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A Covenant is a Covenant

Let us posit for the moment that Mormonism is not true, but that some other religion is. I am curious about how LDSs will be judged with respect to the covenants they have made. Mormons have made covenants before God to follow certain teachings. How will Mormons who have broken those covenants be judged? Will it be to their advantage because Mormonism is false? How about Mormons who have kept those covenants? Will they be rewarded because they kept the promise that they made to God?

I suppose that the same question is valid if Mormonism is true with respect to the vows and commitments made by others. How will the vows of a Buddhist monk be evaluated by God?

Part of the reason that I am asking this question is whether or not the fact that one has made a covenant to do so is a sufficient reason for someone to remain active in the church. Thoughts?

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Anxiety and the Fall

Some years back for a course I was taking in psychiatry we were assigned to regularly visit a local mental hospital. The first and second floors were “day programs” and the third floor was the locked unit, for those not safe enough to be let out. I will never forget the intensity of the cigarette smoke: I’ve since learned that many schizophrenics self-medicate with nicotine. Also unforgettable was the look in the eyes of the many people wandering the bare rooms of the third floor. But for this post, I’d like to talk about what a psychiatrist had on a chalkboard in a side room for a group therapy session. It was a quote from Kierkegaard:

Continue reading “Anxiety and the Fall”

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Process-ease and other Linguistic Pet Peeves

I’m not a prescriptivist when it comes to language. That is, when a foreign-speaking missionary comes home from a mission correcting everyone’s grammar, people are correct (imo) to be turned off by it (this usually assumes, as prescriptivists have throughout time, that English should work like Latin, Greek, or some other language). This “correct” English itself would have been considered a bastardization not too terribly long ago. Split infinitives don’t bother me (though I try to really not use them), and I’m even okay with everyone bringing their books. You’ll hear me gleeflully postpositioning prepositions, at least when appropriate to the audience I’m speaking to, and I’ve certainly transitioned to verbing nouns.

But there are some things that I’d like to correct, for reasons other than to preserve grammar.*

Public enemy #1: “Processeez”: Continue reading “Process-ease and other Linguistic Pet Peeves”

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A Religious Studies Major at BYU Pt. II

In Pt I we looked at developing a curriculum and focused on “core classes”. That discussion is still on-going. This post will examine the develoment of an Introduction to Religious Studies course (which will be part of the core classes), and a required theories course which majors will take during the Sophomore (and perhaps Junior) year. The issue of language requirements was also raised so let’s toss that into the mix here. Continue reading “A Religious Studies Major at BYU Pt. II”

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A Modicum of Modernism

This post arises from one of the issues raised in Nitsav’s Apologia. (Since it’s now, like, 130 comments long, I am sure we’ll never need any other identifier for that post.) At some point in the middle of all those comments, we got on to a discussion of how others handle the problematic issues raised by close study of the Bible, and from there to the modern Catholic approach to scripture. Since I come out of the Catholic intellectual tradition with respect to scripture, I decided I’d venture some thoughts. So by the end of this we’ll be at Dei Verbum and so forth, but right now we’ll start with the Modernist Crisis.

Modernism is one of those terms whose definition sometimes depends on just who is speaking. For our purposes, we’ll start with the idea that modernism is a way of thinking about the world that holds that folks can shape and improve their situation with the help of science, technology, and experimentation. What follows from this is that pretty much everything is examined, with the aim of determining what might be holding back progress. When something is identified as impeding progress, changes are advocated in order to bring about the desired outcomes. Therefore, modernism is in tension with traditional forms of art, thinking, religion, literature, etc., etc., and especially with the authority that supports these traditions. Since religions are typically pretty traditional with vertical authority structures and all, I am sure you can already see the train wreck in the distance.

Although Protestants made the leap into modernism first, the movement and the crisis it generated was not limited to them. Among Catholics, modernism was a pejorative expression first used about 1905 to describe a very loose association of scholarly trends in Catholic thinking. After examining the current state of the Catholic world, the modernists became convinced that Catholicism was not inherently incompatible with modernity and a synthesis was possible. Progress, however, was being held up and Catholics were behind Protestants.
Continue reading “A Modicum of Modernism”

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Provo-based Media and the Priesthood Ban

SCANDAL! Read on for details…

Given the many posts in the ‘nacle devoted to Sunday’s 30-year anniversary of the priesthood ban, I was surprised at the lack of attention given the anniversary in the Provo-based Daily Herald. Saturday, June 7th’s paper had a small (one-column) below-the-fold article noting the anniversary, while just under the Daily Herald’s logo at the top of the paper was a giant headline announcing the “Life and Style” section’s full-page article on Mack Wilberg’s taking the helm of the Tabernacle Choir. I do believe more was done in the online version,[1] but given the way this particular newspaper pitches to the LDS crowd, I find the lack of attention curious. Do they assume their readers would be upset by too much attention? Uninterested?

And I wonder if this seeming stance is at all related to perceptions promulgated recently by BYU’s top Religious Education professors in a discussion to air on KBYU this Sunday morning. They appear to defend (create?) a doctrinal basis for the priesthood ban. This was called to the ‘Nacle’s attention by David G at Juvenile Instructor. In the discussion that ensued, a call was made to petition KBYU not to broadcast the episode.

I don’t want to poach discussion from JI. [Go there and participate!] What I want to ask is what perspective is this answering? Does this represent tangible residues lingering from the Priesthood Ban, residues that the church has tried to denounce? Is it an attempt to counter the arguments that Brigham Young and Joseph Smith were simply racist?

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[1] I found this “vignette” of Darius Gray online, with the note that it ran on Saturday June 7th on A2, but in my (Provo-Orem) copy of the Herald there was no such article printed.

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Uzzah Killed For Blind Obedience

Let me start out by saying I’m a big, big fan of obedience. And I also see many instances where the scriptures teach we should not criticize our leaders. I’ve got no problem with that – IMHO our leaders deserve all the support we can give them.

However, I think that we have been badly misinterpreting a story that is commonly used to support these concepts. The traditional Mormon interpretation of the story of Uzzah and the ark in 2 Samuel 6 and 1 Chr 13 is familiar to most of us: Uzzah reaches out to steady the ark during its transport and is killed for touching it. The modern-day interpretation for us has been that we should not correct Church leaders or Church policy, for despite our good intentions, the leaders of the Church are in charge and it is not our place to correct them. To quote from the D&C Student Manual for Religion 324/325, p188:

“’Uzzah was therefore a type of all who with good intentions, humanly speaking, yet with unsanctified minds, interfere in the affairs of the kingdom of God, from the notion that they are in danger, and with the hope of saving them.’…In modern revelation the Lord referred to this incident to teach the principle that the Lord does not need the help of men to defend his kingdom (see D&C 85:8). Yet even today there are those who fear the ark is tottering and presume to steady its course. There are those who are sure that women are not being treated fairly in the Church, those who would extend some unauthorized blessing, or those who would change the established doctrines of the Church. These are ark-steadiers. The best intentions do not justify such interference with the Lord’s plan.”

Or, in the shorter Seminary version (p97 of the Seminary D&C study guide),

“The phrase ‘steady the ark’ has come to refer to those who lack faith in the Lord and His servants and instead do things based on their own wisdom.”

However, a close reading of the text supports just the opposite: Uzzah was likely killed for NOT correcting his priesthood leaders, who themselves were not following the scriptures. This conclusion is based on three items in the text:

Continue reading “Uzzah Killed For Blind Obedience”

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Experience or Doctrine?

One of the recent debates in LDS intellectual circles has been whether or not Mormonism is about orthodoxy or orthopraxy. As far as I can remember, this debated heated up after Jim Faulconer’s 2002 Yale conference presentation on this topic. This debate has more or less died down, largely because people realized that it was a false dichotomy between the two options, and everyone recognized that it was a little bit of both. Today’s LDS Newsroom, however, seems to intervene in this debate with the following announcement:

SALT LAKE CITY | 6 Jun 2008 | The religious experience of members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is based on a spiritual witness from God that inspires both heart and mind, creating an interpersonal relationship directly with the divine. It does not require one to pass a rigorous theological test. Nor does it demand the extreme self-denial and seclusion of asceticism. Rather, this unique individual experience unfolds in the natural course of everyday living. Thus, the beliefs of Latter-day Saints are not rooted in concepts and principles, detached from the realities of life. They are grounded in a much deeper level of experience that motivates individuals to action.

Continue reading “Experience or Doctrine?”

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The Mormon God of Lost Objects

In many ways, the God of Mormonism is the patron saint of Lost Objects. Our relationship to this God is so close, to the point of calling him a “friend” at times, that he can help us retrace our steps to find some misplaced money, or most commonly, our keys. I admit that I have often utilized this particular service in my prayers.

God’s intimate involvement in our lives is one of the most central themes of Mormonism. Our testimony meetings are filled with accounts of God’s participation in the most mundane aspects of our existence. He can help us decide or know all sorts of things. For Mormons, the Spirit guides us to know the “truth” of all things; seriously, all things, especially the lame ones. Continue reading “The Mormon God of Lost Objects”