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The gospel is a recipe for world peace. The basis for a just, harmonious, and prosperous society is implicit in the gospel as we discuss and practice it today. It is implicit, but it is a long way from becoming explicit. I made this claim in Part I of this series. In this post I will say more about what I mean by “implicit” and “explicit,” as a way of filling out the expansive content and promise of Mormonism, and the expansive context in which I want to think about its fruition, including its intellectual culture. If all of us… Read More
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45 responses
I have been fascinated by the idea of adoption for a long time. Growing up, I knew a few people who were adopted, and the idea of bringing home your baby from Korea or the Ukraine always seemed exotic to me. But my obsession really took off when I got my Patriarchal Blessing. After gushing about the children that would be born to me, a totally out-of-the-blue paragraph began with the words, “I bless the love of your family to extend to other children . . . ” Suddenly, adoption was part of my envisioned Mormon “happily-ever-after,” and I embraced… Read More
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Let’s say you’re attending a hypothetical graduate program in Mormon Studies at a hypothetical Mormon U. What kind of classes do you want to take? History? Theology? Literature? Sociology? Etc? Read More
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One of the most stunning acts of persecution in the scriptures has to be the attack on the believers in Ammonihah described in Alma 14. Those who have heeded the words of Alma and Amulek, men, women and children, are taken by the mob, bound and cast into fire, along with their scriptures while Alma and Amulek are forced to watch. In consternation, the missionaries face the problem of evil in a very personal and immediate way and Alma is constrained by the spirit not to intervene. Read More
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The Lord is my Goatherder, I don’t want him; he hauls me up the mountain; he drags me down to the beach. Surely we all recognize the 23rd Psalm there, from the infamous first translation into Tlingit. Sounds a bit off, doesn’t it? Read More
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51 responses
In a Newsroom piece on issues related to homosexuality, Elder Oaks quotes President Hinckley as saying: Read More
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Tomorrow, the Chicago Tribune is hosting the Printers Row Lit Fest.[fn1] If you like books, there are all sorts of cool things to do. What am I going to do at the festival? Two words: Justin Roberts. In my opinion, he’s the best kids’ musician out there.[fn2] This will be the third Justin Roberts and the Not Ready For Naptime Players concert that my family has seen. Plus, we’ve been to WBEZ’s So Many Ways to Tell a Story twice, and he wrote songs with the kids at both of them. But wait, you say, this is a Mormon blog.… Read More
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The eight-witness statement appears to be a prosaic legal affidavit, yet one that has borrowed much of its phraseology from the three-witness statement. There are at most only two instances of phrases that could be said to have been taken from the Book of Mormon text proper: “of curious workmanship” and “we lie not”. Read More
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Steven Peck, in his moving and mischievous little poem “My Turn on Earth,” more than idly suggests that Creationism is Satanic. Only evolution, in all its messy contingency, is compatible with the gospel and the truth of agency. I laughed out loud and clapped my hands when I read it. Read More
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Much of the Book of Alma covers Alma’s missionary efforts in the land of the Nephites, and in this week’s chapters, Alma 8-12, he meets and preaches with his principle missionary companion, Amulek. Unlike the experiences of the sons of Mosiah, Alma and Amulek’s experiences aren’t always successful in the end. Instead, they face many tribulations, have many who refuse to believe in what they teach, very similar to what our missionaries face today. Read More
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I have always assumed that the three-witness statement was a part of the text of the Book of Mormon, that its language was the same as the English language found in the Book of Mormon proper. The eight-witness statement, on the other hand, has been a little more problematic since it has three instances of the decidedly legalistic phrase “the said Smith” as well as the dubious reference (in the original version) to Joseph Smith as “the author and proprietor of this work”. Read More
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From 12:30-2:30pm on Saturday, June 9, Joseph Spencer and I will be signing copies of our books An Other Testament, Reading Nephi Reading Isaiah, An Experiment on the Word, and Rube Goldberg Machines:Essays in Mormon Theology at Pioneer Book in Orem, Utah. Read More
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8 responses
I’m a bit behind in putting together my lists, so I won’t analyze this too much. As I’ve done with each of the major Forbes lists of the wealthy, here is a summary of the Mormons who appear on the list of the world’s billionaires that Forbes published last month. While there is certainly a bit of churn on the overall list, the Mormons on the list have remained relatively in the same place since I last looked at them in October. Read More
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34 responses
Two recent essays provide a new perspective on the never-ending discussion centered around the question, “Are Mormons Christian?” Mormons claim to be Christian, while at the same time denying divine authority and full legitimacy to all other Christian denominations. Consider the specific topic of rebaptism. Previously baptized Christians who join the LDS Church are required to be rebaptized by an LDS priesthood holder, which seems quite natural to Mormons. Baptized Mormons who later choose to join another Christian denomination are generally required to be rebaptized by that denomination because, in their eyes, Mormon baptism doesn’t count, which rather incongruously strikes… Read More
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The Mormon Review vol. 4 no. 1 is presented here, with Jonathon Penny’s review of Stephen Daldry’s 2012 film Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. By Jonathon Penny I’m late with this, as with so much in my dog-eared, half-buttoned, last minute, Subway-sandwiched, twenty-first century life. I wrote the other day, on reflection about the harried nature of workaday (and workanight) life that I was precocious as a child, ambitious, full of expectations for myself and for the world around me bending to my will made holy for a borrowed righteousness and then the sag set in and I lost all… Read More
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read Part I; Part II; Part III IV. Stairway to Heaven We are entwined in bed when the phone rings. We let the machine answer, annoyed by the interruption but determined not to lose focus. Seconds later the phone rings again. Reed mutters something, and I silently curse whoever is lame enough to call repeatedly at 10:30 pm. When it immediately rings again, Reed lunges out of bed, grabs the phone from the computer desk and barks a hello. I brace myself on behalf of the caller, probably one of the kids’ clueless friends, who’s about to get an earful. But Reed… Read More
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read Part I; Part II III. Day of the Dead When I come inside from lighting the jack-o-lanterns, the boys are waiting for me. “When are we going to go?” Sam asks from behind the white sheet of his ghost costume. “Yeah, let’s go,” says pirate Matt, swinging his pumpkin-shaped candy bag. He is eight and Sam is six. None of our older four kids are willing to be seen trick-or-treating with their parents. Matt and Sam would actually be pleased to have both of us tag along, but taking a long stroller ride in the dark is not our preschooler’s… Read More
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read Part I II. Blue Boy The kids and I are decorating Christmas gingerbread men when the phone rings. I sigh, knowing that even a few minutes’ interruption could spell disaster in a kitchen full of rowdy kids wielding tubes of frosting. I head toward the phone, snatching the sprinkles away from twelve-year-old Ben, who’s sprinkling them straight into his mouth. My mother’s name shows on the caller ID; I pick up to tell her we’re in the middle of a mess and I’ll call her back. “I need you for just a minute,” she says, and her numb voice… Read More
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An essay posted in four parts. Originally published in Irreantum as an entry for the 2011 Charlotte and Eugene England Personal Essay Contest. The deadline for the 2012 contest is May 31. I. Descent It’s an hour or so from sunset when we pile into the jeep – me and my roommate Stacey, her friend Dave, his friend Tim, and a couple whose names I can’t remember, who Stacey and I squeeze next to in the back seat. It’s the beginning of my sophomore year at BYU, early September, 1990—a few weeks since I met Reed, the man who becomes… Read More
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I spend the morning with my children at the cemetery. The high school band played, the mayor placed a wreath at the war memorial, and servicemen, including a veteran of Pearl Harbor, spoke to us. We bought red paper poppies to pin to our shirts. We didn’t talk about Memorial Day in sacrament meeting yesterday. The only mention was that the scouts would be placing flags on lawns. It seems that we should want to remember and honor those who have fought and fallen in our worship services. How many times in the Book of Mormon are the people exhorted… Read More
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The oft-described poverty and pride cycle in the Book of Mormon means that the peoples in Zarahemla and elsewhere repeatedly have to repent, generally in response to preaching or adversity. The first few chapters of Alma are no exception. In chapters 5-7, Alma preaches repentance, urging them to experience a “mighty change” of heart, and many Church members respond, reforming their lives. Read More
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Because Nibley’s Approaching Zion has 18 chapters, the Approaching Zion Project will eventually include at least 19 posts. You can find a link to the full text of Approaching Zion here, and links to all of the installments of the Approaching Zion Project below: Prologue 1. Our Glory or Our Condemnation 2. What Is Zion? A Distant View 3. Zeal Without Knowledge 4. Gifts 5. Deny Not the Gifts of God 6. How Firm a Foundation! What Makes It So 7. How to Get Rich 8. Work We Must, but the Lunch Is Free 9. But What Kind of Work? 10. Funeral Address 11.… Read More
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A review of The Last Natural: Bryce Harper’s Big Gamble in Sin City and the Greatest Amateur Season Ever by Rob Miech. Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press, 2012. 356 p. Review copy courtesy of the publisher. The title ‘The Last Natural‘ packs a lot of meaning and connotation into a few words. While ‘natural’ clearly refers to the inherent talent that Bryce Harper seems to have, there are a few other connotations, at least in baseball. Since Harper arrives at what might be considered the end of the “steroid era,” it could be a kind of pessimistic reference to Harper’s… Read More
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14 responses
Psychology has come a long way the last couple of decades. Instead of seeing us coming into the world with a mind like a blank slate, psychologists and cognitive scientists are discovering through cleverly designed empirical research that we are born with a preloaded mental operating system. It predisposes us to see the world like emotional, opinionated, tribal human beings rather than like rational, logical robots. You can get the whole story, with special emphasis on how moral systems and individual moral convictions are formed, in Jonathan Haidt’s new book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics… Read More
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I recently bought a couple wireless speakers so that I could listen to my music collection away from my computer, without earphones. It turns out that these speakers not only play music off my computer, though: they’ll also allow me to listen to, among other things, podcasts, Pandora, and any number of radio stations, as long as the radio station broadcasts online. Read More
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I’m more than happy to be turning from the divine attributes to the question of divine love. I wasn’t particularly concerned about whether God possesses the several “omni’s” before beginning this project, and, for all I’ve learned along the path laid out by Ostler’s first volume, I’m no more concerned now than I was before. Of course, I think in the end that Ostler himself would have to say that he shares my sentiments in this regard—at least to some degree. His project as he describes it in the prefaces to the several volumes of Exploring Mormon Thought is one… Read More
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56 responses
A brilliant and faithful friend of mine was musing on the pattern typical to new converts in her ward. With her permission: Read More