By Common Consent, a Mormon Blog

This past Saturday, May 19th, the 174th anniversary of Joseph Smith’s arrival at the very same site, my family and I visited what our atlas refers to as a “Mormon shrine.”

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If we’re going to insist on having conversation after conversation about gender, priesthood, and Church administration, can’t we at least make the discussion a bit more fun?

To that end, I offer you the Mormon Patriarchy BINGO Card:

Now, to facilitate the actual playing of the game, I’ll now provide you a discussion prompt. Here it is:

The key difference between men and women in the Mormon universe is that men can work outside the home without diminishing their capacity or performance as parents, women can’t.

Game on.

So, apparently it’s rather difficult to offer a rationalization or defense of a racist practice without sounding like a daft racist. The reason for this is closely related to a more general rule (the bane of unselfconscious racists everywhere): when some idea or practice is racist, claiming it isn’t racist is racist. It just is. It’s one of the unbreakable laws of the universe. Calling something racist not racist is, like, one of the most racist moves you can do. Seriously. Read the rest of this entry »

Many of you, no doubt, have heard the story by now. It actually played out according to an almost cliched trope: the anonymously passed note, from the brave male standing up for standards, to the inadequately covered female flaunting same. Here is the text from the note: 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 »

“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 »

A central part of the problem of dealing with the legacy of Joseph Smith stems from the nature of writing/telling history. First, historical data are inherently incomplete, and what information does or does not wind up being encountered by historians and incorporated into the stories they tell is a product of a combination of sheer chance as well as of sociohistorical dynamics which heavily favor the preservation (and consultation by researchers) of written/textual sources. Because of sporadic and inherently incomplete nature of historical records as well as our own human impulse to process, synthesize, and impart coherence to the randomness we encounter in the world, historians and other influential social actors make choices regarding A) the kinds of stories they put together and tell with historical data, and B) the kinds of data they do and don’t incorporate into their stories. There’s no such thing as a comprehensive self-telling story, and that fact is exponentially more true with regard to historical subjects which carry a great deal of meaning and significance in the present.

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).

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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 »

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 »

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?

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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 »

Finally, our little series begins to move into something that is vaguely recognizable as modern Correlation. Parts 1-5 of the series are available here, here, here, here, and here. Daymon’s dissertation can be found and read here. 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.
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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 »

This post marks the beginning of a series on the origins and historical development of what Mormons typically denote with the term “Correlation.” It’s a long and complicated story, one that will require a number of installments to adequately canvas. It’s also an incredibly interesting story, involving, among other things, polygamy, the Underground, manifestoes, post-manifesto polygamy, senators, aspiring senators, “courts of love,” monogamy, Fundamentalism, Church welfare, apostolic infighting, charts and graphs, minds and bodies, lying, truth-telling, bureaucracies, Navajos, and a plethora of John Taylors. Read the rest of this entry »