- Kent Larsen on The Glasses of Twenty Five Years: “Michelle, I think you’re exactly right. It may be that these understandings and perspectives are something we develop over time, maybe on a spectrum. So we understand God’s nature and attributes on a basic level, and with that we get a certain level of perspective. I suspect I’m still at a very basic level of understanding and perspective. But, here on earth, I’m concerned that there isn’t much understanding, and the lack of an eternal perspective in so many people suggests that the overall understanding in our culture is weak. The culture seems to actively push people to ignoring others, and to a very tribal perspective. And that is leading to real harm.” Sep 14, 07:53
- on Academics and Church growth: a demographic just-so story: “Lol, well, hopefully my great-grandfather contributing to the stereotype that Mormons just want to get a degree so they can move back to Utah hasn’t hurt your career;)” Sep 14, 07:21
- on Academics and Church growth: a demographic just-so story: “Well, well, well…Stephen C, I’m officially adding your great-grandfather to my list of BYU professors who are former members of my ward, even if it’s the wrong BYU and I’m not entirely sure even a predecessor branch existed in 1909! I grew up watching my Dad try to make space LDS evolutionists (he was a microbiology professor before going into industry). The stake had him give firesides and youth conference presentations where he’d insist that just because you found the evidence for evolution compelling didn’t mean you had to reject your faith in the gospel, even though Elder McConkie was saying exactly the opposite at the same time. Just about every department at a university was hostile to the Joseph Fielding Smith/Bruce R. McConkie worldview, and I think a lot of members’ thinking about universities is a legacy of that.” Sep 14, 06:20
- on Academics and Church growth: a demographic just-so story: “I dug back into the sources, and I found it, worth quoting in full since it’s apropos to the OP and the long history of the LDS academic grad student pipeline. His name was Peter P. Peterson, and his wife Hazel Parkinson Peterson wrote an autobiography. Also, it looks like I made a mistake, he taught Zoology at BYU College in Logan (an early Utah State?), but got his PhD at U Chicago in chemistry. I’ll send you the PDF. “In 1909, after Peter received his long awaited PhD in chemistry, we moved to Madison, Wisconsin, where he became a research fellow in soils. We spent many highly enjoyable years there, meeting many Utah people with whom we became fast friends…While at Madison, Peter was offered a position as head of the Department of Soils at the University of Idaho at Moscow. He debated a long time the pros and cons of leaving a nationally regarded institution, such as the University of Wisconsin, when he had a most promising future, for the smaller and exclusively State University of Moscow. But there were other factors, principally the idea of getting out West and closer to the Church once more, that finally decided us. Peter’s associates at Wisconsin tried to talk him out of it, saying he was just getting to a place where his ability and knowledge enhanced his value. They added that his reason for leaving was the one for which they were slow to employ Mormon teachers because they all seemed to pull up stakes before too long and return to their people.”” Sep 14, 04:45
- on The Glasses of Twenty Five Years: ““The reality is that, like it or not, you are already seeing things from some perspective, even if you haven’t defined it or examined its morality (or lack thereof).”… “We are asked to evaluate what we do from the perspective of our relationship with our Heavenly Parents. We are taught there, I think, that the most important perspective we can take in this life is that of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. “If there is a universal perspective for how to look at literature, Mormon or not, or at the world and at life, I think that’s where I will find it.” Thoughtful post. Thanks, Kent. For me, I think the question may be more about what Joseph talked about in Lectures on Faith — about an accurate understanding of God’s nature and attributes. It’s hard to ask the question about what Jesus would do without knowing who He is at the level of character and perfect love.” Sep 14, 01:26
- on Constructing in our Meetings (Or What Did Church Lead You to Think About Yesterday), 9/6: “Ji: Well, I guess I wasn’t too careful in how I worded that. You are correct that there is a vast difference between the Nazi guards and church leaders — and that is NOT at all what I wanted to imply. [And, I could argue that I didn’t, that you’re seeing a 2nd order inference that I didn’t intend. But, it is there…]. As for Frankl, I should have used the word “meaning” instead of the word “happy.” Regardless, Frankl’s overall point is that we can find meaning in what happens to us if we change our perspective — how we see the events in our lives. Ultimately we DO have control over at least one part of our lives: how we think. What I’m trying to tell “Old Man” is that he does have that control. He doesn’t have to think in a way that is critical of what is wrong at church. And he will probably be happier if he takes that control. rogerdhansen: 1) This post (and the others like it) is not the venue for criticizing how church is run. There are plenty of other places where you and anyone else can make those criticisms. As I just wrote above, this series of posts is about HOW WE THINK in church and how that can be better — not about how the church is run. Perhaps I have by accident implied somewhere that I’m looking for suggestions on how the Church should change — if I did so, I apologize. That’s not wanted here, and that’s why the original post has a paragraph near the end that says “ Let me emphasize that this is NOT a place to criticize what is wrong with church or your fellow congregants.“ 2) Your recommendations are all about how you want church to be — that’s how they “help” you, they give you what you want. You are assuming that others want that also. Perhaps you are right, and your suggestions have a certain attraction to me. But how do we actually know that they would be better? How do you know? [That’s rhetorical, don’t actually tell me since its outside of the scope of this post.]” Sep 13, 22:02
- on Others in our Meetings (Or What Did Church Lead You to Think About Yesterday), 9/13: “Here’s a few of my thoughts in reaction to what I experienced in Church yesterday (9/13): My wife and I were watching a couple of little kids during sacrament meeting so that their parent could give a talk. Kids under 5 have a completely different agenda and understanding of the purpose of Church—a different perspective. So a lot of the meeting was shifting back and forth between my usual perspective, and that of a 2-year-old who wanted me to color for her. It was wonderful. The shifting back and forth stretched me a little, and made me realize how varied different perspectives can be. In Sunday School the lesson on Ecclesiastes led to a discussion on ‘busywork’—really administrative work, i.e., those things that have to be done to keep things running, but that often seem not directly necessary for the purpose of the activity or organization. Human beings tend to create this kind of work, structures around our main activities, because they make things easier or keep the activity headed where we want it to go. I’ve noticed that such tasks seem less when you are a student, than when you are a teacher or leader, so I wonder if there’s something about humility, about being willing to learn, that reduces the need for administration? Is it just the hierarchy in society that says who does it? Or does humility lead to less administration? As we’ve started having both Sunday School and gender specific meetings in the second hour, I noticed that in our ward its the women who move from the SS room to go to Relief Society, and not the men switching rooms. Is it that way everywhere? Is it a function of the building? Or our hidden assumptions? Should we worry about it? In priesthood we discussed Elder Kearon’s talk, “About His Business”, with his thoughts on his first calling as a member of the Church. Some of our discussion seemed to imply a hierarchy of callings—something that General Authorities often try to discourage, but I think persists regardless. Someone talked about being released from the High Council to serve as the Young Men’s President. And I thought, would that happen if he had been called to work in the Primary? Why not? There’s a perception that you can easily find people to work in the primary, but not so for the Young Men’s President. I’m now wondering what is the extent of the mental changes that would have to happen to remove the perceived hierarchy! ” Sep 13, 21:42
- on Academics and Church growth: a demographic just-so story: “Stephen C! “My great-grandfather was a U of Chicago Zoology PhD” I can’t help but be interested in this story, and any journals or correspondence that might have stuck around decades later :)” Sep 13, 21:33
- on Academics and Church growth: a demographic just-so story: “For those who want to test this historical hypothesis, President Ernest Wilkinson had BYU publish an annual *Directory of Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Higher Education and School Administration* between the mid-1950s and the mid-1960s. It might provide a window into how LDS members spread throughout academia and across the U.S. during a period of growth for both the church and higher education.” Sep 13, 19:46
- on Academics and Church growth: a demographic just-so story: “To try to answer jader3d’s question, and to agree with Stephen C and Jonathan, in most social science and humanities departments there is a very strong consensus that it is harmful to treat men and women differently, or to treat same-sex and opposite-sex relationships differently. Also, that if someone has strong and persistent gender dysphoria, the best treatment is for them to transition to the gender they identify with, and society has an obligation to treat them as belonging to that gender. So a church that doesn’t ordain women to the priesthood and excludes them from many positions of authority, does not perform or recognize same-sex marriages, and refuses to recognize gender transitions is, depending on the temperament of the individual, an unfortunate reality to tolerate, a problem to solve, or an enemy to defeat. In those departments, but really only in those departments, these issues are regular topics of discussion. The Church doesn’t come up all that often, but papers providing evidence (of varying quality) of the harm done by practices like the Church’s are plentiful. Stephen C’s roundups give you a flavor, but keep in mind those are only the ones that talk about the Church itself. Setting aside the evidence, humans are wired to agree with their community so they fit in. Some members do just fine despite all this; others don’t. The R1s indeed tend to set the agenda for the rest of academia, in part because we train so many of the faculty. (A lot of BYU professors are former members of my ward.) But at an R1, both size and power flow from research grant money, and the social sciences and humanities don’t get much of that. So the part of the university that’s hostile to the Church is fairly small. Yes, HR policies tend to reflect the propositions I started with. If someone can’t stand to work alongside a trans person, an out-and-proud homosexual, or a woman, academia is probably not for them. But I could send them a collection of quotes and speeches from President Oaks suggesting they should have more of a live-and-let-live attitude and be grateful we live in a pluralistic society. The same pluralism (or religious freedom, if you prefer) that lets them live the life they choose lets us live our faith even when we lose culture wars. Gender and sexuality are not the only issues where parts of the academy disagree with the church, though they’re by far the biggest. We’ve seen on the blog recently how anti-colonialist thought would recast the pioneers as villains, but that’s pretty niche. Economics is interesting in that it leans right rather than left. Studies have suggested that studying economics tends to make people more accepting of economic inequality, and if we take our scriptures seriously (D&C 70:14, for example, or 104:16), that’s a problem. But given Church culture, I don’t think many economists see a conflict between their field and the Church. (My degrees are in Economics, though in practice I’m basically a free-range social science data geek.)” Sep 13, 14:20
