Dave's Mormon Inquiry

LDS Statement on Homosexuality

The mainstream media still hasn't put out a story on the recent Statement on Homosexuality (the "Statement") posted at LDS.org, although there have been several posts already in the Bloggernacle (here, here, and here). In this post I will try to offer a description and some analysis of the Statement.

Brother, Can You Spare a Link?

He may be on vacation, but John at Mormon Stories ("MS") can still manage to kick up some dust, now complaining that he has been "de-listed" from the Mormon Archipelago's handy blog aggregator, which bills itself as the "Gateway to the Bloggernacle." [Disclosure: I am part of the committee that runs MA sites, including the aggregator, but was not involved in the discussion about the MS post in question, nor in the decision to temporarily "de-list" the Mormon Stories site.] Since John specifically discussed DMI in his post and invited MA-listed blogs to respond, I will do so here. I'm speaking for myself, not for anyone else. Many of the points relate to issues raised by commenters rather than by John in his original post.

Islamofascism in the News

Great word, which Wikipedia uses as follows: "Islamofascism is a neologism and political epithet used to induce an association of the ideological or operational characteristics of certain modern Islamist movements with European fascist movements of the early 20th century, neofascist movements, or totalitarianism." Yes, I know the Islamic world did not invent fascism and that Eurofascism came first, but that's the whole point. Think of Mussolini. First fascists seem like clowns; then they're someone else's problem; then you're wondering where they got such nice missles. Interesting historical analogy. Pundits are starting to catch on.

Blink and You'll Miss It

A popular Mormon message board is scheduled to shut down on Wednesday (hat tip: my favorite Borderlands blog). Apparently politics was the culprit. I actually linked to the Foyer on my sidebar for a few months and visited from time to time, until about a year ago when they ran a feature with some really tasteless cartoons accompanied by a generous helping of profanity directed at Mormons and the Church. I'm sure they'll find somewhere else to hang out. Displaced Foyerites who want some new and interesting conversation instead of the same 'ole board stuff (and who can limit themselves to occasional, tasteful profanity) are welcome to comment here. Sorry, no avatars to offer.

Update: A new Foyer (with an identical name) has arisen at a different site, with different software, different boardmaster, but the same assortment of colorful characters and the same familiar themes. Interestingly, the old site stubbornly refuses to self-terminate as advertised, and is continuing (for the moment, anyway) under new management.

[Note: comment moderation is on, so comments won't post publicly for several hours.]

Romney Visits California

Get Religion has a post reviewing a Washington Times story on Mitt Romney's recent visit to California. He was a big hit at the California Republican Convention, with one attendee declaring, "He's got the charisma Kennedy had and the morals we wish Kennedy would have had."

So how is it that folks can admire Romney's integrity and morality but not make the connection linking his character to his also being a practicing Mormon? Why is the religious label such a negative for Evangelicals despite the obvious fact that his Mormon religion is a big positive for Romney himself and that it therefore contributes to what most people seem to like about him? If he passes the character test with flying colors (and Evangelicals seem to feel that way), why should the religious label be such a big deal? Voting is not a religious act, yet they speak about voting for Romney like it is the moral equivalent of offering a pagan sacrifice to Caesar.

The post has links to three other GR posts on Romney — they're doing a real nice job there tracking how the media covers Romney. The media has been fair with Romney and he is connecting nicely with the voters. Maybe when the primaries start rolling and debates kick in, Evangelicals will start thinking more like citizens and less like sectarians. As long as Romney doesn't say he was brainwashed into supporting the war in Iraq. That would be bad.

Teens Defend Polygamy at Utah Rally

That is the headline (word for word) on this AP story. It made the little headline box on the Yahoo main page (my primary gateway for news these days), so it's getting plenty of airplay.

Teenage polygamy activists ... kinda creepy. Pictured teen carrying sign that says, "I love all my Moms." I wonder if he has heard of the lost boys? The article makes them sound like regular Utah teenagers: "Dressed in flip-flops and blue jeans, bangs drooping over their eyes, the teens at Saturday's rally talked on cell phones and played rock music, singing lyrics written to defend their family life." Lyrics written to defend their family life? These are not normal teenagers.

Arabs and the West, Part 2

[See Part 1] This is the second half of a review and summary of Storm From the East: The Struggle Between the Arab World and the Christian West (Modern Library, 2006), by Milton Viorst. As noted earler, this sort of review is worth conducting (at least for me) because what was once the Arab-Israeli conflict has broadened and intensified to become almost a simmering global conflict with no prospect of ending soon. And just because the West won the Cold War is no guarantee we'll win this one. This post covers events in the Middle East from WWII to the present. Section headings below are chapter titles from the book.

Arabs and the West, Part 1

Current events (the Israeli-Hezbollah War and the barely averted London airliner bombing plot) are reinforcing the view that the struggle of militant Islam against "the West", buttressed by a fundamentalist ideology under which militants claim the right to kill civilians as well as soldiers, is not going to go away anytime soon. This struggle is going to define at least the next two decades and maybe the next fifty years, so it's time to do a little homework: Storm from the East: The Stuggle Between the Arab World and the Christian West (Modern Library, 2006). The author, Milton Viorst, is a journalist (the dust jacket calls him a "journalist and scholar") who has covered the Middle East since the 1960s. I'll write a paragraph or two drawn directly from material in each chapter (my section headings are the chapter titles). If you like it, check the New Books shelf at your local library for a copy or buy it at Amazon.

This is a No BS Blog

As reported at This Mormon Life ("TML"), there was a short presentation at the recent Sunstone Symposium summarizing Harry Frankfurt's book On Bullshit (Princeton Univ. Press, 2005) and, of course, applying its thesis to discourse in the LDS Church. I was interested enough to go find a copy of the book (well, booklet) and read it. In this post I will comment briefly on the book, then consider (in order) LDS BS, Sunstone BS, and DMI BS. No kidding.

Americanized Mormonism

The SL Trib has an article summarizing Dennis Potter's Sunstone presentation, "The Americanization of Mormonism Reflected in Pop Culture." According to the article, Potter sees the slow demise of radical LDS theology (e.g., communitarianism, becoming gods, Mother in heaven) as evidence of Mormonism's surrender to the American and Christian mainstream.

But what are the alternatives to Americanization: Europeanization? Africanization? Given that any real-world religious institution is going to have some aspects of regional culture leaking into it, the American option seems like the best (or least harmful) of the lot. And there is a distinct Mormon culture that is at odds with a host of practices that fit squarely within "mainstream American culture," battling against everything from the morning cup of coffee and R-rated movies to such recent cultural fads as tattoos and poker. [The Trib has an article on the Sunstone tattoo session, too.]

Earlier, I posted my own comments on an earlier version of Potter's remarks. There are also some comments on Potter's presentation in a post at AMV.

Nephite DNA

In yet another skirmish in the continuing debate over DNA and the Book of Mormon, the Signature Books website recently posted a Ron Priddis response to Blake Ostler's reply (here and here) to Tom Murphy's article "Lamanite Genesis, Genealogy, and Genetics," chaper 3 in American Apocrypha (2002, Signature). [An earlier version of Murphy's paper is available online here. Also, Ostler has now replied to Priddis here and here, with some additional exchanges between the two later in the thread.] I will summarize these articles and add some commentary.

LDS-Related Conferences

DN has a short article summarizing presentations at the recent FAIR Conference. [And see here and here for commentary and reflection at Millennial Star.] What jumped out at me in the Deseret News article was that the FAIR Conference was described as one of "three local LDS-related conferences" that happen in August, the other two (noted at the end of the article) being the SLC Sunstone Symposium and BYU Education Week. I guess there are now two general categories, "LDS General Conference" (in April and October) and "LDS-related conferences" (in August). Since the LDS-related conferences are about ten times more interesting, expect some suppressive fire from the other general category before too long. Look for Alternate Voices II, coming soon to a widescreen projection TV near you.

Book of Mormon as Literature

There's one thing you can't dispute about the Book of Mormon: it's a text. According to a DN article, a panel of scholars will discuss the Book of Mormon as "literature" (a broad subcategory of texts) this Wednesday at 7 p.m. at the Salt Lake City Library auditorium. One of the organizers is Mark Thomas, a BYU faculty member and author of Digging in Cumorah: Reclaiming Book of Mormon Narratives. Another interesting panel member is Robert Price, described as "a New Testament scholar and member of the 'Jesus Seminar'". I believe this is the same Robert Price that authored the last chapter in American Apocrypha, titled "Joseph Smith: Inspired Author of the Book of Mormon." Oh, and Richard Bushman will be on the panel, too.

Update: Googling "Book of Mormon as literature" after posting this, I discovered one of my own posts with links to the Encyclopedia of Mormonism article "Book of Mormon as literature" and two related FARMS articles. Wow, you know you've been blogging too long when you can't even remember old posts and you start repeating yourself and you can't even remember old posts.

Romney and Apologetics

The Article VI Blog has a post entitled The Romney Campaign and Mormon Apologetics: A Connection? The point of the post is to emphasize the LDS political neutrality policy to those unfamiliar with (and suspecting the worst of) the LDS Church and to put unofficial LDS commentary and response to "the Mormon issue" surrounding Romney's candidacy in proper context. Bloggers who deal with comments (and don't we all?) might also find this passage interesting:

Another group, which I personally find annoying, will consider Romney’s candidacy a referendum on Mormonism, and will consider anyone who opposes Romney (especially those who are concerned or worried about his faith) an enemy or truth and righteousness. Some of these folks posted comments on this blog [the Article VI Blog] in its early days, and they were one of the reasons we stopped taking comments. I firmly believe this is a tiny group, many of whom are oddballs. These are the people who will see Romney’s candidacy as not about politics, but about Mormonism. Instead of defending Romney, they’ll defend Mormonism. I personally hope that part of the campaign is drowned out by discussions about issues.

Stakes, Chapels, and Parking Lots

I'm going to milk one more post from Shipps' Soujourner in the Promised Land, culled from another long-titled article, "The Scattering of the Gathering and the Gathering of the Scattered: The Mid-Twentieth-Century Mormon Diaspora," presented as chapter 13 in the book. I won't summarize the article as much as share a few of the factual details that filled in a chapter of 20th-century LDS history I hadn't really grasped before.

Amusing Crimes

For some light relief, go read the Police Beat report for August 2, reported at BYU NewsNet. Maybe I'm a little jaded by seeing stories on serial killers and the like every night, but it seems somehow reassuring to know there are places in the world where the following items (taken verbatim) are the best they can come up with for the weekly crime report:

An Approach to Religious History

I am going to discuss Jan Shipps' essay "Remembering, Recovering, and Inventing What Being a People of God Means: Reflections on Method in the Scholarly Writing of Religious History," chapter 8 in her Sojourner in the Promised Land: Forty Years Among the Mormons (U of Illinois, 2000). While there are scattered comments relating to LDS history in the essay, it treats the writing and framing of religious history in more general terms. Although it is not hard to apply it to LDS history, I'll save most of the "Mo app" for a second post. Here, I'll just summarize two or three of the concepts Shipps develops in the essay. Sorry, couldn't find an online version of the essay. Someday everything will be online, but for now you'll just have to find the book to read the essay in full.

Stranger in a Strange Land

While out of town last weekend, I managed to obtain temporary custody of a copy of Sojourner in the Promised Land: Forty Years Among the Mormons (U of Illinois Press, 2000), a collection of articles and essays by Jan Shipps, a Methodist scholar of Mormonism. Her first exposure to things LDS came when she lived in Utah for about a year well before beginning her graduate work on Mormonism:

... I first thought that Logan was a more or less typical small town. It was such a friendly place that we were soon drawn into its communal life. Yet as that happened, I began to sense that we had somehow wandered into a "twilight zone," that without realizing it we had become actors in one of Rod Serling's oft-used plots: a traveler has car trouble and is towed into what appears to be an ordinary small town for help that, inevitably, is long delayed, and, as time passes, the traveler begins to realize things in this particular small town are "ever so slightly different."