Below is the agenda for Day 2 of the FAIR Conference in Provo with brief bios of the speakers. I will be adding summaries of some of the sessions as the day goes by. (Disclaimer: these are on-the-fly summaries for general information and discussion. Please consult audio recordings or the transcripts that FAIR releases in a week or two for accurate details.) Full bios are available at the speakers page. You can get online streaming of the conference sessions.
FairConference, Thursday Afternoon Sessions
Bob Rees A review of Earl Wunderli’s Imperfect Book Started with this Card Colour changing trick video (http://richardwiseman.wordpress.com/2009/01/07/colour-changing-card-trick-outtakes/) to illustrate that too much focus on one thing can cause you miss the many other things that are going on. What aren’t you noticing? Emerson said, “Tell me your sect, and I’ll tell you your argument.” How we approach the Book of Mormon will determine what we find within it. Rees was impressed with Earl’s thoroughness. He has read extensively and carefully. He approached as though cross-examining it in a court of law, and like any good lawyer making a case, he has been selective in choice of witnesses. Wunderli’s book does not give a balanced presentation, although it gives an impression of having done so. And he does raise important questions about the Book of Mormon, from the use of KJV language, internal stylistic consistency, anachronistic scientific understanding, mythology, and so one. Wunderli sees himself of side of reason, science and truth, and as a result paints the other side unreasonable, unscientific, and inclined to believe in myths and falsehoods. He doesn’t acknowledge that some scholars are open to spiritual ways of knowing, that there is more than one legitimate avenue for seeking knowledge. Those of us who use both approaches see differently than those who use just one. And this cuts both ways; those rely solely on spirit may be indifferent to any evidence. In Book of Mormon…
FairMormon Conference Thursday Morning Sessions
I’m not quite up to live blogging, so my coverage of FAIR will lag slightly behind the fact. I will be posting summaries of talks posted after completion rather than subjecting you to my sloppy notes in real time. Kerry Muehlstein, Ph. D. Brigham Young University Unnoticed assumptions about The Book of Abraham While the assumptions discussed in this talk are applied to Abraham, they also have more general application. What is apologetics? Apologetics to some means to try to defend a certain assumption. For Muehlstein, it means to try to understand what is true, what is accurate. In our search for truth, we need not be afraid, we have nothing to hide, and everything can be put forward as in the exemplary Joseph Smith papers project. No need for a strident tone in apologetics if we are seeking truth and working to disseminate it. The beginning premise is crucial. We (Muehlstein and LDS apologists generally) take as a premise that revelation may be a source of knowledge (unlike scholars outside of the faith) 1. Revelation is a valid source of knowledge. 2. With the Book of Abraham and the Book of Mormon he starts with assumption that these are true, then tries to fit any evidence that he finds within that paradigm, and uses that to filter all evidence that we find. Key Assumptions: What was the source of the text for the Book of Abraham? Assumed it…
Performing Mark
It would seem that when a text is nearly two thousand years old, there might not be a whole lot new to say about it. But this isn’t the case for the Gospel of Mark.
Floating Through a Billion Years of Mormon History
Well, a billion years of geological history and a couple hundred years of Mormon history. That’s what I saw last month on a rafting trip down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. But not everyone sees the same thing.
Summertime Notes of a Liturgical Junkie
Four Services Worth Writing Home About. Mormon Service: An “International Ward” in Western Europe. (No, this picture to the left is not of a Mormon chapel, alas. It’s just an action shot to suggest what being a LJ might involve.) Up on the podium, the bishop is a Wasatch-Front-origined temporary-resident white Anglonavian Mormon, as is one of the councilors, while the other is a recently-immigrated black African Mormon. The main congregational constituents not represented in the bishopric are the old-time local converts, who now occupy a mere quarter of the pews they used to dominate, and whose once unchallenged language is now only sometimes heard and then always translated into English.
BYUNTC Conference Videos
The videos from May’s conference are now available here.
A gospel born in grief
It is time now to ponder, after the silence of bereavement. For me the gospel is sometimes hard to believe, often an intellectual challenge, but always a comforting presence. Things go wrong in this world (well, many things go right as well) but in our day and age the things that do go wrong seem to do that in a grand way. The downing of MZ17 was one of these. What comfort can I find in the scriptures, how does the Old Testament – as that is what we are reading at this time – relate to the afflictions that flesh is heir to? The most inspiring messages and profound notions in the Old Testament are borne out of suffering, out of deep loss and utter despair. When history goes wrong, we, together with the heavens, construct the deepest meaning in our lives. Let us see how. Reading the Old Testament this way, means that we are using the insights of the First Axial Age in order to give meaning to the Second Axial Age. The terms may not be familiar with everyone, but the notion is important, also for us Mormons. In a famous study of 1953, The Origin and Goal of History, philosopher Karl Jaspers noticed that between 800 BC and 300 BC a crucial, silent revolution in religion and ethics took place in areas very distant from each other. In 2005 religious scholar Karen Armstrong took it…
I was a stranger, and ye took me in
These children, fleeing death and devastation, have come to us. Yes, caring for them will cost us time and money and effort, but not caring for them will cost us our compassion.
Rankings, Money, and BYU
Money magazine has just released a new ranking of U.S. universities that has received a bit of attention. BYU does quite well, landing in ninth place overall, just behind Stanford, Harvard, Harvey Mudd, and Cooper Union.
Literary Joseph Fielding Smith #17: The Lord of Hosts has Spoken by Octave F. Ursenbach
The Teachings of Joseph Fielding Smith lesson 17 covers “Sealing Power and Temple Blessings,” the ordinances restored through the priesthood which lead to our salvation, for salvation in the eternal kingdom is dependent on sealing, both to parents, to spouse and to children. The following poems addresses the role of sealing in our understanding of priesthood and of salvation.
Literary OTGD #31: My Friends and I by J. L. Townsend
Lesson 31 of the Old Testament Gospel Doctrine manual covers the wisdom literature of the Old Testament, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, which consist mainly of short statements meant to help guide our behavior. But its pretty easy to make these statements seem contradictory. We all agree that “pride goeth before destruction,” but what if it is pride in our work or in doing our best? And what do we say to parents who have “trained up a child in the way he should go” when that child does depart from the way? It is precisely these contradictions that the following poem addresses.
Mourning and the Gospel
At this moment The Netherlands, like many other countries, are in deep mourning, shocked by the terrible news of the downing of MZ17 in the East of Ukraine. Each of us has somewhere in his or her network people who were in that flight; my faculty lost a whole family, the dean of Liberal Arts with his wife who worked in Communication Studies, and one daughter, a brilliant student who was in my Liberal Arts class last year. At this moment the news is completely dominated by images of a charred field with wreckage, masked soldiers trying to shut off the area, and especially of a long train of cooling-wagons carrying off some of the 298 remains to a safer area, in West Ukraine. At this very moment the whole of Holland is waiting for two airplanes to land at Eindhoven airport, with whatever is left of those dear corpses. A day of nation-wide mourning, this day, a day when all of us ponder on what so suddenly happened, on the losses of that many people, unimaginable, unthinkable, unexplainable. As I am writing I glance to the right where the TV shows the planes landing. At four o’clock all church bells will ring in the country, the trains stop, the airspace is closed, the highways quiet. The Netherlands mourn. There both planes come, I will stop writing. Our king and queen, the prime minister and the whole cabinet, together with…
Literary OTGD #30: Strength by Mabel Jones
What benefit do we get from the temple? Old Testament Gospel Doctrine Lesson #30 covers two renewals of the temple in ancient Israel; that of Hezekaih and that of his great grandson, Josiah. It also gives the example of Hezekiah’s fending off the Assyrians with the help of the angel of the Lord following his cleansing of the temple. This apparently comes because of his righteousness. Could it be the indirect result of cleansing the temple? Does the temple lend us strength? The following sonnet sees strength in the temple, comparing its outward appearance with the inward strength it gives us:
A Baseball Team in Every Ward
In the late 16th century Henry IV of France expressed a desire that everyone in his realm would “have a chicken in his pot every Sunday.” That idea showed up again in Herbert Hoover’s promise of a “chicken in every pot”—the politician’s promise of prosperity. I’m not sure whether “a baseball team in every ward” is a promise of prosperity or programming gone awry, but that is essentially what leaders of the MIA suggested in 1922—some years before Hoover made his ill-fated promise. They wrote: “Each ward should have an organized baseball club, and each stake should have an organized baseball league…”
Literary Worship – Sacred Stones
As our one really unique Mormon holiday, Pioneer Day gives us a chance to look back and reflect on our ancestors and others who went before and made our way easier through their good lives and sacrifices. I think of it as a sort of celebration of our collective quest to turn the hearts of the children to the fathers. And because I love traveling and getting to know new places, thinking about my ancestors always involves a lot of thought about where they originally came from, and if I’m lucky, not just thought, but plane tickets and itineraries. Almost four years ago, I was living with my family in Italy. We’d gone there chasing a sort of genealogical dream, and now we were sitting in a chapel in Turin, Italy, watching live coverage of the Prophet speaking from Rome. President Monson was in Italy breaking ground for the long-awaited and prayed-for Rome Temple. With him were Church leaders from all over Italy as well as Giuseppe Ciardi, the vice-mayor of Rome, and Lucio Malan, a senator from our own northern region of Piemonte. Senator Malan had made the journey from the far north of Italy to Rome because he belongs to a minority religious group called the Valdese–a group with which we had recently become intimately familiar. The Valdese (Waldensians in English) are a small Protestant group in the Alps of Northern Italy who have a particular history with the Mormon Church. They…
Upgrading Our Lay Clergy Model
People are still trying to digest the consequences of the Kate Kelly trial. Just today FMH posted dozens of reports showing how arbitrary the LDS disciplinary process can be and Exponent posted on the feasibility of bringing some level of informed consent to the worthiness interview process. At T&S, we have recently posted and discussed in comments shortcomings of the Kelly trial and problems with apostasy trials in general. Let’s take a step back and ask a more general and hopefully less contentious question: Has the Church outgrown the lay leadership model? Are there any practical alternatives?
Faithful priesthood narratives?
some of those who speak in opposition to women’s ecclesiastical enfranchisement do so because they can’t imagine what a faithful, coherent narrative of our dispensation could possibly look like if women’s priesthood role were restored and developed or if they did receive the Melchizedek Priesthood
James Faulconer – Making Things Harder
It seems to me that the scriptures offer two types of revelations: (1) they reveal things you didn’t already know, and (2) they reveal that you didn’t know many of the things you thought you knew. Both kinds of revelation are pivotal. And each tends to depend on the other. James Faulconer’s new series of books — The Book of Mormon Made Harder, The Doctrine and Covenants Made Harder, The Old Testament Made Harder, and The New Testament Made Harder (forthcoming) — can help on both of these fronts. Though, to be fair, they’re especially good at the latter.
Literary OTGD #29: To President Brigham Young by Eliza R. Snow
There are at least two potential problems when there is a leadership transition—the transition plan or procedure isn’t always known ahead of time, and those involved don’t always follow the plan or procedures. Mormonism’s initial experience with transition didn’t go well—I suspect for both reasons—and the transitions elsewhere in the scriptures often seem unexpected also. For example, the transition from Elijah to Elisha described in Old Testament Gospel Doctrine lesson #29 is unexpected by the Israelites, who search for Elijah for three days after Elisha succeeds him. It is, of course, Mormonism’s difficult initial transition, following the death of Joseph Smith, that led to the following poem.
Literary Joseph Fielding Smith #16: My Child and Thine by Ellen Jakeman
Parenting sometimes seems like a Mormon obsession. We believe it has a significant effect on the success of children both in this life and in the life to come, so it is often the subject of Mormon sermons and lessons, such as chapter 16 of the Joseph Fielding Smith manual. We often find inspiration for how to handle parenting issues in Mormon teachings about the nature of our Heavenly Father and our relationship to him. Mormons assume and rely on the idea that our relationship to our Heavenly Father is similar to our relationship with our earthly parents. This assumption is found throughout our literature and often in our sermons. And it is found in the following poem.
Literary OTGD #28: The Still Small Voice by George H. Brimhall
The story of Elijah listening for the voice of the Lord (1 Kings 19:9-13) is frequently used by Mormons to describe the manner we can receive revelation. Old Testament Gospel Doctrine lesson #28 includes that story, along with others discussing Elijah’s acts as prophet, but focusing on his listening to the Lord to accomplish those acts. While it is undeniably important for a prophet like Elijah to listen to the still small voice, in latter days Mormons emphasize that all people should receive revelation, an idea that is found in the following poem.
A More Nuanced Approach to Scripture
I am so thankful that we are gently backing away from a literal understanding of scripture.
Literary Joseph Fielding Smith #15: The Marriage Vow
While the marriage practiced in the Church and taught in chapter 15 of the Joseph Fielding Smith manual is different than that taught and practiced outside of the Temple and the Church, still the underlying commitment to marriage and many of the promises made are very similar. Even after the Church under Joseph Smith introduced celestial marriage in the 1840s, the protestant views of marriage common in the U.S. still resonated for Mormons (as they do today) In fact, the following non-Mormon poem about marriage was published in the Nauvoo Mormon newspaper The Wasp on the last day of April of 1844, more than 3 weeks after the Prophet Joseph Smith had delivered the King Follett Sermon, which discusses the doctrine of eternity and eternal life. And somehow it seems almost Mormon.