Giving 10% of one’s income to charity is a concept familiar to Mormons (although paying tithes to the Mormon Church is not really the same in its purpose as paying 10% to, say, Oxfam — no judgement implied). One Oxford academic has decided to go further. He has pledged not only to give up 10% of his income but also all of his income above £20k ($30k). Dr Ord predicts being able to donate £1m over the course of his life and thus save thousands of lives. His website (Giving What We Can) encourages others to donate at least 10% and usefully ranks charities according to their cost-effectiveness.

I find Ord’s decision inspiring and wish him well in keeping to his goal (the pull of Mammon should not be underestimated). He goes where tithing does not — hurting the rich (or in Ord’s case, the non-impoverished). Up-scaling our donations according to wealth seems like a sensible way to discharge our obligations to the poor and remove the love of money from our hearts.

Could I do it? Probably not. Off the top of my head, I think our household of five in this corner of England could live comfortably and make room for future needs with no more than £50k ($75k) p.a. Tithing 100% (to the church, or to other charities, or both) of income above £50k is something I really wish I could aspire to. Even then I think £50k is too high a ceiling if I am to “give away [a relatively sacrificial amount of my possessions] to the poor.”

BBC3 (the BBC’s youth channel) airs a series called The World’s Strictest Parents. It’s a reality show where tearaway British youths (“oiks” as the London mayor would call them) are housed with said Strictest Parents in an inverse of Nanny 911 (where a British nanny schools naughty American kids). In last week’s show, two kids are sent to Utah to live with a Mormon family. Enjoy: [Read more...]

The European Mormon Studies Association Annual Conference
15-16 July 2010
Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands
“European Mormonism and its Experience in Media and the Public Sphere”

It’s been over 400 years in the making, but the Vatican finally got some modicum of revenge for the English Reformation this week. In a rather stunning piece of ecclesiastical politics, Pope Benedict XVI grabbed Archbishop Rowan Williams in the thigh and squeezed. Rowan was ashen faced as he announced what had only been told him a few days earlier, viz. that the Roman Catholic Church was to organise

within the Apostolic Constitution, a canonical structure that provides for Personal Ordinariates, which will allow former Anglicans to enter full communion with the Catholic Church while preserving elements of distinctive Anglican spiritual patrimony.

In other words, Anglicans can become Catholics but retain their liturgical identity as Anglicans. Thinking Anglicans has all the links you need.

Some thoughts: [Read more...]

The theme for 2010′s European Mormon Studies Association conference in The Netherlands is “European Mormonism and the Media.” I am hoping to present a paper on Euro Mormons’ interaction online and imagine that their isolation may somehow be alleviated by new media. I am interested in the kinds of websites/forums/lists they visit and the impact they have on their Mormon lives. Suggestions please! I am particularly hoping to hear from the hordes of European lurkers out there.

Imagine, if you will, that a time is coming when human life can be extended a long time beyond our three score years and ten. Maybe through cyborg technology, or through cell regeneration treatments, some humans in our generation will live to 150 or 200. Maybe in a century or two, humans will live for a millennium. Maybe one day our consciousnesses will be downloaded and live forever in machines.

What would this do to our religion (other than enlarging the stakes of the Mormon gerontocracy)?

Massimo Introvigne and Michael Homer tell the interesting story of an Italian author — Oriana Fallaci  — who spoke to them about her novel on the 19th century American West. Her story was to include the Mormons and she asked Introvigne about her research. Introvigne introduced her to Homer who gave her important works of the New Mormon History.

Fallaci’s book, in the end, retold the familiar polygamous/cultic tropes one finds in works such as Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet. The New Mormon History may be more accurate than Doyle’s, but sex sells and Arrington is boring. [Read more...]

The rules governing Mormon missionary music listening habits are quite austere, generally restricted to churchy-stuff (like MoTab) or classical (but no Carmina Burana, lest the elders and sisters get the wrong idea). Individual mission presidents may adapt the rules a little. If you’re lucky you might be allowed a little easy listenin’; if your Prez is of the schoolmaster variety, you’ll be lucky to go beyond the hymns on CD.

Here’s the music I really heard for the first time auf Mission. Some if it was kosher, some not, some of it I did not approve of at the time, some I loved. (Don’t judge us too harshly. Even hard-working missionaries in Catholic central Europe need to let off steam.) [Read more...]

In the latest issue of Ecumenical Trends, James Massa, who heads ecumenical outreach for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, tells the inside story behind the invitation to the Mormon Church to attend the ecumenical meeting with the Pope during his April 2008 visit to the U.S. [Read more...]

Some passages in Mormon scripture (e.g. Abraham 3:22-23) seem to infer that our mortal station has been influenced to some degree by our valiance-quotient in the pre-mortal sphere. My own patriarchal blessing, for example, states that I was born into the LDS covenant by virtue of my status as a “strong leader” in the pre-existence. Such beliefs are not uncommon in the modern church.

Some Mormon authorities have in the past extended this belief to explain questions of race, i.e. that those held to be “cursed with a black skin” were so marked by God as a caste apart from the rights of the priesthood and that they lived under this curse because of their lack of valiance in the pre-Earth life. [Read more...]

I was relatively agnostic about the claims of brilliance accredited to TDK …

… until now. Having watched the film again, I am now a believer: TDK is an awesome film of pure awesomeness.

Christopher Nolan’s sequel to Batman Begins is stylish, exciting, atmospheric, and loaded with great acting. Ledger has been heralded for the Joker, and rightly so, but Bale and especially Gary Oldman as Gordon are equally excellent.

Beyond its superior blockbuster bona fides, TDK is a deeply philosophical film, and pays proper homage to the complexities of the DC comics.

Some thoughts on the ethics of Batman: The Dark Knight: [Read more...]

The Salt Lake Tribune has published a July 4th piece on America and Mormonism to which I contributed. Here is my full conversation with Peggy Stack. (There’s also a great post by Wilfried that is, as ever, more articulate on this matter than most of us could hope to be.) [Read more...]

In one of the Mormon Garden of Eden narratives, the commandment specifying the prohibition of eating from the Tree of Knowledge is as follows (Moses 3:16-17): [Read more...]

Patheos.com, a new website on religion and spirituality, formally launched on May 5th (see Time article here). Today the site added a new “Gateway” devoted to Mormonism. The co-founder and CEO of the Denver-based company, Leo Brunnick, has answered ten questions in this BCC interview.

1. Does the world really need another religion website?

Not if it’s “just” another religion website – there are a lot of sites out there, and adding to the noise wouldn’t be helpful. However, we have created something that is different. It sits in a middle ground between existing sites that are academic (balanced and rock-solid, but dry and hard to consume), or popular (interesting and exciting, but thin and gimmicky), or faith-based (passionate and knowledgeable, but narrow and biased toward one faith). Patheos takes the best elements of each and creates something that is balanced and reliable, while at the same time interesting and easy to consume. [Read more...]

UPDATED:

We went back as a family and it was heaven again. [Read more...]

The arrest of a dozen men in the UK last week allegedly plotting to “blow up Manchester,” serves to highlight, if true, the continued danger posed to the west by militant Islam.

It’s a depressing story. A few moderate Muslim voices give hope, however, a liberal call to prayer over a fundamentalist wilderness. One such voice belongs to Taj Hargey, chair of the Muslim Educational Centre of Oxford and the Imam of the Summertown Islamic Congregration. Writing in the Times, he offers a cause for the poison in British Islam and suggests a cure.

The cause is simple: there is no British Islam. Instead, Muslims in Britain imbibe the milk of exported Saudi wahhabism, wetnursed by fundamentalist imams from Pakistan.

Unfortunately, Islam in Britain has been taken over by the followers of a warped manifestation of the faith. The Muslim Council of Britain, the main Muslim newspapers and many of the big mosques are dominated by men who subscribe to a virulent and backward-looking brand of Islam that has been exported from the Middle East and the Indian sub-continent.

According to Hargey, this is an Islam which fetishises the hadith to the exclusion of the Qur’an. The cure, then, is also simple: downgrade the hadith and return to the Qur’an. [Read more...]

I had Thai dinner with fellow BCC blogger John F. last week in London. Dazzled as I was by his smart pinstripe suit, beautifully ironed shirt, and swish shoes, I made the following observation, which I now share with you:

Formal is good. [Read more...]

Call for Papers: [Read more...]

Steve and Ronan discuss corporal punishment, sacrament meeting attendance, Kolob, Battlestar Galactica, and evolution.

Warning, epic navel gazage ahead. [Read more...]

“When the Son of Man comes in his glory and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. All the nations will be assembled before him, and he will separate people one from another like a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. [Read more...]

We return to the central question of this series: Given the divine expedience of the Fall and the trials and temptations which beset God’s children in mortality, precisely what is the sin of Satan?

With regard to the Fall in the Garden, Mormon Satanology offers certain surprises. For example, the Mormon understanding is that Satan justified his actions in offering the fruit to Eve by virtue of the fact that he was merely doing what was “known and done in other worlds” [Nibley, Return, p. 63]—a claim that, astonishingly perhaps, goes unchallenged by God.

Indeed, according to the book of Moses, the serpent’s temptation began a chain of events which opened the way to eternal life: “Were it not for our transgression we never should have had seed, and never should have known good and evil, and the joy of our redemption, and the eternal life which God giveth unto all the obedient.” The implication here is not only that the Fall was a forward step in the progression of humankind, but also that the Mormon Devil is not God’s enemy simply because he tempts humans. Instead, his evil must be sought beyond his role as a tempter and in the exact nature of the temptation itself.

If our reading of the premortal Satan in Mormon thought is correct, then this temptation will have the goal of permanently arresting the possibility of further progression for Adam and Eve and their descendants. This goal becomes further apparent in the Garden narrative, and especially with regard to the Tree of Life. [Read more...]

3. Why Was It Essential That Premortal Spirits Be Given the Opportunity to Receive a Body? [Read more...]

2. By What Means Did Satan Seek to “Destroy the Agency of Man”? [Read more...]