The Church recently announced that is going to be publishing an LDS “translation” of the Bible in Portuguese. I put “translation” in scare quotes because this is not a new Portuguese version of the Bible translated from the original Greek and Hebrew. Rather, it takes a previous Portuguese translation now in the public domain and updates its archaic language for modern Portuguese readers, adding LDS study aids. This is not the first time that the Church has issued new versions of the scriptures to make their language more digestible for members. For example, the original translation of the Book of Mormon into Korean used a very elevated and archaic form of the language that was difficult for modern Korean speakers to understand. My understanding is that the Church produced a new translation that was easier to read, and that it has done similar things in other languages. These efforts on behalf of non-English-speaking Latter-day Saints raise the question, why not for English speakers as well? The language of the scriptures for English-speaking Mormons is Jacobean English, because that is the language of the KJV, which then influenced the language of the Book of Mormon translation, the Doctrine & Covenants, the Book of Abraham, the Book of Moses, and the JST. In the past some Mormons, such as J. Reuben Clark, have tried to defend the use of the KJV on grounds of accuracy, but this argument simply isn’t sustainable. The…
Author: Nate Oman
I grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah (autobiographical blogging here), and attended Brigham Young University from 1993 to 1999. Between 1994 and 1996, I served in the Korea Pusan Mission. While at BYU, I mainly studied political science and philosophy. (I was lucky enough to take several classes from T&S's Jim Faulconer.) I also took just enough economics to get myself in trouble. After graduation, I married the fabulous and incredible Heather Bennett (now Oman) and worked on Capitol Hill for Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) while Heather finished graduate school at George Washington University. Beginning in 2000, I attended Harvard Law School, escaping with my JD in June, 2003. After practicing law for awhile, I became a law professor at William & Mary Law School. Somewhere along the line, Heather and I managed to have a son and a daughter.
Covenant and Speech
Membership in the Church is a covenant relationship. We repeat this to ourselves a great deal but generally aren’t clear exactly what we mean by it. Often, we imagine a covenant as a contract, a set of reciprocal promises. Given what the scriptures say about covenants, this isn’t a false way of thinking about it, but it is seriously incomplete. The most powerful image of covenant in the scriptures for me is the image of marriage. Israel, we are told, is like the (often faithless) spouse of God. A marriage is a relationship that is defined by reciprocal promises, but it isn’t just defined by reciprocal promises. It is also defined by love, passion, and what I think of as habits of affection. We often think of love as a kind of Dionysian force that assaults us, but married love is more than simply Dionysian. It is also agricultural, something that one treasures, cultivates, and seeks to protect. I think it suggestive that in English “husband” can denote both a spouse and a farmer. If we take the metaphor of marriage seriously as a model for covenants, then it should have an impact on how one speaks and thinks about the Church. Imagine that I subjected my wife to a constant stream of public criticism. It is easy to see how such criticism could be corrosive to one’s marriage, even if it was all entirely merited. My wife might be…
The Most Important Question about the Future of Mormonism
A couple of weeks ago, Patheos had a fun series of blog posts on the future of the Mormonism. (I’m too lazy to provide a link; Google it.) Most of the contributions were insightful and interesting, but I was struck that none of them put front and center what I think is the more important question facing the Church today. Mormonism is driven, ultimately, by missionary work. If you look at the development of our theology, for example, it has largely been formulated in the context of polemics driven by the needs of proselytizing. We articulate our theology through the process of trying to convert people, rather than trying to covert people to our previously articulate theology. More dramatically, whatever seems to be the most successful missionary message tends to come to dominate Church discourse and transform Church practices. We don’t necessarily invent new doctrines or the like for missionary purposes, but the way in which we present those doctrines is decisively influenced by missionary messaging. Think about the way that Mormons talk and teach about the family. In the contemporary Church we generally present these doctrines in terms of the sacaralization of the nuclear family around a broadly speaking modern model of middle-class parenting. I don’t have the common intellectual reflex of disdain for the bourgeois, so my point here is analytical rather than critical. It is striking, however, that doctrines originally revealed in the context of a sacralization…
My Theory of the Church’s Statement on the Change in BSA Policy
Yesterday my Facebook feed erupted with posts by LDS friends expressing dismay over the Church’s announcement that it would reconsider its relationship with the BSA in light of the BSA’s announcement that it would now allow gay scoutmasters. After all, the BSA policy allows local troops to set their own guidelines regarding gay scoutmasters, and in any case the Church has no objection to gay scoutmasters, so long as they are living the law of chastity. Why the sharp response from the Church? I have a theory about, this, but it is only a theory. In 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court decided a case called Boy Scouts v. Dale. Dale sued the BSA under a New Jersey anti-discrimination law, arguing that the BSA’s policy excluding him from being a scout leader because he was gay violated the law. The BSA argued that the application of the New Jersey law violated its rights of expressive association under the First Amendment. The BSA taught that boys should be “morally straight” and believed that this was inconsistent with homosexuality. For New Jersey to require the BSA to have a gay leader would therefore interfere with its message. The Supreme Court agreed and held the application of the New Jersey unconstitutional. Now consider the new BSA policy, which is (1) the BSA no longer has any objection to gay scoutmasters; and (2) local BSA units are free not to have gay scoutmasters if they…
Some things Jana Riess gets wrong about the Church and religious freedom
I like and respect Jana Riess a great deal, but she has a blog post up on religious freedom in which she makes a number of mistaken claims that are worth pointing out. First, she suggests that the Church´s commitment to religious freedom is shallow or poorly thought out. After all, she says, wouldn´t a robust support for religious freedom include minority religions such Rastafarians? Yes it would. However, since 1990 at least the Church has vigorously supported legislation that allows Rastafarians and other minority religions to challenge laws burdening their practices. The Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which the Church helped to pass, was in direct response to Supreme Court opinion holding that the State of Oregon could criminalize the use of peyote by Native Americans. Jana also claims that “The LDS Church has lobbied hard for the right of conservative religious persons – like, say, those who are members of the LDS Church! – to refuse [service in public] accommodations [i.e. private businesses] in the name of religious freedom.” This is not true. Far from having “lobbied hard” on this issue, to my knowledge the Church has not lobbied at all on it. As she notes, it has supported employment protections and housing protections for homosexuals. The Utah law it supported doesn´t address public accommodations, but it quite pointedly provides no exemption for individual landlords with religious objections to homosexuality allowing them to discriminate in housing. The same is…
The Influence of Law on Mormon Theology in the 20th Century
I recently published an article that T&S readers might find interesting. It traces the legal issues faced by the Church as a result of its international expansion after 1945, arguing that the pressures created by these concerns tended to modify Mormon theologies of the state in the last half of the twentieth century. There is a bunch of interesting stuff in the paper (or at least I think that there is), but it mainly makes two contributions. First, it tries to provide an overarching narrative for Mormon legal history in the late twentieth century. Second, it shows that just as with the abandonment of polygamy at the end of the 19th century, law has been an important force in the development of Mormonism in the twentieth century. Here’s the abstract from SSRN, along with a link for those who want to read it: International Legal Experience and the Mormon Theology of the State, 1945-2012 Nathan B. Oman William & Mary Law School January 16, 2015 Iowa Law Review, Vol. 100, 2015 William & Mary Law School Research Paper No. 09-295 Abstract: This Essay has three goals. The first is to provide a basic narrative of postwar Mormon expansion, identifying the basic periods and major developments. The second is to summarize the main legal issues provoked by this expansion. The third goal is to advance an argument about the relationship between this legal experience and the development of Mormon discourse in…
Mormons and Politics
Readers may be interested in a recent episode of the “Research on Religion Podcast,” featuring Quin Monson (BYU) and Dave Campbell (Notre Dame) discussing their new book Seeking the Promised Land: Mormons and American Politics (also co-authored with John C. Green). The book is the first full length study by professional political scientists of the place of Mormons in contemporary American politics. Scholarly discussions of Mormonism tend to be dominated by those trained either as historians or else (more recently) in religious studies. The work of Monson, Campbell, and Green is important because it brings in a bit more disciplinary diversity to the discussion. Among other things, they have actual new data on Mormon political attitudes — as opposed to opinions based on political discussions in the foyer at church — and a social scientist’s sense for what is unique about Mormons and what is not. The podcast provides a nice summary of a some of their research. Enjoy!
Doux Commerce in the City of God
I just put up an essay at the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) that readers of this blog might find interesting. It’s a response to some of Hugh Nibley’s writings on Zion and commerce. Nibley was famously critical of the mercantile ethic, arguing that trade and capitalism were fundamentally hostile to the ideal of Zion. This essay takes a more optimistic view of commerce, drawing on the ideas eighteenth-century thinkers like Montesquieu, who saw in the rise of markets a fundamentally pro-social force with the potential to limit violence and conflict. I’ll let readers judge the ultimate merits of my mash-up between Joseph Smith and Adam Smith, but hopefully it’s worth taking a look at it. Along the way, I offer a critical reading of some nineteenth-century Zion building that may interest Mormon history nerds, particularly those enamored of Leonard Arrington’s work. Enjoy! Here’s the abstract and a link to the article: Doux Commerce in the City of God: Trade and the Mormon Ideal of Zion Nathan B. Oman William & Mary Law School November 7, 2014 William & Mary Law School Research Paper No. 09-289 Abstract: This essay is a reflection on the relationship between religion and commerce in the Mormon tradition. Drawing on the social criticism of the prominent Mormon scholar Hugh Nibley, it asks if commercial activity is consistent with the good life in a just society, what Mormons call Zion. Nibley gave a largely negative answer…
Announcement: Faith & Knowledge Conference at UVa
THE FIFTH BIENNIAL FAITH AND KNOWLEDGE CONFERENCE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA FEBRUARY 27-28, 2015 The Faith and Knowledge Conference was established in 2006 to bring together LDS graduate students in religious studies and related disciplines in order to explore the interactions between religious faith and scholarship. During the past four conferences, students have shared their experiences in the church and the academy and the new ideas that have emerged as a result. Papers and conversations provided thought-provoking historical, exegetical, and theoretical insights and compelling models of how to reconcile one’s discipleship with scholarly discipline. In keeping with these past objectives, we invite graduate students and early career scholars in religious studies and related disciplines (e.g., women’s studies, philosophy, anthropology, sociology, history, literature, etc.) to join the conversation. We welcome proposals addressing historical, exegetical, and theoretical issues that arise from the intersections of LDS religious experience and academic scholarship. Final papers presented at the conference should be brief, pointed comments of ten to fifteen minutes. Please visit faithandknowledge.org for more information on themes and topics explored at previous years’ conferences. Proposals should include a paper abstract of no more than 250 words and a brief CV. Please submit proposals by November 7, 2014 to Christopher Jones at [email protected] Notifications will be sent by November 22. The registration fee will be $25 for graduate students and $50 for early career scholars. For individuals whose paper proposals are accepted, hotel accommodations for…
Discussion, Advocacy, and Some Thoughts on Practical Reasoning
I am saddened by Kate Kelly’s excommunication. I wish that events had played out differently. Excommunication in this case strikes me as the worst outcome for all concerned, although obviously my opinion on this matter does not – and should not – matter. I believe her when she says that the decision is extremely painful for her and her family. They have my sympathy and my prayers. I do worry that part of the public meaning that she and her supporters are assigning to her excommunication is both inaccurate and potentially destructive. In her letter to her bishop, she wrote: Please keep in mind that if you choose to punish me today, you are not only punishing me. You are punishing hundreds of women and men who have questions about female ordination, and have publicly stated them. You are punishing thousands of Mormons who have questions and concerns with gender inequality in the church and want a place to voice those concerns in safety. You are punishing anyone with a question in their heart who wants to ask that question vocally, openly and publicly. This is not true, and to the extent that others believe it is true, Mormon discussions, the Church, and the community of the saints will be harmed. Unfortunately, the letter from Kelly’s stake president seemed to state that the only appropriate discussion of feminist concerns was in private or confined to private meetings with priesthood leaders.…
Why is the Church Handbook of Instructions not Public?
I don’t know the answer to this question. Let me suggest some possibilities: Perhaps the Brethren are worried that publishing the Handbook will encourage people to treat it as a legal text. There are two possible problems with this. It might then encourage people to use deviation from the Handbook to attack priesthood leaders, when the Handbook is merely intended to orient them in particular ways not necessarily limit their ability to deviate. Alternatively, treating the Handbook as a legal text might discourage members from approaching issues prayerfully and flexibly rather than legalistically. By keeping it private, the thinking might go, we limit its public authority as a text and thus limit legalism. The problem, it seems to me, is that it tends to function as a legal text anyway, just a problematic one because it is not public. Perhaps the Brethren are worried that the deep secrets of the Church will be revealed if the Handbook is made public and deeply embarrassing things will come to light. The problem with this is that there just isn’t anything particularly scandalous in the Handbook. I’ve read it. There’s no deep secrets in it. Furthermore, copies of it are available in various research libraries — including BYU Special Collections — to say nothing of the Internet. If it contains deep secrets they are already out of the bag. Remember all of those breathless investigative reports in the NYT exposing the way that…
Some Thoughts on Church Courts
Karen Hall has an interesting post on church courts that’s worth reading. Her basic point is that church courts fail to comply with some rule of law norms. I would quibble with some of her points. For example I think she slips from the idea of rule of law to the narrower idea of an adversarial judicial process involving juries. Most of the world, however, uses the civil law system which has no juries and uses an inquisitorial rather than adversarial structure. (I do not mean inquisitorial to be pejorative. It simply means a system where the judge actively inquires into the case rather than passively judging a contest.) Still, I think that she makes some valid points about how procedures might be improved. In some important ways, however, I think it misses some key issues. The kind of process Karen lauds serves two functions. First, it generates legitimacy for judicial outcomes. Second, it improves the quality of judicial determinations. In the context of church courts, however, I am not convinced that greater due process of the kind that Karen calls for would do either. First, for most Latter-day Saints, the legitimacy of church courts arises from the belief that the decision makers are guided by revelation and motivated by love and concern. Furthermore, because much of the structure of the church judiciary comes from canonized revelations, its legitimacy also flows from the idea that the system has a divine…
Elliot Rodger, Sex, the Good Life, and the Peril of Rights
There are certain things that we need and desire. Among these is love and sex. I conjoin two words, but I mean it to refer to a single whole, the embodied connection of affection, commitment, and pleasure that comes in the mutual giving of two people of themselves to each other. That. It’s a longing that has deep roots in biology and human experience. It seems a good candidate for a necessary component of a good life. The problem comes when that truth – that a good and complete life includes love and sex – combines with our dominant moral discourse, the discourse of rights. Consider Martha Nussbaum, a philosopher at the University of Chicago who has spent the last couple of decades thinking about the links between development and human rights. She has produced something that she calls capabilities theory. The idea is that when we think about what society owes us, what our fundamental rights are, we should think in terms of the conditions that create the basic capabilities needed to live a good and fully human life. I like Nussbaum’s approach because it tries to take seriously the idea of living a good life and then marry it to the language of human rights and multiculturalism. It’s a good test case that lets us see some of the basic problems inherent in some of our fundamental ways of seeing the moral universe. Among the basic human rights…
The Message of Mormonism (pt. 2): Angels, Visions, Prophets, and Gifts of the Spirit
In my last post I talked about Mormonism as an answer to the question, “Which church is true?” and suggested that this question has only been compelling on a large scale in fairly limited circumstances. I ought to note here that I am not trying to come up with some kind of general explanation for why people adopt religions or even of church growth in general. I am just interested in the kinds of messages that we have given about the Restoration and why those messages might or might not be compelling in differing social contexts. Another message on which preaching the Restoration has relied is one that emphasizes the continuation of the supernatural world of the scriptures in the present. This is the message of angelic visitors, gold plates, the gifts of the spirit, continuing revelation, and a re-established and literal Israel preparing the world for an imminent second coming. It promises to believers a religious life filled with dramatic spiritual manifestations, esoteric spiritual knowledge (often with apocalyptic content), and an escape from a secular world bereft of supernatural content. Historically, there is no question but that in certain times and places this has been a potent message. Indeed, in the first generation of the Church’s missionary work the promise of the gifts of the spirit and the reports of visions, angels, and miracles had at least as much – if not more – appeal than the sectarian message…
The Message of Mormonism (pt. 1): Which Church is True?
This is the first in a series of posts in which I lay out some of my thoughts on what Mormonism’s message to the world has been and what it might become in the next generation or two. It’s a big topic, and I’m likely to yammer on at some length. You have been warned. Since the beginning of the Restoration Mormonism’s central message to the world has been “Join us!” We are and have always been a missionary religion. From an internal perspective missionary work serves three basic purposes. The first is to assist individuals work out their cosmic salvation by persuading them to make and keep sacred covenants under the authority of the priesthood as instructed by God. The second is to make the lives of converts in the here-and-now better by giving them a set of disciplines that will allow them to avoid much of the misery of the world for themselves and their families. Finally, missionary work builds the Kingdom of God on Earth, expanding and strengthening the Church as an institution and a community. As the Church grows stronger it can more effectively carry out those tasks committed to it by God. So much for the internal perspective. Here I am far more interested in the messages that we give to potential converts. One way of thinking about this is to say that we offer Mormonism to the world as an answer to a question.…
So Who Gets a Press Conference in Front of the Tabernacle?
One of the aspects of the Church’s recent statement to OW regarding the priesthood session that strikes me as eminently sensible is the insistence that OW not invite media on to Temple Square and confine their demonstrations to public property. It’s worth noting that the letter didn’t say that OW members could not come on to Temple Square as worshipers. It said that they couldn’t conduct a press conference in front of the Tabernacle during a General Conference session. There are three reasons that this makes good sense to me. First, inviting television crews onto Temple Square and holding a press conference during a session of General Conference actually is inconsistent with the spirit of the event. This really isn’t a difficult call. We are not talking about wearing pants to church. (Something that I didn’t even realize was a thing until it was a thing.) We are talking about a media event. On Temple Square. In front of the Tabernacle. During a General Conference Session. The claim that this is not going to be inconsistent with an atmosphere of worship isn’t the sort of thing one can say with a straight face. I understand that one might think the cause is more important than the atmosphere of worship, but it doesn’t seem unreasonable for the Church to prioritize the latter over the former. Second, allowing OW to hold a second press conference on the threshold of the Tabernacle puts…
A Discarded Draft
The following draft of a letter was discovered in the waste paper basket at the Church Public Affairs Office:* Dear Sister Kelly, We have received your request for a ticket to attend the Priesthood Session of April General Conference. The purpose of this session is to provide instruction from Church leaders specifically for men and boys. Each year the Church receives more requests for tickets from men and boys than it can accommodate. Accordingly, your request for tickets is refused. We appreciate your desire to hear from Church leaders, however, and invite you to watch the live broadcast of the meeting and the other sessions of General Conference. We welcome your interest in finding ways that the Church can better serve its female members. God loves and values all of his children, and the Church is always eager to find additional ways of advancing His work. By divine revelation, the priesthood is conferred only on men. The leaders of the Church lack the authority to change this doctrine and practice. You are welcome on Temple Square to worship with the Saints as part of General Conference. However, Temple Square is not an appropriate forum for media events aimed at criticizing Church doctrine and practice. Accordingly, we ask that you not invite members of the media onto Temple Square for any events that you might wish to organize. We also ask that you not organize any other public protest on Temple…
Some Ironies of Continuing Revelation
I was recently having a conversation with an orthodox Jewish law professor about the challenges faced by Mormons and orthodox Jews as they seek to adapt their religion to life in liberal societies. He was struck by the parallels between Jewish and Mormon discussions, and then said, “Of course, I assume that the idea of continuing revelation makes things much different for Mormons.” His comment got me thinking, and here’s what I wrote in response: Chaim, You’d think that ideas of continuing revelation would make discussions of change — including basic theological and liturgical change — easier for Mormons, and in a sense it does. However, there are two reasons that the idea of continuing revelation provides less flexibility than many folks — including many Mormons — assume. First, very early on in the church ideas of personal revelation and continuing revelation led to antinomian chaos. This isn’t that surprising to anyone that has studied the history of religion. In Mormonism the solution was the creation of an institutional structure — the church — that gets endowed with a great deal of theological significance and that limits the kinds of legitimate claims one can make for revelation. Mormons believe that God talks to everyone, but we don’t believe that God will talk to me for someone else, unless God has given me some responsibility for that person, generally through the ecclesiastical structure of the church. There is thus less room…
Why Equality is a Feeling
This is a little long. Bear with me. “Equality is not a feeling” has emerged as something of a slogan among some Mormon feminists. It’s offered as a reply to those who insist that many (most?) Mormon women feel loved and valued within the Church, aren’t pushing for radical reforms, or the like. These women don’t feel unequal. But, equality is not a feeling. What might it mean to say that equality isn’t a feeling? It seems to me that there are two possible ways of understanding this claim. The first is that equality is an objective, empirical judgment rather than a normative or psychological judgment. This strikes me as wrong. Equality always involves normative judgment. To say that things are equal is not to say that they are the same. Rather it is to say that like things are being treated alike. We must make judgments, however, as to what makes two things alike. In doing this we pick out some characteristics as relevant and some as irrelevant. As Peter Westen noted more than thirty years ago in the context of constitutional adjudication, in arguments over equality it is our normative judgments about what to include and what to exclude – rather than the idea of equality or any brute empirical fact – that does all of the work.* The second way of understanding the claim that “equality isn’t a feeling” is to say that it is a normative…
Some Thoughts on the Inevitable Failure of the Ordain Women Movement
It’s hard to know the future, but I will hazard a prediction: the Ordain Women project will fail. If I understand its ambitions correctly, Ordain Women would define success as an announcement that the prophet, having followed the invitation of these faithfully agitating sisters, has gone to the Lord and has received a revelation that women are to be ordained to the priesthood. I don’t know if women will ever be ordained to the priesthood, but I would be shocked if this was to happen while any institutional breath breathed in the Ordain Women movement. There are two reasons for this. The first is that for pragmatic reasons Church leaders do not want to change basic doctrines or practices in response to what they see as attempts to publically embarrass the Church over its basic doctrines and practices. Doing so creates an incentive for others to seek to publically embarrass the Church. I suspect that Church leaders also worry that changing basic doctrines and practices in the face of public pressure erodes the moral authority of the Church if it is seen as another institution that can be pushed about by savvy political operators. The second reason, I believe, is far more important. I think that the members of the Quorum of the Twelve and the First Presidency are utterly sincere in carrying out their callings. I think that they do not regard the Church as theirs. They do not…