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Mormon Feminism at Patheos

The Mormon Portal at Patheos has an amazing forum on feminism up.

The main article by Kathryn Soper is amazing. This type of analysis is not happening on the blogs. I think that Patheos is providing a great space for such issues.

In addition to Kathryn’s, are responses by a rather impressive list of Mormon Feminists including:

All Else Will Follow by Claudia Bushman

A Tale of Two Women by Rixa Freeze

This Great Social Upheaval by Kristine Haglund

Confident and Proactive by Neylan McBaine

A Source of Social Capital? by Melissa Proctor

And here Kathryn responds.

This collection draws attention to some of the most important issues in Feminism and Mormonism. It also highlights some of the tensions within Mormon feminism. I look forward to taking a closer look.

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Reflecting “our aspirations as a just and caring society” (The Church on Immigration)

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint has release the following statement:

As a worldwide church dealing with many complex issues across the globe, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints promotes broad, foundational principles that have worldwide application. The Church regards the declaration of the Utah Compact as a responsible approach to the urgent challenge of immigration reform. It is consistent with important principles for which we stand:

* We follow Jesus Christ by loving our neighbors. The Savior taught that the meaning of “neighbor” includes all of God’s children, in all places, at all times.

* We recognize an ever-present need to strengthen families. Families are meant to be together. Forced separation of working parents from their children weakens families and damages society.

* We acknowledge that every nation has the right to enforce its laws and secure its borders. All persons subject to a nation’s laws are accountable for their acts in relation to them.

Public officials should create and administer laws that reflect the best of our aspirations as a just and caring society. Such laws will properly balance love for neighbors, family cohesion, and the observance of just and enforceable laws.

The Church’s statement was made in support of a declaration released by the Utah Compact, a group of local community and civic leaders. Their Declaration reads as follows:

A declaration of five principles to guide Utah’s immigration discussion

FEDERAL SOLUTIONS — Immigration is a federal policy issue between the U.S. government and other countries — not Utah and other countries. We urge Utah’s congressional delegation, and others, to lead efforts to strengthen federal laws and protect our national borders. We urge state leaders to adopt reasonable policies addressing immigrants in Utah.

LAW ENFORCEMENT — We respect the rule of law and support law enforcement’s professional judgment and discretion. Local law enforcement resources should focus on criminal activities, not civil violations of federal code.

FAMILIES — Strong families are the foundation of successful communities. We oppose policies that unnecessarily separate families. We champion policies that support families and improve the health, education and well-being of all Utah children.

ECONOMY — Utah is best served by a free-market philosophy that maximizes individual freedom and opportunity. We acknowledge the economic role immigrants play as workers and taxpayers. Utah’s immigration policies must reaffirm our global reputation as a welcoming and business-friendly state.

A FREE SOCIETY — Immigrants are integrated into communities across Utah. We must adopt a humane approach to this reality, reflecting our unique culture, history and spirit of inclusion. The way we treat immigrants will say more about us as a free society and less about our immigrant neighbors. Utah should always be a place that welcomes people of goodwill.

Both of these statements are centrist statements. However, they both reject anti-illegal immigrant sentiment. I love how their main focus is on the families that are impacted and the humanity of all. Too often our rhetoric strips these immigrant of there humanity.

I join the Church in their call for us to live up to the ideals of a just and caring society.

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Research and Responsibility

Recent discussions about the influence a vague entity called “Correlation” has on various Bloggernaclers got me thinking about the problem of responsibility in research. I admit I’m personally less likely to blog about certain sensitive LDS issues. For example, there are elements of temple ritual I feel comfortable writing about and other elements I don’t. I personally don’t feel like my reticence is due to being trapped in the Panopticon. I admit I’m less likely to be flippant or brash about topics that may be particularly challenging to the faith of other Latter-day Saints, and beyond that, to the general faith of other believers as well (except for the new atheists. I wouldn’t mind trying to burst bubbles there; perhaps I should be more careful). The question I am confronting is the responsibility I have to the effects of the research I create, participate in, or disseminate.

I’d like to hear reactions to an assertion made back in 1929 by sociologist George Lundberg:

“It is not the business of a chemist who invents a high explosive to be influenced in his[!] task by considerations as to whether his product will be used to blow up cathedrals or to build tunnels through the mountains” (quoted in John Durham Peters, “The Part Played by Gentiles in the Flow of Mass Communications: On the Ethnic Utopia of Personal Influence,” ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, November 2006, 100).

I disagree with Lundberg’s vision of a social scientist’s business. What if we extend the scope from social scientists to historians, theologians, philosophers, political scientists, etc.? Should these people allow considerations of effects to influence what they write or the way they write it? What undergirds the attitude  that “truth will always win out”?  Are there potential downsides to the desire to “let the chips fall where they may”? Of course, the question is not always whether a particular sticky subject is handled, it can also involve how it is handled. But is it our business to even consider such things when researching and writing?

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Patrick Henry and Right-Wing (Anti-) Constitutionalism

The Patrick Henry Caucus is the pro-state’s right group within the Utah State Legislature. This is the right-wing of a very right-wing legislative body. They are in many ways the voice of the tea party movement and the 9/12 groups.

The choice of Patrick Henry as their symbol is an appropriate one. Henry is most famous for his “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death” speech. While this speech is a rousing oration, it points in many ways to who Henry is. He is not the great revolutionary, but America’s first great demagogue. Continue reading “Patrick Henry and Right-Wing (Anti-) Constitutionalism”

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Church Stance on Birth Control, Public and “Private”

Deseret Mutual Benefit Administrators (DMBA), the Church’s insurance company, does not cover prescriptive contraception, for any reason that relates to (“voluntary”) contraception. That is, any Church employee or covered spouse (including BYU employees) that wants contraception requiring a prescription must pay for it entirely out of pocket. The only exceptions for this relate to the physical (not mental) health of the woman: endometriosis, ovarian cysts, etc. Postpartum depression is not a valid medical issue that would result in an exception to this exclusion. This is clearly not an economically motivated decision.

This is not a post meant to criticize the Church; rather it is to ask about the extent to which public discourse matches the “private” (that is, non-Church-wide) practices controlled directly by the Church. Continue reading “Church Stance on Birth Control, Public and “Private””

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Desire

Michel Foucault traces the West’s shift in concern from sexual acts to sexual desires to second-century Greek thought, a shift which was fully embraced and completed by Christianity, in his series, The History of Sexuality.  This transition to concern for desires, the interrogation of desires, the confession of desires, and the hermeneutics of desire inform the modern conceptualization of the self, specifically the idea that our desires, when they are properly known to us through the act of interpreting them, reveal the “truth” about ourselves. While the ancients had developed a system of regulating desires, the specific contribution of Christianity was the hermeneutics of the self.
Continue reading “Desire”

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Mormon Halacha and Common Law

In kosher law, wine is only kosher when it has been produced and handled by Jews. In this way this kosher law is distinctive from the LDS “Word of Wisdom” in that it is not about the substance of the drink, but how it is handled. There is one exception to this rule, however. If the wine produced by Gentiles is boiled, it becomes kosher. On its face, there is no logical principle why boiling the wine would render it ritually clean, but that is not the point. Rather, the point is that the law is such, and one determines whether or not one has observed the law by an examination of the practices involved.

Latter-day Saints have a similar prohibition against wine, but it is not with respect to how it is prepared or handled, but with its alcohol content. In this way, there is a similar exception to halachic law that once the alcohol has been purged the wine is safe to consume. Most Latter-day Saints that I know will eat a meal that has been cooked with wine, provided that the meal was cooked at a sufficient temperature to boil out the alcohol. However, I don’t know any Latter-day Saint that would cook an entire bottle of wine, and then cool it for drinking. There seems to be something wrong with the drinking of cooked wine, but not with the eating of it.
Continue reading “Mormon Halacha and Common Law”

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From Missionaries to Salesmen

While trying to put together some posts, a colleague sent me an interesting article in The New York Times about Mormon young men selling for Pinnacle Security. Having lived and worked quite a bit in Mormon college towns, I have mixed feelings about these operations. Here in Rexburg, Idaho, recruitment offices for security and pest control sales companies are in prominent places throughout the town. One of my neighbors has done quite well selling for such companies.

However, Brigham Young University-Idaho President Kim Clark has been openly critical of these sales schemes. Clark’s concern seems to be about the get rich quick approach that many of these companies use in their recruiting efforts. In addition, while there may be potential for summer earnings, they are not a foundation for careers. Yet, they continue to grow in the area.

I could never do this type of work. I wasn’t a big fan of it while a missionary. But, for the gospel, I will do lots of things. Door-to-door is something that, like donating plasma, I cannot do anymore, even for money.

I also have concerns about the well-being of the young men involved. One of my best friends as an undergraduate had a horrible experience. The following quote from the article is almost haunting:

Sometimes, though, it rains, and when it does, Pinnacle’s sink-or-swim mentality for sales reps, especially new, unproven ones like Brandon Rogers, is tough love at its toughest.

Newbies, for fear they may retreat to their cars, are dropped off and left on foot without shelter or access to a bathroom unless they can gain admittance into a house to make their sales pitch. Mr. Rogers, who is 21, had three energy bars and no umbrella to last him through a long, wet day.

He had made one sale by dark, when they picked him up.

Being critical of these endeavors is easy from my ideological perspective. What are your thoughts?

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What, if anything, do GAs read?

This most recent conference struck me in an interesting way. I found myself listening closely for some small sign that the speakers read and engage topics outside of the scriptures and other GA talks. While I didn’t hear every talk this weekend, I found little evidence that they consumed many books or are aware of scholarly or educated discourses on the topics they discussed. Instead, they seem mostly to traffic in anecdotes and offer homespun wisdom. I do not intend to suggest an implicit hierarchy between homespun wisdom and scholarly discourses. I happen to like both.
Continue reading “What, if anything, do GAs read?”