Yesterday, we had a combined Relief Society-Priesthood meeting during the third hour where the local directors of the Washington-British Columbia Service Mission came to explain Service Missions and troll for participants. Service Missions are, I think, one of the most important developments in the Church since correlation. (more…)
In my cultural history work on Mormonism, I often encounter contemporary critics attempting to assess just what the Mormons were claiming. Often, critics were so angry that all they could sputter was that the Mormons were strange sectarians and were headed for hell. These critics are also notorious for misinformation. One Methodist critic from 1842 seems to have aptly understood the nature of Mormonism, even though he hated it. (more…)
In reviewing PBS’ The Mormons (to be aired on Monday and Tuesday evening this week), the Mormon church-owned Deseret News is fairly positive, considering it a balanced portrayal of a complicated faith. However, (more…)
The first time I heard a Catholic friend refer to a fellow parishioner as a cafeteria Catholic, I had to have the term explained to me. It was used as a mild pejorative, and in a way that was meant to convey disapproval for someone who was perceived to be picking and choosing which doctrines and practices of the church to accept, in the way one would go through a cafeteria line selecting some dishes and rejecting others.
I have now also heard people talk about cafeteria Mormons, and I’ve wondered if it is legitimate for us to borrow the term. I have concluded that it is not. In the first place, it lacks the catchy alliteration the Catholics get. But there is a larger, more important reason, and it is one of the great secrets of the church. Lean in closer, and I’ll whisper in your ear.
Psst! We are ALL cafeteria Mormons. (more…)
I will confess that this time I have the question. I am eager to ensure that my historical writing includes female perspectives and experiences rather than simply charting the course of Joseph Smith’s thought. In my current treatment of early polygamy for a larger cultural history project, I currently have a great deal of primary evidence that polygamy was seen as an index of power, both in life and more importantly in death. This sense of power and afterlife gravitas is quite clear from the writings of the men involved.
I’m wondering who knows about contemporary accounts that demonstrate the women feeling empowered by it, that they somehow participated in the afterlife gravitas, or was it for them primarily the security of a patriarchal association that could persist indefinitely (which would be the argument from silence on the basis of my current findings)? (more…)
Austria has many charms. PBS is not one of them. Having an insatiable desire to watch The Mormons, I invite kind, DVR/DVD-R savvy BCC readers to email me: ronan at jhu dot edu. I’d be very grateful. As a token of thanks: Austrian chocolate.
VP Cheney’s speaks at BYU’s commencement later today (at 4pm). At noon BYU students and faculty demonstrated in a ““Go Forth - Establish Peace†rally. It was held at the west entrance to campus, at the “Enter to Learn - Go Forth to Serve” sign.
In general, it was focused on peace. The most prominent signs were 10’ tall scrolls with Peace written in 28 languages. Some of the other signs were:
“Support this: “Therefore, Renounce war and proclaim peace. D&C 98:16â€
“If we’re going to fight a war, let it be a war on povertyâ€
“1/2 the world lives on less than $2 a dayâ€
There were a few signs that targeted Cheney such as, “Was it Divine Inspiration to Vote Bush/Cheney… just Temporary Insanity.†(more…)
Like any other subscriber, I have my first glimpse of each new, freshly printed issue of Dialogue only when it arrives in my mailbox. As editor, I have of course read everything in it perhaps a dozen times already. So I give it a final quick check for errors and, hopefully finding none, set it aside. But when a copy of Sunstone arrives in my mailbox, I soon find time to settle down for a pleasant session of seeing what Dan Wortherspoon and his crew have come up with this time. It’s always a stimulating experience.
For example, in the latest issue of Sunstone, March 2007, I find a brief notice of a new book by Vern G. Swanson, titled Dynasty of the Holy Grail: Mormonism’s Sacred Bloodline, which asserts “that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and that Joseph Smith is a direct descendant of that couple†(77). That is a doctrine that continues to startle me even though I can’t even remember how long ago it was when I first encountered it. I don’t think I am bothered by the Jesus/Mary Magdalene marriage business so much as by the direct descendant idea. It seems we Mormons have a need to magnify the Prophet by anointing him with a genetic relationship to Jesus that the rest of us don’t have. (more…)
I was thinking about you the other evening. Manchester United and AC Milan were playing soccer on the TV. It was a great game. I enjoyed it. During halftime I fired up the interwebs and saw that 9 US soldiers had died in Iraq. ‘Oh well,’ I thought, and continued watching the game.
Then it it hit me. Young men my age are sacrificing their lives for their country whilst I get to chomp my Ikea crispbreads and enjoy the footie. It’s not fair.
Not fair for people like me, I mean. (more…)
Tears have not always come easily to me. I remember being at my grandfather’s funeral when I was 14, feeling miserable and wishing I could cry but not being able to summon tears. It had little to do with feeling too manly: my testosterone-overload of a football coach cried before and after every game, while my incredibly sensitive and caring father has cried only once in my presence. In my late 20s, a clutch of tragedies befell people I knew well, and I found I had acquired the ability. And now I can’t stop. (more…)
Do Mormon women hold the priesthood? For the majority of Latter-day Saints, the answer is an obvious no: women do not hold the priesthood. For me, the answer is an intellectually frustrating “maybe, yes, no, dunno.” In part, I have found Quinn’s research compelling: clearly there was some sense in the 19th century that temple-endowed Mormon women were part of the “priesthood” (see also J. Stapley’s thoughts). There’s also the rather practical realisation that if Mormon women can dress in the robes of the priesthood, wear the priesthood garment, and enact the rites of the priesthood, they are quite obviously “priests” (see Compton).
On the other hand, it is not clear to me that the 19th century use of the term “priesthood” has an equivalent in modern Mormonism (let alone in wider religious theory). Just because Mormon women could be members of an Anointed Quorum, for example, does not mean that they held the “priesthood” in any sense that would be meaningful for us today. Also, it’s rather obvious that priesthood or no, women are not ordained to priesthood office. For me, I believe there is “a priesthood” available to Mormon women, but I don’t quite know where to situate it and we would need an authorised clarification in order to better understand it.
One thing Quinn has written particularly catches my eye. He suggests that the lack of ordination of women, and the separation of Mormon womens’ “priesthood” from the bureaucratic function of the church may, in fact, be a useful thing: (more…)
Every year for Earth Day, I give up a bad habit, some indulgence I love, for my good old friend, the Earth.
It’s like Lent for me and the Earth is Jesus, except the earth never gives me an Easter, resurrection, or the day I can finally go back to my old self again. It’s rough, but somehow I manage in giving these up permanently.
This year, I’ve decided to (more…)
I attended a wonderful funeral this week, wonderful in the sense the Puritans would have intended, a dramatic and frightening occurrence that connected participants to God, both his power and his grace.
WXRT, Chicago’s premier alternative rock station, does a “Saturday Morning Flashback” each week. Today they are focusing on 1976, the year I graduated from high school. Hearing Blue Oyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear the Reaper” immediately brought my mind back to my youth growing up in DeKalb, IL. The following is a (slightly edited) memoir of what it was like for me to grow up in the branch there, later a ward, which I wrote for a Ward reunion almost a decade ago. My hope is that others will similarly share reflections of how the wards of their youth shaped them. (more…)
This is an illustration of my bad habit of assuming that people of course already know what I know when responding to questions. (more…)
I have a confession to make. I am the chief mind behind the weblog, The Ironic Priesthood. It was a relatively short-lived anonymous humor site that made fun of the BYU Daily Universe and occasional mega-threads in the bloggernacle. I started it for the reason that I believe most people start such things: I was tired of seeing the same old arguments and I figured that I would lampoon the elements of those arguments that I found most ridiculous. Or sometimes I would see something that I thought was silly or incredibly wrong-headed and I would want to try and show why with humor. In any case, it was a project that consumed most of my last summer and then I got too busy to work on it anymore.
(more…)
Patrick Mason is one of our newest Dialogue guests. He may or may not be related to one of our permabloggers.
Priesthood organization isn’t a very sexy topic. I mean, who really gets excited about the reorganization of the Quorums of the Seventy? When BCC readers get all starry-eyed about Joseph Smith, it’s usually for his metaphysics, or his radical challenge to individualism and market capitalism, or something along those lines. The architecture of priesthood government? Yawn. Somebody wake me up with a little King Follett Discourse (or KFD, as the kids say). (more…)
Whatever else he intended by his comment, I doubt Richard Dutcher was hoping to provide fodder for my blog posts. Nevertheless, Richard’s spiritual journey away from orthodox Mormonism has caused me to reflect on a question that I ponder from time to time: From an LDS perspective, is it heretical to believe that God might have a plan for at least some of His children that entails something other than their joining (or staying a member of) the LDS Church?
(more…)
Those of you lucky enough to be in Salt Lake City this weekend should check out an opening at the David Ericson Gallery. My friend Nathan Florence has a solo show opening there, with an Artist Reception on Friday (April 20) from 6-9. He is a fine fellow, and terrific painter–go see!! Details, and some of Nathan’s work at his website.
There is a post up at Feminist Mormon Housewives that discusses the Kathy Sierra saga and draws lines between “benevolent sexism” and “violent misogyny.” To some degree, whenever I encounter posts like that, my response is always “and…?”
Humans are ethical animals and, as a result, we make value judgments all the time. We all do it. We argue that there are superior and inferior modes of address, dress, behavior, thought, emotion, and so forth. That there are particularly virulent versions (violent misogyny, racism, etc.) doesn’t stop all of us from using milder forms of discrimination. We all judge; it is what we do.
(more…)
Having decided that BCC needs more sauna-talk, M. Norbert Kilmer, our resident Yank-in-Finland, has been permablogged.
Yip Yip!
With Sam’s recent post on alternative therapies in the Mormon corridor, I can’t help but think of our progenitors and their approach to healing. Many in the 19th century hierarchy championed Thomsonian remedies, but even with the professionalizing of Deseret’s medical arts during the latter part of that century, the Saints had great faith in the healing properties of consecrated oil. (more…)
My friend Lloyd is 78 years old. He is English but has lived in the Baltic region since the early 60s, a widower since 1992. He is a complicated man with some major moral flaws, but I adore him, and he is a part of our family. We have lunch together regularly, he often comes to our home in the evening, and when I have time I join his oldtimers’ cafe newspaper reading group. (more…)
In light of recent conversations I’ve had relating to the Mormon culture region (MCR), I wanted to pose a question to the Blogdom. I have been impressed on my encounters here in the MCR to what extent the faith necessary to accommodate golden plates and resurrected angels has been sufficiently strong to encompass other exciting intellectual assertions, like the healing efficacy of silver, the restorative power of chiropraxy (so much more than a backrub but so much less than a religion), and the enormously tempting lucre of nutraceuticals and “health drinks.” MCR Mormons seem to love what is now termed Complementary-Alternative Medicine (CAM) in the canon of social science. (more…)
I was talking to Jay yesterday about Keith Merrill’s response to this talk from Richard Dutcher, and for the millionth time, I noted how utterly incomprehensible it is to me that people could see Dutcher’s work as unsupportive of faith or religious devotion, or in any way detrimental to the church or its members. In my experience, Dutcher’s films are so very supportive of both our community and its faith that I find Merrill’s response to Dutcher’s work utterly mystifying. (more…)
When I was in the second grade, I entered and won the school Reflections contest. A blue ribbon and a silver dollar. My story was called The Frost Princess and it was about a land perpetually in summer. The sun was always shining, the flowers were in constant bloom, everyone was perfectly happy. Contrary to what you’d expect, the trees and bees and flowers couldn’t take it anymore. They were exhausted by all the upbeatness of summer. They complained to their local princess, every land has one, and she said she knew of a special princess that could help them out. The Frost Princess. After much begging, the Frost Princess finally came and offered winter to the flowers and the trees. She told them they would die a little bit, that it would be cold and snowy and some of them wouldn’t make it through, but summer was so hot and happy that everyone chose winter. Winter came on all the land and the trees and flowers and grass finally got to rest in the cold, snow-covered ground.
At age 8, I believed that I won because each word (word!) was written in a different magic marker color but now I think I must have struck a nerve with some frazzled Mormon PTA mom, longing for a rest. (more…)
Here’s a dozen thoughts I had the other night, working as a veil worker: (more…)
I was looking for someone’s name in one of my old journals and starting skimming; I came across this entry:
Feb. 7 1997
Last night was stake priesthood. A farce. First talk starts with ten virgins and prodigal son and uses them to say we should be careful with our resources. Is that what Christ meant? Hmm. Then talked about 401Ks and mortgages and whatnot. Very practical I guess. Next was the importance of appearances. White shirts! Get your haircut! No references to scripture. Then came how Christlike attributes will make you more successful in your career, and some advice on career planning for boys. Apparently Monson doesn’t care for basket weaving [1]. Last was an appeal for more fast offerings. No problem, but not spiritual. I can’t believe I dragged [named some YM] there. Like a bad joke by Mencken [2], or from a Sinclair Lewis novel. These are not my people [3]. Weren’t we supposed to consider the lilies?
[1] I think this obscure statement was responding to an anecdote about President Monson, but I don’t recall.
[2] H.L. Mencken: ‘Perhaps the most revolting character that the United States ever produced was the Christian businessman.’
[3] This is a phrase that runs throughout my journals when talking about the church. It’s from a Joe South song.
Where is Ernest Wilkinson when we need him most, him and his supernal gift of utterly crushing all forms of activism and youthful dissent? Not content with protesting Dick Cheney’s impending commencement speech, a gang of hoodlums — dare I say, ne’er-do-wells — has now invited Ralph Nader to speak at an “Alternative Commencement.”
What is going on here? Is this the BYU from some alternative universe? Will they serve ocat ojavan, that inverted flatbread delicacy? Also attending: Bizarro Superman and Lyndon LaRouche.
(Just kidding, folks. I think this is a provocative, interesting idea — even if Nader isn’t the most prestigious alternative in the world, it’s still pretty fun.)
