Category: Cornucopia

NBA strikes deal with LDS Church for Jabari Parker

by Matt Evans • April 1, 2014 • 49 Comments

Today the NBA announced a landmark agreement with the LDS Church to ensure that Jabari Parker’s desire to serve a mission does not interfere with his draft prospects, saying the church has agreed to their proposal to call Parker to serve as a missionary in the city of the NBA team that drafts him. While the official statement is brief, sources close to the negotiations report that because the NBA considers Parker to be a certain star, league officials, including new commissioner Adam Silver, went to unprecedented lengths to ensure that Parker enters this year’s draft. The deal stipulates that Elder Parker will proselyte and live with missionary companions, like other volunteer Mormon missionares, except that, since Elder Parker will be an NBA player, he and his companion will attend all of the team’s practices and games. The NBA has even given permission for Elder Parker’s companion to sit on the team bench in missionary attire during games to comply with mission rules, and has guaranteed that the companion will be shown at least twice during every televised game. The league also made other concessions to secure the church’s cooperation, including donating a box suite for the local mission to use for entertaining investigators. Joe Dumars, President of Basketball Operations for the Detroit Pistons, is excited about the proposal, saying it raises Parker’s draft prospects even higher, “There’s not a GM in the league who wouldn’t like having two clean-cut Mormon missionaries…

As Much As I Know Anything

by Nathaniel Givens • March 31, 2014 • 28 Comments

“Out of curiosity, what makes you believe in Mormonism? Or God for that matter?” This is a question I got from a close friend, more or less out of the blue, the Wednesday before last in a Facebook conversation that had been—up to that point—mostly about how much I love Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files. It’s not like it’s the first time I’ve been asked that, but it’s a question I’ve struggled unsuccessfully to answer in the past. I’ve tried on more than one occasion to sit down and write out my reasons, but I always failed. Eventually I gave up. And then, last week, I found that the answer had been there all along. And it was pretty simple. Looking back, I’d say that was the problem. For all I love to write about epistemic humility, doubt, and uncertainty I have just about the simplest and most conventional Mormon testimony that it is possible to have. And maybe, in the past, I’ve been a bit ashamed to admit that there’s nothing special, profound, or unique about my testimony. I guess I just thought I was too good for my own testimony. That was half the problem, but there’s another half, too. My other dirty little secret is that for all the time I spend talking about doubt and uncertainty, when it comes to my religious faith I just don’t have serious doubts in the way that most people understand the…

Where is the door? How do WE knock?

by James Olsen • March 30, 2014 • 98 Comments

One of the gems of my mission was the opportunity to spend an evening with a Bishop from the RLDS (now Community of Christ) Church

So Who Gets a Press Conference in Front of the Tabernacle?

by Nate Oman • March 28, 2014 • 77 Comments

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…

Faith, Revelation, and Jewish Parallels

by Ben S. • March 27, 2014 • 11 Comments

Some Jewish reading recently has triggered some LDS thoughts and parallels. I jotted these down between lengthy organic chemistry homework sessions, so they’re less refined than I’d like, but still important to get out there. (I’m trying to shed my perfectionist writing tendencies.) James Kugel is an insightful and approachable Hebrew Bible scholar. He’s also an Orthodox Jew who retired from Harvard to go live in Israel. Kugel’s How to Read the Bible details how and why ancient and modern audiences understood the Bible differently, exposition which many people find disturbing or even undermining of faith.

Equal Means Something

by Julie M. Smith • March 24, 2014 • 102 Comments

It looks like one of the major responses that will be offered in the current discussion of women’s roles is that “equal does not mean the same.”

When Civil Disobedience Isn’t

by Kaimi Wenger • March 22, 2014 • 45 Comments

(Disobedient, that is.) As you may have noticed, the recent discussions about Ordain Women and related projects such as Wear Pants to Church Day have generated a complicated set of responses, many of them very critical. We saw critics labeling these women apostates or “dumb feminist bitches.” A few outliers even threatened violence against organizers. These harsh reactions start from a baseline that women who want to wear pants to church, or attend General Priesthood Meeting, or even (gasp) be ordained to the Priesthood, are obviously disobeying a core gospel principle, by disagreeing with existing church policy and culture. They are sometimes cast as protesters taking a stand through civil disobedience, in a way that violates Mormon norms. But is disagreement really wrong? Is this really disobedience? There is of course a great tradition of Civil Disobedience in Civil Rights activism, and it has generally involved public rulebreaking. Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks clearly broke laws. And these were invidious and evil laws, absolutely; but it was also clear that sitting at that Woolworth’s counter or that bus seat meant breaking a law. Hence the name, civil disobedience. But the women of PANTS were not actually breaking any rules. It was not Rob-a-Bank Day, or even Drink a Latte Day. It was Wear Pants Day, and pants are allowed! How crazy is it that these women endured a massive outpouring of public abuse for doing something that doesn’t break…

A Discarded Draft

by Nate Oman • March 19, 2014 • 61 Comments

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…

A Kingdom of Priests

by Julie M. Smith • March 19, 2014 • 21 Comments

On 30 March 1842, Joseph Smith spoke to the Relief Society. He said that he “was going to make of this Society a kingdom of priests as in Enoch’s day— as in Paul[‘]s day” (Citation).

Some Ironies of Continuing Revelation

by Nate Oman • March 17, 2014 • 21 Comments

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…

Human Evolution: Problems and Possibilities

by Nathaniel Givens • March 17, 2014 • 35 Comments

I agree with Jonathan Green’s description of how most Mormons tend to think about evolution vs. creation. To recap, we tend to: Affirm an active role for God in the creation of human beings Accept basic science as it relates to genetics, natural selection, geology, etc. Reject attempts to force an either/or choice between points 1 and 2. As a general rule, Mormons are happy to embrace science and religion, and do not see a necessary conflict between the two. When it comes to the usual hullaballoo over religion vs. science, this is certainly correct. There just isn’t any particular reason to care very much whether God created Adam and Eve using natural selection or some other means. However, there is a more subtle conflict. It exists between the continuity of the evolution narrative and the way we talk about humanity as a discrete category. Here is one example of the problem from a typical statement of Brigham Young’s: The ordinance of sealing must be performed here man to man, and woman to man, and children to parents, etc., until the chain of generation is made perfect in the sealing ordinances back to Father Adam. There must be this chain in the holy Priesthood; it must be welded together from the latest generation that lives on the earth back to Father Adam. [J.D. 18:213 emphasis added] Clearly Brother Brigham had in mind a sense of completeness that can only exist…

The Desolation of Noah: An Unexpected Explanation

by Kaimi Wenger • March 13, 2014 • 38 Comments

It seems like we’re being inundated with discussions about Noah lately. A major motion picture is set to discuss the tale of Noah and the Ark — but the picture will also include an unusual disclaimer stating that it shouldn’t be seen as the real Noah story. Meanwhile, the Noah story itself faces a rising tide of criticism, with Bill Nye (the Science Guy) publicly ridiculing the story on national television. In response to that wave of criticism, some writers have floated defenses of the Noah account. For instance, at Meridian Magazine, writer Ronald Millett gives an in-depth discussion of how the Noah account can be reconciled with science — and therefore, how its critics are all wet. Given the extent to which the discussion has made a splash, I thought I might dip in a toe as well. Ahem. So. Millett is, of course, on the right track. Obviously the Noah account is real; and obviously as well, there are significant gaps between the stated account and the understandings of modern science. Therefore, it is incumbent on us to find a way to reconcile the two. And Millett makes several suggestions that show the work he put in to the reconciliation. He notes that miracles, by definition, are not scientific. He notes that the Bible contains a lot of accounts of physically improbable events, such as manna. And finally, he suggests a variety of answers to specific criticisms. For…

Fallibility, Trust, and Commercial Development

by Nathaniel Givens • March 10, 2014 • 108 Comments

I’ve written about the fallibility of our leaders before (here, here, and here) because I think it’s important for us as members to develop greater spiritual independence and because the unrealistic expectations held for the leaders (as often by the critics as by the devout) set people up for unnecessary disappointment. But the concept of fallibility, like the even trendier concept of doubt, can be overplayed. Leaders are fallible, yes, but that doesn’t preclude room for trust. The proximate cause of my ruminations was the announcement of the Church’s addition of a chapel and a commercial apartment tower next to the Philadelphia temple site. Based on reporting in the New York Times and Philadelphia Inquirer, local reception of the proposed projects is quite enthusiastic. From the NYT: [Philadelphia’s] deputy mayor for economic development… praised the church for taking a step that private developers were less likely to tackle, that is, committing to such a project without more evidence of economic vitality in the surrounding neighborhood. From the Inquirer: They [the Church’s developments] could end up as one of the most civic-minded projects now being built in Philadelphia. The Inquirer was notably less enthusiastic about the aesthetics of the project (“The collection of architectural pastiches promises to be one of the weirder ensembles produced in 21st-century America outside of Las Vegas.”), but from everything I’ve been able to determine the residents of Philadelphia are happy to have the projects, both for…

What are the best Ensign articles?

by Ben S. • March 9, 2014 • 25 Comments

We have four missionaries in our ward, with ipads. They have complete access to the LDS.org library, but (per their mission president’s wishes) little else in terms of reading/enrichment material. I keep mentioning different books, as is my wont (see here, here, and here), and telling them “all you need to do is read,” so they’ve been frustrated at the apparent lack of access to “the good stuff.”

Ordain Women – the Joke Is On You

by Alison Moore Smith • March 8, 2014 • 63 Comments

I just read the “hilarious” post on Andy Kano’s blog titled: Some LDS Women Want The Priesthood? Well LDS Men Have Some Requests Too. If you don’t want to read it, in a nutshell it’s a “comical” slapdown of Ordain Women in which he demands equality by, you know, providing a room where men can nurse their babies (I mean who wants to see all that exposed chest hair!), adding padded priesthood room chairs, and equalizing other disparities that he, apparently, thinks (in that über gut-busting way) are equivalent to not being able to share in the power of God and all that silly stuff that no one really wants to be part of. To be clear, I have a wee tendency to be sarcastic. And I like parody and can enjoy good satire. I guess that’s what Andy was trying to accomplish. But I think he fails because he’s part of the church “power structure” ridiculing those who aren’t and who sincerely feel disenfranchised (to use an overwrought term). It’s pretty hard to pull of that kind of “humor.” Apparently Andy has received scads of comments from myriad perspectives. Enough that he appears to have added a couple of caveats at the end. In a single paragraph he says both this: I realize that my post is dismissive to the topic of female ordination without showing any empathy. Sometimes feelings get hurt when a person tries to be funny…

Why Equality is a Feeling

by Nate Oman • March 7, 2014 • 102 Comments

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…

Supernatural Selection

by Jonathan Green • March 7, 2014 • 77 Comments

If I had to estimate what the median Mormon adult currently thinks about the origin of life, or the model that the church as an institution is most comfortable with, I would describe it as non-exclusive evolution through supernatural selection.

The Ninety and Nine

by Rachel Whipple • March 5, 2014 • 7 Comments

Christ can only go out after the lone lamb if he has some confidence that the other ninety-nine are in safe pastures, a protected flock.

“I want to do it.” Priesthood, Care, and a Little Girl.

by Chris Henrichsen • March 4, 2014 • 61 Comments

It was the day before the first day of school. That meant is was time for the annual “back-to-school” father’s blessings. This has been a tradition in our house, as it is with many families. However, that year felt a little different. Todd, my oldest , was starting middle school. Geneva, my youngest, was starting full-day Kindergarten. It is a year of transition. Shem, the new 4th grader, went first. I will not go into the details of the blessings themselves, but I love the intimacy of such blessings. I love the feel of their hair as I place my hands up their head. My hands on their head often reminds me of how little they really still are. Geneva was next. A year before we were very nervous about her education. However, her speech had improved greatly and we now feel that she is ready to conquer Kindergarten…and the world. After I said “amen,” Geneva jumped up. Beaming, she said, “I want to do it.” She was standing by the chair…ready to assist in the blessing of her brother Todd. And she was pumped and ready to go. She had seen people at church during the setting apart of presidencies. Once a president or counselor is set apart, they join in with the circle for the next blessing. Geneva was ready to do the same. Or maybe she has been reading Stapley and Wright and she knew that girls…

Awkward Discourse, Awkward Practice

by James Olsen • March 3, 2014 • 23 Comments

Let me say up front that I’m a big fan of the Church’s new Gospel Topics section. And the most recent entry “Becoming Like God” is perhaps my favorite. I thought the author contextualized the topic well, and I especially liked the section entitled “How do Latter-day Saints envision exaltation?” In part because of the nature of the topic, and in part because the author courageously included two full paragraphs on our Heavenly Parents, however, this article manifests our incongruent, sometimes incoherent, and at the least wholly awkward way of discussing all things women in the Church. There’s nothing special about this awkwardness showing up in this particular article – as I just mentioned, the author was courageous in candidly discussing Heavenly Mother. Unfortunately, this awkwardness seems to show up in nearly everything we say as a Church. To be specific: I find directly analogous the way we talk about and treat women generally and the way “Becoming Like God” conspicuously switches back and forth from noting how significant it is that “we have heavenly parents” to speaking only of Heavenly Father, referring to Him as if a single parent involved in our eternal progression. It’s certainly enough to make reason stare. We awkwardly go from heralding the RS and how active and worthwhile our sisters are to upholding patently unequal governance and practices of ritual participation. Just as we go awkwardly from exalting the critical importance of the priesthood…

“I am glad we pay our tithing.”

by Chris Henrichsen • February 28, 2014 • 42 Comments

My wife Lyndee got an email at work a few weeks ago. It turns out that they have been paying her the wrong amount. They have been paying her significantly less than they should have been paid They had placed her incorrectly on the pay scale. Lyndee has two bachelors degrees and they were only paying her for one. We knew this was the case but she had been told that this was how the district paid new teachers. This development will move her over two columns on the school districts pay scale. Somebody had told her that the district only paid for additional degrees or credits received AFTER one starts teaching. This was discouraging since she is currently our only full-time income and she deserves even more than the new revised amount. I had even been told that if I taught for the school district (my plan for next year), they would start me at the bottom of the pay scale and not count any of my degrees beyond my bachelors. Guess what? That also is not the case. Given the rough shape of our school district and the numerous voices who had confirmed that the district started everyone at the bottom (as they had been doing with Lyndee), we had little reason to question the supposed policy, though it was discouraging. However, we are happy that it is not the policy at all. In one afternoon, Lyndee’s salary…

An Answer for Daniel Peterson

by Julie M. Smith • February 28, 2014 • Comments Off

Brother Peterson, You asked a question on your blog that I will answer here.

An Offhand Apologia of Sorts, and some Reflections

by Ben S. • February 26, 2014 • 51 Comments

I exchange emails with a good number of LDS people. Some of them are simply looking for information, a pointer to the right article or scripture or background. Some of them are finding their spiritual footing to not be as firm as it used to be, which is highly disconcerting. No one enjoys just trying to stay afloat while the waves keep breaking over you. One such exchange recently ended with a personal question, given X, Y, and Z, why do *you* stay? It was a busy day, and I only had five minutes (dangerous to write something serious so spontaneously), but I wanted to give my interlocutor something. Since several people have found it helpful, here’s my quick response, edited slightly for clarity and detail.

Thanking God’s Advocates, the Promoters of the Cause

by Nathaniel Givens • February 24, 2014 • 27 Comments

Today in Gospel Doctrine I played the role of Devil’s advocate. I spent the last 10 or 15 minutes leading a discussion about the children who died when God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, when God sent the Flood, when Christ died on the cross and Nephite cities were burned, buried, and sunk, and when Alma and Amulek watched as women and children were burned to death before their eyes. Several of the commenters sought to defend God’s justice using familiar arguments (like the idea that there are some things worse than death) or evasions (like the idea that maybe there were no children in Sodom who were not already engaged in or tainted by sin). Some of these arguments make more sense than others to me, but for me no combination makes the problem go away entirely. The whole idea of using modern reasoning to try and justify these stories seems futile given the existence of ancient explanations that are, themselves, just as bad. 10 And when Amulek saw the pains of the women and children who were consuming in the fire, he also was pained; and he said unto Alma: How can we witness this awful scene? Therefore let us stretch forth our hands, and exercise the power of God which is in us, and save them from the flames. 11 But Alma said unto him: The Spirit constraineth me that I must not stretch forth mine hand; for…

Compassion-and-service

by Rosalynde Welch • February 23, 2014 • 13 Comments

I recently accepted a new calling in my ward. I’m now the compassionate service leader in the Relief Society. It’s been a good change from my previous calling as gospel doctrine teacher; I’m still relatively new in the ward, and this calling allows me to meet and know the people I worship with more intimately. There is a self-interested angle to this: every so often I cause a little trouble in my wards, or contemplate doing so, and I’ve found that when I know and love individual people I can get away with saying more. Plus, you know, once in a while the service I organize does actually bring some love and support into people’s lives — which is the whole point, after all. Over the past week our ward has whipped up some classic, casserole-style compassionate service. A new family moved in, and several days later a member of that family suddenly became very ill, resulting in week-long ICU stay. We barely knew these people — indeed, I hadn’t even met them yet — but the ward sprang into action, and visits, meals, childcare, priesthood blessings, and lots of fasting and prayer were freely offered. My tiny part in all of this was to organize the meal deliveries, a task that took only a few minutes thanks to an email network and a convenient website. Ward members responded willingly, and I do believe that we ministered to this distressed…

We’ve All Been Set Up

by Frank McIntyre • February 21, 2014 • 22 Comments

We’ve all been set up for failure. Consider the plan: go to Earth and obey the commandments. How likely is that to turn out well? Add in that part with Adam, Eve, and the fruit and I think it is pretty clear that this was a set up to force us to… turn to God. Failure makes us humble. Repentance changes our hearts. Which is the goal: a broken heart and a contrite spirit. So when someone complains about a standard being too high or that we are setting people up for failure by expecting things like chastity, honesty, modesty, tithing or whatever else. Well, they may be right. Failure, after all, was part of the plan. (this post owes debts to, but no has no claims on, Nathaniel’s post here and the fireside speaker in my ward last week).

Success in Life

by Rachel Whipple • February 19, 2014 • 25 Comments

My daughter just turned 12, and her new Young Women’s advisor and the one other Beehive in the ward came over to introduce her to the program, give her a slew of pamphlets, and welcome her to Young Women. After they left, I read through the Guidebook for Parents and Leaders of Youth that they had left for me. It is a nice little booklet. In the section “Role of Parents” it states: “Your sons and daughters are children of God who have great potential. Although the Church has many leaders and resources to help them, you as their parents have the primary responsibility to help them succeed. the Church’s programs and materials for youth, described in this guidebook, are designed to assist you as you help your children develop the skills and attributes needed for success in life.” And that sounds good. But remembering Craig’s piece Bo Knows Heaven, I have to admit that I don’t know what success in life looks like, or if success if life is what God wants most for us. For the Young Men, there is the Aaronic Priesthood Duty to God Program. “The Aaronic Priesthood Duty to God program helps young men accomplish the purposes of the Aaronic Priesthood. It helps them develop skills and attributes that are needed to succeed in life.” This sounds good, but it is vague in that it relies on the unstated purposes of the Aaronic Priesthood and…

Raising an Ensign: Challenges of Scholarship on Mormonism at BYU

by Ben Huff • February 18, 2014 • 29 Comments

In his recent First Things article, Ralph Hancock argues that it is vital to the mission of BYU that it produce scholarship articulating a distinctively Mormon worldview, as a major part of its regular work. What would it take for BYU to respond seriously to Hancock’s call? Hancock notes that there is much more one would need to consider on the way to concrete action than what he is able to say in a five page article. As things stand, for such a large, well-funded, highly religious university, BYU is doing surprisingly little on this front. For the vast majority of BYU faculty, including in the humanities and social sciences, this is simply not included in their job description. Rather, what they will be recognized for professionally is scholarship done in the mode and according to the standards of the (secular) mainstream academic world. It should go without saying that the production of scholarship is a core purpose of a modern university. If BYU is not producing scholarship that develops a well-informed, distinctively Mormon worldview, as a large and routine portion of its work, then as a Mormon university it is as though BYU is missing a leg. Further, because scholarship is the primary basis of university teaching, and there is no other comparable source for academic work developing a Mormon worldview, it is as though BYU is also missing an arm. Why would BYU choose to go through life…

Sounding the Secularist Alarm at BYU

by Marc Bohn • February 17, 2014 • 94 Comments

Ralph Hancock has a provocative article in the March edition of First Things in which he raises concerns about the specialization/secularization he sees occurring at Brigham Young University: “For some decades, BYU had managed a compromise between the academic mainstream and its own aspiration to a distinctive mission. [While encouraging excellence in the scholarly communities in which we participate, leaders have also] urged the faculty to resist hyper-specialization, by which we seek merely to ‘imitate others or win their approval,’ and instead to assume the responsibility of ‘those educated and spiritual and wise [to] sort, sift, prioritize, integrate, and give some sense of wholeness… to great eternal truths.’ But the machinery of specialization was already in place, and it has only accelerated. “While the mainstream academic suppression of all questions of transcendent purpose and of associated moral limits was taken as a given across the disciplines, and while most researchers and teachers deferred intellectually, in their specialized professional capacities, to the authority of a rationalist and reductionist framework of understanding, they were not for the most part concerned to draw the moral, political, and religious implications. The authority of a reductionist scientism and an ethic of limitless personal freedom grew steadily in the human sciences and humanities, but most BYU professors were happy to consider their scientific or scholarly work as ‘value-neutral’ and to compartmentalize their religious and moral beliefs in a ‘private’ domain supposedly exempt from the ordering paradigm of their discipline. Even the relatively few professors knowingly committed to the moral and political implications of the secular–progressive paradigm often felt no urgent need to convert less enlightened students.” This trend…

Men, Women, and Modesty

by Julie M. Smith • February 17, 2014 • 96 Comments

Imagine that every single talk you ever heard about missionary work was given by someone who had not served a mission or every single talk about fasting was from someone who (let’s say for health reasons) had never fasted. It is reasonable to suspect that our rhetoric about missionary work or fasting would, in these circumstances, sound very, very different. Currently, we define modesty as being (almost) solely applicable to females, and yet the discourse is (almost) entirely shaped by people who are not female. I think this has led us to several problems.

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