Dave's Mormon Inquiry

Mormonism, Fundamentalism, and Absolute Truth

I recently read Terry Eagleton's After Theory (Basic Books, 2003), in which Eagleton manages (in a very entertaining way) to be critical of just about everything, including fundamentalism and "Utah" (a term he seems to be using as a proxy for Mormonism). He makes an interesting argument about fundamentalism, suggesting that it is rooted in how certain people ("fundamentalists") read texts. His references to "Utah" suggest he sees Mormonism as practicing a fundamentalist approach to truth. I think I disagree with both points. Some fundamentalist movements might be based on how certain texts are read, but not all, and Mormons don't really employ the fundamentalist approach that Eagleton seems to attribute to us.

A New Mormon Gateway

A website with answers. That's what Time Magazine calls the new religion website Patheos.com in "What Do Religions Believe? A Website with Answers." The Time article describes the new site as one "that sets out to explain the differences among religions as well as illuminate the areas of common ground." Just today the site unveiled its Mormon Gateway section, a menu of resources designed to complement the more detailed information presented in the Library section of the site.

Theology in the Wake of Evolution

It's not easy being a theologian in the 21st century. One of the main reasons is that science provides credible, non-theistic explanations for many of those "where did we come from?" questions that religion once had all to itself. Evolution seems to pose a particular challenge. John Haught, a professor of theology at Georgetown, tries to tackle the problem head-on in his book God After Darwin: A Theology of Evolution (Westview, 2000).

History and Identity

I recently read a short essay by Eric Hobsbawm, "Identity History Is Not Enough." I came across it in his book On History, a collection of essays, but fortunately for you it is available online at the above link (except for the last page, for some reason). Mormonism is not mentioned, but the discussion seems to bear directly on the writing and reading of Mormon history.

The Future of Religious Liberty

Does it have a future? Some people view religious liberty as a civil and constitutional right; increasingly, others see it as a problem to be dealt with. The Mirror of Justice post "Securing Religious Liberty in an Age of Growing Intolerance" is a short reflection on what this means for the future of religious liberty.

I've Seen All Good People

We know there are good times and bad times, but are there good people and bad people? Common sense says yes, as does virtue ethics, a branch of philosophical ethics that attempts to identify virtues worth having and tell good people how to get them. Alas, the story is not quite so simple.

The Mormon Sort

After seeing a reference or two, I noticed a copy of The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart at the library and gave it a quick read. The thesis is simple: increased income and mobility over the last five decades has enabled Americans to self-sort geographically into communities surrounded by people they are most comfortable with, namely people like themselves.

One Last Book Before I Go

So your mission call finally arrived (see here, here, or here) and you suddenly realize that it starts in 44 days but you don't know that much about Mormonism or what it is you are supposed to teach for two long years. You are suddenly serious about "missionary prep." What book should you read?

Confronting Modernity

I recently finished up Hans Kung's Great Christian Thinkers, which reviews the work of seven theologians (Paul, Origen, Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Schleiermacher, and Barth). From an LDS perspective, the most interesting of the bunch is Friedrich Schleiermacher, who Kung terms "the paradigmatic theologian of modernity." The question he presents to LDS readers is how our approach to religion and doctrine deals with modernity. Is our approach premodern, modern, or postmodern (which in theology generally means some version of neo-orthodoxy)?

Forgetting, and History

From Ernest Renan, a French 19th-century philosopher:

Forgetting, and I would say even historical error, is an essential element in the creation of a nation, and that is why the progress of historical studies is often a danger for the nation itself.

Being Orthodox in the Modern World

A couple of years ago, Noah Feldman published "Orthodox Paradox," an essay in which he recounted some of the tensions of being an Orthodox Jew in the modern world (I ran across it reading The Best American Spiritual Writing 2008). Increasingly, being an orthodox anything in the modern world raises some of the same tensions.

Theology and Conversation

It's hard for Mormons to find an accessible doorway into theology. David F. Ford's short book Theology: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 1999) is the first I've found to really give me some traction with this elusive subject.

Politics versus Sectarianism

I recently finished The Theocons: Secular America Under Seige and put up a short post on it elsewhere. But as I continue to mull it over I have a different idea to float than I discussed in the other post, namely that the rejection of Mitt Romney as a presidential candidate by religious conservatives in the Republican Party marks a triumph of sectarianism over politics that will undermine (or already has) the political influence of the theocons, to whatever extent you grant they have had influence.

Too Much Truth?

Blogger and journalist Rod Dreher posted an op-ed piece at USA Today, "How much 'truth' is too much?" It reviews in passing the author's personal journey from faithful Catholic journalist reporting on the abuse scandals in the Catholic Church to Orthodox Christian who prefers to avoid repeating that experience a second time in his new church.

Why Are the Faithful Fleeing?

At the blog Text Messages, an interview with Julia Duin, who is the religion editor at the Washington Times and author of the book Quitting Church: Why the Faithful are Fleeing and What To Do About It. Here are a couple of highlights from the interview.

Religion as a Learning Community

From David Ford's Theology: A Very Short Introduction:

Religions are learning communities which benefit from interactions with other learning communities, and they also need to cultivate their own educational institutions. There have been devastating consequences when religious communities have had negative attitudes to study, scholarship, and intelligent faith, or have failed to face intelligently major questions, discoveries, or developments. There have also been extraordinary achievements when intelligent faith, deep learning, and imaginative wisdom have come together.

The Mormon Index

A comprehensive bibliography? A portfolio of LDS-owned companies? No, it's a measure of food-storage activity by preparedness-minded Mormons, as revealed in a feature at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, "The Mormon Index is a rising sign of troubled economy."

Translation and Apologetics

There is a lot of Mormon apologetics out there, perhaps because there is a lot of Mormon criticism. It has gotten better over the years, but one still sees both good apologetics and bad apologetics. A post from a few weeks ago at Faith-Promoting Rumor that points up one difference between the good and bad sort is "Translation Styles and Book of Mormon Apologetics and Exegesis." The observation made in the post is that an author cannot shift between tight and loose translation styles to enhance her arguments as she moves from chapter to chapter or point to point.

Mormons and Restorationists

This is the second post drawing on E. Brooks Holifield's Theology in America: Christian thought from the age of the Puritans to the Civil War (see first post here). The broad themes Holifield draws from American religion in the 19th century -- a continuing quest for reasonableness and rationality, avoidance of theological "speculation," and appeals to internal and external "evidences" to support belief in God and the Bible -- are observed in the theological content and style of almost every American denomination. It is other factors that distinguish them from each other. Restorationists, those who would "return the Church to its primitive purity, return theology to the people, and return reason to theology," emerged as an identifiable movement in the early 19th century. Interestingly, Mormonism is not grouped with the Restorationists.

Quakers, Shakers, and Mormons

One approach to understanding early Mormonism and its doctrines is to compare it with other denominations of the same period. In E. Brooks Holifield's book Theology in America, Mormonism is covered in Chapter 16, "The Immediacy of Revelation," which also discusses two other movements that claimed new revelation as the basis for their theological innovations.