This is a fascinating bit of history. Derry was an early convert to Mormonism who emigrated from England to Utah, became disgusted with polygamy and what he saw as an abusive system of tithing and church governance, and returned to the American Midwest, where he joined the RLDS church and became a leader and missionary in that denomination. Like The Giant Joshua, it’s odd to read something that is so clearly “a pioneer story” but isn’t uniformly positive. Andrew Bolton, a former apostle in Community of Christ, gave me a copy of the book after we met at the 2023 World Conference. He wanted to know whether it would be useful for folks with an LDS background looking into Community of Christ. I found the book fascinating from a historical perspective, but I don’t think it would be helpful in ministry. As basically a summary of old journals, reprinted in newspaper articles and then collated in this book, it makes for dry, long reading. Furthermore, Derry’s conflict with the LDS church is put in very RLDS terms that don’t match Community of Christ’s contemporary priorities and identity.

This is disgusting and reprehensible. I refuse to watch the video myself, but it sounds like it wouldn’t be out of place on the Gab groups I’ve looked at for research projects.

This is a wild, compelling story that I missed when it first came out. Glad to be reading it now.

Good focus on the digital labor aspects of this whole thing. I sympathize with Reddit for not wanting to provide free value for generative AI (this is one of the trickiest parts of that conversation), but Reddit’s users are right to balk at providing free value for the platform.

Helpful summary by Masnick; bookmarking for later.

Almost immediately after finishing yesterday’s post, an idea occurred to me that I wanted to chase a little further. I’ve mentioned before my admiration for Thomas Römer, a Germano-Swiss Bible scholar who teaches at the Collège de France and whose lectures are freely available in podcast form. I’ve listened to a lot of those lectures, and I remembered that Römer had made some comments about the rhetorical purposes of the Abraham story that seemed relevant to my wrestling with the story of the Binding of Isaac.

C’mon Reddit.

I’ve alluded to the binding of Isaac in previous posts, and I hope that what I’ve written before makes it clear how uncomfortable I am with this story. Nonetheless, it’s one of the readings in this week’s Lectionary scriptures, and there is a part of Robert Alter’s translation of this story that does stick out to me. Here’s how Alter renders Genesis 22:2:

And He said, “Take, pray, your son, your only one, whom you love, Isaac, and go forth to the Land of Moriah and offer him up as a burnt offering on one of the mountains which I shall say to you.”

One of kiddo’s favorite podcasts is the delightful Forever Ago, each episode of which dives into the history of something specific, such as the weekend, Black cowboys, etc. Kiddo often listens to podcasts in the morning while waiting for (or eating) breakfast, and on Saturday morning, knowing that we were visiting Lexington Pride later that day, she pulled up the episode on the history of the rainbow Pride flag.

With that history fresh in our minds, I noticed something different about the rainbow flags that fly in downtown Lexington during hte month of June: Lexington does not fly the common six-stripe rainbow flag. Instead, it flies a version of the flag with pink in it. I was so distracted by the pink that I didn’t count the other colors, but I’m guessing this is most likely the original eight-color flag designed by Gilbert Baker in 1978, as featured in that Forever Ago episode and as seen below.

Nearly a year ago, I wrote a post about an important part of RLDS history that I mostly love but also get slightly annoyed by. In short, Wallace Smith, who was then prophet-president of the RLDS Church, was put on the spot by a local seminary professor, who asked the following question:

If our mutual studies of Christianity and the RLDS Church were to discovere that there was a discrepancy between what Jesus taught and what Joseph Smith taught, which would you accept?

Perhaps most interesting thing here is official comment from Reddit. It’s not quite “auto-reply with a poop emoji territory,” but it might actually be worse?

I’ve linkblogged a lot of stuff on Reddit lately, but this is a good summary and reaction, so I’m adding it to the list.

Wil Gafney and her *Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church° continue to be a source of inspiration for me. For the past two weeks, her readings for the relevant Sundays of the season of Ordinary Time in the Christian liturgical year have begun with Samuel’s miraculous birth to Hannah. I’ve just now completed the reading for Proper 6 reading, in which Hannah’s pleas for a child despite her seeming infertility are answered. In reading Gafney’s commentary on the passage, I deeply appreciated these lines:

Lots of ugh here.

I had never heard about this story before. It’s tempting to think of World War II as “a good war,” but stories like this complicate it. How is this blatant racism compatible with fighting against the Nazis?

I’m glad this article points out how much unpaid work mods do to make Reddit a place people want to go. They arguably add more value to the platform than employees do, and this strikes me as a bad move.

Reddit’s response continues to feel tonedeaf and sketchy to me.

Here’s Masnick saying some of my thoughts but better—and adding some observations I would not have come to on my own.

Feels pretty sleazy to me.

I get that any platform has to pay its bills, but Huffman keeps coming off as a real jerk.

This comic memoir of (same-sex) marriage has excellent art, tells a good story, and hits on very important points for the time we’re in. I picked it up on a whim and really enjoyed it.

Keep it up, subreddits!

What I appreciate about coverage of this from The Verge and Techdirt is the way that it draws attention to questions of digital labor.

Good for them. Let’s hope it makes a difference.

This just makes me like Andy more. Shame on Cameron and everyone else using queerphobia to influence an election.