Ray, the notion of cultural adaptations troubles me. It seems to assume there is something outside of culture which can find a means of adapting to culture. I wonder what can justify a claim that something is beyond culture. Can claims to divine origin? Only to the degree that the divine can stand continually outside of human activity. But that makes it unknowable. Otherwise we face power claims which prioritize themselves by removing issues from discussion. But that process is still within culture.

However all that academic stuff said I think I would like your stake’s Spanish branch. It sounds fun.

There is the old saying from Italian that to translate is to betray. Any process of translation involves a series of choices and accidents which only allow some meanings through and which create new meanings in the text in translation. As a result new Mormonisms are being created simply by taking the historical Church mostly found in the Mountain West and moving it to other milieus, whether urban US suburbia, Japan, Mexico City, or anywhere else.

Well gotta pack my bag to leave in a couple of hours for Lake Titicaca.

Even the notion that some things are essential and some not is a challenging assertion that attempts to make some things forms and the rest tokens.

David, I like this formulation. I’m just (at this embarrassingly late date) reading Talal Asad for the first time, and have been struck by his observation that even calling a particular set of practices “religion” already imposes an enormous set of preconceptions and unexamined assumptions on our observation of other cultures. It seems to me that teasing out these prejudices is particularly difficult and important, precisely because Mormon categories of belief and practice overlap in different ways than other traditions’.

Otoh, the Spanish Branch in our stake regularly starts 10-15 late, and the general noise level is much higher than that to which I am accustomed and enjoy. My initial judgment was to address those “concerns” - until it hit me that my perception was cultural and that the branch was FAR more successful statistically than any other unit in our stake. It became clear to me that what they were doing - the atmosphere and spirit that they were creating in that church family - worked for them, even if it seemed a bit dysfunctional to me.

I am fine with cultural adaptations that do not sacrifice doctrinal foundations. In this case, I’d rather put new wine in unique bottles than not be able to put the wine in any bottles at all.

The wrong taketh the truth to be hard?

On the Finnish words and the concept of presiding, that notion can only be expressed in language–despite more corporal ways of showing deference to presiding authorities. As a result an analysis of the words and their connotations and usages inside and outside of Mormonism would be important or helping us understand the different Mormonisms that are arriving of necessity in this time of correlation.

Something we were talking about Sunday: the Finnish word for president, presidentti, is only used to refer to the president of the country: its not used otherwise. And so President Monson is usually called profeetta Monson — Prophet Monson. Likewise, all church callings use the word ‘johtaja,’ leader, instead of president. So it’s a stake leader, a temple leader, etc. How that works with the concept of presiding as a doctrine is interesting.

Also, the increased importance of baby blessings to match up with the general cultural practice of infant baptisms within Lutheranism is interesting, but I’ve been contemplating a post on that.

PS. I will be glad to put into more ordinary English anything that does not make sense in my academese.

When I was a missionary in Bolivia I kept noticing how the “charlas”, as we called them, the missionary discussions, were nearly unintelligible to working class Bolivians, who were most of the people we taught, yet we were supposed to recite them word for word. I soon gave that up, I must admit in favor of trying to explain the concepts.

Catholics faced the same difficulty here in Peru. At one point the Church established a single set of authoritative writings in Quechua, which the clergy were supposed to use verbatim, if possible. The Quechua however was a code that no one really spoke. The Church chose to create its own language out of the diversity of Quechua to try to suggest something universal and fixed. Yikes. History repeats itself it seems.

The lay leadership is a source of syncretic re-elaboration of Mormonism, as are ordinary members.

The issue of the Christmas Tree reminds me of the figure ground problem and boundaries drawn. For the sister you sited the tree was Christian. For other Latter-day Saints, since it was also pagan in origin, it did not count. Why not an orange tree indeed? Let the new context rule here in inconsequentials.

This is the boundary between the two that is so significant and rich in meaning as it is created, challenged, and argued. Even the notion that some things are essential and some not is a challenging assertion that attempts to make some things forms and the rest tokens.

The name of a Wasatch Front culture is similarly a problematic notion like in Catholicism the notion of popular religion, in that it delegitimizes one kind of working of Mormonism in favor of others, in part to make Mormonism more transportable. No matter how done, these distinctions are always arguable, I think.

Nora, on the importance granted to the US, I hear you.