By Common Consent, a Mormon Blog

One more thing to do before we frame an evolutionary interpretation of the Fall—we must destroy absolutes. Absolutes seem antithetical to much of Mormon theology. Ideas such as embodiment, temporality, gendered deities, the agential nature of existence, the implications of emergence, and a god who weeps seem to be antithetical to the God of classic monothesism. Much of the neoplatonism upon which much of Christianity rests, relies on a set of absolutes that misdirect our Mormony gaze in ways that have allowed things like arguments from creation ex nihilo that structure many current creationist leanings to have crept into our creation narratives. Modern creationism seems to fly in the face of what we have discovered about the universe. [Read more...]

Jeffrey N. Walker, “Habeas Corpus in Early Nineteenth-Century Mormonism: Joseph Smith’s Legal Bulwark for Personal Freedom,” BYU Studies Quarterly Vol. 52, No. 1, 2013, 4-97.

BCC: Tell us about your background and your interest in Joseph Smith and the law. [Read more...]

Today I put in a shift at the Deseret dairy. Fifteen other men and I packaged and boxed up 1 lb. blocks of cheddar cheese for distribution through the church’s system of bishops’ storehouses.
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Title: Mormonism at the Crossroads of Philosophy and Theology: Essays in Honor of David L. Paulsen
Editor: Jacob T. Baker
Publisher: Greg Kofford Books
Genre: Philosophy/Theology
Year: 2012
Pages: 422
Binding: Softcover
ISBN13: 978-1589581920
Price: $31.95

When it comes to academic engagement with philosophy and theology, Mormonism largely lacks two things: People and place. Mormons who are interested in making a comfortable living typically don’t seek higher education in these areas. The Church’s schools, seminaries and institutes focus more on devotional approaches to the faith. Such circumstances help explain why some of the most sustained work in recent Mormon theologizing and philosophizing has occurred in interfaith settings, which can provide interlocutors and institutions for participation and publication. When the topic of Mormon/Christian interreligious dialog arises, people are likely to think of Stephen E. Robinson’s How Wide the Divide, or Robert Millet’s books attempting rapprochement with various Evangelical scholars, books published mostly by non-Mormon presses. David L. Paulsen’s name is less likely to be recognized by the average Mormon than Robinson or Millet, but it is arguable that Paulsen has done more than any currently-living Mormon scholar in advancing sustained and rigorous interfaith exchanges. The scary and valuable thing about exchanges is that everyone usually departs changed in some sense. [Read more...]

As our long-time readers already know, your feedback is important to us! Thanks to those who provide helpful tips in their comments or in emails on how we can improve BCC. One reader provided some extended feedback in an email, which I’d like to share. [Read more...]

Revelation given at Provo, Utah, May 20, 2013. As a consequence of the early brethren incessantly using mobile devices for Facebooking and Bejeweling in their meetings, the Prophet was led to ponder on the matter; consequently, he inquired of the Lord concerning it. This revelation, known as the Word of Internet Wisdom, was the result.  [Read more...]

We didn’t have anyone signed up to do this lesson, but since I just taught it today I thought I’d give a report on what transpired here in case it is useful to those of you who have not had it yet. [Read more...]

A little more on Niche theory might be useful:

Niche theory introduces the possibility of emergence. Let me be careful with that word because it has come to mean many things to many people and tends to be a fraught concept. I am defining it in the sense of Mark Badau (Not Badiou mind you). Badau argues for three concepts of emergence. In all three types, the foundational concept of emergence is the idea that a property is emergent if it is a property that can be possessed by the macro scale, which cannot be possessed by the micro scale. The classic example of this is the property liquidity possessed by water in a bucket, but is not possessed by a single water molecule. He then breaks this down into three kinds of emergence, nominal, weak and strong. [Read more...]

Early Friday morning, Frances Beverly Monson passed away. Sister Monson was the beloved wife of President Monson, and the mother of their three children, Thomas, Ann and Clark. She met her husband in 1944 after he saw her perform in a production of “Hello Dolly”*, and one cannot help but fondly wonder how much this influenced his well-known love of musicals.

Sister Monson, the youngest of five children and only daughter, grew up in Salt Lake City. Like so many of her generation, growing up in the Depression influenced her and accorded her thrift and resourcefulness. She graduated from the University of Utah and enjoyed math and science, which served her well in her accounting job, which she used to pay for college.

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There has been some discussion lately about closely reading the Book of Mormon in relation to the YW PP manual controversy. I am always one to encourage a close reading. What I am doing below is not a close reading, but rather a quick note about the perils of casual reading and eisegesis. But please, read closely. It’s a rewarding book.

Frequently, we misread the purpose of Nephi’s slaying of Laban. [Read more...]

The Mormon Church teaches little girls are immodest if they expose their shoulders. That is a scandal. Children can’t dress immodestly for the same reasons seven-year-olds can’t sin and twelve-year-olds can’t enter into contracts. They don’t have the knowledge and understanding that would give them the capacity. So as a father of two young children being raised in the Mormon faith, I was disappointed to see the article titled The Orange Shirt in the May 2013 issue of The Friend. I wasn’t the only one. The article “based on a true story” involves a young girl thinking of trying on a shirt with spaghetti straps, which the author labels as immodest. The story explains that the girl felt uncomfortable when she picked the shirt up and attributed her feeling to the Holy Ghost warning her that trying the shirt on was wrong. To teach children that their access to the Holy Spirit is dependent on their clothing choices is perverse.

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So I’m flipping channels this evening and happen upon a new show on the National Geographic Channel, called “Polygamy, USA.”  It premiered a week ago; the second episode, “Winter’s Ball,” will run later tonight.  Unlike Sister Wives, which focuses on a single family, or the Dargers, also a single family, this show gives a broader picture of the Centennial Park group in Arizona.  (Centennial Park split from the FLDS back in the 80s, and don’t practice the abuses encouraged and required by Warren Jeffs.) [Read more...]

In his book Being and Event, Badiou construes ontology to be based upon set theoretic elements, principally the void, the empty set which provides a foundation for all subsequent set manipulations. He focuses especially on the ‘belongs to’ operator, and the notion of set itself—a collection of elements. He sees being as such is multiple in the sense that it is not decomposable into a countable set (you can’t map a being into one-one relationship with the natural numbers), they can be element of a set or or as he calls it a ‘count-as-one’. His thought is rich and complex and I don’t want to explore it fully here, but I do want to tap into his notion of an event. [Read more...]

Given in the Worcester Ward, Cheltenham England Stake on 12.v.2013 and heavily indebted to Lowell Bennion’s “What it means to be a Christian.”

I should like to add my voice of praise to the young men who have spoken to us today and also to their leaders, who serve them so selflessly. My talk today is directed towards these young people, among whose number is my own son. President Hinckley used to say that the purpose of the church is to make bad men good and good men better. Here are six things that I think, if followed, will make the youth — and indeed all of us — better Christians. In preparing this short talk, I have been influenced by Mormon writer and educator Lowell Bennion and I shall frequently be quoting from him. [Read more...]

A couple of months ago I made an extraordinary discovery. While sorting through some old boxes and family records I found my mother’s old mission journals, which I didn’t even know existed. There are three hardbound books which say “Ledger” on the front, but when I opened them, I immediately recognized mom’s neat, well-spaced handwriting from notes to my elementary schoolteachers about my homework and long, newsy two page letters every week during my own mission. Reading these journals has been like discovering a gold mine. I have always known my mother as, well, my mother, and these diaries provide a detailed portrait of what she was like as an adult woman, but before she met my father, got married, had kids, and became the person I knew.

The journals are also fascinating in another way. With all our current excitement about more young women serving missions, my mother’s experiences show us what it was like for a woman to be a missionary in the years after World War II. It’s interesting to notice the changes in mission life, as well as some of the things which never change. For this blog post, I wanted to introduce some brief excerpts and quotes, and follow up with commentary.
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So to begin. Assume that the story that science tells is tout court correct. That humans evolved from apelike ancestors and have existed as a species for roughly two-hundred thousand years and became behaviorally modern about fifty-thousand years ago. They have been living and dying for almost eight-thousand generations.

Dying. What do I mean by that? Actually, it can mean a lot of things. For example, it can mean the cessation of living. Scripturally it can also mean a number of things. Paul’s letter to Romans is a great place to start. No I take that back, Jim Faulconer’s book on Romans is a great place to start. Look at the attached photo It shows the index entries for ‘death’ in his book on Romans giving a short peek into the way Paul uses the word. [Read more...]

I am aware that Easter has passed some time ago now, but this year I have felt its draw still these weeks later. I want to hold this Easter a little longer in my memory, to reflect on its meaning even after it has come and gone.

Easter means many things to many people.

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I get asked this question often: “what books on Mormonism should I read?” Probably every other week or so. It comes from a broad range of people, including non-Mormon academics who have a small interest in the field, sunday school teachers who want to be better prepared to teach the Doctrine and Covenants, or fellow reading nerds who just want to banter about their favorite books. But most often, the question comes from average members of the Church who just want a better understanding of their faith tradition and its history. I usually refer them to my post on The LDS History Canon I wrote for JI a couple years back, but I often do so grimicingly because of three problems: 1) it is both out of date and flat-out wrong on some inclusions, which I hope to correct in a new version soon, 2) it is academically-oriented, and modeled more for an academic historian’s interest’s than the general member’s, and 3) it is only history.

So I decided to attempt to make, with everyone’s help, a list that is interdisciplinary, approachable, and relevant. Put simply, a list of books I wish every member of the Church would read. [Read more...]

Hey dol! merry dol! ring a dong dillo! Ring a dong! hop along! fal lal the willow! Tom Bom, jolly Tom, Tom Bombadillo!

I am going to return to The Silmarillion anon but in the meantime, here’s something to cause MCQ and RAF certain pain. [Read more...]

‘There is nothing worse than death, Dumbledore!’ snarled Voldemort.
‘You are quite wrong.’ said Dumbledore . . .

—————– Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. p. 718
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One of the key challenges in defining a post-Darwinian LDS theology is that of the Fall. The Fall is considered one of the foundational pillars of Mormon doctrine (as Bruce R. McConkie has often argued). This because the Fall is what provides the backdrop for the necessity of the Atonement, another foundational LDS doctrinal pillar. [Read more...]

We’re a Church with a canon. An agreed-upon book of authoritative stories, teachings, commandments. Sometimes I feel canon claustrophobia, other times I sense a liberating opportunity. I’ve gone through periods when I put my scripture study on hold. Sometimes an excerpt of scripture off-ends me when I’m simply seeking stability. A curious chapter in John describes such a moment:

“Then Jesus said to them, ‘Verily, verily, I say to you, Except you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life; and I’ll raise them up at the last day.’ From that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him” (John 6:53-54, 66).

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I recently wrote a post detailing my experiences casting out devils as a missionary. I mentioned in the beginning of that post some other strange or harrowing experiences I had undergone as a missionary, including witnessing a murder. Reflecting further on this, I recalled hearing somewhat similar stories from other missionaries. I asked my wife, who served in Manila, Philippines, if she had ever been witness to extreme violence or murder and she affirmed that, among other things, she and her companion saw a group of men descend on another man and cut his head off with a machete. [Read more...]

My wife has been reading the book, Eating Animals, by Jonathan Safran Foer. Unless you are either growing/slaughtering all your food yourself or, at minimum, a locavore vegan, reading it will cause you to examine your eating habits and find yourself wanting. By which I don’t mean that you will feel like you need to eat better, or more healthily at the end of the book; I mean that you will question your ability to consider yourself a good person if you continue to eat the way you do. [Read more...]

When I read this article about Elizabeth Smart, I was, as always, impressed with her courage and wisdom. I was also disheartened to learn that she had heard the chewed gum analogy (and I’m willing to bet it was from a seminary or church teacher, or at least a Mormon school teacher). Generally I think we are (finally!) abandoning the chewed gum, licked cupcake, wilted rose object lessons–I can’t recall ever having been taught them and I feel reasonably certain that my daughter will not hear them. That’s why I allow her to attend church!

However, the very first scripture girls are required to study in their Personal Progress work on the value of Virtue is Moroni 9:9, which describes young women as having lost their virtue by being raped. That scripture reference needs to go, NOW. And we need to start explicitly teaching that this scripture reflects a cultural mistake among Book of Mormon peoples in their understanding of virtue, one which fails to properly apply the principle of agency and denies the power of the Atonement. The chastity in which the Lord delights (Jacob 2) is not merely virginity, and cannot be taken away by another person, especially not by violence or abuse.

Take this reference out of the Personal Progress manual. Do it now.

Please.