I really enjoy Halloween. I’ve always liked dressing up and making costumes. Over the years, I’ve learned that the trick to costumes is not complete accuracy, but suggestion. Like a good suspense movie, an audience needs only to be directed. Then they create the full costume in their minds. So my pioneer costume, which I only wear in July, is a regular dress, late 90s cut, but paired with a bonnet and apron that I whipped up out of scrap fabric and a shawl, and it is surprisingly convincing. Pumpkin carving, too, is another ‘less is more’ type of enterprise. Although there are examples of truly spectacular and detailed carving, the classic jack-o-lantern is simple with easily carved triangle eyes. And that very simplicity is both effective and evocative of all Halloween. Right now, the best part of Halloween is trick-or-treating. We have grade-school aged children. I don’t care so much about the candy (they may disagree). We don’t go to trunk-or-treats, or hit up the stores in the mall. We walk around our neighborhood, crossing paths with other neighbors who are walking together as families. We see our elderly and homebound neighbors who we’ve helped with decoration and leaf raking. We are welcomed at the doors of people who will never darken the doors of our churches. And for that night, we are a community. On All Hallow’s Eve, we may be dressed in fantastic ensembles, but we are…
Year: 2012
Romney’s CRUT – Updated (10/30 at 7:30 pm)
Maybe you’ve heard: Bloomberg News reports that Romney escaped taxation on some of his income by donating it to the Church, only that he donated less than he said he did, only that he didn’t have to donate as much as he said he would, or something like that. Confused? Fair enough. I’ll try to walk through what happened (though estate tax isn’t really my specialty, and I haven’t ever worked with a charitable remainder unitrust (“CRUT”). A CRUT is an irrevocable trust. What that means, essentially, is that it is a legal entity that an individual can form. As a legal entity it can own property. And a CRUT’s principal purpose is to own (and to distribute) property. In order to qualify as a CRUT, a trust must be set up to pay a fixed percentage of its assets to one or more beneficiaries.1 Upon the beneficiaries’ death, whatever is left in the trust is paid to a designated charity. Clear? Not entirely? Okay, how about this: I decide to form a CRUT (and am significantly wealthier in this hypothetical world than I am in the current one). I form the trust and contribute stock that is currently worth $1 million. I set it up to pay me 10% of its value every year and, on my death, whatever is left will go to Loyola University Chicago, where I teach. If, at the end of year one, the assets…
Pre-storm Report from NYC (updated)
Since I live in NYC, I’ve been following the weather and news pretty closely from various sources. I left work early yesterday, and it was closed down today. All transit has been shut down, evacuations taking place, and the Ward/Stake communications network is in place. I live up a hill, so I’m not worried about flooding. I went for a short walk this morning to pick up a few more supplies, and the reactions vary broadly. Some places are boarded up and closed, others open like usual. Fewer people are out on the road, but I saw three runners in twenty minutes. And I’ll confess, one reason I went out was to see if I wanted to run in the weather. (RunnersWorld had some good humor on that.) So far, it’s not much different than any other storm. Constant drizzle, but not hard rain. Wind, sometimes really strong wind, but I haven’t seen any downed trees or even big branches yet. It’s selfish and shallow, but I enjoy extreme weather; it’s a change in schedule, a little uncertain, and fun… up to a point, obviously. My wife’s trapped in the Chicago area for a few days, so I spent the day cleaning with streaming videos in the background, reading Saving Darwin as deep cultural background affecting how we instinctively read Genesis (post to come!), and eating through anything that might conceivably go bad quickly in the fridge, if we lose power. That means…
Literary BMGD #43: Christ’s Ministry to the Nephites, part III
Mormon, the book in the Book of Mormon written by its compiler, is perhaps the most depressing of the book of scripture. It might be subtitled ‘the Decline and Fall of Nephite Civilization.’ And its author was all but hopeless in his assessment. But unlike Gibbon’s perhaps better known description of decline and fall, Mormon also describes the future effects of his record, predicting that millions will be convinced to come to Christ by the story he tells. In the following poem, Parley P. Pratt also traces this same history, in part three of his poetic description of Christ’s ministry to the Nephites.
BMGD #41: 3 Nephi 22-26
Winning the mini-mini-Lottery: What would you do?
I sat in a comfy chair downtown reading my iPad for two hours, and received $175 in Amazon credit for my troubles. That’s nice work, if you can get it. Even better is getting paid four figures to fly to France on a private G5 and take four naps a day for a week. (Yes, I’ve done that too, but napping on a rigorous schedule is much more difficult than it sounds.)
Frequently in the NFL, Barely in the NBA
I”m late in updating my list of Mormons in professional football. Its not because last year’s post was hijacked by those talking about playing sports on Sunday. But it may be in part because I’ve focused more on baseball recently. But, I’ve finally got my act together, and here’s the current list, along with the now due list of Mormons in professional basketball — including an additional Mormon playing in the NBA preseason
Performative Religion
To throw another idea in the faith vs. works debate: “Faith is not equivalent to belief or certainty. Faith has more to do with commitment. Faith is fidelity.” Times and Seasons is a place that respects the faith of Latter-day Saints. As someone who often struggles with the faith of belief, I cling to the faith of fidelity. I want to keep the faith in this church that I love. Some things I don’t know, and some I only hope to believe, but I am committed by covenant and the strength of my faith to act as though the teachings and doctrines of the Church are true. My thanks to Paul Toscano and David Allred for the excellent articulation of faith as fidelity that they shared at the recent Counterpoint Conference. It’s a concept I’d been struggling to articulate for some time.
The God Who Weeps: Faith
I agree with The God Who Weeps that faith is a decision, but I disagree about the site of this decision.
Book of Mormon Comics
I love stories. A narrative strikes me as the most fundamental way of ideas with other people. And by ideas, I mean not only the bare events of the narrative, but also abstract concepts, morals, and emotional truths. It makes sense to me that our basic scriptural texts have strong narratives. The Old Testament is a collection of stories, with the consequences of one generation’s choices setting the stage for the actions of the next. The Book of Mormon also has very strong narratives. Other classic stories that we are familiar with, we feel free to reimagine. We update fairy tales, retell myths in modern settings. Even the stories of Genesis are recognized as archetypes that we re-present and reinterpret. But too often Mormons tend to shy away from this type of creative engagement with the text and narratives of the Book of Mormon, perhaps from a kind of self-censorship that fears corrupting in some way the most true book on the face of the earth. Unfortunately, that means that while we regard the book as wholly inspired (or just holy), it often remains dry and emotionally opaque to us. Although we are counseled to apply the scriptures to ourselves, we often don’t actually take the obvious first step of sympathizing with the people of the Book of Mormon as though they were real, feeling men (or women, for the few that are explicitly mentioned in the text). The unfamiliar…
Silas Marner, Empty Casket
Defamed and exiled, Silas Marner loses his native faith. Now he’s got nothing to prop up his soul.
Literary BMGD #42: The Gospel
In the final minutes of his visit with the Nephites (3 Nephi 27), Christ makes clear that the church established for the Nephites must bear his name and teach his gospel. He even specifies elements of his gospel: the atonement and resurrection, the final judgment, repentance, baptism, faith in Jesus Christ, the gift of the Holy Ghost and enduring to the end. I don’t think it would be very hard to connect any Mormon doctrine to this list.
BMGD #40: 3 Nephi 16, 20-21
Exploring Mormon Thought: Benediction
In linguistics, a word that is only attested once in a text is called a hapax legomenon. In older texts (like Hebrew and Mayan texts), these hapaxes can be especially hard to decipher because that single attestation may be the word’s only occurrence anywhere. Lacking context, it’s hard to tell what a hapax means.
Mormon of the Year candidates from this past summer?
In May I asked readers here to look at those who had made the news during the first part of the year and suggest who among them should be considered for “Mormon of the Year.” The theory is that looking at the question periodically during the year means that we will include those who have been forgotten by the end of the year. This way, we avoid a bias towards recent events. So, I’d like to suggest that we look at who has made the news since April and suggest possible candidates for “Mormon of the Year.”
Religious Music
Summer Seminar 2013: Workings of the Spirit and Works of the Priesthood
The Annual Summer Seminar on Mormon Culture “Workings of the Spirit and Works of the Priesthood: Gifts and Ordinances in LDS Thought and Practice.” Brigham Young University June 3 – July 12, 2013 In the summer of 2013, the Neal A Maxwell Institute at Brigham Young University, with support from the Mormon Scholars Foundation and the Jack and Mary Lois Wheatley Institution, will sponsor a summer seminar for graduate students and junior faculty on “Workings of the Spirit and Works of the Priesthood: Gifts and Ordinances in LDS Thought and Practice.” The seminar will be held on the BYU campus in Provo, Utah, from June 3 to July 12. Admitted participants will receive a stipend of $3000 with an accommodations subsidy if needed. The seminar continues the series of seminars on Mormon culture begun in the summer of 1997. The seminar will be conducted by Terryl Givens, Professor of Literature and Religion and James A. Bostwick Chair of English at the University of Richmond. This particular seminar will continue a series begun three years ago on the history of Mormon thought. A principal evidence appealed to by early Mormon writers and missionaries, on which they based their claim to authoritative restoration, was the abundance of spiritual gifts manifest among believers in the church founded by Joseph Smith. Closely allied to these gifts was the Latter-day Saint claim to genuine priesthood authority. We will study how early Saints understood the workings…
If she wants to…
Women can go on missions, if they want to. Now that they can go at 19, some will go who may not have wanted it quite enough to wait until they turned 21. But it is still not the same as for men, who have a clear expectation and strong social pressure to serve missions sometime after they turn 18. Girls in the church hit this idea, “they can do it if they want to” quite often. Starting at age 8, when American boys enter the officially sanctioned Church version of Cub Scouts, the segregation begins. The boys meet weekly, with a well-developed program and the mandatory 2-deep leadership to do projects, play games and earn little trinkets of awards. The girls are given the Activity Days program, sometimes called Achievement Days, where they meet twice a month with a generally much lower ratio of adults to children. They are not given a well developed program with a full curriculum of activities and games. There are no set awards to earn. There is no committee analogous to the Cub Scout Committee that meets to review the girls’ progress and advancement (there is no standard of advancement for girls) and to plan large monthly recognition meetings to which families are invited (Pack Meetings). Whenever these inequities are pointed out, the response is that the girls can do the same activities that the boys do, if they want to. This ignores the…
Finding My Heavenly Mother, Part 3 (Eternal Polygamy Edition)
Since polygamy will keep rearing its ugly head every time we try to talk about Heavenly Mother, I’ve given it its very own post, as promised. Polygamy occupies an uneasy place in the psyche of many Mormons today. Although the practice was abandoned by the church in the early 20th century, it is exotic and taboo enough that it continues to be one of the public’s primary associations with Mormons. However, even within the church, the idea of polygamy (and specifically, polygyny) continues to complicate theology and life. Today I’d like to take a deeply personal look at some of the fruits of our lingering, troubled relationship with polygamy, and the effect it has on how we conceptualize and talk about (or don’t talk about) Heavenly Mother. If you’re feeling the need for conversational antecedents, please see Finding My Heavenly Mother, part 1 and part 2; also part 4. In public and to their non-member friends, Mormons typically try to distance themselves from polygamy and its popular portrayals in the contemporary media. Church members, leaders, and political figures alike will explain upon being pressed that we haven’t practiced polygamy in a hundred years, and then try to steer the conversation toward less controversial topics. And while fundamentalist Mormons do continue the practice, they are vehemently disavowed by the mainstream church, which views them as apostates. Polygamy is, of course, also a minefield for missionaries. It’s true that in my family we have…
Literary BMGD #41: A Vision
Poetry by Joseph Smith? That is certainly not what Joseph Smith is known for, nor is it often claimed that he was a poet in all the writing and studies made about him. [Orson F. Whitney is the exception that comes to mind.] But the following poem, when published in 1843, carried his byline when it was published. As a paraphrase of D&C 76, this poem fits well, I think with the Gospel Doctrine Book of Mormon lesson #41. As Christ teaches to the Nephites in this lesson (3 Nephi 22-26) he focuses on making sure that their scriptural cannon is complete, adding the neglected prophecies of Samuel the Lamanite and the to them unknown teachings of Malachi. And then he expounds all things unto them. Doesn’t section 76 have that kind of “exposition of all things” feel to it?
BMGD #39: 3 Nephi 17-19
American Academy of Religion – CFP in Mormon Studies
AAR Pacific Northwest Region AAR/SBL/ASOR Regional Meeting Seattle University Seattle, Washington May 3-5, 2013 SPECIAL TOPICS: MORMON STUDIES
Last Call for Faith and Knowledge Conference Submissions
CALL FOR PAPERS – OCTOBER 15: THE FOURTH BIENNIAL FAITH AND KNOWLEDGE CONFERENCE WESLEY THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY WASHINGTON, D. C. FEBRUARY 22–23, 2013
Book Review: The God Who Weeps
New Progress for Mormon Studies
The University of Virginia today announced today a $3 million anonymous donation to establish the Richard Lyman Bushman Chair of Mormon Studies in the University’s Department of Religious Studies. The chair is still subject to approval by the University’s Board of Visitors, after which a search committee will look for candidates for the inaugural appointment, due to begin serving in the 2013-14 school year.
Exploring Mormon Thought: Two Paths in a Wood
Blake Ostler does a lot of admirable critical work in Of God and Gods (Kofford, 2008), but the book’s main constructive contribution grows out of his decision to make our heady claims about the superlative attributes of God throb with a Hebrew heart.
Silas Marner, Interrupted
Godfrey is trying to repent but no one will cooperate.
Potential Effects of the Missionary Age Announcement
If you had any doubt about the impact of the announcement yesterday that missionary service for men and women can begin earlier, just read the reactions in the bloggernacle, on facebook and twitter and even in major newspapers. The largest of the blogs in the bloggernacle have already weighed in on the change… multiple times… in less than 24 hours. I have to wonder; has anyone not put in their two cents?
Missionary Service and Mormon Femininities
I was surprised and really happy to hear about the big missionary shake-up today. I learned about it first on Facebook, since I wasn’t able to watch Saturday morning’s session, and it was fun to monitor reactions there and around the bloggernacle throughout the day. I pretty much concur with most of the assessments reported in Peggy Fletcher Stack’s great piece in the Tribune: Joanna Brooks and Neylan McBaine both had important comments about the implications of the change for increased gender equality in church governance. I would add one more thought on potential structural implications: a drastically increased cohort of sister missionaries will throw gendered power relations in the mission field into starker relief, with a much larger proportion of the total missionary force ineligible for mission leadership — and without recourse to a complementary-compensatory motherhood discourse (or an alternative female power structure in the RS) that we often use to soften the disparity in regular church life. It may be that the stark gender inequities in mission experience will spur experiments in building parallel female leadership lines outside of RS (and also, presumably, still outside of the priesthood ladder) that may one day bear fruit in regular ecclesiastical governance. Lots of the early reporting focused on church governance and structure, but this evening I’m seeing more comment on potential implication for LDS culture. Ben Park just put up a provocative piece about the gendered iconography of the Mormon…
My Notes on Priesthood Session, October 2012
I had planned on giving a brief summary of Priesthood Session tonight; unfortunately, some family/logistical issues kept me from getting to our Church building until well after the session had started, so I’m afraid I missed the first speaker. And I’d planned on bringing my iPad to take notes on, but I accidentally left it at home, and was left with my phone for note-taking. But, in spite of the technical difficulties I faced, it was an enlightening and uplifting session of Conference. Below are my notes, with only the smallest edits for clarity and to fix some autocorrect problems (and virtually no editorial content from me): Bishop Stevenson: I came in as he was telling a story about a college kid (I think) in Japan who was at a party when somebody pulled out the marijuana. He had the courage to leave the party, along with one of his friends. There will be times when you have to stand up for right in front of your friends. But there will also be times you have to stand up for your beliefs in front of a computer screen Reward for courage: happiness and joy. Courage to say no, to say yes. Elder Perkins: Oath and Covenant of Melchizedek Priesthood. Caution signs. “Beware concerning yourselves.” Have you been stunned by the falling of a respected priesthood brother? Deep personal conversion, strong family support: twin guardrails to protect us. 1. Pray always…