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The Church is being very active in making videos available on the internet that address a variety of issues that might be of interest to people on this forum. They are in a several places where the Church and others positively discuss various subjects. I would suggest that perhaps a new category could be added for Recommended videos. Here are three, and I can add more later. FAIR (Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research) has videos on a wide variety of topics, many of which answer criticisms of the Church & it’s teachings. They are put together by many different people with just as many different approaches and formats, though they reflect reasonable scholarship.
http://www.youtube.com/user/fairldsorg Several videos with soothing music that can be relaxing and perhaps inspirational
http://www.youtube.com/user/DandC25v12 The Church has a channel on YouTube. Some videos address controversial subjects, while others are general reporting of the Church’s activity.
Thanks, dash. I’ll check these out. Perhaps the church is addressing the kinds of questions I have, not formally with statements over the pulpit, but more allowing the use of Internet tools to meet the needs of members like me that can’t find answers in Sunday School curriculum.
Do you think that is happening because the church is behind it pushing it, or is this just evolving because individuals are pushing it onto the Internet?
While the Church seldom responds to critics, but many sites on the internet do address them. For example jefflindsay.com fairlds.org mi.byu.edu answeringthecritics.blogspot.com. There are many others I can add to to the list, but my computer suffered a hard crash recently so I will need some time to resurrect them. In the mean time, here’s a copy of an article on MormonTimes.com dated Thursday, Oct. 08, 2009 which discusses the Church’s intentions about the internet
LDS Church using the Internet to its advantageBy Aaron Shill
Mormon Times
PROVO, Utah — Official LDS Church content on the Web now branches beyond lds.org.
And more is coming.
Read more stories from the 2009 BYU Campus Education Week
There are “Mormon Messages” on YouTube, the Mormon Channel streaming online and several sites designed specifically for search engine optimization. Future offerings may include personalized online general conference journals, upgraded ward directories and content for mobile phones.
“We all believe and know that the Lord has given us (technology) for a purpose,” said Ron Schwendiman, manager of curriculum processes for the LDS Church.
Schwendiman recently gave a Campus Education Week audience a look at what is and “what might be” for the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints online, offering examples of how the church is both broadening its reach and enhancing online resources for members.
One effective project involved a venture into unlikely territory. Schwendiman pointed to the church’s success on YouTube — which can be a “scary place.”
“There’s a lot of bad stuff on YouTube,” he said.
The LDS Church, however, now has an official channel on the site where it broadcasts
Mormon Messages– general conference vignettes set to music and video. They’re easy to produce, Schwendiman said, and the church posts one or two per week.About 549,000 people watched an Easter message given by Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, making it the No. 1 video on YouTube for several days afterward.Many of the viewers and those making comments were not church members, Schwendiman said. “It is amazing how many views we get,” he said. “That is the kind of direction we’re now headed as we’re trying to proclaim more of the messages of the Restoration.”
The church has also developed about 20 different Web sitesspecifically for search engine optimization. One example is lds.org/jesuschrist. It differs from jesuschrist.lds.org, a site launched last year, in that it is built specifically for Google searches. Such sites are designed for general audiences and serve as a gateway to content on the church’s primary Web site. There are sites dedicated to family, prayer and church leaders such as Presidents Thomas S. Monson and Gordon B. Hinckley.
Schwendiman emphasized the importance of making edifying and compelling content easier to find.
“We’re trying to improve that,” he said, adding that a team of 20 people is focused solely on making the search experience better.
One area of focus is language transition. Different language options for content do exist on lds.org but haven’t been promoted because they’re difficult to navigate.
Schwendiman said the goal is to have 10 languages available in a consistent format with navigable screens within the next year.
Those who are interested in learning about projects under development have a few options. LDSTech is an open, public site that provides “a glimpse into” the technical work being done by the church.
Labs.lds.org is where church members can experience ideas under development and offer feedback, though some are just “rough concepts.” The site is a “closed environment,” Schewendiman said, and requires a user name and password.
Church members can create a login for labs.lds.org at the new LDS Account site, which will eventually create a “single sign-on experience” for all the church’s Web sites, Schwendiman said.
One of the projects currently on the labs site is a general conference experience. The site features a search tool for finding talks by session, speaker, topic or keyword, while a “personalized study” tool allows users to tag, highlight and add notes to the text of talks and save them in a personal journal.
Other projects include a revamped ward directory site, a youth experience site, and general conference and ward directory options for mobile browsers.
Worldwide there are more cell phone users than Internet users, Schwendiman said, and developers are “trying to figure out ways we can move to the phone.”
With Mormon Radio now online, an online TV station is also a future possibility, Schwendiman said.
He acknowledged that Latter-day Saints are hungry for more features, but providing what members need and want is not an easy process, Schwendiman said. It requires people, time and, in the case of lds.org, an investment in new technology.
“The church has over 60 million page views a month and over 100,000 pages of content on lds.org,” Schwendiman added later. “It all takes work.” Lds.org has exceeded its foundational technology, making it difficult to implement new features that members need and want.
“They’re on the plan, but it isn’t as easy as it sounds,” he said. “We’re in a transition.”
Thanks for the article, dash, but just as a gentle reminder to everyone: If you want to include an article or talk or reference of any extended length, please provide the link rather than the full text. It’s much easier to bookmark good stuff that way – or link to it on another site where you might write or participate.
Seriously, dash, thank you for referencing the article.
Heber, Let me try again with a more direct response to your question of whether the Church is being more open and forth coming. I understand the concern many have because the Church has alternatively encouraged and then discouraged investigation into it’s history. I have followed the Joseph Smith’s Papers Project closely, and it is showing very encouraging signs. Under President Hinkley, the Church opened up it’s archives to the researchers reportedly with instructions to let the chips fall where they may. President Monson has done nothing I believe to change anything. And volume II has come out just recently.
To further certify that the project had the highest degree of scholarly integrity it got the certification of the National Archives. Further more, they are not interpreting their finding. The approach the National Archives certified the on is to simply reproduce ALL documents without interpretation. They can and do provide background and context to understand what the documents are, but the interpretation and analysis of them is left to others. It is simply outside the scope of their work.
Bushman’s book “Rough Stone Rolling” came out of some of the earliest research, and is an example of interpretive history. Bushman also contributed to that research, and I believe that his book is a reasonable attempt to report some of those findings while also being honest with reporting his bias as an active Mormon. Other authors, Mormon or not, will be free to interpret the raw information presented in the Joseph Smith Papers.
“Massacre at Mountain Meadows” by Walker, Turley and Leonard similarly plows new ground, presenting new info even if not flattering and attempting to give an even-handed approach to interpreting the history.
I have also read, though I don’t have the original documentation, that President Monson has said he believes after the Joseph Smith Project is completed, the research effort should continue until all subsequent Church history is likewise documented. Sounds encouraging to me.
Whether this openness is limited to history, I do not know. In the recent past, I have not read anything that the Church has done to quieten members who actively support “gay rights” and opposed them with California’s Proposition 8 last election. The only thing I recall is a recent speech Dalin Oaks gave at BYU Idaho challenging the the very aggressive response it got from the gay community over Prop 8, but he did not challenge the right of members to support gay marriage.
I also applaud the church’s latest actions to be more forthcoming about its history. Yes, many see it as “inoculating” the members against the “anti-mormon propoganda,” but I see it as a natural response based on the information that IS available and accurate out there. The church MUST be as forthright as possible, given its claims to live with integrity and honesty. The fallout will be disheartening to a portion of the membership who based their testimonies on a perfect Joseph and the “brochure” history. But I think the result will be a positive shift to a greater focus on love and service, rather than “we are the one and only true church.” I don’t think the latter will have a chance…and I think that is a good thing.
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