Episode 215: Let's Talk About Shibboleths

Shibboleths are customs, traditions, words, or phrasings that distinguish one group of people from another. Latter-day Saints have a lot of unique identifiers. Garment lines, beverage choices, vocabulary, or prayer styles might serve as reliable clues to whether or not someone belongs to our church. In Episode 215, Cynthia and Susan talk about some of these shibboleths and how they function within our culture to identify not only whether or not someone is a member, but in some cases what type of member they are.

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Notes & Quotes:

I’ve Got Questions: The Spiritual Practice of Having It Out with God, by Erin Hicks Moon
Offensive political dog whistles: you know them when you hear them. Or do you?, by Ian Olasov, Vox, 11/7/2016
BYU Devotional: Elder Ballard's "questions and answers", by Trevor Morgan, BYU News, 11/13/2017
Our drug of choice right now is knowing who we’re better than, by Nadia Bolz-Weber, The Corners, 8/4/2022
The battle lines around the word 'Mormon', by Jana Riess, Flunking Sainthood, Religion News Service, 10/13/2021
The Name of the Church is Not Negotiable, by Neil L. Anderson, 10/2021
Shameless: A Case for Not Feeling Bad About Feeling Good (About Sex), by Nadia Bolz-Weber

“I believe we can keep the main thing the main thing. The thing that matters most does not have to be at the mercy of the thing that matters the least.” —Erin Hicks Moon

“We need to listen to and understand what our LGBT brothers and sisters are feeling and experiencing.” —M. Russell Ballard

“Were I to name the ‘loop’—the thing inside of us that is so easily exploited—I would say it is our need to think of ourselves as “good”. More specifically, our need to think of ourselves as better than others. I know I myself devour anything that gives me that little self-righteous dopamine bump. I love that shit like chocolate. Delicious.” —Nadia Bolz-Weber

"In fact, if the church’s efforts to expunge ‘Mormon’ from our collective vocabulary have been successful in any way, it’s this: driving a significant wedge among our people. ‘Mormon’ has become a shibboleth, an immediate shorthand for Latter-day Saints to size up one another’s obedience and orthodoxy.
One nuance we miss today is that the Gileadites and the Ephraimites are from the same tribe of Israel. They’re cousins, essentially. This is not a story about Israelites attacking foreigners but of them butchering their own people. This call is coming from inside the house.” —Jana Riess

“Our purity systems, even those established with the best of intentions, do not make us holy. They only create insiders and outsiders. They are mechanisms for delivering our drug of choice: self-righteousness, as juice from the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil runs down our chins. …. Purity most often leads to pride or to despair, not to holiness. Because holiness is about union with, and purity is about separation from.” —Nadia Bolz-Weber

“What God and I frequently argue about is that God is not taking my suggestions for who is on the list and who the bouncer turns away at the door. [...] I feel as though I’ve compiled a pretty decent list of standards people who claim to follow God should be about, but God keeps telling me, ‘Thanks, but I think I’ve got it.’ Or as Barbara Brown Taylor says: ‘I’m not in charge of this House, and never will be. I have no say about who is in and who is out. I do not get to make the rules. . . . I am a guest here, charged with serving other guests—even those who present themselves as my enemies. I am allowed to resist them, but as long as I trust in one God who made us all, I cannot act as if they are no kin to me. There is only one House. Human beings will either learn to live in it together or we will not survive to hear its sigh of relief when our numbered days are done.’” —Erin Hicks Moon

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