Dave's Mormon Inquiry

The Angel and the Beehive

Just finished The Angel and the Beehive: The Mormon Struggle with Assimilation (U. of Illinois Press, 1994) by Armand Mauss. It is an exercise in the sociology of religion, looking at the experience of the LDS Church in the 20th century and particularly the second half of that century. I can summarize the thesis of the book in one sentence: After spending the first fifty years of the 20th century striving for and largely achieving assimilation with and acceptance by mainstream America, the Church then spent the next fifty years partially de-assimilating and reasserting its unique and conservative religious identity in order to keep itself and its members visibly distinct from mainstream and Evangelical Protestantism. [I didn't say it would be a short sentence.] Mauss terms that de-assimilation process retrenchment.

Marking Online Scriptures

LDS Webguy shared some terribly useful information in a post with the geeky title Scripture URL Strategy on Scriptures.LDS.org. It explains how to highlight in yellow particular verses and to center them in the screen by starting the display a few verses back. Take the "natural man" scripture in Mosiah. Here's how I used to link it. Here's how LDS Webguy taught me to link it. Very nice.

Welcomed Into Zion

I'd like to start doing Sunday posts with a little different flavor, either borrowing from talks or lessons prepared for class or just whipping up something mildly edifying on the spot. I'll do some posts on Paul and his letters later in the year. For now, I'll share a passage I ran across in connection with President Hinckley's talk The Faith to Move Mountains from the October 2006 Conference. He recounted the story of how Brigham Young, in October 1856, sent out rescue caravans to find and feed migrating Saints stranded in snowy Wyoming and escort them back to Salt Lake City. I looked up the relevant material in Allen and Leonard's The Story of the Latter-day Saints. Quite a tale.

Viewer Mail: The First Child

One of the nicest things about running a weblog is getting complimentary emails from readers who enjoy the posts and comments here. Sometimes they have questions, which I generally answer as best I can, of course, but sometimes I just pull a blank. Here's one I need some help on: Who was the first "child of record" born in the Mormon Church? I imagine he or she was a baby born to a pair of new converts in New York or Ohio (where most of the hundred or so Mormons in upstate New York moved in early 1831). No doubt it was a much-celebrated child, being the first "Mormon baby," but I don't recall ever reading an account or even comment on the topic.

For bonus credit, does anyone know who the first "born in the covenant" child was? This baby would likely be to a married Mormon couple in Nauvoo in 1842 or 1843, when the first recognized sealings were performed, but again I recall seeing no remarks or even speculation on the topic.

The New Atheism

Not new and improved, just new. For this week's online essay, go read Mohler's The New Atheism?, posted a couple of months ago when everyone was talking about the new books by Dawkins, Dennett, and Harris. He is responding to a Wired article entitled The New Atheism: The Church of the Non-Believers, in which each of the Big Three are interviewed.

Ping Pong Proselyting

You've heard of baseball baptisms? Read about ping pong proselyting in How the Soviet Union was Opened to the Gospel. Somehow I would have thought chess would be the sport that would get a foot in the door in Russia ...

The Mormon Way

Just finished my advance copy of The Mormon Way of Doing Business (2007) by Jeff Benedict. It is subtitled "leadership and success through faith and family." The book has received a fair amount of attention: I've seen a write-up on the book in the Deseret News; a report on a panel discussion with the author and several of the CEOs featured in the book; and a long excerpt from the first chapter. [And don't miss the fine review posted at Straight and Narrow, Jettboy's blog.] So I'll keep my comments short and maybe give longer comments on one of the chapters in a later post.

Blogger Exed

Yes, an LDS blogger was exed this week. While using labels is sometimes controversial, this was clearly a DAMU blog, not a Bloggernacle blog. It started with a short post last month here, an update followed here, then it ended with a touching narration of the final events here. Having read the recent posts of said blog, I think it's a good illustration of just how obnoxious a person has to become before formal discipline enters the picture.

Spiritual Crocodiles 2.0

A generation ago, Elder Packer delivered a classic General Conference address: Spiritual Crocodiles. In his address to BYU students earlier this week entitled Lehi's Dream and You, Elder Packer sounded many of the same themes, albeit without coining any new metaphors. Deseret News summarized Packer's remarks, including this quote:

"You live in an interesting generation where trials will be constant in your life," he said. "Learn to follow the promptings of the Holy Ghost. It is to be a shield, a protection and a teacher for you. Never be ashamed or embarrassed about the doctrines of the gospel or about the standards we teach in the church."

Bookstore Upgrade

Amazon recently added some extra functionality to their Associate bookstore program, so yesterday I began upgrading the DMI Bookstore. I put together a display page showing LDS New Testament books, given that the Sunday School curriculum in 2007 covers the New Testament. The three on the top line are all new books: a new biography of Paul; an illustrated volume by three LDS scholars entitled Jesus Christ and the World of the New Testament, which Deseret has been promoting heavily so you have probably seen the cover; and the new paperback edition of Sisters at the Well, stressing the role of women in the life and teachings of Jesus. The new store also provides customized pages for specific titles linked from the bookstore (click on one of the links above to check it out). Very nice.

Mummified Indians

Here's a link to a news story sent to me by a reader: When Terror Came to the Mummies of the Amazon. Sounds like a grade-B horror flick, but it actually reports the archeological discovery of mummified Indians from pre-Inca Peru of about 600 years ago, likely from a group known as the Chachapoyas. Interesting bunch, these Chachapoyas:

The Chachapoyas were a tall, fairhaired, light-skinned race that some researchers believe may have come from Europe. Little is known about them except that they were one of the more advanced ancient civilisations in the area. Adept at fighting, they commanded a large kingdom from the year 800 to 1500 that stretched across the Andes.

I wonder if they dug up any mummified horses with them? Now that would be something to write home about.

Telling Stories: More on Folklore

I thought the earlier post on Mormon folklore went well, so I went and dug up the only Sunstone issue I own, which happens to contain William A. Wilson's article "On Being Human: The Folklore of Mormon Missionaries." Somehow I managed to avoid reading the article until now. The main theme is that folklore stories aren't really about the ostensible objects of the stories, such as the Three Nephites; they're really about the people relating and re-telling the stories. Yes, that's irony alright, although I didn't note that choice term in Wilson's essay.

Logic and Spirituality

President Cecil O. Samuelson spoke yesterday at BYU's first Tuesday devotional of the year. As reported by BYU NewsNet, Samuelson encouraged students "to find ways that they can mix their faith with reasoning, especially in their future capacities." He counseled students, as they "go forth to serve," to plant seeds of faith and to "plant these seeds even in their professional settings as they mix reason and faith."

The article provides this direct quote of Samuelson sounding almost Maxwellian: "This means that if we have trained in education or engineering, nursing and neurosciences ... and in every branch of learning available here at BYU, we apply the best and latest principles of these honored professions in the context of our ethical, gospel and moral understandings." Cogent counsel for students and bloggers alike.

Who Are These Guys?

That seems to be a popular question for magazines and newspapers looking at "the Mormons" these days. The latest entry: A modern prophet goes global, in the Economist (and thanks to a reader who sent me the link). The accompanying pic shows a blond missionary in white shirt and tie walking past a third-world hovel. Understandably, the piece highlights events in England: "Also dear to Mormon hearts are parts of northern and central England where, soon after Smith had his visions, the faith won many converts." After touching on 19th-century emigration to Utah, it notes that now "the Mormons want their converts to stay put and use their spanking new meeting-house and temple; and their keen young missionaries are as likely to be British or Danish (even, in one case, from Greenland) as American."

This Just In: Protestant Revelation

Christian critics often roll their eyes about the Mormon claim to modern revelation. Now I'm not sure whether the critics' position is that prophetic revelation (as opposed to pastoral or personal revelation) simply doesn't happen anymore, or whether their point is that if it does it would not be to an LDS President or a Catholic Pope, it would be to some Protestant luminary. But the general thrust seems to be that prophetic revelation isn't needed because we have the Bible. So I was surprised to read GR's post on the Rev. Pat Robertson's way of speaking. GR quotes an AP article: In what has become an annual tradition of prognostications, religious broadcaster Pat Robertson said Tuesday God has told him that a terrorist attack on the United States would result in “mass killing” late in 2007. Well.

Mormon Folklore

Mix one part storytelling with one part history and a dash of folk doctrine, and you get Mormon folklore. Over the holidays, the Deseret News posted a fine interview with William Wilson, the reigning expert on Mormon folkore. It touches on some of his favorites (missionary stories, Three Nephite stories, and J. Golden Kimball stories) and ends with this Zennish quote: "All the stories are true — it depends on the truth you're looking for." Ah, yes. Perhaps you aren't reading the story; the story is reading you.

The article also references Wilson's recently published book, The Marrow of Human Experience: Essays on Folklore (USU Press, 2006). Over half the essays in the book are about Mormon folklore, so if you're into that sort of thing ... well, click and buy.

A Sense of Community

Here's a second post based on The American West: A New Interpretive History (see the first post), another attempt to link LDS history with Western History in three paragraphs or less. I'll summarize the material from Chapter 12, "A Search For Community," that shows how singularly successful Mormons in Utah were at building community in the West. It was a much different approach than that of the stereotypical pioneer family: "Rural life in the great open spaces of the trans-Mississippi West was filled with hard work, monotony, and often stultifying isolation." Not for the Mormons, who embraced hard work but not monotony or isolation. The resulting sense of community carried through to the extended Church of the 20th and 21st centuries.

I Know This Booklet Is True

In the Winter 2006 issue of Dialogue, Lavina Fielding Anderson has a short article on True to the Faith ("TTTF"), the doctrinal booklet published by the Church a couple of years ago. The contents of the booklet were subsequently posted online at LDS.org. She calls it "190 pages of what Mormons are supposed to believe, know, and do." I have described it as a long-delayed response to the notorious Mormon Doctrine. However described, it is a terribly useful little booklet, offering official comment on everything from Abuse, Addiction, and Adoption, to War, Welfare, and Zion.

Blog Resolutions

It's that time of year, time to reflect on what happened last year and to make ambitious plans for the coming year. Time to look at the blog and say ... can I do this for another year? Yeah, I think so. I'm encouraged by the nice feedback I have received from some readers lately; by the email inquiries I get on various Mormon questions from some visitors; and by the many interactions I have with Bloggernacle bloggers and commenters. So here are a few ideas for DMI for the year 2007.