Unique But Not Different: Latter-day Saints in Japan by Shinji Takagi, Conan Grames, and Meagan Rainock is a fascinating glimpse into the world of Japanese Latter-day Saints. The book is based on a comprehensive survey data, which it explores to examine the diverse social, political, and ideological backgrounds of Japanese Latter-day Saints. Over the course of exploring those data, the book provides valuable insights for scholars, missionaries, Church leaders, and members alike about the state of the Church in Japan. The format is very academic in its investigation of the survey results and reads more like a scientific paper than narrative history, and it is very well done.
Year: 2024
Smith Family Women
Joseph Smith grew up in a family with strong-willed women. Among those are two who left some notable records of the early Church, particularly Lucy Mack Smith (his mother) and Katharine Smith Salisbury (his sister). Two recent posts at the Latter-day Saint history site From the Desk discuss these two Smith family women and their legacies. What follows here is a co-post to these other two posts.
Book of Mormon Historicity, Part 3: Quiet
So I often think about life when I finally finish the book I’ve been working on for a long time. Probably a lot of questions and some unhappiness both from Orthodoxy and ex-Mormons. Both sides may be unhappy that I held such views while serving as bishop. That’s understandable. One point I wanted to address was something I saw while John Dehlin was interviewing Bill Reel and both were saying how important full-disclosure was on issues that pertain to Mormon belief. They felt obligated to let Mormons know about the bad stuff so that such Mormons could have informed choices about their faith. Mormons who were/are not as frank as them are apparently bad. I thought, “Hmm, I imagine they’d probably criticize my attitude of mostly being quiet at church.” And I don’t mind being so criticized as I have many differences with those commentators, but I do think it would be helpful to explain why I do so.
O’Sullivan’s Law and Latter-day Saint-Adjacent Organizations
Chat-GPT’s rendition of a very strict, orthodox Mormon, right next to a liberal, heterodox Mormon, because even heterodox Mormons still wear buttoned-up, tucked-in shirts evidently. O’Sullivan’s law, one of those cute Internet “laws,” states that “any organization or enterprise that is not expressly right wing will become left wing over time.” Like most Internet laws, it kind of holds up, even though exceptions can be found. There’s something to it in regards to Church-related institutions if you replace left-wing and right-wing with edgy and/or heterodox. For example, one of the early, founding members of Dialogue was Dallin H. Oaks, whereas a simple perusal of the Table of Contents of issues through the years shows a clear veer towards critical studies issues in the Dialogue journal and, presumably, community. I’m not, in this post, making an argument for whether that is a good or bad thing, but the directionality of the drift is clear. And then of course the classic case is the Maxwell Institute. Not that it was ever “edgy,” just that it clearly shifted from being what could be described as being on the Molly Mormon side of the continuum with its apologetics focus to speaking to a smaller, more academic niche. Again, I have no desire to rehash the old fights over the “coup,” although for the most part I will admit that I think, after the dust has settled, I like the division of labor, and think…
Being a Mormon without Believing in a Historical Book of Mormon, Part 2
Again I make no pretenses to “resolving” this complicated topic and expect plenty of pushback, but, like I said in my last post, I see these conversations as important. It does appear to me that the evidence is contrary to the BoM being historical (I’ll post about that more), and yet I see Mormon practice as highly valuable (though often frustrating!) I’ve seen related conversations over the years on the Bloggernacle and people often point to the value of literature and even the parables of Jesus. And yet those examples aren’t REALLY presented as historical the way Smith and the Book of Mormon present the Book of Mormon. I saw on Paul Dunn’s Wikipedia page that Dunn pointed to Jesus’s parables as defense of his fabrications. I think a lot would find that distasteful, as, again, Dunn presented his stories as real (and seemingly working for Dunn’s own aggrandizement). The Book of Mormon is different than bragging about oneself, but it did found a religion that gave Smith a very prominent position.
A Review: Commentary on the Community of Christ Doctrine & Covenants, Volume 1
I’ve been hunting down resources to use in studying the Doctrine and Covenants, and one of the books I wanted to highlight in that regard is the Commentary on the Community of Christ Doctrine & Covenants Volume 1: The Joseph Smith Jr. Era, by Dale E. Luffman. It is a fascinating glimpse into both the Doctrine and Covenants itself and how it is viewed and used in a sister organization in the Restoration movement. The book goes through each individual document in the Doctrine and Covenants, offering information about the historical and theological context of the document, commentary and exegesis, how it was understood at the time it was written, and some interpretation and thoughts about how the document is significant to members of the church today. Throughout, it offers many important and interesting insights about this important volume of scripture.
On Miracles
Elijah calling down fire from heaven, 21st century version Years ago I saw a New Atheist-y meme that showed a cartoon panel of “the power of God across time,” starting with the creation of the world, moving onto the great flood and turning water into wine, and then ending with Christ appearing on toast, with the idea that in today’s age we kind of grasp at straws to see this little miracle here or there whereas in the past there were seas being split and fire coming out of the heavens to burn up sacrifices. This is one of those things where I think they have a point on some level. As a general principle I think miracles operate at the same cadence and magnitude today that they did in the past (typically in the subtle, private moments of our lives) and the farther back the record goes the more I’m open to the possibility that the miracles described were later additions, that the correlation between the magnitude and how public the miracle was and how old it is is attributable to the kind of folkloric additions that we see in just about every really old story that has had time to evolve and become grander. Ethics aside, If Brigham Young isn’t calling down a pillar of fire to block the way of the invading US Army in Echo Canyon, or President Oaks isn’t calling she-bears out of Cottonwood Canyon…
An Influential Letter You’ve Probably Not Heard Of: Wilford Woodruff to Heber J. Grant, March 28, 1887
Over the last century, for better or worse, we have had four men who became president of the Church while health concerns and/or advanced age made their capacity to carry out the role of Church president questionable. (George Albert Smith, Joseph Fielding Smith, Spencer W. Kimball, and Howard W. Hunter are the four I have in mind.) In addition, the average age of Church presidents at time of ascension to the presidency in the last century was around 81 years old, meaning that many of them lost the ability to function within a few years of becoming Church president, just as a fact of age. I do not believe that is likely to change, and there is one rather obscure document more than any other that has ensured that is the case—a letter written by Wilford Woodruff in 1887.
Grinding the Faces of the Poor Through the Lottery
I do not have the brain chemistry for gambling. If I bet my house on a coin flip and won, I would be a sleepless wreck for weeks anxiously wondering about what would have happened had I lost. (Like tobacco, this is one of those Latter-day Saint rules I would keep even if I left the Church). Perhaps because of this, the idea of a gambling addiction, where people destroy their lives because they need the next hit or are trying to get back to even, is very viscerally unpleasant to me (which makes gambling addiction-centered films such as Molly’s Game, The Gambler [preferably the 1974 version, which is based on Dostoevsky’s novel of the same name] and Uncut Gems very intense for me), and I am glad that Utah is one of the most anti-gambling states in the country. I usually bristle at the reflexive Utah=Latter-day Saint connection that many draw, but in this case it makes theoretical sense that Utah’s anti-gambling is in part derived from its Latter-day Saint heritage. Recently due to a Supreme Court decision the floodgates for sports gambling were opened across the country, and many states liberalized gambling laws. They did this in a staggered fashion, which makes it so that researchers can more rigorously draw causal conclusions about what happens when sports gambling is legalized. A recent paper that just dropped found that when online sports gambling was legalized they “find a roughly…
A Review: Second Class Saints
The priesthood and temple ban against individuals with Black African ancestry is a topic that is both fraught and crucial in understanding the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Matthew Harris’s recently-published Second Class Saints: Black Mormons and the Struggle for Racial Equality provides one of the most in-depth looks at that ban, with a special focus on the process by which it was challenged and lifted in the twentieth century by the 1978 priesthood revelation. It also discusses the ongoing effects of the ban and the anti-Black teachings in the Church that framed it after the revelation and the reluctance of Church leaders to come out against those teachings until 2013. Ultimately, however, the focus of the book is “on racism as it affected Black and biracial people in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints” (p. xiv).
Cutting-Edge Latter-day Saint Research, July 2024
Clarke, Steve. “When conspiracy theorists win.” Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy (2024): 1-24.
John Turner on his Joseph Smith Biography
John Turner is known in Latter-day Saint circles for his biography of Brigham Young and his book The Mormon Jesus: A Biography. Next year, however, he will add to that collection with John Turner’s Joseph Smith biography. Turner recently spoke about the forthcoming biography with From the Desk, and announced that “I loved writing Joseph Smith: The Rise and Fall of an American Prophet, which Yale University Press will publish in Summer of 2025.” What follows here is a copost to the full interview.