We’re happy to present Kurt Manwaring’s interview with Benjamin Park. He’s a professor of history at Sam Houston University and has been a visiting fellow at the Maxwell Institute. He just had published American Nationalisms: Imagining Union in the Age of Revolutions. He’s been working on research on the political culture of Nauvoo in the 1840’s. You can read the full interview with Ben at 12 Questions. We’re including some relevant excerpts here that hopefully will engender some discussion. I’ll add some comments at the end.
Year: 2018
The Divine Christ and the Human Jesus
We’ve been in Jerusalem long enough to be able to spend time with pilgrims of varying denominations from all over the world. I personally love the concept of pilgrimage. I love being able to find the spiritual world within the material one, and I love how it brings people together through a special kind of worship; because while there are many beliefs and traditions that make the groups of people we’ve met fascinatingly different, there are important ways that we are similar. One of these is that we believe that somehow in coming here we will find something of Christ that we can’t find elsewhere. Since Christ’s death believers have spent thousands of years, millions of pages and countless hours trying to understand what it means to believe in a god who has form, but who few have ever been privileged to see. And, because we don’t see, we work very hard to find meaning in not seeing. We cling to Christ’s pronouncement that it is better to believe without seeing anyway, reminding ourselves that a true believer’s responsibility is to move past such superficial needs as sight and touch. But, despite our best efforts, there is something tangible I think most of us long for when we think about Christ. The fact is we have physical bodies and our physical bodies long for physical connection. And so we pack up our hope and our longing and we travel across…
Times & Season Welcomes Mary Grey
Times and Seasons is excited to welcome our newest guest blogger, Mary E. Grey, who will be writing a series of posts from her current home in Jerusalem.
The Loss of Sin
I think one of the many social changes we’re seeing unfolding before us is the loss of sin. I don’t mean loss in the good sense of moving away from sin. Rather I mean loss in the sense that the very category of sin is rejected and rendered incomprehensible. Much of Mormon proselytizing depends upon a shared sense of sin. That is that sin is something to overcome and the atonement is the answer. Without a notion of sin it is simply much harder to see what the point of Jesus or the atonement even is.
12 Questions With Gary Bergera
We’re happy to present Kurt Manwaring’s interview with Gary Bergera. This is cross-posted here and at the 12 Questions site. Gary Bergera, for those not already familiar with him, is the editor of the recently released Confessions of a Mormon Historian: The Diaries of Leonard J. Arrington.
What if Harry and Meghan ….
As more or less self-appointed wedding-specialist I simply had to watch the “wedding of the year”, between the British prince Harry and the American actress Meghan Markle. And what a splendid event it was, a joy to watch, and a rich inspiration for ‘pondering’. So let us ponder. First, it was a “real wedding” indeed, with all symbolic acts in place: the presentation of the bride – a pity the father was absent – the inner circle of family and friends, and the outer circle of the general community. The rings, the vows, the call for dissenters, all under the authority of the officiant, plus the tying of hands, followed by the “I now declare you …”. The kiss came later, for the general public. The symbols were clear, shared and meaningful, while the sermon was a gem of black American preaching, a gush of fresh air in the rather stolid Anglican verbal tradition. For all who love church music, the cathedral choir with the young boys’ voices was a treat, as usual; one cannot beat the Anglican church in that respect. Still, the American gospel choir, with its intense rendition of “stand by me” was just such a glory. The Dutch morning papers today exult about the whole scene, the mix of the best in British and American cultures. Then there was the pause, when the couple was absent while the audience was regaled on a cello concerto by…
Future Mormon 6: A Radical Mormon Materialism
Welcome to the oft delayed sixth chapter of the once weekly reading club for Adam Miller’s Future Mormon. Hopefully we’ll get back to weekly again. For general links related to the book along with links for all the chapter discussions please go to our overview page. Please don’t hesitate to give your thoughts on the chapter. We’re hoping for a good thoroughgoing critical engagement with the text. Such criticisms aren’t treating the text as bad or flawed so much as trying to engage with the ideas Adam brings up. Hopefully people will push back on such criticism if they disagree or even just see flaws in the logic. That’s when we tend to all learn the most.
Messianism as Ethical Futurism – Reading Nephi – 19:7-17
Nephi’s eclectic messianism can be read as prophesying an ethical futurism.
The Death of the Newspaper
I know the travails of the Salt Lake Tribune and then smaller papers like the Daily Herald in Provo and the Ogden Examiner don’t seem directly LDS related. However all these papers, along with the Deseret News, tend to cover religious topics. It’s worth discussing what’s going on.
To Every Man is Given a Free Gift
In D&C 46:11 we read, “there are many gifts, and to every man is given a gift by the Spirit of God.” I’ve long taken that to mean that literally every person on earth has a spiritual gift, if they’ll hearken to the light of Christ. Often we don’t realize just how many gifts we are making use of until we’re released from a calling or if we get out of tune with the spirit. At that point skills and abilities we depended upon leave. The question is, however, whether D&C 46:11 is speaking of all people[1] or just people in the Church.
Review Essay: “The Power of Godliness: Mormon Liturgy and Cosmology”: Materiality and Performance
Like a paring knife to a grapefruit, Jonathan Stapley’s new book on the history of Mormon cosmology is slim, sharp, and swift to carve through pith, serving up elegant wedges of history. The Power of Godliness: Mormon Liturgy and Cosmology (Oxford, 2018) traces the evolution of ritual practice in Mormonism, including priesthood ordination, sealing rites, healing practices, baby blessings, and folk divination. The author’s reticence to extract neat diagrams from his findings is a virtue of the book, and any summary should be offered advisedly. Taken together, however, the chapters show a gradual migration from civic- to kinship- to church-centered forms of ritual soteriology, occurring alongside processes of codification and consolidation that, by the late 20th century, concentrate Mormon liturgical discourse and practice within the male ecclesiastical priesthood. I am no historian, and I leave it to the experts to adjudicate Stapley’s stimulating historical claims. Several points struck my picture of Mormon history–incomplete and idiosyncratic as it is–with particular explanatory power. As I understand them: Early notions of sealing and its connection to the doctrine of perseverance evolved rapidly. Initially, the Saints were “sealed up” in the soteriological sense that their salvation was permanently assured; it would “persevere” all future threats and sweep safely them to heaven. Later in the Kirtland and especially Nauvoo periods, the Saints were “sealed to” one another in a relational bond that was the vehicle of salvation, and the perseverance implied was that of the…
Bridewealth and gospel: an African quandary?
In his recent world tour President Russell Nelson visited Kenya and spoke about a specific cultural custom in Kenya, the bridewealth or bride price. President Nelson called it ‘dowry’, which is technically incorrect, but that is not the issue I want to raise here. Bridewealth consists of the valuables that are transferred from the family of the groom the father of the bride, as a compensation for the loss of a woman. Dowry are the valuables a bride takes with her into her married state, often part of her inheritance, to be used by her and/or her husband. African marriages, throughout, are bridewealth marriages: one ‘pays’ for a bride. While lauding the Africans for their family orientation, Nelson denounced the custom of bridewealth, arguing that it does not square with the practice of the gospel; in fact Dallin Oaks had done so before him in a talk about gospel culture. One major reason for raising the issue of bridewealth payments, is that it puts a heavy burden on the young men who need many years to get all the cows and money needed for such a transaction, before they can settle down with a family. That not only tends to postpone their marriage, but also precludes them from going on a mission, and one can understand why both church leaders frowned on the custom. So the advice to the Kenyan members was not to follow the custom and marry without…
Starting With Faith…
Over at Faith Promoting Rumor G Wesley has up a post critiquing BYU’s scholarship. The main bone of contention was a talk by Elder Bednar regarding scholarship at LDS schools. Wesley responds that BYU should “first and foremost places set apart for critical thinking and the scientific method.”
Engraving a Record, Engraving a People – Reading Nephi – 19:1-6
All my life I’ve imagined the Book of Lehi—those tragically lost 116 pages—as having been written by Lehi. But the Book of Lehi was engraven on plates
The Bread of Life, with Chocolate Chips
Today I am pleased to present a guest post from a good friend of the blog, Samuel Morris Brown. I learned to cook when my wife was recovering from cancer surgery. There’s a hollowness, kindred to cancer, hungry to swallow you up when a beloved’s life is threatened. I still remember, with a soul-deep ache, that time when her body was a battleground for scalpeling surgeons and monstrously deformed cells. Those harrowing days are a distant memory now, but that fulminant awareness of her mortality still haunts me. I’ve seen a lot of death in my short life; nothing disoriented me like her cancer. The wild upheaval of unexpected illness unearthed more than a surgical specimen for the pathologist’s microscope. She and I discovered in the cancer’s aftermath my longstanding failure as a husband to be her full partner. This spousal dereliction had insinuated itself into the infrastructure of our marriage. I realized that my soul needed a surgery of its own. A spiritual death had wrapped its malignant fingers around my internal organs, a nefarious mimic of the tumor that had lifted the retina off the back of her eye. The simultaneous, stark revelation of her mortality and my personal failure left me wanting to sit alone in a room and cry my way through the smothering chaos rather than accept the painful transformation that beckoned. But there was no time to stare, heartbroken, at my pitiful soul, dithering…
What’s in a Name? – Reading Nephi – 18:23-19:1
This post is part of a series of reflections on I Nephi. If you’re interested, the introduction to the series is here. To peruse earlier entries, click the authors tab at the top of the page and then click on my name. I welcome your own thoughts on these specific verses (or on my reflections) in the comments below. * * * * I Nephi 18:23-19:1 They arrive at the promised land. They pitch their tents. I can’t help but picture elation and Hollywood scenes of the family kneeling to kiss wet sand as water rolls over their feet. They made it! Now what? At the end of years of travel, when one finally reaches one’s destination, what does one do? As Nephi goes on to note, they’re in a new land with new flora and fauna and resources—but a land of which they’ve zero knowledge. Particularly when it comes to survival, local knowledge is everything. I imagine a profound funk of “what now?” hung over them. After more than eight years, are they simply to stop? Do they stop and build right on the coast? Do they look around for a fertile valley? Do they have to try and find an uninhabited location? Are they sure that God doesn’t want them to continue on further into the wilderness? Nephi makes no comment about these decisions and does not mention revelation here. It’s unclear that the Liahona—so integral to their ocean voyage—could…
Where is the wedding?
This post is about ritual, not doctrine, so it is about the form of worship, not its theology. I will use the word ‘ritual’ for all formalized forms of worship, Mormon and other, even if we use ‘ordinances’ in our own ‘Mormonese’, but ‘ritual’ is the generally accepted term. Rituals are important since as symbols in action they are ‘sticks to lean on in worship’. In the Mormon church we have quite some rituals, like the sacrament, prayers, testimony bearing, baptism, laying on of hands, administering, and of course the temple is a house full of rituals. My thesis in this first blog on wedding and marriage is that in our LDS ritual repertoire, large as it may be, we are missing one ritual, the wedding. Now, let me be clear: I use ‘wedding’ for the ritual (or ceremony, but that is the same category) by which a couple is married. Marriage is the institution, wedding the specific form this festive occasion takes, a form which depends on culture and tradition. And on the Church. All cultures know the institution of marriage, but not all cultures have weddings; sometimes the joining of a man and a woman occurs very gradually. But anyway, when a man and woman are married, they form a new group in society: they have gone from their ‘family of orientation (living with mon and dad) to their ‘family of procreation’, and henceforth the children of the…
Loving my Prosperity Gospel
The term “prosperity gospel” describes an execrable set of ideas in American Christianity, chiefly that wealth is a marker of righteousness, and that believers can ensure material wealth and prosperity through spiritual practices. But “prosperity gospel” is often applied to a much broader set of beliefs
A Simple Religion
You’ve probably noticed I’ve not been around much of late. I was fighting off a case of the flu which seemed to be persisting a tad long. I figured it might be a secondary lung infection as I was also having fevers at night. I went to the local Instacare expecting to pick up an antibiotic prescription. Much to my shock, I had an infection but not in my lungs. It was in my heart.
10 Questions with Spencer Fluhman
Continuing our work with the 10 Questions team, we are pleased to present Kurt Manwaring’s interview with Spencer Fluhman, Director of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship at BYU and an editor of “To Be Learned is Good: Essays on Faith and Scholarship in Honor of Richard Lyman Bushman.” Manwaring and Fluhman cover a wide range of topics during their discussion, which is well worth reading in full. A couple of highlights that stood out to me include Fluhman describing the mission of the Maxwell Institute: The Institute is a research unit dedicated to religious topics but defined in particular by that intersection between the practice of faith and the rigorous study of it. We ask our scholars to conscientiously serve two audiences: those academic fields interested in the study of religion and the Latter-day Saints themselves, whose religious commitments compel many to care deeply about the broader world of religious ideas and scholarship. We can’t typically write for both audiences at once, so we take care to be clear about who we’re talking to. The two audiences demand different skills and tools. Academic audiences expect specialized language, deep immersion in scholarly literature, and an academic tone. LDS audiences, on the other hand, expect sensitivity to their covenantal commitments, to their regard for some texts and voices having spiritual authority over others, and for writing that is accessible rather than specialized…. Our work with the academy seeks understanding and empathy, for…
That time President Nelson released me from the pulpit
One week before general conference I got up in High Priest Group and conducted the meeting for the first time. We’d moved into the ward six months ago and I’d just been called as the new group leader. Sunday the Stake Presidency called me in and officially released me. We all thought it was pretty funny. No one seemed to be bothered by the fact that a calling we’d expected to last for some time was over so soon. Certainly that calling and a couple weeks in it taught me something. Perhaps it even helped somebody else. What looks like a bizarre flight path on a two dimensional map can look very natural in three dimensions. What seems strange to us is obvious to God. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.
10 Questions with Jonathan Stapley
As part of our work with the 10 Questions team, we will be posting later this week on Kurt Manwaring’s upcoming interview with the Maxwell Institute’s Spencer Fluhman. In the meantime, however, we thought we would highlight a great interview 10 Questions recently posted with Jonathan Stapley, bloggernacle regular and author of “The Power of Godliness: Mormon Liturgy and Cosmology” (Oxford University Press). In his interview, Stapley notes of his new book: “[I]n The Power of Godliness, I look at the history and development of core ideas essential to current Mormon identity such as priesthood, authority, and ordinances. I also analyze how women have variously been included and excluded from these concepts, especially in relation to the liturgy of the church. For example, in Nauvoo, men and women who participated in the Temple liturgy while Joseph Smith was alive, referred to themselves as “the priesthood.” Both believers and scholars have struggled to understand what that meant. Moreover many have used historical practice or theology to make arguments about the current ecclesiastical or liturgical structures of the church. My volume is an academic history of Mormonism, and as such it’s intent is simply to understand and analyze the past and contextualize and historicize the present.” When you have a moment, check out the 10 Questions interview and Stapley’s new book, which are both well worth your time.
Fusion
Meeting with my ward high priests group has been one of my favorite parts of the week for several years.
Maxwell Institute Giveaway
To promote #10questions interviews about “To Be Learned is Good” with Richard Bushman, @spencerfluhman, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich and @patrickqmason, @MI_BYU is sponsoring a book giveaway. FOLLOW & RT on Twitter by April 5 for a chance to WIN A FREE COPY.
Easter Conference
Based on a talk given this Sunday in sacrament meeting. This year, Easter and General Conference are on the same day, which illustrates how we measure time in multiple ways.
Failed Revolutions and Failed Patriarchs – Reading Nephi – 18:17-22
This post is part of a series of reflections on I Nephi. If you’re interested, the introduction to the series is here. To peruse earlier entries, click the authors tab at the top of the page and then click on my name. I welcome your own thoughts on these specific verses (or on my reflections) in the comments below. * * * * I Nephi 18:17-22 Above all, this passage reveals the deep hypocrisy of Laman. In verse ten Laman is the adamant defender of tradition and the cultural norms that ought to govern our lives—he refuses to accept rule from a usurping younger brother. In verse seventeen and eighteen, however, he has no compunction with regard to deposing the patriarchal rule of his father—a far greater infraction of tradition. Even more, he shirks the duty of the firstborn to care for the parents in their old age; quite the opposite, he creates conditions that bring his parents to the point of death and refuses to alter course when this becomes clear. Even taking Nephi’s account with a grain of salt, it’s hard to imagine a scenario here where Laman doesn’t come off very poorly.\ Part of the function of this passage is to reveal the utter ungovernability of Laman. It’s not just that he won’t submit to Nephi, a younger, usurping brother; it’s that he won’t submit to any form of authority, any of the cultural norms and constraints—Laman is refusing…
Flourishing Amidst the Storm – Reading Nephi – 18:9-16
Murmuring undermines one’s relationship with God and one’s ability to cope either with the storms of the cosmos or the wounds inflicted by our family members.
Stating the Obvious: The World
In the current unhappy state of online Mormon discourse, stating the obvious is sometimes controversial, and for that reason all the more necessary.
SMPT at Utah State Univ. Next Weekend: The Exaltation Revelations
The Society for Mormon Philosophy and Theology will be meeting at Utah State on Friday-Saturday, March 16-17, with a focus on “The Exaltation Revelations,” D&C 76, 84, 88, and 93. The program includes talks on divine justice, the potentially universal scope of salvation, the law of the celestial kingdom, the role of the priesthood in salvation, and various perspectives on the eternal nature of humans and our kinship with God. Many of the most distinctive Latter-day Saint teachings appear in a series of revelations received in 1832-33, and recorded in Doctrine and Covenants sections 76, 84, 88, and 93. Richard Bushman has called these the “exaltation revelations,” in reference to the state of the righteous in the celestial kingdom. These revelations clarify the nature and basis of salvation and exaltation, the order of the Aaronic and Melchizedek Priesthoods, the eternal nature of humankind, and the role of the church in the last days. While they draw continually on themes and language of the Bible, the exaltation revelations establish Mormonism as a dramatic departure from the prevailing Christian theology of the time. The conference will be held on the fifth floor of the University Inn. It is free and open to the public. Please join us! Full program information appears on the SMPT website.
Review: William V. Smith’s ‘Textual Studies of the Doctrine & Covenants’
In October 2007, I returned home to Texas from my mission in Nevada. In April of the following year, the raid on the YFZ Ranch near Eldorado, TX, occurred. I didn’t think much about it at the time because, you know, they weren’t real Mormons (as many LDS are wont to say). However, a good (non-member) friend called me soon after the raid and posed some questions about these polygamists Mormons, seemingly bothered that one of his best friends was mixed up in an abusive cult. I was likely too dismissive of his concerns, largely due to the mentality above. I explained the schism between the FLDS and Utah-based LDS Church, pointing out that my church had ceased practicing polygamy long ago. That seemed to satisfy him as we talked about how bizarre the whole situation was. However, just how strange all of this was to outsiders did not fully hit me until a little later at work when a newly-hired woman asked me (something along the lines of), “What church do you go to?” When I told her I was Mormon, she became rather pale. Being used to the reaction (I do live in the South), I expected her to be some kind of evangelical. However, her next question threw me: “So…is there, like…a community of Mormons around here?” I didn’t understand her at first. I pointed out that there was a chapel just down the road from where…