The Pharisees get a bad reputation from their portrayal in the gospels, but it probably isn’t deserved. Jewish scholar Amy-Jill Levine recently discussed why that is likely to be the case that we are guilty of misunderstanding the Pharisees in a recent interview at the Latter-day Saint history blog From the Desk. What follows here is a copost to that interview. To start, Amy-Jill Levine shared some information about who the Pharisees were: In much of the Christian imagination, beginning with the Gospels, the Pharisees (with a few notable exceptions) represent hypocrisy, misogynism, elitism, xenophobia, the letter of the law rather than on the Spirit, and generally everything that Christians, and by extension, everyone, does not like. Conversely, Jews have, since the Middle Ages, recognized the Pharisees as the predecessors of Rabbinic Judaism: The Pharisees encouraged the Jewish people to increase the sanctity of their lives and fully to be a “priestly kingdom and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:6). Even within the New Testament, however, the picture is complicated: The Gospels show them in synagogues, as hosting Jesus at dinner, and as teaching the people. When Matthew states that the Pharisees “cross sea and land to make a single proselyte” (23:15), the impression is not one of separation but of active engagement with fellow Jews to help them better to follow Torah. Josephus also talks about the popularity of the Pharisees among the masses despite not being a fan. (Josephus…
Joseph Spencer on Bruce R. McConkie’s Legacy
Long-time followers of my blog posts (if any exist) are likely aware that I have a complicated relationship with Elder Bruce R. McConkie. He was hugely influential to me in my teenage years and early twenties before my own views of Latter-day Saint theology began to conflict with his in a few very notable ways. I still have a large amount of respect for him, both for his role as an apostle and his intellectual efforts to create a systematic theology, but I also find that his authoritarianism and some of his views rub me wrong. I don’t seem to be alone in this wrestle, however, as there seems to be a large segment of Latter-day Saints who have downplayed McConkie’s contributions, even while other Latter-day Saints tend to see his work very favorably (hello there, Dennis Horne!). Joseph Spencer has recently offered a reassessment of Bruce R. McConkie in an interview on the Latter-day Saint history blog From the Desk that has led me to ponder more on Elder McConkie’s legacy. What follows here is a co-post to the full interview (a shorter post with excerpts and some discussion).
From Whence Muhammad?
Fun fact: One of the most prominent movies about the life of Muhammad (who, out of respect for Sunni Muslim sensitivities, is never actually shown onscreen) was produced and directed by Latter-day Saint Richard Rich, who has also done some Book of Mormon films, and whose aesthetic you might recognize from movies like the Swan Princess. Muhammed occupies an interesting place in Latter-day Saint thought. On one hand, Joseph Smith was often compared to Muhammad in the 19th century, and there are a lot of points of similarity with the idea of a true faith being restored to an unlearned prophet visited by angelic messengers who was able to create an extensive work of religious literature (or oral recitation that eventually became literature in there case of Muhammad). On the pro-Muhammad side, there a variety of GA quotes that make the case that Muhammad was inspired by God. Of course, the Church and Islam are theologically incompatible on various important points, so while interfaith dialogue, support, and outreach is important (I’ve been particularly moved by accounts of the Church offering meetinghouse space to Muslims), at the end of the day the two faiths are obviously not going to merge any time soon, so for a TBM to believe Muhammad was inspired would require also believing that there is some slippage between the historical Muhammad and what eventually became Islam. This is a valid perspective (and one that Islam…
Alienation – you keep using that word
I generally have vowed to stay out of specific political discussions online, but this is not about any specific political issue – I have seen this claim too often with many issues or candidates from all side of the spectrum and in different locales (and not just the presidential election in the USA that dominates discussion right now). I am seeing far too many people declare that support for [a specific candidate or law or hot button political issue] is “alienating” (or various synonyms, but mostly that interestingly specific word) them from the rest of the Church membership.
“Dios Te Loamos”
“Dios Te Loamos” by Edmund Richardson was one of the shorter original hymns included in the Mexican Mission hymnals. That being said, I am fond of this text.
“Promesa cumplida”
“Promesa cumplida” by Joel Morales is a fantastic example of hymns about the Great Apostasy and the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in Mexican Latter-day Saint literature.
Faith crisis in Brandon Sanderson’s Sunlit Man
This post is full of spoilers. Don’t read it until you’ve read the book, which is very much worth reading and has become one of my favorites by Sanderson.
The Cosmological Grandeur of the Restored Gospel: Mining the Journal of Discourses
Worlds Without End in the style of Van Gogh How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, “This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant?” Instead they say, “No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.” A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths. -Carl Sagan One of the unique characteristics of the restored gospel is the expansiveness of its cosmological vision. Traditional religion held a Ptolemaic worldview in terms of existential importance if not astronomical reality. This world was the creation that mattered, and all discoveries beyond its horizon landed in the realm of speculative theology, whereas almost from the beginning and long before infrared space telescopes the restored gospel preached a very fundamental premise that is radically distinct: this world and its inhabitants are only a small part of God’s creations. However, we were only ever given little precious glimpses into this broader scheme. Even the one line from the temple: “I have only been doing that which has been done on other worlds” has a sort of understated power. It’s said in passing, so quickly that you could miss it if you weren’t paying…
“El Tiempo Ha Llegado” and “Te glorificamos, oh Dios”
There were two hymn texts in the Mexican Mission hymnals that I wasn’t really sure what to do with: “El Tiempo Ha Llegado” and “Te glorificamos, oh Dios.”
Theology in Alma
Just in time for us to study Alma in “Come, Follow Me,” the Latter-day Saint history blog From the Desk published an interview with Kylie Nielson Turley about theology in Alma. Kylie Nielson Turley wrote the Maxwell Institute’s brief theological introduction to the first half of the Book of Alma and has a lot of insights to share from her time researching and studying about Alma. What follows here is a copost to the full interview (a shorter post with excerpts and some discussion).
The Church in the Courts, 2024
The website “Court Listener” is a publicly available source for looking up cases around the country. By searching for the term “Latter-day” I looked for all cases involving the Church that were filed sometime during 2024. Of course, I am no lawyer (unlike By Common Consent, our bench is quite shallow on the legal side of things), so I uploaded the court PDFs to ChatGPT to explain the role of the Church in the respective case. I did not include one divorce case that was picked up or any case that simply cited a case that the Church was involved in. As seen, most of the Church’s involvement is with amicus briefs, or briefs filed by parties who are not directly involved in the case, but who want to make their perspective on the case known. People In Interest of C.M.W.R., 22CA0925 (Colo. Ct. App. 2024) Colorado Court of Appeals In the case referenced, the role of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) is central to the incident under examination. Here are the key points: Incident Location: The fire occurred at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Meetinghouse in Fruita, Colorado. Damage: The fire resulted in more than one million dollars in damage to the church building. Connection to the Juvenile: The juvenile, identified in the case as C.M.W.R., was arrested in connection with this fire and subsequently charged with criminal mischief, first-degree arson, and second-degree burglary. The…
Joseph Smith’s Uncanonized Revelations
I don’t think it’s a secret that I have an ongoing fascination with the Doctrine and Covenants. I am, after all, publishing a book about it this winter and (as my Mexican Mission Hymns project is coming to a close), I’m beginning work on an annotated edition of the Doctrine and Covenants. But that fascination extends beyond the Doctrine and Covenants to include other documents that are similar to those found within. Thus, I’m excited to note that BYU and Deseret Book recently published a new collection of Joseph Smith’s non-canonical revelations. And the authors recently shared some information about their work on Joseph Smith’s Uncanonized Revelations at the Latter-day Saint history blog From the Desk. What follows here is a copost to the full discussion.
Review: Christopher Blythe, Terrible Revolution: Latter-day Saints and the American Apocalypse
Christopher James Blythe. Terrible Revolution: Latter-day Saints and the American Apocalypse. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020. ISBN 978-019-7695159. Terrible Revolution traces the central place of apocalypticism in LDS history and belief along multiple axes. Chronologically, the book traces the varieties of apocalypticism from the American religious context of Joseph Smith’s earliest activity through the Church’s Utah period and into the 21st century.
The Latter-day Saint Homeschooling Conundrum
Latter-day Saint homeschooling families living outside the Mormon belt face a conundrum. For the uninitiated, many if not most homeschoolers actually do quite a bit of organized educational activities with other homeschoolers in what are called “homeschool co-ops.” Sometimes this is limited to activities while in other cases one of the parents will volunteer to teach. (So yes, contrary to popular stereotypes, homeschool kids do actually get quite a bit of socialization.) However, again outside of the Mormon Belt it seems that homeschool families basically fall into two camps: purple haired, hippie, atheist types or super religious, often fundamentalist protestant types who don’t want their kids to learn about evolution. (And yes, there are others, but I’m slightly exaggerating for effect here). In some areas there aren’t enough homeschoolers to allow differentiation, and people simply can’t afford to be picky; this was the case when we lived in Texas, and it leads to some fun circumstances where the purple haired atheist kids play with the fundamentalists. However, in places where there is a critical mass of homeschoolers they tend to differentiate. And in these cases the Latter-day Saint families tend to join the secular homeschoolers, because the religious ones often require one of those faith statements that we Latter-day Saints are adept at legalistically parsing to see if we can in fact sign them in good faith. Of course, often the faith statement has some kind of trinitarian, creedal formula,…
Doxologías
Doxologías is an expanded text based on “Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow”, but it was eventually phased out in favor of the latter by the time that the 1942 hymnal was published.
Let’s Talk about the State of Israel
When I was 14 c. 1990, my teachers’ quorum instructor was giving a lesson (hard to remember what the particular topic was) when he went into a diatribe about what a horrible injustice the creation of the state of Israel was. I’d never heard anybody say that before, but I’ve come to agree whole heartedly with that adviser. In 1947, the UN under pressure from the US and Soviet Union, passed Resolution 181, giving Israelis 56% of the land of Palestine even though Israelis only owned 7% of Palestine [this number is apparently overly simplistic; see DSC’s maps below] prior to that. There’s no other word for such an act than theft. Religiously motivated theft is even worse, I’d argue.
How Literally Do Members Take the Church’s Truth Claims?
Stephen Cranney and Josh Coates This is one of a series of posts discussing results from a recent survey of current and former Latter-day Saints conducted by the BH Roberts Foundation. The technical details are in the full methodology report here. Occasionally in Latter-day Saint discourse people that have lost their testimonies of the Church’s truth claims float the idea that perhaps they could salvage their belief in the Church if it was made to be more allegorical and less literal. At the outset we admit our own perspective that, while we respect people’s different beliefs and ways of making the Church work for them, this wouldn’t really work at scale, and that for the Church to actual continuing functioning as a living, breathing, growing faith, and not just a cultural relic of a bygone sociocultural movement of a kind of “descendents of the Mormon pioneers” lineage-based service organization, it has to not only hold to its literal truth claims, but to actively promote and defend them. The Community of Christ, for example, does not have a position on the historicity of the Book of Mormon (or of many historical questions in general). The ambivalence of leadership towards actively promoting literal truth claims is undoubtedly sensed by the membership, who follow suit. (And as an aside, contrary to widespread missionary folklore, they did not “renounce” the Book of Mormon to be accepted by mainstream Protestants.) Of course, how common the…
Cutting-Edge Latter-day Saint Research, May 2024
Sorrell, Sydney A., G. Tyler Lefevor, Samuel J. Skidmore, Rachel M. Golightly, and Kyrstin NL Searle. “Understanding How Religiousness Shapes Perceptions of Compulsive Sexual Behavior.” Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy (2024): 1-16.
One Day More
Hymns—for Home and Church will be getting its first preview tomorrow! Back at the start of April, the Church announced that “12 hymns of the new ‘Hymns—for Home and Church’ will be available on May 30, 2024.” We already know that “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing” will be among those (that was explicitly stated in the April announcement and has been shown in footage related to the release), but we aren’t sure what the other ones are yet. After this first release, there will be “new batches coming every few months.”
Religious Studies Graduate Programs are Pyramid Schemes. Just Say No.
Blind leading the blind I’m not saying that religious studies folks are blind to things that matter, I just thought it was a good depiction of the religious studies treadmill in general, and I kind of just like the picture. I have one of those Facebook friends who I’ve only met briefly once in real life (at Sunstone), but with whom I’ve had enough Facebook interactions with that it’s like we know each other in person. I’ve been privy to a tragic trajectory of his career that I’m seeing as becoming all too typical. He enjoys researching and talking about religion, so he bought the “pursue your passion” line that was ubiquitous in our generation, got a PhD in Mormon Studies (more or less, I don’t know the exact degree title) at Claremont (not afraid to say it out loud, they’re one of the worst offenders), and then gradually realized after the umpteenth rejection that, when people make it sound like the Mormon Studies academic job market is “tough,” as if with a little positive thinking and grit you can still get that job, what they should have said is that it is “non-existent.” He has since had to restart his professional life and seek retraining in middle age. Outside of BYU or the Church Office Building, I can only think of a handful of people who are full-time “Mormon Studies” scholars: Deidre Green at Berkeley, Patrick Mason at Utah…
Sherem the Native American
Despite keeping the name-title of the Nephite founder in their royal name, the outsized positive influence of that prophet-king and founder of the Nephites was clearly quickly missed. “The people of Nephi, under the reign of the second king, began to grow hard in their hearts, and indulge themselves somewhat in wicked practices,” Jacob lamented (Jacob 1:15). They began to be preoccupied with obtaining riches and indulging in immoralities. Realizing that the Jewish immigrants were just a fraction of the People of Nephi helps many more things make sense. After all, the multiple wives and girlfriends of the wicked Nephites were not just Jacob’s grandkids and nieces and nephews sinning with each other.
“Mensaje de paz”
“Mensaje de paz” by Joel Morales is notable as being the song that was sung when Elder Melvin J. Ballard and then-ambassador J. Reuben Clark, Jr. visited with the Latter-day Saints in Mexico in 1932. Morales is also the author of “La Proclamación” and “Final.”
Temples in the Tops of the Mountains
Temples in the Tops of the Mountains: Sacred Houses of the Lord in Utah by Richard O. Cowan and Clinton D. Christensen (BYU RSC and Deseret Book Company, 2023) helped me solve a long-time mystery about my life. You see, when I was six years old, I went to the Vernal, Utah Temple open house. For some reason, I walked away believing that there was only one temple baptismal font for the whole church that they just moved between temples. I even told my Primary that is what I learned at the open house when they asked me about it. Obviously, that’s not the case—each temple has its own baptismal font (and the book also informed me that there are some temples that will soon have two baptismal fonts)—but I have always wondered what led me to that conclusion.
An Anonymous BYU Honor Code Office Experience
An Anonymous Account of an Experience with the Honor Code Office at BYU and its Aftermath that was Submitted to T&S as a Guest Post. Surprisingly, after the initial rush of dread the first feeling after seeing the pop-up message on the screen was one of relief. I had been caught, would be reported to the honor code office, and was told to log off immediately. It started very subtly. As a newlywed I had a basic curiosity about this new world of sexuality that I had just entered into, and that was the hook which led to me watching YouTube videos that I should not have been watching. I could typically find a little corner in the BYU computer lab against a wall. At first I tried to find some plausible deniability in what I was typing in the search bar, but as the hunger and risk taking grew there was little of that left. And besides, I had been doing it for a while now, if they were actively monitoring me, surely I would have been caught by now? (Many years later I found myself on BYU campus for the first time in a long time, and noticed that the computer labs had signs warning users that they were being monitored. “Now you tell me,” I thought). We had just moved wards so my initial introduction to my new bishop was a little awkward. (Hi, I’m emailing…