Dave's Mormon Inquiry

The Still Small Voice

I'm reading Friedman's Disappearance of God (see my Now Reading list) and came across an enlightening discussion of "the still small voice." He suggests on page 23 that the Hebrew words would be better translated as "a sound of thin hush," representing essentially a sound of silence. In other words, the text isn't saying there was a still small voice, it is saying there was no voice and no sound at all following the wind, the earthquake, and the fire. Friedman reads I Kings 19, Elijah's encounter with God on Horeb or Sinai, against chapter 18, Elijah calling down fire on Mount Carmel to show up the pagan priests in Israel. Chapter 19 he then reads as God's rejection of such showy displays of divine power and His unwillingness to do that kind of thing anymore. But is chapter 19 then an endorsement of "the still small voice" as an alternative avenue of God's revelation, as Mormons read it? Or is the "sound of thin hush" in chapter 19 part of a retreat from direct revelation altogether (whether by showy displays or quieter voices) in favor of mediation through the person of a prophet, as Friedman appears to suggest?

Moving Up

Feminist Mormon Housewives jumped up to a spot in the Top Twelve, replacing the Sons of Mosiah who, after months of riotous living and online carousing, have reformed their ways and signed up with By Common Consent.  FMH maintains the only "Lady Bloggernackers" blogroll that I have seen and offers a striking color scheme (it's either pink or magenta or a funky shade of purple).

Draper Temple

There's a press release at LDS.org announcing a new temple to be built in Draper, Utah (about 20 miles south of downtown SLC).  Here's the text of the announcement:

Mormon News

I added Mormon-News.com to my "Media" blogroll last week (see a few clicks down my right sidebar).  It's a media links site, providing links to most online newspaper stories on the LDS Church, categorized by state (say, Arizona) and by topic (say, Social Issues).  There's even an international list.  Darren, a regular visitor to this blog, runs Mormon-News.  No commentary, just links.

Personally, I find such media sites to be great sources for quick, interesting blog topics.  Group bloggers can sit back and cherrypick, but as a solo blogger I need to come up with at least one post per day, and media sites almost always offer at least one story on some interesting issue.  Other sites on my "Media" list that I find particularly useful are the LDS Newsline service of the Deseret News, the Religion News Blog, and BYU NewsNet.

Open House

Welcome visitors from the New Bcc (and anyone else who wanders in).  Here's a quick tour of my site with a few comments on Typepad posting.  I've been blogging at this Typepad site since March 2004.  Typepad features new to Blogger bloggers include:

1. Typelists: Pre-formatted blogrolls, termed "typelists," can display books and CDs as well as links.  See my right sidebar for a few book lists.
2. More . . . :  When posting, you can go down to the "Customize the display of this page" link and check "extended post" to open up the second box.  Only what's in the first box shows on the main page.
3. Comments: Typepad offers great comments management.  After a thread is started, you can access comments from the "edit post" screen for all your posts--they are all listed below the body of the post.  In addition, you can close comments on a thread at any point, if desired.
4. WYSIWYG: The new interface is kind of flighty, but it seems to work.

The Insider

In honor of Prof. Midgley's brief appearance at T&S last week (in that forgettable thread that went into meltdown), my online essay of the week is Midgley's review of Palmer's An Insider's View of Mormon Origins, which he entitled Prying Into Palmer (read the review to get the reference).  I also added Palmer's book to my Mormon Studies blogroll on the right sidebar along with my own 45-word review.  If that's not long enough, go see my slightly longer review back at the old blog (which for some reason refuses to die, despite my not paying the renewal). Here's a paragraph from Midgley's review, on the minor but telling point that those denominations that endorse revisionist history in the Palmer mold do not seem to fare well:

But if worldly success is the measure, then the fact is, as I and others have shown in considerable detail, that the Community of Christ -- the controlling faction of what was once known as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints -- has not prospered.  Instead, those in charge of the Community of Christ have managed, since the late 1960s, to turn the nearly 250,000 on their membership rolls into something like 70,000 members.  This dramatic decline has been the result of adopting radically revisionist guesswork about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon.  Palmer thinks that this is the direction that the Church of Jesus Christ should now take. This is simply amazing.

Descendants of Lehi

In Sunday's Gospel Doctrine class, the instructor asked in relation to Mormon 7, "Who are the latter-day descendants of Lehi, and where are they to be found?"  Recall that Mormon 7 invites the Lamanites of the latter days to believe in Christ, accept his gospel, and be saved (from the chapter heading).  After a couple of class comments, the instructor noted that the manual identified the native people of North America, Central America, South America, and the Pacific Islands as "the latter-day descendants of Lehi."  This summary by the instructor, of course, corresponds to the traditional LDS understanding of the question.  Later, I checked the instructor's manual, which actually states the following: "You may want to explain [to the class] that latter-day descendants of Lehi are found among the people of North, Central, and South America and the Pacific Islands" (italics added).

Interesting choice of words.  The vast majority of instructors and class members read the statement in the manual and think it is simply restating and endorsing the traditional view.  Yet one can parse the words to include the Limited Geography Hypothesis (LGH).  Anyone suggesting the statement is misleading as to what the "official" LDS position is would quickly be met by the apologetic riposte that the statement is perfectly consistent with LGH, with Asian origins of Native Americans, with DNA and linguistic evidence, and so on.  The statement strikes me as a fine job of telling the people what they want to hear while retaining deniability, but isn't an official manual of instruction supposed to give clear and accurate doctrinal statements?

Expansion Draft

T&S picked up five new bloggers in the first round of the Bloggernacle Expansion Draft.  The new additions include a distinguished Euroblogger, a grad student in Philosophy, a smiling economist, a grad student in Religious Studies, and a newly-minted English PhD.   With such a diverse group of new arrivals, expect some new topics to show up at T&S in coming weeks.

Will competing blogs match this bold new move by T&S?  Persistent rumors of upgrades at Bcc suggest more changes will follow, although it's unclear whether the junior circuit will dip into the depleted expansion pool for new bloggers.  Perhaps Bcc will have to pick up an established blogger or two in the free agent market to beef up its lineup.  Any other rumors of impending additions, redesigns, or platform changes out there?

One Big Happy Family

Evangelical Preaches at Salt Lake Tabernacle on Sunday November 14, reports the Deseret News.  First, the president of the Fuller Theological Seminary gave some introductory remarks, including offering "a stunningly candid apology to members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and noting that 'friendship has not come easily between our communities.'"  Then Ravi Zacharias, described as an "internationally renowned Christian philosopher," spoke on the theme "that Jesus Christ's unique claim upon humanity is that he embodied truth and sacrificed himself for a world that often does not recognize him."  While noting there are differences in how Evangelicals and Mormons view Jesus Christ, "he emphasized much of what they share in reverence for a being both consider the divine Savior of mankind."  I blogged on this briefly in September when it was first announced.  This seems like a real step forward in improving LDS relations with the rest of the Christian church.  Did anyone here attend?

Atheism in the Postmodern World

Just finished The Twilight of Atheism: The Rise and Fall of Disbelief in the Modern World (Doubleday, 2004) by Alister McGrath, a professor of historical theology at Oxford.  McGrath gives a refreshingly objective account of the declining fortunes of atheism as an ideology.  Full-blown atheism really did not exist before the 18th century.  It gathered momentum in the 19th century as it became intellectually defensible, acting as an ideology of liberation from oppressive religious institutions allied with state power.  It was legitimized by arguments supplied by Feurbach, Marx, and Freud.  In the post-Darwinian era of the late 19th and early 20th century, belief in God fell out of fashion and religious institutions themselves adopted a good measure of secularity under the banner of Liberal Christianity.

Alma the Poet

Here's an early stab at an online essay of the week: a series of short essays entitled The Poetic Genius of Alma the Younger, over at Meridian Magazine.  The link is to Part 1 on Lyricism; there are later installments talking about Virtuosity and about Symbolism. Since my earlier post on depth in Book of Mormon elicited some interest, I though this might be a nice follow-up. The author doesn't try to make an apologetic argument out of his analysis, he just looks at some of the material in Alma as poetry and sees how far he can go with it. I find the author's approach rather refreshing, the kind I would expect from a backpacker turned missionary turned lawyer-poet (from the author bio paragraph accompanying the article).

Alma 1 - The Nephite State Church

It has been about five months since my last entry in the Sunday School category, so I'll try and catch up a bit.  Alma 1 shows the attitude of the Nephite theocracy toward religious dissenters.  Nehor taught that "all mankind should be saved at the last day" and that the clergy "ought to be supported by the people" (v. 3).  So universal salvation and a professional clergy were preached among the Nephites--I know that sounds a lot like what people were talking about in 19th-century America, but there it is among the diaspora Jews of Nephite America.

The Evangelical Mind

For the online essay of the week, go read The Evangelical Mind Today, a short piece by noted religious historian Mark Noll over at First Things.  Noll authored the controversial book The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind ten years ago--the article at First Things gives his comments on how things look ten years later, which is pretty much the same.  His opening sentence: "Ten years after the publication of The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, I remain largely unrepentant about the book’s historical arguments, its assessment of evangelical strengths and weaknesses, and its indictment of evangelical intellectual efforts, though I have changed my mind on a few matters." The following paragraph from the article sums up his critique:

Yet on the whole, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind still seems to me correct in its descriptions and evaluations. What is true throughout the Christian world is true for American Christians: we who are in pietistic, generically evangelical, Baptist, fundamentalist, Restorationist, holiness, "Bible church," megachurch, or Pentecostal traditions face special difficulties when putting the mind to use. Taken together, American evangelicals display many virtues and do many things well, but built-in barriers to careful and constructive thinking remain substantial.

The LDS Church is Restorationist and shares many features of the Evangelical approach to religion. Does Noll's critique extend to Mormonism as well?

More Trouble in River City

And at BYU they spell trouble s-e-x.  Yes, BYU pulls another movie, according to the Deseret News (and here's the BYU NewsNet story).  The movie is "Hero," an Oscar-nominated foreign language film.  The article explains: "Though the movie contains no nudity or graphic sexual scenes, background sounds in a 20-second portion of the film suggests sexual activity is occurring."  While noting that it is "rare to find a film that has absolutely nothing in it that nobody would take offense at" and that it is "increasingly difficult" to find films that don't offend someone in a BYU audience, the typically spineless administrators caved and pulled the film.  The administrator's explanation: "One issue at BYU that the administration is hypersensitive about is anything to do with sex or nudity."

Tolkien, Depth, and the Book of Mormon

Just finished The Road to Middle-Earth: How J.R.R. Tolkien Created a New Mythology (Houghton Mifflin, rev. ed., 2003) by Tom Shippey, himself a professor of English language.  Shippey is a sympathetic critic trying to rescue Tolkien from the obloquy heaped on him by two generations of literary critics who were simply not equipped to understand or evaluate the roots and the context of Tolkien's creation.  He created his own genre, a singular achievement that precious few authors manage even with a chorus full of literati cheering them on.  Three brief points on what went into the unique mix of Tolkien as an author:

1. THE WAR - Tolkien fought in the trenches in World War I.  He returned, but the war cost him his closest friends, the young scholars who were his college friends but died in the muddy fields of France.  Tolkien came by his battle scenes honestly.
2. CATHOLICISM - Tolkien was a lifelong and dedicated Catholic.  While it was early remarked that the peoples of Middle-Earth appeared to lack religion, the later (sometimes posthumous) publication of Tolkien's additional writing makes it clear that in subtle ways his Catholicism did influence the world he created.  For example, men were fallen in Middle-Earth, but not elves, not even the "wood elves," those who did not visit the West.
3. LANGUAGES AND TEXTS - He was a professor of English language, meaning Middle English, Old English, and all that.  He could read Beowulf in the original (in fact, he was the one who established Beowulf in the eyes of critics) and, like the Christian poet of Beowulf, was himself a Christian author telling epic tales of a pre-Christian era.

Blogging Event: Ancient America

[Preview] I'll try another real-time blog for America's Stone Age Explorers, the Nova episode that airs Tuesday November 9 at 8:00 p.m. on PBS.  Here's the online overview of the show from the PBS website, noting Tom Dillehay's pre-Clovis finds at Monte Verde in Chile as well as the epochal Pleistocene megafaunal extinction.  I figure it's always worth my time to learn more about the principal ancestors of the American Indians (and of all Native Americans).  Feel free to add your comments as the show proceeds.  Kickoff at 8 o'clock sharp, California time, on this thread--I'll add paragraphs here as the show proceeds.

The Pew Gap

It's Time to Get Religion, at least if you're in politics, according to the religion blog Get Religion.  Quoting from a NY Times article (not always friendly to either religion or conservative politics), "Mr. Bush owes his victory to a formula that includes conservative Catholics, mainline Protestants, Hispanics, Jews and Mormons," as well as Evangelicals.  Say, since when are "Hispanics" a religion?  More surprising is the fact that several months ago "Zogby pollsters said that 43 percent of Democrats wanted to see abortion banned, to one degree or another."  Bottom line: the Dems need to get some new issues (think religion) and reconnect with heartland America (the people in the pews) if they are going to recover in the next election cycle.  Just ask Tom Daschle.

Images and Icons

Last week a bunch of new icons appeared on my Typepad posting window, for colored font, spell check, a WYSIWYG posting template, and other new features, so I'm going to try and use some of the new features this week to expand my personal blogging horizons.  For example, I can now upload images--such as Blue Moroni on the left--and actually wrap text around the image (something I was never able to pull off with the old blogging software).  Have any Typepad users out there found any particularly handy features in the new package?

LDS in Israel

Blogger Ronan Head of United Brethren has an article about Mormons in the Middle East over at Meridian Magazine.  The article describes the experience of Joshua and Sahar, who are, respectively, an Israeli Mormon and a Palestinian Mormon.  There are also interesting remarks on the BYU Jerusalem Center, which has become popular among the locals for its jazz concerts and as an ideal spot for panoramic wedding photos.  Go figure.

Has anyone else noticed that Meridian Magazine, taken as a whole, is about ten times more interesting than the Ensign?  As I see it, Meridian doesn't take itself too seriously, it just tries to be entertaining and informative on topics of interest to most Mormons.  In contrast, the correlated Ensign is generally neither entertaining nor informative on predictable topics we hear about all the time.  Could Ronan's interesting article have been published in the Ensign?  Doubt it.  Not enough preaching.

Defending the Traditional View

For the online essay of the week, go read On Wagging the Dog by Kevin Christensen, from the May 2004 Sunstone. It's short, only four pages! Christensen is responding to several articles in the March 2004 Sunstone grouped around the theme "Reframing the Book of Mormon." Christensen refers sympathetically to other instances of bottom-to-top inspiration in the Church as the tail wagging the dog, but argues that buying into this more radical reframing effort "would amount to their not only wagging the dog, but also stuffing and mounting it as well." Hats off to Sunstone for publishing a "rebuttal" view--not a practice followed by all Mormon Studies publications.

My Polling Results

I'm sitting here watching my CNN.com map of America slowly turn red--this looks like the election of 1800. Maybe we should rename the parties the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans. If the Dems can't win against Bush the Younger, they are as dead as the Federalists in 1800! The winds of change they are a-blowin'. [Update: Okay, later in the evening blue scored in the West and the Midwest, but given Republican gains in the House and Senate in addition to Bush's win in the Electoral College and the popular vote, this is still being called a "realigning election."]

I DID MY OWN BLOGGERNACLE EXIT POLL, and have dropped two blogs from my Top Twelve for infrequent blogging, plus one more for lack of engagement with the blogging community. I am filling these open spots with: A Bird's Eye View, run by the Fowles brothers, who have been steady bloggers for many months now; Baron of Deseret, who has likewise been a steady blogger and who will no doubt resume that practice when he returns from his vacation trip to Asia; and the new blog United Brethren* (the * means one of the brethren is a sister), which shows a lot of potential and, for a bonus, managed to snag one of the Fowles duo as a "named blogger." I welcome these fine blogs to my Top Twelve!

A Very Brief History of Philosophy

Solomon and Higgins wrote A Short History of Philosophy (Oxford Univ. Press, 1996), but that was apparently too long at 305 pages, so in 1997 they came out with A Passion for Wisdom: A Very Brief History of Philosophy, which accomplishes the task in a mere 128 pages. That's as far as they have gone, but if you are really obsessed with brevity, go read Eric Schulman's History of the Universe in 200 Words or Less. He also did it in 6 words and even in 2 words here, here, and here. But I digress. What themes get covered in the 128 pages of Solomon and Higgins' very brief history of philosophy?