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11 responses
It’s good to ponder the end of the world from time to time. Now I’m not really a food storage guy. That has never troubled me much. Until lately. My new approach: Every time North Korea fires a missile, I buy another flat of drinking water and put it in the garage, along with one of those big 2.5 gallon water containers. If the Koreans plunk one in the ocean near Hawaii, I’ll double it. Anyone else feeling a little less secure these days? Read More
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4 responses
The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit. (John 3:8) I think a common self-criticism we make within the Church is the valid concern that people get so caught up in trying to be perfect that we miss the forest for the trees with respect to the atonement. People do things just because it’s on some idealized checklist. Frequently because so many checklist items are incomplete they become depressed or at least discouraged. Some even… Read More
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56 responses
The Church announced today that it’s pulling out of scouts for all the 14 and older boys. So no more Eagle Scout projects. Overall I think that a positive thing. Trying to do both young men [i]and[/i] scouts is pretty hard. Plus my son admittedly doesn’t like scouts too much. I have to drag him to scouts every week. (He’s 12 so this doesn’t affect him yet) Read More
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15 responses
General Conference seems to come and go so quickly now. This must have something to do with the ease of streaming it live into every home — 10 hours of Conference in one weekend is more than enough for most of us. Once upon a time getting the Conference Ensign was a treat. Not so much anymore. The Conference cycle seems to have been compressed into just a few days, like binge-watching a TV series on Netflix. That’s not really what I’m going to talk about, just something I have particularly noticed this Conference cycle. Anyone else feel this way? Read More
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10 responses
When I first got invited to blog I had several topics I was really excited about. Then life came at me fast and most of those projects fell between the cracks. What I want to do is return to them but cut to the chase a little more swiftly. I’ve talked about knowledge quite a bit. Especially with posts like Pragmatism as Mormon Epistemology Part 1 and Part 2. Here’s my theory about a way of Mormon knowing that can deal both with the typical lay member as well as explain how an informed member can claim to know religious… Read More
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2 responses
As I read the women’s stories in Baring Witness, I was filled with love and sorrow and hope for all of these sisters. I want to sit with them over a long lunch, laughing and crying together. These are women who have shared their vulnerabilities, who have opened their lives to me: how can I not love them? And the great strength of this collection is that Welker has gathered together Mormon-y women who have a wide variety of experiences with marriage, including even standard Mormon marriages that work according to plan with those relationships that encounter all sorts of… Read More
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29 responses
I’ve been thinking about the different callings I have been given over the years. To that end, I present to you Rachel’s Church Callings, an incomplete list: Read More
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29 responses
One thing I’ve noticed a lot is people creating simple divisions of people within the church. I’m sure you’ve heard many of them. Liahona Members vs. Iron Rod Members. Chapel Mormons vs. Internet Mormons. Intellectuals vs. Fundamentalists. I’m sure there’s some out there that I somehow missed. I’ll confess these have always bothered me for a lot of reasons. Read More
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32 responses
Back home Easter was nearly as big a holiday as Christmas. I was quite shocked when first moving to Utah to attend BYU at just how marginalized Easter was here. Part of that I figured was due to it typically coming near finals when no student had a lot of free time. Part was Conference Weekend so often falling on or near Easter. Once I graduated I realized that wasn’t the cause at all. I still can’t quite understand why Easter is so minor in Utah. It’s not even a holiday! Schools could put spring break the week of Easter… Read More
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20 responses
I was invited to speak at a recent Relief Society conference on the topic of nurturing relationships through faith and testimony transitions. I post my remarks here by request, and because I haven’t blogged in forever. About ten years ago my sister Gabrielle looked like a typical young Mormon mom. She had a three little boys, a knack for home renovation and photography, and had recently returned to running after her last baby. One morning on her run, she tripped and fell. Clear sidewalk, no debris: strange, but she didn’t think much about it. Then it happened again a few… Read More
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58 responses
Last week at General Conference, President Burton delivered a talk titled “Certain Women.” Read More
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4 responses
I have never read Rod Dreher and have no particular insight on how American conservative Christianity should respond to secularism. If Mormons look to medieval clergy for a model of forming intentional communities, however, I think a better option than Benedictine monasticism is that of the Canons Regular. Read More
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43 responses
Last year around this time I had one of my first posts here at T&S on an analysis of the number of converts per missionary. I thought, given the latest data from the Church, it would be worth revisiting the topic. I had noted a huge drop in missionary productivity first around 1989 after an unexpected leap. The next big drop was between 2011 and 2012 which was somewhat tied to some birth rate demographics but also the shifting of the age for missionaries to 18 years old. I won’t repeat everything I said there so I’d advise checking out… Read More
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11 responses
Any conference predictions out there? I’m pretty bad with predictions but here are a few of mine. Read More
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28 responses
Borrowing the title from my good friends at BCC, let’s talk about sorcery, another interesting topic that is discussed in the April 2017 Ensign article “The War Goes On.” The central claim of the article is that gay marriage is Satan’s counterfeit version of “marriage between a man and a woman” that is “ordained of God,” because gay marriage “brings neither posterity nor exaltation.” But the article also addresses counterfeit faith, counterfeit love, counterfeit priesthood, and counterfeit miracles: One of Satan’s counterfeits for faith is superstition. His counterfeit for love is lust. He counterfeits the priesthood by introducing priestcraft, and… Read More
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4 responses
There was a gushing story about Utah and particularly the Mormon influence there in today’s Bloomberg. The issue was how Utah deals with poverty. Particularly how Utah is near Denmark in economic mobility figures. It’s not the first time Utah has been singled out. A couple of years ago Newsweek did a similar story. I think the question is how much we should trust the gushing. Certainly I think we’re doing some things right here. However I know we have a tendency to notice the things we do right and ignore some of the problems. There is a bit more… Read More
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2 responses
In my last post I went through the foundational metaphor for agency in the scriptures. I argued it was a space that was cleared or opened so that people could be free. I want to continue this investigation a little by looking at early Hebrew creation accounts. One of the most interesting books on what we might term the “basic ideas of early Israelite religion” is Jon Levinson’s Creation and the Persistence of Evil.[1] Levinson is Jewish but I think few Mormons could read it without noticing a strong parallel between what Levinson describes as ancient Israelite religion and certain… Read More
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7 responses
How do you tell the story of a 200-year-old movement in a single volume? In the summer of 2011, Matthew Bowman received a call inviting him to write such a volume in under three months. The result — The Mormon People: The Making of an American Faith — is an accessible, even-handed volume that uncommonly gives as much attention to the modern church as it does to the days of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. Here are three things that I learned from the book: The power of the primary during the correlation reorganization of the 1960s: “The reorganization drained some power… Read More
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7 responses
Clark’s post and his links to David Bokovoy’s discussion of deutero-Isaiah at Rational Faiths reminded me that the dating of Isaiah does not cause me much concern, mostly because I am averse to crises, but also as a direct consequence of my academic studies and research. Read More
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8 responses
Agency is one of the most fundamental concepts in LDS thought. Often people confuse agency and free will. They are not necessarily the same thing. I’m going to avoid all those sorts of nuanced discussions here. What is interesting to me are the more social, literary and especially political implications of Mormon notions of agency. Often a notion of agency is taken for granted when Mormons make a political point. I think this puts the cart before the horse. Agency gets used in such arguments without there ever being an consideration of what agency is. Thus agency because the ultimate… Read More
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21 responses
This is a talk I gave in sacrament meeting on March 12, 2017. The topic was “Trials and Their Purpose.” I appreciate the thoughts and words of [the previous speakers]. I hope that you all can find some solace in our various messages, even if the answers are a bit incomplete. The purpose of trials—or what is more commonly known in philosophical circles as the problem of evil—is a question that has plagued philosophers and theologians for centuries and I don’t pretend that I’m going to resolve it in a 15-minute sacrament talk. The evolving and at times contradicting theologies… Read More
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44 responses
A couple of years ago, Elder Richard Maynes (of the Presidency of the Seventy) quoted Matthew 13:44 in his conference talk: “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.” But wait a second! The King James Version of that verse reads differently: “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field; the which when a man hath found, he hideth, and for joy thereof goeth and selleth all that he hath, and… Read More
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12 responses
We’re all familiar with Alma 42 and the notion that mercy can’t rob justice. I was reading this today at church and was struck by a context that often doesn’t get mentioned. In the ancient world relationships often determined actions. This meant special treatment for friends and especially relations. In Greek philosophy and plays you often see the key tension being between familial relationships and justice. The idea is that justice is what one should do if one wasn’t related. It’s the idea of being no respecter of persons. The very notion of justice in the middle east starting during… Read More
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8 responses
I’ll be speaking at the Rocky Mountain Retreat this June. Here’s the description of my presentation: Read More
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26 responses
Several parts of the Book of Mormon are highly influenced by the text of deutero-Isaiah. The traditional problem here is that deutero-Isaiah (chapters 40-55) are usually considered to be written fairly late – usually dated to during the exile in Babylon. Contrary to what some members say, the dating isn’t just assuming that prophecy is impossible. Rather the text makes assumptions of the audience that just don’t work earlier. A good example is the presumption that Jerusalem has already been destroyed. While there are some figures who support an unified Isaiah[1] I confess I just don’t find persuasive their answers… Read More
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28 responses
Yesterday was testimony meeting (for some of you, fast and testimony meeting). By good fortune, I have never had much anxiety about the “ward crazies” who say such interesting things on open mic Sunday — by good fortune, the wards I have attended have not had this challenge. But I do see the standard mix of young children, probably three or four per testimony meeting, some who manage on their own, some who manage with parental prompts, some who require a word-for-word script whispered into their ear. It’s cute if it’s your own kid; it’s not a big deal if… Read More
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35 responses
Rod Dreher at The American Conservative in response to significant losses on cultural issues in the US suggested that social conservatives should adopt what he calls the Benedict Option. More or less it means those who cease trying to make the public sphere what they consider moral and instead create more local and self-contained communities. Last week Hal Boyd at the Deseret News talked of this option for Latter-day Saint communities. Read More
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37 responses
One of the interesting facets of Mormon history is that a few key events are not exactly clear. An example is the Melchezedek Priesthood restoration. Ben at the Juvenile Instructor did a nice overview of the issues a few years back. The Millennial Star did a nice post discussing how Addison Everett’s account bears on all this. Basically though we don’t know for sure when it was restored. A common, perhaps dominant view, is that rather than being a single event it was a process. I don’t claim to be an expert in all this. I’ve read the same books… Read More
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The Society for Mormon Philosophy and Theology will hold its 2017 Annual Meeting at Claremont Graduate University on March 2-4th, on the theme, “Poured Out Upon Us: The Holy Spirit.” Over two dozen presenters, including several T&Sers, will speak on a wide range of aspects of Mormon belief, including: “Deny Not the Manifestations of the Holy Spirit” —John W. Welch, Brigham Young University “‘The Spirit Said unto Me Again: Slay Him’: Latter-day Saint Reflections on Divine Violence” —Patrick Q. Mason, Claremont Graduate University “Toward a Nephite Pneumatology” —Joseph M. Spencer, Brigham Young University “The Family: A Performance of the World”… Read More
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12 responses
There’s something memorable about the phrase, “wars and rumors of wars.” It certainly occurs in the scriptures often enough. Two prominent examples are in Nephi’s vision of the future of his people (and his brothers’) on the American continents (1 Nephi 12:21, 1 Nephi 14:16) and the Savior’s own discussion of the end (Mark 13:7 and Mattew 24:6). The latter usage–echoed as well by Moroni (Mormon 8:30)–always struck me as anachronistic. These were opinions I formed as a kid, back when we all watched the First Gulf War on television. War was a different thing, then. The whole world was on our… Read More