Mormonism, so goes a well-worn trope, is more into orthopraxis than orthodoxy. That is, we tend to care more about right conduct — e.g. loyalty to the kingdom, keeping covenants, following commandments, etc. — than right belief — e.g. the precise nature of divine progression or the correct location of Kolob. This raises the question, however, of why Mormonism hasn’t really developed any sort of a formal jurisprudence. Looking at church courts in the nineteenth century and comparing Mormon “law” to Islamic law sharpens the issues
Year: 2008
Interpretation: Latter-day Saint Perspectives
A Presidents’ Day Poem
A poem for Presidents’ Day:
Little Zions
Today was our stake conference, and we had a visiting general authority: Elder Terrence C. Smith, one of the North American Area Seventies. His talk was one of the finest, most doctrinally insightful sermons I’ve ever heard at a stake conference. But what really caught me came in the first minute of his talk. He’s Canadian, specifically an Albertan, and he mentioned being from a little town “that’s probably 90% LDS.” That’s interesting, I thought.
Preaching to the Court House and Judging in the Temple
For the last year or so, I have been doing research on Mormon church courts in the nineteenth century. Until about 1900, it was expected that Mormons would not sue other Mormons in secular courts, but would take their disputes to their local bishop or high council. I’ve been looking at three inter-related questions: How did the Mormon court system develop, why did Latter-day Saints take civil disputes to church courts, and why did they ultimately abandon the church courts? I have now posted a more or less final version of my paper on SSRN, where you can down load it.
How American is the Church?
(The following is an excerpt from a larger study on the concept of “gospel culture”, which I have been working on. I hope that comments will help me correct and refine this aspect on Americanness). For the past few decades, in their efforts at internationalization, church leaders have stressed that this is “not an American Church”, but an international, universal Church.
Love on Campus
It’s just not what it used to be, even at the BYU, as shown in a day-before-Valentine’s-Day BYU NewsNet article, “The Evolution of Human Love.”
Did revelation cease?
It seems to me that Mormon discourse has two mutually contradictory ways of talking about revelation during the Middle Ages, and that neither view takes much notice of actual medieval views on the matter.
How to Date Your Spouse
A fascinating New York Times article discusses recent psychological data: “Using laboratory studies, real-world experiments and even brain-scan data, scientists can now offer long-married couples a simple prescription for rekindling the romantic love that brought them together in the first place. The solution? Reinventing date night.”
Bruce Young on Christians, Romney, and Voting
A pro-Huckabee blog recently(ish) set out the (now somewhat dated) argument that (non-Mormon) Christians have a Biblical duty not to vote for Mitt Romney. In response, Bruce (husband of blog-butterfly Margaret) Young wrote a short rebuttal piece. (He’s also a BYU professor of some renown.) I thought the discussion might be of interest (to the T&S community), and so with the permission of Bruce and Margaret Young (have you asked her about her movie lately?), I’m posting it here. My response (to Pastor Haisty’s argument that, according to John the apostle, Christians should not wish someone who believes in a “false Christ” well and should not welcome such a person into their home or any “house” that in some sense belongs to them):
The Childless Ones
We are reminded again of the importance of families to God’s eternal plan. We are reminded again that the Church teaches to the ideal, to the pattern, to the eternal. Those of us (men as well as women) whose lives do not — will not, cannot, in mortality — reflect the divine pattern are reminded again to turn to God for answers in our personal circumstances. Sometimes it helps to know that the saints, as well as a Heavenly Father, understand what is missing, and that we would mirror the divine pattern if only we could.
A Poem and a Sermon
First, the poem:
Call for Papers
The Old Written Order of Things
The Presiding Bishopric’s Office used to publish a monthly magazine called Progress of the Church, filled with news and statistics and directives to Church leaders at the local level.
Should Mormons Hate Huckabee?
For the first time in American history, a Mormon had a serious shot of making it to the highest office in the land. But no more: Mitt Romney has pulled out of active competition for the Republican nomination and thus for the presidency. How should us Mormons feel about that?
How to Bury a Prophet
The Marty Center at the University of Chicago has posted this interesting article by Kathleen Flake on President Hinckley’s funeral. Here is the money passage from the piece:
The role of individuality in narratives about Mormonism
Some conversations I’ve had in the past months have touched on the idea of individuality. The concept can play surprisingly different roles in people’s narratives about Mormonism. For instance, some good friends who I’ve known for many years are in the process of leaving the church. Conversations with them sometimes discuss the idea of individuality. I would paraphrase some of their assertions along these lines: “Aspects of church doctrine and culture — important among them, the multiplicity of rules on everything from earrings or tattoos to alcohol, tithing, church attendance, and so on — force a type of conformity that prevents me from fully expressing my individual personality. Only outside the confines of Mormonism can I really be an individual.”
Family History and Mormon Scholarship
I recently read an article on Joseph Smith’s legal battles in a well-respected Mormon history journal. It was interesting and well-researched. Its main thesis, however, was that certain previous authors about Joseph Smith’s legal troubles had been “lying” (the author’s word not mine) about his trials, and Joseph Smith could have avoided martyrdom by behaving with more integrity. I read a fair amount of legal history, and suffice it to say that these are not the sorts of arguments that one sees in say Law & History Review.
Telling the Untold Story
Last Saturday was the world premiere of Nobody Knows: The Untold Story of Black Mormons, at the San Diego Black Film Festival.
Mothers Who Know: Homes and Temples
In her General Conference address last Fall, President Beck said, “Growth happens best in a “house of order,” and women should pattern their homes after the Lord’s house (see D&C 109).”
President Uchtdorf to First Presidency
That is all.
President Hinckley and Mormon Memory
In Religious Literacy, Stephen Prothero considers the decline of religious knowledge in America, much of which relates to the failure of institutions (family, school, church, university) to maintain a “chain of memory” that transmits religious knowledge from one generation to the next. President Hinckley helped Mormonism avoid this failure. Mormon memory is alive and well.
Under-Appreciated Hymns
When in the sultry glebe I faint, or on the thirsty mountain pant, To fertile vales and dewy meads, my weary, wandring steps he leads. Where peaceful rivers, soft and slow, amid the cooling verdant landscape flow.
From the Archives: The Quandry of the Sugar Beets
I think that I have finally isolated the great symbol of a recent set of intellectual and spiritual quandaries that I have found myself working through of late. I am not talking about polygamy, Adam-God, or blood atonement. I have in mind an even more challenging remnant of our past: sugar beets.
Rape in Provo
90% of Provo rapes are not reported to the police. This is just one of many disturbing facts in a Deseret Morning News article about rape in Provo. (The article is a few years old according to its byline, but it showed up this morning as #3 on the “Most Popular Articles” list on the Deseret website — I’m not quite sure why.) According to the BYU police officer cited in the article, “most Provo residents are religious and have a tendency to stigmatize discussion of sexual assault and sometimes to demonize the survivor.”
Mormonism’s Poisoned Theodicy
Consider two theological claims. First, a severely mentally retarded child has her retardation because in the premortal world she was an exceptionally valiant spirit and her current disability means that all that was necessary was for her to receive a body and then go straight on to eternal exaltation, worlds without number. Second, in this life blacks were denied the priesthood prior to 1978 because they were not valiant in the premortal conflict with Satan.
Calumny May Defame
The wonderful folk at the Westboro Baptist Church have announced plans to picket President Hinckley’s funeral. These nutters — who are not affiliated with mainstream Baptists — are known for marching at U.S. soldier funerals with placards that read, “God Hates F***s.” Yesterday’s muddled press release (warning: the URL is itself offensive, and the press release is pretty bad) states that President Hinckley and Mormons generally are “[gay] enablers” and announces that therefore, “Gordon Hinckley is in Hell.”
A Couple of Thoughts on President Hinckley
For some years, when I was a teenager and then a young man, I was convinced President Hinckley would die as a counselor in the First Presidency; that he would never become president of the church.
Praise to the Man Who Communed with Jehovah
President Gordon B. Hinckley died earlier this evening at age 97. “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but all them also that love his appearing.” (2 Tim. 4:7-8)
“He telleth the number of the stars; he calleth them all by their names”
A nadir of correlated Old Testament study arrives in Week 25, when the Sunday School manual directs all of one week’s attention to the book of Psalms. Even this attention is focused largely on a handful of bright pearls — the comforting lines of The Lord is My Shepherd, for instance; and an array of creative, not always convincing Messianic parallels in Psalm 22. The rest of the book remains criminally unexplored.