So I stumbled across a short book titled Judaism's Great Debates (Jewish Publication Society, 2012) by Rabbi Barry L. Schwartz. It includes an interesting chapter on defining boundaries, an issue that is familiar to Mormons. Why do we Mormons sometimes seem so eager to push people onto the other side of a formal membership line? Why do we still have the equivalent of heresy trials, and why are they so poorly managed?
The chapter highlights the story of Baruch Spinoza, a 17th-century Jew living in Amsterdam who became one of the finest philosophers of his time. A brilliant student, Spinoza initially questioned traditional Jewish teachings. He went on to reject Mosaic authorship of the Torah and to formulate some of the earliest critical studies of the Bible. He was excommunicated from his Jewish congregation for heresy in 1656 at the age of 24.
The term "spiritual but not religious" has become popular over the last decade as academics and pollsters have noted a large rise in the number of Americans who eschew affiliation with or participation in any denomination or religious institution but who nevertheless believe in God (variously defined) and often employ a variety of personal spiritual practices such as meditation, prayer, service to the poor and needy, reading sacred books, etc. To some extent this demographic overlaps with what Christians of prior eras termed "the unchurched." As is so often the case, Mormonism has its own terminology. What do we call "spiritual but not religious" Mormons or unchurched Mormons?
I was in Tokyo on Sunday and was able to attend the full three-hour block of meetings at the Shibuya Ward -- a Japanese-language ward, not an English-language branch. I don't speak Japanese, but still had a wonderful time. Here are some reflections on what Correlation looks like from this end. It doesn't look so bad.
The LDS Newsroom just posted another interesting essay, "Mormon and Modern." The essay seems designed primarily as talking points for a gentle defense to secular critics who dismiss religion in general as a form of superstition unfit for the modern world and Mormonism in particular as a new and therefore even less welcome example of religion.
That question is not as straightforward as you might think. Garry Wills' Head and Heart: American Christianities (Penguin Press, 2007) reviews these two different approaches and uses them to structure his history of Christianity in America. It is an effective format that helps the reader follow developments, in contrast to most histories of religion in America which are often overloaded with doctrinal and denominational details that have little interest for most contemporary readers.
It has been only one week since the initial Washington Post article quoting BYU Professor Randy Bott's controversial statements was published. [See Kent's very helpful ongoing chronology of events and published stories.] But a week is a lifetime online. While official and unofficial reactions will continue to play out over coming weeks and months, we can already see who the winners and losers are among the main players. Briefly, the winners are the LDS Church, LDS Public Affairs, LDS bloggers and columnists, the mainstream media, and the rank and file members of the Church. The losers are BYU and the BYU College of Religious Education. Professor Bott gets a category of his own.
A few weeks ago two Evangelical scholars authored "The Evangelical Rejection of Reason," an op-ed at the New York Times lamenting the fact that the Republican primary race "has become a showcase of evangelical anti-intellectualism." While the Mormons in the race, Romney and Huntsman, were described as "the two candidates who espouse the greatest support for science," the discussion still invites the LDS reader to reflect a bit on whether there is a similar strain of LDS anti-intellectualism evident in LDS culture if not in LDS presidential candidates.
Wheat & Tares ran a fun post earlier this week titled LDS Men Are Incredible ... although the URL string shows that the original draft title of the post was "Why Men Suck." That kind of marks off the two ends of the spectrum, doesn't it? That's a nice lead-in for the question: What remarks are going to be directed at LDS men in next week's General Conference?
That's the title of Chapter 7 in Christianity: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2004) by Linda Woodhead, in which the author tackles the general problem of the gender gap (women are disproportionately represented in the pool of church-goers across all Christian denominations, including the LDS Church). Why so many women and why not more men in most congregations?
Jan Shipps always has something interesting to say about Mormonism. An essay you might not have run across is "Making Saints: In the Early Days and the Latter Days," in Contemporary Mormonism: Social Science Perspectives (Univ. of Illinois Press, 1994). It turns out that becoming a Latter-day Saint (or acquiring the characteristics of Mormon ethnicity) involves more than just conversion or joining the Church.
Once upon a time, I wrote a post titled "The Puzzling Mormon Gender Gap." It is still puzzling, primarily because it seems so inconsistent with the popular picture of the Church as a patriarchal institution run by old white males. When the topic came up recently in a ZD thread, the ZD discussants (generally a fairly rational bunch) simply denied the data. Well, I think the question is too important and too interesting to dismiss simply because LDS feminists (and I use that as a descriptive term, not a dismissive one) don't want to talk about it.
A few weeks ago I judged several rounds of a debating tournament held at the local high school. Teams from all over the state participated. Imagine walking by a high school cafeteria and seeing a couple of hundred students dressed in suits and skirts, chattering like all kids do but also pouring over notes and outlines for the upcoming matches. It was an impressive sight.
Once upon a time, there was Sunday School, an independent auxiliary whose officers were appointed by senior LDS leaders and whose primary task was to develop a Sunday School curriculum, and commission and supervise the writing of lesson manuals. They did a nice job. Then came Correlation.
The Deseret News posted an article ("Mormons need to work to increase favor") summarizing remarks by Gary Lawrence at the recent FAIR Conference held last week in Sandy. He addressed perceptions of Mormonism, based on data gathered by his polling firm. We've got some problems, it seems.
Sleep: it's more important than you think, especially for teenagers. Here's from George Will's latest column, "How to ruin a child":
Only 5 percent of high school seniors get eight hours of sleep a night. Children get an hour less than they did 30 years ago, which subtracts IQ points and adds body weight.
My second-favorite group blog recently postedaseries on what's wrong with Sunday School, showing once again that we bloggers are, if nothing else, talented complainers. So let's talk teaching and collect a few simple suggestions for improvement.
There's hope! At least that's the message of a couple of posts I read through lately (here and here) presenting an interview with Adam McHugh, the author of Introverts in the Church: Finding Our Place in an Extroverted Culture. By "Church" he means Evangelicals, not the LDS Church, but the discussion is still relevant to us.
The most frequently encountered terms used in internal discourse to categorize Mormons are "active" and "less active" (the updated form of "inactive"). However, these terms aren't generally recognized or understood by non-LDS and so aren't very useful for journalists. So what terms do journalists use to convey to readers the level of participation of a Mormon subject? And are there other or better terms we might use inside the Church?
On Saturday night I attended a Miller-Eccles presentation by Kristine Haglund, the managing editor at Dialogue. In the first half of her presentation, she talked about the present state of Mormon Studies and what younger Mormon scholars are doing. Kristine herself may have been the youngest in attendance, a hopeful sign for Dialogue, which needs to find a way to turn potential younger readers into paying subscribers. She apparently became interested in Mormon Studies through blogging and was an early T&S permablogger.
Suggested lesson topic: What to do when you are seven years old and do not want to go to church. Yes, I finally watched the video of the seven-year-old kid who drove away in the family car to avoid going to church (see posts at Get Religion or the SL Trib for details and the video). The story coyly refrains from noting which church the kid was fleeing, but the video comes courtesy of the Weber County Sheriff's Office, so I'm just guessing ...
This is the third post on Richard L. Bushman's Mormonism: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2008). [See Part 1 and Part 2.] In Chapter Three, Bushman reviews the several meanings of the term "Zion" in LDS doctrine and thinking.
The Pew Forum recently issued a detailed summary of survey information about Mormons gathered as part of a much larger survey of religious life in the United States. It is a very readable summary, noting that Mormons comprise 1.7% of adults in the US; 35% of Mormon adults live in Utah and 13% live in California; Mormons are more likely to be married and more likely to be a college graduate than a member of the general population; and so forth.
They're coming. Even if you don't own a robot vacuum cleaner or lawnmower, you've been dealing with robots for many years now without realizing it: ATMs, kiosks that vend DVDs, the scan-it-yourself devices at the grocery store that greet you with a friendly "Welcome, valued customer!" and conclude with a brisk "Your receipt is printing. Don't forget to pick up your change!" How long before the Church starts using robots for some functions? Please, no snarky comments. This is a serious topic.
That question has been getting more consideration recently, with the general consensus being, "No, at least not yet." By Common Consent is posting an academic piece by scholar Walter E. A. van Beek that helps understand the question. He uses the examples of Islam and Roman Catholicism to highlight diversity within the religion as a key indicator of world status.
The diversity mentioned in Islam and Catholicism allows for identification processes of the individual with that religion, that vary widely. People may define themselves as Catholic or Muslim on widely diverging grounds, ranging from full and total commitment (the literal meaning of "Islam") to identification of a very low intensity.
I recently spent a day on the BYU campus as part of an informal reunion with several old dorm-floor roommates and family members. It was a nice visit, and made me recognize something that often gets forgotten in online discussions about BYU: It is a great place for LDS kids to go to college.
At Get Religion, "The Mormons are coming!", taking issue with aspects of a Washington Post article of the same name. I would summarize the general problem in simpler terms: some journalists in the mainstream press believe their own propaganda, which they use to frame most stories and to select friendly facts. Let's look at an example from the Get Religion post, then hit the larger issue of what the post reveals about the evolving use of Mormonism as a symbol.
According to [the] Pew [Forum], Mormons have one of the most lopsided gender ratios of any religion: 44 percent men and 56 percent women.
You can't argue with the gender gap -- that's what the data is. The question is why such a disproportional gender gap emerges in the LDS Church. [And let's just take it for granted it's not because the researchers just forgot to factor in all those absent 19-to-21-year-old men off serving missions.]
At the Salt Lake Tribune: "Deseret Book demotes Twilight." "Demote" means that neither Twilight nor the other volumes in the megaselling series by LDS author Stephanie Meyer are now available at Deseret Book stores or even at their online site. Here's the inane company statement provided in respose to questions about the move:
Like any retailer, our purpose is to offer products that are embraced and expected by our customers. When we find products that are met with mixed review, we typically move them to special order status.
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.
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.
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.
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."
Here's a short quote from Richard Rorty's essay "Truth without Correspondence to Reality" for those who feel there is a tight link between politics and doctrine. Rorty uses the term "philosophy," but I think the same argument holds true for philosophy, theology, or doctrine.
It is unfortunate, I think, that many people hope for a tighter link between philosophy and politics than there is or can be. In particular, people on the left keep hoping for a philosophical view which cannot be used by the political right, one which will lend itself only to good causes. But there never will be such a view; any philosophical view is a tool which can be used by many different hands.
I'm off visiting family for a few days, which brings with it the pleasure of browsing someone else's bookshelf. I came across Reflections on Mormonism: Judaeo-Christian Parallels (1978), one of the early volumes in the excellent monograph series from BYU's Religious Studies Center. The short and intriguing lead article is an essay by noted sociologist of religion Robert N. Bellah titled "American Society and the Mormon Community." Doctrine and history make for great discussion, but what the LDS Church really offers the sincere believer in our increasingly fragmented and disconnected society is a community. Not a sense of community or some mythical "church universal," but an actual, functioning community of fellow-believers — what Mormons often refer to as "the kingdom of God," a reference to the Church as an earthly and human institution, contrasted with "the kingdom of heaven," whatever comes later.
A post at Mormanity raises the question of the role of statistics in managing the LDS Church. Statistics are ubiquitous in congregations, stakes, and the Church as a whole. I understand why local and senior LDS leaders rely on statistics, but rarely is the downside of this statistical focus discussed.
Gary Lawrence thinks so,
as related in an SL Trib piece. He's the author of a new book, How
Americans View Mormonism: Seven Steps to Improve Our Image. Lawrence, a
pollster, sampled a thousand people. Here's the bad news:
Forty-three percent said the church treated women as
second-class citizens, 39 percent said it used pressure tactics, 38
percent said it was pushy, 16 percent saw it as racist and 16 percent
said it was a "church to be feared."
There are lots of ugly feelings in LDS congregations in California, according to the Salt Lake Tribune. In "California gay marriage fight divides LDS faithful," Peggy Fletcher Stack speaks to some of the offendees who are choosing to skip LDS services for the duration or even resign their membership. But she also gives the official LDS position:
Latter-day Saints are free to disagree with their church on the issue without facing any sanction, said L. Whitney Clayton of the LDS Quorum of the Seventy. "We love them and bear them no ill will."
In the Salt Lake Tribune: "BYU Yanks Calendar Maker's Diploma." It doesn't bother me that the LDS Church excommunicated Calendar Guy, but there's something wrong with BYU piling on by refusing to issue his diploma. It is an article of LDS church governance that excommunication reaches only to the revocation of church membership, not to any temporal penalties. BYU is certainly an arm of the larger LDS Church organization — it's run by a General Authority. So why is BYU allowed to add substantial administrative punishments to what should be solely an LDS ecclesiastical matter?
My point isn't that the BYU action is mean-spirited, it's that it seems to run directly contrary to published LDS policy on how excommunicated members are to be treated.
Sometimes inventing new Mormon adjectives seems like a cottage industry. Iron Rod v. Liahona is the most colorful and enduring dichotomy, liberal v. conservative the most misleading. Several posts surveying the wider pool of Mormon subcategories have popped up lately.
Ever heard of Time Again? Neither have I, but Wikipedia tells me they're "a punk rock band from Los Angeles, California," where they seem to be doing just fine. Anyway, news on the street is that their lead guitarist, Elijah Reyes, is going on a a two-year LDS mission.
It gets better: the band is taking two years off while Elijah is on his mission. A statement from the band said "we didn't feel that it was right to replace him, so we all agreed to wait for him to get back before we start playing again." Seriously, does it get any better than this? Please, send this kid to my town. If you're into this genre, please go buy their albums.
The Red Brick Store, where the small universe of non-correlated LDS journals is working together to communicate with their small universe of potential readers (Mormons who are interested in reading non-correlated LDS articles). Seems like a great idea. Anyone more familiar with the site and what it hopes to accomplish is welcome to tell us about it in the comments. The only explanation provided at the site is this one sentence: "A collaboration amongst editors of Mormon-related journals and magazines to nurture and share good writing and good thinking in Mormonism."
FPR has a three-part series (Part One, Two, Three) discussing Mormon pedagogy and the various "stages of faith" postulated by James Fowler in his book Stages of Faith: The Psychology of Human Development. The FPR posts provide an interesting discussion as they relate to LDS teaching. My question is why so many people accept Fowler's stages or categories as anything other than psychobabble.
From the South Bend Tribune: "Religion, horror inspire former Mormon author," featuring a discussion of Brian Evenson's latest book. They're trying to cram an awful lot into that headline, aren't they? I'm less interested in Evenson's writing than in how his unfortunate experience at BYU raises issues related to academic freedom and its limitations. The anonymous letter system seems particularly disruptive — these are generally authored by disgruntled students or jealous colleagues, neither of whom should be empowered to initiate disciplinary inquiries of faculty members in good standing. For a full list of Evenson's works, see his Wikipedia page.
Pakistan and India, for example, as discussed in a post at the new blog As If From the Dust. According to the post, the LDS Church "was officially registered in Pakistan" in 1995.
The San Juan Valley Pageant, as related by an intriguing post at A Motley Vision. The pageant sounds like an odd but captivating mosaic of Mormon and Native American historical images. By the way, AMV's home page seems to be experiencing some technical difficulty. Feel free to leave technical advice in the comments here.
Check out the artist's rendering of the planned LDS stake center building in Boston. Looks like a temple, sounds like a Mormon megachurch, but it is supposed to be just another stake center. Very nice stake center.
After Theory Terry Eagleton on whatever it is that comes after postmodernism. My Post
Experiments in Ethics A moral philosopher's surprisingly entertaining critique of traditional philosophical ethics using modern experimental data. • My post
Alone in the Universe: Why Our Planet Is Unique The prolific astrophysicist and science writer John Gribbin reviews where Earth came from, why it is here, and how it will end (in a rain of cometary chunks from the Oort Cloud in about a million years). Read all about it in my post The Fate of the Earth.
Ancient Israelite Religion Susan Niditch explores myth, ritual, experience, and ethics in the Hebrew Bible and using surviving archeological artifacts, revealing a surprisingly diverse ancient Israelite religion. • My Post
Davies: The Mormon Culture of Salvation Uses a variety of models to look at LDS doctrine and cultural practice related to death and salvation, with a lengthy consideration of the "world religion" question. My Post • Pub Note
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