is an article from the Salt Lake Tribune. It looks like they've had a number of people review the different sections of the book.
From the article:
"Riess and Bigelow sent chapters and drafts to more than 20 readers - Mormon and other, conservative, liberal, inside Utah and out in the 'mission field.' Well-respected religious studies scholar Jan Shipps, a non-Mormon historian in Indiana specializing in LDS history, was a technical adviser, approving every page.
'This may be the only book some people will ever read about Mormonism,' Riess said. 'We felt a lot of responsibility to do it right.'"
heather,
I liked to the same article in my post. :)
Jana Reiss, one of the authors, guest blogged over at T&S several months ago. One of her posts talked about her experience writing Mormonism For Dummies.
WA, MI, IN, MO and Belgium (Ben, how could you forget?)
Oh, that's funny, Kim. I didn't follow that link or even mouse over it because I assumed it went to the publisher website or amazon or something like that.
And you can add Colorado and Alaska to the list. Let's Drink Sprite?!?
Some Californians (namely my former neighbors, the Fretz family) used to joke about having Fretz toast for dinner. Even if nobody else in the world had heard of this until now, it would still be true.
I'm not suggesting that the claim the authors make is not true. However, by including it in their book they provide validity and prevalence to this statement.
Certainly, some Mormons pick their noses, eat dessert with a spoon, type with two fingers, shave their eyebrows or do a host of actions. However, none of these are included.
If the authors include it, they assume it is more widespread than simply a single ward somewhere. As well, by including it, they give readers the impression that it is widespread.
Geez, it was just a repeated joke I heard, guys. I find it hard to fathom questioning the whole book's validity because we included an innocuous little joke that not every Mormon has heard. I can guarantee you that more than two Mormons have heard it, which makes our qualifier "some" accurate.
I'm a cola drinker, and my wife's family sometimes teases me by singing "Choose the Sprite," but I didn't include that joke in the book, otherwise I guess it would be worthy of a total boycott.
Then why not qualify it as a joke, rather than implying that it has some widespread usage? Why not use other Mormon jokes, particularly more widespread ones.
While "some" may be an accurate term in this regard, I think "few" or "a handful of" would have been far more accurate.
That being said, I am not about to dismiss the entire book based on this comment. The first chapter seems fairly accurate and concise.
Um, the line we used was "Some Mormons joke . . ." Doesn't that count as qualifying it as a joke?
My mistake.
You did qualify it as a joke, but including it still implies it is widespread.
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