Participants in Richard Bushman’s and Terryl Givens’ Summer Seminar on the Gold Plates will be presenting papers tomorrow, Thursday, August 18th, at BYU. Here are the details: The Mormon Scholars Foundation Annual Summer Symposium on Mormon Culture The Cultural History of the Gold Plates Thursday, August 18, 2011 B037 Joseph F. Smith Building Brigham Young University, Provo, UT Morning Session 9:00 AM Welcome by Richard Bushman, Invocation TBA 9:15 AM “Worlds of Discourse, Plates of Gold: Joseph Smith’s Plates as Cultural Catalysts”—Stephen Taysom 9:45 AM “Guard the Gold: Didactic Fiction and the Mainstreaming of Moroni”—Ben Bascom 10:15 AM “Fictionalizing Faith: Popular Polemics and the Golden Plates”—Jared Halverson 10:45 AM BREAK 11:00 AM “Artistic Depictions of the Gold Plates and the Material Cultural Inheritance”—Julie Fredericks 11:30 AM “Processing the Plates: The Presence and Absence of the Gold Plates”—Tyler Gardner 12:00 PM “”Wagonloads’: The Disappearance of the Book of Mormon’s Sealed Portion”—Rachael Givens 12:30 PM BREAK FOR LUNCH Afternoon Session 1:45 PM “Fantasy, Fraud and Freud: The Uncanny Gold Plates in 19th Century Newspaper Accounts”—Sarah Reed 2:15 PM “The Forbidden Gaze: The Veiling of the Gold Plates and Joseph Smith’s Redefinition of Sacred Space”—Elizabeth Mott 2:45 PM “The Notion of Ancient Metal Records in Joseph Smith’s Day”—Michael Reed 3:15 PM BREAK 3:30 PM “The Metallurgical Plausibility of the Gold Plates”—Caroline Sorensen 4:00 PM “Rediscovering Joseph Smith’s ‘Discovery Narrative’ in Southern Utah”—Christopher Smith 4:30 PM “In Consequence of Their Wickedness: The Decline and Fall of Mormon Seership, 1838-1900”—Rachel Gostenhofer A PDF version of the program is also available.
Category: Cornucopia
“What the Hell Is Happening in Somalia?” – Part 1
Ghedi, 13 years old, is trying to escape Mogadishu, the capital city of Somalia. Now, before I start Ghedi’s story, let’s get ourselves situated. Here’s Mogadishu relative to the rest of Africa: You can see that it’s a coastal city, on the southern end of the Horn of Africa (that’s the pokey piece of Africa jutting out right below the Saudi Arabia.) Let’s zoom in on that a little bit closer: Note that Kenya is just southwest of Somalia. That’s important because Ghedi, the hero of our story, is trying to get out of Somalia and into Kenya. Specifically, he’s trying to reach Dadaab, a refugee camp in Kenya, 445 miles away. The journey looks like this: To put that in perspective, here’s the trip from Independence to Nauvoo, shown at the same scale: That’s 257 miles, according to Google — just over half the distance that Ghedi will need to travel in order to reach Dadaab in Kenya. Or, to compare with the trek from Winter Quarters to Salt Lake City: That trip is 938 miles — about twice as far as Ghedi needs to go. So quick review: Independence to Nauvoo — 257 miles Mogadishu to Dadaab — 445 miles Winter Quarters to Salt Lake City — 938 miles But let’s get to the real issue: why is Ghedi (along with hundreds of thousands of others) trying to escape from his home in Somalia? Right now there are…
Grant Hardy’s Subject Problem
Criticisms of the Book of Mormon generally fall into one of two categories: objections to its historical claims on the one hand, and on the other critiques of its literary style. The two prongs are often combined in a single attack, for instance in the suggestion that the awkward style of the book reflects the naïve voice of an unlettered youngster. For their part, the book’s defenders also tend to elide the two categories, arguing that passages of inelegant prose are better understood as latent Hebraisms laboring under English syntax. Most of the time, of course, devout readers of the Book of Mormon simply ignore the book’s style altogether. Grant Hardy, in his new book Understanding the Book of Mormon, wants to uncouple the problems of historicity and literary merit. He brackets the first, setting aside the apologetic debates that have dominated Book of Mormon studies over the past four decades. Instead, he turns his attention to the content of the book, and in particular to its peculiar stylistic qualities—and on this matter if he is no apologist he is nevertheless a bit apologetic, conceding the book’s literary deficiencies but pleading on its behalf that, to borrow a Twainism, the Book of Mormon is “better than it sounds” (273). Hardy seeks to rehabilitate the literary reputation of the Book of Mormon by drawing attention to what he calls its “organizing principle”: “the fact that it presents itself as the work…
A Review of Grant Hardy’s Understanding the Book of Mormon
In On the Road with Joseph Smith: An Author’s Diary, we get a fascinating peek into Richard Bushman’s psyche during the time immediately after the publication of his monumental work, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling.
Grant Hardy Week at Times & Seasons
Times and Seasons is excited this week to present to you a roundtable series review of Grant Hardy’s recent book Understanding the Book of Mormon: A Reader’s Guide (Oxford 2010). The upcoming posts will not only acquaint you with book itself, but also provide our opinionated responses, and of course, allow you all to join in the fray. Best of all, Brother Hardy has agreed to participate in a 12 Questions Interview that will cap off the whole affair. To begin, for those of you not already familiar, we want to introduce the author himself. Dr. Grant Hardy is currently Professor of History and Religious Studies and the Director of the Humanities Program at the University of North Carolina at Asheville. After serving a mission in Taiwan he earned his B.A. in Ancient Greek at BYU followed by a PhD in Classical Chinese Language and Literature from Yale University. Professor Hardy is the recipient of numerous awards and accolades for both his teaching and scholarship. In his current post he received the 2002 Distinguished Teacher Award for the Arts and Humanities Faculty, and he was named to a Ruth and Leon Feldman Professorship for 2009-2010. He is also the recipient of a research grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Professor Hardy has published Worlds of Bronze and Bamboo: Sima Qian’s Conquest of History (Columbia 1999); The Establishment of the Han Empire and Imperial China (Greenwood 2005); and the first…
Belief
I know a lot of people swear by it, but I’ve never found “belief” to be a reliable way of describing what is (or isn’t) happening when I plant myself in a pew.
The Conference Showdown: Ward, Stake, or General?
It’s ward conference for us today. Ward conference is kind of a let-down for me. It doesn’t offer the short church session that we get from stake conference, and I can’t watch it on my laptop while eating not-Cap’n-Crunch in my pajamas. It’s pretty much just business-as-usual. But it’s not like the two-hour session of stake conference is really such a break when you’ve got to keep small kids quiet for the duration. Really, I’d rather have three hours of church with someone else watching my kids than to try and keep them quiet and attentive for two hours of sermons. However, stake conference does offer the Saturday adult session. I enjoy getting to go to spend an hour and a half in church on a Saturday evening. The talks don’t usually stick with me, but the experience is nice and relaxing. A pre-Sabbath Sabbath. And general conference is general conference. (My only question there is, am I supposed to capitalize it — “General Conference” — or is it okay to leave it lowercase? A quick Google search of lds.org shows both usages.) Of course, ward conference is different from behind the scenes. It’s one of the rare opportunities for ward and stake leadership to connect and align. I imagine that the same thing happens at stake conference between stake and general leaders. So here’s my questions: Which conference do you most look forward to? Which conference do you feel…
Sam Brunson Joins Times & Seasons
Times & Seasons is happy to announce that Sam Brunson has agreed to join our happy blogging family as a permanent contributor. For those unfamiliar with Sam, the introductory post on him can be found here and his posts to-date are available here.
The Tongues of Mortals
There’s a sidebar called “The Poetic Language of the King James Bible” in the August 2011 Ensign.
Scent of a Mormon
The program for the annual convention of the Modern Language Association regularly includes the following request: The Committee on Disability Issues in the Profession reminds attendees that refraining from using perfume, cologne, and other scented products will help ensure the comfort of everyone at the convention.
Call Me Uzzah
I just saw Stephen M (Ethesis)’s post on complaints about EFY and I liked his list of reasons people complain (particularly about church stuff). For those of you who aren’t clicking the link to his article, here’s the quick summary of his list: Legitimate — Complaining about a demonstrable problem with a demonstrable solution. Compulsive mental illness — What it sounds like. Compulsive snarkers — “People who are just constant nitpickers…” Thematic — “People who have adopted a cause, and thereafter have a stream of advice and complaints that circle around that as a theme…” People in pain — “Some people complain out of their pain, which is often rubbed wrong by many things.” People looking for an excuse to analyze and talk about something — What it sounds like. Bullies, who are using a complaint as an excuse to try and push people around. I’m fine with complaining as long as it serves a purpose (see #1 above). When I started a new college program a couple years ago, one of the Orientation Day activities was a personality test. The test determined that I am a “reformer”. I don’t mind that label. When I see institutional problems, I want to do what I can to correct them. The church parlance term for “reformer” is “ark steadier”. That one’s not quite so flattering. Of course, everyone who complains feels that their complaints fall under the “1. Legitimate” category. If I’m…
Rhetoric v. Practice
By the time I was, say, 15, my hair was long. Not long-for-a-good-Mormon-boy, but legitimately long. (Also, I listened to heavy metal and grunge–there may have been a causal relationship there, but I’m not sure which way it ran.) Both my music and my hair probably violated the Church’s rhetorical standards.[fn1] That is, per statements in various Church publications and general Mormon cultural rules, both were probably inappropriate. But, even though I braced myself for the inevitable condemnation, it never came. Seriously. I participated in the administration of the sacrament throughout my long-haired days. No young men’s leader, teacher, bishop, or other person in the Church ever asked me to cut my hair, or otherwise remarked negatively on my hair.[fn2] And, during all those years, I only got one lesson on evil music. And the Sunday School teacher kind of undercut his point by bringing, as a visual aid and example of music we shouldn’t listen to, one of his old Jethro Tull albums.[fn3] By not condemning me, my ward members blew a perfectly good chance for me to dismiss them (and, by extension, the Church) as small-minded, judgmental, and not worth my time. I’m entirely sure that this broad ability to focus on what is important (in my case, spiritual nourishment and social acceptance) isn’t observed universally. I had a convert on my mission very nearly go inactive because of a lesson where another ward’s bishop insisted that members who…
Things I’m Banning
Quoting from Monty Python. Sorry, it’s just not funny when I hear you do it. This applies double to anything about being turned into a newt and getting better. Same goes for Princess Bride. Yes, it’s quite possibly the greatest movie ever made, but I don’t care that you can recite the whole thing word for word. And I’m especially banning the use of British accents by non-British peoples who defy bans #1 and #2. I shouldn’t even have to include #2, because Wesley wasn’t British. Also, the word “bloody”. The grammar rule that says periods and commas go inside quotations marks, even when they don’t apply directly to the quoted material. Use sensible placement rules, like questions marks and exclamation points! No? The use of “No?” as an emphatic. The observation that, if I were British, I wouldn’t have to include #3 or #5 in my list. Cap’n Crunch. It’s like razor blades in apples. What sadist designed a kids’ breakfast cereal that shreds the insides of your cheeks and the roof of your mouth, and especially that thing that connects the underside of your tongue to the bottom of your mouth? Let me know if I missed anything.
A Primer on Mormon Prayer: Duration
Say that you want to pray. Say that you want to make prayer the center of your life rather than just an aid to it. Say that you want to take up prayer as an end in itself. Say that you understand prayer to be the formal practice of submitting your will to God’s. And say that you think prayer should be at least as much about listening as talking. How long should you pray?
Grant Hardy at Meridian
So I haven’t exactly been a fan of Meridian, but lately they have been running some very innovative stuff from Grant Hardy; see here and here. And I suppose you can discuss his essays in the comments here, if you play nice.
Loosely Coupled – An n-tier Religion
One goal in computer programming is to build “loosely coupled” systems. A loosely coupled system isn’t tied down to a specific platform. It makes it easy to take a program written for Macintosh and turn it into a program that can run on Windows or Linux or whatever other system you want. When a new platform appears (like the iPhone), a loosely coupled system makes it so that you can just swap a few parts around and make your program work on that new platform. Loose coupling is achieved by separating a system into “layers”. Take this blog, for example — timesandseasons.org (or most any website you visit) consists of three layers: the presentation layer, the data layer, and the business logic layer. Here’s a quick overview: The presentation layer is what you see on your screen right now. It determines what the site looks like, things like “put that picture montage at the top of the page” or “put this article in the middle of the page, with “Recent Comments” to the left and “Notes From All Over” to the right. The data layer is what stores all of the content for the site. It’s a database that contains all of our blog posts, all of your comments, and the various links that you see on the sidebars of this page. The business logic layer is what connects the presentation layer to the data layer. You come to this…
Borrowing and Betraying Culture
NPR did a piece yesterday evening on a speech school for Brooklyners (Brooklynites? Brookies?) who want to get rid of their accent. These are people who feel that speaking with a Brooklyn accent makes people perceive them poorly, and that it’s holding them back socially or professionally. Predictably, this leads to a kickback from the non-Brooklyners who feel that regional dialects are part of the richness and charm of our nation, as well as from other Brooklyners who feel that these ones are “betraying their culture”. Is culture something that can be betrayed? And do we have a responsibility to retain the distinctive identities of our birth? — My personal feeling is that it’s wrong for us to try and trap others within their cultures. When I hear my first-world compatriots lament the loss of obscure native cultures and languages, I can’t help but feel like these cultures are being treated as if they are sitting in a museum or zoo. Native cultures don’t exist for our amusement. When people forsake a native language for a popular language, they are doing it because they believe it will better their circumstances and opportunities in life. It’s wrong for me to expect Ainu speakers not to learn Japanese, or Kerek speakers not to learn Russian. There isn’t a lot of economic demand for Ainu. — When I was attending BYU ten years ago, an alumnus from an earlier generation wrote into the…
My Book of Mormon: The Musical Post
I know I’m totally late to The Book of Mormon: The Musical party. The media has done it to death, the Bloggernacle has discussed it to death, and the Tonys awarded it to death. It’s provide huge amounts of press to the Church and at least one great interview on The Daily Show. I read most of the press obsessively for about a month. However, if I go to New York this summer (a small but distinct possibility), I probably won’t see it. But not for the reasons that you might think. Or at least not entirely. See, I don’t like musicals. During the seven or eight years I lived in New York, I probably saw four or five Broadway shows. Thoroughly Modern Millie (first wedding anniversary), The Man of La Mancha (brother-in-law was in town, he wanted to see it), Hairspray (rush tickets with my wife and another couple), Movin’ Out (more on that later). Oh, and In the Heights, because my sister’s firm took summer associates there and they had a couple extra tickets. Of the shows we saw, Movin’ Out was probably my and my wife’s favorite. Movin’ Out was a musical featuring the music of Billy Joel (played by a rock band on a stage above the stage) and the choreography of Twyla Tharp (performed initially by the leads of several New York-based ballet and modern dance companies). After seeing it, I started looking at the…
A Primer on Mormon Prayer: Contributing
Over at BCC, Kristine opined last week on the subject of Mormon “intellectuals.” After admitting that knowing stuff can, in fact, be helpful, she concluded the following: “But this is the suspicion that was nagging at me during our conversation, and has not left me: intellectual gifts, like most of what we bring to the altar, are not nearly as valuable as we think they are.”
Valid Targets and the Muse
In 2001, when I lived in Tracy, California, I attended the tri-stake institute in Stockton, or maybe it was Manteca. The teacher was Pres. Anderson, an amazing CES instructor. (He was transferred out to Utah shortly after I left Tracy… Do any of you know what happened to him, or what he’s up to now?) Pres. Anderson started his lesson on the celestial kingdom with these words written on the chalkboard: Two pedigreed Siamese kittens — Cost: $100 Is that a great deal? I don’t know how much Siamese kittens normally cost, but apparently it’s more than $100 a pair. He asked the class who would buy the kittens (with the caveat that you couldn’t purchase them just to re-sell them). The cat lovers raised their hands, and the rest of us abstained. His point was that the value of any deal is dependent on our tastes. $50 for a pedigreed kitten is only a great deal if you’re the kind of person who would like to have a pedigreed kitten. He went on to draw a parallel between the kittens and the celestial kingdom, but I want to take the object lesson in another direction. If you consider that we each have one life to spend, what kind of “deal” would you like to get for your life? Scientific genius; nobel prize winner; contributor to the human understanding of the universe — Cost: One life Great parent; loved by…
Remember the name
What is the name of the church? (Pick up to three options). Try not to google it first. [poll id=”4″]
CNN blog reports from anti-Mormon Bizarro-Land
The CNN blog just ran a lengthy interview with Tricia Erickson, who makes a variety of arguments that no believing Mormon should ever be elected President. (Link here; note that in her interview she cites language from the endowment ceremony). Erickson’s arguments are predictably bad. She repeats the old evangelical anti-Mormon reasoning that Mormons are all basically automatons, and suggests that any Mormon politician would have a secret church-promoting agenda. It’s an argument straight out of The Manchurian Candidate (and reminiscent of the anti-Catholic arguments raised against JFK). Her argument, such as it is, is sufficiently silly and hyperbolic that it is essentially self-refuting. But what are the implications of the article’s prominent publication today — what does it say about the current political and religious discourse? I found it interesting for a couple of reasons. First, it surprised me that CNN would run this sort of thing. The article was a silly, self-serving (buy my book!) hack job. Erickson isn’t particularly accurate in her discussions of the church or church members. She also quotes lines from the temple, which CNN should know will bother church members. The decision to run this anyway suggests that there is still an audience for this kind of thing, which is unfortunate. Her article is interesting not for its content but as an illustration of attitudes which still exist. (Check the comments at CNN, if you dare. Yikes.) On the flip side, CNN also…
A Primer on Mormon Prayer: Aligning
What exactly is it that you are trying to practice when you practice prayer? In particular, what exactly is it that you are trying to practice when you practice prayer as an end in itself rather than as a means to some other end? I take two things as axiomatic with respect to the practice of prayer.
King Noah and Burdensome Taxes
A strain of popular Mormon thought appears to hold that a significant message derived from the story of King Noah is that taxes in excess of 20% are per se immoral, and drawing whatever inevitable conclusion follows from the current U.S. marginal tax rates. [fn1] It’s a fair application, I guess, of Nephi’s apply-the-scriptures-to-ourselves philosophy. Still, I can’t believe that this is Mormon’s, or, for that matter, God’s, purpose in relating this story. If it is, it’s a relatively sloppily-delivered point: for the most part, the rate of tax is irrelevant. [fn2] The rate only has relevance in relation to the base (that is, the set of things that are subject to the tax). Think about which tax would be more burdensome to you: (a) 35% of your income, less amounts you invest and save, or (b) 20% of your entire income (or, for some of you, (c) 15% of your net worth)? It’s not clear until we know your income and how much you invest and save, but there is the possibility that the higher marginal rate of tax will cost you less money. Mormon, however, neglected to let us know what the tax base was. He just tells us that Noah “laid a tax of one fifth part of all they possessed.” [fn3] So was Noah’s tax a property tax? an income tax? a consumption tax? a value-added tax? Did it tax their imputed income? Could they deduct…
A Primer on Mormon Prayer: Deciding
Prayer can be approached as a means or as an end. You’re tired of using God as a crutch to get wherever else you want to go and finally decide, throwing it all over, to just make God your explicit destination. Consecration it is. The kingdom of God or nothing.
The Bonds That Tie
Sometime while I was in the MTC, I started a list of things that were cool and that I didn’t want my mission to make me forget or turn my back on. I wrote things down on a loose sheet of paper that I kept, folded, in my journal. I’d love to see it now, to look at what 19-year-old me thought 21-year-old me (and, presumably, 35-year-old-me, knowing my self-absorption at the time) should be. Sadly, it fell out of my journal at some point long, long ago. But the list may or may not have included hair- and facial-hair styles, music, and literature. The list was at least a side and a half of the paper, so I’m entirely sure I had constructed a full 360-degree aesthetic for myself.
A Celestial Education?
Michelle Stone’s “Celestial Education” philosophy is seriously misguided and theologically dangerous.
A Primer on Mormon Prayer: Abiding
You know the feeling: you’re hungry for God. Your soul, restless, can find no rest. Your pillow’s warm on both sides.
NT Sunday School Lesson 26: Matthew 26:47-27:66; Mark 14:43-15:39; Luke 22:47-23:56; John 18-19
These study materials will focus on Matthew. Matthew 26 Verse 47: This crowd came from the temple priests, so it may have been the temple police rather than a mere mob. Verses 48-49: Just as it is today for many, a kiss on the cheek seems to have been a standard greeting, but it seems not merely to have been that. Ulrich Luz (Hermeneia commentary on Matthew, page 415-17) says that in first-century Palestine, the kiss was a sign of solidarity and reconciliation and, so, “One would hardly be able to say that the kiss of greeting was a completely normal and thus meaningless ritual in the Jewish society of that day.” For two millenia writers have taken this kiss to be the symbol of betrayal. The only alternate voice seems to have been that of Origen, who recognized that Judas was neither fully good nor fully evil and, so, probably vacillated in his feelings for the Savior (Luz 412). Verse 50: Does Jesus mean it when he refers to Judas as “friend”? Is he making a point by using a term of address that contrasts with “brother,” the usual form of address between the disciples? Instead, is he being ironic? Is he, perhaps, offering Judas an opportunity to repent? Is Jesus really asking Judas why he has come? What is the point of Jesus’ question? (Some translations take this as a statement—“Do what you’ve come for”—rather than a question.)…
A Primer on Mormon Prayer
A religious life is a life of prayer. Don’t skimp on this or, no matter how white your sepulcher, your insides will always just be full of dry bones.