Below you will find pages that utilize the taxonomy term “Mormonism”
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ for Heike's Void, by Steven Peck
What a weird, profound, and beautiful book. This is a very Mormon novel, and in all the best ways. It takes Mormonism seriously—even literally—but not uncritically. I’d wager that Peck has read Grant Hardy, and my favorite bit in an amazing book is a throwaway joke about farewell expressions in French in a way that only someone who knows and loves the Book of Mormon would do. More than all of that, it is a profound and optimistic (but never naïve) story about redemption knowing no bounds.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Maxwell Institute Podcast #157: Latter-day Saints in the French Imagination, with Corry Cropper, Daryl Lee, and Heather Belnap - Neal A. Maxwell Institute'
Such an interesting book. I’m going to have to get a copy to read one day.
link to ‘Maxwell Institute Podcast #157: Latter-day Saints in the French Imagination, with Corry Cropper, Daryl Lee, and Heather Belnap - Neal A. Maxwell Institute’
further thoughts on Jephthah's daughter
Yesterday, I wrote a post on Jephthah, a figure in the book of Judges who makes a commitment that if God helps him out in battle, he’ll sacrifice the first thing that exits the door of his house when he returns home. Robert Alter notes that there’s been a lot of rabbinic and scholarly effort to make sense of this but that in “any case, it is a rash vow.” Indeed, the vow goes wrong, and Jephthah winds up in a situation where’s he believes he’s committed to offer up his daughter in sacrifice.
on Jephthah, Jeremiah, and David Archuleta
Some of the most troubling passages in the Christian canon have to do with the sacrifice of children in the name of God. Abraham’s near sacrifice of Isaac is perhaps the most obvious example of this, but there are other examples that (ought to) raise as much concern in the mind of the believer. Perhaps the most interesting (to me) story along these lines is found in Judges 11:31 (I’m using Robert Alter’s fantastic translation throughout this post), where one of the eponymous judges, a man by the name of Jephthah:
on distinctions between 'church' and gospel'
During the last few years I spent as a practicing Latter-day Saint, one recurring pet peeve that I had was the overbroad use of the term “gospel” to refer to all Latter-day Saint doctrines, teachings, and beliefs. In hindsight, learning to separate the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ from everything that I believed was a major part of my faith transition—and my ability to continue in Christianity even when the version that I was used to started to no longer work for me.
sticking with the Book of Mormon
I am a big fan of the Book of Mormon. It’s one of the reasons that I stuck with Community of Christ when transitioning out of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I know the book is problematic, and I doubt its historicity, but I’m still an advocate for making some religious meaning out of it.
There are diverse opinions about the Book of Mormon in Community of Christ, and while there’s plenty of room to believe lots of different things, the default institutional view tends to be either indifferent or suspicious of the text.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'BYU requires new hires to waive their right to clergy confidentiality'
The inconsistency here is infuriating. When I was in grad school, I had the philosophy that I (a Mormon working toward a PhD) couldn’t rule out the possibility of working at BYU. There’s still a lot that I like and respect about BYU, but seeing the way they’re putting the squeeze on their employees makes it clear that I could never have survived there.
link to ‘BYU requires new hires to waive their right to clergy confidentiality’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'A BYU fan repeatedly called Duke volleyball player a racial slur during match in Utah, family says'
BYU is really on a roll this week.
link to ‘A BYU fan repeatedly called Duke volleyball player a racial slur during match in Utah, family says’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'BYU Tramples Queer Students, Again – Wheat & Tares'
Learned about the Trib article from this blog post, which I think also makes some solid points. It’s one thing to prefer that outside organizations not provide materials, but if BYU isn’t doing anything itself…
link to ‘BYU Tramples Queer Students, Again – Wheat & Tares’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'LGBTQ groups say BYU trashed their resource pamphlets'
What a disappointment.
link to ‘LGBTQ groups say BYU trashed their resource pamphlets’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'How Mormons are addressing sex abuse: Too little, too late'
Appreciate Jana’s perspective on this horrible story.
link to ‘How Mormons are addressing sex abuse: Too little, too late’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'A Few Minor, and Hopefully Helpful Editing Suggestions on the LDS Church’s Recent Statement about Abuse | By Common Consent, a Mormon Blog'
I’ve long lacked confidence in my own opinions (as a general rule—I can also be an opinionated jerk), so even the simplest disagreement with a position I’ve taken can take some wind out of my sails. When I read the official Latter-day Saint response to the recent AP story, I didn’t agree with it, but it still slowed me down some. “Maybe I should consider things from another point of view,” I thought.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'The Teen Who Helped Expose the Boy Scouts’ Pedophilia Epidemic, and the Mormon Church’s Cover-Up'
This reporting is from a couple of years ago, but I wasn’t paying enough attention at the time, and recent events make me regret that.
link to ‘The Teen Who Helped Expose the Boy Scouts’ Pedophilia Epidemic, and the Mormon Church’s Cover-Up’
should I stay or should I go?
I haven’t attended the Latter-day Saint congregation I officially belong to since March of 2020, and I’m coming up on one year of being an official member of Community of Christ. It’s pretty clear to me—and, likely, to others—where my religious future is headed.
Yet, I’ve always expected that I would remain a de jure—if not de facto—member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Even if it’s not the right spiritual home for me or my family any more, and even if I have major disagreements with it, this church has been an important part of my life, and I’ve always wanted to preserve that by retaining my official membership.
'Belgian French' and the intentional awkwardness of LDS Book of Mormon translation
This week and last, I’ve been reading up on Mormons’ commitment to both the language of the King James Version (Philip Barlow’s Mormons and the Bible is a fantastic read) and what is seen as the authoritative text of the Book of Mormon. In Paul Gutjahr’s The Book of Mormon: A Biography, he quotes the official Latter-day Saint Scripture Translation Manual as including the following guidelines for translators of the Book of Mormon:
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Stranger People | Times & Seasons'
I haven’t watched Stranger Things 4, but it’s interesting how media depictions of Mormonism often get some of the details wrong, folding it in with broader conservative Christianity instead of focusing on its unique weirdness. This often confused me as a kid, especially when adults would wonder if I were allowed to play games with supernatural themes or… sing songs?
link to ‘Stranger People | Times & Seasons’
thoughts on an in-press article—and on names and legitimacy in Mormonism
One of the highlights of the summer has been getting an article accepted in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought. This article takes as a starting point Cragun and Nielsen’s argument (also published in Dialogue) that:
what is really at play in the debate over the use of “Mormon” is legitimacy.
Cragun and Nielsen are writing in 2009, at a time when Big Love is on the air and the April 2008 FLDS Temple raid is (or was recently) on the news.
thoughts on Joseph, Jesus, and fundamentalism
Over the past several months, I’ve been slowly working my way through Mark Scherer’s three-volume The Journey of a People, the most recent quasi-official history of Community of Christ. The first volume was interesting, since it covered an era of Mormon history that I’m familiar with from a perspective that I’m not familiar with. I found the second volume a bit harder to get through—some individual sections were fascinating, but it seemed to lack an overall throughline or narrative.
anxiety, privilege, and trying to make a difference
A couple of weekends ago, I had my first experience with a Community of Christ Reunion camp. Kiddo and I only stayed for a long weekend rather than the whole week, but it was still a great experience. By far the best experience I had at Reunion was a Monday morning class for young adults and “90s kids” (which is not a label I’ve ever actively applied to myself, but it fit just fine.
bike rides, TTRPGs, and other 2022 Father's Day weekend fun
The title of this post is a bit misleading. My wife and I aren’t really big on “Parent’s Day” celebrations: Years of Latter-day Saint “all women are mothers” (read: motherhood is the most important part of womanhood) Sunday services grated on us during our years of infertility, and even now that we are parents (and aren’t practicing Latter-day Saints—though my current denomination certainly isn’t immune from a cringeworthy celebration of parents either), it’s just not a thing we do.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'What the Latter-day Saint hymn ‘Love at Home’ has to do with blackface'
So, so many wild things in this article. I grew up loving this hymn and had no idea it had roots in blackface minstrelsy. Hope the Church will take it out of its next hymnbook, but I’m not holding my breath. The real kicker is Brigham Young’s concern about blackface—not because it’s racist but because it’s degrading to white people.
link to ‘What the Latter-day Saint hymn ‘Love at Home’ has to do with blackface’
an 'ultimate sense of FOMO' and joining Community of Christ
Over the past several weeks, I’ve been putting a lot of work into adjusting my online presence, a project that I expect to last through most of the summer. In dividing my website into distinct subareas and pivoting from a single Twitter account to a number of Mastodon accounts, I’m trying to do something about the context collapse that’s been keeping me from sharing some of the big things going on in my life lately.
Dallin Oaks and Marjorie Taylor Greene on heterosexual extinction
Thanks to a recommendation from BoingBoing, I just finished reading a Business Insider article describing a recent video in which Marjorie Taylor Greene:
predicted that identifying as heterosexual will be a thing of the past within a period of less than 200 years thanks to LGBTQ-inclusive sex educators, who she called “trans terrorists.”
More specifically, Greene was quoted as saying that heterosexual extinction would come about “probably in about four or five generations.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on ''Under the Banner of Heaven' raises the question: Are Mormons dangerous?'
I suspect that there is nothing as damning in Mormon history as Mormons’ failure to own up to that history, and Jana’s writing here captures that nicely.
link to ‘‘Under the Banner of Heaven’ raises the question: Are Mormons dangerous?’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Religious Education at BYU: An Open Letter to the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities | By Common Consent, a Mormon Blog'
Lots of thoughts about this. As someone with an education PhD who teaches and researches outside traditionally education topics, I want to emphasize that the prevalence of education PhDs is a symptom, not the actual problem. In my teaching and research outside my home discipline, I work hard to learn the content and communities that I’m branching into. The disdain for those content and communities at BYU Religious Education is the real problem here and therefore what I’m really worried about.
🔗 linkblog: just finished 'Utah Makes Welfare So Hard to Get, Some Feel They Must Join the LDS Church to Get Aid — ProPublica'
Bishop roulette makes for terrible public policy.
link to ‘Utah Makes Welfare So Hard to Get, Some Feel They Must Join the LDS Church to Get Aid — ProPublica’