Paying attention didn’t matter. I was expected to be quiet, even if it meant reading a nonchurch book. During a particularly rough patch in 1964, I read the entire Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan series — just in sacrament meetings.
It’s much easier to stay reverent (by that, I mean silent) in church today. Unless yours is a semi-hysterical faith involving violent contortions, snakes or actual bloodletting, odds are that you can be tempted to peer into the mesmerizing eye of the Great Deceiver: your cellphone.
The entire world is at your fingertips. If a church meeting is dragging long and tedious — as they so often do, God help us — it’s possible to surreptitiously evoke the spirit of sports scores, solitaire, gambling, porn and email into the meeting.