Category: Latter-day Saint Thought
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Will the Community of Christ Die Off?
Yes, I know there’s no big hill on the back-side of the Community of Christ Temple, but Gemini has decided that there is and I can’t convince it otherwise. It is no secret that the Community of Christ is not doing so well growth-wise. Of course, no religious groups except for Assemblies of God,…
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What Did Church Lead You to Think About Yesterday, 2/22?
Who is responsible for your experience at Church? Is our worship passive, dependent on the skill of the speakers, musicians and those organizing the meeting? Or are each of us active participants, trying to pull worship out of what we’re given? We claim that we go to Church to worship, but often members talk about…
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CFM 3/2-3/8: Poetry for “Let God Prevail”
The phrase “Let God Prevail” suggests a certain view of life—the idea that we might be a kind of impediment to what God wants to do, and that we need to get out of the way. And the idea makes sense theologically, since we believe that God respects our agency, and will not force us,…
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Abraham: A Study in Humanity
Two things need to be noted first of all: One, I don’t think scriptures should be read as an Ikea manual—do things exactly this way or else you’ll ruin it. They are meant to be read as wisdom literature. Their purpose is to throw us off our stride by subverting our expectations; they make us…
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What Did You Think About Church Yesterday, 2/15?
Was something wrong at Church? Did you object to what was said? I know that things sometimes go poorly at Church (and everywhere else, for that matter). But do we go to Church to catalog the problems and errors? We claim that we go to Church to worship, but often members talk about Church like…
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CFM 2/23-3/1: Poetry for “Is Any Thing Too Hard for the Lord?”
Many of the difficulties that we face in our lives in the gospel come down to assumptions we make about God. We expect a consistency according to our conception of things. In short, we expect a vending machine, instead of God. So the answer to the question about what could be too hard for the…
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Feeding the hungry has negative ROI
The holiest service you perform, the kind of service Jesus asks of those who would be his disciples, will not be rewarded with success, respect, or even a lot of happy feelings. That was never part of the bargain, and you should be aware of that in advance.
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First Shall be Last and the Last Shall be First: A Didactic, Overbearing Parable
Yes, I know nobody perfectly fits these stereotypes. Once upon a time Bill was a 7th-generation member who loved his Mormon community. His grandfather had been a [insert high Church or BYU or Utah business culture position]. For him Church participation wasn’t much of a sacrifice, but rather was a part of the waters he…
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Your Reactions to Church Yesterday, 2/8
While we claim that Church is worship, I think Church members often talk about Church like it is entertainment. I hear things like “I got bored”, “I didn’t like that talk,” “What they said was wrong,” etc. If you are worshiping God at Church, why do these questions matter? Is the presentation, good or bad,…
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CFM 2/16-2/22: Poetry for “To Be a Greater Follower of Righteousness”
Since the Old Testament is so long, each lesson covers much more material, making it much harder to have overall themes for the lesson. As a result, each lesson tends to be more episodic, covering a broad range of topics. This lesson is like that, covering everything from righteous desires, to Melchizedek, to tithing. I…
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Your Reactions to Church Yesterday, 2/1
While we claim that Church is worship, I think Church members often talk about Church like it is entertainment. I hear things like “I got bored”, “I didn’t like that talk,” “What they said was wrong,” etc. If you are worshiping God at Church, why do these questions matter? Is the presentation, good or bad,…
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CFM 2/9-2/15: Poetry for “Noah Found Grace in the Eyes of the Lord”
The story of Noah and the flood has often led to difficulties, especially between those who take the story literally and those who see it more metaphorically. For those who are trying to decide between a literal interpretation and a metaphorical interpretation (as if this were a binary question that has to be decided one…
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What Can We Learn from Visions of Glory? Part 2
Mystery seeking is an essential part of Mormonism’s founding narratives. Part 2 of a three-part series beginning with What Can We Learn from Visions of Glory? Speculating about the afterlife is integral to who we are as Latter-day Saints. The Church’s proselytizing program puts questions about “our Heavenly Father’s plan” in the center of its…
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Your Reactions to Church Yesterday, 1/25
Recently I explored the writings of a Mormon literary thinker little-known among Church members today, Wayne Booth. In The Company We Keep, Booth proposes that human beings not only learn by induction and deduction, but by what he calls “coduction” — the discovery of knowledge in conversation with others. This is a cornerstone of how…
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CFM 2/2-2/8: Poetry for “The Lord Called His People Zion”
For me, this lesson (to be taught February 8th — I work 2 weeks ahead) might be one of the most important lessons of the whole Come Follow Me cycle. The example of Enoch and the idea of Zion, our utopian ideal, lead to important questions about what we do today and how we organize…
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The Church Doesn’t Need Your Panic: A Response to Jonathan Green
Guest post by Morgan Deane. I read Jonathan Green’s post and because the underlying flaws have been repeated at least three times over the past year, I thought it was worth a substantive response, and it was too long for comments. There’s a lot of heat, hyperbole, and moral posturing in his post, but very…
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Ark Steadiers and the Priesthood Ban
So a while back I tossed out the idea of faithful LDS who pushed back on some church policies and proposed the label of “ark steadiers.” I thought about these issues while reading and reflecting on Matthew Harris’s Second Class Saints. The big issue for me was that some members did push back on the…
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Your Reactions to Church Yesterday, 1/18
Recently I explored the writings of a Mormon literary thinker little-known among Church members today, Wayne Booth. In The Company We Keep, Booth proposes that human beings not only learn by induction and deduction, but by what he calls “coduction” — the discovery of knowledge in conversation with others. This is a cornerstone of how…
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CFM 1/26-2/1: Poetry for “Teach These Things Freely unto Your Children”
I’m old enough that when thinking about teaching children my mind quickly goes to the wonderful and insightful Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young song, “Teach Your Children Well”. Most of all, the song points out an often overlooked element of teaching, that we really don’t know and can’t completely understand what our children have gone…
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What Can We Learn from Visions of Glory?
Kendall Buchanan is a Provo business owner with a wife and six kids, and a passion for religious scholarship, especially Mormonism. Visions of Glory is a side-effect of our spiritually vibrant Mormon culture. Part 1 of a three-part series discussing the book and its significance. Ever since Visions of Glory was spotted in a photo…
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17 Thoughts About Resistance
1—To get this out of the way: There was no good answer to the question of how the Church should have responded to Nazism. There was no safe middle ground between complicit engagement, impotent resistance, and needless death. If letting missionaries train the German basketball team had a .01% chance of making war less likely,…
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Conviction Without Conflict: The Power of a Gentle Answer
Guest post by David Metcalfe I recently saw a post on social media of two missionaries in Africa playing soccer with some local teenagers, and under the video were some normal comments like “that’s so cool!”, but then some inevitable, bizarre diatribes about how evil the church is. If you use social media, you’ve…
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How Much of a Testimony is Reason? How Much is Emotion?
If I felt the spirit telling me that there was a Loch Ness Monster, I probably still wouldn’t believe, simply because I’d a priori expect some hard evidence to have shown up by now if a plesiosaur was surviving in the Scottish Highlands. Reason and science provide epistemological boundary markers for religious claims, and I’m…
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Your Reactions to Church Yesterday, 1/11
Recently I explored the writings of a Mormon literary thinker little-known among Church members today, Wayne Booth. In The Company We Keep, Booth proposes that human beings not only learn by induction and deduction, but by what he calls “coduction” — the discovery of knowledge in conversation with others. This is a cornerstone of how…
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CFM 1/19-1/25: Poetry for The Fall of Adam and Eve
Few stories in human history have the impact of the story of the fall of Adam and Eve. In the traditions of most of the world, the story suggests answers to issues like the existence of evil, the role of men and women, the purpose of life and the nature of God. Of course, the…
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Your Reactions to Church Yesterday, 1/4
Recently I explored the writings of a Mormon literary thinker little-known among Church members today, Wayne Booth. In The Company We Keep, Booth proposes that human beings not only learn by induction and deduction, but by what he calls “coduction” — the discovery of knowledge in conversation with others. This is a cornerstone of how…
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CFM 1/12-1/18: Poetry for “In the Beginning God Created the Heaven and the Earth”
Creation is a crucial idea in LDS thought — we have shifted its meaning to suit a different cosmology, and its meaning remains in flux between the implications of our theology and what the rest of humanity understands. In LDS thought, not only is creation about using pre-existing materials (including us!) to create something new…
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Spiritual Experiences Going off the Rails
So I’m thinking about this issue after having watched Netflix’s documentary on Jodi Hildebrandt, “Evil Influencer”: what’s up with Mormons doing criminal and immoral things under the belief they are inspired by God? Such acts, of course, are pretty rare, but at this point it’s feeling a little disconcerting for it to appear that a…
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“As Far as It Is Translated Correctly”: The Bible and the Fulness of the Gospel
There’s been lots of talk about the church granting more allowance additional biblical translations beyond the KJV, but I’m arguing in this post that I don’t think that’s what Joseph Smith meant by the eighth article of faith “as far as it is translated correctly.” JS of course did a revision of the Bible, but…
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Your Reactions to Church Yesterday, 12/28
How did you react to Church yesterday? What did you notice? Did you end up thinking differently? [In case you missed this last week, I was ill and didn’t post.] Do you think your reactions were what they should be? Were they ethical? This is the latest invitation for reactions to local meetings, continuing the…