By Common Consent, a Mormon Blog

[Part 7 is here. Probably it's worth reviewing before reading this.]

I’ll begin with the Peculiar, or let’s say, Unsettling, or Cautionary. Cantor allowed that “sets” could be defined by any well-formed logical statement. As it happened, this was not precise enough. And by that I mean, you can describe collections of things by well-formed logical statements which are somehow, too large or strange. A first sign of trouble came from British mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell, in the form of a paradox. This is not one of those namby-pamby literary/political/economic/theological/legal things where it seems some assumption or other leads to an outlandish or uncomfortable conclusion. No. This is a genuine fault in the system, FULL STOP.

Trouble in paradise.

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Jonathan Kland has a BS in Construction Management from BYU and an MA in Architecture from the University of Florida. From 2008 to 2010, he was an architect for the LDS Church, where he developed a new series of Standard Plan meetinghouses for the US/Canada. Called the Independence, this plan includes eight versions, each of which is constructed in linked components, allowing for easy expansion to a larger phase as needed. The first of these was recently dedicated adjacent to the Kansas City Temple. His blog documenting and celebrating outstanding Mormon architecture is ldsarchitecture.wordpress.com.

For bold new ideas in ecclesiastical architecture, the world might well look to the Mormon Church where there are no narrowly prescribed conceptions nor pre-determined structural plans, where the only limitations placed upon the architect are the canons of beauty, good taste, usefulness and the boundaries of his own mind as guided and directed by revelations to fulfill the job to which he is assigned by proper authority. [1]

So stated Joseph H Weston, in a 1949 publication sponsored by the Presiding Bishopric titled ‘Mormon Architecture.’ While it is most interesting to hear this statement in light of where we are today, I would venture to say that the greatest architectural legacy of the LDS Church lies in our meetinghouses. With the majority of buildings now using standard designs, even the recent past held a breadth of style, material usage and detailing as broad as the American architectural landscape. As such, the history of LDS meetinghouse architecture is in large part also the history of American architecture. Read the rest of this entry »

Back in 1976, LDS historians James Allen and Glen Leonard published The Story of the Latter-day Saints, still one of Deseret Book’s finest publications to date. They issued a prophecy that anyone could’ve made: “The history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been written many times before, and will be written again as new information becomes available and as succeeding generations ask fresh questions about their past.”¹

More than thirty years later in the middle of this “Mormon Moment,” the MoStudies community has been abuzz about Matt Bowman’s brand spanking new book, The Mormon People: The Making of an American Faith (New York: Random House, 2012). Bowman’s opening chapter got me thinking about the use of anecdotes in the opening of such historical overviews. If you were writing such a book, where would you stick your foot in the stream?

Bowman surprised me (not merely because he didn’t go with a pioneer tale). Here’s the beginning of chapter one, called “Joseph Smith and the First Mormons”: Read the rest of this entry »

January 29 marks the anniversary of the day in 1863 when the worst massacre of native Americans in our history took place in Utah territory.  Colonel Patrick Edward Connor led a group of about 300 California volunteers north from Camp Douglas in Salt Lake City.  They reached the winter encampment of the Northwestern band of Shoshone on Bear River, about 4 miles north of what is now Preston, Idaho, early in the morning and attacked when most of the camp was still sleeping.

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The gold standard of home teaching of course includes giving the most recent 1P message from the Ensign to each family. If you don’t do that as a HTer, then, as the kids like to text, “ur doing it wrong.” But has it always been that way? Read the rest of this entry »

New Scientist magazine earlier this month ran a special report called: “Unscientific America: A dangerous retreat from reason.” (If you are unfamiliar with the highly respected New Scientist it is a newsweekly for and by scientists, much like The Economist that examines stories, trends and analyses in science. It is published in Great Britain.) It opens, “As campaigning for the 2012 presidential election gets into full swing. US politics, especially on the right, appears to have entered a parallel universe where ignorance, denial and unreason trump facts, evidence and rationality.” It points out that while America was founded on enlightenment values it as fallen off the wagon (And while the dizzy argue about whether the founding fathers were Christian, there is no doubt that they were profoundly educated and versed in the best science, philosophy and theory available at the time). One doesn’t have to listen very far into the current political debates to see that America is in deep doo doo as its commitment to science slips further and further into an allegiance of the unenlightened and the uninformed.
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Visiting Teaching was something I found especially charming as a new convert. It was novel and sweet- having two women, friendly and attentive- drop by my house each month to share something thoughtful was a soothing balm. As a new mother, relocated a thousand miles from my old friends and support system, I really loved the kindness those women showed. In retrospect, I think they were even sincere. Mostly.

But then the shine wore off. The sisters I thought were genuinely interested, thought genuinely cared, were assigned to someone else. The visits stopped. It was the tiniest bit shocking to realize I had been an assignment. The warmth I felt at the charm of Visiting Teaching dulled just a bit. It was a surprise when I realized what life-long Mormons understand- Visiting Teachers change, and no matter how we spin it, it is, in fact, a duty. Is that bad? Perhaps not. Read the rest of this entry »

Last time, I briefly introduced you to Georg Cantor (1845-1918), a Russian-born Jewish Christian who became a well-known and in some quarters infamous, mathematician. Cantor systematized much of what perviously was just mystical respect for the infinite.
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I’ve been in well over 20 wards in my relatively short lifetime. Some I remember fondly, others…….not so fondly. The last two wards in which my family and I have resided have been eye-opening experiences for my wife. She’s had strongly (though not exclusively) negative experiences with ward members. I’m sure most of you are familiar with these in some way or another; they are unfortunately not exceptional: purposive exclusion, gossip, derisive comments, biting criticism, cold indifference, etc. We’ve experienced the same to varying degrees in other wards, but in these two cases she has had the opportunity for the first time to become a member of communities of women outside of the Church. What she found, for her, was astonishing; these women were welcoming of her in ways that so many women in our wards had not been. When they discovered she was a Mormon (a point she did not readily volunteer at first, fearing a backlash), there was mostly just curiosity, though occasionally peppered with fascinating conversations with the Christian women in these groups about shared and cherished values and beliefs. Read the rest of this entry »

My son, there is a great and marvelous work in store for you. You will be an instrument in my hands in making unto me a great people. They will be my people, and I will be their God, and you will work a work to bring this to pass. You will lead them to their salvation, to the land of the New Zion.

But first you must retrieve the record. Read the rest of this entry »

During a recent priesthood lesson, the teacher asked this question:

What do you think is the greatest threat to your family?

I think he misread the question, or misinterpreted the question: I think he meant to say, what is the biggest threat to the family, as in the institution, and then we could all produce our various social bogeymen and parade them around. But by posing the question the way he did, my answer was so quick in my mind and so strong that it felt like some sort of inspiration.

The biggest threat to my family is me. Read the rest of this entry »

In honor of the seminary 100^th anniversary commemoration going on right now (find a recording here) we at BCC started reminiscing about how seminary/institute influenced and inspired us or, sometimes, frustrated and flummoxed us. Here are some of our anonymous musings:

“I learned that my seminary teacher was a rightwing dweeb that was completely unprepared for any political pushback in class.”

“I was excommunicated from 9th grade seminary for teaching evolution (and being a smug little jerk, but hey, I’m telling the story) and from 10th grade seminary for never attending (I figured it was a free period for me to hang out with friends or go hiking or play pinochle). I loved Institute, however”.

“I had one good seminary teacher and three fantastic ones. I loved seminary.”

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Stephen Webb (professor of religion and philosophy at Wabash College — and someone who is clearly up on his Mormonism), in his thoughtful piece at First Things writes (ht: sidebar):
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I once made the silly mistake of suggesting that members of the Church might beneficially learn from non-LDS sources, or more specifically, that non-LDS sources might have messages for people in the world, messages from God that could only viably come through them and not from our own leadership. The sentiment itself might not sound so objectionable to most Mormons. My mistake was that I made this suggestion during a Sunday School lesson. And I compounded my error by later reading a quote from a non-manual source.

As former GOP presidential nominee candidate Rick Perry once said, “Oops.”  Read the rest of this entry »

Do you like BCC? Do you like the sidebar, the news we bring you, our book reviews and our discussion of what’s happening in Mormonism? The U.S. Senate, in dizzying heights of internet ignorance, is in the process of considering legislation that very well could shutter our sidebar and censor our speech, closing the Bloggernacle. The legislation is called the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA), and could have severe legal consequences for us if we linked to a site anywhere online that had any possible links to copyright infringement.

Suffice it to say, this would devastate much of the internet. PIPA’s stupid sister, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), is no better. It’s time for you to visit AmericanCensorship.org and contact your Senator, who very probably doesn’t even use email. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has more information on this as well.

You have already probably heard a lot about this issue from Google, Craigslist, Wikipedia and a host of other sites that have gone dark today. We’re keeping our content up out of dedication to you, our community, but this is really important. Please take a minute and speak up today.

Recently I have begun reading the Book of Mormon again using Grant Hardy’s Reader’s Edition.  The other night as I sat in my parent’s house to read, my step-father and I began discussing the problem of giving copies of the Book of Mormon to people.  For us there were a number of considerations: the cost of the copy, the size of the copy (physically), the size of copy (selections vs. entire text) and the readability (versification, footnotes, structure etc.).  The question I pose, therefore, is: which copy of the Book of Mormon would you give to a friend? Read the rest of this entry »

[See part 5 here.]

The Intrigues of the Infinite are coming to play. Whether you are confused by the infinite or have some logical grasp of it, I’m going to take you on a ride through a few of those intrigues of the past. Hold on to your logical pants.
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A few months ago, I was attending a university level criminal law class in a Muslim country that recognizes sharia law in the constitution.  The class was lively, the students were prepared, and it was incredibly enjoyable listening to these students chew through topics like the presumption of innocence and burden of proof.  At one point, during a discussion of the country’s penal code, a student raised his hand and asked why drinking alcohol was against the law in that country, when it was not criminalized in America.  “How can one act be a crime in one country, and not in another?”  The teacher, probably not willing to be waylaid by a philosophical discussion of “what is crime” punted the question and briefly talked about sharia before moving on.  I think it’s too bad that the teacher didn’t delve into the question of “what is crime” because approached from a comparative law standpoint, it is pretty fascinating. Read the rest of this entry »

Elizabeth Pinborough is a Latter-day Saint scholar and historian, with a special focus in religion and literature as well as women’s history. She is also editor of the forthcoming Habits of Being: Mormon Women’s Material Culture. Elizabeth currently blogs at Scholaristas. We’re excited that Elizabeth has agreed to contribute this review.

Title: Women of Faith in the Latter Days, Volume One, 1775–1820
Editors: Richard E. Turley Jr. and Brittany A. Chapman
Publisher: Deseret Book
Genre: History
Year: 2011
Pages: 501
Binding: Hardcover
ISBN13: 978-1-60641-033-2
Price: $34.99

The first volume in the Women of Faith series features biographical essays by a number of Mormon history professionals, including Jill Mulvay Derr, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, and Mark L. Staker, in addition to fledgling historians, amateur historians, and other experienced authors. It treats a wonderful collection of early Latter-day Saint women born between 1775 and 1820, some well known and some less so. This is not a strictly academic book. Yes, it has footnotes, which are in some cases quite extensive. But this compilation of faith stories is necessarily something more. It serves as a devotional textbook the influence of which will reach beyond scholarly utility. Its stories of faith are not only an important piece of the Mormon historical record and a window into the historical construction of faith among Mormon women. These stories are also essential to the contemporary vitality of Mormons’ life of faith. Read the rest of this entry »

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res]

This is a sermon which I gave in sacrament meeting on January 1, 2012. It was the day after our third daughter, Alison, was baptized, and my parents and parents-in-law were in attendance, which all made for a wonderful occasion. I don’t think I would have done anything different with this sermon it had been just another Sunday though. In any case, I think it turned out well, and enough people told me afterwards that they liked it that I decided to post it here. Enjoy. Read the rest of this entry »

In my last post I looked at the “War in Heaven” as depicted in a late-19th century work of Mormon fiction: Nephi Anderson’s Added Upon. I want to respond to one of the comments from that post, but rather than humbly making use of the comments section there I decided to go ahead and grandstand a bit because my response to the comment gets closer to the root of what I really intended by writing that post, and what I hoped to see in the comments.

KaralynZ: “My mom had a copy of this and I read it several times growing up. I consider it as much of a useful source of truthful theology as ‘Saturday’s Warrior’ is.”

This seems to imply that Anderson’s book is useless, trite, or vapid (ties to Saturday’s Warrior are seldom complementary). I don’t mind a snarky or funny reply here and there, and such a reply comes pretty easy for Added Upon. Like I mentioned, the dialogue can be wooden, it’s extremely didactic, the characters can often be seen as cardboard props rather than complex persons, and in some cases it perpetuates what we see today as harmful theological ideas (e.g., less-valiance in premortality stuff). Why dig it up, then? Why bother with it? “Truthful theology” is all I bother with, after all! Read the rest of this entry »

Another image of Mitt and Devotion…

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So what do BCC readers believe (check all that apply):
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BCC has been invited to participate in a conference call discussing the latest results from the Pew Forum study ‘Mormons in America‘.  I will be live blogging the conversation.  Thank you to the Pew Forum for allowing us to participate. Read the rest of this entry »