A New Look and New Ideas

The Mormon Badge Project team has given the blog a makeover and added new pages with information about our new ideas for Mormon Badges.  Check it out!

Also, look for our new Mormon Literacy Badge, "The Restoration," coming out this Thursday, November 1st!  This new badge will give users a basic overview of the founding or restoration of the LDS Church.  Find out why prophets are important, who Joseph Smith was, and how he translated the Book of Mormon.  Stay tuned to increase your Mormon knowledge!

THE FIRST MORMON BADGE IS UP!

The Mormon Badge team is proud to announce the release of our first badge, “Mormons and Polygamy.”  A common misconception about Mormons is that some Mormon men have multiple wives.  They don’t.  As you’ll learn, the practice of polygamy in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was discontinued over one hundred years ago. This badge explains a few basic facts about the history of the Mormon church and polygamy.

Are you ready to get informed about Mormons and polygamy and earn your first Mormon Badge?  

Here are the steps:

1. Spend just 10 minutes reading the official material from LDS Church websites in these two links: http://mormon.org/faq/practice-of-polygamy (pay attention to the comments by real Mormons) and http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/polygamy-latter-day-saints-and-the-practice-of-plural-marriage
2. Take our short “Mormons and Polygamy” quiz -yes, it’s open book- by clicking this link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dHNnWmtmZEkzV2tORjFqRVB2d1BPbHc6MQ.  If you get the answers right, we’ll email you the link to claim your “Mormons and Polygamy” Badge from our badge hoster-site, badg.us.  After we email you the link, we’ll never use your address again to contact you or for any other purpose.
3. Claim your badge by clicking the badg.us link in the email.  You’ll be able to display your badge in your Mozilla Badge Backpack and post it to your blog or website, showing your friends that you are informed about Mormonism!  
4. Tell all your friends to come and earn the badge too!

A FAQ about Mormonism and Issues with Representations of Mormonism in the Media

This quote is from the LDS Church's newsroom website (http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/) and explains some of the problems with media's representations of the Church and with  the general lack of knowledge about Mormonism of most members of the public.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the fourth largest Christian church in America. More than half of its 14 million members live outside the United States. Yet despite the faith’s growth and presence, survey results continue to show that relatively few people are familiar with Mormon beliefs.

As an institution, the Church has the responsibility to publicly and clearly articulate its official teachings. In turn, reporters can help inform the public by accurately reporting on these doctrines. But in doing so journalists should be aware of some common pitfalls. For instance, reporters pressed for time tend to take peripheral aspects of the faith and place them front and center as if they were vital tenets of belief. Additionally, sincere commentators often overemphasize what others see as “different” about Latter-day Saints at the expense of highlighting the Church’s most fundamental doctrines in their reporting. Unfortunately, as many members attest, this kind of journalism paints a distorted picture of the Church and continues to confuse the public.

Despite these complications, the Church welcomes honest inquiry from all types of media outlets. The Church expects journalists to be accurate and honest and to focus on the faith as it is lived and believed by its members. The Church discourages sensationalized and misleading journalism that accentuates abstract ideas that do not reflect the beliefs, teachings and practices of the Church’s global membership.

These are the problems the Mormon Badge team is hoping to mitigate by publishing badges that use official LDS church material to explain common misconceptions about the church. We hope to release our first badge with information about polygamy and Mormonism sometime next week.  In the meantime, check out this FAQ published in the Church's newsroom that covers polygamy and many other frequently asked questions about Mormons. See the FAQs by clicking the link:
http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/mormonism-101
On the newsroom site, you'll need to scroll down a little and click the FAQ link just below the info-graphic.

Why Mormon Badges?

These slides came from a project for our Digital Culture class at Brigham Young University that spawned The Mormon Badges Project.

Between The Book of Mormon Broadway musical and Governor Mitt Romney's presidential campaign, lots of people are talking (and singing) about Mormonism, or the LDS (Latter-day Saint) faith, right now.

But some people have only heard popular misconceptions about Mormonism.

Others simply don't know who Mormons are or what they believe.

Our goal is to award people badges after they complete 5-10 minutes of official material taken from Church websites and LDS scriptures.  (While all our material will come from the Church itself, please note that we are not sponsored by the Church in any way.)  Our aim is not to convert, but simply to inform, so that more people have accurate information about our faith.

We hope that people will find the badges interesting, informative, and easy to complete.  Each badge should leave the user a little bit closer to understanding what Mormonism is and isn't.


As the number of badges earned increases, we hope that often repeated misconceptions about Mormonism will decrease.


Why should you want to earn a Mormon badge?  Maybe you're a journalist or frequent blogger who wants to ensure your comments about Mormons are accurate.  Maybe you're just a regular guy or girl who wants to know more about the religion that everyone's talking about.  And wouldn't it be cool to display your Mormon badges on your Facebook profile or blog so that other people know you know something about Mormonism?  Each badge is a conversation piece and a credibility enhancer.  And meanwhile, we'll feel pretty good that more people understand us just a little bit better.  It's a win-win situation.

The DL on Mormon Badges

Welcome one and all!  My friends and I are a group of BYU students who are set on helping set the record straight on the LDS faith--especially in light of Governor Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign.  There are a lot of journalists, government officials, and even leaders of other faiths who have misconceptions about our beliefs.  Many are simply not informed with accurate information.  As a result, Latter-Day Saints, or “Mormons,” are often cast in a negative light.  While any publicity for the Church tends to be good publicity, my friends and I have devised a system of “badges” that could help spread the word on what Mormons are all about and what we really believe.

What is a badge?  This is a relatively new phenomenon online.  It works like this: certain organizations online offer a course or set of material that must be learned like, say, TV/VCR repair.  An individual may take that badge course, and if he meets the necessary qualifications, such as reading the lesson material, watching relevant instructional videos and passing a quiz at the end of it all, he is rewarded with a badge which signifies that he is competent in that particular body of knowledge or skill set.  This badge can then be attached to that individual’s blog, as a sign that they are knowledgeable about that specific topic.  

Well, we want to do the same thing...sort of.  We want to give badges to people like you and your friends who take the time to more accurately understand some of the more controversial issues surrounding our faith, like polygamy, blacks and the priesthood, and “baptizing dead people.”  The required course for each badge will be 5-10 minutes of material from Church websites, videos and LDS scriptures. You can then display your badges on a Facebook profile or blog, giving more clout to your writings about the LDS people and their faith.  It’s a win-win situation: You get more credibility and have something interesting to talk about, and we get the satisfaction of knowing that our religion is being more accurately represented.

Why are we telling you all of this now, before the first badge has been released?  If you’re LDS, this General Conference (a bi-annual church-wide meeting) is a great time to get the word out to your friends because interest in the Church is higher than usual.  If you’re not LDS and you want to understand us better, we hope you’ll keep checking back to earn your first badge as soon as it’s released, in about two weeks.  We really want you all in on this.  As we work on the first badge, we’re looking for your comments, input, questions, and help, from LDS and non-LDS alike.  If you have an issue that you’d like to see addressed in our system, let us know!  If you want to donate some time to the project, please tell us how you can help and email us your contact information.  We really want this project to succeed.  That’s why we’re turning to you!  Thanks in advance for all your support and prayers!

-The Mormon Badges Team