Dave's Mormon Inquiry

C is for the Cross

Heavy competition in the C’s, including Chastity, Church Administration, and Coffee, but I chose the Cross because I have rarely seen more than a cursory one-sentence discussion of why the LDS Church declines to use the image of the cross in its churches and its literature. The standard explanation is that the cross is a sign of Christ’s death, whereas in the LDS Church we celebrate His Life. In this post I’ll review the seven sentences of the TTTF entry, then discuss the pros and cons of the LDS position.

Gone Fishing

Back in a couple of months.

A Taste of Barker

Margaret Barker, a non-LDS scholar, has published a couple of books that have received attention and praise from LDS apologists. This week, Meridian has a short article on Barker's work with the subtle title Plain and Precious Things Restored. As an aside, I think Meridian really owes the author a free portrait package -- a guy who writes as much as the article's author does really deserves a better head shot to post.

BT Renaissance

I'm pleased to announce that The Bloggernacle Times is back online: the www.bloggernacle.org URL now points to a spiffy new WordPress site designed by J. Stapley and his MA crew (who also join as new contributors). The format is a little more open, but expect some of the regular features you came to know and love at the old site to reappear at the new one.

Mormon Cinema Gets Noticed

At The Revealer, "a daily review of religion & the press," there's a short, snarky blurb on Mormon cinema. Wanna bet the gal writing the article has never seen a "Mormon cinema" production? But that won't stop a determined journalist from commenting, will it? The blurb links to a much longer article on Mormon cinema in last week's SL Trib, obviouslly written by someone who has seen a few of the movies he cites. Not that I'm one to comment on such movies, never having seen God's Army or even Napoleon Dynamite (although there's a copy of it floating around the house somewhere), and I wouldn't see The Work and the Glory unless strongly urged to do so by someone with a loaded weapon who knows how to use it. But it sounds like several LDS producers are on a quest for the holy crossover movie: Donnie and Marie did it in music, Steve Young and Dale Murphy did it in sports, Orson Scott Card did it in fiction, and sooner or later one of the moviemakers will hit it big in the mainstream movie market.

Metaphysics | Mormonism

Just finished The Basics of Western Philosophy (2004), a topical intro to philosophy and a break from my usual preference for historical intros to philosophy (I never seem to get beyond the intro stage). I think of Clark as a real amateur philosopher, whereas I'm just an amateur amateur philosopher. I'm happy just to be able to spell Nietzsche correctly without looking it up. Anyway, a good topical intro gives a more technical intro to the subject (I reviewed a similar topical intro here last year). I'll write about metaphysics (what is the stuff that makes up reality?) today and maybe do a second post on morality (defining and living the good life) tomorrow.

One Year of Sanity

BYU NewsNet reports the Harold B. Lee Library is reviewing its current policy which, over the last year, has apparently been to give research assistance to library patrons regardless of hair length or personal appearance! Now that the administration is aware of this heinous practice, "university and library officials say the policy may be revised and that in the future, the proper academic vice president will review Honor Code changes." At BYU, no good deed goes unpunished.

One librarian is quoted as saying that it was "extremely difficult to enforce and in terms of the spirit of the law, it was difficult to have students reporting on students.” Somehow I don't think these minor concerns (spirit, schmirit, we've got rules here, darnit!) will deter the motivated staff of the Honor's Code office from doing their duty to God and campus. Soon, only guys with really short hair — and only gals with just one modest body piercing per ear — will get their questions answered at the library.

The Mysteries of Godliness

I finally finished David John Buerger's Mysteries of Godliness (Signature, 2d ed. 2002). Subtitled "A History of Modern Temple Worship," this is simply not the sort of book your average Mormon is inclined to read. I myself put it off for about three years. I have enough problems without some muckracking dissenter adding to my temple list, I thought. Surprisingly, I quite enjoyed the book. So I'll provide a sort of edited PG ("particularly gentle") version of the book, "adapted to the capacity of the weak and the weakest of all saints," and let those of you who want the rest of the story of the LDS temple liturgy go read it on your own. If you can't wait or just don't want to shell out for the entire book, you can read Chapter 3 online for free.

Reflections on Mountain Meadows

Today is September 11, 2005, now denoted "Patriot Day" on US calendars. On the same day 148 years ago, 120 men, women, and children died in Southern Utah. This unseemly confluence of synchronicity spurred a lengthy essay by Steve over at BCC. Some time ago I posted my own reflections on the topic at BCC, entitled A Visit to Mountain Meadows, based on my visit to the site in early 2004. Here are the last three paragraphs of my earlier post:

More Evangelical Politics

[9/9 Update: GetReligion posted a second, even more provocative look at this issue: The Exaltation of Mitt Romney. And there are some interesting comments, too. This story is heating up fast!]

Following up my earlier post on Romney's Evangelical problem, I'll highlight two posts from my newly-installed blog feeds on the left sidebar. GetReligion (run by several religion journalists) posted An Evangelical Problem?, discussing Amy Sullivan's recent article arguing that Romney will have real problems with Evangelical voters if he decides to run for president. The comments to the blog post are worth reading, too. The Revealer also posted a short piece with the eye-catching title Mormons Drink Christian Baby Blood, Don't They? Their point is that mainstream media reporters have discounted Romney's religious problem with Evangelicals because they don't take conservative religious leaders (who make little attempt to hide their unhappiness with Mormonism) seriously or consider their opinions to be newsworthy. At The Revealer's main page, the story was at the top of their "Today" column. Personally, I think "likeability" drives more of the average voter's response than most pundits allow. There's nothing to prevent many Evangelical voters from saying to themselves, "I still don't like Mormons, but I like Romney and I'll vote for him."

New Commenters

Reviewing my comments for the last week, I have added three new links to my "Commenters" blogroll. Sarebear's Pie-Bolar is a pink blog that keeps showing up on my referral log -- must get a lot of traffic. And where the heck is Seeville, Utah? Eric Russell's Filmnote offers just film reviews but has an LDS Film section too. Finally, PsyRel (short for "psychology of religion") is a blog and companion website run by a psychology and religion prof from Georgia. Go drop in for a visit to a couple of these interesting blogs.

If you like to follow newer B'nacle blogs, you should note that A Soft Answer is back in business after a layoff of several months. I prematurely declared it DOA not too long ago; nice to see it flourishing again. Excellent use of colored fonts with the new template!

B is for Body Piercing

This is the second installment looking at selected articles from True to the Faith (TTTF), a doctrinal booklet published by the Church last year (here’s the first post). The article on Body Piercing is three short paragraphs. “Latter-day prophets strongly discourage the piercing of the body except for medical purposes,” begins the first paragraph, and “[t]hose who choose to disregard this counsel show a lack of respect for themselves and for God.” Seems clear enough, except that “[i]f girls or women desire to have their ears pierced, they are encouraged to wear only one pair of modest earrings.” So four earrings are bad, two earrings are good. Body piercing is wrong, except when it’s not. I don’t dispute the practical necessity of “grandmothering in” the practice of women wearing a pair of earrings. It just seems to undercut the notion that body piercing per se is wrong.

Looking Ahead

I don't normally post on politics, but I can't resist this interesting story by a Boston Globe reporter about Mitt Romney, presidential candidate. It focuses on whether Evangelical voters would have a problem with Romney being LDS (the article's subtitle: "Religion could be a hurdle if Romney runs for president"). Not since a Roman Catholic John F. Kennedy ran for president in 1960 has the particular denominational affiliation of a presidential candidate been a real issue, and in Kennedy's case it was a non-issue by election day. So I disagree with the idea suggested by the article that Evangelicals have to "accept" (in some sense) the LDS Church to bring themselves to vote for Romney, should he become a candidate. I think they only have to accept Romney as a candidate or an individual: If they like him, his ideas, and his campaign speeches, they'll give him their vote. If they don't, they won't.

Frankly, if Evangelicals make a stink about Romney being Mormon, it would probably win him votes among the tens of millions of Americans who detest Evangelicals, and when it comes time to actually pull a lever in the voting booth, most Evangelicals would opt for Romney over Hillary Rodham Clinton anyway. So my contrarian opinion is that Evangelical opposition to Romney, should it materialize, might just make him a more appealing candidate rather than cause him problems.

Evolutionary Psychology

Just finished Evolutionary Psychology (2004), a textbook on a new approach to psychology that has been on my "Now Reading" list (now banished far down the left sidebar) for about a year. Evolutionary psychology might revolutionize the field. It is a new subdiscipline that attempts to understand human psychology in all its varieties in an evolutionary context, considering the many facets of human thought and behavior in light of their adaptive contribution to human survival (i.e., reproduction). For those with some knowledge of and sympathy for evolution, the book makes psychology understandable, even reasonable. I don't have time to write a lot, but I'll throw out a couple of teasers, then end up with this interesting question: Is there a Mormon view of psychology?

Secular Anti-Mormonism

I promised a weekly FARMS piece, so this week's online essay is Reflections on Secular Anti-Mormonism, by Daniel C. Peterson. It was his presentation at the recent FAIR Conference (hat-tip to M* for the link). Despite the title, Peterson spent most of the essay debunking the nihilistic bent of modern secularism rather than focusing on anti-Mormons, and I agree with most of his commentary. Our few Eurobloggers should find Peterson's remarks particularly interesting. He did, of course, throw in a few jabs up front, poking fun at Signature Books, one of its authors, and "Sunstone atheists" in the first few paragraphs before moving on to his main thoughts. What surprised me is that I actually enjoyed the piece. Perhaps he should write fewer book reviews and more essays.