Dave's Mormon Inquiry

Sister Parkin on Service

For the Saturday afternoon session, I am highlighting newly-released RSP Sister Bonnie Parkin's talk on love, compassion, service, and all that. I will again add selected quotes from the new book Statements of the LDS First Presidency: A Topical Compendium ("FP Statements"; at Amazon here) as a way of investigating the sort of material included in that reference book.

Elder Bednar's Recipe for Spiritual Rebirth

For my Conference blogging, I'm going to highlight specific talks. In addition, I'm going to use the various topics to explore the new book Statements of the LDS First Presidency: A Topical Compendium (Signature, 2007), retailing for $23 at Amazon and which I'll refer to as "FP Statements." [The book was recently reviewed by J. Stapley at BCC.] To start things off, I'm going to look at Elder Bednar's talk on spiritual rebirth from the Saturday morning session (the pickle talk).

Slippery Rocks

Philosophy is a walk on the slippery rocks.
Religion is a light in the fog.
  -- Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians

So is theology more like philosophy or religion? Is it a walk on slippery rocks or a light in the fog? Is it the philosophies of men, mingled with scripture, or a reasoned inquiry seeking the principles that define spiritual truth? For an LDS view on this interesting question, go read the EOM article "Theology," authored by Louis C. Midgley, this week's online essay.

PoD: WHM at FMH

Post of the Day: Women in Church History, a guest post at FMH by Claudia L. Bushman. The post is a short essay that starts with this intriguing sentence: "One of our puzzles as Mormon women is where we fit into the Church." Sometimes FMH is a little "out there," but the recent posts in celebration of Women's History Month have been impressive. The interview with Carol Lynn Pearson, for example, which includes the provocative quote, "Well behaved women seldom make history." Well, neither do well behaved men, but I get the point. Boys can be boys, but girls are expected to behave.

Mormon Neo-Orthodoxy

Learn a new word and you suddenly see it everywhere. I post on modern theology and lament the lack of Mormon theology, then what do I bump into the next day but O. Kendall White, Jr.'s Mormon Neo-Orthodoxy: A Crisis Theology (Signature, 1986). Even better, the full text of the book is online and free. I'm going to read through it over the next week and invite you to read along.

Augustine Contra Fundamentalism

I'm about halfway through Francis Collins' The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence For Belief (2006). Collins is a brilliant geneticist who is also the head of the Human Genome Project. I checked the book out from the local library about six months ago but couldn't get into it at all. This time I'm actually listening to the CD version during the daily commute so there's nowhere to hide, and I'm enjoying it much more than I would have anticipated. Maybe God's Universe got me warmed up to scientific apologetics. Anyway, I'd like to share a choice quote that Collins offers from the sophisticated St. Augustine.

PoD: FARMS and Abraham

Post of the Day: FARMS: Abraham, Astronomy, and Cosmology by Jared* at LDS Science Review, giving short reviews of several essays from the FARMS book Astronomy, Papyrus, and Covenant. The full text of the book is available online; in fact, there are almost twenty online books now posted at the FARMS site. I guess FARMS finally decided that if lil ol' Signature could sponsor free online books, so could they. If you're keeping score at home, it's FARMS 18, Signature 16 (titles available online).

Modern Theology in One Easy Lesson

There's plenty of Mormon doctrine but very little Mormon theology (although SmallAxe at FPR feels differently). That's either good or bad, depending on what you think of theology. But if you're inclined to sample what theology has to offer modern Mormonism — or if you just want to understand modern Christianity a little better — it will be Christian theology you will turn to. Here are a few comments on modern theology (post-Enlightenment) based on material in the last four chapters of Roger E. Olson's History of Christian Theology: Twenty Centuries of Tradition & Reform. After a whirlwind summary, I'll add a couple of Mo apps.

New Blog

Either/Or is a Typepad blog run by PK and AML (for Angry Mormon Liberal), a husband and wife team. They intend Either/Or to be "a place to talk about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its influence in our lives, [and our] political, philosophical, social, and spiritual beliefs." Sounds interesting.

More on the Utah War

I recently attended a presentation on the Utah War by historian David Bigler. For background on the Utah War of 1857-58, see my earlier post; this post will give a few of the interesting details in Bigler's presentation that adds to the basic story. He called it the United States' "First Civil War" (although it was the Mormons' third war). My notes are a little sketchy; for more complete coverage, see his book Forgotten Kingdom: The Mormon Theocracy in the American West, 1847-1896, a history of 19th-century Utah that (I'm told) doesn't pull any punches.

PoD: Liminal Man

Post of the Day: Liminality by John at Mind on Fire, defining it as "a state of in-betweenness, of standing on a threshold, of transition." He notes, "There are liminal beings, people who don’t fit wholly in one category or stage or another." This is the sort of literary concept that applies everywhere once you get the hang of it. For example, John himself is a liminal man: "I seem to be doomed to be stuck in transitory states." For a related post on liminality, take a whack at On Isostasy (rhymes with apostasy but, as applied to membership, means liminality) by a guest poster at Pilgrim Girl.

The Utah War

I've got three posts lined up on the Utah War of 1857-58 and the unfortunate occurrence at Mountain Meadows. This post is a general overview that will be a set-up for the posts to follow. Here are two links that give excellent short essays on the Utah War: "The Utah War," an article by Richard D. Poll in the online Utah History Encyclopedia; and "Utah Expedition," also by Poll, from the Encyclopedia of Mormonism. A related article is "The LDS Reformation of 1856-57," by Paul H. Peterson, also from the Encyclopdia.

PoD: History and Faith

Post of the Day: History and Faith by Lynnette at ZD, asserting that "our faith is necessarily going to have historical content." Even more directly: "Our faith claims are closely tied up with our history." Echoing an idea I've come to agree with, Lynnette quotes Douglas Davies as writing that "history within Mormonism often plays the role occupied in other traditions by theology.” This insightful post inspired some quality discussion in the comments as well.

New LDS Photoblog

Here's a new blog featuring photos of Utah and the BYU campus: Onelowerlight's Daily Photo Safari. I downloaded the accompanying shot of a BYU quad as an example (yes, there's still a little grass left on campus). And you might enjoy the photos of Kelly's mission call party. It's about time someone did something a little different with a blog.

The Food of Truth

As I was surfing, looking for something to post (am I the only one who does this?), I ran across this GR post on the Pope's 130-page letter. Wow. It's hard to make heads or tails of it from media reports, but the super-sized letter itself isn't so opaque. It is technically an Apostolic Exhortation, which probably means something particular to informed Catholics. The subject of the letter is "the Eucharist as the source and summit of the Church's life and mission." It is directed "to the Bishops, clergy, consecrated persons, and the lay faithful." So it's not just to Catholic officials, it is (formally, at least) directed to Catholic laity. I'll offer one quote that caught my eye, calling the Eucharist (what Mormons call "the sacrament") "the food of truth."

PoD: How to (Not) Criticize the Church

Post of the Day: Criticizing the Church: A How To Guide by Liz at Spherical Chickens, offering advice from Hugh Nibley's essay "Criticizing the Brethren." A couple of pointers from Nibley: don't criticize, debate; get that beam out of your eye first; don't get stuck on trivia; and are you just trying to show off? On a similar theme, Anneke (new blogger!) at A Motley Vision posted Dissension in the Ranks, suggesting LDS art is mediocre because LDS critics don't offer enough criticism and LDS artists don't know how to use it when they get it.

A Mormon in the White House?

I plunked down $25 for an opening-day copy of Hugh Hewitt's A Mormon in the White House? 10 Things Every American Should Know About Mitt Romney. You can get it at Amazon for $18. I have no doubt it will be about ten times as insightful and relevant as the usual vapid campaign-year political biography. In the Introduction, Hewitt expresses his hope that, if Romney doesn't manage to get the nomination or the office, it's for policy stands or candidate gaffes but NOT because of his religion. At the same time, it's clear Hewitt, a 99.44% pure conservative, thinks Romney is a true conservative and has what it takes to sit in the big chair.

Posts of the Day

Mormonism and Philosophy by Clark at Mormon Metaphysics, quoting none other than Leo Strauss while offering a tentative explanation for why there is so little Mormon theology. Clark suggests (following Strauss) that whereas Christian dogma inclines practitioners of theology to acquire the tools of philosophy, Islamic and Jewish (and Mormon?) thinkers are instead directed to the methods and concepts of law. And speaking of law, you should also check out Mormon Jurisprudence and Apostasy by Steve at BCC, suggesting that LDS church court practice and procedure resembles that of continental civil law rather than Anglo-American common law.

Faith and Scholarship

I just read Professor Kent P. Jackson's article "Asking Restoration Questions in New Testament Scholarship," pages 27-42 in How the New Testament Came to Be, the published collection of the 2006 Sydney B. Sperry lectures (Deseret, 2006). It covers at greater length ideas later summarized in "Sacred Study," a short Jan. 6, 2007 Church News article by Jackson, examined at some length by Mogget at FPR in a three-part series (here, here, and here). I'm going to summarize Jackson's longer article and add a few personal observations.

Posts of the Day

Margaret Toscano's Theology: An Appreciation by JNS at BCC, arguing that Toscano's writings are an original and significant contribution to LDS theological discourse. A must-read companion post is My Mormon History by Toscano herself at FMH, offering her brief reflections on the challenges of being a female scholar of Mormon thought and culture (one of those challenges being her excommunication in 2000 for her published views on MIH, priesthood, etc.).

New Upgrades, New Blogs

Time to upgrade. I revamped the entire right sidebar: dropped Google ads, moved my lists of prior DMI posts to the bottom of the sidebar, and added a "New LDS Blogs" list to my blogroll section. The first three entries: Spherical Chickens, by a BYU English and Chem major; Enduring to the End, by an aspiring LDS writer and poet; and the Zach Jones Blog, by a history grad student who will be presenting a paper on LDS missionary work in 19th-century Finland at the upcoming MHA conference. Go say hi and leave a comment at these interesting new sites.

Oh, and I added Snap previews (after wrestling with Typepad's widget maker for the code). I can't yet tell whether they are useful or just annoying. Any feedback?

Universal Normalcy

Check out the new decor at Get Religion by reading "Perfectly Pedestrian Polygamists." The post reviews media coverage of a college basketball player's polygamous family. Interesting story, of course, but GR's focus is on how the media covers religion stories, and the point of the post is that, in the newspapers, everyone is normal. The more unconventional the relationship, the more "normal" the media will describe it. The GR post calls this "advocacy reporting." Interesting term. The media falls all over themselves this political season citing surveys and quoting conservative Christians that depict patriotic, monogamous Mormons as wacky pseudo-polygamous cultists. But when a real polygamist shows up in a story ... they're "normal."

Help me with some synonyms for "advocacy reporting." Biased reporting? Shallow reporting? Worthless reporting? I don't even bother to subscribe to a newspaper anymore. They just seem like a waste of paper to me.

Shadow of the Blogs

The Spring 2007 issue of Dialogue arrived yesterday. I notice an increasing number of references to familiar LDS weblogs and bloggers in the letters and articles in this issue. The shadow of the blogs is growing longer. Just one more reason for bloggers to subscribe.

I Wish to Thank ...

The 2006 Niblets have been posted — my thanks to those who kindly voted for DMI in the "best solo blog" category. ZD even posted graphical displays of the results, which makes me wonder why there wasn't a "best graphics" or "best images" category. Maybe next year. The upgraded-to-WordPress Mormon Wasp and the reliably green Mormanity, two of my favorite LDS weblogs, also scored well in the voting.

I celebrated by adding 50 pixels to my center column (from 400 to 450), so you will now get about 12% more words per vertical inch of screen. I managed to successfully recalibrate the placement of my banner image and the comment box. If I missed something, let me know.

Supreme Quorums

Just finished The Supreme Court: The Personalities and Rivalries That Defined America (2006) by Jeffrey Rosen, a law professor at GWU. The book is a companion volume to the recent PBS series of the same name which, somehow, I missed hearing about. Did anyone catch it? The book stands very nicely on its own (not true of all companion volumes) and focuses on how the personalities of some of the more notable justices on the Court contributed to their success (or undermined their efforts) to move the Court and the country in the direction of their view of the legal or social issues they championed. After a few summary remarks, I'll ask whether there are any parallels to our own ruling Quorum of the Twelve.