An anonymous Latter-day Saint in Arizona has reignited the debate surrounding baptism for the dead and victims of the Holocaust.  This unfortunate incident raises, once again, questions around whether and how Mormons should practice these ordinances and I think it is time for a change, but perhaps not the one Rabbi Cooper was calling for.

This type of offense has happened too often to ignore the evident implications.  As long as the LDS Church continues to pursue a wholesale approach to processing and performing baptisms for the dead lay members of the Church, intentionally or not, will continue to cause hurt to members of other faiths. Is there scope for change without altering what is at the heart of these ordinances.  I believe there is. [Read more...]

During the Church’s relatively short life, it has excommunicated many people; unfortunately very few of them ever return to the Church. [Read more...]

Gerhard Richter, Annunciation after Titian, oil on linen, 1973.

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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 more...]

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 more...]

This post is written off advanced word and may be inaccurate. The full results will be published tomorrow and this post will be updated as more details are available.

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life is about to be published. Like previous years, the researchers have tried to untangle some of the complexities of the Mormon experience, and this year in particular the questions have a special importance. In this latest iteration of the survey, 1,019 Mormons were interviewed and some of this data captures interesting trends among the Latter-day Saints. As a caveat, part of the problem with this data, as always, is a lack of appropriate nuance in the questions.

According to the survey, less than half of Mormon respondents believe that abstaining from caffeine is necessary to continue to be a ‘good’ member of the Church. It is difficult to draw anything substantive about this particular question except that it is clearly trying to tap into something latent concerning the Word of Wisdom. If anything it seems surprisingly high, especially because it is not clearly proscribed by D&C 89.
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Belatedly, another edition of Best Comment of the Week. Rules for nomination are the same.

Mark B. on avoiding MoTab

It’s really pretty easy to avoid listening to the MoTabs. It’s like avoiding porn–don’t buy it, don’t click on those links, and if it pops up unbidden on your computer or TV, turn it off.

Keeps my blood pressure in the range my doctor likes, and saves my friends and family from hearing me complain. [Read more...]

According to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, true fellowship requires that we must not only live together as believers but also ‘as the undevout, as sinners’.[1]  Lynette, at ZD, recently described a Church where we fail to see ourselves as a hospital but rather focus on projecting sainthood.  Additionally, Scott’s excellent post on worthiness and repentance has outlined very clearly why we are in the position Lynette discussed. In the comments of Lynette’s post, Kristine shared a beautiful post articulating the emotional necessity of being able to avoid the intensely raw suffering of others in our community while recognising that there are moments when grief and pain need to rupture the procedural fabric of our Worship services.  These ruptures are very often difficult to respond to.  Over the summer I read a wonderful account of a teacher who tried to develop classes where children could share difficult experiences and at the same time I was reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  These two texts have helped me see that confession is still a form of spiritual practice but that confessing in private, to people other than our close friends, is one way of extending a particular conception of repentance. [Read more...]

Instead of selecting a winner from among the nominations, the powers that be wanted to share them all so that we can reminisce together.  The original rules for Best Comment of the Week are the same and a number of excellent comments were not eligible, sorry John F.

Here are the nominations, simply for your reading pleasure:  [Read more...]

Titles in the Church have often bothered me, and probably not for very good reasons.  A somewhat recent link in the BCC sidebar noted, according to Judith Dushku, Governor Romney’s preference for being called by his ecclesiastical titles.  Reading this made me uncomfortable, and not because I do not use ecclesiastical titles.  It just feels unseemly.  I remember hearing a Bishop being told that one of the reasons he might be struggling to motivate people in the Ward is because he did not refer to himself enough by his official title and that he should request this from other members.  Similarly I know of Stake Presidents who insist on using proper titles, even referring to the deacon’s quorum president as President X.  All this strikes me as peculiar or did until I recently re-watched The West Wing.  Specifically, this TV show prompted me to question the extent to which the status of Bishop is governed by a different set of dialogic parameters than other types of conversation? [Read more...]

Michaelango Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610), Doubting Thomas, Oil on canvas, (1602-3).

Even today there is something quite shocking about Caravaggio’s ‘Doubting Thomas’.  For me, it is disturbingly literal.  The ragged apostles, perhaps even a little ugly, are crudely observing Thomas put his finger inside the wound of Jesus.  It is both invasive and a little mundane; yet these qualities suggest something profound about our relationship with Christ. [Read more...]

Figures in a Landscape (1972-3) by Sidney Goodman

My father and mother were sealed in the London temple but subsequently their sealing was cancelled and my father was excommunicated. I have not seen him for over 10 years. Since my mother’s divorce she remarried and has been sealed again in the temple. Currently, according to the Church Handbook of Instructions, ‘After a husband and wife have been sealed in a temple, if one of them is excommunicated or has his or her name removed from Church membership records, his or her temple blessings are revoked. However, the sealing blessings of the innocent spouse and of children born in the covenant are not affected’.[1]  Although I find some solace in the continued validity of the sealing to my mother, I am still spiritually fatherless, an orphan of sorts.

Yet, in another sense, I am not. [Read more...]

Last Sunday, I was walking down the hallway toward Sunday School right at the end of the allotted hour; as I neared the foyer where the class is given I heard a lady giving the closing prayer. As she prayed for the Conference speakers in preparing their talks I was moved by her expression of faith. [Read more...]

Giovanni Franceso (Guercino) Barbieri (1591-1666), ‘Saint Peter weeping before the Virgin’, oil on canvas, 1647.

Having previously seen a print of this painting, I was surprised at my immediate response to the original when I visited the Louvre earlier this year. I have not experienced real grief in my life and as I stood before this masterpiece there was an unexpected sense that this image articulated something that I knew I would one day have to feel. It was almost prophetic but also, in one sense, surprisingly un-Christian.

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If anyone has ever doubted the awesome institutional power of BCC, then the last few days have brushed all doubters aside.

Barely five months have passed since Ronan suggested that young men from the UK should be allowed to serve LDS missions at the age of 18. As from today, young men will have that right without any special permission. [Read more...]

Recently I presented a paper at the EMSA conference.  Time constraints, and also a sense of their devotional rather than scholarly nature, required that I remove some of the comments I wanted to make.  As such I have tried to describe them below.

At the conclusion of his recent book, Douglas Davies offers the reader a ‘glance’ at the sacrificial spirituality of Mormonism by connecting specific themes in Joseph Smith’s theology with Richard Hutch’s view of saintliness and the ‘ongoing human sacrifice’ from which it is formed. [Read more...]

After thinking about how ‘taking care‘ is a sign of sacred space I want to examine another feature of the sacred, namely revelation. [Read more...]

A few days ago, in a summary of his excellent article on Mormon Environmental Theology, Jason Brown asked ‘Must nature be a separate domain for its sacredness to be apparent?’ Steve Evans responded that ‘Sacredness is a human concept, attributed by humans (through God, one assumes).’ For sacredness to become ‘apparent’ it must already be present prior to becoming recognisable. Jason responds that he wants to think about how ‘to take a concept like sacredness which does imply a sort of separation (think temple) and expand it to the forest as a space where people can both pray and work.’ [Read more...]

A few months ago, Jim F. wrote a post considering both references to fear and perfect love in LDS scripture (the First Epistle of John and an Epistle of Mormon).  Jim argued that each injunction invokes two different scenarios: one which pertains to the Final Judgement and our relationship with God and the other refers to our relationship with other people.  Jesus’ anxiety in Gethsemane, prior to the trial/temptation (gr. Peirasmos)[1], is related to John’s and Mormon’s insight[2] and I want to explore this briefly. [Read more...]

Between February 23^rd 2002 and July 2^nd 2008, Ingrid Betancourt was a political prisoner.  An activist, anticorruption campaigner and a senator, Betancourt was held captive by leftist guerrillas.  Her remarkable rescue brought worldwide media attention.  As she left the plane she held in her hand a rosary and a crucifix that she had made from the same thread that her captors used to weave their gun belts.

Her rosary was still with her as she visited sacred Catholic sites and worshipped there.

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Terryl Givens’ ‘People of Paradox’ is an important attempt to develop a theoretical and empirical account of Mormon Culture. In this post, I want to take issue with his exploration of the transition in Theatre.  In short I believe Givens has failed to situate Mormonism’s approach to Theatre within the broader context of changes in class and highbrow culture in America.

Givens argues that the theatre was important for early Mormons, even though very little original work was published.  This interest has diminished.  However, his account fails to develop the association between changing Mormon interests and practices and the rise of the ‘highbrow’ in America.  Consequently, he misses how the legitimation of the Theatre and the move toward middle-class assimilation shifted the cultural landscape of the Latter-day Saints.  Moreover, in trying to provide a ‘cultural history’ of Mormonism he seems to have adopted too readily a contemporary frame of American culture which has invariably shaped that history.  As a result, the data Givens pulls together suggest that his argument is a series of holes held together by string. [Read more...]

Sharing the gospel with friends and neighbours is usually difficult for most members in the British Isles. Missionaries often struggle to find people who are interested. When they do find someone our worship services either fail to speak directly to their concerns or they fail to inspire the forms of devotion that are congruent with their previous religious heritage. For local members there are a variety of social costs that come with being Mormon; our theology, history and praxis are quite alien to many Europeans (as Tresa Edmund’s Guardian column demonstrates). As Mauss has outlined, being a member of the Church in Western Europe is not easy. Within this network of dispositions, doctrine and our past, Embarrassment serves an unusual role in inhibiting the Church’s growth. [Read more...]

“You can’t trust Melanie but you can trust Melanie to be Melanie.” Ordell in Jackie Brown

‘He that saith he receiveth [my law] and doeth it not, the same… shall be cast out’ (D&C 41:5).

According to the D&C, there is a point at which an individual’s sins can become so detrimental to the community that they need to be formally excluded (cf. D&C 41:5).  Excommunication is a difficult topic that requires care.  This discussion is not intended to focus upon those times when excommunication has been used and there is, seemingly, no direct impact upon the community (though I am sure this sometimes happens).  Rather I want to consider whether it might be possible to accept sinners as part of the community, even when their sins are potentially destructive.  Wendell Berry wrote: ‘A community can trust its liars to be liars… and so enjoy them’.  If a community could accept the sins of another with this type of love then excommunication might not be such an essential part of our ecclesiology. Yet, I am sceptical of such an approach to sin and the community. [Read more...]

This post is a brief attempt to approach a question: How can perpetually sinful individuals trust that they have received revelation on behalf of another? [Read more...]