[Update 2:] The Church has responded, both with respect to Dr. Bott’s statement and with a statement on the Church and race. I’m adding the text of each to the bottom of the post, but I want to highlight these two excerpts: We condemn racism, including any and all past racism by individuals both inside and outside the Church. The origins of priesthood availability are not entirely clear. Some explanations with respect to this matter were made in the absence of direct revelation and references to these explanations are sometimes cited in publications. These previous personal statements do not represent Church doctrine. (In both, emphasis mine.) The first excerpt is wonderful, not pulling punches against our own. And the second, although it’s phrased in the passive voice, is pretty much as explicit a renunciation of previous thought as I’ve seen in the Church, and I know that I’ll be pulling these statements out when (or, I hope, if) I hear these repeated again. — Aaargh!!! I thought we were past this. I really did; I’d heard rumors on the internet for years of people teaching offensive racist folklore about the long-repealed priesthood ban. But I had never actually experienced anybody seriously making those arguments—I had only heard them in the context of, This is what some people claim. And I know that anecdote is not evidence, but I’ll put forward my anecdote anyway: Once, while I was in high school,…
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Credible Criticism
This weekend the interweb exploded with a post at Mormon Matters entitled Elder Marlin Jensen Apologizes for Proposition 8. In the ensuing discussion there, and in numerous discussions on Facebook, a debate erupted over whether the headline and the conclusions were warranted, or whether it was being spun into something that could be used by advocates for change. (For a good reflection of what actually happened in the meeting, refer to Carol Lynn Pearson’s comment at Mormon Matters, and her published notes of the account here.) Particularly relevant is that the debate about the tactics used was largely confined to those who share the same values, those who hope to see our Church grow and reconcile some very difficult issues. This was not a debate about whether to talk about Elder Jensen’s words – the account of this meeting is touching and meaningful and should be shared. Rather, it was a debate about tactics. A debate about the use of inflated rhetoric to leverage Elder Jensen’s words to effect change.
The Angel and the Internet
A few years ago, the confluence of the Mitt Romney campaign and Proposition 8 (and to some extent Harry Reid) focused sustained national attention on the church and its members. The church’s profile has only continued to grow since then, raising a variety of questions about assimilation, retrenchment, and the future of the flock. Mormonism has long inhabited a liminal state between cultural insider and outsider. Armand Mauss’s pioneering work The Angel and the Beehive charts the church’s uneasy relationship with mainstream status, a cycle of ebb and flow driven by the specific benefits and drawbacks on each side of the spectrum. If the church is too peculiar, it will suffer in its growth prospects and place in society. At worst, disrepute can lead society to treat such a church as a threat to be eradicated (a possibility of which Mormons are quite aware). This creates strong pressure to assimilate in order to avoid social costs and reap the benefits of societal acceptance. However, this raises the question of whether the church community can gain respectability without giving up its distinctive cultural and doctrinal markers — and so, as Mauss notes, the community adopts different strategies at different times. At times the organization and its members may embrace assimilation, while at other times they feel a need to “reach ever more deeply into their bag of cultural peculiarities to find either symbolic or actual traits that will help them mark…
Where Is Mormonism Headed?
That theme is addressed from many different angles in The Future of Mormonism series at Patheos. It might be the best online event on Mormonism I’ve seen, with contributors drawn from across the Mormon spectrum. Here are a few highlights. Mormonism in the New Century by Armand Mauss — Mauss sees the retrenchment-assimilation pendulum swinging back toward assimilation as the Church moves into the 21st century. He lists several signs of this “new posture of diplomatic outreach by the church leadership.” Mormon Publishing, the Internet, and the Democratization of Information by Kristine Haglund — Dialogue’s editor weighs in on “the challenges facing Mormon publishing.” Like blogs, which Haglund rather coyly describes as showing “that people really like to hear themselves talk.” I like her suggestion that the bottom-up efforts of independent journals and blogs may help Mormonism develop a “framework for engaging the ever-broadening discourse about Mormonism in the new media world.” Partnering with our Friends from Other Faiths by Elder Quentin L. Cook — And it came to pass in the year 2010 the people beheld the first apostolic blog post. Elder Cook sounds an interfaith message, endorsing “a mutual respect for each other’s beliefs and a desire to collaborate on important issues where we find common ground.” He closes with his own hopeful view of what the future holds for us: “The future of Mormonism in the public sphere will, in part, be a shared one as we…
Perceptions of Mormonism
The Deseret News posted an article (“Mormons need to work to increase favor“) summarizing remarks by Gary Lawrence at the recent FAIR Conference held last week in Sandy. He addressed perceptions of Mormonism, based on data gathered by his polling firm. We’ve got some problems, it seems.
Stop! Hamer time
Next Friday and Saturday, May 21st and 22nd, John Hamer will be at Miller Eccles in southern California to discuss the history of the Community of Christ. John’s work is fascinating, and if you’re in the area, I’d encourage you to attend one of the two events, either on Friday the 21st in Orange County, or Saturday the 22nd in Los Angeles. The event announcement (with lots of information about why you should attend) is this: Dear Friends: We are pleased to announce the next meeting of the Miller Eccles Group will be on Friday, May 21, 2010 (Villa Park) and Saturday may 22 (La Canada). Both sessions will be at 7:30 p.m. The speaker will be John Hamer, an independent historian and author (more about John below). We anticipate a fascinating discussion of “The History of the Community of Christ.” The Speaker: John Hamer is president of the John Whitmer Association (the Community of Christ counterpart to the Mormon History Association) and the editor of John Whitmer Books. He is also a mapmaker extraordinaire and has done a number of the special maps for the Joseph Smith Papers project. John is currently going to press with a beautiful book about the history of the Community of Christ. You can see a preview of what it will look like at this link. Check it out to see what an artist John is when it comes to map making and book design. The…
Claremont Conference: What Is Mormon Studies?
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.
Lineage: A Troubling Concept
Here’s a quote from Lesson 7, “The Abrahamic Covenant,” that caught my attention in Sunday School: The great majority of those who become members of the Church are literal descendants of Abraham through Ephraim, son of Joseph. Those who are not literal descendants of Abraham and Israel must become such, and when they are baptized and confirmed they are grafted into the tree and are entitled to all the rights and privileges as heirs.
Mormon Studies on a Budget?
A few years ago, Armand Mauss advised our readers that an essential texts list for Mormon studies probably included a dozen books (including Shipps, Bushman, Arrington, and Givens) as well as regular reading of four major periodicals. That remains a very good recommendation; however, for many Mormon studies newbies, that level of depth may not be an option. This post addresses the question, how should someone on a limited budget begin to explore Mormon studies?
12 Questions for Marvin Perkins, Part Four
Here is the last installment of our 12 Questions with Marvin Perkins, comprised of Brother Perkins’ responses to our last two questions. We’d like to thank Brother Perkins for the time and effort he’s put in to giving us a set of very substantive and thought-provoking responses.
12 Questions for Marvin Perkins, Part Two
Here is Part Two of our 12 Questions with Marvin Perkins, comprised of Brother Perkins’ responses to our next four questions. See Parts One, Three and Four for our introduction of Brother Perkins and his responses to our other questions.
About Times and Seasons
Times and Seasons has been the premier source for Mormon blogging since its inception late 2003. The blog was founded by four LDS attorneys (Matt Evans, Adam Greenwood, Nathan Oman, and Kaimipono Wenger) after a series of e-mail discussions, at a time when the LDS blog world consisted of a few solo blogs and one small group. Times and Seasons stepped into that gap with flair. In our first year, we added eleven new bloggers (fortunately almost all non-lawyers) to our original four, and the group wrote over 1200 posts overall. We quickly found ourselves drawing 2000 readers per day and generating hundreds-of-comment discussions. The nascent Mormon blogosphere also expanded rapidly at that time, with the rapid formation of blogs like By Common Consent, Millennial Star, and Feminist Mormon Housewives (each explicitly drawing on the model and example of Times and Seasons). An early discussion at Times and Seasons also led to the creation of the name “Bloggernacle” to describe the growing world of LDS blogs. Since then, the bloggernacle has grown to include dozens of blogs (including aggregators), tens of thousands of readers, and a popular Mormon Times column. Times and Seasons has continued steady throughout this time, building popular features like 12 Questions and Essential Texts in Mormon Studies, while continuing to expand and bring aboard new ideas and participants. For instance, in 2009 we became the official partner of The Mormon Review, an electronic magazine helmed by…
Thoughts on Hinckley and Monson
Since Kaimi was kind enough to link to it, I thought I’d elaborate a bit on some comments of mine which Peggy Fletcher Stack used in her excellent article summarizing the accomplishments of President Hinckley, and the opportunities and challenges facing President Monson. It would be interesting to hear more from some of the other sources she made use of in putting her piece together (Melissa Proctor, Ronan Head, etc.), but for now, here is at least a little bit the context of my remarks.
Telling the Untold Story
Last Saturday was the world premiere of Nobody Knows: The Untold Story of Black Mormons, at the San Diego Black Film Festival.
“This Thing Was Not Done in a Corner”
I was delighted when Noah Feldman accepted my invitation to give the keynote address at Princeton’s Mormonism and American Politics conference because I knew he’d offer a thoughtful and sophisticated outsider’s perspective on these issues. His latest NYT piece, a polished and updated version of his conference remarks, is even more that that, however. In challenging what Feldman calls the “soft bigotry†against Mormonism, still surprisingly so widespread, while at the same time effectively raising legitimate issues for Latter-day Saints to wrestle with themselves, Feldman’s piece does what few other articles on Mormonism have been able to do and is rightly getting a lot of attention.
Mormonism Q&A I: Race issues; Jesus/Satan issues; some sources
There have been some interesting discussions of Mormonism in the media lately. Commenters like Lawrence O’Donnell, Maureen Dowd, Frank Rich, and others have made statements about the church in highly public places. What are we (or others) to make of these? In this post, I’ll try to address some of the questions that I’ve seen in various media contexts lately.
The Bushman Moment
Richard Bushman’s recent appearance at a Pew Forum conference on Mormonism and Democratic Politics has got me thinking about the role of scholars of Mormonism in shaping the religious news coverage swirling around Mitt Romney’s candidacy. I decided to do a little bit of informal content analysis of recent news stories, seeing which scholars are getting quoted.
Jill Mulvay Derr on Eliza R. Snow (Smith)
This past Friday, my wife and I (and many other folks) had the privilege of hearing Jill Mulvay Derr speak to the Miller-Eccles study group about Eliza R. Snow Smith. The presentation was great.
Cornucopia, Essential Texts in Mormon Studies, Life in the Church, Mormon Studies, Social Sciences and Economics
O’Dea’s The Mormons Part II: The Edited Volume Retrospective
The Mormon Social Science Association, under the direction of editors John Hoffman, Cardell Jacobsen, and Tim Heaton of BYU’s Department of Sociology, is currently putting together a volume of essays that retrospectively assess O’Dea’s 1957 classic The Mormons.
Oman on Rees on Oman
Eons ago in blog time, I did a post called “An Open Letter to the Dialogue Editorial Board.”
Alternate Voices
One of the more interesting pieces that I have read on Mormon intellectual life is Armand Mauss’s essay “Alternate Voices,”Sunstone April 1990. The article was written in response to a General Conference sermon by Elder Oaks of the same name. (Also worth reading here.) Brother Mauss’s article in its entirety is reproduced here with the kind permission of Sustone and Brother Mauss.
Miller-Eccles Report
Last Friday and Saturday, I participated in a panel at the Miller-Eccles group, on the topic of Mormon blogging.
Bloggernacle invades Miller-Eccles
An announcement for people who may be in the Southern California area on March 24 or 25: Nate Oman, Caroline Kline, and Kaimi Wenger will be speaking as a panel at the Miller-Eccles group in Southern California, on the topic of LDS blogging.
12 (or so) Questions for Kathleen Flake
Back in November, we solicited questions for Kathleen Flake, author of the terrific book The Politics of American Religious Identity (2004). We are now pleased to present her responses. Thanks Professor Flake! 1. How have you negotiated the tension between focusing on Mormon studies versus the broader issues within your discipline? How have your faith and your interest in Mormon studies affected your career at Vanderbilt, if at all? My focus has not been on Mormonism as an end in itself. Rather, I have experimented with using Mormonism as a tool to understand the “broader issues.”
Book Review: Black and Mormon
Any etiquette book will tell you: there are certain topics you just don’t bring up in polite society. Any Mormon will tell you: we have a few topics of our own to add to that list. And one of them is the issue of blacks and the priesthood.
On the Shelf
I’ve been thinking for several days about something that Armand Mauss said in the first “12 Questions” post. Speaking of greying intellectuals (which I assume includes me) and their early choices, he said: “Some of them (maybe half – who knows?) opted to put their Church loyalties, careers, and/or public images ahead of their intellectual yearnings and independence, feeling that the latter could not justify the disruption and jeopardy to their largely conservative spouses and families, to their aspirations for respectability in the Church, or to their career plans. Others (maybe another approximate half) decided that they could not simply put their doubts or their intellectual quandaries on the shelf, or compartmentalize their religious and intellectual lives.” He is speaking in broad terms here, perhaps in terms of types, so it is probably a mistake to personalize the remark and ask where I fit.
The Voice of the Bloggernacle
Think for a moment about who you are — specifically, your relationships with your co-workers, your friends, and your family. Are you kind? Are you patient? When topics are brought up in conversations in Church or elsewhere, and you disagree, do you get angry? Are you condescending or sanctimonious? My guess is that you’re probably like most mormons — respectful of differing viewpoints, kind and patient to family and friends, and gracious to strangers and guests as they pop into your life. Now think about who you are in the Bloggernacle.
My (Mormon) Hang-up with (Opposition to) Gay Marriage
Hello all. My thanks for Nate for inviting me (if only for a while) to participate in this blog, and thanks for the introduction Kaimi. Speaking of such, I notice that Times and Seasons started off without any general explanations or identifying comments. Is that a policy, or just because it was assumed that most everyone who might read this blog would know who all the participants are? Either way, I feel foolish jumping into a conversation without doing a little of the usual sacrament-meeting-“let me tell you a little bit about myself”-routine. So anyway…my name’s Russell Arben Fox; I’m married to Melissa Madsen Fox; we have two daughters, with a third due in about two weeks. I live in Jonesboro, AR, and teach political philosophy and other stuff at Arkansas State University. I’m originally from Spokane, WA; my wife is from Ann Arbor, MI; we met and married while students at BYU, which I attended from 1987-1994, with a break in there for a mission to South Korea. We’ve lived in the southern U.S. for either 2 1/2 or 8 1/2 years now, depending on if you include the Virginia suburbs of D.C. (where we lived while I worked on my Ph.D. at Catholic University of America) in “the South.” Everything else you might want to know about me or my family can be found at either of the links Kaimi provided. Ok, that’s enough. Kaimi’s post on gay…