As Joseph Smith is dead, then it would be quite the revelation.
I’ve had Moxie before. It wasn’t that great. Nothing to come back from the dead to promote, anyway.
Oh Lordy, don’t say that in front of my Dad! He used to have cases of the stuff choppered in when his local store stopped carrying it!
This is all very interesting, I had no idea these were matters of interpretation.
A way of emphasizing the Mormon “us” vs. the non-Mormon “them”? Resonates with something mentioned by Diamond in Collapse regarding populations adopting dietary restrictions for distinction (specifically the Greenland vikings not eating fish despite that being a decent resource of the area).
A Mormon ex-flatmate of mine used to drink coffee and Coke… and he got excommunicated!! :eek:
('course it might have had something to do with him coming out as gay to his bishop). 
I didn’t know there was a correlation there. Makes sense, I drank a lot of coffee as a child.
Nothing in the commandment says “tea and coffee are heavily caffeinated and therefore bad for you.” The scripture says “hot drinks” and current leadership says “hot drinks = coffee and tea, everything else is up to you and we aren’t saying anything about caffeine in general.” It is not, in fact, a ban on caffeine–but many people think of it like that and since the stuff is habit-forming, it’s good to avoid. So: iced tea is out, energy drinks are widely considered to be really quite bad stuff, Coke and so on is perhaps not that great but you should make up your own mind, herbal tea is not actually tea, and everyone likes all forms of chocolate.
What’s this about a commandment? Yes, I know most active LDS regard the Word of Wisdom as a commandment. And you can’t go to the temple unless you obey. And you can’t learn the handshakes without going to the temple. And you can’t get past the pearly gates without knowing the handshakes.
But you’re forgetting that God Almighty declaredthat it is not a commandment, just a word of wisdom:
ETA: this post was overly snarky. I’m being rude, and I apologize.
Maybe it’s time to cut back on the caffeine.
This doesn’t make sense to me for three reasons:
(1) If you read the WoW as “no hot drinks,” then green tea would be included, as it’s served hot. Granted, black tea is typically steeped in hotter water than green tea, but it’s still hot.
(2) If you read it as “no caffeinated drinks,” then green tea would be included, as it has caffeine in it.
(3) Green tea and black tea (and white tea and oolong and pu-erh and…) are all produced from the same plant, using somewhat different techniques. It would be like saying that medium-blend Columbian coffee is okay but espresso is evil.
Please elaborate.
So… herbal tea isn’t tea, and isn’t a “hot drink” despite it being hot? 
No snark dangermom, but that just seems very confusing…
So tea = Camellia sinensis, but not the various herb and flower based tisanes? I wonder how South African red tea is classified. (It’s called a tea rather than a herb tea, but is derived from a different plant).
Of course it’s confusing. That’s what happens when you make things up as you go along.
Technically speaking, red tea (rooibos) isn’t tea either, since it’s made from Aspalathus linearis instead of Camellia sinensis, but in common U.S. parlance, pretty much any drink made from soaking plant matter in hot water is called tea.
I’m funny about rooibos, though. I call it tea, even though I make a point of saying “herbal tea” or “infusion” for anything else not made from tea plants. I don’t generally use the word “tisane” in casual conversation because I have to explain it every time.
Perhaps it was snarky, but the question still remain valid, although it will be interesting to see if there is a response from someone.
Your point reinforced what I said in my post, that the Word of Wisdom has been elevated to beyond what it was originally, a response to Smith’s wife Emma about the mess she would have to clean up after church meetings. As I posted yesterday, it was advice to the early Saints.
Brigham Young was clear about this. From his words (Journal of Discourses, Vol. 8, p. 361)
(emphasis added)
The question of how the Word of Wisdom was changed from advice to the mistakenly, but commonly held belief of being a commandment would be an interesting topic for a research paper or a book. When did this occur and why?
This is an interesting phenomenon which occurs within Mormonism, (and to be fair, probably within most fundamentalist churches) where a great deal of the teachings are treated as the word of God, but with plausible deniability build into the system. Other teachings, such as the historical denial of the priesthood to black, are treated this way. It was an official doctrine of the church, formally stated by the church to be a direct command from God, then changed and then the current spin by members was that it was never official; that the apostles were only expressing their personal opinion. I see this as a fundamentally dishonest argument by the apologists for the church.
There is no distinction within Mormonism between symbolic issues and what you are calling the fundamental part. Heavy emphasis is on visible issues, the underwear and following the Word of Wisdom.
Some people agree with this, and I’m interested in studying more about the issue, since the question of why this would receive such strong emphasis.
[quote=“Gary “Wombat” Robson, post:54, topic:572229”]
I don’t generally use the word “tisane” in casual conversation because I have to explain it every time.
[/QUOTE]
Not to anyone who’s ever read any Agatha Christie.
To generally address this question, the WoW was indeed put in place as a recommendation. Over the years, obedience to it was patchy and sporadic, but it was generally recognized as a standard one should at least aspire to. Brigham Young’s challenge at a conference in 1851 to really start living it properly is, I think, widely considered to be the point at which it started to become a commandment, though it was still slow to be accepted. Mormons generally consider this to be gentleness while members got used to the idea.
Yes, not living the basics of the WoW will keep you out of the temple, which requires a higher standard, but we’re still not living it all that well what with all the meat and junk we eat. WoW violations won’t get you excommunicated though. Likewise, not paying tithing will keep you out of the temple, but it won’t keep you out of the church. There are quite a few things like that.
I’m pretty burned out these days on arguing LDS doctrine here, and I’m too busy anyway. So while I’m happy to answer basic questions, I’m not into going very indepth. I’m just not in a position to do that at the moment.
And yep, herbal tea is really a tisane or infusion, not a tea. I wouldn’t know anything whatsoever about African red tea or Argentinian mate or all those other things we could argue about endlessly.
That could make for an entertaining thread. If you start one up, let me know.
So would “cold tea” -the kind served by certain Chinese restaurants-be OK?