BYU athlete kicked out for not attending church enough ....

[_the road to hana]

Just got off the phone with my brother at BYU and asked him about this out of curiosity.

He said that the Honor Code specifies that you must attend Church Meetings in your actual ward and that everyone knows this.

http://honorcode.BYU.edu/images/stories ... rm2006.pdf

This would be particularly important for order at BYU where there are how many wards? And so close together there are many wards meeting at the same time in the same buildingse. Can you imagine trying to minister to a ward with that kind of transitivity?

I suppose people who have no experience with churches which actually keep membership rolls, have concerns for a specific group of people as their stewardship, etc. wouldn't understand this. But I think most people here on this board have enough experience with the Church that they should understand this.

So, Charity, do you think BYU students should never go home to visit their family on the weekends, if they live within distance to do that?

[_asbestosman]

So, Charity, do you think BYU students should never go home to visit their family on the weekends, if they live within distance to do that?

BYU was fine with me doing it for special occasions like missionary farewells once in a while. However, they wanted me to have 80% attendance in my BYU ward.

[_charity]

So, Charity, do you think BYU students should never go home to visit their family on the weekends, if they live within distance to do that?

Talk about black and white thinking, hana. Nobody ever said anything like that.

I think you know that I was talking about ward hopping. Guys going to ward after ward after ward checking out the girls. Maybe girls doing the same thing checking out the guys.

[_the road to hana]

So, Charity, do you think BYU students should never go home to visit their family on the weekends, if they live within distance to do that?

Talk about black and white thinking, hana. Nobody ever said anything like that.

I think you know that I was talking about ward hopping. Guys going to ward after ward after ward checking out the girls. Maybe girls doing the same thing checking out the guys.

Did you actually read the article in the Salt Lake Tribune?

It said that the student had 10-11 opportunities to attend church at his BYU ward during the time period.

He attended at his BYU ward 6 of those weeks, another week was General Conference, and the rest of the time he was either at home with his parents attending that ward, attending the ward of a friend in Cedar City, or sick.

Does that sound like ward-hopping to you?

And could someone please answer my question about taking attendance? How does anyone know whether you're there or not?

[_charity]

So, Charity, do you think BYU students should never go home to visit their family on the weekends, if they live within distance to do that?

Talk about black and white thinking, hana. Nobody ever said anything like that.

I think you know that I was talking about ward hopping. Guys going to ward after ward after ward checking out the girls. Maybe girls doing the same thing checking out the guys.

Did you actually read the article in the Salt Lake Tribune?

It said that the student had 10-11 opportunities to attend church at his BYU ward during the time period.

He attended at his BYU ward 6 of those weeks, another week was General Conference, and the rest of the time he was either at home with his parents attending that ward, attending the ward of a friend in Cedar City, or sick.

Does that sound like ward-hopping to you?

And could someone please answer my question about taking attendance? How does anyone know whether you're there or not?

Yes, I read the article.

And my post about ward hopping was in response to the Nehor posting the honor code requirement to attend their own ward. This had become a general discussion not specific to the article.

Attendance is not taken by name, but only numbers of people attending. I know that because that is one of my husband's jobs as ward membership clerk. To count the number of people in the room (and the halls). But he does not take by names. That is the procedure in the Church.

[_Runtu]

Yes, I read the article.

And my post about ward hopping was in response to the Nehor posting the honor code requirement to attend their own ward. This had become a general discussion not specific to the article.

Attendance is not taken by name, but only numbers of people attending. I know that because that is one of my husband's jobs as ward membership clerk. To count the number of people in the room (and the halls). But he does not take by names. That is the procedure in the Church.

I suspect something else is going on here. Unless the bishop is a complete idiot, he wouldn't remove an ecclesiastical endorsement for simply not being there 5 Sundays out of the semester. I don't think we're getting the whole story.

I know people who did much worse things than skip church a few times, and they were allowed to stay. This story doesn't sound right to me.

But just for Ray: Those BYU people are horrible and deserve our condemnation! How dare they throw this fine young man out for no reason! Bad BYU! Bad!

[_guy sajer]

As usual, those who want to speak against the Church or BYU can do so, and BYU can't answer back because of confidentiality issues.

This cuts both ways, Charity. Confidentiality exists to protect the accused. It also exists to protect the accuser.

Just as it might prevent unflattering details about the accused from being publicized, it might also prevent unflattering details about the accuser from being publicized.

But we'll never know, will we whether this is a justified dismissal or a purely artitrary and unfair dismissal?

It may be justified under BYU rules, or it may be the actions of self-righteous prick out to make a statement who is being protected from a bureaucracy that is adverse to bad publicity.

Believe me, I saw plenty of arbitrary, unreasonable adiminstrative decisions at BYU. These are not perfect people being guided by the Holy Spirit in all that they do, but they are human, with all the petty human characteristics found everyhwere, including petty, bureaucratic arbitrariness.

What bothers me about this decision is that it was, it appears, made by a local ecclesiastical leader who should not be in the position of making administrative policies at BYU. Local ecclesiastical leaders range from reasonable to completely unreasonable, each with different standards. If you get a narrow minded prick as a Bishop or SP, tough luck for you.

The whole ecclesiastical endorsement is an unreasonable invasion of privacy. Can anyone name any other religion in which violating the secrecy of the confessional is official Church policy?

[_guy sajer]

Yes, I read the article.

And my post about ward hopping was in response to the Nehor posting the honor code requirement to attend their own ward. This had become a general discussion not specific to the article.

Attendance is not taken by name, but only numbers of people attending. I know that because that is one of my husband's jobs as ward membership clerk. To count the number of people in the room (and the halls). But he does not take by names. That is the procedure in the Church.

I suspect something else is going on here. Unless the bishop is a complete idiot, he wouldn't remove an ecclesiastical endorsement for simply not being there 5 Sundays out of the semester. I don't think we're getting the whole story.

I know people who did much worse things than skip church a few times, and they were allowed to stay. This story doesn't sound right to me.

But just for Ray: Those BYU people are horrible and deserve our condemnation! How dare they throw this fine young man out for no reason! Bad BYU! Bad!

Perhaps, Runtu. But one thing I learned at BYU: Never, ever underestimate the capacity for some people to be a narrow-minded, self-righteous prick. There are lots of reasonable people at BYU, but there are also lots at the other end of the spectrum. It wouldn't surprise me if there were more to the story, but it also wouldn't surprise me if what we were dealing with here is a narrow-minded, self-rightous prick and a bureaurcracy too timid to stand up to him.

[_guy sajer]

So, Charity, do you think BYU students should never go home to visit their family on the weekends, if they live within distance to do that?

Talk about black and white thinking, hana. Nobody ever said anything like that.

I think you know that I was talking about ward hopping. Guys going to ward after ward after ward checking out the girls. Maybe girls doing the same thing checking out the guys.

Did you actually read the article in the Salt Lake Tribune?

It said that the student had 10-11 opportunities to attend church at his BYU ward during the time period.

He attended at his BYU ward 6 of those weeks, another week was General Conference, and the rest of the time he was either at home with his parents attending that ward, attending the ward of a friend in Cedar City, or sick.

Does that sound like ward-hopping to you?

And could someone please answer my question about taking attendance? How does anyone know whether you're there or not?

And so what if he's ward hopping. What the hell is wrong with that? He's going to church in either case. I mean, what other religion on the face of this planet punishes its members for attending the "wrong" congregation for crying out loud?

That's one of the unique things about Mormonism, unlike in most other mainstream religions, which exist to serve their members, in the Mormon Church, the members exist to serve the Church. The needs of the individual member don't mean shite. This whole policy of "forcing" in essence, members to attend specific congregations, even if they don't meet their spiritual, social, or other needs, is totally fu**ed up.

[_guy sajer]

Just got off the phone with my brother at BYU and asked him about this out of curiosity.

He said that the Honor Code specifies that you must attend Church Meetings in your actual ward and that everyone knows this.

http://honorcode.BYU.edu/images/stories ... rm2006.pdf

It's impossible to do that when you're (a) watching General Conference, (b) visiting your family in another location or (3) (God forbid) sick.

I was in student branches/wards for years in Provo, and I hardly knew anyone who had 100% attendance. You're only counting the 6 times out of 11 he was at the student ward, and not Conference, or when he was home. If he was sick only two out of eleven weekends, that would beat the record of the local ward leadership here. I've been to a number of wards where it's an unusual occurrence to have all three members of the bishopric on the stand in any given week.

Conference is one week. Ward-hopping is almost universally discouraged throughout the Church. However, the Bishop thought there was a problem. That's his call. There may be more going on, there might not.

Why this warrants being in the news is beyond me. It's a religious school. You live with the rules or you get booted. It happens a lot there.

Yes, ward hopping is quite the moral transgression. Right up there with self-pleasuring.