Images, Latter-day Saint Images, Mormon Arts

A Mormon Image: Never Too Old for Trunk or Treat

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As I dressed my 3 year old in her Halloween costume for the ward trunk or treat, she asked “and mom, what are you going to be?”  Oh, I’m too old for this stuff, I thought.  Then as we walked in that night, I saw this 70 year-old clown and realized, we’re never too old to feel like a kid again. by Dana Willard of 88 Miles Per Hour ___ This picture is part of our ongoing series highlighting Mormon images. Comments to the post are welcome; all comments should be respectful. In addition we invite you to submit your own images to the Mormon Image series. Other images in the series can be found here. Rules and instructions, including submissions guidelines, can be found here.

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Church History, Comparative religion, General Doctrine, Latter-day Saint Thought, Mormon Studies

Claremont Conference: What Is Mormon Studies?

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The Claremont Mormon Studies Student Association is holding its Spring 2010 Conference on April 23 and 24 on the theme What Is Mormon Studies? Transdisciplinary Inquiries into an Emerging Field. The Conference line-up is as follows: Keynote Address Jan Shipps – Indiana University-Purdue University Critical Approaches to Mormon Studies Loyd Ericson – “Where is the Mormon in Mormon Studies?  Subject, Method, Object” Cheryl L. Bruno – “Mormon History from the Kitchen Window: White is the Field in Essentialist Feminism” Blair Van Dyke – “How Wide the Divide? The Absence of Conversation between Mormon Studies and Mormon Mainstream” Christopher C. Smith – “What Hath Oxford to do with Salt Lake?” Challenges Facing Mormon Studies Adam S. Miller – “A Manifesto for Mormon theology” Jacob Rennaker – “Through a Glass, Darkly? Biblical Studies, Mormon Studies, Parallels, and Problems” Greg Kofford – “Publishing Mormon Studies: Inside Looking Out” Scholar Panel Brian Birch  – Utah Valley University J. Spencer Fluhman – Brigham Young University Armand L. Mauss – Claremont Graduate University Concluding Remarks Richard Bushman – Claremont Graduate University For more information see the Claremont Mormon Studies website.

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Cornucopia

12 Walks to Zion

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I’m not ready to leave my “building Zion” discussion just yet. Where does the New Jerusalem come from? If you asked my peers, parents, seminary teachers, and Sunday school instructors, you might receive visions like these:

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Cornucopia

Are We Mormon, or Are We Dancer?

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In my previous job, I served as co-chair on the college diversity council. It was not a position I was qualified for, but one in which I learned a lot. While there, I noticed that “black” is a culturally acceptable word again. I’m interested in the words we use to describe races, ethnicities, and cultures. When I was little, “black” was the only word I knew, but I remember being taught in middle school to use “African American” instead. As a black-and-white (no pun intended) conservative teenage thinker, I was bothered by this shift. It seemed like a pointless debate — why did anyone even care? Then, a few years ago, I heard statements from church leaders encouraging us to use “latter-day saint” rather than “Mormon” to describe ourselves. Suddenly I became very aware of the words people used to describe me, and I was sensitive to my own response to the question, “What religion are you?” Thinking back to my middle-school introduction to race and ethnicity, I was especially bothered that some people were offended by one term, while others were offended by the other. I felt that it put me in a no-win situation, and as a result, race became a very uncomfortable topic for me to talk about. I wanted one “right” term, a term that would allow me to comfortably refer to a group of people without offending anyone in that group. The college diversity council…

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News and Politics

Do daughters make you more conservative?

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Tyler Cowan revisits the topic in a post today (HT: Sheldon). I vaguely remember someone in the bloggernacle posting on this in years passed, but my cursory search didn’t turn up much. So, as I’m curious what others make of the research, I thought I’d throw it out to the wolves again. Cowan quotes a new article that states in relevant part: Washington (2008) finds that, controlling for total number of children, each additional daughter makes a member of Congress more likely to vote liberally and attributes this finding to socialization. However, daughters’ influence could manifest differently for elite politicians and the general citizenry, thanks to the selection gradient particular to the political process. This study asks whether the proportion of female biological offspring affects political party identification. Using nationally-representative data from the General Social Survey, we find that female offspring induce more conservative political identification. We hypothesize that this results from the change in reproductive fitness strategy that daughters may evince. (Perhaps this plea is laughably in vain, but let’s avoid the banal partisan tit-for-tat).

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Cornucopia

Priesthood Session in a Nutshell

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President Eyring conducted, with music by a BYU priesthood choir (with an expressive and energetic conductor) and talks by Elder Oaks, Elder Rasband, YM President Beck, and the First Presidency. This was an amazingly upbeat meeting. President Monson called this one of the best priesthood meetings he ever attended.

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Cornucopia

Easter Sunday

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Because Easter is not a biblical term (and has pagan origins), some suggest that “Resurrection Sunday” would be a better term. The word itself only appears once in the King James Bible at Acts 12:4, where is is better translated as “Passover.” So significant was the event of that Sunday morning that Christians since have celebrated it as “the Lord’s Day,” and it has become our weekly sabbath, replacing the Saturday of the Old Testament. Still, for millennia the term “Easter” has come to be synonymous with resurrection, hope, and the joyful refrain “He is risen!”

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Cornucopia

April 4th

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I’ve loved the Holy Week series that Eric has posted. I hope I’m not interrupting with this post. But I think it’s fitting this Easter to also remember other pioneers and prophets who have given their lives to help make men free — and especially so, when one such man died 42 years ago today. And so I hope you’ll permit a link to a hymn of a different sort, a poem which openly connects the lives of two people who lived and died . . . in the name of love.

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Cornucopia

The Choir Documentary “One Voice.”

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This is a bit gratuitous (let alone a tad self-promoting), but this Sunday at noon, between conference sessions, BYU-TV will be airing a documentary on the Choir, focusing particularly on our tour last summer.  Entitled “One Voice: On the Road With the Tabernacle Choir” it includes behind-the-scenes and in-front-of-the-audience footage, as well as interesting interviews with Mack Wilbert, Choir leadership and administration, organist Rick Elliott, and others. There are also a handful of short interviews with me . . . Then, at 5:30 that same day, BYU-TV will broadcast out final tour concert at Red Rock outside of Denver.  For those who do not get BYU-TV, it can be streamed at http://www.byu.tv/ A trailer of the documentary can be found at http://byutv.org/onevoice/, and additional broadcast times of both shows can be found at http://www.mormontabernaclechoir.org/events/#417.

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Cornucopia

Saturday before Easter

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D&C 138; 3 Nephi 9 and 10 Christian tradition relates the so-called “Harrowing of Hell,” wherein Jesus broke the bonds of Adam and Eve and brought them and other Old Testament saints from hell into heaven.  Although LDS doctrinal statements do not include statements such as “and he descended into hell” as do the Apostolic and other creeds, Restoration scripture does stress that “he descended below all things” (e.g., D&C 88:6, 122:8). The real state of the righteous dead before the Atonement of Christ and Jesus’ own activities among them during the time that his body lay in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea were revealed to Joseph F. Smith on October 3, 1918: As I pondered over these things which are written, the eyes of my understanding were opened, and the Spirit of the Lord rested upon me, and I saw the hosts of the dead, both small and great.  And there were gathered together in one place an innumerable company of the spirits of the just, who had been faithful in the testimony of Jesus while they lived in mortality; And who had offered sacrifice in the similitude of the great sacrifice of the Son of God, and had suffered tribulation in their Redeemer’s name. All these had departed the mortal life, firm in the hope of a glorious resurrection, through the grace of God the Father and his Only Begotten Son, Jesus Christ. I beheld that they…

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Cornucopia

Good Friday

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The day traditional associated with the crucifixion of Jesus, the Friday before Easter, is called “Good Friday” in English either because it is a “holy” Friday, or, more likely, because in English “good” is often an archaic expression for “God.”  Hence “goodbye” for “go with God.”  Accordingly it is “God’s Friday” because on this day was the culmination of God’s reconciling the world to himself through the death of his Son. Matt 27; Mark 15; Luke 23; John 18:28–19:42; see also 3 Nephi 8 Jesus in the Hands of the Romans (Mark 15:1–21; Matt 27:1–32; Luke 23:1–32; John 18:29–19:17a) At Calvary (Mark 15:22–28; Matt 27:33–38; Luke 23:33–34, 38; John 19:17b–24) Activities at the Cross (Mark 15:29–32; Matt 27:39–44; Luke 23:35–43; John 19:25–27) Last Moments (Mark 15:33–37; Matt 27:45–50; Luke 23:44–46; John 19:28–30) The Burial of Jesus (Mark 15:42–47; Matt 27:57–66; Luke 23:50–56; John 19:38–42) Suggested Music: Suggested Music: “O Savior, Thou Who Wearest a Crown.” (hymn 197) Suggested Listening: St . Matthew Passion; Handel, Messiah, Part II. But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him.  For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.  And not only so, but we also joy in God…

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Cornucopia

Maundy Thursday

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“Maundy” is an early English form of the Latin mandatum for “commandment” and recalling “A new commandment I give you, that ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye love one another” in John 13:34. The events of Thursday night, beginning with the Last Supper and extending through our Lord’s suffering in Gethsemane, his betrayal, his arrest, and his first hearing before the Jewish authorities, reveal his great love for us.

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Cornucopia

Waiting Outside the Temple

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This story in the Arizona Republic got me thinking. It recounts the temple wedding of a Mormon convert. His mother opposed his baptism, and when it came time for him to be married she was devastated by her inability to attend the ceremony. The article was, I thought, a poignant telling of the story, one that nicely captured the mother’s pain. Among other things, the article notes that in countries where marriage must be a civil ceremony Mormons are allowed to be sealed immediately after a non-temple wedding. But not so in the United States, where a couple must wait a year before they may be sealed. Relaxing this policy strikes me as a good idea. I think that the church should continue to emphasize temple marriage and can even continue to teach that civil marriages followed by temple sealings are disfavored. Providing the option of a civil marriage followed by a temple sealing, however, would give families in difficult situations a tool for assuaging understandable pain. It could also alleviate a point of animosity against the church without compromising its doctrinal integrity. I do think that Mormons need to do a better job explaining why non-Mormons cannot attend temple sealings. This is universally explained in terms of the absence of a temple recommend and this, in turn, is explained in terms of worthiness. Hence, non-Mormon parents are told that they are excluded because they are “unworthy.” It’s understandable that…

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Cornucopia

Spy Wednesday

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In some traditions the Wednesday before Easter is called “Spy Wednesday” because this may have been when Judas agreed with the chief priests to betray the Savior. This act of betrayal is highlighted by its collocation with an act of love, the anointing by the unnamed woman in Bethany.

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Cornucopia

Tuesday before Easter

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After drawing lessons from the withered tree, Jesus spent the morning in the temple. The second block of these teachings in Matthew, which also cover most of the material preserved in Mark and Luke, focus on attempts by the Pharisees, Herodians, and Sadducees to trap Jesus in his words (22:15–40).

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Cornucopia

The Why

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Last night I was considering the “what” and “how” of Zion. After reading the comments from that post, I see that I’m skipping past the “why”. If I want to understand how Zion will work, I first need to understand why it exists — what it’s intended to achieve. The scriptures exhort us with eager anticipation for the prophesied Zion. They even go into some detail on visions of its dimensions and inhabitants. But they don’t say what it’s for, or why we should be excited about it. So what’s it for? And for whom? One key question to answer is, is Zion a means or and ends? In other words, is Zion intended to prepare its inhabitants for something greater, or is Zion the final reward of the righteous? If Zion is an ends, it will be more exclusive, but if its a means then it will be more inclusive. Another question: what is Zion supposed to offer its inhabitants? Is Zion intended to maximize their happiness? Their righteousness? Or are those the same things? Or is the goal to maximize something else: productivity, knowledge, fecundity? Like my previous post, all these questions are, of course, speculative. However, they’re important. Perhaps the purpose of Zion will be determined by conversations like these — perhaps sincere discussion and reflection will not merely uncover, but in fact create the vision of the Zion that one day I hope we build. Without…

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