With the arrival of Salt Press at the Maxwell Institute, we have finally entered an era of “theory” as part of mainstream LDS scripture studies. At the same time, we LDS have not fully processed the moves made in biblical studies. There was a short spurt of LDS feminist criticism in the 1990’s, but this did not engage the scriptures as a primary point of inquiry. Poststructuralism, cultural criticism, and queer studies have had almost no impact on LDS scripture studies.
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What’s Wrong with the Topical Guide?
Last year I suggested some changes that I would make to the LDS Scriptures, which included getting rid of the Topical Guide. There was some resistance to this recommendation in the comments. With the recent announced changes to the LDS scriptures, I thought now would be a good time to revisit this topic. The new edition of the LDS scriptures makes no substantive changes to the Topical Guide, only corrected reference errors, formatting changes, and a few other typos. (The list of changes appears on page 11-12 of this document.)
Updated LDS Scriptures: An Occasional Series
As a group of people that is generally pretty interested in the scriptures, we were pleased to learn of the new edition (2013) of the LDS scriptures announced on Friday. The link provides a wealth of information about the new edition, including a discussion of the history of the LDS editions, and detailed documents noting every change made to the text and headers. The transparency of this new change is extremely useful. New maps and study aids are provided as well. In early commentary, LDS audiences have welcomed the new edition, even if most of the changes are extremely minor.
One of the primary areas of attention so far is the addition of explanatory headers for the two Official Declarations in the Doctrine and Covenants. These have largely been received enthusiastically, though there has been some critical assessment on their depiction of the past. Other important changes to the headers in the Doctrine and Covenants reflect the historical work of the Joseph Smith Papers Project.
Here at FPR, we plan to look more broadly at what was changed, as well as what was kept in the standard works and study aids. Obviously, they didn’t take all of my advice on this issue! Stay tuned for some analysis of these changes in the coming weeks!
UPDATE: Posts in this series will be under the category: 2013 Scriptures.
On Sale! Book of Mormon: A Reader’s Edition
I cannot speak more highly of Grant Hardy’s phenomenal The Book of Mormon: A Reader’s Edition. This text will transform your experience reading this sacred text. Hardy’s version organizes the text into readable paragraphs, formats poetry into verse, minimizes distracting footnotes by focusing on essential, clarifying materials, and includes a top notch appendix full of useful information. Right now, I just want to bring your attention to the fact that the e-edition of this book is on sale on Amazon for only $2.99. Check it out!
Truth, Lies, and Personal Narratives of Faith
I have a weird problem with personal stories. It is not that I don’t like them (I do quite a bit!). Rather, I do not trust them because I do not think that there is a “personal” that is not the product of some cultural force. I feel the problem acutely as a Mormon because I find that I am nearly incapable of telling a personal story, which is the dominant way that one’s life of faith is expressed. I marvel at how my fellow Latter-day Saints can so easily see symbolic importance in the events in their lives, wherein truths are revealed in compelling objects lessons. I am moved and persuaded by the moral lessons and personal stories of loss and redemption, challenge and vindication, or tragedy and reinterpretation. However, when I teach or speak, I find only meaning in the abstract, the theoretical, and the textual. When I try to find meaning in the events of my life, even to tell the story of how I have arrived where I am, I see only contingency and circumstance, rather than agency and meaning. I sometimes feel that I lack a narrative that holds my life together at all, and as a result I can feel disconnected from my brothers and sisters who dwell in such richly meaningful lives.
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FPR Best of 2012 Edition
This year was an interesting year for FPR. We moved to Patheos at this time last year, but it didn’t seem to change us much. In fact, you would hardly know it was the Mormon Moment by visiting FPR this year. Not a single post on Mitt Romney, the Book of Mormon Musical, or Pantsmaggedon.
We did, however, actually play some important part in the Mormon Political Moment with Chris H.’s bid for Wyoming’s congressional seat. Chris also suffered a real tragedy with the murders on his college campus by a gunman.
Change and Power: A Response to Nate Oman
The analysis of power seems to be something that I care about. Whether it is D. Smith or Ralph Hancock, who in my view accord too much power to LDS leadership, I seem to get riled up about this issue. While Nate Oman takes a view very similar to my own to how power operates (perhaps to his chagrin), there are some points that I want to further push with respect to his analysis.
Oman has the enviable knack of frequently saying really interesting and provocative things about Mormonism. Most recently, Oman blogged about how power operates in Mormonism. He argued that we have two historical models of change. In 1978, the priesthood ban was lifted and was embraced widely by the leadership and membership alike. In contrast, in 1890-1911, the church abandoned polygamy, which, Oman notes, “literally tore the Church apart.”
The implications of this analysis for Oman is that there is wisdom in waiting for the church membership and leadership to arrive at certain views of what the church should do before instituting change. Had the racial ban been eliminated too early, it may have had the same kinds of disastrous consequences that the end of polygamy brought. Too radical of changes can undermine the power and unity of leaders’ authority. This view of power suggests that power must be wielded in fundamentally conservative ways. Power is resistant to change because power seeks primarily to reproduce itself. Were the church’s power to not reproduce itself, the church could fracture. Schism and mass excommunications are the potential “ecclesiastical costs” of keeping up with broader American attitudes.
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Series Announcement: Faith, Scholarship, and Teaching at BYU
It is academic job application season and for the last little while Church History and Docrine at BYU has been including an interesting and thought-provoking question as part of the application process. In addition to traditional application materials, the job advertisement asks for:
…a statement (no more than 500 words) regarding your philosophy of integration of faith and reason in your scholarship and teaching. President Spencer W. Kimball charged BYU professors to “become ‘bilingual’ in speaking the language of scholarship and the language of the spirit.” Your statement should explain the role of faith and reason in your own academic experience and detail how you plan to integrate the “language of the Spirit” and the “language of scholarship” in your role as a BYU religion professor.
This question has got us thinking about what it means to be “bilingual,” and the nature of the division between ‘spirit’ and ‘faith’ on the one hand, and ‘scholarship’ and ‘reason’ on the other. Over the next few weeks FPR bloggers will be proving their answers to these tough questions. We invite our readers to offer their own thoughts as well.
Faith and Knowledge Conference Reminder; Philip Barlow as Keynote
CALL FOR PAPERS – OCTOBER 15:
THE FOURTH BIENNIAL FAITH AND KNOWLEDGE CONFERENCE
WESLEY THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY
WASHINGTON, D. C.
FEBRUARY 22–23, 2013
Keynote address by Philip Barlow (Utah State University).
The Faith and Knowledge Conference was established in 2006 to bring together Latter-day Saint graduate students in religious studies and related disciplines in order to explore the interactions between religious faith and scholarship. During the past three conferences, students have shared their experiences in the church and the academy and the new ideas that have emerged as a result. Papers and conversations provided thought-provoking historical, exegetical, and theoretical insights as well as compelling models of how to reconcile one’s discipleship with scholarly discipline.
In keeping with these past objectives, we invite graduate students in religious studies and related disciplines (e.g., women’s studies, philosophy, anthropology, sociology, history, literature, etc.) to join the conversation. We welcome proposals addressing historical, exegetical, and theoretical issues that arise from the intersection of LDS religious experience and academic scholarship.
Proposals should be no more than 250 words, and must include your name, university, the degree you are pursuing, and your status or progress toward that degree. Please submit proposals by October 15, 2012 to Josh Probert at jprobert@udel.edu. Notifications will be sent by Monday, November 12.
Final papers presented at the conference should be brief, pointed comments of ten to fifteen minutes. Travel and accommodation subsidies will be available to those whose paper proposals are accepted. Further information will be posted on the website faithandknowledge.org.
Committee:
Richard Lyman Bushman, Columbia University
Jason Combs, University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill
Carl and Susan Cranney, Catholic University of America
Josh Probert, University of Delaware
Historicizing God
There is a certain apologetic strand of Mormon reflection on the Bible that points out that the God(s) of the biblical texts are not identical with the theological constructs developed in classical philosophical theology. This view emphasizes two central aspects of “the God of the Bible”: 1) God is one among many gods; 2) God is anthropomorphic. These arguments have tended to focus on particular representations of God in ancient Israelite religion from the 8th-4th century.