1 The LDS have made huge advances in getting themselves recognized as Christians. My mom's cousin is LDS, and all around nice guy and a good man. He earns his living by going around to various Mormon churches and ripping out the old angel of Moroni towers and installing steeples. The new LDS church back in Clarksburg looks just like a Southern Baptist church. Big, square brick building, with a huge white steeple and the Ionic columns out front.

2 Hi Warren, Just saw your post. I agree we need discernment. In this case that wasn't so much the issue. The criteria for the awards, as you point out, weren't clear. Some-one nominated a Mormon bloggers blog - she didn't know who. The organiser picked the finalists and didn't realise. People who voted visited the finalists blogs - read the latest posts and voted. I don't think it was about discernment - Christian women bloggers aren't all lacking discernment. It was about being pushed for time, reading posts (which don't mention Mormonism) and voting for a lot of different blogs. In other words, in this case it was just some learning curves in awards organising and mistakes were made. I think in the same way I've had work colleagues and not known their beliefs for ages. Sometimes the hardest person for everyone to get on with in the workplace turns out to be a Christian. I worked with one colleague for a year before finding out she is a Jehovah's Witness. So it isn't always obvious and on the internet when busy people are pushed for time, and have a level of trust in the finalists presented - well a mistake happened. Somehow it got made about beliefs. But the Mormon blogger who won, when she relaised who the awards were intended for (which hadn't been clear) chose to give back the award - even though the organiser told her she could keep it. It didn't need to be so controversial. And there weren't Christian women bloggers who were confused about Mormon and Christian beliefs. As I said, it was just a learning curve about running awards. Fortunately the blogger who won has integrity and understands that. A couple of her friends reacted because some-one who was not the awards organiser put up a post - which if you were a winner would be upsetting. You would see some other blogger challenging your award win and not understand why. So they responded after seeing how upset she was - and as the post that went up talked about beliefs they responded. Once the Mormon bloggers got over the shock and realised who the awards were intended for it was resolved. I think it helps to see what actually happened. God bless, Catez

3 Thanks for the update, Catez. Hadn't realized that the Mormon blogger gave back the award. And you present a VERY good point. I know when I'm voting in something like that contest (which I don't do often) I don't always look closely at the blogs that are nominated. In fact, many times I simply vote for the blog that I already read (which defeats one of the purposes of such contests -- to show people new blogs). There is a lot more to this one than meets the eye, clearly.