SideblogFor part one, see here.
Unity with the Brethren
For Latter-day Saints, the route to truth is through revelation, available to the individual through the Holy Spirit but at all times to be guided by those authorised to reveal doctrine to the church (= the Brethren and their institutions, e.g. Correlation). Read the rest of this entry »
People might rightly ask why Anglophone Latter-day Saints still use the King James (Authorized) Version of the Bible when there are new translations available which better represent the ancient sources and their languages.
The purpose of this series of posts is not to offer a defence of the KJV nor to criticise its use. Rather, I wish to try to explain, particularly for a non-Mormon audience, why Mormons use the KJV, or to state it differently, what the use of the KJV says about the modern Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
In short, I believe that the use of the KJV underlines the importance of unity to the LDS Church: unity with Joseph Smith and the Restoration, unity with the Brethren, and unity with traditional Mormon Christology. Read the rest of this entry »
This is the final installment in a review of Peter Vardy’s book Good and Bad Religion (London: SCM, 2010).
Let’s recap:
Vardy would have us ignore truth claims in our appraisal of religion, fraught as they are with epistemological headaches and what not. Do not judge Scientology on the credibility of Xenu but by the behaviours and ideologies which Scientology promotes. Read the rest of this entry »
This is the next installment in a review of Peter Vardy’s book Good and Bad Religion (London: SCM, 2010).
Having decided that “good” religion leads to human flourishing via the Aristotelian virtues, Vardy goes on to identify three ways in which “bad” religion limits the same. Read the rest of this entry »
So, to Aristotle we turn — to the notion of human flourishing, to the alignment with God’s natural law which will enable the same, and to the virtues which characterise this alignment. So far, so Aquinas. Read the rest of this entry »
Kent’s feature at T&S serves again as a reminder that it’s time to offer nominations for the Boggs-Doniphan Award (Gentile of the Year). Who is the non-Mormon who has had the greatest impact on Mormonism for good (Doniphan) or bad (Boggs) in 2010? Previous winners were Mike Huckabee and Stephen Colbert. I nominate Barack Obama for paving the way for the Mormons to save the Constitution.
Having established that “truth” is not relevant to “good” and “bad” religion, Vardy goes on to discuss the problem of otherwise determining the morality of religious behaviour. In this he cites Plato’s Euthyphro Dilemma — is something good because God commands it or does God command that which is good? Religion has traditionally followed divine command theory in ethics: good can be judged as good because God commanded it and he is good. The circularity is obvious and thus Vardy rejects it, noting along the way that this thinking as led to a depressingly long list of religious crimes. Read the rest of this entry »
Our next question is that of “truth.” Vardy discusses the assault of the popular atheists on the notion of religious truth, namely that it is both lightweight and dangerous, a “virus” to use Dawkins’ term. Vardy disagrees, obviously, championing the idea of knowledge beyond the empirical realm. In doing so, he rubbishes Ayer’s view that the unverifiable is worthless. Kant suggested that though we are confined to the phenomenal world, this does not preclude the existence of the noumenal. On occasion, Vardy argues, the noumenal can make itself known to us through something other than the normal senses, perhaps through aesthetic experience. This is a perfectly reasonable thing to believe. Read the rest of this entry »
The title is partly for my punk buddy John Fowles, but also because I intend to spend a few posts reviewing a new book by Peter Vardy, Good and Bad Religion (London: SCM, 2010). Read the rest of this entry »
I’m currently teaching Buddhism to a group of educated, but distinctly non-Buddhist young men. Last week we talked about Buddhist food rituals and I told them that many Theravada monks fast after noon. For boys (and their teacher) who enjoy their food, this seems like an impossible practice.
It also had them asking “why? — what’s so beneficial about not eating past lunch?” One witters on about self-control blah-de-blah, but I’ve decided that it would be better to try it for a week and see. The experiment is somewhat (completely?) artificial because I’m neither a Buddhist nor a monk and so the spiritual element is likely to be missing, but having floated the idea at dinner today, I’m now committed to it. You see, my youngest son told me I couldn’t do it — “dad, you’re too greedy” — and my wife is dubious that I will be able to eschew the 9pm Marmite-on-toast. Gauntlet, dropped.
In assembly yesterday I talked about how we can learn from Israeli grandmothers and treat others how we would wish to be treated. The Golden Rule is an ethical universal but so very difficult to do.
I want to take this idea further. Listen to this strange tale from the New Testament (Luke 24: 13-16): Read the rest of this entry »
On Saturday, Jews across the world celebrated the high holiday of Yom Kippur. Known in English as the Day of Atonement, Jews fast and pray on Yom Kippur as an atonement — or penance — for the previous year’s sins and misdeeds. Read the rest of this entry »
Mormon testimonies tend to be small-t trinitarian:
1. I know that God lives.
2. I know that Jesus is the Christ.
3. I know that the Church is true. Read the rest of this entry »
A few months ago my family visited Picardy in northern France. From the cathedral city of Amiens we drove to Albert and entered a rolling countryside so beautiful now but so full of blood and horror almost a century ago. Despite our distance from the First World War, “Somme” still invokes a feeling of dread in the British, images of trenches and mud and mutilated bodies passed to us through a vivid national memory. We were not there but somehow we know it was uniquely awful. Read the rest of this entry »
Reposted, and edited, in light of the use of the ephod in 1 Sam 23 (part of the Gospel Doctrine reading)
The Book of Mormon translation mechanism is surrounded in mystery. Read the rest of this entry »
And so it begins!
THIS IS A THREAD FOR BLOGGERNACLE SOCCER FANS TO DISCUSS THE WORLD CUP. HATERS GET LOST.
BCC’s World Cup festivities begin here, starting with a World Cup Predictor:
Go to the BBC predictor and tell us who you have in the final and who will win.
I have Argentina beating Brazil in the final. Of course, what I really want to happen is for England to win a second star. First we need to beat the Yanks on Saturday.
More events to follow…
Is “Suspensive” Historiography the Only Legitimate Kind?
Christopher C. Smith*
I am a PhD student at Claremont Graduate University, doing History of Religions in North America, with a particular focus on Mormon Studies. I also happen not to be a Mormon. I have never been a Mormon. My interest in Mormonism is academic, and I’m especially interested in Joseph Smith. Joseph Smith is a fascinating puzzle to me, and I have struggled to make sense of who he was and what motivated him to do the things he did.
That of course puts me in a difficult position, because here at Claremont I am surrounded by believing Mormons, and so I’m constantly aware of the risk that the way I make sense of Joseph Smith and the Mormon movement may be offensive to some of my friends and colleagues here.
As a result, I’ve thought a lot about this question of whether it’s legitimate for me as a scholar and a historian to talk about LDS truth claims. Is it legitimate for me to express views about Joseph Smith that fly in the face of what Mormons believe? Will this be perceived as an attack? Will I be considered biased and anti-Mormon by my colleagues?
My Mormon colleagues here at CGU face a similar problem, but from the opposite direction. If they speak as faithful Mormons from a position of belief in the Church, they run the risk of alienating non-Mormons, of being labeled biased apologists, and of being seen as non-academic and perhaps even unemployable by secular universities. Read the rest of this entry »
The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ by Philip Pullman
My rating: 2/5
Here’s the story: Mary has twins — Jesus, a religious weirdo, and Christ, the politician. Encouraged by a mysterious stranger, Christ makes plans to turn Jesus’ provincial message in to a world religion.
I sort of wanted to like this book, if only so I could resist the holy religious outrage which often accompanies anything written by the pop atheists nowadays. Religions would most of the time be better off confronting the abuses of faith that are pilloried by people such as Pullman, rather than pretending they don’t exist. Read the rest of this entry »
Troubled with the carnage unleashed by Moses, a friend wrote me the following: Read the rest of this entry »
The Incarnation is both cosmologically grand and appealingly chthonic at the same time. It supposes that the Great God of a universe of more than one hundred thousand million galaxies, the Supreme Being who created this universe and perhaps an infinite number of others, condescended to earth to live life as a poor Jewish man in the Eastern Mediterranean two thousand years ago. The story is full of miracle — virgin birth, resurrection from the dead — and yet strangely familiar. There is fear and love, hope and failure, loyalty and betrayal, with Jesus’ humanity palpable and proximate. Peter Steele captures well the Christian awe of this incarnate God: “in the face of this mysterious reality [the incarnation], either we could talk for ever, or we could find ourselves wordless.”[1] Read the rest of this entry »
Another of Ronan’s Rules:
If it’s not experienced by international Mormons, then it’s not essential to Mormonism.
The European Mormon Studies Association Annual Conference 2010
Tilburg University, Tilburg, Holland
Thursday 15th – Friday 16th July 2010
Keynote Address: Professor Terryl L. Givens
Call for Papers
“European Mormonism and its Experience in Media and the Public Sphere” Read the rest of this entry »
At the end of the last season of Lost, the viewer is (finally!) given a glimpse of the island’s foundational mythology. On a beach we see the island’s two deities — Jacob and “Smokey” (for want of a better name) — watching a ship bring new souls to their world. The relationship between Jacob and Smokey seems cordial at first but we soon see that beneath their surface bonhomie, conflict burns: Smokey tells Jacob that one day he will find a “loophole” which will allow him to kill Jacob. Cue Lost intro scroll. Read the rest of this entry »
Recent complaints from Iran that the British Museum is unreasonably delaying the loan of the Cyrus Cylinder reminded me of this old post. Beware everything you ever read about the Cyrus Cylinder.
I have been reading Bruce Feiler’s Where God Was Born. In it, Feiler travels the Middle East in search of the foundational places of the Bible. It’s enjoyable enough if a little preachy — most of the people he meets (rabbis, imams, priests, scholars) seem to have consistently and improbably eloquent defenses of religious universalism on their lips. It’s also very Old Testament-centric, unsurprising given Feiler’s Judaism. Mormons will enjoy his conversation with an LDS soldier on top of the ziggurat in Ur, although he commits the unforgivable “Church of the Latter-day Saints” mistake. Read the rest of this entry »
On the day the Lord gave the Amorites over to Israel, Joshua said to the Lord in the presence of Israel: “O sun, stand still over Gibeon, O moon, over the Valley of Aijalon.” So the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, till the nation avenged itself on its enemies, as it is written in the Book of Jashar. The sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day.
- Joshua 10:12-13
Update: Reader opinion poll now open! Voting is closed.
If T&S is running Mormon of the Year, it must be time for the BCC Boggs-Doniphan Award for the non-Mormon with the biggest impact on Mormonism in 2009, be it positive (Doniphan) or negative (Boggs). Let’s discuss candidates and we’ll vote later.
I went to an Anglican elementary school. Every Christmas we put on a nativity play at the local church. One year I was Joseph, another year Herod. But one thing I could never be was an angel. That was reserved for the girls.
As a good Mormon boy among those apostate Anglicans, I knew that something was terribly wrong with the angels. For one, they wore wings. But worse, they were girls, and we all know angels are men.
Rubbish, right? Right?
What’s the Mormon doctrine of angels? And, where are the female angels? Read the rest of this entry »
A (slightly edited) conversation I recently participated in:
LDS Headlines Authors Elsewhere
