In 1546 1517 [Editor's note: let's hope this correction satisfies you nitpickers], Martin Luther posted his Ninety-Five Theses on the door of Castle Church in Wittenberg. Now it’s 2008, but theses—posted or unposted—are still a good thing to have. In conversations about Mormonism, I have encountered certain platitudes repeatedly. After hearing some of them for the last bearable time, I decided to write a couple of my own theses against ideas that threaten what I see as my religion.

Here is the first, posted in a doorless manner that Luther could only have dreamed about. (more…)

Last act, and then some other posts about other things entirely…

We also learn one more crucial lesson from love. This lesson is one that Shakespeare lets us learn from Helena and God lets us learn from worship. And it is this: throughout the play, Helena loves Demetrius. She starts by loving him for specific reasons, but when he abandons her and loves someone else, she persists. At first, this persistence seems childish and undignified. And it is; it really partly is. But there is something strange about Helena. Even after Puck hexes two desirable men (Lysander and Demetrius) into loving her—even after she believes everyone is mocking her and her friends abandon her—she still chooses Demetrius. She still loves him. Now, we could make a thousand arguments about why this is: perhaps she has no self-esteem, or is certainly irrational, or that her worship has made Demetrius into a false god. And in the beginning, Shakespeare does seem to be making fun of Helena’s childish professions (protestations) of love. But we also know that Helena used to love Demetrius and he used to love her back. And so, while her actions seem laughable or irrational to us they are rational to her—they proceed from a memory of a great trust and an ensuing and confusing separation. (more…)

But how does love help us to avoid deception? Specifically, how is religion’s commandment of love the physic for a quarantined perspective? Surely it isn’t just a flowers-and-bunny’s setup; there must be something in the nature of love that confronts the problem of knowledge.

It is interesting to note that Shakespeare respects fiction’s moral ambiguity and leaves things nice and complicated. (more…)

King Theseus comes closest to articulating the predicament when he tells his new wife (with shining condescension) that “The lunatic, the lover and the poet/ Are of imagination all compact.” These three perspectives are similar because they all see more than mere reason can; the first two are similar because they are capable of great deception and great insight. The poet, however, is a chronicler of deception: aware enough of his own to see others’. Poetry is the desired state of imagination because it is a fiction that makes the world more real; it is true enough to life that it becomes greater than it, out-perspectiving life in its awareness of perspective. But, interestingly, poetry is not the means to poetic perspective. Love is. And that is why Shakespeare has so much to teach us about Mormonism (or any religion) and that is why both religion and poetry, in their proper state, have so much to teach us about self-deception.

Good religion teaches us to be madmen and lovers, and then to write good poetry. (more…)

I said I would be talking about the relationship between conscience and self-deception, which is really a discussion about criticism and deception, since people with sharp consciences feel compelled to criticize in the name of truth. This is particularly true in religion—for our purposes, Mormonism—in which the subject of truth is paramount and people must criticize in order to preserve it. These critics are often hounded. They are told: lay off, be positive, drown critique in kindness. This poor kind of guidance led me to write posts on the importance of conscience, since it is clear that these directives ignore the very real task of judgment and belittle agency in favor of allegiance. But many advocates of conscience are similarly amiss. This crowd often equates integrity with questioning and conscience with critique, as if those things were secure and enough by themselves. They are right in the motives for critique, but they are often wrong in their method—more particularly, because of their confidence in their method. (more…)

The works of Ashley Sanders are the stuff of legend. She attended the Lord’s University and majored in philosophy and English. You may recognize her name as the organizer of last year’s alternative commencement. She now works with Sunstone and has a formidable blog of her own that might contextualize some of her guest posts. Quoth Ashley: “I am going to Middlebury bread loaf school of English for a master’s, and applying for a masters in activism and social change at the University of Leeds.” Welcome to our new guest!

Prologue

In my last few blogs at Project Deseret, I have been arguing for conscience as a birthright. But, as my friend George reminded me, “a defense of conscience must also answer the problem of deception”–more specifically, self-deception. He is right. Having created a post title that sounds like a cross between a Jane Austen novel and a Mormon tabloid, I will ply Shakespeare to reckon between perspicacity and perspective. An essay, in five acts. (more…)