By Common Consent, a Mormon Blog

In my second year of teaching high school English, I was offered a unique semester class: 25 boys from a local juvenile detention center would be bussed in for a few classes day, including grade 10 English. Since that class would move me from part-time to a full contract, I agreed.

It was explained to me that a sheriff would remain in class at all times, and he would take care of discipline. I knew instinctively that that was a terrible idea: I would have to control the class or I would have no role there. But without the usual external motivations of good grades and happy parents, how could I exert enough authority to teach? [Read more...]

You walk into Relief Society and someone hands you the pinterest-approved announcement for the next weeknight activity:  “Pretty Pretty Princess Girls Night Out!  Featuring a ‘Modest is Hottest’ Fashion Show!”  Or maybe you show up to your freshman year at BYU, interested in wildlife biology, only to learn very quickly that it is not a major or a career that is compatible with motherhood.  You go to girls camp, excited about the hiking, but spend most of your time preparing for a very special fireside in which the leaders will tell you what boys really expect of you and how you can conform your life to those expectations of being sweet and modest and spiritual (and pretty).  You attend a nationwide institute broadcast by a seventy and his wife where they give advice on marriage to men and women, including the admonition for girls to invest in a full length mirror.  As a teenager, you look around your ward for role models, and identify those women with multiple children, and sweet voices, and color coordinated houses, and husbands who were successful enough to support a PTA volunteer wife.  You try to stand out in your singles ward, because you want to find a husband, so you skip relief society to stay home and do your hair–but it’s not enough, you need an interesting hobby.  Music and crafts and traveling to the country where you served your mission are okay.  Herpetology is not.  You are taught at a Deseret Book sponsored “Especially for Women” event that lobbying is not ladylike, unless you’re lobbying for families.  In Relief Society, you ask why women don’t have the priesthood, and you hear the hushed chuckles as the teacher smiles at you sweetly and knowingly and tells you that women are more spiritual than men, and that men need the Priesthood to catch up to you.  You join a book club where you and the other sisters only read young adult novels, just to make sure that you are not exposed to ideas of “the world.” You are praised–unyieldingly praised for your innate sweetness and your spirituality and your defense of your family.  When the boys are in scouts working on career day merit badges, you are learning how to support them, how to encourage them to honor their priesthood, how to keep their thoughts pure by covering your body, and then you make them cookies.  It is relentless messaging, year after year after year, starting in the year you were born, and never letting up.  Your whole life has taught you to do exactly one thing.  This:

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We are very pleased to have Emily U, from Exponent, as our guest for this post on Lesson 10. 

Notes, commentary, and questions for LDS Sunday School teachers using the ‘Doctrine & Covenants and Church History’ manual. Feel free to share your thoughts or ideas regarding the lesson in the comments.

Section 25 is remarkable because it is the only revelation in the Doctrine & Covenants given to a woman. It’s also remarkable because Latter-day Saints trace the origin of their hymnals to this section. It begins with addressing Emma Smith and concludes with “this is my voice unto all,” so there is universally applicable advice in the section, but there is also prophecy that seems to be just for Emma. [Read more...]

If you live in anywhere in the Upper Midwest, and you’re the sort of Mormon who goes to stake conference, then yesterday you were sitting in a church building somewhere listening to some piped-in talks from Salt Lake City, the concluding one being given by Elder Dallin H. Oaks. His remarks were very Hinckley-ish, running over a wide range of topics pertinent to both administering the affairs of the church and living a Christ-like life. At one point he directed his comments to the single adult members in the church, and he told a short story, which I actually thought was an almost perfect analogy of the situation facing most single adult members of the church. Almost. To summarize as best as I can recall, his analogy went like this: [Read more...]

The headings for D&C sections were written anew in the recent 2013 edition of the LDS scriptures. Unfortunately, the heading for D&C 130 was not corrected to reflect its contents. (See below.) Nevertheless, the new scriptures are an encoded banner of trust for the Joseph Smith Papers. Go JSPP.
[Part 4 is here.]

Ok, here is D&C 130, coded to reveal where it came from, a genetic text if you will. Note: some passages are clearly quotations of modified biblical pericopae. That is not what I’m about here. I’m just displaying the modern manuscript sourcing for our current text of D&C 130.
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There is lots to be said about the new edition of LDS scriptures. (Race! Polygamy! Abraham!) One of the more seemingly mundane changes, but perhaps the most frequent, concerns the reference’s to Joseph Smith’s history.

Much of the historical changes come as a result of the great work being done by the Joseph Smith Papers Project (see here). And a major result of this new research has called into question the reliability of BH Roberts’s History of the Church, a seven-volume series based on earlier manuscripts. (See my overview here.) Put simply, these books took historic sources and often modified the language to make them seem more authentic and written in Joseph Smith’s own voice. They have been under increasing scrutiny, especially as the original sources these books were based on have come available. A few years ago, the Church’s RS/PH manual Teachings of the Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith explicitly mentioned that it bypassed the source because of those problems. Now the transition has influenced the section headings for the Doctrine and Covenants. A quick glance through the comparative changes shows dozens of headings that had references to the History of the Church removed. [Read more...]

“Church Releases New Edition of English Scriptures in Digital Formats“

Go forth and explore.

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Journal of Mormon History

Call for Articles

Special Issue on Mormonism and Race

To be published in the summer issue of 2014

Finished papers due July 31, 2013

Special Editors:

Max Perry Mueller: mpmuell AT fas.harvard.edu

Prof. Gina Colvin: gina.colvin AT canterbury.ac.nz

Goals of the Journal’s special issue on Mormonism and race:

This special issue of the Journal of Mormon History aims to broaden and deepen the conversation on Mormonism and race beyond the historical focus on the ban on black men from the Mormon priesthood, and its emphasis on the U.S. experience. In particular we aim to understand “race” beyond the black-white (European-African) binary. We welcome articles ranging in historical focus from the Mormon movement’s founding to the present day. Articles exploring international encounters, race and gender, and race and politics, and race and class are of particular interest.

Requirements:

Papers should be original work. Wherever appropriate, concrete evaluation results should be included. Submissions will be judged on originality, technical strength, primary sources, significance, and interest to our readers. Papers should range from 6,000 to 8,000 words. Please submit manuscripts simultaneously to both of the Special Editors listed above. Include separately a brief CV or biography.

We’re happy to have Morgan Davis as a guest author once again. Morgan is posting approximately once a month this year on several of the themes in the new youth manual, Come Follow Me. The third in his series is below. See previous entries here and here.

In my last post, I argued for patience with certain gospel mysteries, such as the pre-earth life, and showing care in not leaping to conclusions in our thirst for definitive answers. Now I will do an almost-about-face and charge headlong into speculation about one of the greatest of all gospel mysteries, the Atonement. I get to do this because, I am told, I am human and so embody contradictions, which means I need the Atonement as much as anyone. In what follows, I take Adam’s Miller’s marvelous Rube Goldberg Machines as permission to practice theology without a license, or even an apprenticeship, admitting that my speculations are just that and so have the potential to be—in Jim Faulconer’s powerfully ambivalent words—good for nothing. [Read more...]

“On Marriage”

You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore.
You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days.
Ay, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.
But let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.

Love one another, but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.

Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.

–Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

“I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people: that each should stand guard over the solitude of the other.”

–Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet [Read more...]

Earlier this month, I wrote a post about women getting an education, and about how while our leaders encourage getting as much education as possible, we are culturally and ecclesiastically reinforced, as women, to often delay finishing our degrees and begin our child-bearing quite young. I pointed out how Utah has the largest gap in the nation between male and female college graduates, and this data is supported by the US Census, footnoted in the original post.

The comments were lively and interesting, and per normal on a blog discussion there was ample disagreement on some issues. One point, brought up more than a few times, was the idea women were not actually struggling with this anymore- that women were now fully encouraged to get their degrees, and that the church wasn’t pushing them into sacrificing their educations for the sake of marriage and of starting their families young.

I submit to you, from the 2013 March Ensign, The Right Time to Marry.

I was in D.C. and NYC visiting friends and family this weekend and heard the following story, which I reprint by permission.

A longtime neighbor of the missionaries in one part of northern Europe was an apartment-ridden chain-smoker. She often invited the elders over for dinners and sometimes took the lessons. And the elders would help her get her groceries, including, at least for this young missionary, her tobacco.

And while he didn’t mind helping her out this way, he did feel bad enough about it to remove his missionary tag at the store. Then once the tobacco was safely hidden in the bag, he’d put his missionary tag back on.

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Friend of BCC, Joe Spencer, has generously written this guest post as part of our Sunday school series. Joe blogs at the awesome ‘Feast upon the word‘ where they also post excellent lesson materials.

Notes, commentary, and questions for LDS Sunday School teachers using the ‘Doctrine & Covenants and Church History’ manual. Feel free to share your thoughts or ideas regarding the lesson in the comments.

It appears that it was D&C 42 that turned the saints’ attention to the possibility—perhaps the necessity—of publishing the revelations. Many early officers in the Church made handwritten copies of that revelation to use in going about their duties. When one of those early officers apostatized and gave his copy to a couple of newspapers to print as the “secret bylaws of the Mormonites,” the Church’s leadership had to ask whether they wanted to have more control over the circulation of God’s word to them. Plans were then made to establish a printing outfit in Zion, to issue a newspaper, and to begin to assemble the revelations thus far received into a volume to be called the “Book of Commandments.” The first revelation to come off the newly assembled press in Missouri was, however, not the Church’s authorized version of D&C 42, but the so-called “Articles and Covenants” of the Church, the revelation we know as D&C 20. [Read more...]

You can see from parts one, two and three that the text of D&C 130 is founded on the Manuscript History of the Church via its instantiation in the Millennial Star. The Manuscript History is a work of epic proportions, almost entirely due to the planning and effort of Willard Richards, apostle, private secretary to Joseph Smith and church historian and recorder. Richards procured large ledger books in which to copy edited source documents for the history. Richards did not live to see his project completed, but the History more or less followed his source plan, a plan written out in Nauvoo before the apostles journeyed west to Utah. The various scribes for the history include some well known names in Mormon lore, like Thomas Bullock, Jonathan Grimshaw, Leo Hawkins, Robert Campbell and more.[1]
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“So what happened next?”

“He came through the doorway and stared at me.”

“Then what?”

“He started to beat me with his fists. Then he grabbed at me. But it wasn’t like being grabbed by a man, I could see him grabbing my spirit. He had one hand around my neck and was pulling on it. It stretched out, I could see him pulling it out. Then it snapped back. That hurt my head and my feet.”

“Where was Sister B?”

“She was beside me in the bed at first. She could not see him, but she could see me struggling and later she told me she knew what it was. She got out of bed and knelt down and started praying.”

“Wow. How long did this go on?”

“It was about 30 minutes.”

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When I was fourteen years old I had the best job I will ever have. I sold programs at Derks Field, home of Salt Lake City’s AAA baseball franchise. I walked up and down the stairs of the grandstands hawking my wares, just like the beer and hot dog vendors. “Programs here! Get yer program, just one dollar!” It was a great job for a young baseball junkie who was transitioning from baseball cards to the live game. After about the third inning, nobody bought any more programs, so I could get myself a hot dog and a (root) beer, find a place to sit somewhere along the first base line, and enjoy the rest of the game.

Although I didn’t appreciate it sufficiently at the time, I was aware that my father made the effort to drive into town twice, once to drop me off before the game and again after it was over to bring me home. Once, before a Saturday afternoon game, dad told me that he would be delayed for a while after the game, so we had to devise a plan for picking me up. As we neared the ballpark, we saw a storefront bookstore which promised to tell “The Truth About Mormonism!”. Dad suggested that after the game I just walk over to the bookstore and wait for him there. So it was under the direction of my father that I first encountered, as an 8th grader, the Kinderhook plates, Nauvoo polygamy, Mormon racism, and the problems with the Book of Abraham. [Read more...]

Highlighting a very worthwhile project headed by Melissa Inouye.

____________________________________________

As Mormonism continues to develop internationally, so too does the field of Mormon studies. More and more foreign scholars are looking to do work in the area, but often lack the requisite resources. The International Mormon Studies Book Project is a new effort to provide critical resources for developing Mormon studies internationally by purchasing books to form a base Mormon studies collection at institutions where scholars have demonstrated a keen interest in doing research on Mormonism. Currently, institutions interested in partnering with the IMS Book Project span the globe, from Asia to Australia to Europe. The first two IMS Book Project collections are slated for donation to Jianghan University（江汉大学) in Wuhan, China, and the newly formed French Institute for Research on Mormonism (Institut Français pour la Recherche sur le Mormonisme) in Bordeaux, France. In the coming months and years we hope to place as many IMS Book Project collections as continued donations will allow and as interested recipient institutions can be found. [Read more...]

Admit it. You’ve done this, too. Likely multiple times. I know I have. Just off the top of my head I can vaguely remember posting on Facebook a couple years ago that the program for a conference I was presenting a paper at–in Krakow, Poland–was just dreadfully long, and I would be presenting at the middle or the end on the third day, and how was I going to sufficiently explore this amazing city, oh my heart. I’m so depressed I’m going to go stuff myself full of that delicious kiszka ziemniaczana. (Did you know that you can only find it here, in Poland? What’s the deal with that, right?) [Read more...]

Imagine you are 16 years old. You are LDS and the church is relatively small. Youth Conference is scheduled to happen at Colby College in Maine. It’s November. There are fun things in store, and you’ll meet other Mormons. The busses gather up the attendees from all over New England. After the get-to-know-you activities, etc. the key-note speaker stands.

He begins to speak and you start hearing names like Karl Barth, Paul Tillich, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Bonhoeffer, Bultmann, and in this mix somewhere, Joseph Smith.

Truman Madsen delivers the goods: “God: Personal or Impersonal.”

It was forthwith printed as a missionary pamphlet!

In response to a recent blog discussion about plural marriage, several long-time bloggernacle participants and I got involved in a lengthy and spirited email conversation. We ended up deciding that a redacted, heavily edited, and anonymized version of our exchange would make for interesting blog fodder. The conversation started out by considering whether people today are more scandalized by the plurality of Joseph Smith’s wives, or by (some of) their ages. But it shifted rather quickly in a new, more general dirction, which is where we pick up here. [Read more...]