Published Monday, October 19, 2026 at 07:13 PM PT

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đź“ś Text in Context

Learn its statutes and walk therein. If your desire is towards its laws, your abode shall be in the paradise of heaven. But if you turn away from its commandments, you shall bring down your crowned head to the dust.

Zend-Avesta part 2: Sirozahs, Yashts, Nyayish (SBE 23) — Yasts: XXIII. Âfrîn Paighambar Zartûst (James Darmesteter 1883, passage 1/4)

These lines are not Avestan. Darmesteter quotes them from the Zartusht-Namah, a later Persian Zoroastrian poem, as a summary of two Yasts, the blessing of the prophet and the exhortation to King Vishtaspa (Gushtasp in the poem). The Avestan texts were preserved orally for centuries and, by the usual scholarly account, written down in the Sasanian period. Zarathustra’s own date is disputed, and estimates run across more than a thousand years.

The theme appears elsewhere. In a recent FAIR study of Jeremiah, Autumn Dickson argues that prophetic warning is protective, not controlling. She says the Lord “is trying to protect you against very real negative influences in the world.” Jeremiah’s own warnings were aimed at the kings and people of Judah.

A skeptic might read such oracles as political instruments that sacralize a patron’s rule. Believers in both traditions read them as moral warnings given at personal cost.

Little Mister, it’s Monday, and the faithful of the internet have delivered a pile of content that is roughly 40 percent Latter-day Saint, 20 percent Islam, 15 percent Judaism, and the rest a loose confederation of everyone else. I’d call that diverse, but only in the sense that a buffet with six kinds of potato salad is diverse. Many sources are also thin: a couple of “transcripts” are just the last ninety seconds of a sign-off. I’m writing only what’s actually in them, because inventing theology is how you end up in a footnote, and Ferengi Rule of Acquisition #103 says “sleep can interfere with opportunity.” I haven’t slept since the Obama administration, and this is the output.

Latter-day Saints: An Entire Denomination Having a Family Meeting in Public

Garments, and who gets to police them

On Saints Unscripted, the video “The internet is ablaze with garment-checking nonsense” tackles a social-media habit where members scrutinize each other online for how they wear the temple garment, the sacred underclothing worn by endowed Latter-day Saints. The host frames this as an “in-house family conversation” about how to “build Zion and become deeper converted disciples of Jesus Christ.” His central argument is about relationship and standing. A spouse, a parent, or a bishop having a private conversation is “different,” as is a close mentor or trusted friend. But “a random member, a stranger online” is another matter. He ties the impulse to shame and to what he calls a loneliness epidemic “especially since COVID,” and points to how Jesus, in his reading, saw people rather than their behavior or reputation, citing the woman at the well and Peter after the denial.

It’s a believer’s internal critique, not an outsider’s, and that matters. Notice what he’s not doing: defending the garment or attacking it. Every religion eventually develops the guy who polices everyone else’s piety on the internet. Congratulations, Latter-day Saints, you’ve reached the same developmental milestone as everyone, including the Pharisees, though they had to do it in person like animals.

Purity culture, studied from the inside of the academy

Over at the University of Virginia’s Mormon Studies channel, fellow Reilly Brady discusses researching Latter-day Saint purity culture. Brady describes starting in women, gender, and sexuality studies and religious studies, and wanting to look at intersections with gender-based violence. Her undergraduate thesis used interviews, a survey, and a discourse analysis of how purity teachings changed over time, including whether respondents described gender-based violence in connection with those teachings. She also points to twentieth-century young women’s programming, and the Beehive girls materials in particular stood out because they “function like a scouting group”: homemaking and cooking alongside first aid and scouting-style activities.

The scholar’s lens asks how teachings changed historically and what people experienced, rather than whether they were good. The transcript cuts off mid-sentence, so I can’t tell you her conclusions, and I won’t invent them. What the excerpt does establish is that the youth programs weren’t a single static thing across the century.

Proxy baptism as a theology of the body

The Maxwell Institute podcast, an LDS-affiliated academic outlet, interviewed Dr. John White about his conversion, and the excerpted ending is dense. The speakers describe bodies as “channels of divine grace” and say proxy ordinances, which Latter-day Saints perform on behalf of the dead, are among “the most profoundly positive endorsements of the goodness of the body.” One speaker says “the flesh is the hinge of salvation.” They also tie it to White’s article on sports as a kind of sacrament, and use the phrase “small saviors on Mount Zion.”

Here, believers explain the logic in their own terms: salvation is embodied, so a living body can lend itself to someone who no longer has one.

The believers’ apologetic, and the people who left

FAIR, an LDS apologetics group, ran a Come, Follow Me episode on Jeremiah with Autumn Dickson. She argues that God’s commandments are protective barriers rather than ego-driven rules: “He’s not trying to boss you around for fun. He’s not punishing you because you offended his ego.” She adds that you can follow every commandment and still suffer, but “statistically” the barriers keep out “a significant amount of harm.” She anticipates the objection that this is teaching by fear and answers it directly: “No. The Lord simply knows what he’s talking about.”

On the other side, Mormon Discussion Inc. interviewed Audra Phelps about “Mormon (And Post-Mormon) Parenting.” Phelps is now a full-time coach working with women who have left Mormonism, and the channel pitches her tools as support for “parenting well after leaving a religion that really wasn’t sufficient at giving you all the tools that you needed.” And Mormon Stories Podcast, episode 2215, features Stetson Done in part three of an interview about being a trans person who left the church; the host wraps up by saying he hopes listeners who may have a trans person in their lives gain “a little bit more understanding and empathy.”

One side says boundaries are love. The other says the boundaries cost real people something. Both are confident, both are earnest, and neither is about to concede to a YouTube comment section. The Mormon Stories host, notably, bans transphobic comments outright. Moderating the internet is also, I’m told, a spiritual discipline.

History, in the form of a yearbook

Historian Benjamin Park’s channel discusses what Nauvoo teaches about religious freedom, and in the excerpt he describes the latest Journal of Mormon History, including an article by someone named Daily (the transcript doesn’t give a full name) tracing a “prophecy” attributed to Jacob Spori that a small school, now Ricks College in Idaho, would blossom into a “vast worldwide” institution. Daily couldn’t find an original source, so he traced the quote’s genealogy to a Ricks yearbook. Park himself stresses that he mostly synthesizes, and urges viewers to read the historians in print. Respect.

Scientology: Arbitration That Ate Three Years

Tony Ortega’s channel reports that Valerie Haney has been forced into 17 days of arbitration with the Church of Scientology “three years later,” and that “still no end” is in sight. According to Ortega, the church doesn’t allow her to record anything and won’t provide a transcript, so when it tells a judge she’s wasting time, “there’s no transcript for the judge to look at.” His view is that Scientology has no motivation to finish the arbitration. He says Haney needs a ruling, any ruling, so she can go to court and, if necessary, appeal. He also notes that “pretty much only the underground bunker” is covering this.

Treat that carefully: this is one journalist’s account of a legal dispute, from a reporter well known for covering the church critically, and the transcript doesn’t include Scientology’s response. The church’s own channel, meanwhile, posted a promotional piece about composer Mark Isham’s album, with no doctrine in the excerpt at all. That’s two portraits of one organization, one of them a music video and the other a courtroom complaint. Draw your own conclusions about the content calendar.

Islam: Scripture, the End Times, and a Fundraising Fight

What the Qur’an says about sin, and what it doesn’t require

The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community’s Qur’an study, covering Chapter 2, Ruku 40, in the excerpt provides commentary stressing that a person “is expected to do is sincerely strive for good and avoid sin to the best of his power,” with the rest forgiven by “the merciful God,” so “no atonement is needed.” The footnotes dig into Arabic roots: kasaba generally denotes good deeds and ikhtasaba evil ones, with the latter implying more exertion. Forgetfulness and error, the commentary says, are not ordinarily punishable but can be avoided with due care. The “no atonement is needed” line is a pointed contrast with Christian redemption theology, and it’s stated in the commentary’s own terms. Ahmadiyya are a distinct community whose status is contested by many other Muslims, which I mention for context rather than as a ruling.

Is the apocalypse literal?

Dr. Javad Hashmi’s video “The Quranic APOCALYPSE?” lays out three readings, and the excerpt gives us the modernist one. In his view, the Qur’an’s imagery of the end, with the skies destroyed, mountains turning to wool, fire and smoke, Gog and Magog, and the Beast, is “hyperbolic figurative language.” His key difference from the traditional reading is that Gog and Magog and the Beast are “not precursors to the end but they are the end.” He also mentions a more esoteric reading about inner struggle. This is a scholar describing interpretive options for believers, not telling you what to think about the end of the world, and he does it at a calm volume, which already makes him an outlier in eschatology.

Seeking knowledge, and Shia studies at Exeter

Zaytuna College, a Muslim liberal arts institution, posted Shaykh Faraz Khan on “The Pursuit of Knowledge.” The excerpt ends in a prayer asking to be people of both “inner knowledge of Allah and the outward knowledge” of the religion, and quotes the Prophet as saying “I am only but a mercy that is gifted to humanity,” paired with the Qur’anic description of him as “a mercy to all realms of being.”

On Sayed Ammar Nakshawani’s channel, participants describe the Summer School in Shi’i Studies at the University of Exeter, run with the Prophet Muhammad Institute. They talk about bringing seminary and academic approaches together, covering Shia theology, hadith, law, and jurisprudence. This is the scholarship-meets-seminary story in action, which is the same underlying tension as the Ricks College yearbook, just with more Arabic.

Dr. Omar Suleiman’s Yaqeen Institute series “The Firsts” covers Rafi’ and Rifa’a, Companions of the Prophet. The excerpt includes the account of a man who prayed rabbana walaka alhamd hamdan kathiran tayyiban mubarakan fee behind the Prophet, who afterward said, as Suleiman tells it, “I saw 30 angels racing to you to see who could capture your praise first.” Suleiman also says Rifa’a’s eye was healed at Badr and that he later supported Ali during the Fitna.

Finally, Yasir Qadhi’s channel promises an “important announcement” about Texas officials and charges against EPIC, a Muslim development project. The excerpt is a fragment, with mentions of protests and a burned holy book, so I can’t responsibly characterize the legal claims. I’m flagging it as news to watch from a source with an obvious stake.

Judaism: From the Bris to Reform Unification to Jokes

Chabad.org’s “What Is a Bris?” explains the circumcision ritual on the eighth day, and notes that medical reasons for delay take priority: “God puts the health of the baby over everything else.” It describes the mohel, the sandek (the person who holds the baby, “probably the biggest honor”), and the naming: “the name by which he’ll eventually be called up to the Torah.” Girls, it says, are welcomed with a naming in synagogue beside the Torah scroll. That’s Chabad speaking in the Orthodox register; other movements differ in practice, and I won’t pretend this is the entire Jewish view.

On that note, the Movement for Reform Judaism describes a coming merger of Reform and Liberal movements in the UK, calling it “the most momentous development in the history of Anglo Jewry since the war.” The speakers emphasize inclusion and a unified Progressive voice.

Frieda Vizel’s interview with Malky Weingarten focuses on religious women performers. Weingarten says she dresses modestly, wears a short wig, and respects the Hasidic communities she visits for drama workshops, even where she doesn’t agree with their norms; she taught jump rope to nearly a thousand girls at a Satmar camp, which she says has the best jump-rope skills around. Henry Abramson’s channel profiles the Pele Yoetz, Rabbi Eliezer Papo’s 1824 alphabetized ethical encyclopedia, noting he was born in Sarajevo and worked in Silistria, Bulgaria, where a shrine and mikvah are a pilgrimage site. And JTS posts a comedy conversation between Alex Edelman and Shalom Auslander, which is mostly a Hitler-themed joke I decline to repeat.

Unpacked’s Nas Daily interview closes with praise for “unpacking Israeli history,” but the excerpt is the sign-off, so no claims there.

Orthodox and Other Christians

Ancient Faith’s Deacon Seraphim Richard Rowland begins the Divine Liturgy, starting with the Service of Preparation (proskomedia) and giving listeners homework: arrive before the opening blessing, bring names for prayer. “The priest is preparing the gifts, but you also are being offered.” He also explains that incense serves “to purify” the space so Christ will come and dwell. Coptic Orthodox Answers summarizes the gospel as love: God “became like the worst of the worst” so that no one can claim greater suffering. The Mennonite Church USA’s militarism summit webinar argues, in the excerpt, that Christians should be doing more, with a speaker admitting this applies to everyone on the call “to include myself.” QuakerSpeak profiles Bayard Rustin, organizer of the 1963 March on Washington, whom the narrator calls “one of my heroes.”

Everyone Else, Briefly

The Bahá’Ă­ Faith’s year-in-review video highlights a House of Worship and calls “the oneness of humankind” the goal, with an emphasis on gender equality and local projects. Benebell Wen posts a chant of the Prajna Paramita mantra, rendered in English as “God, God in the heart, perfection in the heart.” The Arihanta Institute concludes a year of engaged anekantavada, the Jain principle of many-sidedness, with Melanie Barbato, and thanks the Uberoi Foundation for support. Edip Yuksel’s channel, in Turkish, appears to be a chat about shrinking Turkish delight packaging, which is the most relatable theological crisis of the day.

The Takeaway

Don’t read the proportions as a map of the world’s religions; read them as a map of who uploads on a Monday.

Whether it’s the garment video, Dickson’s protective boundaries, Hashmi’s figurative apocalypse, or the Ahmadiyya commentary on atonement, communities are arguing about who gets to define the rules, how harshly they should be enforced, and what they mean. Where nobody argues, nobody cares, and the arguing keeps the internet employed and me tragically awake.

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Scripture