132 search results for "Julie Smith"

News and Politics

*Search, Ponder, and Pray* by Julie Smith: your essential guide to revisiting the gospels

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“Tell me the stories of Jesus,” begins the primary song. You’ve read the stories of Jesus in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. You’ve heard them in church lessons and talks. You know the stories; you probably love the stories. But what if you want more? I recently used Julie M. Smith’s Search, Ponder, and Pray: A Guide to the Gospels to revitalize my study of the first books of the New Testament, and I loved it. What Smith does more than anything else in this volume is ask questions. In Matthew 6, when Jesus recommends giving to the poor in secret, Smith asks: “Why is recognition of good works bad? Is the prohibition for the benefit of the giver or the receiver?” Or in Matthew 22, when Jesus invites Peter to “render … unto God the things that are God’s,” Smith asks: “Are humans the things that belong to God?” and then nudges the readers to take a look at Genesis 1:26 as they consider that question. One question that provoked a strong reaction for me came from Luke 6, when “the scribes and Pharisees watched [Jesus], whether he would heal on the sabbath day; that they might find an accusation against him.” Smith asks, “Do you ever find yourself acting the way the scribes and pharisees do…? What motivates them? How do you guard against developing their attitude?” As I pondered, I saw myself, in my weaker moments, looking…

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Admin

Hello and Goodbye to Guest Bloggers: Julie Smith & Karen Hall

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We would like to thank Julie Smith for a wonderful two weeks of guest blogging and we hope that she will continue to participate here in the comments. We also want to introduce our newest guest blogger, Karen Hall. Karen graduated from BYU where she studied Russian. She then went on to Harvard Law School. While there, she clawed her way to the top of the Latter-day Saint Student Association hierarchy, and ended her law school days as President of that illustrious organization. Needless to say, she ruled with an iron fist, and the LDSSA descended into chaos and apostacy upon her move to Washington, DC, where she practices law and wastes time on the internet. Welcome Karen!

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Cornucopia

Julie M. Smith

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I live in Austin, Texas, with my husband, Derrick, an electrical engineer. We have three boys: Simon (’98), Nathan (’01), and Truman (’04). We are a homeschooling family and I also teach at the LDS Institute here in Austin. I have a BA in English from UT Austin and an MA in Biblical Studies (Theology) from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, where I specialized in the study of women in the New Testament. I wrote my thesis on Mark 14:3-9, which I explored from literary and feminist perspectives to determine how the story teaches the audience about Jesus’s identity. I wrote a book, Search, Ponder, and Pray: A Guide to the Gospels. It contains 4,000 questions (no answers) designed to get the LDS reader to really think about the scriptures and to introduce the major findings of biblical studies to the general reader. I like to read, buy books, and go out for ethnic food. (Edit this page).

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Church History, News and Politics

Incredulous About Joseph Smith’s Polygamy

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Incredulous About Joseph Smith's Polygamy

Entrenched in Mormon Culture I am a 7th generation Mormon who grew up in Utah County. I attended church all my life, had regular family scripture study and FHE. My dad was a BYU math professor and my mom a devout scripture scholar. I graduated from seminary and graduated from BYU (with all its required religion courses) and married a 5th generation, returned missionary in the temple. And I didn’t learn that Joseph Smith personally practiced polygamy until I was in my 20s. I had heard the story about Emma pushing Eliza down the stairs, causing a miscarriage in her jealous rage. But it was all fabricated nonsense created by anti-Mormons trying to defame the prophet. Like everything else that looked or sounded unsavory. Everyone knew about the public polygamy in Utah. Every year our elementary class toured the Beehive House, complete with all the wives’ bedrooms and  fairly open discussion about managing the logistics. Polygamous ancestors were a dime a dozen (or two). Whenever the topic of plural marriage came up it was usually swept away with a Gordon-B-Hinkley-like flick of the wrist. “It’s behind us.” We don’t practice it. Move on. Nothing to see here. 

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Cornucopia

A Great New Product from Smith Industries

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NEW PRODUCT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE AUSTIN, Texas – October 28, 2004 – Smith Industries LLC today proudly announces the release of their latest product, Child 3.0. Also known as “Truman Michael Smith,� Child 3.0 has been under development for nine months and arrives just in time for the holiday season.

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Admin

Who is Julie?

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Unlike some of our other bloggers, Julie has been remarkably prompt in providing the administrators of this site (also known from time to time as “The Quataverate” or sometimes simply as “The Big Four”) with biographical information and a picture. Hence, I am pleased to announce the the “Julie Smith” link on the side bar is fully operational. Have you ever longed for an answer to that all consuming question, “Who is Julie Smith?” Your long wait is over. Just click here.

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Admin

Welcome, Julie & Thanks, Greg

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Many thanks to Greg Allen, who posted early, often, and well here at T&S. I suspect that he won many new fans for greg.org, and we look forward to hearing from him again soon. Our newest guest blogger is Julie Smith, a native Houstonian who earned a BA in English from the University of Texas at Austin and an MA in Biblical Studies from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, where she specialized in women in the New Testament. You know her here as “Julie in Austin,” but you might also be familiar with her book, Search, Ponder, and Pray: A Guide to the Gospels, which according to Julie “contains over 4,000 questions (no answers) and attempts to get LDS readers to really think about the scriptures and to introduce them to the various approaches of academic biblical studies.” Julie teaches at the LDS Institute in Austin, Texas. She is married to an engineer, and has two children, whom she homeschools. Welcome, Julie!

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New Testament, Scriptures

What You Might Be Missing in Matthew’s Genealogy of Jesus

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“Most readers of Matthew’s Gospel take one look at that first page full of ‘begats’ and impossible-to-pronounce names and quickly turn the page.” So begins Julie Smith’s thoughtful essay “Why These Women in Jesus’s Genealogy?”, which is available free of charge in the Segullah journal (2008) and is reprinted in her book Search, Ponder, and Pray: A Guide to the Gospels. “But,” Smith continues, “Matthew was a deliberate writer.” She goes on to highlight that among more than 25 men in Jesus’s line, Matthew includes just four women (plus Mary), and they aren’t the matriarchs, as one might have expected (such as Abraham’s wife Sarah or Isaac’s wife Rebekah). Rather, the women she includes are Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba. Smith goes on to reflect on why Matthew may have included each of these women who were outside of the social mainstream in at least some way. Smith poses a range of hypotheses; readers can, of course, decide for themselves.  I strongly recommend reading the (short, accessible) article yourself. But I’ll share two passages that I marked with exclamation points in my hard copy.  “These women are, as Jesus is, intercessors: Tamar enables Judah’s line to continue; Rahab brings her family into the house of Israel; Ruth brings the Moabites into David’s line; and Bathsheba brings her son Solomon to the throne.” And one more: “Modern readers generally do this Gospel an injustice by skimming over the genealogy as if…

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Church History, Come Follow Me Currculum, Scriptures

“By mine own voice or by the voice of my servants”

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Doctrine and Covenants section 1 is a fascinating document.  Written in late 1831, it would chronologically fall in place right around section 67, but was intended as a preface for the compilation of Joseph Smith’s revelations known as the Book of Commandments.  By extension, it later served as the preface for the Doctrine and Covenants. Section 1 is intended to get people’s attention and make it clear that modern revelations from the Lord are important to pay attention to.  It declares that the text is written in “the voice of him who dwells on high … the voice of the Lord,”[1] and that “the voice of warning shall be unto all people, by the mouth of my disciples whom I have chosen in these last days …, for I the Lord have commanded them.”[2]  Right off the bat, we have a document presented as the voice of the Lord and that voice declaring that He has authorized disciples to give voice to His warnings.  It specifically names Joseph Smith as “my servant” and states that the Lord “spake unto him from heaven and gave him commandments” and that “these commandments are of me, and were given unto my servants in their weakness, after the manner of their language, that they might come to understanding.”[3]  As indicated by the title that was given to the first attempt at publishing a collection of revelations or sections (the Book of Commandments—the title was…

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Book Reviews, Mormon Studies

Perspectives on Mormon Theology Review

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Dave managed to finish his review of Perspectives on Mormon Theology before I did. To cut to the chase let me just summarize my judgment of the book first. If you’re at all interested in the implications of scholarly considerations of Mormon history, exegesis, or theology then this is a must read book. Blair Van Dyke and Loyd Ericson did a fantastic job selecting the people to contribute. It has so many disparate viewpoints that nearly every position is considered and discussed. Among some, apologetics has come to have a rather bad reputation. While I doubt this book will change many views, I think it does make one think both about the weaknesses and strengths of traditional approaches along with other approaches we should consider. If I have one complaint, it’s a minor one. I do wish there were formal responses to some of the essays. Other books such as Discourses in Mormon Theology have done that to one degree or an other. As is the essays tend to stand alone even though they do address sometimes common arguments. Still that’s an extremely minor complaint and doesn’t undermine the strength of what is here. 

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Book Reviews, Church History, Guest Bloggers

Telling the stories of the Church’s history

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A review of Leonard Arrington and the Writing of Mormon History, by Gregory A. Prince Telling the history of a church can be tricky. Which elements arose from the culture of the time? Which manifest the direct intervention of the divine? Is that even a sensible distinction? On the one hand, some Church leaders have historically seen the principal role of religious history as being to show “the hand of the Lord in every hour and every moment of the Church from its beginning till now” [1]. With this as one’s end, the appropriate means may be a partial telling of history: “Some things that are true are not very useful” [2]. On the other hand, some fear that this will leave believers vulnerable when uncomfortable truths come out: “I worry about the young Latter-day Saints who learn only about the saintly Joseph and are shocked to discover his failings. The problem is that they may lose faith in the entire teaching system that brought them along. If their teachers covered up Joseph Smith’s flaws, what else are they hiding?” [3] As Laurel Thatcher Ulrich put it succinctly, “History is dangerous.” No character in Mormon history is perhaps better placed to illustrate this lesson than Leonard Arrington. In 1972, Arrington became the first — and to date, the only — professional historian to serve as Church Historian of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. (To be fair, Arrington’s PhD was…

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News and Politics

What is Zion and how do we get there? 31 Mormons weigh in: You’ll definitely find your Zion somewhere in here

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A review of A Book of Mormons: Latter-day Saints on a Modern-Day Zion In this useful collection of brief essays, an impressively wide array of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints describe what Zion means to them. As the editors write in their introduction, “Forget about glossy Mormon-produced documentaries. Forget about funny Broadway musicals. … Here you will find a potent mixture of everyday and extraordinary Mormons speaking in their own voice about tough issues and hard-won testimonies.” The range of approaches is wonderfully expansive. Some of the authors speak of how Zion means better inclusion of groups that have historically been under-empowered. Neylan McBain, whose book Women at Church I can’t say enough good things about, writes, “As we stretch toward a new identity of Mormon womanhood, our community craves a vision of how we can honor our priorities without being slaves to their former trappings.” Julie Smith explores the question “does Mormonism oppress women–or liberate them?”, providing a typology for how different women approach their relationship to the Church (the Sariahs, the Abishes, and the Morianton’s maids), useful in thinking of how women with different views can still “all pull together,” as the old hymn suggests. Kalani Tonga invites readers to bring members who feel marginalized (or — for whatever reason — are “not at the table”) into an active embrace, particularly highlighting the challenges of women of color. Ignacio García uses the history…

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News and Politics

Family and individual: the chicken or the egg?

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Julie Smith wrote a stimulating post last week, “A Rhetoric of Indirection,” in which she argues that the Church is undergoing a counterproductive cultural shift in homiletic emphasis from personal discipleship to strong nuclear families. When she joined the church in the 90s, she writes, “there was a focus on individual righteousness–personal scripture study, prayer, personal worthiness, temple attendance, etc. Now when I hear those things, they are usually couched in or around The Family.” While official discourse did address  families 25 years ago, she concedes, it was a secondary concern rather than a direct focus. She concludes by lamenting that the present emphasis on families is distorting our culture and teachings, “leading us to focus on precisely the wrong things, to the detriment of individuals and families.” Julie’s post was hugely appreciated by our readership, and I understand why. I’m very sympathetic to — more than sympathetic, deeply invested in — the difficult position of singles, gays, childless couples and members in non-traditional family situations, and I am troubled that teachings on the importance of families leaves them spiritually under-nourished. I consider this to be a question of pressing concern for church leaders. Because I enjoy conversation with Julie, and because I think it’s important and fun for social conservatives and progressives to talk, I’d like to respond to her post on two points, one small and one fundamental. First, I’m skeptical of the implied historical narrative, in which…

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News and Politics

In Their Own Language

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“For it shall come to pass in that day, that every man shall hear the fullness of the gospel in his own tongue, and in his own language.” D&C 90:11 Introduction This post begins with a simple question: does the Maxwell Institute (formerly FARMS) publish scholarship that treats the Book of Mormon as an ancient text? Or, in the words of Bill Hamblin, has the new leadership at MI “undermin[ed] ancient Book of Mormon studies” in favor of “modern Mormon Studies in its broadest sense” to the point where the Maxwell Institute today is “Sunstone South”? It’s a sensitive question, so let me get some caveats out of the way. I’m not an expert in ancient studies of any kind (Book of Mormon, Mesoamerican, Biblical, or other). Additionally, I’m not trying to wade into the larger controversy surrounding the change in leadership, a controversy that involves people I know and respect on both sides. I’m not passing judgment on MI as an institution nor responding to all the criticism raised by Bill Hamblin (and others), some of which are valid. I want to start by just answering one question: has the study of the Book of Mormon as an ancient text survived at MI? After reviewing the most recent issue Journal of Book of Mormon studies and one of the newest books published by the Maxwell Institute, I can say that it certainly has. Schooling the Prophet I’ll start with…

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Guest Bloggers

Introducing Walker Wright

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After citing him on multiple occasions here at Times and Seasons (for example here and here), I’m very pleased to announce that Walker Wright will be joining us for a guest blogging stint. Walker is an MBA student at the University of North Texas, and his primary interests are in the theology of work and sacralizing the mundane. Walker has written for Square Two, presented at Sunstone, Mormon Transhumanist Association, Faith & Knowledge, and Mormon Scholars in the Humanities, and is contributing a chapter to Julie Smith’s forthcoming Come, Let Us Reason Together: Dialogues with Scripture. He also blogs at Difficult Run, Worlds Without End, and at his own blog The Slow Hunch.

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