Sideblog
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 »
“When death becomes the center of our consciousness, then religion authentically begins. Of all religions that I know, the one that most vehemently and persuasively defies and denies the reality of death is the original Mormonism of the prophet, seer and revelator Joseph Smith.”
–Harold Bloom
“I will open your eyes in relation to your dead.”
–Joseph Smith, Jr.
In Heaven as It Is on Earth: Joseph Smith and the Early Mormon Conquest of Death
Samuel Morris Brown
New York: Oxford University Press. 2010
Hardback, 408 Pages
Sam Brown’s long-anticipated book has been well worth the wait. Read the rest of this entry »
J. Kirk Richards: "Cristo"
Joseph Smith, by J. Kirk Richards
Which brings us back to Joseph Smith. Read the rest of this entry »
There are any number of angles one could take in trying to think or talk about prayer. How does God hear prayers? How does God respond to them? When and for what should we pray? What are the mechanisms that make prayer potentially efficacious? I’d like to discuss prayer from a perspective that brackets these questions of efficacy or the effects our praying has on God, focusing instead on one particular aspect of prayer, perhaps most memorably described by C. S. Lewis who famously argued that the most important consequence of prayer was not its effect on God but rather its effect on the person who prays. Read the rest of this entry »
All the anticipation of and conversation around the upcoming anniversary has reminded me of a powerful experience. I attended a fireside with my wife several years back at which President Hinckley spoke. He was sharply dressed (a light gray suit with a jet black tie and matching pocket-kerchief). I remember being somewhat surprised at his remarks, not because he said anything earth-shattering in itself, but because he seemed to deviate from his more typical folksy conventional wisdom at least topically, if not stylistically. Read the rest of this entry »
A good friend of mine and avid Mormon book collector recently apprised me of one of his newer and more impressive acquisitions: Spencer W. Kimball’s personal copy of The Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith. As the inscription below (scanned from the opening pages of the book) indicates, it was a gift from his wife, Camilla. (Click on the image to see it full size).
Inscription: "A fathers day gift from your devoted wife"
The following is a list of grievous sins: Read the rest of this entry »
Two weeks ago a bishopric counselor asked me to prepare a talk for the upcoming Father’s Day sacrament meeting. Now, I’ve made no secret of the fact that I have some problems with our current (and past) discourse on gender, sex, and gender roles. These problems are trenchant, and definitely not the mere product of self-consciously sexist attitudes on the part of current LDS leaders (indeed, sexist attitudes are much more the products how we talk about these topics and the kinds of things that our talk about them takes for granted). Still there have been some important shifts in the past generation. Read the rest of this entry »
On Monday afternoon, 18 April 2011, Stanley E. Whiting passed away at a Hospice center just outside Independence, Missouri. Earlier this year, at age 76, Stanley learned that the pancreatic cancer he successfully pushed back 3 years ago had returned with a vengeance. Read the rest of this entry »
I am silvery, scaly. Puddles of flakes form wherever I rest my flesh. Each morning, I vacuum my bed. My torture is skin deep; there is no pain, not even itching. We lepers live a long time, and are ironically healthy in other respects. Lusty, though we are loathsome to love. Keen-sighted, though we hate to look upon ourselves. The name of the disease, spiritually speaking, is ‘Humiliation.’
—John Updike, “From the Journal of a Leper”
Generally speaking, the miracles of Jesus’ ministry fall in to four categories: healings, exorcisms, nature miracles, and post-resurrection appearances. This post will focus primarily on healings, and take Jesus’ healing of lepers as paradigmatic of this important aspect of His earthly ministry. Read the rest of this entry »
Women are endowed with special traits and attributes that come trailing down through eternity from a divine mother. Young women have special God-given feelings about charity, love, and obedience. Coarseness and vulgarity are contrary to their natures. They have a modifying, softening influence on young men. Young women were not foreordained to do what priesthood holders do. Theirs is a sacred, God-given role, and the traits they received from heavenly mother are equally as important as those given to the young men.
—Vaughn J. Featherstone, October 1987
This past year I was asked to give a talk on the value of motherhood in our Mother’s Day sacrament meeting service. As I prepared the talk, I posed two questions to a number of women and mothers I know, including my wife.
What is the thing you most enjoy hearing in talks about motherhood?
What is the thing you most dread hearing in such talks?
The answer, it turns out, in virtually all cases, was identical. For both questions: Read the rest of this entry »
[Two Mormon Elders stand adjacent to a popular thoroughfare, attempting to catch the attention of passersby. On a table next to them are displayed various samples of Church-produced art, most of which depict either families or images of the Savior’s ministry. At the center of the display is a framed copy of “The Family: A Proclamation.” A man approaches, his attention visibly piqued. Elder Q reaches for a copy of the Book of Mormon, while Elder P gears up to speak with man.] Read the rest of this entry »
Despite all the clamoring and buzzing about some of last weekend’s more, um, provocative and controversial moments, the most memorable sermon for me this General Conference was delivered by Elder Todd Christofferson. Read the rest of this entry »
In recognition of a recently surfaced artistic masterpiece, I offer the BCC reading community this humble verse along with a commemorative piece by Brother Matsby:
Strange things are afoot
On a sacred document.
Barry, how could you?
Feast your eyes upon the artwork below, and then tell us: Which one evokes the most powerful spiritual feelings.
This is the final, and longest, post of the series. Read the first eight installments: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, and Part 8. You can download and read Daymon’s dissertation here.
Remember, Daymon has made his dissertation available for purchase in bound form here. All of the proceeds will go to the Utah Food Bank. Read the rest of this entry »
Read the first seven installments: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7. You can download and read Daymon’s dissertation here.
I should note that the dissertation chapters that coincide with this portion of the discussion are among the most accessible of the entire work. They’re also rich with detail in a way that this conversation can really only approximate. Remember, Daymon has made his dissertation available for purchase in bound form here. All of the proceeds will go to the Utah Food Bank. Read the rest of this entry »
Read the first six parts: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6. You can download and read Daymon’s dissertation here.
*****Also, a bit of news: Daymon has made his dissertation available for purchase in bound form here. All of the proceeds will go to the Utah Food Bank. Read the rest of this entry »
For those of you who have kept up with and continue to follow this series, we thank you for your diligence and patience. In part 1 we tracked the polygamist Underground and the discursive splitting it generated within Mormonism. From there, part 2 cast the issuance of Manifestos in light of the possibilities for reading capacitated by that discursive rupture and semiotic fragmenting. This led, eventually, to strategies for curtailing what was emerging as a kind of neo-Underground by Church leaders, and the Church courts wherein these things were (not particularly) sorted out were canvassed in part 3. The formal division between holdout polygamists and the newly monogamous Church only began to really take hold with the excommunication of recalcitrant apostles, most prominent among them John W. Taylor. Discussion of his excommunication comprised the bulk of part 4 in the series. Again, I heartily recommend that you read Daymon’s dissertation, available here. Now, to business… Read the rest of this entry »
Catch up on the series with parts one, two, and three. Daymon’s dissertation can be downloaded and read here.
Brad: So to this point we’ve basically laid some important historical groundwork. We began in the 1880s on the Underground and ended last time roughly three decades later with the implementation of disciplinary hearings. These historical developments entailed some really difficult, complicated, entangled issues involving authority, priesthood, the relationship between polygamous and monogamous Mormons in the wake of the 1904 Manifesto, etc. The whole idea is that by the time we actually get around to the emergence of what we can today recognize as Correlation—that process doesn’t really make a lot of sense in a vacuum. It doesn’t just come out of nowhere, and the more we understand the issues that LDS leaders faced at the time in their efforts to transform Mormonism into a “modern” religion and church, and especially a post-polygamous church, the more the rise of Correlation will make a kind of historical and logical sense, as a particular response to a particular set of concerns and difficulties. Read the rest of this entry »
Read installments 1 and 2 in the series here and here. Seriously. Read them. Before you read this. Also, read Daymon’s dissertation here.
Read the rest of this entry »
A continuation of our conversation on the origins and historical developments of Correlation. Part 1 can be read here. To reiterate, these conversations are meant to serve as an introduction or prolegomenon to Daymon Smith’s pathbreaking existing work on the topic, available here. Last time we talked about the Underground. It would be useful to read there before moving into this section of the conversation. Again, thanks to Daymon for his willingness to participate in these chats. Read the rest of this entry »
Oh, Matsby -- how could you?
The association of the fallen state of humanity with the biblical story of expulsion from Eden has deep and varied Christian roots. While Original Sin might be a notion primarily associated with the theological traditions of Catholicism (and perhaps Eastern Orthodoxy as well), Protestants too view the redemptive work of Christ as the antidote to the problems of human sinfulness as embodied in Adam’s fall from grace. I have no idea the extent to which the problem of physical death figures into these Christian anthropologies (though I assume that the at least some connection between Adam and Eve’s transgression and our collective mortal nature is implicit in most if not all Christian traditions). But my sense is that the link between physical death and the Fall enjoys a unique theological focus and valency in Mormon thought. Read the rest of this entry »
Nothing like an all-destructive act of divine carpet bombing to kindle the holiday spirit. I actually debated putting off the conversation to a less celebratory time, but time, it seems, is the one luxury which we currently lack. You see, it turns out (so I’m told, by people who really seem to know what they’re talking about) that God destroys societies that embrace and normalize homosexual relationships. Since we appear to be on the brink, as a civilization, of making precisely that mistake, I figured better safe than Sodom. So, let’s get to brass tacks: why did God destroy the cities on the plains, and what might it all portend for a society (ours) where the gay agenda is spreading and taking root like a crop of rainbow dandelions? Read the rest of this entry »
Seventeen centuries ago, on 28 October 312, the emperor Constantine, convinced that Christ had delivered to him recent military victories, officially converted to the by then rapidly spreading and increasingly powerful religion of Christianity. He would soon attempt to extend his personal conversion onto whole of his imperial dominion, if only symbolically. And, since Christianity was, among other things, a strategic tool for consolidating his power, the newly anointed Religion of Empire would itself be subjected to unification and centralization. Read the rest of this entry »
If a sure sign of a healthy organism is that its feces stink, then perhaps the steady onslaught over recent years of effeminate “progressives” (along with their cohorts in the Liberal Media) whining about the price of freedom is evidence that the bloggernaccle, as a deliberative body, is finally at fighting weight. Read the rest of this entry »
Mike stared incredulously at his brother. “I can’t believe I’m hearing what I’m hearing.”
There was a self-assured quality to the look in his brother’s eyes right now, a strange blend of confidence-inspiring beauty and what Mike viewed as arrogant self-righteousness. Then again, his brother had every reason to feel supremely confidant in matters such as these, as their father seemed to trust him implicitly. Yet precisely for that reason, Mike was uncomfortable, knowing what his brother’s words implied about their father’s authority, even sanity.
“He is wrong – at least about this. I know it’s hard to hear, but the logic is as inescapable as it is self-evident.” Read the rest of this entry »
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