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7 responses
Some time ago while singing Christmas carols at a non-Mormon event, I suggested that the group sing “Far, Far Away on Judea’s Plains.” I was greeted with blank stares and questions. “What song?” “Never heard of it.” It turns out I was so immersed in Mormon culture (I still am to a large degree) that I didn’t know that “Far, Far Away on Judea’s Plains” is an LDS hymn by a 19th century Utah author, and is therefore unknown to most non-Mormon audiences, even though its doctrine is universal enough for most of them. Read More
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17 responses
Five-Sense Gray. 9:15 in the morning in the very late autumn in Belgium. It’s barely and unenthusiastically light because the sun has just come grudgingly up (if you call ten feet above the horizon up), and because the heavens are so blanketed with clouds that whatever slivers of rays manage to get through are absorbed right away into the gray. Belgian towns aren’t colorful in any sort of autumn or winter light, but in this particular flannel-gray sort they might as well just go ahead and say it: we are thoroughgoingly monochrome. Read More
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37 responses
Below is the text of a letter that I wrote about a year ago to a close friend who was in the midst of a crisis of faith. I have edited it to remove any identifying information: Dear Friend, It was a pleasure to talk with you earlier. I am sorry to hear about the spiritual and intellectual difficulties that you have been struggling with. You are — quite literally — in my prayers. I have thought a great deal about what you told me of your struggles with faith and the Restoration. I hesitate to offer any advice or… Read More
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39 responses
I recently did a quick read of John G. Turner’s Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet and posted notes here. Here is my one-sentence summary: “Turner gives a balanced if candid portrayal of Brigham, one that mainstream Mormons should be able to read without serious difficulties.” But not everyone agrees. Some very bright people think the book might very well cause problems for mainstream Mormons and should therefore perhaps be avoided. It’s a serious question: Can books cause problems? If so, what do we do with those problem books: Ignore them? Hide them in locked cases? Burn them? Read More
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[This is Part 4 of a 4-part series. Part 1. Part 2. Part 3.] In my first three pieces I’ve spent an awful lot of time talking about epistemic humility. Now I’m going to talk about what I consider to be the antithesis of epistemic humility: extremism. My definition of the term is non-standard, but I believe it both fits as the antithesis of epistemic humility and matches our intuition that there’s something to extremism that is more than merely being far removed from the mainstream. After all, if you live in a society where child sacrifice is the norm and you consider… Read More
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21 responses
[This is Part 3 of a 4-part series. Part 1. Part 2. Part 4] In this post I want to present a secular example of epistemic humility. As with the religious example, I hope that this one will also provide some intrinsically interesting ideas. I also plan on reusing these ideas in the next couple of posts. Like my first example, the second highlights the fertility that arises from knowingly maintaining contradictory views. In this case the conflict is between the highly stylized model of human behavior used by economists (homo economicus or the rational agent) and real, live human beings. It… Read More
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I’m no longer of the opinion that religion matters because it makes life meaningful. Religion, it seems to me, makes meaning rather the way breathing makes CO2: as leavings, as tailings. That’s fine. Meaning may follow, but it’s meant to be exhaled. If you hold your breath, you’ll suffocate. Read More
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5 responses
For the past year each Monday afternoon my “Literary BMGD” posts have appeared each Monday — perhaps confusing some readers who have wondered exactly what these posts were all about. And those who clicked on them to read what they had may have been surprised to find that they were… poetry. What exactly is BMGD and why poetry? If I am going to continue these posts, I should probably explain: Read More
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On this day, on every day, let us mourn with those who mourn. For our hearts are broken, and all the sorrow and pain and suffering of the world has fallen in the shattered shells of ourselves. Let us take us these fragile broken pieces and lay them on Thine altar. Let us make our broken hearts an offering unto Thee. O, God, we hurt. O God, let us find some comfort, some peace, in doing Thy work, in mourning with those who mourn, and comforting those who stand in need of comfort. Lord, forgive us our sins, on this… Read More
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30 responses
Everybody’s talking about pants. And having already recently conducted my own private (and unrelated) “wear pants to church” event, I thought it would be an opportune time to share my thoughts here. I had been contemplating wearing pants to church for awhile and had several reasons for doing it, although when it actually came down to it, the choice to wear pants on that particular Sunday had mostly to do with the fact that I was exhausted from taking care of sick family members and my dress pants were clean and pressed, while my skirt was not. Turns out, though,… Read More
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I met Tigre pretty soon after arriving in my second area. He was a solid man, all muscle but his midsection. As I got to know him, I learned that both his muscle and his gut were well-earned. The muscle because Tigre taught karate for a living, and owned his own studio. The gut? You have never seen such a mountain of rice, covered with an avalanche of beans, as this man ate for lunch. Read More
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[This is Part 2 of a 4-part series. Part 1. Part 3. Part 4] I appreciate the kind welcome to T&S and all the good comments and questions. I know I haven’t responded to some of them yet, and I’ll try to rectify that soon, but I wanted to make sure I had this post ready to go. My goal is to live up to my promise to walk through a religious example of epistemic humility in action. At the end of the last post, I suggested that one of the dangers we face when our beliefs conflict with each other is that… Read More
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How well does the average missionary who goes to a foreign country learn his or her mission language? Read More
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Michael Otterson advised the press: to understand Mormonism, go to the source and allow Mormons to define themselves. But what if these Mormons are survivalist Joel Skousen, Tea Party painter Jon McNaughton, or Tammy, an anti-government gun-toting rodeo queen from Overton, Nevada? All three were lengthily interviewed on French national radio. Read More
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55 responses
A few disjointed thoughts, first on the pants event itself and then on the response. I have a lot of sympathy for the goals of the pants-protest group, as I understand them. I too would like to see a broadening of Mormon femininity; I would be very pleased to see symbolic changes in practice that would underscore the spiritual equality of the genders; I think the church will benefit from a more open and more compassionate acknowledgment of Mormon feminists’ concerns. To that extent, I say Brava, sisters! I think there were some errors in the conception and planning of… Read More
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[This is Part 1 of a 4-part series. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4] I’m happy to have a chance to do a guest stint here at Times and Seasons, and over the next two weeks I want to use my borrowed soap box to talk about epistemic humility. Epistemic humility is an awareness of the limits of our ability to know. It is an admission that we are ignorant of things that are true and that we accept as true things which are not. Hence the title, which comes from a longer saying of Akhenaten: “The wise man doubts… Read More
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After much prodding from the folks here at Times & Seasons, circumstances have finally led Nathaniel Givens to accept our invitation to guest blog. Lurking on the bloggernacle for years, he says, made him realize that his ideas aren’t getting any fresher. So, finding himself with a surplus of unoccupied evenings (due to the necessity of working far from home), he discovered that now is the “later” he previously had in mind whenever he procrastinated the task of committing his ideas to digital paper, and he’s agreed to publish those ideas at T&S. Nathaniel earned a BS in mathematics from… Read More
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Mid-December is creeping up on us, bringing with it finals and the end of another semester. This year, as a result in the change in missionary ages, mid-December may also herald a tidal wave of new missionaries. Growing up, I heard not-infrequent stories about missions. But I remember only the rarest stories of the MTC. So, To better prepare you for the MTC,[1. Assuming, of course, that any prospective missionaries read blogs. Which, I’ve heard, they probably don’t, generationally. But maybe someone younger than 30 somewhere is.] here’s an MTC story. Merry Christmas! When I was in the MTC, we… Read More
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You thought you were going to get it right. Right. Instead, you’re morphing into that crazy guy who sits on the front row in Sunday School with two hands up and three incompatible opinions. Given your extremity, making you crazy may well be God’s worst best way of saving you. Plan A is out the window. Now, the only way to get there from here is through that. Read More
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Over at FMH, rah has a post responding to my “How Mormonism Changes” post. As I read it, she has basically three objections to my post. First, she insists that I misunderstand the motivations of liberal Mormons, which are grounded in genuine love and concern for others rather than ideological embarrassment. Second, she suggests that historically the priesthood ban’s elimination had more to do with evolution within the hierarchy than it did with progression of the membership of the church. Third, she claims that the model of prophecy I propose is mistaken or the like because it does not appear in… Read More
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At Faith Promoting Rumor TT has a legthy response to my last post on how Mormonism changes. It’s worth a read and you should go over a take a look. I actually agree with a lot of what he says, but I’d like to push back on a couple of things. First, he writes: “Unity” of the church is selective, not a neutral category, one that excludes some in order to manufacture unity. That is, even the choice to “preserve” unity comes with costs measured in exclusion. There are a couple of ways of understanding this. It could just be… Read More
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Its that time of year again. The media will soon start reviewing the important news stories of the year, Time will soon select its Person of the Year (Mitt Romney has been nominated); so we should get busy selecting the Mormon of the Year. For those who don’t remember, T&S selected Mitt Romney as the Mormon of the Year for 2008, Harry Reid for 2009, Elizabeth Smart for 2010 and Jimmer Fredette for 2011. As in the past, the choice does not mean that the person is a good Mormon or even a good person. This designation is solely about the… Read More
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95 responses
One of the things that the Mormon interwebs do is imagine change within the Church, lament the lack of change within the Church, and (at times) agitate for change within the Church. Certainly there is historical precedent for change within the Church, the most dramatic recent example being the 1978 abandonment of the Church’s racial priesthood ban. This is an example worth thinking about. First, the shift came relatively late if you super-impose the Mormon timeline on the civil rights timeline in the United States. The Supreme Court declared segregation unconstitutional in the 1950s, although it didn’t do much to… Read More
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The church has a new website today: Mormonsandgays.org. Read More
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Two years ago, we spent one of my favorite Christmases ever in Italy. We were living in a little town nestled against a mountainside between the Ligurian and Maritime Alps. Every Sunday we drove a half hour through the Piedmont countryside to meet with our little LDS branch. I loved our branch to death, but it was in that awkward in-between stage where there are enough members to necessitate a full complement of auxiliaries, but not nearly enough to comfortably staff said auxiliaries. We generally kept things more-or-less together, but we didn’t have a lot of extra time or resources… Read More
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I’m not a fan of public prayers in public places other than churches. It makes me feel a little bit uncomfortable. Some of this may be my contrarian reaction to prayers in classes at BYU and to the often earnest but uncomfortable prayers offered up before dramatic performances. I don’t suppose visiting theatrical companies mind much; it goes with the venue. But I feel for the students who pray these prayers, whether they are a jumble of stock phrases or an earnest, but incoherent mush of sentiments that are slightly inappropriate for the situation at hand. As an adult, I… Read More
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The final lesson for the Book of Mormon Gospel Doctrine class covers Moroni 7-10, the final Book of Mormon prophet’s closing advice to readers, including teachings about faith, hope and charity, the conditions of salvation, spiritual gifts, the role of the Holy Ghost, and how to judge between good and evil. The motivation for this latter counsel is somewhat captured in this poem, which looks at the extremes to which our friends can sometimes push us, and the feeling of being lost or torn between opposites that can happen if we try to follow their advice. Read More