It’s a mistake to think that Mormonism is about Mormonism.
Category: News and Politics
Politics – Current Events – Media
Announcement: Faith & Knowledge Conference at UVa
THE FIFTH BIENNIAL FAITH AND KNOWLEDGE CONFERENCE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA FEBRUARY 27-28, 2015 The Faith and Knowledge Conference was established in 2006 to bring together LDS graduate students in religious studies and related disciplines in order to explore the interactions between religious faith and scholarship. During the past four conferences, students have shared their experiences in the church and the academy and the new ideas that have emerged as a result. Papers and conversations provided thought-provoking historical, exegetical, and theoretical insights and compelling models of how to reconcile one’s discipleship with scholarly discipline. In keeping with these past objectives, we invite graduate students and early career scholars in religious studies and related disciplines (e.g., women’s studies, philosophy, anthropology, sociology, history, literature, etc.) to join the conversation. We welcome proposals addressing historical, exegetical, and theoretical issues that arise from the intersections of LDS religious experience and academic scholarship. Final papers presented at the conference should be brief, pointed comments of ten to fifteen minutes. Please visit faithandknowledge.org for more information on themes and topics explored at previous years’ conferences. Proposals should include a paper abstract of no more than 250 words and a brief CV. Please submit proposals by November 7, 2014 to Christopher Jones at [email protected]. Notifications will be sent by November 22. The registration fee will be $25 for graduate students and $50 for early career scholars. For individuals whose paper proposals are accepted, hotel accommodations for…
The Body of Christ
“Is the church true?” This question is, I think, poorly posed. It seems ill-suited to the kind of existential burn that might compel me to ask it. It seems like a bad fit for what I’m after in a white-knuckled prayer.
Recommended NT Resources part 2: General and Reference (updated)
Many of these can be purchased in paper, kindle, or from Logos or Accordance. (I’m a big Logos user.) As with all my recommendations, take them with a grain of salt. I neither fully endorse nor vouch for everything said in these, but you will certainly learn and grow by reading them. Samples are often available from Amazon or Google books, and in some cases I’ve linked to others here or in the past. If you missed it, part 1 is here.
A Hypothesis for Columbus Day
1 Nephi 13:12 refers to Bartolome de las Casas. Discuss.
Our Prayers and God’s Messy Plans
I taught lesson 35 today, which covers Amos and Joel. As usual, I benefitted a great deal from Ben Spackman’s Patheos posts, and in particular his discussion of Amos 3:6 and Amos 3:7. The latter, of course, is the famous scripture we all learn in seminary: “Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets.” Ben included a short paper about the meaning of the word “sod” (“secret”) and its relation to the idea of a divine council. The word refers to both private discussion and the product of such discussions. The Old Testament is certainly rife with examples of the Lord involving mere mortals in His planning process and accepting their input. 30 Then he said, “May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak. What if only thirty can be found there?” He answered, “I will not do it if I find thirty there.” 31 Abraham said, “Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, what if only twenty can be found there?” He said, “For the sake of twenty, I will not destroy it.” 32 Then he said, “May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak just once more. What if only ten can be found there?” He answered, “For the sake of ten, I will not destroy it.” – Genesis 18:30-32 (NIV) This idea of a God who involves us not…
Meeting the Mormons
Imagine that the Meet the Mormons movie was made any time between, say, 1940 and 1990. I think we know almost exactly what it would have looked like:
I was a stranger, and ye took me in
These children, fleeing death and devastation, have come to us. Yes, caring for them will cost us time and money and effort, but not caring for them will cost us our compassion.
As Instructed
On Tuesday, Ally Isom, Senior Manager of Public Affairs with the LDS Church, encouraged listeners to have respectful conversations about their concerns with and faith in the Church.
Her 15 Minutes at an End: Ultra Violet dead at 78
Isabelle Collin Dufresne, known as Ultra Violet, died this morning after a battle with cancer. She was 78. Dufresne was perhaps the most famous Mormon artist that most Mormons haven’t heard of. But at the height of the Pop Art movement and Andy Warhol’s Factory, Ultra Violet was well known in the New York art scene, and she is still well remembered for her memoir of that time, Famous For 15 Minutes: My Years with Andy Warhol.
Boko Haram, 200 schoolgirls and us
The French president Francois Hollande is convening an international conference with the countries around Nigeria on the question how to deal with Boko Haram, Michelle Obama addressed the USA on the plight of the abducted schoolgirls: all through the western world the media react to this incident in North Nigeria. Last Saturday I gave an interview on Boko Haram for the national Dutch radio: the media have ‘discovered’ Boko Haram, and so have international politics. Of course the furor is completely justified, especially when the leader of Boko Haram, Abubakar Shekau, announced that he would sell the girls, either as prostitutes, forced brides or slaves. But, as always, there is a history to this, and maybe a moral. So I want to raise two questions here: how could this happen – the history of this brutal violence – and why do we react as we do at this very junction of time? And maybe a third question: how do we deal with this most vicious aspect of ‘the world’? A major study on Boko Haram, published by the African Studies Centre, Leiden, Netherlands. History first, very short, with my own involvement. As an anthropologist I have been researching the Kapsiki/Higi for over four decades now; the group I study is called Higi in Nigeria and Kapsiki in Cameroon, and lives in the Mandara Mountains 300 km. south of Lake Tchad, at both sides of the border between the two countries.…
Why I Watch Game of Thrones
Since Nathaniel mentioned Game of Thrones and why he doesn’t watch it in his wonderful post earlier this week, I thought I’d give you a few lines on why I do watch the series. Much ink has been spilled over the gratuitous sex and violence in Game of Thrones. I’ll admit that I roll my eyes over the fact that every conversation that can possibly take place whilst the person speaking (or at least someone else in the room) is having sex, does. Still, I think what tends to bother people even more is the sense that there are no boundaries to the terrible things that can happen in Game of Thrones. There is indeed a nightmarish quality to the experience of watching the series. The arbitrariness, the dawning realization that something awful will happen to your favorite character, if not in this episode, then in the next, is uncomfortable and unnerving. Who wants to allow this perverse story world of rape and senseless violence to inform his or her real worldview? However much we might dream of dragons or daring quests, the Seven Kingdoms as brought to us in stark and opulent detail by HBO are not a world we are remotely accustomed to or comfortable with inhabiting. It can all seem quite distant from our ordinary first world lives, where safety is the norm, the Rule of Law obtains, and most of the ghastly things that happen in Game of Thrones are thankfully remote,…
Some Thoughts on the Inevitable Failure of the Ordain Women Movement
It’s hard to know the future, but I will hazard a prediction: the Ordain Women project will fail. If I understand its ambitions correctly, Ordain Women would define success as an announcement that the prophet, having followed the invitation of these faithfully agitating sisters, has gone to the Lord and has received a revelation that women are to be ordained to the priesthood. I don’t know if women will ever be ordained to the priesthood, but I would be shocked if this was to happen while any institutional breath breathed in the Ordain Women movement. There are two reasons for this. The first is that for pragmatic reasons Church leaders do not want to change basic doctrines or practices in response to what they see as attempts to publically embarrass the Church over its basic doctrines and practices. Doing so creates an incentive for others to seek to publically embarrass the Church. I suspect that Church leaders also worry that changing basic doctrines and practices in the face of public pressure erodes the moral authority of the Church if it is seen as another institution that can be pushed about by savvy political operators. The second reason, I believe, is far more important. I think that the members of the Quorum of the Twelve and the First Presidency are utterly sincere in carrying out their callings. I think that they do not regard the Church as theirs. They do not…
Good news for Gene Schaerr
As reported by outlets including Above the Law, well-known LDS attorney Gene Schaerr is leaving his law firm for a new post at the State of Utah. His departure e-mail describes his new role as “defending the constitutionality of traditional marriage.” This certainly seems like a worthwhile endeavor. It would be terrible if male-female marriage (which is often described as “traditional marriage”) were found unconstitutional, barring straight folks from marrying. I have good news, though. A careful perusal of the Kitchen v. Herbert opinion reveals that male-female marriage remains completely constitutional in Utah. In fact, based on anecdotal reports, male-female marriages are still taking place in Utah, even after Judge Shelby’s court ruling, and apparently without triggering any constitutional crisis. It looks like traditional marriage is still constitutional in Utah. And since that’s the case, I guess we can all go home now. (Image: Wikicommons.)
Do exemptions from the ACA’s ‘contraception mandate’ threaten religious liberty?
In March, the Supreme Court will hear a pair of cases on whether for-profit employers can claim a religious exemption to the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that employer health plans cover contraceptives without any out-of-pocket expense because the use of contraceptives violates their owners’ religious beliefs. In a Washington Post op ed this week, Fred Gedicks, the Guy Anderson Chair at BYU Law School (and a prior T&S guest blogger), flips the case on its head, claiming that it is actually exemptions from the “contraception mandate” that pose a threat to religious liberty. The op ed briefly summarizes a journal article that Gedicks has co-authored in the forthcoming Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review. As Gedicks closes the op ed with an explicit appeal to his “minority faith,” I’m curious to what extent Gedicks’ line of reasoning resonates with other Mormons. In brief, Gedicks argues that “[e]xempting ordinary, nonreligious, profit-seeking businesses from a general law because of the religious beliefs of their owners would be extraordinary, especially when doing so would shift the costs of observing those beliefs to those of other faiths or no faith. The threat to religious liberty, then, comes from the prospect that the court might permit a for-profit business to impose the costs of its owners’ anti-contraception beliefs on employees who do not share them by forcing employees to pay hundreds of dollars or more out-of-pocket each year for contraception and related services that should be covered…
A Look at the Political Affiliations of Some Prominent Members
A friend recently drew my attention to a new website that catalogs Utah voter registration data in a searchable format that was purportedly purchased from the Herbert administration. After checking the voter registration data of a few friends and acquaintances, I thought it would be interesting to identify the party registrations of some prominent members of the Church. Any other fun finds to add to the list? First Presidency Thomas S. Monson, registered Republican Henry B. Eyring, registered Republican Dieter F. Uchtdorf, unaffiliated voter Quorum of the Twelve Boyd K. Packer, registered Republican L. Tom Perry, registered Republican Russell M. Nelson, registered Republican Dallin H. Oaks, registered Republican M. Russell Ballard, registered Republican Richard G. Scott, registered Republican Robert D. Hales, registered Republican Jeffrey R. Holland, registered Republican David A. Bednar, unaffiliated voter Quentin L. Cook, unaffiliated voter D. Todd Christopherson, unaffiliated voter Neil L. Anderson, registered Republican Relief Society General Board Linda K. Burton, unaffiliated voter Carole M. Stephens, registered Republican Linda S. Reeves, registered Republican Others Gary E. Stevenson (Presiding Bishop), registered Republican H. David Burton (former Presiding Bishop), registered Republican Steven E. Snow (current Church historian), registered Democrat Larry Echohawk (general authority, former Obama cabinet member), unaffiliated voter Sheri Dew (CEO of Deseret Book), registered Republican Marlin K. Jensen (emeritus general authority), unaffiliated voter Cecil O. Samuelson (President of BYU), unaffiliated voter Bronco Mendenhall (BYU Football Coach), registered Republican Thurl Bailey (former NBA star), registered Republican Donny Osmond (singer/actor), registered Republican Robert Kirby (Salt Lake Tribune…
Same-Sex Marriage Bans and Tax
The District of Utah has had a busy week. As I’m sure you heard (and if you haven’t, you ought to read Kaimi’s post first), Utah’s ban on same-sex marriage has been struck down as unconstitutional. A week ago, in the wake of the decision that didn’t actually legalize polygamy, I looked at the potential tax consequences of that decision and, fairly anti-climatically, determined that there were none. Plenty of electrons will be spilled going over this decision but, again, I suspect that the tax consequences will be underexplored.
Decriminalizing Polygamy (and, of Course, Tax)
On Friday, December 13, the Judge Waddoups, a district court judge in the District of Utah, held that Utah’s criminalization of polygamy was unconstitutional. Partly, anyway.
More on that in a minute. I suspect that this opinion will reverberate throughout the blogosphere and the mainstream media, with the reporting displaying various levels of accuracy. The question I suspect won’t get much play, though, is, what are the tax consequences of this decision?
Happy(?) Repeal Day!
The Twitters tell me that 80 years ago today, Utah became the 36th state to ratify the 21st Amendment, thus ending Prohibition.
Whatever you think about Prohibition, it’s probably worth noting the Pres. Grant was not a fan of its end. In fact, he addressed the end of Prohibition—and Utah’s role in ending it—at General Conference in 1934. Here’s an (annotated by me) excerpt of what he said:
Money for Nothing and the Housing for Free
On Thursday, November 21, the district court of the Western District of Wisconsin declared (part of) the parsonage exemption—a special tax provision for certain religious persons—unconstitutional.
Complicity
It’s one thing to know that what you are witnessing is wrong; it’s another thing altogether to know what to do about it. I do know that inaction is often taken as tacit approval, and I do not want to be guilty of the sin of complicity
A Canning Statement from the Church
Given the rumors circulating about closing canneries and the reasons for doing so, Times and Seasons asked the Church’s PR department for a statement and received the following: The Church is not closing canneries and is not limiting the variety of goods available to Church members. Over time, we will be reducing the number of facilities where the packaging of dry goods occurs. Instead, Church home storage centers will offer the same or additional commodities in pre-packaged form, at no additional cost.
An Overview of LDS Involvement in the Proposition 8 Campaign
I’ve just posted my article, ‘The Divine Institution of Marriage’: An Overview of LDS Involvement in the Proposition 8 Campaign, to SSRN. The article is largely descriptive, setting out in some detail the church’s actions and statements relating to Proposition 8. It chronicles a significant amount of factual material that has not been discussed at all in the existing legal literature. It may be especially relevant to people who have an interest in Proposition 8, same-sex marriage issues, gay rights issues generally, or LDS church issues generally. The full abstract is as follows: “The Divine Institution of Marriage”: An Overview of LDS Involvement in the Proposition 8 Campaign The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS or Mormon church) was heavily involved in the passage of Proposition 8 in California in November 2008, which restricted marriages recognized under state law to those between a man and a woman (as construed by the California Supreme Court, it prospectively denied legal sanction for same-sex marriages while not interfering with such marriages previously recognized under state law). Church members participated in the Proposition 8 campaign a variety of ways, including extensive fundraising and various publicity efforts such as door-to-door get-out-the-word campaigns. Statements by the church and its leaders were a central part of the LDS Proposition 8 strategy. The church issued three official statements on Proposition 8, which combined theological and religious content with specific political, sociological, and legal claims. For instance,…
This Sunday’s Sacrament Meeting
As a child in the 80s, I remember often feeling a low-level dread. Not constant, not to the extent that it interfered with enjoying life, but the dread of a Cold War child that, any minute, the happy world I lived in might be destroyed in a hail of nuclear fire.[fn1] It didn’t have anything to do with my parents, who didn’t spend any significant amount of time talking about the risk of all-out war. And I don’t recall talking about it at school or at church. But it kind of underlay the culture, emerging not infrequently from the 6:00 news. And then, of course, in 1989, that fear began to crumble. Sadly, fear returned in 2001, and we (meaning, myopically, we in the United States) now live lives of heightened awareness of tragedy, awareness that a person with a bomb or a gun can emerge in the most unexpected places and shatter the peace that we enjoy. I don’t want to comment on the tragedy in Boston; like many people, I’ve watched it in impotent sadness on Twitter and other places on the web. I mourn for those who have been hurt or killed, who have lost friends and loved ones, but I don’t have anything helpful or insightful to bring to the table.[fn2] I do, though, have one request to Sacrament meeting speakers on Sunday: please don’t talk about the bombing. Or at least, please don’t talk about…
An April 15th Post
Sorry, Murphy
Despite a heartfelt campaign led by his children, LDS baseball star and former Massachusetts Boston Mission President Dale Murphy was not inducted into the baseball Hall of Fame, according to the results announced this afternoon. While that result was expected, the fact that fellow Mormon Jack Morris was also not selected was almost as suprising as the fact that the BBWAA selected none of the eligible players this year. The group last failed to add any players to the Hall of Fame in 1996.
Facebook Memes and the Property Tax
There is, I’ve been told, a Facebook meme going around, juxtaposing a decaying house and the San Diego temple to support the argument that churches should not be exempt from taxation.
And, like Facebook memes everywhere, this one is dumb. Dumb primarily because it is a tautology that doesn’t say anything. Because of course a tax-exempt organization does not pay taxes that a non-exempt individual pays. That’s pretty much the definition of tax exemption.
Of course, saying that a Facebook meme is dumb and tautological makes for a pretty short and boring post. Far more interesting, imho, is to take seriously the point that the people spreading the picture are trying to make, and complicating that rhetorical picture a little bit.
Elected Mormon Politicians
The recent elections included some changes in the Mormons holding elective office around the country, but overall not a lot of change. We still have about the same number of Mormons in the U.S. Congress. The areas where a lot of Mormons are in state government still have a lot in state government. But some of the areas where there were few Mormons serving in elected office lost the few that they had. In the end, Mormon politicians ended up more concentrated.
Quick Mormon Election Results
Here are the results so far for Mormon candidates running for the U.S. Congress. I will have complete results for all races in the next few days, as they become available. Please let us know your thoughts and about any aspects of the elections that you though important:
Mormons in the Running
With the election approaching on Tuesday, I’ve been racing to put together a rundown of the candidates who are Mormon around the country. I know that Kay Atkinson King has done an extensive series on BCC going over the congressional elections, but I think that my summary below has a few additional pieces of information, including both state level elections and information on a few candidates who aren’t actually Mormon but who have significant Mormon connections or were once Mormon — a status that we will probably see more in the future.