Dave's Mormon Inquiry

Religion as a Learning Community

From David Ford's Theology: A Very Short Introduction:

Religions are learning communities which benefit from interactions with other learning communities, and they also need to cultivate their own educational institutions. There have been devastating consequences when religious communities have had negative attitudes to study, scholarship, and intelligent faith, or have failed to face intelligently major questions, discoveries, or developments. There have also been extraordinary achievements when intelligent faith, deep learning, and imaginative wisdom have come together.

The Mormon Index

A comprehensive bibliography? A portfolio of LDS-owned companies? No, it's a measure of food-storage activity by preparedness-minded Mormons, as revealed in a feature at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, "The Mormon Index is a rising sign of troubled economy."

Translation and Apologetics

There is a lot of Mormon apologetics out there, perhaps because there is a lot of Mormon criticism. It has gotten better over the years, but one still sees both good apologetics and bad apologetics. A post from a few weeks ago at Faith-Promoting Rumor that points up one difference between the good and bad sort is "Translation Styles and Book of Mormon Apologetics and Exegesis." The observation made in the post is that an author cannot shift between tight and loose translation styles to enhance her arguments as she moves from chapter to chapter or point to point.

Mormons and Restorationists

This is the second post drawing on E. Brooks Holifield's Theology in America: Christian thought from the age of the Puritans to the Civil War (see first post here). The broad themes Holifield draws from American religion in the 19th century -- a continuing quest for reasonableness and rationality, avoidance of theological "speculation," and appeals to internal and external "evidences" to support belief in God and the Bible -- are observed in the theological content and style of almost every American denomination. It is other factors that distinguish them from each other. Restorationists, those who would "return the Church to its primitive purity, return theology to the people, and return reason to theology," emerged as an identifiable movement in the early 19th century. Interestingly, Mormonism is not grouped with the Restorationists.

Quakers, Shakers, and Mormons

One approach to understanding early Mormonism and its doctrines is to compare it with other denominations of the same period. In E. Brooks Holifield's book Theology in America, Mormonism is covered in Chapter 16, "The Immediacy of Revelation," which also discusses two other movements that claimed new revelation as the basis for their theological innovations.

Doctrine and Politics

Here's a short quote from Richard Rorty's essay "Truth without Correspondence to Reality" for those who feel there is a tight link between politics and doctrine. Rorty uses the term "philosophy," but I think the same argument holds true for philosophy, theology, or doctrine.

It is unfortunate, I think, that many people hope for a tighter link between philosophy and politics than there is or can be. In particular, people on the left keep hoping for a philosophical view which cannot be used by the political right, one which will lend itself only to good causes. But there never will be such a view; any philosophical view is a tool which can be used by many different hands.

Originally posted with comments at Beliefnet.

The Mormon Community

I'm off visiting family for a few days, which brings with it the pleasure of browsing someone else's bookshelf. I came across Reflections on Mormonism: Judaeo-Christian Parallels (1978), one of the early volumes in the excellent monograph series from BYU's Religious Studies Center. The short and intriguing lead article is an essay by noted sociologist of religion Robert N. Bellah titled "American Society and the Mormon Community." Doctrine and history make for great discussion, but what the LDS Church really offers the sincere believer in our increasingly fragmented and disconnected society is a community. Not a sense of community or some mythical "church universal," but an actual, functioning community of fellow-believers — what Mormons often refer to as "the kingdom of God," a reference to the Church as an earthly and human institution, contrasted with "the kingdom of heaven," whatever comes later.