Year: 2005

Holy Men and Hucksters

This post is ostensibly by way of reminding our Southern California readership that it’s not too late to catch the last day of the Claremont Conference on Joseph Smith. It’s also an excuse for me to ruminate on the ever-engaging question of what sixteenth-century blogging might have looked like had they, you know, invented computers and the internet and everything. Here’s a possibility:

Bloggernacking

A few recent highlights: -Lisa at FMH writes a Feminist Polygamy Manifesto — don’t miss it. -Aaron at BoH: Faker or fakir? -Bloggernackers (heart) Elise Soukup: DMI, Mormon Stories, and a nice interview at M*. –Chloroform in print on iPod. -DMI wants to start a discussion group about whether discussion groups are permitted. Clearly he has forgotten “the first rule of discussion groups is you do not talk about discussion groups . . .” -Reminder: Volunteers sought to participate in polygamy . . . survey. -Finally, if you like your navel-gazing with a healthy dose of snark, you may want to look at a relative bloggernacle newcomer, doubtless administered by famed ‘nacle urban-legend-buster arJ.

The Deep Meaning of the Bloggernacle (Abridged)

It seems to have been a bicoastal weekend for real-world discussions of the bloggernacle. John Dehlin gave a great talk on blogs at the Seattle Sunstone Symposium (pod cast here), and I gave a brief presentation to Naomi Frandsen’s “Saturday Night Discussion Group” (a name that carries all sorts of unfortunate disco connotations for me.) Lacking the technical sophistication do a podcast, here is a shortened version of what I said:

On the Blowing of Noses and the Bearing of Testimonies

While I was running errands with my children one morning last week, I glanced up at the rearview mirror to see my four-year-old daughter’s finger probing her nostril. I reprimanded her, gently, and asked if she needed a tissue. “No thank you, Mom,” she answered cheerfully, “This kind comes out only by a fingernail, right?”

Jerusalem

Last week Janice and I spent several days in Cornwall, Great Britain, with the BYU students doing London Study Abroad.

Supplementing Angels

A not-so-hypothetical from a reader: Your daughter’s AP English class is using Tony Kushner’s Angels in America as a central part of a semester’s curriculum. You are friends with the teacher and would feel comfortable suggesting that she supplement the Angels module with another book or short story dealing with Mormonism from a different, hopefully “insider,” perspective. What work of Mormon literature would you suggest?

A Paradox of Our Own

One of the more prominent strands of modern political philosophy is what has been called “luck egalitarianism,” which of course raises basic questions for Mormon theology.

Are we mainstream?

Slate has an interesting photo-essay on the architecture of mega-churches. One of the featured buildings is the Conference Center in Salt Lake City (known among Church Historical Department employees as the “meganacle”). I was struck by the following bit of commentary from the essay: The approach of the architects, Zimmer Gunsul Frasca of Portland, Ore., shows the influence megachurches have had on mainstream religions. I’ve tried parsing this several ways, but it seems to me that the only way of reading it is as claiming that Mormons are a mainstream religion, as opposed to the evangelical megachurches.

Heder-day Night Live

Last night Jon Heder, star of Napoleon Dynamite, hosted “Saturday Night Live.” I caught a few of the sketches he played in, and one thing was pretty clear: the kid’s no Philip Seymor Hoffman. He’s amiable and sweet-faced, to be sure, but there’s a muddiness to his voice he can’t seem to clear, and his mouth, for all its soft pliability, is suprisingly unagile with dialogue. I haven’t seen his latest effort, a supporting role in the romantic comedy Just Like Heaven, but in my judgment he doesn’t have either the chops or the charisma to make a career of movie-acting. It’s too bad, because he seems like a genuinely good kid, and Napoleon earned him a ton of celebrity-capital among an important demographic; he might have been the really big, genuinely Mormon star we haven’t had yet. I just hope the boy has managed to keep clean in Hollywood and New York; those are pretty muddy straits for a squeaky-clean BYU boy.

From the (off-site) Archives: Mormons and the ACLU

Over two years ago, I posted a series of posts on reasons to support the ACLU, and whether a Mormon could or should support the ACLU, on my personal blog. The discussion that ensued was one of the contributing factors to the formation of Times and Seasons. Given that the conversation around here turns to this topic from time to time, I thought it might be useful to move that set of posts over here. They are lightly edited for context and updating. (For the original posts, see here and here.)

Claremont Conference on Joseph Smith

As part of our occasional series of announcements on important Mormon Studies events, we’re happy to publicize an academic conference entitled “Joseph Smith and the Prophetic Tradition,” sponsored by the School of Religion of the Claremont Graduate University and to be held on its Southern California campus on October 20 and 21.