We talk about our Heavenly Father loving us, and our leaders say they love us, but sometimes it feels like they mean “us” in general, and not “me” in particular. We are told that almost any righteous man and woman can have a successful marriage if they are both committed, if both of them have enough faith to do everything right. [fn1] The particulars of the individuals, the quirks and preferences that make up our personalities, don’t much matter. And many couples in contented arranged marriages can testify to the viability of this idea. In the same way, any given community of saints within any arbitrarily drawn ward boundary has the potential to foster Zion within it. We don’t choose our wards, not really. We serve and worship where we are assigned. We learn to love each other in our particularity as we serve together through years. We are not just numbers, we are fellow saints who struggle and celebrate and mourn together. As we come to know each other, we develop compassion and charity. We learn to love. But we cannot allow ourselves to forget how arbitrary are those boundaries that foster these relationships. On Sunday the ward boundaries were changed throughout my stake. I’ve never experienced this before, and I was surprised at how devastated, how bereft I felt about being cut off from my ward family, the ward I have served in for the last three years,…
Category: Cornucopia
BMGD #31: Alma 43-52
Dam Comments
Too much attention to those awkward stones just adds to them and makes a dam, and I seriously don’t want to have to bring out the dynamite and blow it away.
BMGD #30: Alma 40-42
The Block
Some Sundays three hours is more like eternity squared. Discuss.
Book of Mormon Midterm Answers, part 2
Since these take a long time to write up, and the answers can be fairly dense, I’ve broken up the answers further. (Edit: Here is the original post without any answers, and answers part 1.) 18) On the back of this paper, provide a brief outline of 2 Nephi. Outlining is a tool useful at several levels of the text (book, chapter, verse), that can help one see logical connections in the text. Faulconer has an explanatory chapter on it here, and here’s what my quick sample outline of 2 Nephi looked like. 19) Who took a transliteration of Book of Mormon characters to see Charles Anthon? 20) Who helped Joseph translate early on, and switched a rock for the seer stone when Joseph wasn’t looking to test him? (See this transcript) 21) Who “borrowed” the 116 first pages and consequently lost them? 22) Who mortgaged and then mostly lost his home and farm for $3,000 to pay for the publication of the Book of Mormon? The answer to all of these is Martin Harris. I think all four questions were on the same test, likely weirding out students with the equivalent of 4 C’s in a row on a multiple-choice test. 23) Relative to when Lehi and his family left Jerusalem, when did Nephi begin to write the large plates? The small plates? If God wanted a record kept, why didn’t he command Nephi to start writing immediately when…
The Way We Teach Our Children Modesty
At the age of two, my daughter Axa could point out an immodest outfit in a shop window. At five, she added sleeves to the dress on the princess picture her babysitter had drawn for her. Although I don’t recall making any special effort to teach her about modesty, I was surprised and gratified that she understood the concept at such a young age. However, lately I’ve been having disquieted feelings when she brings up modesty, as I realize that something in the nuance of what I’ve taught has gone awry. And then just a few weeks ago, something happened that disturbed me. Axa (who’s now seven) was reading the Book of Mormon out loud to me. She hadn’t interjected a word until we came to this passage (from the Testimony of Joseph Smith, describing the appearance of the angel Moroni): He had on a loose robe of most exquisite whiteness. It was a whiteness beyond anything earthly I had ever seen; nor do I believe that any earthly thing could be made to appear so exceedingly white and brilliant. His hands were naked, and his arms also, a little above the wrists; so, also, were his feet naked, as were his legs, a little above the ankles. His head and neck were also bare. I could discover that he had no other clothing on but this robe, as it was open, so that I could see into his bosom.…
A Song of Embodiment
Anything I’m able to think is because of everything I feel. And everything I feel is this wonderful embodiment, this solid physicality. Everything begins as physical sensations that are then co-opted, abstracted, and re-appropriated by the mind. Love in the abstract began as a warm feeling of security and comfort and a belly full of milk. It grows into trust and affection. From our instinctive feelings of approval and disapprobation we develop judgment, ethics, and morality. Everything we call virtuous began with some action that met our approval, that felt good, was beautiful or useful to ourselves or others and thus became codified by our society as morally worthy. [fn1] Our emotions are derived from our bodies and emotions drive our decisions and our actions. Reason is only used to justify ourselves after the fact. So how could we make any decision before embodiment? Before we felt, how could we know? We are here for an embodied experience: to feel, to learn, to decide, to know. I don’t know what I am apart from my body. It overwhelms my consciousness. And yet my body is not of my choosing. It is the first given of my experience. I like reading Carl Sandberg’s poem Phizzog [fn2] with my children: This face you got, This here phizzog you carry around, You never picked it out for yourself at all, at all—-did you? This here phizzog—-somebody handed it to you–am I right? Somebody said,…
Curious about Belief
Is the existence of God, for you, an obvious and uncontroversial feature of any common sense way of seeing the world? Has it always been so profoundly and straightforwardly given that you could not deny it? If so, then in what sense would we be right to say that such a belief is either praiseworthy or blameworthy?
BMGD #29: Alma 36-39
The Temple and The Tempest
Shakespeare’s been critical for me at critical junctures in my life. In Mormonism where The Bard is revered, I think this is common. In Junior High Hamlet was the gift of language that bootstrapped the monkey into a meaningful world. Celebrating the Ides of March together with the woman I desperately wanted to marry reversed the obvious set-up for a tragedy. It’s a memorial my family continues to celebrate each year with a brief family Shakespearapalooza. This last week has been filled with Shakespeare, culminating last night with a dream date my wife took me on to the Royal Shakespeare Company’s performance of The Tempest at Stratford-Upon-Avon. The artistic detail of the play was brilliant; Prospero mildly interesting and passable; Miranda simplistic and dull; Sebastian (a woman) very genuine and convincing; Ariel completely mesmerizing, haunting, and utterly unforgettable. Taken together it was a transformative production that upheld the troupe’s “royal” reputation. All of this is mere intro. What inspires me to write is theatre itself – the way a well-written play is so essentially adaptable, open to reinterpretation in ways that reveal – either anew or for the first time – what genuinely lies in the text. The word is perhaps infinite in its ability to speak contemporaneously, in part because of its symbiotic relationship to the richness of human experience. I’ve never met anyone who decried theatres, directors, or actors and actresses (merely) for a reinterpretation – the idea…
Exploring Mormon Thought: Sin
I’ve struggled with what to write in response to chapter 5 of The Problems of Theism and the Love of God. Why? Because, except when it comes to nit-picky details, I’m in full agreement with Ostler for once. Indeed, I applaud this chapter and am eager to see how he moves forward with it in the next chapters. What to write, then? For fun, I think I’ll just insert here, as a kind of confirmation of what Ostler has to say, my own recent written reflections on Romans 1—a passage he cites on page 162. Here is the passage in its entirety, with my own translation: It’s immediately within preaching, within the transfer of faith, that divine righteousness is revealed—as it’s written: “The one who’s righteous will live by faith”—while divine wrath is revealed from heaven against all lack of divinity, against all human unrighteousness, against all those who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. What’s known of God is manifest among them, because God has made it manifest to them: his eternal power and divine nature—things indiscernible since the creation of the world—have been understood and discerned through the things he’s made. So they’re without excuse. Though they knew God, they didn’t glorify him as God or give thanks to him; rather, they grew vain in their thinking, and their senseless hearts were darkened. In a word, professing wisdom, they became fools. And they have economized God’s glory by making…
A Finite Population?
So how many people do we think will exist in the whole of humanity throughout our history?
BMGD #28: Alma 32-35
Business Week’s erroneous claim about LDS charitable giving
Caroline Winter’s new article is a must-read. She examines many facets of the church’s estimated income, its property ownership, and its use of funds. I thought many portions of it were very, very good. Readers seem especially focused on a few key portions of the article. However, one of her key fact claims is based on a factual error. Here is why. Winter writes that: According to an official church Welfare Services fact sheet, the church gave $1.3 billion in humanitarian aid in over 178 countries and territories during the 25 years between 1985 and 2010. A fact sheet from the previous year indicates that less than one-third of the sum was monetary assistance, while the rest was in the form of “material assistance.” All in all, if one were to evenly distribute that $1.3 billion over a quarter-century, it would mean that the church gave $52 million annually. A recently published article co-written by Cragun estimates that the Mormon Church donates only about 0.7 percent of its annual income to charity; the United Methodist Church gives about 29 percent. If true, this is pretty damning information. The LDS church takes in billions of dollars (Winter estimates about $8 billion annually) and gives merely $50 million a year to charity. But is that claim accurate? Winter’s “recently published article co-written by Cragun” with this estimate appears to be this article, which was published in Free Inquiry, the quarterly magazine of…
O Pioneer! Book Review of Villages on Wheels
The 4th of July is a week of intense patriotic celebration in Provo. Freedom Festival is the biggest party of the year here. People go all out with block parties, fireworks, parades, races, and art contests. We end the week exhausted. As a relative newcomer to Utah Valley, I’ve wondered why is Independence Day is such a big deal here. It turns out that Provo is simply upholding pioneer tradition: “Both Mormons and American travelers commemorated July 4th with elaborate patriotic observances. They generally stated at daybreak with gun and cannon salutes, and continued with cheers, speeches, toasts, feasts, parades, dancing, and drinking whatever spirits were available” (Kimball 82). As we come up on the 24th, it is the perfect time to return to a few books about pioneers. My favorite has for years has been Wallace Stegner’s The Gathering of Zion: The Story of the Mormon Trail (1964), which I never have in my home because my copy is always on loan to one friend or another. I love Stegner’s writing and his straightforward approach to the struggles and faith of the pioneers. By telling complete stories, Stegner allows us to see the pioneers wrestling with doubt and faith as they wrestled their way across the plains, and as a result, those early saints become more real and more worthy of veneration than I find them to be in more selective, faith promoting accounts. The one drawback for me…
BMGD #27: Alma 30-31
Romantik
Heinrich von Ofterdingen by Novalis is one of the founding documents of Romanticism. The novel is perhaps most famous for the title figure’s vision of a blue flower in the first chapter. What is not as well known is how Heinrich’s family drama is also the ecclesiology of Mormonism.
Ecology of Intellectual Culture: Bootstrapping Mormon Studies, Part IV
Intellectual life is a social endeavor, involving both a community of participants and institutions that support their activities. In this post I discuss some of the key elements of the ecosystem that is needed for a flourishing intellectual culture. In my view, these key elements include scholars, conferences, publishers and publications, academic positions, and graduate programs. At the moment, while Mormon Studies has some version of each of these elements, they are all quite limited and in many cases rather rudimentary. Yet in standard ecological fashion, each of these elements symbiotically depends on the others, and I’ll discuss why. It is an interesting question, then, how to get from our current situation of a few scattered sparks to one of established intellectual vitality. Perhaps the primary components of an intellectual culture are people who think, and thoughts. While thinkers are not necessarily associated with a school, I will call them scholars. While our thoughts may simply take place in our heads, to form part of the culture, they must be expressed and shared. At an informal level, they may be expressed and shared among friends, in informal discussion groups, on blogs, or, say, in Sunday School discussions. In a robust intellectual culture, however, thoughts must take a more robust form, as presentations and publications. Hence an intellectual culture needs conferences and similar fora for presentations, and it needs publishers who are interested in publishing Mormon Studies and capable of both…
Exploring Mormon Thought: Original Sin
Chapter 4 of Exploring Mormon Thought (Vol. 2) surveys and critiques traditional approaches to the doctrine of original sin. Chapter 5 will give us Ostler’s own approach to the problem. I haven’t read chapter 5 yet (Joe will address this chapter soon), but chapter 4 has got me thinking about original sin.
SMPT Reminder/Travel Funding/Arrington Lecture Update
The July 16th submission deadline for the Society for Mormon Philosophy and Theology’s 2012 Annual Meeting is approaching. The conference will be held at Utah State University, September 20-22, with the theme, “Theology of The Book of Mormon.” For a fuller discussion of the theme and submission information, see the Call for Papers. Some funding is available, on a competitive basis, to defray travel costs for student presenters of up to $650 each, based on the merit of the proposal and the distance traveled. Details on travel awards also appear on the Call for Papers page. Those considering attending may also be interested in another event that weekend in Logan: Terryl L. Givens, “The Prophecy of Enoch as Restoration Blueprint” 18th Annual Leonard J. Arrington Mormon History Lecture Thursday, September 20th, 7pm Logan Tabernacle, 50 N. Main Street Givens will be speaking on the unique theology of the prophecy of Enoch in the Book of Moses, including its portrayal of Zion and of a God who weeps, and on the crucial role this revelation played in the early development of Joseph’s conceptions of the cosmos, of God, and of his own role as a prophet. The SMPT conference schedule will be arranged to encourage attendance at this event. Abstract and Bio from Arrington Lecture flyer (PDF, 1.8MB): “The Prophecy of Enoch as Restoration Blueprint” The prophecy of Enoch exerted an influence on the development of early Mormonism far out of…
The Threat of New Order Mormons
I’ve been struggling to articulate to myself the difficulties that true blue Mormons have with new order Mormons. I’m not satisfied with what I’ve been able to come up with, and I hope you will be able to help me work through this. The struggles of Mormons going through a faith transition to become new order Mormons or ex-Mormons is well documented within the bloggernacle. Through online communities they are able to find support and understanding that they may even be afraid to ask for in their families and congregations. My concern in this post is the true blue Mormon. Are new order Mormons justified in being hesitant to come out to them? While some saints will be welcoming and loving of all people who want to be affiliated with the church in any capacity, I think a great deal of regular saints feel threatened by new order Mormons, and as a result have less than charitable reactions. I can think of three areas in which a regular saint may feel threatened by a new order Mormon: 1. By being selective about which doctrines and practices to believe and adhere to, the new order Mormon is in effect denying the authority of the church (and by extension, God) to guide or mandate them in those aspects of their lives. This is seen as an act of blasphemy, and may be a taken as a personal affront by those who have…
A Book of Silence
I want to recommend Sara Maitland’s A Book of Silence. I don’t know what God wants with you. But, with time, I feel more confident about what he wants from me. For a long time, I thought his silence was a rebuff. Now, I’m more convinced it’s an invitation to do likewise. The silence seems like something he wants to share.
EFY, hair, and culture
The bishop told Amadou he would not be allowed to attend EFY unless the braids were cut. Amadou comes from Mali. His family settled here a few years ago and became members of the Church.
BMGD #26 Alma 23-29
Book of Mormon Midterm Answers Part 1
I posted the questions last week. It’s taken me much longer than I thought to hunt down my references/handouts/links, so I’m breaking the answers into two parts. 1) Nephi says several times that knowing “the things of the Jews” can help us understand Isaiah. Similarly, the “things of the Jews” can help us understand the Book of Morm on. Briefly explain two specific examples of “things of the Jews” that help us understand either Isaiah or the Book of Mormon. (4 pts.) We talked about lots of these in class. What’s interesting to me is immediately after declaring “the things of the Jews” to be the key, he also says he deliberately has “not taught [his] children after the manner of the Jews;” (2 Nephi 25:5-6) 2 a) How do we know that when Jacob and Joseph were ordained “priests and teachers” they were not being ordained to our Latter-day priesthood offices of priest and teacher? 2 b) Why then are they called teachers? (Handout, discussed in class. 4 pts.) First, it’s anachronistic to read our modern priesthood divisions back into the scriptures willy-nilly. Even the way we have them today is highly variable and has changed. (See Hartley, W. G. (1996) “From Men to Boys: LDS Aaronic Priesthood Offices, 1829-1996” Journal of Mormon History. vol. 22 no. 1) Second, I think Joseph Fielding Smith has the right reasoning; we ordain men to one office or another, not both. The…
Are Book Reviews Scholarship? Explosive Tensions Within the Mormon Studies Review
Perhaps the main problem with the Mormon Studies Review, which led to this awful explosion in the last couple of weeks, can be crystallized by looking at the titles it has held over the years and thinking for a moment about what they mean. At first, it was the FARMS Review of Books on the Book of Mormon. It then became the FARMS Review of Books, the FARMS Review, and finally, just the Mormon Studies Review, expanding out the “MS” and dropping the “FAR” at the start. That is quite a journey, and expresses a range of personalities whose conflict with one another appears to have finally produced this explosion between Jerry Bradford and Dan Peterson. The scope changed dramatically from just books dealing with the Book of Mormon at first, to all kinds of stuff related to Mormonism at the end. But those changes in scope were pretty straightforward. The complicated part is a matter of genre. The Review started as a publication that specifically did book reviews, and ended up as a publication that invites “substantial freestanding essays that make further contributions to the field of Mormon studies.” And my hunch is that Jerry Bradford would want to emphasize these freestanding essays as the core of the publication going forward, even though they are mentioned second, as an “also” in the current description of the journal on the Maxwell site. But see, book reviews are just a very…
BMGD #25 Alma 17-22
Book of Mormon Midterm
We’ve arrived in early Alma, and so, as I did for my BYU New Testament class I taught, I provide here some questions taken from the midterms and finals of the two Book of Mormon classes I taught in 2004 and 2006. Both sections covered 1 Nephi-Alma 29, but one was a freshman section and one an RM section. These exams were open-scripture, but as with the New Testament exam, open scripture certainly did not equate to easy. I wanted to test if students were reading, thinking, and able to make use of the critical-thinking and other skills we were learning in class and homework assignments. Sometimes I just wanted to see if students could read closely and think coherently. How do YOU do on these?
David and Uriah: A Meditation
The most upsetting thing about the story of David and Bathsheba (2 Samuel 11) is not what he did with Bathsheba, bad as that was. That he was intrigued with her is unremarkable, even natural; she was totally hot, after all. Bringing her to the palace is a different story, disgraceful even if he had only sat her down for a chat, since her husband was away at war. Even as a phenomenally successful and revered king, David displayed the priorities of a ten-year-old who’s been hanging out with bad company. I would have said “of an adolescent,” except that apparently David wasn’t much past adolescence when he volunteered to risk his life for the nation of Israel, declining the sword and armor of King Saul, to take on Goliath, the decorated, feared, and enormous champion of the Philistine army, with only a leather strap and five smooth stones. He had come a long way since then. The adultery that came next is the greatest sin next to murder, though in my mind still that next step down to murder is quite a doozy. The most despicable thing is not merely that he ordered Uriah killed, but the way he did it. If you’re going to do something as appalling as murder, you can at least show some decent form. David wasn’t man enough to kill Uriah himself. He didn’t even do him the honor of hiring a hit man.…