“Do Mormons believe they can become Gods” is a question that requires much more than a yes or no answer, to be sure. If members of the Church are reluctant to answer with a simple “yes” or “no”, they seem to be trying to hide something, or to be unversed on the subject. This circumstance is reflected in an oft-cited response President Hinckley gave to various public interviews. I’ve seen it on facebook, I’ve seen it on message boards, I’ve seen it on blogs and in various columns. Hopefully this post can help clarify.

Pres. Hinckley has been accused of being dishonest or evasive on the subject of deification–whether humans can become gods. He is depicted as saying something to the effect of “we don’t know anything about that.” I believe a closer look at the respective interviews suggests that Pres. Hinckley was more specifically saying Mormons don’t know much about God’s past, rather than humanity’s future. Here’s the selection from a 1997 interview in the San Francisco Chronicle, wherein Pres. Hinckley affirms the divine potential of women and men:  [Read more...]

Hands on clocks seldom pull our eyes in circles anymore,
we, the guided-by-pixel ones, no less captivated by time.
We, the archaeologists of old experience turned architects of a new year,
our implements are senses, memories, books, arts and friends.

And some mock me for aspiring to create worlds:
“ye shall be as the gods”; to one a blasphemy, to another an absurdity,
not realizing I’m already a fashioner—
and they too—of worlds without number.
Worlds without number, create we them,
in every face encountered, every landscape
glimpsed in a rear-view mirror, making order from chaos,
firm foundations fashioned by a new year’s Eve, her eyes open wide.

Living in built worlds of blood and hair,
building new worlds with/from traditions and hope.
Holding hands and hopes in our pockets or against our breasts (i.e., feeling time),
We, fashioners of the deep. We, imaging the gods watching mortal creations die (i.e., watching time).

“Knowing” good and evil, not knowing whether God
speaks Elizabethan English, misuses verbs.
The Fashioner of worlds abusing tense? Is this time?—
and has ever so been—the sin and salvation of auld lang syne?  [Read more...]

Title: Exhibiting Mormonism: The Latter-day Saints and the 1893 World’s Fair
Author: Reid L. Neilson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Genre: History
Year: 2011
Pages: 240
Binding: Hardcover
ISBN13: 9780195384031
Price: $29.95

It really goes without saying now that we’re in something called the “Mormon Moment.” Two presidential candidates, a hit Broadway musical, and a massive advertising campaign are just a few things on the list current public opinion shapers on Mormonism. Still, about half of all Americans apparently still claim to know very little or nothing about the faith. It’s hard not to feel like we Mormons are really in the thick of things like never before, but taking the long view provides some fascinating context.

If you think we Mormons get a bad rap in 2011, you should’ve been at the Columbian Exposition (also called the Chicago World’s Fair) in 1893. Right on the heels of the Manifesto, Mormons showed up to claim their place as respectable and patriotic Americans. Historian Reid L. Neilson’s latest book Exhibiting Mormonism tells the story of how the Church sought to shape public opinion by participating in the Exposition and in subsequent world’s fairs and expositions through the 1930s. It’s a pretty straight-forward book, not a lot of bells and whistles, most significant, perhaps, for describing the Church’s shifts in PR attempts. [Read more...]

It was only 17 hours ago:

The quote is from Elder Perry’s 1974 BYU devotional talk, “Be the Best of Whatever You Are.” It also makes an appearance in the Young Women Manual 1. I’ll bet the latter reference is where he found it.

*Caution: This post contains spoilers.*

It was summertime and I was home alone for a few weeks. AMC was replaying their series The Walking Dead all the way through and, although I’m not a horror/suspense/zombie fan per se, I’d seen enough chatter by Facebook friends to give it a shot. I’m glad I did. On its face, The Walking Dead doesn’t seem to be FHE fodder, but you’d be surprised at the deep theological and philosophical reflections zombies can foster.¹

The Walking Dead follows a small group of survivors from Atlanta struggling to endure a zombie apocalypse. In their world, the idea of zombies didn’t previously exist, so the characters are forced to work out for themselves the nature of what looks like a spreading disease. Government structures are in complete disarray and people are fending for themselves. “Walkers” roam the streets seeking to eat human flesh; their bites and bodily fluids spread the disease. The virus essentially invades human neurobiology, killing the consciousness of its host and taking control of the body through the brain stem. The only way to kill a Walker is by destroying the brain.

Instead of being a scare-em-and-shoot-em-up thriller (though it has its moments!), overall the series finds its real emotional power in the conflicts of the human protagonists. Its true genius is underscoring the fact that many of the problems we encounter aren’t black and white; The Walking Dead focuses on complexity and shades of gray.² The rest of this post highlights three areas of off-the-cuff theological reflection the show spurs.  [Read more...]

Heidi A. Campbell and Heather Looy, eds., A Science and Religion Primer (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2009), $15.99.

Dialog about the relationships between science and religion is usually an interdisciplinary endeavor, with all the jargon and assumed knowledge you can shake a stick at. The editors decided a “crib sheet” of key terms and figures would provide “a way in” to the currently central discussions about religion and science (13). The first section of the book contains intro essays about the respective roles of history, philosophy, theology, and technology in discussions of religion and science. The second half is a collection of A to Z entries on a bunch of different SR topics, including Chaos Theory, Darwin, Ecofeminism, Emergence, Fideism, Intelligent Design, Metaphysics, Panentheism, Spinoza, Theodicy and a bunch more. Each entry contains key points and suggestions for further reading. I worried that the book would be a bit boring, but each article is written by a talented and knowledgeable scholar who brings a unique voice to their subject without straying from the introductory purposes of the book. If you’re looking for a nice intro, I definitely recommend this book. I could see it coming in handy at seminars and in study groups like the one Steve Peck recently participated in at BYU. [Read more...]

Stephen Jay Gould died too young. He was a controversial paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, historian of science, and a fun writer. Targets of Gould’s criticism range from fundamentalist creationists to sociobiologists. In the “science vs. religion” debates he’s best known for proposing “NOMA,” or “non-overlapping magisteria”; the modern sciences shouldn’t be at war with religion because they don’t address the same questions. He distinguishes science’s description of “is” from religion’s claims of “ought.“

In his final book (published after his death), Gould expands the terms from “science and religion” to “science and the Humanities.” He explains: ”[Scientific] facts may enrich and enlighten our moral questions (about the definition of death, the beginning of life, or the validity of using embryonic stem cells in biological research).” However, “our yearnings and quest for morality and meaning belong to the different domains of the humanities, the arts, philosophy, and theology—and cannot be adjudicated by the findings of science” (106).¹ These domains must work together in order to help us  humans make the most of our existence. This book is Gould’s argument for mending the old breach between science and the humanities by stressing what they share in common and by proposing a merger of their respective strengths (144). [Read more...]

"I must tell you of a work that has moved quietly forward in the Church virtually unnoticed." —Elder Boyd K. Packer, "Scriptures," October 1982 General Conference address.

Do you know any Bible Dictionary literalists? Folks who take the BD as the gospel truth?

When the topic of prayer comes up I expect someone to dutifully turn to our BD, which makes a very interesting (and sometimes even useful)  claim about prayer, essentially that the purpose of prayer is to align ourselves with God’s will, rather than to convince God to do something we want. I call it “sometimes” useful because I think there’s much more that can be said about prayer from an LDS standpoint, and to the extent the BD ties a person to such a narrow position I don’t find it useful at all. In the words of Phillip Barlow: “many [BD] entries are not purely attempts to convey the biblical meaning of a concept but conscious expressions of modern Mormon theology” (Mormons and the Bible [New York: Oxford University Press, 1997], 210).

I’m anti-literalist especially when it comes to the BD, (and the other add-on scripture study apparatuses like chapter headings, footnotes, etc. collectively called “Study Helps“). Since I’m just a regular dude it’s nice to have a little authoritative back-up when necessary. So here are a few quotes you can print up on little scraps of paper and glue into your already-bulging quads which direct us away from strict BD literalism. [Read more...]

Title: The Scholar of Moab
Author: Steven L. Peck
Publisher: Torrey House Press
Genre: Magical Realism/Western Fiction
Year: 2011
Pages: 300
Binding: Paperback
ISBN13: 9781937226022
Price: $15.95 (Kindle, $9.99)

“I think this story is interesting cause my other friend
had strange things happen too. There are weird things in the world.
Strange even for a Scientist & Scholar like me.” —Hyrum Thanye (22)

Steven L. Peck’s new book The Scholar of Moab doesn’t read like your typical novel at all. The narrative is told by an unnamed chronicler, the “Redactor,” who brings strange tidings from an unlikely Cumorah. Buried deep within an “old curmudgeon’s trailer,” beneath a “mountain of filth and garbage” the Redactor discovers a collection of unusual documents carefully tucked inside a box labeled “Keep” (4). These documents include a journal by a dead fellow named Hyrum Thayne, a scientific article on “bumblebee faith,” a photograph of cowboy conjoined twins, letters and poetry by a nature lover named Dora Tanner, leftovers from a dismantled Webster’s dictionary, and other odds and ends. From this hodgepodge the Redactor pieces together clues about infidelity, theft, child abduction, religious fanaticism, and—somehow floating through it all—good intentions. [Read more...]

Title:  Simply Jesus: A New Vision of Who He Was, What He Did, and Why He Matters
Author: N.T. Wright
Publisher: HarperCollins
Genre: Christianity
Year: 2011
Pages: 240
Binding: Hardcover
ISBN13: 978-0-06-208439-2
Price: $24.99

There are a lot of great things I could tell you about N.T. Wright’s latest book Simply Jesus. I could praise the way Wright, former Bishop of Durham in the Church of England, clarifies Jesus’s claims about “the Kingdom of God” by situating him alongside Judah the Hammer, Simon the Star, Herod the Great, and Simon Bar-Giora–historical figures who, before and after Jesus, declared their kingdoms (105-117). I could analyze Wright’s seven-point typology of the Exodus as he depicts it playing out in the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth (63-66, 174-176, etc.). I could explain the way Wright challenges the notion that Jesus was simply a good moral teacher by placing Jesus’s actions and claims within their ancient cultural context, trying to discover what he thought he was doing based on the very Hebrew scriptures he quoted and enacted (166, 170, etc.). I could dissect Wright’s employment of key Old Testament texts regarding the coming Kingdom of God, texts which Wright views as crucial to understanding Jesus’s claims and various reactions to them (151-166). I could engage in debates about properly interpreting the identity of the “servant” in the book of Isaiah (153-158). I could even hook you in by outlining the interesting, often compelling ways Wright tries to answer questions like “Look out the window…If you think Jesus is already installed as king of the world, why is the world still such a mess?” (198).

Indeed, there is plenty of stuff in Wright’s latest book which makes for compelling review fodder. Instead of any of the above, I’ll describe the clever central metaphor Wright employs throughout Simply Jesus in order to paint “A New Vision of Who He Was, What He Did, and Why He Matters.” [Read more...]

Periodically, (usually when a collection is published) we see reflections on the literary genre of the “personal essay” in Mormonism. Here’s mine, albeit quite belatedly. The footnotes provide some links, which themselves provide further suggestions on the subject if you’re interested. 

Title: What of the Night? Personal Essays
Author: Stephen Carter
Publisher: Zarahemla Books
Genre: Personal Essay
Year: 2010
Pages: 168
Binding: Paperback
ISBN13: 978-0-9843603-1-4
Price: $14.95 (Kindle, $2.99)

Having grown up Mormon I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know what a “testimony” was. Like breath, sleep, and family, testimony’s a natural part of my life. The genesis is lost to me, but I can remember instances when my conception of “testimony” was sharpened. As a kid in Primary I learned that a testimony ought to be a list of things I know are “true,” and these things were all things I’d learned about at Church. Usually us Primary kids would also sneak a few extra things onto the end of our testimony lists, like the fact that we loved our brothers and sisters and dads and moms. As I got a little older I learned we could include a personal experience or two in our testimonies. I usually enjoyed listening to these ones a little more, but the list still came at the end as it should; the general thrust of testimony remained the same.

This changed a little when a seminary teacher parsed different ways we “bear” our testimony. [Read more...]

On this Veterans Day it seems appropriate to reflect on a battle we’re all currently enlisted in, because we just lost a whole regiment today, so to speak. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) declared Africa’s western black rhino extinct today. Dialogue‘s recent issue focusing on the environment and Latter-day Saint thought (guest-edited by the beloved Steven Peck) got me thinking. Given our scriptures which declare that an important relationship exists between God, the earth, and humans, the loss of the black rhino should catch our attention.

We believe God created the heavens and the earth, and that male and female were created in God’s image. It’s in our scriptures and our rituals. I’ve been told there’s been a bit of debate on how all that creation stuff really shook out, but here I want to focus on the idea of God’s creation in terms of the fall of Eve and Adam, and all of their posterity, and our responsibilities to creation.  [Read more...]

Title: Darwin’s Pious Idea: Why the Ultra-Darwinists and Creationists Both Get It Wrong
Author: Conor Cunningham
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans
Genre: Religion/Science
Year: 2011
Pages: 580
Binding: Hardcover
ISBN13: 978-0-8028-4838-3
Price: $35

Conor Cunningham wants to “move beyond the silly impasse brought about by fundamentalism (whether secular or religious)” in regards to the legacy of Charles Darwin (xi). Many atheists and plenty of Christians “tend to sing from the same hymn sheet” on this point: that “Darwinian evolution threatens to annihilate religion at its very root” (xvi). Cunningham disagrees. While Daniel Dennett has called organic evolution a “dangerous idea,” Cunningham calls it a “pious idea.” To be more precise, Cunningham outlines his understanding of evolution as promulgated by “ultra-Darwinists,” which he admits is quite dangerous—not merely to religion, but to the scientific method generally as well. He argues that religious fundamentalists and fundamentalist atheists alike misconstrue what organic evolution entails, and he outlines the boundaries of their misconstrual. Finally, he offers a different way to conceive of evolution from a Christian perspective, that evolution itself can help us understand God and ourselves. In this review I’ll briefly explain Cunningham’s main points, explain why I think he could have done a better job, and offer a few suggestions for further reading.  [Read more...]

FIRST, I try to keep in mind that the Church
makes no claim to being a democratic institution,”
–Armand Mauss, “Seeing the Church as a Human Institution,” Sunstone Magazine (July 2003), 20.

Here’s one of those rare phrases that I can simultaneously whole-heartedly agree with even while clenching my teeth. The teeth-clench admittedly stems from specific circumstances when this completely accurate phrase (“the church is not a democracy”) has been used to slam doors, to maintain top-down policy arrangements, however trivial. But there are good things to say about this phrase, even if we don’t always taste the fruit such a circumstance should bear. For example, Alexis De Tocquville famously worried about the “tyranny of the majority,” and many framers of the US Constitution hoped to confront this problem by establishing a constitutional republic (despite the recent meme which emphasizes the latter over the former for political ends. There’s a side-track for you!). So the little folk might be better protected.

I fully recognize a few potential problems here.  [Read more...]

If you go to the Church’s online edition of the scriptures you’ll notice a prominent link to a 3-part documentary called “Fires of Faith: The Coming Forth of the King James Bible,” produced by BTUTV. What an interesting subtitle. “Coming forth” is a phrase we typically reserve for discussions about the Book of Mormon. The phrase connotes divine direction, implicitly asserting the KJV’s prominence for LDS scripture study in the English speaking church.

I’ve recently been using a New Revised Standard Version for my scripture study. I’ve also used a free Kindle copy of the English Standard Version to follow along with recent Sunday School lessons on those ever-so-difficult Pauline epistles. Using different Bible versions has brought the text to life in a new way for me; I wish more members would make use of a variety of translations. Too often we say “A Bible! A Bible! We have got a KJV Bible and there cannot be any more Bible.”

That being said, there’s a peculiar devotional quality I personally experience in the KJV that I can’t easily escape. I figure it has something to do with the KJV’s prominence in my early memories of the reading or hearing scriptures, including its familiar cadence in the Book of Mormon.

Speaking of which…

[Read more...]

Title: The Gift and the Power: Translating the Book of Mormon
Author: Brant A. Gardner
Publisher: Greg Kofford Books
Genre: Religion
Year: 2011
Pages: 379
Binding: Hardcover/Kindle
ISBN13: 9781589581319
Price: $34.95*

“A gust of wind shuffles the two manuscripts.
The reader tries to reassemble them. A single novel results,
stupendous, which the critics are unable to attribute.”

—from If on a winter’s night a traveler, a novel by Italo Calvino

Stop and think over that epigraph for a minute. Then think about this next one. For at least 30 full seconds:

“…between that ancient text
and our modern translation
sits Joseph Smith
staring at a stone
in the crown of his hat.”

—Brant A. Gardner, p. 260

Ready?  [Read more...]