By Common Consent, a Mormon Blog

The Salt Lake Tribune has published a July 4th piece on America and Mormonism to which I contributed. There’s a lot to say on this. Here is the totality of my conversation with Peggy Stack. (There’s also a great post by Wilfried that is, as ever, more articulate on this matter than most of us could hope to be.) Read the rest of this entry »

Today, this is favorite poem, published in Dialogue 41:2 (Summer)
Here’s the first half:

Grace
By Annette Weed

I’m wedged between two lifetimes,
this one and that.
Like cement walls on either side,
they press close. Read the rest of this entry »

Thomas B. Marsh and his wife Elizabeth were baptized on September 3, 1830, and were therefore among the earliest members of the church. (Dan Vogel calculates that they were the 55th and 56th members, preceding all the future apostles save for William Smith and the Pratt brothers).[1] Marsh became an important early church leader and when the Council of the Twelve was organized in 1835, he was called to be one of the original members. Because he was the oldest original apostle, he became the quorum’s first president. And yet today, among Mormons, Thomas B. Marsh (if he is remembered at all) is remembered only in a story where his wife was jealous over the division of some “milk and strippings,” the fallout of which led the couple into apostasy.

History is somewhat different than the fable. Read the rest of this entry »

In one of the Mormon Garden of Eden narratives, the commandment specifying the prohibition of eating from the Tree of Knowledge is as follows (Moses 3:16-17): Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been at my current job for four years.  During that whole time, there has been a homemade sign hanging up in the bathroom stall:  LADIES PLEASE REMEMBER THAT OTHERS USE THE RESTROOM BEHIND YOU!! PLEASE BE CONSIDERATE OF OTHERS AND CLEAN UP BEHIND YOURSELVES.  ALSO THE AIR FRESHNER (sic) IS HERE TO USE.  THANKS TO ALL.  Read the rest of this entry »

Vacuum cleaners are kind of a sore spot in my house, mostly because of a major lapse in judgment I made about a year ago when my dear, sweet, wonderful wife approached me about purchasing a new vacuum cleaner. We were living on a tight budget, and because vacuums are expensive, I asked her to explain what was wrong with the el cheapo vacuum cleaner that we already owned. She told me a few things that were apparently wrong with it, but in general the explanation was that it just wasn’t up to snuff.

Now, of course, this is the part where I screwed up.
Read the rest of this entry »

Although I have attended many baptisms for eight-year olds, today I attended my first adult baptism.  As an eight-year old, I recall seeing baptism through the lens of duty and right and wrong moral decisions.  I didn’t see baptism as an opportunity to enter and serve in a community, because I was already part of the Mormon faith.  I saw it as a duty to check off if I wanted to be exalted and free of sin.  But the adult baptismal service I attended emphasized being welcomed into the community more than duty, which caused me to see baptism in a new and refreshing light. Read the rest of this entry »

I was a late convert to rock music. I can remember when my parents were taking my older sister to see the movie “Help,” and I refused to go; I didn’t want to hear any of that rock and roll stuff. And in junior high, at first, at least, I was probably the only kid who didn’t listen to WLS a.m. out of Chicago, the top 40 radio station of choice for the young, with Larry Lujack and Bob Sirott and John “Records” Landecker. I preferred WGN, which had more of a talk format. Read the rest of this entry »

In the Imporovement Era, June 1945 contains the following quote as part of a Ward Teachers’ message:

When our leaders speak, the thinking has been done. When they propose a plan–it is God’s plan. When they point the way, there is no other which is safe. When they give direction, it should mark the end of controversy. God works in no other way. To think otherwise, without immediate repentance, may cost one his faith, may destroy his testimony, and leave him a stranger to the kingdom of God. Read the rest of this entry »

Parley and Orson Pratt and Nineteenth-Century Mormon Thought

Public Symposium at Brigham Young University
July 2, 2009
B092 of the Joseph F. Smith Building at BYU

In the tradition of Richard Bushman’s summer seminars on Joseph Smith and early Mormonism, eight graduate students, under the direction of Terryl Givens and Matthew Grow, have studied the writings of Orson and Parley Pratt and will be presenting their research at this symposium. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m going to change names for this post. I’ll just call them Mormon Mother and RM Son.

RM Son met the most beautiful woman in the world at BYU–or so he told her in a note he tossed her direction in the library, and which made her blush and timidly accept a date. They had the sort of romance we expect full-hormoned BYU students to have. That romance went beyond the plan, however. They got pregnant. Read the rest of this entry »

We all know that the two great commandments are to love God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and to love your neighbor as yourself. I find the differences between the two refreshing and apt. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve heard a lot of people get up in sacrament meeting and say it was no accident that they were asked to give a talk on a particular topic because that topic was one that they had always struggled with or had been struggling with recently.  I haven’t been asked to speak in sacrament meeting since I moved into my current ward.  Incidentally, I moved into my current ward a little more than five years ago.  My husband has spoken in this ward a couple of times, but I haven’t, and since they no longer have husbands and wives do tag-team sacrament meeting talks, I think that as long as we stay here, I am safe from ever having to give a talk again.  We live in a very large ward, where people are always moving in and seldom moving out, so there are always plenty of people to talk in sacrament meeting without having to ask old Rebecca J to dust off her scriptures and wing it for ten minutes. Read the rest of this entry »

Benchmark Books will be hosting a screening of “Nobody Knows: The Untold Story of Black Mormons” at their store, 3269 South Main Street, Suite 250, Salt Lake City, on Tuesday, June 30th (one week from today), at 6:00 p.m. Margaret and Darius will both be present to discuss the film and respond to questions. Read the rest of this entry »

originally posted on the resting VSOM

My poor dead dad. I’ve blogged him to death. I’ve written him to death too as he was the theme of all my angsty teenage poetry and short stories. The recap: my parents divorced with I was 9. He died when I was 13 of complications of Type I diabetes. He was also bipolar and very unreliable. He was pretty bad at being a dad, and then he died. But 20 years is a long time to work things out. I care about him a lot now and I see more clearly the circumstances under which he was working and failing as a father. 

Mostly, I haven’t had a father. No surrogate fatherly figures. I have older brothers but luckily they were just brothers and not fathers to me. No bishops or home teachers or Sunday School teachers who felt called to take me under their wing in order to be a “father” to me. When I was pumped with hormones as a teenager, I thought I was very pitiable. My problems were due entirely to my fatherlessness. It was the state that was so bad, I didn’t even know to mourn him as a person until my 20s. 

I don’t know if I like it or hate it now, but I don’t mind my fatherlessness one bit. I’ve got issues, no doubt about it, but I know just as many people with living fathers, involved fathers that have issues too, even some of them have the same issues that I do. I don’t know how those people got screwed up but clearly no-dad status isn’t the only thing that will make you need a therapist. 

I hope everyone has two parents that love them. Or at least like them. I hope they have parents that pay attention. I hope everyone can know their parents. But if they don’t, life’s not so bad. I mean, you might turn out like me. 

I celebrate my dad this father’s day. Maybe I’ll build him a shrine. With a viola, some hiking gear, some microwaved bologna and a sign that says: “You didn’t really screw me up that bad, Dad. I love you.’

3. Support culture and church margin

What is different between mainline Christians and Mormons in the Netherlands, however, is the margin, the one of the disengaged believers and disengaged non-believers. The differences between the social function of churches in the USA and in Europe have been sketched elsewhere in detail but need to be stressed again. The social motivations for church attendance in the US are largely absent in Europe, but here other mechanisms prevail: cultural membership or individual choice. Cultural in the sense of being a “cultural catholic” or “cultural Calvinist”: raised in that tradition, defining identity in terms of the tradition and recognising the traces of upbringing and values are buildings blocks of the own personality, both social and individual; but one does no longer go to church. Disengaged non-believers have become the norm in this part of Europe: raised in the shadow of some church, recognising its influence, but having moved definitely out of reach of the church bells. It is with them that the church has retreated to its most general function, that of a part in the process of identity construction. In Holland, the pattern has been clear for decades: Holland is becoming a country of “Christians without a church”. Christians, yes, but cultural Christians; the simple credo is “I believe there might be something”, and if I live a good life, no real harm can befall upon me later”. A credo that is often voiced by inactive Mormons as well, at least in our sample. As a Catholic comedian voiced it: “O God, if you do exist, save my soul, if I happen to have one”. One clear example of this cultural Christianity is the role of the Catholic Church in Belgium. Belgian Catholics, in great numbers never go to Church, the last thing is declare themselves not a Catholic. Read the rest of this entry »

2.1. Case: inactive members in the Netherlands

In order to answer this question (what processes of identity construction does the church generate in various types of religious adherence?), I shall concentrate first on “the International” church, i.e. a part of the church outside ” Deseret” as this is the main arena for the Mormon Church to become a “Church for all the World”. The case is from the Netherlands.

For some context, let us visualise a mean Dutch Mormon unit, ward or branch, the mean of a 10 unit Dutch stake, half branch, half small wards. The composition of 1998 is as follows: Read the rest of this entry »

So I took my oldest child to Girls Camp yesterday for Valiants Day.  She was not that keen on going because she didn’t think she would like it.  I was not that keen on taking her because I knew that I wouldn’t like it (but I did suspect that she might, at least a little bit, once she got into it).  Read the rest of this entry »

Call for Papers

The Family and Human Relationships in History, Literature, Art, and Philosophy
May 21-22, 2010, Claremont, CA
A conference sponsored by Mormon Scholars in the Humanities

Every story, it is said, is a family story. Yet in stressing the freedom and self-sufficiency of the individual, modern culture de-emphasizes the degree to which people are born in dependency, of specific parents, and develop in and through relationships with others, most closely in the family. By considering the family, family history, and human relationships, we invite inquiry into changes in the culture of the family over time, inquiries into family memory, depictions of the family and the individual in art and literature, and philosophical investigations of the role of family, friends, and mentors in personal development. Read the rest of this entry »

Youth temple trip. I am the driver of four young people. Nearing the end of the hour long journey, I hear a groan from the back seat. In the rear view mirror, I see rolling eyes and a face with a greenish tinge. Being an experienced mother of five, I ask my son to get the bucket out of the back. It’s not there. The only option is a lunch box sized cooler. I can see the angel Moroni and hit the accelerator. Half a block from the temple, the sounds of retching and the splash of vomit fill the van. Read the rest of this entry »

by Walter E.A. van Beek
Chair, Anthropology of Religion, Tilburg University, The Netherlands

1. World religion: variety and identity

What constitutes a world religion is hard to establish, as in principle it is not an analytic but more of a public relations term. In order to avoid normative definitions, which easily slip in the discourse on world religions, I just want to isolate some crucial characteristics shared by a few religions which are recognised as a world religion or a world church: Islam and the Roman Catholic Church. Of course, Islam is not a church in the sense of a closed bounded organisation, has no doctrinal authority vested in someone, and Catholicism is part of a large gamma of Christian churches. What they do share, however, beyond a common region of origin, is quite impressive. Both are monotheistic, scripture as well as tradition-oriented. Both have their saints, their folk expressions of faith, both have a long history of active proselyting. Both are tied in, or have been tied in with secular dynasties and earthly realms. In both the separation of state and religion is not primarily wished for. Both have holy places, pilgrimages, and both have waged holy wars. In both, the historical connection with the land of origin or first florescence is still present, but both have grown out of an ethnic or regional definition of identity. In Islam the Arab connection is still strong, but in no way is Islam restricted to one ethnic identity or one geographic region. The same holds for Catholicism: Rome centered, historically Jerusalem interested, it has outgrown its Mediterranean orientation. Read the rest of this entry »

When we administer blessings we are commanded to use olive oil. A quick bit of research through the scriptures, Church magazines and Conference proceedings yielded basically only the reasons (a) we’ve been commanded to do so; (b) the ancients did it that way; and (3) it is the purest kind of oil. It is advised that if you do not have pure olive oil (and its purity is important and emphasized) do the blessing without.

Yet in much of our richest symbolism, we understand the reasons for the symbol. In the sacrament the bread stands for the body of Christ, the water the blood. It is very specific and well understood what these symbols refer to. Yet even in that holy ritual the substance can be substituted, if we understand and honor the referent. We all know the story of potato peels being used at the end of WWII. The symbols point to the atonement. The form the symbols take is not the important thing and the material symbols can be substituted.

This does not seem to be true of priesthood blessings. It has to be olive oil or nothing. Why? What is the olive oil pointing to?

Well, it isn’t CES anymore – the official name is Seminaries and Institutes of Religion (with emphatic instruction to not create an acronym) and Stakes are now in charge of calling (yes it is a calling now) and managing teachers, so you don’t really work for CES-SIR. That said, I just wrapped up a year of teaching early-morning seminary. This is my story. Read the rest of this entry »

Eons ago (in 2006), I wrote a blog post about Mormon popular art. In it I suggested that the Spirit has a tendency to testify of sincerity (rather than artistic quality) and that this explained why so much Mormon art is bad. In the comments to that section, D. Fletcher (whom I wish participated more around these parts nowadays) suggested that the reason so much Mormon art is tepid is because we are, generally, happy. Art comes from pain (much like comedy or addiction) and unless one is tormented in ways that most Mormons won’t admit great art cannot come. At the time, I thought that this was needlessly reductive; today I’m not so sure. But, that said, I have a suggestion for our artists out there (I myself not being much of one): feel the restraints of Mormon life as pain. Read the rest of this entry »

If you had a magic wand that could make tomatoes, you probably wouldn’t care about tomatoes very much. I mean, why would you? Why worry about preserving them in the refrigerator, when you can make more anytime you want? Need a tomato? Abracadabra, a wave of the wand and poof there it is. Do you think you would really pull out a Ziploc to save the unused half of a tomato that you had cut for a salad if you could conjure them at will? Quite likely you would pass them out to the neighbors with abandon. You could use them as compost. You could employ them as the lubricant on a slippery slide for your kids on sunny summer days. You certainly would not cultivate them, nourish them from carefully chosen starters, or set up cages to guide and cherish their growing form. Cheap, magically-made tomatoes would not induce you care about tomatoes. They would be eminently disposable. Read the rest of this entry »

Sometimes people post the question “If you weren’t Mormon, what would you be?” As I think about that question, I’m a little bit torn. There are so many other churches and faith traditions I have my share of sacred envy for, and which I deeply respect and appreciate. But for me, the ultimate answer is probably that I would be an atheist. I do have a rational bent of mind. Read the rest of this entry »

A few years after the Civil War, enacting a tragedy that had occurred hundreds of mournful times throughout the nineteenth century, a steamboat on Lake Erie sank on its approach to the Port of Cleveland. Though the main lighthouse was operating normally, for uncertain reasons the lower lights—flames kept by houses along the banks to illuminate the location of channels and treacherous parts of the shoreline—were not visible to the ship’s crew. Unable to see the dark shore, the steamboat struck ground and sank, with significant loss of life.

In the aftermath of the Cleveland steamboat tragedy, the mega-evangelist Dwight Moody reflected to his bard Philip Bliss that these lower lights were the lights individual Christians were to keep. These would be small, weak, pale compared to the Light of the Savior, but without them our sisters and brothers might perish even as they approached the brighter light of the lighthouse.

Much to the delight of Moody and generations of worshipers since, Philip Bliss promptly turned these reflections into the hopeful and inspiring hymn “Let the Lower Lights Be Burning.” In his hymn Bliss calls to us to keep aflame our “feeble lamp[s]” in the hopes that some “poor fainting, struggling seaman” we “may rescue,” we “may save.”

Shortly before 2am today a lower light whose pale fire rescued and saved me almost twenty years ago sputtered and then died.
Read the rest of this entry »

Recently I got an e-mail from a friend informing me that the bishop of our old singles ward had passed away.  Being a thousand miles away, I was unable to attend his funeral, but I wish that I could have.  This man was very dear to me.

It just happens that I was thinking of him a few days before receiving this news.  I don’t remember why.  I hadn’t seen him in a long time. Read the rest of this entry »

So, usually when I post, I have something long and boring and complex and vaguely theological to say. Not this time. This time, I just want gossip. Read the rest of this entry »