Dave's Mormon Inquiry

City on a Hill

The Puritans didn't just emigrate to New England, they aimed to establish a new society. This is best expressed in John Winthop's famous sermon, "A Model of Christian Charity," delivered on the ship that took him and his fellow believers across the Atlantic in 1630. I'll pull out a couple of quotes that convey his vision of an ideal Christian society, then compare it to the Mormon vision of Zion announced by Joseph Smith.

Plight of the Smart LDS Woman

You probably missed this article in the BYU-Idaho online student newspaper (a nice little publication — I like their interface better than BYU NewsNet's), entitled Smart Women Can Intimidate Prospective Mates. BYU-I administrators are quoted saying no, that doesn't happen here at BYU-I. But here's what the female students say: One says when she told guys her major was math, they "would put a wall up right there." So she changed majors. Another said, "Because you're a girl you're kind of expected to know less." And a male faculty member explained that "naturally men like females who are dependent. Men want to be needed. Women who don’t need them intimidate them." Okay.

Is this a BYU-I thing? A BYU-everywhere thing? A Mormon thing? Or just a guy thing? And we really need to hear from a few math majors on this one. Maybe if you said you were majoring in arithmetic it would seem less intimidating.

Correlation: Blessing or Curse?

About half the lesson in the Sunday School manual today was on Correlation. Since the lesson itself went through the Correlation Dept., you won't be surprised to hear it had glowingly wonderful things to say. The problem is that I actually agree with some of them. So here are some quick pros and cons to the emergence of Correlation as a directing force in the Church.

The 100-Minute Bible

Another edited Bible for your reading pleasure, designed for people on the go with not much time to spare for things spiritual: The 100-Minute Bible. Surprisingly, it is endorsed and published by the stuffy old English, as noted in this article. Here is the Sermon on the Mount in 100-speak. It's condensed, but the vocabulary isn't dumbed down. The omniscient third-person narrative even makes it sound Book-of-Mormonish. Makes me wonder what a 100-Minute Book of Mormon might sound like. Or maybe a 120-Minute Book of Mormon, reminding us it still has all those plain and precious truths that got erased from the Bible.

Bushman on Mormon History

I heard Richard L. Bushman speak to a small audience last week about his new biography, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling. In this post I'll summarize his remarks about his approach and method for writing a biography of Joseph Smith, touching on the ways in which he seems to move the paradigm for writing 19th-century Mormon history forward. In a later post I'll summarize the substantive points he made about Joseph Smith.

Topix Hits

All of a sudden my site log is picking up hits from the Topix.net LDS channel, about ten or fifteen per day. They have apparently added blog posts to their input sources. In addition to a couple of DMI posts, I have seen posts on their feed from BCC, from Mormon Wasp, and from the Religion News Blog. Great — it's like free advertising! You might have noticed the news posts displayed on the BCC sidebar; that's the Topix.net LDS channel, configured to display on a blog. Anyone else getting hits from Topix or other news sites? Anyone have a clue what kind of algorithm they run to select which posts from a blog make their feed?

Secret Gospel of Mark

About a week ago, M* ran a post on the Secret Gospel of Mark. I swung by my local library and checked out a copy of Crossan's Four Other Gospels: Shadows on the Contours of Canon (1985), which has a short but informative chapter on Secret Mark. Alas, I'm too late for the discussion at M*, but since my earlier post on the Gospel of Thomas was so well received, I'll go ahead and post my comments here. I'll summarize (1) what Secret Mark is; (2) why most Christians don't like it; and (3) why some Mormons do like it.

Multiplying Miracles

I received an email from a reader concerned about how to respond to some stories he was hearing about the printing of the Book of Mormon in 1830. Specifically, there's a book and a speaker out there claiming the actual printing of the book, at Grandin's print shop in Palmyra in 1829-30, could not have been accomplished by the normal printing technology of that time and that it must, therefore, have been miraculous, in some unspecified way. Here's an article at Meridian Magazine that summarizes and responds to the book and its claims. I'll summarize my response, then invite your comments and feedback.

Horsing Around

I haven't posted an online essay of the week for some time now. So let's try Horses in the Book of Mormon, a popular take on the horses question directed to a general Mormon audience, posted at Meridian Magazine. Meridian got the article from the Ancient America Foundation, whose About page explains: "AAF publications provide evidence for authenticity of the Book of Mormon." As long as you have a testimony of Mesoamerica, that is. Otherwise, you are one of the "uninformed Latter-day Saints [who] continue to promote other areas."

Call for Student Papers

The BYU Religion Department issued a call for student papers last week as part of its annual Religious Education Student Symposium. BYU undergraduate and graduate students are invited to submit 10- to 12-page papers on "any religious topics ranging from scriptural topics and church history to world religions and teachings of living prophets." Winners get their paper published and may also receive cash prizes of up to $1,000. I would be interested in seeing a list of titles of papers submitted in prior years, but no links were given in the story.

The story quoted the apparent spokesperson for the program as saying past submissions have been "very bright and faithful." One of the goals of the program, she said, is "learning to write soundly with a cloak of faith." Cloak of faith — interesting metaphor. And what happens to the student who submits a paper that is not sufficiently cloaked with faith? Maybe the development of good cloaking skills is one of the goals of the program. The story notes that the program was started with the encouragement of a visiting General Authority, in order to develop gospel scholarship among the students. Before this program, notes a BYU prof, there had been no forum where "students could write meaningful papers in church history and doctrine where they could give their own ... perspective and viewpoints on matters of the church." The deadline for paper submissions is November 28.

France Gets Religion

The land of moribund Catholicism has suddenly found religion it seems — Islamic religion. I know we've all been distracted by Bannergate, but it has been quite a couple of weeks in France. It's hard to really grasp what's going on from news media reports. A recent post at Get Religion helps explain why: Journalists can't cover riots very well. How do you interview a riot? How do you even get a handle on who is rioting, why they're participating, why it started this year rather than last year or next year? But don't be fooled by the confusion: This could be the biggest story of the year.

1491

I just breezed through 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus (Knopf, 2005). The author is Charles C. Mann, a journalist, but he's done his homework in trying to synthesize the present state of science regarding the origin and history of pre-Columbian America. Bottom line: the simplified textbook version that most people got in school is now largely superceded by new developments, but there is so much dispute at the moment regarding alternative theories that there is no definitive consensus theory to replace it. I'll comment on the book for a few paragraphs, then come back to the Mo app at the end.

E is for Exaltation

The True to the Faith ("TTTF") entry “Exaltation” is just three words: “See Eternal Life.” Interesting. I think the Church still believes in and teaches what Mormons have traditionally referred to as “exaltation,” but leaders prefer to use different terms now, such as Eternal Life, which is given a two-page discussion. Are we feeling less exalted these days?

MSNBC Links Bloggernacle

MSNBC has a "Blog Talk" page that gives links and excerpts to blogs that talk about various Newsweek articles. Their Mormon Odyssey page presently lists articles from four different B'nacle blogs. Not that they push much traffic — it took three days for a link back to MSNBC to show up in my Sitemeter log. But it's always nice to be noticed by the MSM.

Aim Higher

There's a story in the DN this morning about an Air Force officer hassling an airman for wearing "LDS apparel" under his uniform. [Hat tip: BCC sidebar newsfeed.] In a tactfully written story, the airman, a touring member of an Air Force musical group, says he was told to "lost the shirt or leave the tour." Turns out the officer is an Evangelical who likes to pick on non-Evangelicals in his unit. The story quotes a Catholic in the unit who faced similar flak from the CO. Timely intervention by an LDS chaplain resolved the particular conflict with the LDS airman. [Sounds like they do good work — maybe LDS stakes should have chaplains, too!] It will take more than a chaplain to solve the Air Force's problem. Not to mention the Evangelicals' problem, which runs even deeper.