Title: An Other Testament: On Typology
Author: Joseph M. Spencer
Publisher: Salt Press
Genre: Scriptural Exegesis
Year: 2012
Pages: 193
Binding: Cloth (or .pdf)
ISBN13: 978-0-9839636-2-2
Price: $18.95 (or free, but the clothbound volume really is quite handsome! And if that ain’t the coolest looking cover I’ve seen in a while…)

What’s that you say, Joseph M. Spencer, graduate student of philosophy at UNM? You’re just out offering a radical new textually-based interpretation of the entire Book of Mormon in your spare time, hmm? Radical and new. Sounds like a nice little project you got there, yes. Wait, what?! [Read more...]

George Albert Smith repeatedly referred to the scriptures as “the greatest library in the world” (TPC:GAS, chapter 10). During his October 1917 conference address he stood before the congregation and read the entire first section of the Doctrine and Covenants.

Read: D&C 1:37-39.

“Search these commandments, for they are true and faithful, and the prophecies and promises which are in them shall all be fulfilled. What I the Lord have spoken, I have spoken, and I excuse not myself; and though the heavens and the earth pass away, my word shall not pass away, but shall all be fulfilled, whether by mine own voice or by the voice of my servants, it is the same. For behold, and lo, the Lord is God, and the Spirit beareth record, and the record is true, and the truth abideth forever and ever. Amen” (TPC:GAS, 106).

This was actually not an easy task for President Smith. His reading an entire section is particularly significant considering what “The Life and Ministry of George Albert Smith” chapter describes regarding his health: [Read more...]

Adam S. Miller, ed., An Experiment on the Word: Reading Alma 32 (Salem: Salt Press, 2011) ISBN: 978-0-9839636-0-8; Paperback; $12.95; 99 pages, and Joseph M. Spencer and Jenny Webb, eds., Reading Nephi Reading Isaiah: Reading 2 Nephi 26-27 (Salem: Salt Press, 2011) ISBN: 978-0-9839636-1-5; Paperback; $12.95; 158 pages.

“At one time, Ts’ui Pen must have said; ‘I am going into seclusion to write a book,’ and at another, ‘I am retiring to construct a maze.’ Everyone assumed these were separate activities. No one realized that the book and the labyrinth were one and the same.…[And] I kept asking myself how a book could be infinite.” –Jorge Luis Borges, Ficciones (New York: Grove Press, 1962), 96-7.

The Book of Mormon is a curiously self-referential book. Perhaps its greatest conceit is the fact that it just can’t quit talking about itself. OK, books don’t talk, but the scribes who kept the original records from which the BoM was constructed seem unable to avoid writing about their project in their project. How many books have you read that focus so intently on their own production? So here we have a book that contains scattered pieces of its own interpretive instruction manual—a manual which has largely been overlooked in the hundred-and-eighty-plus years since its original publication. [The cheerful reader asks, “Overlooked?”]

Yes. [Read more...]

From my ongoing “tips for teachers” series especially for Sunday School, RS and PH instructors. See here, here, here, here. 

The teacher-to-student talk ratio is tough to navigate. The manual repeatedly reminds teachers that if they are taking up most of the time they’re doing it wrong. Chapter 6′s “Teaching help” says carefully listening to questions and comments is an “expression of love.” Chapter 9′s “Teaching help” says teachers ought to refrain from being the “star of the show” by putting the pupil “into action.” Chapter 16 says skilled teachers ask themselves “What will my students do in class today” rather than “What shall I do in class today.” And I’m particularly fond of Pres. Packer’s quote, the “Teaching help,” in chapter 2:

“Quite a bit of teaching that is done in the Church is done so rigidly, it’s lecture. We don’t respond to lectures too well in classrooms….teaching can be two-way so that you can ask questions. You can sponsor questions easily in a class.” [Read more...]

This 3-part series is a response to Matthew Bowman’s excellent Slate article, “Saturday’s Warriors: How Mormons went from beard-wearing radicals to clean-cut conformists.” I’m going over my three quibbles/expanded analyses: First, the article paints a flatter evolutionary model of LDS history than I believe Bowman himself advances in his book. Second, as a result, Bowman glosses over some important distinctions between Mormon pop-culture and correlated materials. Finally, Bowman also might have drawn attention to how the shifts he describes directly relates to the present discussions of “official doctrine.” Expansion #3:

III. (Un)Official

So there’s been plenty of chatter lately about what does and doesn’t count as “official Church doctrine.” The LDS Newsroom has published statements on the subject–one perhaps a response to Romney’s last campaign effort, the other a response to Bott-gate–and a member of the Quorum of the 12 addressed the issue explicitly in Conference. There are various motives for advancing this distinction, but here I’d like to make one quick comparison which, like Bowman’s column, can be mercilessly nit-picked due to its terseness. [Read more...]

This 3-part series is a response to Matthew Bowman’s excellent Slate article, “Saturday’s Warriors: How Mormons went from beard-wearing radicals to clean-cut conformists.”

I’m going over my three quibbles: First, the article paints a flatter evolutionary model of LDS history than I believe Bowman himself advances in his book. Second, as a result, Bowman glosses over some important distinctions between Mormon pop-culture and correlated materials. Finally, Bowman also might have drawn attention to how the shifts he describes directly relates to the present discussions of “official doctrine.” Nitpick #2:

II. Glossing Correlation and Broader Mormon Culture [Read more...]

A few weeks ago a friend posted an article on Mormonism written by a former member of the Church which, for the most part, did a fine job of describing Mormonism for outsiders. After I “Like”‘d the link and responded with some clarifications another guy replied “BHodges would quibble with the angel Moroni himself.” Well, if not the Angel Moroni, I’m quibbling here with one of the most notable academic angels of present Mormon Studies, Matthew Bowman. I recently did a podcast with Bowman, author of a great new book from Random House called The Mormon People, which I pitch to you now.

The prolific Bowman has yet another article out this week in Slate called “Saturday’s Warriors: How Mormons went from beard-wearing radicals to clean-cut conformists.” It’s another specimen of Bowman’s typically fun, frank, and insightful analysis. But I think the piece requires a bit of quibbling, as such popular columns always do, and I’m feeling a bit audacious today, so here goes nothing. [Read more...]

Last night I noticed a change on lds.org. I’m not sure when it happened, but a new page has been added called “Common Questions for Teachings of Presidents of the Church: George Albert Smith, 2012.” (Notice the site dates the GAS manual itself as 2010, so this is evidently quite new.) Only one link appears in the list, pointing to chapter 6, “Sustaining Those Whom the Lord Sustains.” The new info has its own page, but also appears in the sidebar of the lesson itself under a section called “Applying the Lesson to Our Time”: [Read more...]

You, brave teacher, are like unto Gandalf the Grey, Mithrandir, gatekeeper of the manual. Suddenly, just as you and your Hobbits are enjoying the recitation of a quality quote, a Balrog rears its head.  The most recent manual has a fair number of one particular Balrog I’ve come to fear on my journey to Mount Doom: “The World.”

Yes, that mystical and mythical entity we’ve heard much about but never seen. “The World” is everything we’re not. When we say “potato,” the world says “deadly napalm sandwich with a side of war on religion.” In chapter one alone I encountered five references to “The World,” about one every other page (TPC:GAS, 3, 5, 6, 7). What to do?

YOU…SHALL NOT…PAAAAASS!!!

[Read more...]

In this post I highlight a few excerpts from chapter seven of the George Albert Smith manual and offer some suggestions for class discussion.

1) Eternal Life in the Present

The introduction to this lesson proposes an interesting, if not unique, conceptual shift for the term “eternity”:

He frequently reminded the Saints that “we are living eternal lives”—that eternity doesn’t begin after this life but that mortality is a crucial part of eternity (67). [Read more...]

The Pilate Stone (apx. 26–37 CE) is the only universally accepted archaeological find with an inscription mentioning the name "Pontius Pilatus" to date.

If you’re looking for a way to spice up your Easter festivities with some unusual literature, this post is for you. Historical fiction isn’t my cup of tea, with very few exceptions, such as Mikhail Bulgakov’s Pontius Pilate, a novel-within-a-novel which recounts the trial and execution of Yeshua Ha-Nozri under the direction of the famous Roman procurator. Pontius Pilate is supposed to be the magnum opus of a Russian author who becomes bitter when the Russian literati reject it, leading him to burn the manuscript and move into an insane asylum. Chapters from the story are scattered within Bulgakov’s stunning work of Russian magical realism, The Master and Margarita.

Pontius Pilate plays on the idea that the gospels as we have them today are unreliable, but are nevertheless based on actual historical circumstances obscured over time. The story begins on Good Friday as a prisoner is brought before Pilate, the Roman procurator, after being accused of inciting the people to destroy the temple and teaching that the rule of Caesar would come to an end. As in the New Testament account, the Sanhedrin has sentenced him to death and the procurator must sign off.  [Read more...]

After the recent “Bottgate” hullabaloo and opposition to proxy baptisms of Shoah victims, we might have expected a bit of a break. But a new Slate column has again called our attention to skeletons in our communal closet. The column’s author, Max Mueller, is a Ph.D. candidate in religious history at Harvard University and specialist in early Mormon history and race relations. (See my recent podcast interview with him on blacks and the priesthood here.) He writes about the discovery that Thomas Jefferson’s slave Sally Hemings has been sealed by proxy to him. He relates several other troubling historical examples of proxy sealing in a balanced, informative, and sensitive approach that deserves our careful attention. I look forward to other forthcoming responses from those who are more familiar than I am with all of the historical nuances. In this post I’d like to call attention to two specific theological tools Mormons might use to help mitigate these problems. [Read more...]

Nadia Yassine is a Muslim intellectual/activist from Morocco. She doesn’t embody the sort of “above the fray” intellectual, detached from untidy personal connections and political motives. Instead, her combination of roles reflects a recent trend in Islamic thought aiming to rehabilitate a religious tradition through local and international activism. In the US we’re more likely to hear about “radical” Muslims who might train with al-Qaeda than about people like Yassine. Such folks make for better newscopy than intellectuals, after all. But she offers much food for thought in her book Full Sails Ahead by taking aim at the West, and critiquing elements of Islamic culture, modernization, and globalization. In a disenchanted modern/post-modern world she hopes Islam can provide a moral compass to guide humanity’s great ship, the sail of which is represented by hijab, or the veil worn by many Muslim women. She’s an eminently snappy author, and while the book is a translation from her French original, I don’t believe much of her sarcasm, wit, puns, or jokes were lost in translation. Is this a common French intellectual style? It felt very Nietzschean to me. Fun, thought-provoking, and aggravating by turns.

What I find particularly interesting for discussion here is the similar way she shifts discussion of Darwin away from scientific claims toward cultural assertions–a move also made by certain Young Earth Creationist Christians in the US. Mormons aren’t the only ones who’ve sadly outsourced views on evolution to fundamentalist Christians. [Read more...]

See part 1 here.

In this post I’ll highlight a few excerpts from chapter six, “Sustaining Those Whom the Lord Sustains,”  and offer some suggested questions for discussion. As the manual’s introduction suggests, “You could also develop your own questions especially for those you are teaching” (vi). There’s plenty here and more to fill up the time. If your class is anything like mine much of the discussion will actually come from the seats in answers to good questions.

I’m interested to hear your feedback on how this lesson is structured and on the content itself. You’ll notice most of the questions lead into the next quote or talking point but I tried to keep the overall structure flexible enough to allow for skipping around if class members bring up points from later in the lesson. How did your teachers share this lesson? Also feel free to suggest your own favorite scriptures/anecdotes/quotes for use in this lesson.  [Read more...]

Here’s a post to ponder while preparing for the upcoming RS/PH lesson, Chapter 6: ”Sustaining Those Whom the Lord Sustains,” whether ye be a teacher at the front of the class or a teacher from the seats.

I noticed an interesting trend while preparing for this lesson. Seventeen of the twenty-one quotes in the chapter predate George Albert Smith’s serving in the office of President of the Church. Following the manual’s selection, quotes given from before he was president tend to emphasize the importance of sustaining the President of the Church whereas quotes after his sustaining tend to focus on his own weaknesses and desire to serve.

Quotes while serving as President:

Two of the four quotes related after he was sustained as president in 1945 refer directly to the office of President, and they are excerpts from his first General Conference addresses as President. His emphasis is on his own weakness and his need for sustaining from the membership.¹

“I thank you for the confidence that has been manifested…in hoping that I may succeed, and promising as some of you have, that you will help me to succeed, because I am only a man, one of the humblest among you…I will need the help of every man and every woman and every child, not for my blessing, but for your blessing, and for the blessing of the children of men wherever they may be. That is not my responsibility, that is our responsibility” (TPC:GAS, 57, italics in the manual, not noted whether in original).

[Read more...]

Or, “an ode to invested Latter-day Saint history”*

Yesterday, various bloggers and writers were invited to a meeting
with the editors of the most recent volume of the Joseph Smith Papers
Project to discuss the new “Histories” volume. This post is partially
a reflection on that event, and you can expect other blog posts and reviews to come.

In a revelation dictated on the day of his church’s founding, Smith reported God’s command: “there shall be a record kept among you.”¹ And so it was; with various fits and starts the early Saints strove to fulfill what they took to be a divine mandate. Mormon history, from the very beginning, was invested. It was Mormon history. Much of our earliest material was recorded under the dictation, direction or influence of Joseph Smith. It doesn’t take a genius or a meticulous historian to recognize that such records will carry deeply impressed fingerprints of the personalities, prejudices, and perspectives of those doing the recording. And such records are invested.

You might sense a problem with this. We want people to simply tell it like it is, enough cheerleading, tell the truth, lay everything bare. However, I’m suggesting that those who complain loudest about the obviously-partisan nature of official accounts might find it more fruitful to deeply consider the initial impulses behind the records Mormons kept. Why did they record this and not that? What are they focusing on, and what seems to escape their gaze altogether? Invested history won’t often provide distanced, dry, meticulous, disconnected accounts though the stuff from which it is crafted might very well seem less-than-exciting. I’m asking you instead to conceive of our earliest historical accounts with close attention to their context. Such accounts include personal witnesses of spiritual experiences (visions of the heavens, visitations from heavenly beings), shot through with political, economic, and social concerns. Words like “bias” and “objectivity” should give way to words like “perspective” and “values.”

Perhaps this is the grand secret of understanding Mormon history! [Read more...]

Title: Born Believers: The Science of Children’s Religious Beliefs
Author: Justin L. Barrett
Publisher: Free Press
Genre: Religion/Science
Year: 2012
Pages: 336
Binding: Hardcover
ISBN13: 9781439196540
Price: $26.00

Belief in God is childish. So reports Justin L. Barrett, an Oxford University professor who studies the cognitive science of religion, in his new book Born Believers. [Read more...]

I’ve taken greater interest in the concept of “social justice” ever since Glenn Beck warned us all to leave the Church over it.¹ “Social justice” as a theological concept initiated mainly by Catholics, it receives close attention in what is referred to as “Liberation theology” (especially in Latin America), and it has more recently been embraced by John Rawls and other secular political philosophers. The phrase itself is seldom used by Mormons and a full treatment of social justice in Mormon thought has yet to be completed, although restoration scripture is bursting with opportunities for social justice exegesis.²

Joseph A. Grassi’s book, Informing the Future: Social Justice in the New Testament presents an overview of social justice themes throughout the Bible.³ He deftly demonstrates ways that social justice ideals embedded in the Old Testament are carried through the New Testament and the ministry of Jesus. Many of these same themes permeate the Book of Mormon, too. [Read more...]

“I have no accurate knowledge of my age, never having seen any authentic record containing it”—an obscure beginning for Frederick Douglass, one of the most distinguished abolitionists of the nineteenth century (41).* So he chose tomorrow, February 14, to celebrate his birth. Now February is set apart in the United States and Canada as Black History Month. Born in Maryland in 1818, Douglass ultimately toiled twenty years in slavery, nine more as a slave fugitive, and spent an entire lifetime fighting for abolition. He protested slavery twenty years before the Civil War and lived to see black emancipation, though the fight continued long after his 1895 passing, his exact age unknown, but not his name. Douglass’s ultimate weapon in this battle was the power of his own personal witness. His pen proved mightier than the whip. His book An American Slave is “the most artistically crafted and widely read of all the American slave narratives” (vii).

Frederick Douglass’s book has been dissected by historians, feminists, and literary critics. This epic account of slavery and freedom was deeply informed by his familiarity with the Bible and his recognition of the power of religious symbols in fighting oppression. It appealed to many of his contemporary Americans by drawing on the literary approaches of escape-from-captivity narratives, tales of self-made men, and spiritual autobiographies (11). But Douglass didn’t preach an easy faith to comfort the pious; he issued a stinging Jeremiah-like rebuke of religious and political establishments which countenanced oppression (11). His powerful voice is perhaps best remembered today for his utterly remarkable 1852 speech (one of the greatest American sermons of all time) “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July,” but his autobiography (actually one of three he wrote) is so eloquent and stirring that many of his contemporary whites couldn’t fathom that a black man could possibly have written it. The book relates his earliest memories of slavery and the circumstances of his flight to freedom. Can I deny God’s hand in this man’s work? Latter-day scripture admonishes: “Seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom; seek learning, even by study and also by faith” (D&C 88:118). I have no doubt that Douglass’s book is one of the best we are so enjoined to read and ponder. [Read more...]

To say Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species changed the landscape for discussions about science and religion would be a drastic understatement. Origin’s publication in 1859 was more like a new big bang; its aftershock has rippled through discussions about the relationship between science and religion to the present. Articles describing the interaction between Mormonism and Darwinism tend to focus mainly on the disagreements between Joseph Fielding Smith and B.H. Roberts, or perhaps the unfortunate 1911 BYU controversy when several brilliant professors were dismissed from their posts. But the story extends long before and after that crucial point in Mormon history.

As for BYU, the school has come a long way. In 2009 the school celebrated Darwin’s 200th birthday anniversary with a series of lectures in praise of his work, and the biology department is first class. But a recent Pew Forum survey suggests that Mormons lag behind when it comes to understanding evolution. 22% of Mormons said “it is the best explanation for human life,” while three-in-four (75%) disagreed. Perhaps the numbers reflect poor question phrasing, but my limited personal experience suggests the number isn’t entirely off-base.

And yet, it need not be so. Mormon responses to Darwin date back to 1860, within a year of the publication of Origin. While they were initially skeptical if not hostile, some Mormons took a “wait and see” approach as scientists worked through the implications. Some Mormons even labored to find solid reconciliations between their faith in the restored gospel and the discoveries of modern science in Darwinism. Such efforts continue to the present.* In memory of Darwin’s birth (12 February, 1809), this post includes a 1954 General Conference shout-out to the famous naturalist. [Read more...]

I think the most underrated Mormon-themed book of 2011 was Tom Mould’s Still, the Small Voice: Narrative, Personal Revelation, and the Mormon Folk Tradition. As its title suggests, the book explores how the Spirit’s “small voice” is still an important part of religious life for Latter-day Saints. It’s is a folklorist’s examination of the stories Mormons share about personal revelation.

Mould is associate professor of anthropology and folklore at Elon University in North Carolina. He recently joined me as a guest on the “FAIR Conversations” podcast. His work is thought-provoking, challenging, and inspiring, both religiously and academically. He brings the perspective of a thoughtful outsider but speaks with an insider’s knowledge. Here’s an excerpt from the interview. You can hear or download the full episode here.

***

BHodges: Tom, in the beginning of the book you give a brief outline of personal revelation as something that is foundational to Mormonism perhaps beginning with Joseph Smith reporting his visions and revelations. But you say that [such foundational stories] are the tip of the iceberg in Mormonism when it comes to personal revelation. Can you explore that metaphor, the tip of the iceberg? [Read more...]

…Or, my re-view of Philip Lindholm’s book, “Latter-day Dissent”

I read the news today, oh boy. The New York Times has a little series on Mormonism, tidbits from five writers, “What is it about Mormonism?” It presents, for the most part, highly caricatured pieces of polemic. (Maffly-Kipp and Reiss hold their own, however.) Elsewhere, Tricia Erickson recently published a scare-all book warning America about the dangers of a Mitt Romney presidency. She’s appeared on various news shows and in articles as an expert on Mormonism. Here she is at something called One News Now:

“I grew up as a Mormon bishop’s daughter, so I know how they think; I know how they program their members…Mormonism is no different than any other cult. It’s very likened to Islam because they’re not really allowed to have critical thinking.”

She cites her mo-credentials to back up the claim that Mormonism doesn’t allow “critical thinking,” just like Islam. Yes, those scary Muslims. One of my grad courses this semester is “Contemporary Islamic Activist Intellectuals.” This presents an odd spectacle. I’m a Mormon, surrounded by Muslims, all of us engaging in critical thinking about Islamic intellectuals. Clearly, there must be more to the story than what Erickson lets on about. Or are Mormons a bunch of uncritical dupes? [Read more...]

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 more...]

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 more...]

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 more...]