Some of you may have heard that the LDS Church has undertaken a massive project of providing a Spanish edition of the Bible that is similar in scope to the English LDS Bible, including cross-references to Restoration scriptures, a Bible Dictionary, and explanatory footnotes. They have received copyright permission for one of the influential Spanish translations of the Bible and are using this as the basis for the new edition. I do not have all the details to the endeavor (I would love more information if any of our readers have some), but from one source who is close to the project, the Church has employed Hebrew and Greek scholars to “retranslate” the Spanish edition when relevant to a particularly LDS view, or for the sake of clarity (I do not have any information on the quality of these people’s Greek, Hebrew, or Spanish, let alone their skills with textual criticism, so don’t ask me!). Such changes do not appear in the footnotes from what I understand, but in the text itself. From this source, I was told that such modifications have been made on practically every page!
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My Margaret Barker Experience
I first heard about Margaret Barker seven years ago and have watched from the sidelines as LDS scholars have fallen all over themselves after her ideas. However, I have never read her work. My avoidance of her work changed when a friend of mine sent me one of her lectures for comment (this is a great way to maintain a long-distance friendship, btw). It was worse than I imagined. I listened to the 35 minute lecture probably 10 times and just got more frustrated every time. I am slightly embarrassed by this episode of LDS intellectual history. It represents a step backwards in dealing with the contemporary critical evaluation of biblical texts and ANE religion.
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Wilford Woodruff Conference at Yale
This upcoming conference at Yale is the same weekend as the conference on Mormonism and Politics at Princeton. It looks like there are going to be some interesting papers, but it is unclear exactly if any of them are going to be more than historical recitations. If you are in the area, please go and let us know how it was!
The only question is why this conference is being held at Yale. All but one of the presenters is BYU faculty (Richard Lambert is a US attorney in Utah who runs the Mormon Historic Sites Foundation). Further, there is only a small LDS population in New Haven. Why fly out 8 people to speak to 8 other people?
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Conference Announcement at Prinecton
“Mormonism and American Politics”
Princeton University, November 9-10.
Mitt Romney’s run for the White House raises perennial questions about the place of religion in the public square and offers scholars an interesting occasion to reconsider the contested intersection of religion and politics. The media has made much of Romney’s religion and so have some sectors of the American public. What can we learn from public attitudes about Mormonism? Are the religious beliefs of a political candidate relevant to serving in office, and if so, how? Are there political implications to Mormonism? Do the legislative records and political careers of other Mormon politicians shed any light on this question? In what ways is Mormonism politically comparable to other religious groups?
This conference will explore some of these issues in four separate panels that will discuss 1) the earliest encounters of Mormonism and American politics, 2) Mormonism as a case study for church/state separation 3) media perceptions of Mormonism and 4) the role religious identity plays in the public square.
Participants include Richard Bushman, Richard Land, Kathleen Flake, Philip Barlow, Marci Hamilton, Alan Wolfe, Helen Whitney, Mark Silk, Noah Feldman, Sarah Barringer Gordon, Stephen Macedo, Thomas Griffith, Melissa Proctor, Robert George, Russell Arben Fox, Chris Karpowitz, David Campbell, John Green, and Francis Beckwith.
The event begins Friday, November 9th at 8:00 p.m. and continues until 5:00 Saturday, November 10th. It is free and open to the public.
For more information please see http://www.princeton.edu/~csrelig/
Holiness and Housework: The Sacred and the Mundane
One of the most influential theories for explaining religion over the last 50 years has been that religion is a system which divided people, places, and things into essentially two categories: the sacred and the profane. This view, popularized by Mircea Eliade, held that the sacred was a locus of holiness, where God could be encountered. Temples, churches, special times of the day for prayer, holy days, priests and priestesses, etc were examples of the sacred. The profane was everything else. Sometimes the profane was forbidden, but usually the profane was just the ordinary. This way of thinking about religion has come under some scrutiny for various reasons, but it is a useful way for thinking about Sister Beck’s controversial Conference talk.
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The Excommunication of Father Feeney
In 1953, Pope Pius XII excommunicated Father Feeney for refusing to submit to ecclesiastical authority. The issue in question was Feeney’s rejection of the liberalization of Catholic Doctrine (a broad movement culminating in Vatican II). Specifically, Feeney was excommunicated for his insistence on the traditional, historical doctrine of the church, extra ecclesiam nulla salus (There is no salvation outside of the church). Feeney maintained that salvation was only for those who had been baptized, rejecting the idea that good people throughout history who may not have had the opportunity to know about the church could receive salvation. This conservative position earned him global fame and a direct confrontation with the Pope.
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Is the “Family” the problem?
It is evident that the LDS church has made the institution of the nuclear family its centerpiece in both its external PR and internal emphasis. There are many wonderful things that can be said about such an approach. The rise and fall of the nuclear family in the 20th century is certainly an interesting moment in history and much can and should be said about this trend in the coming years. I have been doing a bit of reading lately that has got me thinking about the role of the family and the critiques it has faced by different religious thinkers.
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The Informal “You” In European Missions
Everyone knows that missionary work in Europe is a massive failure. The church has need of substantial PR boost and an entirely new strategy for appealing to contemporary Europeans and their immigrant populations. I suspect that there are a number of problems that need to be addressed, not least among them is that the traditional method of proselytizing in Europe is seen as outmoded at best and an offensive version of American imperialism at worst. However, all of these problems are compounded by a long-standing policy for European missionaries to only use the “formal” form of “you” in all conversations, regardless of whether it is culturally or grammatically correct to do so.
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Is there a Mormon Diaspora?
Diaspora studies have become increasingly important in recent years. Anthropologists, political activists, theologians, linguists, and others have moved to the diaspora communities for rich research and fascinating studies. LDS scholars and thinkers have not been unaware of this trend and have sought to capitalize on this conceptual framework for making sense of contemporary Mormonism. There is no doubt that there has been a major shift in LDS populations leaving Utah for California, the East Coast, and other places around the world for educational, economic, and marriage reasons. However, I wonder whether this trend is properly understood as diasporic in a similar way to Africans, the archetypical contemporary diasporic community.
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