Dave's Mormon Inquiry

Knowing Versus Doing: Those Ignorant Americans

I'm just starting Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know — and Doesn't, by Stephen Prothero, chair of the religion department at Boston University and author of the highly regarded book American Jesus. The book forces us to confront the question: Just how ignorant is the average American? [That's a dangerous question to ask in an election year.]

A Little Less Politics On Campus

BYU NewsNet has a detailed article summarizing the newly revised BYU policy concerning political activities on campus and political involvement by BYU faculty, staff, and students. [Hat tip: ASA.] There are also stories on the revised policy at the Deseret News and the SL Trib. If anyone has a link to the full text of the revised policy, please post it in the comments.

Things Evangelicals Don't Like To Talk About

One of them is the Baptist doctrine of submission. A couple of pointed posts by LDS women who certainly do not share the Baptist view of submission are "Huckabee is a Chicken Patriarch" at Feminist Mormon Housewives, and "Follow-up on Huckabee and 'Chicken Patriarchy'" at Zelophedad's Daughters. The Bloggernacle features entire blogs full of women who don't share the Baptist view of submission. In fact, I think it is fair to say that, apart from the CES and a few hundred octogenarians scattered along the Mormon Corridor, the entire LDS Church rejects the Baptist view of submission.

Deseret News Blog Feature

The Deseret News posted "Today on the Bloggernacle" at its online site, with links to five LDS weblogs. It looks like this may be a recurring feature at the DN website -- just another incentive for bloggers to put up quality material and be recognized with a link or two. It's not the cover of Rolling Stone, but it's something.

Anyone with more information on this feature is welcome to post it in the comments. New visitors who followed the link from the Deseret News to this weblog (or other weblogs) are welcome to say hello and share comments. By the way, I'm Dave and this is my weblog.

The Moral Law Within

No doubt Kant would be genuinely surprised that science has had an easier time exploring "the starry heavens above" than comprehending "the moral law within." But progress is being made. For this week's online essay, go read Steven Pinker's article "The Moral Instinct," a long essay published in the New York Times (hat tip: Concurring Opinions). As posted, it has 8 segments to it, but I finally discovered the "one page" and "print" options in a small box at the top of the first page -- very nice. Thank you NYT.

Highlights

I re-added a dynamic list pulled from my Bloggernacle Hightlights feed to the right sidebar, which is just a display of the posts I tag as "share" from my Google Reader. I also updated my Google Reader by adding the 20 or so newer LDS blogs from the sidebar. I try to favor solo blogs when I tag posts for the Highlights feed, but those group blogs just put up so many interesting posts ... By the way, there's a nice post over at Blognitive Dissonance talking about the handy Google Reader and its share function. Mine is a public feed (see here), so anyone who is clever can add it to their own sidebar. [Hint: right click for "View Source" and just copy the code in my sidebar.]

Gladys Knight and Mormon Music

I'm slowly working my way through Terryl Givens' People of Paradox: A History of Mormon Culture (OUP, 2007). Chapter 13 is on music and dance in the 20th century. There's plenty to work with, from the Choir to the Osmonds to Saturday's Warrior (the first of the Mormon pop musicals). But what really caught my attention was the paragraph on Gladys Knight's Saints Unified Voices ("SUV") choir.

Mean Mr. Romney

Politics just ain't what it used to be. Here's a headline from a Reuter's article on Thursday's Republican debate in South Carolina: "Romney Attacks McCain at Republican Debate." What'd he do, throw a chair at him? Call him nasty names? No, here's what the article said he said:

I know that there are some people who think, as Sen. McCain did, he said, you know, some jobs are leaving Michigan and they're not coming back. I disagree. I'm going to fight for every single job, Michigan, South Carolina, every state in this country, we're going to fight for jobs and make sure our future is bright.

Bushman on Mormon Women

Claudia Bushman presented on "Lives of Mormon Women" a couple of years ago at the FAIR Conference, which posted the talk online. It's a good piece for my online essay of the week, a remarkably even-handed summary of the the female half of the LDS Church circa 2006. One thing she notes is the rise of the single LDS woman:

In the congregations in New York City, there are many beautiful, charming, intelligent, amazingly talented single women doing good things, taking their lives seriously. But at church every Sunday they hear lessons that talk of the glories of marriage. We have to recognize that these exceptions are becoming the mainstream. The world is changing and so is the Church.

A New Christian Apologetics?

A website called Christian Manifesto posted an inteview with Dr. Andrew Jackson, author of the new book Mormonism Explained: What Latter-day Saints Teach and Practice. After noting that he found LDS missionaries and bishops to be a poor source of reliable information about Mormon beliefs, he gave this promising response:

I ended up leaning on Steven Robinson, Robert Millet, a few of the new Mormon scholars who have been interacting with evangelicals as of late, and the writings of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young for source material. I found that there are really two streams of Mormonism, which I explain a little in my book.

The Poetic Gospel of the Newsroom

The LDS Newsroom just posted a remarkable new commentary piece, The Mormon Worldview. In church it would be called "the plan of salvation," but the PR team has upgraded the lingo to make the message understandable for the rest of the world, and even for journalists. The PR department isn't Correlation — they don't actually change the doctrine — they just use different words and images to convey the message. And they have produced a truly admirable verbal upgrade in this latest post.

A Flood of New Blogs

In the wake of Elder Ballard's "Proclamation on New Media" (I'm sure that's what later generations will call it) I have noticed a lot of new LDS blogs and bloggers. Welcome to the neighborhood, everyone. No sidebar list can possibly keep up, but I'll post the 15 blogs that presently appear on my "Newer LDS Blogs" list (right sidebar, 8 clicks down), many of which are "Ballard blogs." Anyone with a new blog that isn't on my list is welcome to post a link in the comments.

The Keystone Metaphor

This is my first post on this year's Book of Mormon curriculum. LDS.org posts the course manual. Lesson 1 includes material on the keystone metaphor, as well as handy links to most of the scriptures referred to in the lesson. I'll try to post once a week on a topic related to the lesson for the week. The topic of this post is the keystone metaphor, based on a statement by Joseph Smith: "The Book of Mormon [is] the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of our religion" (HC 4:461). My main point is this: It's just a metaphor!

A Must-Read Essay on Mormonism

For a long overdue online essay of the week, you simply must go read the New York Times Magazine essay on Mormonism and politics, "What Is It About Mormonism?", by Noah Feldman, a Harvard law prof. First line: "Our post-denominational age should be the perfect time for a Mormon to become president, or at least the Republican nominee." Ah yes, it should be, shouldn't it?

Essential Differences

I recently read The Essential Difference: The Truth About the Male and Female Brain (Basic Books, 2003) by Simon Baron-Cohen, professor of psychiatry at Cambridge University. Anyone interested in the source and nature of gender differences (i.e., everyone) will find this an interesting book, and people with an interest in understanding autism are particularly encouraged to find a copy and read it.

Canada's Thought Police

From the New York Post:

Celebrated author Mark Steyn has been summoned to appear before two Canadian judicial panels on charges linked to his book “America Alone."

The book, a No. 1 bestseller in Canada, argues that Western nations are succumbing to an Islamist imperialist threat. The fact that charges based on it are proceeding apace proves his point.

Reassuring thought for the day: No matter who wins the election, at least we're not Canada.

The Blessings of Democracy in Kenya

Over 300 people have died due to violence in the wake of Kenya's Dec. 27 presidential election. But the SL Trib reports that LDS missionaries in the area are safe and accounted for. It adds, "In similar volatile situations, such as a 2002 prison uprising in Bangu, Brazil, LDS officials typically require missionaries to stay inside their apartments and discontinue all proselytizing activities until peace has been restored." Yes, I think missionaries in Kenya should stay inside their apartments for a few days. And they should forego any efforts to teach young men carrying machetes until, say, after Easter. For more details on what it's like to lose an election in Kenya (or to win one, for that matter) read this post at Get Religion.

Book of Mormon Word Counts

Gospel Cougar has posted a list of Book of Mormon word counts ... in a single blog post. Yes, it is a list of about 3500 words found in the Book of Mormon (just eyeballing it), along with the number of occurences. There are actually two lists, one alphetical and one sorted by frequency. This entry alone saved the Gospel Cougar blog from my end-of-year sidebar culling (sorry, these things must be done from time to time). The word "and" appears 16,321 times. "Lamanites" appears 693 times, while "Christ" appears 382 times. The most popular z-word is "Zarahemla" at 148. You can have a lot of fun with this tool.

A Pleasant Surprise

It seems 2008 has delivered its first miracle -- the new Joseph Smith manual. Who would have thought that a correlated manual could actually be interesting? That's doubly rewarding as the new Joseph Smith manual will be with us for two years. A short write-up with several striking illustrations is posted online at the Church News. I'll add a few things I noted while browsing through the manual on Sunday afternoon.