1. …and all I got was a finisher’s medal Saying that God told me to run a marathon is a provocative formulation, but not inaccurate.
Apologetics and the Sheep Stealing Model
A few days ago Latter-day Saint apologist Jacob Hansen of A Thoughtful Faith had a debate with noted Catholic apologist of Pints with Aquinas fame Trent Horn that has been garnering some attention. At the outset, I love these sorts of things. A respectful but straightforward debate about contrasting religious views can help both sides articulate their beliefs and responses better. When a faith does not face explicit doubts and pressures their scalpels become dull. Another example of this in our tradition is Stephen Robinson’s excellent back and forth How Wide the Divide? With Craig Bloomberg. Eminently respectful but not holding anything back. There’s a long, venerable tradition of structured interfaith debates; even in the Middle Ages Christian kings would sponsor religious debates between Jews and Christians in the great “disputations” (which, given the power imbalance weren’t exactly “anything goes” debates on the part of the Jewish rabbis), and prominent, structured debates between Proto-Protestants and Catholics played a vital role in the early religious fermentation of the Reformation. However, anybody with proselytizing experience knows that the following literally never happens: two people get into a debate about this or that theological point, one person marshals their argument and convinces the other by sheer reasoning, the other person concedes, loses their faith, and converts to the other faith. When somebody has a strong faith to begin with, some people see the conversion as a two-step process: 1) destroy their initial…
Review: Bruce R. McConkie: Apostle and Polemicist, 1915–1985
Bruce R. McConkie: Apostle and Polemicist, 1915–1985 by Devery S. Anderson is the latest entry in Signature Books’ Brief Mormon Lives project. As has been the case with other books in the series, this one is a short biography of an individual of note in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and is very well done.
AI Censorship and Sacred Cows
In the AI world there is a debate swirling about how much AI providers should censor their image generation. Of course there are plenty of things to mock in past attempts to censor or otherwise put a thumb on the scale of AI to be more socially appropriate. Exhibit A of course were the racially diverse, Black SS stormtroopers created by Google Gemini, but anybody who’s spent a decent amount of time using AI has run into these guardrails, and sometimes they can be annoying. I had a tragicomical experience myself in the early days of Midjourney when they didn’t have the fingers right, and when I tried to create a picture of Adam and Eve it gave Adam multiple genitalia. I tried to regenerate the image specifying “no nudity,” and got a warning that I was using a forbidden term and would be banned if I continued to try to create nude images. The guardrails around religious topics in particular are so strict that it becomes difficult to do anything religious per se, one has to describe a religious scene without invoking religious vocabulary. (I assume the skittishness about depicting religious imagery is really just about depicting Mohammad, but they’re trying to be consistent). However, in the past week or so the world was exposed to an almost completely uncensored AI tool with the release of Elon Musk’s Grok 2 (because of course it’s Elon). All of the sudden…
An Abbreviated Journal of Discourses
While Bruce R. McConkie’s controversial Mormon Doctrine is famous in Latter-day Saint circles, it wasn’t his first controversial project. Prior to that time, he worked on preparing a “best-of” collection from the Journal of Discourses that was known as Sound Doctrine. The project was close to publication when the First Presidency intervened and shut it down. Devery S. Anderson shared some information about the volume in a recent interview at the Latter-day Saint history blog From the Desk. What follows here is a copost to the full interview.
Is Anybody Excommunicated Anymore?
I assume they aren’t actually this dour, but what some people envision a disciplinary council looks like. Here I’m not addressing the normative question of whether we should excommunicate, I have already said my piece about that here. A while ago I was speaking to my stake president and made some humorous quip about him excommunicating people, and he had responded that he had actually never excommunicated anybody before. I was kind of surprised at this, as my father who has served in bishoprics in the 1990s and 2000s referred to disciplinary councils and excommunications during his time. (And yes, I know it’s not technically called “excommunication” anymore, but here I’m using the term to be more pithy). I have no hard data on this, but I would not be surprised if excommunications are less of a thing nowadays for several reasons. To some extent the excommunication process requires the consent of the person being disciplined. They could just not show up and/or request their records be removed. Whereas before the Church may have had enough sociocultural heft in some geographic areas to get people to show up, even if there was a call to a disciplinary council I suspect many people just wouldn’t bother (unless, of course, they want to invite a bunch of media and make some point of it). Of course, they can have one without the person, but generally speaking completely inactive, members-on-records-only are…
A Review: Unique But Not Different
Unique But Not Different: Latter-day Saints in Japan by Shinji Takagi, Conan Grames, and Meagan Rainock is a fascinating glimpse into the world of Japanese Latter-day Saints. The book is based on a comprehensive survey data, which it explores to examine the diverse social, political, and ideological backgrounds of Japanese Latter-day Saints. Over the course of exploring those data, the book provides valuable insights for scholars, missionaries, Church leaders, and members alike about the state of the Church in Japan. The format is very academic in its investigation of the survey results and reads more like a scientific paper than narrative history, and it is very well done.
Smith Family Women
Joseph Smith grew up in a family with strong-willed women. Among those are two who left some notable records of the early Church, particularly Lucy Mack Smith (his mother) and Katharine Smith Salisbury (his sister). Two recent posts at the Latter-day Saint history site From the Desk discuss these two Smith family women and their legacies. What follows here is a co-post to these other two posts.
Book of Mormon Historicity, Part 3: Quiet
So I often think about life when I finally finish the book I’ve been working on for a long time. Probably a lot of questions and some unhappiness both from Orthodoxy and ex-Mormons. Both sides may be unhappy that I held such views while serving as bishop. That’s understandable. One point I wanted to address was something I saw while John Dehlin was interviewing Bill Reel and both were saying how important full-disclosure was on issues that pertain to Mormon belief. They felt obligated to let Mormons know about the bad stuff so that such Mormons could have informed choices about their faith. Mormons who were/are not as frank as them are apparently bad. I thought, “Hmm, I imagine they’d probably criticize my attitude of mostly being quiet at church.” And I don’t mind being so criticized as I have many differences with those commentators, but I do think it would be helpful to explain why I do so.
O’Sullivan’s Law and Latter-day Saint-Adjacent Organizations
Chat-GPT’s rendition of a very strict, orthodox Mormon, right next to a liberal, heterodox Mormon, because even heterodox Mormons still wear buttoned-up, tucked-in shirts evidently. O’Sullivan’s law, one of those cute Internet “laws,” states that “any organization or enterprise that is not expressly right wing will become left wing over time.” Like most Internet laws, it kind of holds up, even though exceptions can be found. There’s something to it in regards to Church-related institutions if you replace left-wing and right-wing with edgy and/or heterodox. For example, one of the early, founding members of Dialogue was Dallin H. Oaks, whereas a simple perusal of the Table of Contents of issues through the years shows a clear veer towards critical studies issues in the Dialogue journal and, presumably, community. I’m not, in this post, making an argument for whether that is a good or bad thing, but the directionality of the drift is clear. And then of course the classic case is the Maxwell Institute. Not that it was ever “edgy,” just that it clearly shifted from being what could be described as being on the Molly Mormon side of the continuum with its apologetics focus to speaking to a smaller, more academic niche. Again, I have no desire to rehash the old fights over the “coup,” although for the most part I will admit that I think, after the dust has settled, I like the division of labor, and think…
Being a Mormon without Believing in a Historical Book of Mormon, Part 2
Again I make no pretenses to “resolving” this complicated topic and expect plenty of pushback, but, like I said in my last post, I see these conversations as important. It does appear to me that the evidence is contrary to the BoM being historical (I’ll post about that more), and yet I see Mormon practice as highly valuable (though often frustrating!) I’ve seen related conversations over the years on the Bloggernacle and people often point to the value of literature and even the parables of Jesus. And yet those examples aren’t REALLY presented as historical the way Smith and the Book of Mormon present the Book of Mormon. I saw on Paul Dunn’s Wikipedia page that Dunn pointed to Jesus’s parables as defense of his fabrications. I think a lot would find that distasteful, as, again, Dunn presented his stories as real (and seemingly working for Dunn’s own aggrandizement). The Book of Mormon is different than bragging about oneself, but it did found a religion that gave Smith a very prominent position.
A Review: Commentary on the Community of Christ Doctrine & Covenants, Volume 1
I’ve been hunting down resources to use in studying the Doctrine and Covenants, and one of the books I wanted to highlight in that regard is the Commentary on the Community of Christ Doctrine & Covenants Volume 1: The Joseph Smith Jr. Era, by Dale E. Luffman. It is a fascinating glimpse into both the Doctrine and Covenants itself and how it is viewed and used in a sister organization in the Restoration movement. The book goes through each individual document in the Doctrine and Covenants, offering information about the historical and theological context of the document, commentary and exegesis, how it was understood at the time it was written, and some interpretation and thoughts about how the document is significant to members of the church today. Throughout, it offers many important and interesting insights about this important volume of scripture.
On Miracles
Elijah calling down fire from heaven, 21st century version Years ago I saw a New Atheist-y meme that showed a cartoon panel of “the power of God across time,” starting with the creation of the world, moving onto the great flood and turning water into wine, and then ending with Christ appearing on toast, with the idea that in today’s age we kind of grasp at straws to see this little miracle here or there whereas in the past there were seas being split and fire coming out of the heavens to burn up sacrifices. This is one of those things where I think they have a point on some level. As a general principle I think miracles operate at the same cadence and magnitude today that they did in the past (typically in the subtle, private moments of our lives) and the farther back the record goes the more I’m open to the possibility that the miracles described were later additions, that the correlation between the magnitude and how public the miracle was and how old it is is attributable to the kind of folkloric additions that we see in just about every really old story that has had time to evolve and become grander. Ethics aside, If Brigham Young isn’t calling down a pillar of fire to block the way of the invading US Army in Echo Canyon, or President Oaks isn’t calling she-bears out of Cottonwood Canyon…
An Influential Letter You’ve Probably Not Heard Of: Wilford Woodruff to Heber J. Grant, March 28, 1887
Over the last century, for better or worse, we have had four men who became president of the Church while health concerns and/or advanced age made their capacity to carry out the role of Church president questionable. (George Albert Smith, Joseph Fielding Smith, Spencer W. Kimball, and Howard W. Hunter are the four I have in mind.) In addition, the average age of Church presidents at time of ascension to the presidency in the last century was around 81 years old, meaning that many of them lost the ability to function within a few years of becoming Church president, just as a fact of age. I do not believe that is likely to change, and there is one rather obscure document more than any other that has ensured that is the case—a letter written by Wilford Woodruff in 1887.
Grinding the Faces of the Poor Through the Lottery
I do not have the brain chemistry for gambling. If I bet my house on a coin flip and won, I would be a sleepless wreck for weeks anxiously wondering about what would have happened had I lost. (Like tobacco, this is one of those Latter-day Saint rules I would keep even if I left the Church). Perhaps because of this, the idea of a gambling addiction, where people destroy their lives because they need the next hit or are trying to get back to even, is very viscerally unpleasant to me (which makes gambling addiction-centered films such as Molly’s Game, The Gambler [preferably the 1974 version, which is based on Dostoevsky’s novel of the same name] and Uncut Gems very intense for me), and I am glad that Utah is one of the most anti-gambling states in the country. I usually bristle at the reflexive Utah=Latter-day Saint connection that many draw, but in this case it makes theoretical sense that Utah’s anti-gambling is in part derived from its Latter-day Saint heritage. Recently due to a Supreme Court decision the floodgates for sports gambling were opened across the country, and many states liberalized gambling laws. They did this in a staggered fashion, which makes it so that researchers can more rigorously draw causal conclusions about what happens when sports gambling is legalized. A recent paper that just dropped found that when online sports gambling was legalized they “find a roughly…
A Review: Second Class Saints
The priesthood and temple ban against individuals with Black African ancestry is a topic that is both fraught and crucial in understanding the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Matthew Harris’s recently-published Second Class Saints: Black Mormons and the Struggle for Racial Equality provides one of the most in-depth looks at that ban, with a special focus on the process by which it was challenged and lifted in the twentieth century by the 1978 priesthood revelation. It also discusses the ongoing effects of the ban and the anti-Black teachings in the Church that framed it after the revelation and the reluctance of Church leaders to come out against those teachings until 2013. Ultimately, however, the focus of the book is “on racism as it affected Black and biracial people in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints” (p. xiv).
Cutting-Edge Latter-day Saint Research, July 2024
Clarke, Steve. “When conspiracy theorists win.” Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy (2024): 1-24.
John Turner on his Joseph Smith Biography
John Turner is known in Latter-day Saint circles for his biography of Brigham Young and his book The Mormon Jesus: A Biography. Next year, however, he will add to that collection with John Turner’s Joseph Smith biography. Turner recently spoke about the forthcoming biography with From the Desk, and announced that “I loved writing Joseph Smith: The Rise and Fall of an American Prophet, which Yale University Press will publish in Summer of 2025.” What follows here is a copost to the full interview.
Churches with Sound Fundamentals Are Very Robust
Imagine President Nelson and the First Presidency came out with a revelation prophesying that the Second Coming would happen on a specific year (yes, that would never happen in the Church for a great number of reasons, but suspend disbelief for a second). This message was trumpeted from the General Conference pulpit on multiple occasions and carried across multiple issues of the Ensign. Missionaries are told to incorporate the message of God’s imminent coming in their materials. After several years of this kind of consistent, focused preparation the prophesied date comes….and nothing happens. At first there’s some fudge factor. Maybe it’s the next month or the next year? But soon it becomes clear that the entire prophecy is wrong. Would that be the death knell to the Church? Something very similar to this actually happened to the Jehovah’s Witnesses in 1975. My understanding was that there was always some level of plausible deniability, but you had to be a more nuanced believer to read between the lines of official material to parse out such a space. The Witnesses by and large were gearing up for the Second Coming. And what happened to them when Christ failed to arrive? I ran across this graph of Witness growth during the 20th century (citation, since I don’t know how to do footnotes in WordPress: Sturgis, Paul W. “Institutional versus Contextual Explanations for the Growth of the Jehovah’s Witnesses in the United States, 1945-2002.”…
Being a Mormon without Believing in a Historical Book of Mormon, Part 1
I think I stopped believing that the Book of Mormon was historical in 2011. I keep a journal, but didn’t write that “event” down. Anyway, sometime around then, but I’ve continued practicing Mormonism. I was called as a bishop in December 2018, so did the bishop thing not believing the Book of Mormon was historical. I’ve seen comments on this blog and elsewhere noting that most non-history BoM believers end up leaving. That’s probably true, but some stick around, like me. This is a big topic that I’ll break into a few posts (perhaps post some over at the JI), but I figured I’d start with a little background. As we all know, debates over BoM historicity tend to be central to debates over validity of the faith, so when I got into Mormon history at the end of my undergrad at BYU, even though that meant early republic US religious history and not ancient Mesoamerica, that issues of historicity floated in the background nonetheless.
Joseph Smith’s Uncanonized Revelations, a Review
Joseph Smith’s Uncanonized Revelations, edited by Stephen O. Smoot and Brian C. Passantino, is a new collection of revelations by or attributed to Joseph Smith. It builds upon the research and publication of documents by the Joseph Smith Papers Project, drawing together the relevant documents into one easily accessible place and providing context for each. The main section of the book focuses on revelations that can reliably be attributed to Joseph Smith while an appendix contains revelations that either are attributed to someone close to Joseph Smith or are late, second-hand recollections that may or may not be accurate and authentic reproductions of Joseph Smith revelations.
On Pie and Beer Day
Last Utah post for a while, I promise Imagine you lived in the Jewish Autonomous Oblast in Russia, or some other area settled by a historically disenfranchised religious group. Also imagine, if you will, that this Jewish or Muslim or what have you group had a local holiday that celebrated their escape from persecution and their settlement in their new land. In such a situation, using wordplay to come up with an alternative holiday where one ate pork would be considered in poor taste given the genesis of the holiday. (Or, for example, a Friday Meat Day on Good Friday for a Catholic community). The mature thing to do would be to be happy for them, maybe even join in the local celebrations. You wouldn’t be offended just because it was particular to the religious group that has historical roots in the place. If you switch Mormon with literally any other group, Buddhist, Muslim, Baha’i, whatever, this is obvious, but for some reason this is one of those things where it’s normatively okay to be demeaning towards Latter-day Saints in a way that would be considered inappropriate for virtually any other religious group.
The New Ex-Mormons
We just returned from our yearly-ish pilgrimage to Utah. Trips to Utah are always an opportunity to stick my finger in the air to get a more subjective, qualitative sense of things are going in the Church. Of course, Utah does not equal the Church in so many ways, but it does act as a sort of financial and membership ballast, and the amount of Mormon-ness in Utah is big enough that one can notice trends and patterns that would be harder to discern from random noise with a smaller sample size. However, here I’m not backing up any of these conjectures with quantitative data, it’s just my own anecdotal sense that may or may not be right, for what it’s worth. Back in my day Utahns could basically be separated out into three groups: members, whether active or not, ex-members, and never members. Typically but not always there were tensions between the first two groups, and ex-members either moved to Salt Lake Valley or left Utah altogether. The ex-Mormon identity was a very reified, concrete thing. It could hardly be otherwise with a relatively high-tension, high demand religion like the Church. Now I’m noticing another group, the second-generation ex-members. Some are what immigration scholars would call “generation 1.5,” or people who are born in one country as children but moved to another country young enough that for all intentions and purposes the UK/the US/whatever is the only country that…
A Review: The Last Called Mormon Colonization
Growing up in Utah, I heard many pioneer stories about my ancestors and their colleagues who traveled west to settle the Intermountain West region. I found, however, that many of the stories focused on the journey itself rather than the years that followed as they established settlements and survived in an arid region. The latter half is just as important, as is the observation that many people uprooted their lives repeatedly to settle more remote areas beyond the Wasatch Front in Utah. One dramatic story of that sort is among the last that could be considered pioneering—the settling of the Big Horn Basin in northern Wyoming in the early twentieth century.