University of Virginia

Charlottesville, VA

There is a lot to like about Michael Otterson’s recent letter.  It is a cause for hope that the issue of women in the church is being taken seriously.  It is honest, heartfelt, transparent, and reaches out directly to a community who often wonders if anyone cares at all.  I am grateful for this gesture and am pleased to see that he is an active part of the conversation.

There are lots of things to critique about the letter too, many of which have happened in other blog posts and comments.  There is also cause for disappointment in the explanation that reportedly years of conversations about women in the church have lead to so few and so minor actual changes.  But I want to specifically point out one thing that stood out to me. When explaining the issue of women’s ordination in the LDS tradition, Otterson attests:

I suppose we do not know all the reasons why Christ did not ordain women as apostles, either in the New Testament or the Book of Mormon, or when the Church was restored in modern times. We only know that he did not…

Only one argument is given for why the priesthood is restricted to males: precedent.  Even on this point, the precedent is given no rational defense.  “We do not know all the reasons…We only know that he did not”  This statement strikes me as among the most significant in the letter, and I am deeply appreciative of his candor.  Otterson is not saying that there is no reason.  Rather, Jesus may have had a reason, but we do not know as a matter of doctrine what the reason is.

Continue reading “What Otterson Got Right: “We don’t know all the reasons””

Is scripture only scripture if it is a inerrant record of what really happened?

There are some people who believe that the only difference between the Greek myths (as an example) and the Bible is that Samson really killed a lion with his hands, but Hercules did not; that God really sired Jesus, and Zeus did not really sire his mortal children; that ravens really fed Elijah, but Telephus was not suckled by a deer; that Jesus really turned water into wine, but Dionysus did not; and that Balaam’s ass and the serpent in the garden really did talk, but, oh wait, there are no talking animals in Greek mythology.  That is, for some people the difference between the Bible and any other ancient myth is that one tells an accurate history, while the others are all untrue history.

Continue reading “What is Scripture, for reals?”

This post comes from guest contributor Orson.

LDS scholars can sometimes be quite disparaging when discussing Judaism. It’s not intentional. Mormons by and large love the Jewish people (even if we often fail to properly understand them). Yet not withstanding this generally positive sentiment, Mormon scholars have a long history of making derogatory anti-Semitic remarks. I feel a need to point this out, not with a desire to embarrass specific individuals, for certainly, when it comes to representing the “other,” all of us can improve, but it’s high time that something be said about this problem so that we can begin correcting this matter.

Take for instance the recent Deseret News article by BYU professors William Hamblin and Daniel Peterson on the topic of “Rebuilding the Temple in Jerusalem.” These prominent LDS scholars depict Jewish history with these words:

The destruction of the Jewish temple by the Romans in A.D. 70 was a devastating event in the history of Judaism. It served as a transforming catalyst in both the origins of Christianity and the transition of Israelite religion from a priestly sacrifice-centered system to the legalistic text-centered religion of rabbinic Judaism as we know it today.

To characterize 1st century Judaism as a “priestly sacrifice-centered system,” and rabbinic Judaism as a “legalistic text-centered religion” is not only historically incorrect, but a problematic and pejorative stereotype of the Jewish faith.

Continue reading “Guest Post: Mormons Talking About Jews”

Let me share my observations about being a pseudonymous Mormon blogger for over a decade.  There is a common belief that bloggers who “hide” behind a pseudonym will abuse that position to do bad things.  My experience, however, has not born this out.  Instead, the pseudonymous blogger is often the target of rude treatment that is not only socially acceptable but even cheered on by some.

Continue reading “Pseudonyms and the Ad Hominem”

The following is a reprint of a post originally written in Oct 2008.  Something reminded me of it and I decided to share it again.

Paul’s bitter dispute with Peter and James poses a problem for thinking about LDS notions of authority because it puts into tension church authority and moral and doctrinal issues. When true doctrine and church leadership are in conflict, how are we to make a choice between them? When our sense of what is moral conflicts with our leaders’ sense of what is moral, what are we supposed to do? Paul found himself in exactly this situation, and had to make a choice between his own sense of what was right and the views of his leaders who had been commissioned directly by Christ to take care of the church.
Continue reading “Challenging Church Leadership”

Many of my close friends and family already know this, so it won’t be a surprise to them, but I am still giddy to announce that I have accepted a job at BYU Religious Education starting in Fall 2014.  Hiring decisions were recently made public, so I can finally share the good news with our readers.  My life-partner and I will be moving to Orem this July, so let us know where we can find a supportive ward!

I would like to share a bit of the back story about how all of this came to be.  Officials from BYU Religious Education approached many of us at the blog over the last few years acknowledging some of the concerns of the LDS graduate student community.  Out of these conversations they invited me to apply, and have actually created a special position for me funded by the office of the President to bring some of a new vision.  President Samuelson, as many observers have been reporting in national magazines, has been turning BYU into a secular liberal institution, and I am pleased to report that this trend will continue under President Worthen.

As part of these changes, I have been asked to put together some new courses. In addition to further side lining apologetics and promoting secular Mormon Studies in its place across Religious Ed, I am working on a new Religious Ed course on the collected works of Joanna Brooks, with possibly another that focuses on the podcasts and Facebook posts of John Dehlin!

While some corners of the LDS church’s intellectual health have been thriving, including in some aspects of church curriculum, the LDS Newsroom, Church History, the Maxwell Institute, and even BYU Religious Education and Deseret Book, other corners of the Church Educational System and the secretive committee that vets all potential hires, speakers, and academic boards at BYU, have been silently blacklisting, banning, and investigating LDS scholars. The anecdotal evidence is increasingly persuasive that there is a campaign in some quarters of the LDS church’s educational arms to marginalize LDS scholars of religion that are perceived to be too controversial. Some see a silver lining in continuing the trend that the most powerful and influential scholars of Mormonism will continue to exist outside of BYU and CES.  I hope that will not be the case.

Continue reading “Friendly Fire on Mormon Scholars”

Latter-day Saints are studying the Old Testament this year.  Unfortunately, many LDS readings of the Old Testament adopt a hermeneutic wherein the stories in Genesis provide moral role models.  It seems that we have come to see the scriptures as a kind of guide book for living a moral life, in spite of the fact that the stories never tell their readers to emulate any of the characters.  If we adopt this reading strategy, we miss important ways of engaging in moral reasoning, and quite frankly, misread the point of these stories entirely.

Continue reading “What is the Moral Lesson of Genesis?”

So, I am still thinking about the interpretive claim made by another blog that “God is a child sacrificing, misogynist, racial bigot.”  I started writing a post about the nature of interpretation and the naivety behind the myth that the scriptures contain a meaning prior to human interpretation. What I have found objectionable about this particular reading is not simply its conclusions, but the way it presents these conclusions as the outcome of an unbiased reading of scripture.  While I was thinking about writing this post, I remembered that Blake Ostler and I had an great exchange about the nature of interpretation a few years back.  Rereading it, I realized that pretty much everything I wanted to say now I had already said a few years ago.

Here is a link to my earlier blog post about interpretation and the comments section with Blake (and others) weighing in.