About six months ago, I got an email asking (a) if I knew anything about low-profit limited liability companies (“L3Cs”) and private foundations, and (b) if I’d be willing to be a guest lecturer in a class, explaining what they were and how they function. I did know something (though at the time not much) about them, so I said I’d do it, then spent several weeks immersing myself in the theory and practice behind L3Cs.[fn1] It turns out that Loyola’s business school offers an elective class in Social Entrepreneurship. The point of the class, from what I can gather, is to teach business students about how to create profit-making businesses that make the world a better place. *** I’ve sensed some skepticism recently, both within and without the bloggernacle, about the propriety of charitable institutions making a profit (or, sometimes, about whether profit-making transforms a charitable institution into a non-charitable one). And I find that skepticism odd. Because of course a charity can (and, I would argue, in most cases should) earn a profit, at least some of the time. Why? A couple reasons. First, money that’s just sitting around is actually losing value. And that’s the case for everybody (including you and me and for-profit businesses—some companies will use “sweep accounts,” which allow them to invest excesss cash overnight). I assume that charitable institutions don’t have steady revenue, revenue the timing and amount of which match exactly their administrative…
Year: 2012
Imagining Mormonism
So after several recommendations, I finally got around to reading Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities. The book examines a simple question: how do institutions or nations (the book’s focus is on nationalism) create a sense of identity in their membership or citizenry? It’s one thing to feel a sense of identity with a group whose membership one knows personally: an extended family, a village, a small company. But what about churches or corporations or countries whose members, workers, or citizens number in the millions? The more you ponder that question, the more interesting it becomes. In that light, let’s talk about the strong identity that Mormons seem to feel.
Business Week’s erroneous claim about LDS charitable giving
Caroline Winter’s new article is a must-read. She examines many facets of the church’s estimated income, its property ownership, and its use of funds. I thought many portions of it were very, very good. Readers seem especially focused on a few key portions of the article. However, one of her key fact claims is based on a factual error. Here is why. Winter writes that: According to an official church Welfare Services fact sheet, the church gave $1.3 billion in humanitarian aid in over 178 countries and territories during the 25 years between 1985 and 2010. A fact sheet from the previous year indicates that less than one-third of the sum was monetary assistance, while the rest was in the form of “material assistance.” All in all, if one were to evenly distribute that $1.3 billion over a quarter-century, it would mean that the church gave $52 million annually. A recently published article co-written by Cragun estimates that the Mormon Church donates only about 0.7 percent of its annual income to charity; the United Methodist Church gives about 29 percent. If true, this is pretty damning information. The LDS church takes in billions of dollars (Winter estimates about $8 billion annually) and gives merely $50 million a year to charity. But is that claim accurate? Winter’s “recently published article co-written by Cragun” with this estimate appears to be this article, which was published in Free Inquiry, the quarterly magazine of…
O Pioneer! Book Review of Villages on Wheels
The 4th of July is a week of intense patriotic celebration in Provo. Freedom Festival is the biggest party of the year here. People go all out with block parties, fireworks, parades, races, and art contests. We end the week exhausted. As a relative newcomer to Utah Valley, I’ve wondered why is Independence Day is such a big deal here. It turns out that Provo is simply upholding pioneer tradition: “Both Mormons and American travelers commemorated July 4th with elaborate patriotic observances. They generally stated at daybreak with gun and cannon salutes, and continued with cheers, speeches, toasts, feasts, parades, dancing, and drinking whatever spirits were available” (Kimball 82). As we come up on the 24th, it is the perfect time to return to a few books about pioneers. My favorite has for years has been Wallace Stegner’s The Gathering of Zion: The Story of the Mormon Trail (1964), which I never have in my home because my copy is always on loan to one friend or another. I love Stegner’s writing and his straightforward approach to the struggles and faith of the pioneers. By telling complete stories, Stegner allows us to see the pioneers wrestling with doubt and faith as they wrestled their way across the plains, and as a result, those early saints become more real and more worthy of veneration than I find them to be in more selective, faith promoting accounts. The one drawback for me…
Mormons in Soccer
For some time I’ve been trying to build a list of Mormons playing soccer throughout the world, and over time I think I’ve come up with a start of one. So far I’ve found about a dozen Mormons who have ever played professional soccer somewhere in the world. Amazingly enough, three of these have played at the World Cup level. But only 2 of these are playing now, and one of these two is playing in the U.S. In addition one Mormon is coaching at the professional level and another at the NCAA Division I level (outside of the BYU teams). The numbers are so small in comparison to other sports (including Rugby, which isn’t very popular in the U.S.) that I have to believe that I’m missing many more players.
Literary BMGD #28: Lines written for Lydia Snow
Today Alma’s discourse on the development of faith in Alma 32 is well known among Mormons and widely referred to on almost any discussion of faith. The “nourishing” of seeds and plants is, of course, common in poetry — its the comparison of seeds and growth with faith or the word that is important to Mormonism. I haven’t researched whether or not this discourse was used frequently like it is today. But there are elements of the idea and description in the chapter which can be found in some early Mormon poetry. Parley P. Pratt used it in the following poem.
BMGD #27: Alma 30-31
Globetrotting, Mormon-Style
One of the things almost sure to be heard in testimony meeting after someone has traveled (whether it’s across the ocean or just to the next town over) is an expression of gratitude that “the Church is the same no matter where you go.” To a certain extent, it’s true. We all sing the same hymns, although every ward congregation seems to have its particular favorites. We all read the same scriptures. Sunday meetings follow the same general format, even if the meetings are in a different order. Thanks to Correlation, Sunday School and other lesson manuals are standardized and translated into over a hundred languages, and on any given Sunday the whole worldwide Church is studying the same lesson (give or take a week or two depending on how organized the local Sunday School teacher happens to be). We’ve traveled and moved around the world quite a bit, and I’ll admit that I do appreciate the general “sameness” of Church meetings. It’s nice for my children (and for me!) to know that no matter how different the country where we live may be, when we go to Church it will feel familiar. But I also deeply relish the little differences. For example, in Italy when I arrived at Church I was greeted not with a handshake, but with kisses on both cheeks (and sometimes the top of my head too). There is nothing like being kissed thirty times in…
Romantik
Heinrich von Ofterdingen by Novalis is one of the founding documents of Romanticism. The novel is perhaps most famous for the title figure’s vision of a blue flower in the first chapter. What is not as well known is how Heinrich’s family drama is also the ecclesiology of Mormonism.
Ecology of Intellectual Culture: Bootstrapping Mormon Studies, Part IV
Intellectual life is a social endeavor, involving both a community of participants and institutions that support their activities. In this post I discuss some of the key elements of the ecosystem that is needed for a flourishing intellectual culture. In my view, these key elements include scholars, conferences, publishers and publications, academic positions, and graduate programs. At the moment, while Mormon Studies has some version of each of these elements, they are all quite limited and in many cases rather rudimentary. Yet in standard ecological fashion, each of these elements symbiotically depends on the others, and I’ll discuss why. It is an interesting question, then, how to get from our current situation of a few scattered sparks to one of established intellectual vitality. Perhaps the primary components of an intellectual culture are people who think, and thoughts. While thinkers are not necessarily associated with a school, I will call them scholars. While our thoughts may simply take place in our heads, to form part of the culture, they must be expressed and shared. At an informal level, they may be expressed and shared among friends, in informal discussion groups, on blogs, or, say, in Sunday School discussions. In a robust intellectual culture, however, thoughts must take a more robust form, as presentations and publications. Hence an intellectual culture needs conferences and similar fora for presentations, and it needs publishers who are interested in publishing Mormon Studies and capable of both…
Exploring Mormon Thought: Original Sin
Chapter 4 of Exploring Mormon Thought (Vol. 2) surveys and critiques traditional approaches to the doctrine of original sin. Chapter 5 will give us Ostler’s own approach to the problem. I haven’t read chapter 5 yet (Joe will address this chapter soon), but chapter 4 has got me thinking about original sin.
In Harm’s Way: Review of Saints of Valor
A couple of months ago I received a review copy of Saints of Valor: Mormon Medal of Honor Recipients (Greg Kofford Books, 2011; 430 pages in paperback | publisher’s page). I’m going to first discuss two issues related to war and Mormonism: (1) how Mormons serving in the military improve the public perception of Mormonism; and (2) the ambiguous position of Mormonism on participation in war versus pacificism. Then I will provide a short discussion of the book itself. War and Mormonism The willingness of LDS volunteers of the Mormon Battalion to serve in the US Army was largely forgotten by the nation in subsequent decades as Mormons in Utah came into conflict with the federal government. During the Utah War of 1857-58, Mormons took the field against US soldiers, although happily the conflict was resolved without actual combat between the opposing forces. Consequently, the patriotism of Mormons was very much in doubt in the second half of the 19th century. Participation by Latter-day Saints in the military was an important part of reversing that perception and helping pave the way for Utah statehood (in 1896) and normalization of Mormons in the political life of the nation (the first decades of the 20th century). In her book The Politics of Religious Identity, Kathleen Flake recounts the 1905 testimony of Richard W. Young to the Senate’s Committee on Privileges and Elections as part of the committee’s hearings on the seating of…
The Boundaries of Independence
As my children have grown and started to leave home, I find myself conflicted by the idea of Independence. Of course I want them to be independent, to go off on their own, make their own choices and even, to be frank, to require less or none of my support and effort. Its not that I’m not willing to give them support and effort, but more that just as they need to be independent, my wife and I would like fewer requirements. We, too, would like a bit more independence.
SMPT Reminder/Travel Funding/Arrington Lecture Update
The July 16th submission deadline for the Society for Mormon Philosophy and Theology’s 2012 Annual Meeting is approaching. The conference will be held at Utah State University, September 20-22, with the theme, “Theology of The Book of Mormon.” For a fuller discussion of the theme and submission information, see the Call for Papers. Some funding is available, on a competitive basis, to defray travel costs for student presenters of up to $650 each, based on the merit of the proposal and the distance traveled. Details on travel awards also appear on the Call for Papers page. Those considering attending may also be interested in another event that weekend in Logan: Terryl L. Givens, “The Prophecy of Enoch as Restoration Blueprint” 18th Annual Leonard J. Arrington Mormon History Lecture Thursday, September 20th, 7pm Logan Tabernacle, 50 N. Main Street Givens will be speaking on the unique theology of the prophecy of Enoch in the Book of Moses, including its portrayal of Zion and of a God who weeps, and on the crucial role this revelation played in the early development of Joseph’s conceptions of the cosmos, of God, and of his own role as a prophet. The SMPT conference schedule will be arranged to encourage attendance at this event. Abstract and Bio from Arrington Lecture flyer (PDF, 1.8MB): “The Prophecy of Enoch as Restoration Blueprint” The prophecy of Enoch exerted an influence on the development of early Mormonism far out of…
The Threat of New Order Mormons
I’ve been struggling to articulate to myself the difficulties that true blue Mormons have with new order Mormons. I’m not satisfied with what I’ve been able to come up with, and I hope you will be able to help me work through this. The struggles of Mormons going through a faith transition to become new order Mormons or ex-Mormons is well documented within the bloggernacle. Through online communities they are able to find support and understanding that they may even be afraid to ask for in their families and congregations. My concern in this post is the true blue Mormon. Are new order Mormons justified in being hesitant to come out to them? While some saints will be welcoming and loving of all people who want to be affiliated with the church in any capacity, I think a great deal of regular saints feel threatened by new order Mormons, and as a result have less than charitable reactions. I can think of three areas in which a regular saint may feel threatened by a new order Mormon: 1. By being selective about which doctrines and practices to believe and adhere to, the new order Mormon is in effect denying the authority of the church (and by extension, God) to guide or mandate them in those aspects of their lives. This is seen as an act of blasphemy, and may be a taken as a personal affront by those who have…
A Book of Silence
I want to recommend Sara Maitland’s A Book of Silence. I don’t know what God wants with you. But, with time, I feel more confident about what he wants from me. For a long time, I thought his silence was a rebuff. Now, I’m more convinced it’s an invitation to do likewise. The silence seems like something he wants to share.
EFY, hair, and culture
The bishop told Amadou he would not be allowed to attend EFY unless the braids were cut. Amadou comes from Mali. His family settled here a few years ago and became members of the Church.
Literary BMGD #27: Psalm LII
The chief character in Alma 30, the first of the two chapters in lesson 27, is Korihor, the anti-Christ, who preaches, among other things, the contradictory ideas that there will be no Christ and that the future can’t be known. By the end of the chapter Korihor has begged for a sign and been struck dumb. He then admits that he has been deceived by the devil. While the earliest Mormon writers didn’t face many anti-Christs (at least not those who stated as much like Korihor did), they certainly faced those they considered just as bad—such as Missouri Governor Lilburn W. Boggs. And Church members weren’t always circumspect with their feelings.
BMGD #26 Alma 23-29
Guest Post: Why I Find Developments at the Maxwell Institute Concerning
[A guest post by Professor David Earl Bohn, retired professor of political philosophy at Brigham Young University] Recently, the Maxwell Institute announced a significant change of course on its website—one that re-directs the Institute’s focus away from apologetics and Mormon-centered research and toward a more generic emphasis on religious scholarship. The “bloggernacle” had actually been abuzz about rumors of these developments since before they were officially confirmed. (For a non-exhaustive sample of related posts and articles see: here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here). Cause for Concern Many of us who care deeply about Mormon research and scholarship have witnessed these developments unfold with some concern. The character of these changes and the actual manner in which they have been carried out thus far have raised serious questions about whether the very raison d’être of the Maxwell Institute, including the significant achievements of the Mormon Studies Review (and its predecessor), are not being undermined or even abandoned. Over time, all institutions necessarily undergo “a change of guard.” For organizations that have clear mandates such as the Maxwell Institute and the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (or “FARMS”)—which came under the Institute’s umbrella in 1997—this transition might be expected to bring differences of style and manner, along with some new ideas and approaches. However, the changes at the Institute seem to involve considerably more than this, including the unexpected and awkwardly handled removal of key Institute figures who played a central role in establishing FARMS and carrying…
Practical Apologetics: Help, I want to go back to church
Seismic changes at the Maxwell Institute have prompted reflective blog posts on the fate of FARMS and Mormon apologetics in general (The Rise and Fall of FARMS | The Legacy of FARMS | Explosive Tensions within MSR). My view: the FARMS approach has become outdated. Mormon apologetics will become more decentralized and more social as people (both LDS and non-LDS) turn to Google and Facebook rather than the bookstore, the library, or journals to get answers to their Mormon questions. Apologetics will therefore become more personal and more practical. People still want answers. Mormon.org, blogs, and Mormon Stories are the shape of the future for apologetics: diverse, personal, interactive. [Disclaimer: I’m not endorsing the agenda of Mormon Stories, whatever it is, just noting the popularity of the format.]
Book of Mormon Midterm Answers Part 1
I posted the questions last week. It’s taken me much longer than I thought to hunt down my references/handouts/links, so I’m breaking the answers into two parts. 1) Nephi says several times that knowing “the things of the Jews” can help us understand Isaiah. Similarly, the “things of the Jews” can help us understand the Book of Morm on. Briefly explain two specific examples of “things of the Jews” that help us understand either Isaiah or the Book of Mormon. (4 pts.) We talked about lots of these in class. What’s interesting to me is immediately after declaring “the things of the Jews” to be the key, he also says he deliberately has “not taught [his] children after the manner of the Jews;” (2 Nephi 25:5-6) 2 a) How do we know that when Jacob and Joseph were ordained “priests and teachers” they were not being ordained to our Latter-day priesthood offices of priest and teacher? 2 b) Why then are they called teachers? (Handout, discussed in class. 4 pts.) First, it’s anachronistic to read our modern priesthood divisions back into the scriptures willy-nilly. Even the way we have them today is highly variable and has changed. (See Hartley, W. G. (1996) “From Men to Boys: LDS Aaronic Priesthood Offices, 1829-1996” Journal of Mormon History. vol. 22 no. 1) Second, I think Joseph Fielding Smith has the right reasoning; we ordain men to one office or another, not both. The…
Gendered Unity
Every ward or branch I’ve lived as an adult has struggled with the dilemma of how to increase a sense of unity among the Relief Society sisters. In some places, demographics have dictated a natural split between the transient (a few months to a few years) young college and graduate age students, wives, and mothers and those who live in the ward on a more permanent basis: more established families, families with grown children, and retirees. We’ve also lived in a branch split by language differences in which about half of the members spoke English as a native language, about half spoke some form of Spanish, and a few spoke other languages like Portuguese and Tagalog. In all cases, there was an obligation felt by the Relief Society presidencies to increase unity among the sisters. We tried planning enrichment meetings that would encourage cross-generational and cross-cultural interaction. Some things, like potluck dinners with recipe exchanges worked pretty well. But we couldn’t ever make it stick; women naturally segregated themselves by common interests or backgrounds, and always a few women were left out. Those lonely women were generally not actively excluded, but because there was no strong sense of inclusion, they often felt rejected and unwanted, or worse, completely anonymous. (There is something to be said for personal responsibility here: if you want to be included, you need to make an effort. But it may be that for some people that…
Are Book Reviews Scholarship? Explosive Tensions Within the Mormon Studies Review
Perhaps the main problem with the Mormon Studies Review, which led to this awful explosion in the last couple of weeks, can be crystallized by looking at the titles it has held over the years and thinking for a moment about what they mean. At first, it was the FARMS Review of Books on the Book of Mormon. It then became the FARMS Review of Books, the FARMS Review, and finally, just the Mormon Studies Review, expanding out the “MS” and dropping the “FAR” at the start. That is quite a journey, and expresses a range of personalities whose conflict with one another appears to have finally produced this explosion between Jerry Bradford and Dan Peterson. The scope changed dramatically from just books dealing with the Book of Mormon at first, to all kinds of stuff related to Mormonism at the end. But those changes in scope were pretty straightforward. The complicated part is a matter of genre. The Review started as a publication that specifically did book reviews, and ended up as a publication that invites “substantial freestanding essays that make further contributions to the field of Mormon studies.” And my hunch is that Jerry Bradford would want to emphasize these freestanding essays as the core of the publication going forward, even though they are mentioned second, as an “also” in the current description of the journal on the Maxwell site. But see, book reviews are just a very…
Literary BMGD #26: War
The Anti-Nephi-Lehies, the focus of Book of Mormon lesson #26, have to be the most unusual group in the Book of Mormon. Their choice of pacifism is unequaled in scripture, except possibly by the people of Enoch. While the lesson concentrates on their conversion and how that led them to turn to pacifism, I think the fact that they chose pacifism is instructive, something that should make us all ponder what really matters. Perhaps their pacifist views, along with the troubles in Missouri, influenced William Wines Phelps, one of the first poets of Mormonism, leading him to write the following condemnation of war:
BMGD #25 Alma 17-22
Book of Mormon Midterm
We’ve arrived in early Alma, and so, as I did for my BYU New Testament class I taught, I provide here some questions taken from the midterms and finals of the two Book of Mormon classes I taught in 2004 and 2006. Both sections covered 1 Nephi-Alma 29, but one was a freshman section and one an RM section. These exams were open-scripture, but as with the New Testament exam, open scripture certainly did not equate to easy. I wanted to test if students were reading, thinking, and able to make use of the critical-thinking and other skills we were learning in class and homework assignments. Sometimes I just wanted to see if students could read closely and think coherently. How do YOU do on these?
David and Uriah: A Meditation
The most upsetting thing about the story of David and Bathsheba (2 Samuel 11) is not what he did with Bathsheba, bad as that was. That he was intrigued with her is unremarkable, even natural; she was totally hot, after all. Bringing her to the palace is a different story, disgraceful even if he had only sat her down for a chat, since her husband was away at war. Even as a phenomenally successful and revered king, David displayed the priorities of a ten-year-old who’s been hanging out with bad company. I would have said “of an adolescent,” except that apparently David wasn’t much past adolescence when he volunteered to risk his life for the nation of Israel, declining the sword and armor of King Saul, to take on Goliath, the decorated, feared, and enormous champion of the Philistine army, with only a leather strap and five smooth stones. He had come a long way since then. The adultery that came next is the greatest sin next to murder, though in my mind still that next step down to murder is quite a doozy. The most despicable thing is not merely that he ordered Uriah killed, but the way he did it. If you’re going to do something as appalling as murder, you can at least show some decent form. David wasn’t man enough to kill Uriah himself. He didn’t even do him the honor of hiring a hit man.…
Hit and Miss
I’m not quite up to creating original content today, so I’m going to link and comment to a few posts and articles that caught my eye. It’s really amazing how much coverage Mormonism is getting lately compared to a few years ago.
Sent Back
In the latter half of the 19th century, the principle role that New York City filled for Mormonism was as a transit point—more than 75,000 Mormon converts entered the United States through New York City during those years while several thousand missionaries sailed for Europe from New York’s port. But beginning with the Page Act in 1875 and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the U.S. began restricting immigration, beginning with Chinese and also including convicts, lunatics, and “others unable to care for themselves.” And in the late 1880s, attention on polygamy prosecution in Utah led to a provision of the Geary Act of 1892 which prohibited entry by polygamists. If you were restricted from immigrating, you were sent back.