Just over a month ago, Kaimi posed a question asking how exactly our Latter-day Saint beliefs should translate into specific ideas on the issue of immigration. His blog post was provoked by press accounts of meetings that Elder M. Russell Ballard and other Church officials had just had with members of the Utah legislature from both parties. These sorts of meetings are nothing unusual; they’ve actually become a matter of tradition. Before each general session, party leaders in both the House and Senate meet separately with Church officials to discuss any issues of importance. What set these particular meetings apart, however, was the increasingly hardline immigration measures the legislature was set to consider during the upcoming legislative session.
Month: February 2008
The Church Historian’s Press and the Argument in Favor of Mordred
The Church issued a press release today annoucing the creation of a “Church Historian’s Press” to handle the publication of the Joseph Smith Papers. (The press release also mentioned “works related to the church’s history and growth.”) I am not quite sure what the rationale for this is. Previous volume of the papers were published by Deseret Book, which did a nice enough job, although of late the physical publication standards at Deseret Book have been falling. Perhaps the new imprint is to insure library quality production values. Maybe it just reduces administrative hassle to have the production done in-house, particularlly in light of the way that technology has been dropping the costs of publishing. Or perhaps something bigger is afoot.
The Marc of the Beast
Times and Seasons welcomes its latest guest blogger, Marc Bohn.
Thomases
The name Thomas has a tortured history in Mormonism.
Sleepless
A medical bleg from a bloggernacle regular in need: My oldest daughter is expecting her third child. She has not slept (except for three hours) in twelve days.
Bloggernacle in the News
In the online Deseret News: “Today in the Bloggernacle,” with links to posts at BCC, Nine Moons, and Millennial Star. I’ve seen similar posts in recent weeks (such as here and here) under different titles but with the same format, so this appears to be a new regular feature. Just one more reason to check spelling and grammar before you hit the “post” button.
From Theophany to Ritual
I thought that one of Richard Bushman’s most provocative arguments in Rough Stone Rolling was his interpretation of the temple endowment, and I’ve been surprised that it hasn’t generated more interest.
Samson
Regina Spektor’s contribution to the underrepresented lyrical genre of speculative historical romance suggests, from the perspective of Delilah, that the story could have ended differently:
Book Review: Bound on Earth
Angela Hallstrom’s debut novel, Bound on Earth, is worth reading.
By Common Consent
Earlier this month, Thomas S. Monson was set apart. This coming conference, church members will be asked to sustain him as President of the church. And members will almost certainly sustain him. But what if they didn’t?
Living with Another’s Agency
How often do you want to “fix things” for someone you love because you (think you) see so much more clearly than he does?
Great Sermons: Out of Obscurity
This talk was given early on in Elder Maxwell’s time as an Apostle and I think it is an excellent example of what I liked about him. “Granted, there is not full correlation among the four Gospels about the events and participants at the empty garden tomb. Yet the important thing is that the tomb was empty, because Jesus had been resurrected! Essence, not tactical detail!”
Why Did God Give Contradictory Commandments?
The temple treats the Garden story as a universal story. Whatever the reason for that, you can make a good case that in some sense each of us has been in the Garden and fallen. In fact, as we’ve discussed here before, making the Garden story a universal story can make sense of the contradictory commandments God gave Adam and Eve.
More Blessed to Give
A few months ago I read Kate Braestrup’s excellent memoir Here If You Need Me, and I’ve been thinking about this passage ever since. My son Zach is the child of Unitarian Universalists, so naturally he didn’t know a lot about Jesus. But I heard a lot about Jesus at my Christian seminary, and a lot of it was pretty cool.
Mormon scholars dominate the Globe
At least, Melissa Proctor does. Today’s Boston Globe has a very nice article about her new Mormonism class at Harvard Divinity School, along with some good discussion about the trends in Mormon studies generally. Congratulations, Melissa!
Mormon Law and Islamic Law
Mormonism, so goes a well-worn trope, is more into orthopraxis than orthodoxy. That is, we tend to care more about right conduct — e.g. loyalty to the kingdom, keeping covenants, following commandments, etc. — than right belief — e.g. the precise nature of divine progression or the correct location of Kolob. This raises the question, however, of why Mormonism hasn’t really developed any sort of a formal jurisprudence. Looking at church courts in the nineteenth century and comparing Mormon “law” to Islamic law sharpens the issues
Interpretation: Latter-day Saint Perspectives
A Presidents’ Day Poem
A poem for Presidents’ Day:
Little Zions
Today was our stake conference, and we had a visiting general authority: Elder Terrence C. Smith, one of the North American Area Seventies. His talk was one of the finest, most doctrinally insightful sermons I’ve ever heard at a stake conference. But what really caught me came in the first minute of his talk. He’s Canadian, specifically an Albertan, and he mentioned being from a little town “that’s probably 90% LDS.” That’s interesting, I thought.
Preaching to the Court House and Judging in the Temple
For the last year or so, I have been doing research on Mormon church courts in the nineteenth century. Until about 1900, it was expected that Mormons would not sue other Mormons in secular courts, but would take their disputes to their local bishop or high council. I’ve been looking at three inter-related questions: How did the Mormon court system develop, why did Latter-day Saints take civil disputes to church courts, and why did they ultimately abandon the church courts? I have now posted a more or less final version of my paper on SSRN, where you can down load it.
How American is the Church?
(The following is an excerpt from a larger study on the concept of “gospel culture”, which I have been working on. I hope that comments will help me correct and refine this aspect on Americanness). For the past few decades, in their efforts at internationalization, church leaders have stressed that this is “not an American Church”, but an international, universal Church.
Love on Campus
It’s just not what it used to be, even at the BYU, as shown in a day-before-Valentine’s-Day BYU NewsNet article, “The Evolution of Human Love.”
Did revelation cease?
It seems to me that Mormon discourse has two mutually contradictory ways of talking about revelation during the Middle Ages, and that neither view takes much notice of actual medieval views on the matter.
How to Date Your Spouse
A fascinating New York Times article discusses recent psychological data: “Using laboratory studies, real-world experiments and even brain-scan data, scientists can now offer long-married couples a simple prescription for rekindling the romantic love that brought them together in the first place. The solution? Reinventing date night.”
Bruce Young on Christians, Romney, and Voting
A pro-Huckabee blog recently(ish) set out the (now somewhat dated) argument that (non-Mormon) Christians have a Biblical duty not to vote for Mitt Romney. In response, Bruce (husband of blog-butterfly Margaret) Young wrote a short rebuttal piece. (He’s also a BYU professor of some renown.) I thought the discussion might be of interest (to the T&S community), and so with the permission of Bruce and Margaret Young (have you asked her about her movie lately?), I’m posting it here. My response (to Pastor Haisty’s argument that, according to John the apostle, Christians should not wish someone who believes in a “false Christ” well and should not welcome such a person into their home or any “house” that in some sense belongs to them):
The Childless Ones
We are reminded again of the importance of families to God’s eternal plan. We are reminded again that the Church teaches to the ideal, to the pattern, to the eternal. Those of us (men as well as women) whose lives do not — will not, cannot, in mortality — reflect the divine pattern are reminded again to turn to God for answers in our personal circumstances. Sometimes it helps to know that the saints, as well as a Heavenly Father, understand what is missing, and that we would mirror the divine pattern if only we could.
A Poem and a Sermon
First, the poem:
Call for Papers
The Old Written Order of Things
The Presiding Bishopric’s Office used to publish a monthly magazine called Progress of the Church, filled with news and statistics and directives to Church leaders at the local level.
Should Mormons Hate Huckabee?
For the first time in American history, a Mormon had a serious shot of making it to the highest office in the land. But no more: Mitt Romney has pulled out of active competition for the Republican nomination and thus for the presidency. How should us Mormons feel about that?