We are rapidly approaching the two-year anniversary of the announcement of the Vienna temple: the 4th of April 2021. I remember the day well. We were all watching conference from home during those pandemic times, so I wasn’t able to see the immediate reactions of my ward, but I’m sure audible gasps echoed around living rooms all around the country. The excitement was felt as far away as North America. People I hadn’t heard from in years—mostly former missionaries I had served with in the Austria Vienna mission in the mid-1990s but also family members and friends—reached out to share felicitations on an occasion that seemed to validate a lot of hard work by a lot of people over decades.

As a missionary, I recall members in a Vienna suburb showing us a map where they thought the temple was going to be built, even labeling it “temple square” (Tempelplatz). I don’t recall how they had determined that that would be the place. It was just an empty field in an unremarkable part of the country, far enough from Vienna that you could afford to build a house and raise a family but not so far that you couldn’t commute into the city for work. There were already a number of member families living there, so maybe someone had purchased the lot and intended to donate it to the church when the time was ripe. See below for details:

At any rate, a temple is something members have been working towards for a very long time.

Last Friday our ward celebrated the Relief Society’s 181st anniversary with an ambitious program involving all the organizations: the Relief Society prepared a play in three acts recounting the founding; the Primary was tasked with sewing bonnets for all the women; the Young Women and Young Men decorated the cultural hall; the bishopric set up the sound reinforcement; and the elders quorum was asked to cater dinner in accordance with guidance provided by the Relief Society.

The central feature of the dinner menu was to be roast chicken. There were a lot of moving parts for the dinner, so I decided to delegate the side dishes and deserts to members of the quorum and took responsibility for the main dish myself.

A week before the Relief Society’s gala event, I placed an order for 20 roast chickens at the grocery store deli just down the street from the church to be ready for pickup a half hour before the dinner was scheduled to begin. The same deli had taken care of twice as many chickens for our Christmas party, so I figured they were up to the task. Deli staff were happy to take my order, and when I followed up in person on Wednesday they gave me two thumbs up—everything was on track.

The war being waged against the civilian population of Ukraine—denying them light, heat and life itself—shocks the conscience. There is no silver lining, no higher purpose to the horror being deliberately visited on Ukraine’s families.

Nevertheless, their resilience allows us to hope for and work toward a better future. As Timothy Snyder put it, “Ukrainian resistance to what appeared to be overwhelming force reminded the world that democracy is not about accepting the apparent verdict of history. It is about making history; striving toward human values despite the weight of empire, oligarchy, and propaganda; and, in so doing, revealing previously unseen possibilities.”

At this time of the year in particular—when Christians around the world commemorate the humble commencement of a remarkable series of events that changed the world—hope is called for. Stanislav Shyrokoradiuk, Bishop of Odessa-Simferopol, said in an interview today that “More than ever, Christmas this year is the festival of longing for real peace to come amid all the misery we are currently experiencing. We will therefore celebrate Christmas more consciously than ever this year” (my translation). 

I will do my best to join him.

I know the title of my post has a strange ring in the ears of most native speakers of English—”thou” is an archaic pronoun, and even members of the church who are accustomed to hearing and even using it on a regular basis only do so when praying. So what’s the deal with the title? Well, “thou” is what you will find in English translations of the scriptures where “du” is found in German versions. Take, for example, the season-appropriate twenty-first verse of the first chapter of Mathew:

And [Mary] shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins.

In German, that verse reads:

[Maria] wird einen Sohn gebären; ihm sollst du den Namen Jesus geben; denn er wird sein Volk von seinen Sünden erlösen.

My parents were born in the Great Depression and took the church’s program of self reliance seriously. We kept a cow, goats, pigs and chickens and had a big garden and an orchard of peach, plum, apricot and pomegranate trees. What we called the back porch was a room the same size as the eat-in kitchen that was dedicated to food storage. There was a chest freezer big enough to hold butchered animals and shelves of food storage featuring white five-gallon buckets of wheat and textured vegetable protein as well as the canned goods and preserves.

My parents lived full lives without ever needing to actually rely on their food storage, but I’m glad I grew up in a household where we at least practiced self reliance for several reasons. Here are just a few: First and foremost, a sun-warmed peach picked from the tree at peak ripeness is a bit of heaven on earth—definitely add this to your bucket list. Second, having thrown numerous chickens into cardboard boxes to contain the flailing following their decapitation and prior to dunking them in boiling water to prepare for plucking, I have developed a healthy respect for the suffering that the meat on my plate represents. Third, crystallized honey and peanut butter makes an excellent snack in times both good and hard.

Following the successful insertion of the James Webb Space Telescope into orbit just minutes ago, NASA administrator Bill Nelson cited Psalms 19:

The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.

Merry Christmas, faithful readers!

I grew up in the rain shadow of the Sierra Nevadas where praying and fasting for rain was a regular part of being a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Even though I have since sought out greener pastures—literally!—on the other side of the world, I still follow with interest and concern the status of the droughts in the American West, particularly in California. And so I was delighted last week when an atmospheric river brought much needed precipitation to California, Nevada and Utah.

I shared my delight with family members living in the affected regions, and much of the conversation went along predictable lines—thanks to Heavenly Father for answering prayers and sending rain and snow. But one response caught me off guard. A relative confessed to having forgotten to pray for moisture. He then concluded—and this is what surprised me—that his prayers didn’t matter since the moisture came anyway.

I’m curious how future generations will assess the response by members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to the COVID-19 pandemic. The starting point is arguably an auspicious one: at least when I think of natural disasters and personal tragedies, I think of helping hands mobilizing chainsaws and casseroles at the drop of a hat, reflecting a shared willingness to take tangible steps to help others when misfortune strikes.

Unlike most natural disasters, however, the COVID-19 pandemic is practically invisible—there are no downed trees or piles of debris to mark the areas hardest hit. Sure, streets were deserted during lockdowns in some parts of the world, and hospitals are overflowing in others, but for the most part the carnage is visible only to those most directly affected.

In my assessment, this cloak of invisibility—aided by an incubation period that separates the point of infection from the onset of disease and its consequences in time and space—has contributed to an unusual degree of politicization for a natural disaster. Instead of being perceived as something that warrants a coordinated collective response, the pandemic manifests itself as isolated individual hardship and tragedy, not something those who remain unaffected should necessarily be expected to care about. The response to the response has tended to fall along party lines, and those partisan divides can also be found among the members of the church—to the point that we may not even aspire to a united response—despite what in my view has been a balanced institutional approach to the pandemic and its impact on our communities.

Few figures in the development of Mormon studies during the late-twentieth century are more significant than D. Michael Quinn. Educated at Brigham Young University, the University of Utah, and Yale University, Quinn was among scholars who revisited and revised the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He worked as a researcher under Church Historian Leonard Arrington and produced a series of significant works emblematic of the New Mormon History. At times Quinn’s work sparked backlash, and his identity as queer, Chicano, and independent put him at odds with his surrounding culture. His controversial scholarship and activities led, first, to his forced resignation as a full professor at BYU and then, later, to his excommunication from the church. 

Quinn’s legacy has only grown with time. His many articles and books continue to inform and influence scholarship today. The Mormon studies community mourned when he passed on April 21, 2021, at the age of seventy-seven.

We will hold a one-day conference examining the life and legacy of D. Michael Quinn on March 25, 2022, at the University of Utah. Sessions will explore both his experiences as a historical figure as well as his impact on historiography. 

While most panels will be composed of invited speakers, one session will be reserved for junior scholars as a tribute to Quinn’s dedication to mentoring younger generations. We therefore seek paper proposals from those currently in school or less than three years removed from receiving their degree who are working in fields related to those on which Quinn published. These fields include, but are not limited to, Mormon power structures, gender and sexuality, religion and folk culture, post-manifesto polygamy, dissent, and religion and capitalism. Please submit a 250-word abstract and brief CV to quinnconference@gmail.com by December 1, 2021. Decisions will be made by January 15.

Limited funding will be available to assist with travel costs for those whose papers are accepted but lack institutional support. A final program will be announced in January 2022.

The entrance to a nondescript apartment building is tucked between a sports betting lounge and a newspaper shop on a busy but unremarkable street. The sidewalk is crowded with scaffolding and construction materials; a neighbouring building is getting a new facade. Just to the right of the front steps is a brass plaque set into the sidewalk and engraved with four names: Karl Stein, Bruno Kleinrock, Cornelia Kleinrock and Susanne Kleinrock. Also included are their birthdays and a brief summary of their fates:

• deported 1942 to Riga;
• fate unknown;
• deported 1943 from Malines [Belgium] to Auschwitz;
• deported 1943 from Malines to Auschwitz.

Karl, Cornelia and Susanne were murdered in Auschwitz and, although it is not known for sure, it is likely that Bruno was too. They were Jews, and the plaque marks the address of their home in Vienna prior to their forced removal.

An official publication of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints recently printed an editorial entitled “A fence at the top or an ambulance at the bottom?” in which emeritus General Authority Seventy and former Sunday School general president Elder Tad R. Callister expresses the hope that his readers would be “archdefenders of the nuclear family and God’s moral values” and weighs in on the importance we ought to attach to “the essentiality of the family unit to the well-being of society”:

If you were asked, “What is the greatest challenge facing our nation today?” how would you respond? The economy, national security, immigration, gun control, poverty, racism, crime, pandemics, climate change? While each of these is a valid concern and deserves attention, I do not believe that any of them strikes at the heart of our greatest challenge — a return to family and moral values. To put our prime focus on other challenges is to strike at the leaves, not the root, of the problem. It is, as some have noted, to put an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff rather than a fence at the top.

It isn’t always easy being an international member of a church in which English dominates—not only is the headquarters located in an English-speaking country and the hierarchy largely populated by native speakers of English, but the only authentic version of its founding and distinguishing scripture is English.

It’s the twenty-fourth of December. Three generations are gathered around the piano in the family room singing Christmas carols. Light from the windows illuminates soft flakes falling silently to the ground. Just as silently, unnoticed by the youngest in the room, grandmother and grandfather exit the room. A while later—no one can recall exactly how long; time seems suspended on this most anticipated evening of the year—young ears pick out the ringing of a bell. The music stops and there is a rush for the door. Small feet pad down the hallway, eager hands throw open the living room door and wide eyes take in the splendour of a decorated tree lit with candles where once the sofa had stood, at its base a pile of wrapped gifts—the Christkind has come!

The poster shows a smiling man still on the uphill slope of middle age with his arm around a child, gesturing to St. Stephen’s Cathedral, the mother church of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Vienna and prominent symbol of the city. Above him in the clear blue sky is the declaration “Our home!”

Below the happy pair is a room full of women wearing burqas looking at a framed photo of a masked figure in battledress with an AK-47 within reach and the words “Home Sweet Home” scrawled on the wall behind. Next to the photo is an open window with a view of the tower of St. Stephen’s, but this time it is overlaid with a red crescent moon. At the bottom of the poster is the assertion that the party’s political opponents—social democrats, Christian democrats and Green party—support radical Islam.

In a letter dated 19 May 2020, the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles announced “that meetings and activities may be resumed using a phased approach when local government regulations allow and Area Presidencies inform local leaders” (emphasis in the original). This comes as no surprise considering that a number of countries around the world never did impose a full lockdown on their citizenry or are now in the throes of a phased return to some semblance of life before COVID-19, and part of that now seemingly distant past involved things like large indoor gatherings with enthusiastic singing and food and drink passed among hundreds of people.

Life in Vienna is having to adjust quickly and relatively radically to the realities of the pandemic—indoor gatherings of 100 or more people or outdoor gatherings of more than 500 people have been cancelled, which means that in a city known far and wide for its cultural treasures there will be no church services, no concerts, no plays and no museums for the foreseeable future. The borders to neighbouring countries are closed in both directions, which is a dramatic development for a region that has fought hard to win the free movement of people. Universities and schools are closed in a city that recently celebrated the 650th anniversary of its university’s founding. Starting on Monday, most businesses will remain closed for at least 7 days; only those that provide essential goods and services such as pharmacies, banks, gas stations and grocery stores will be allowed to open. And it is the employees of the latter that I would like to commend during these trying times.

One Sunday last September a 13-year-old girl with pancreatitis was feeling worse than usual and laid down. Her parents prayed and fasted that she would return to health, anointing her with oil and laying their hands on her for healing. By Tuesday she was dead, the victim of a chronic—but treatable—condition that had ravaged her 160 cm tall frame over many weeks until it weighed only 30 kg (BMI 11.7).

Last week an Austrian court sentenced the parents to five years in prison for neglect of a minor resulting in death. The jury deadlocked on the charge of murder by omission. The state prosecutor appealed the decision and plans to seek a harsher sentence.

I recently visited a neighboring country where the church has a presence substantial enough to warrant a temple but where human resources are nonetheless stretched thin.

Last week we defrosted the freezer. Everything except a big bag of raspberries had been used up by the time the appointed day arrived. Not wanting to delay an already overdue event, we decided to dump the raspberries out into a steel mixing bowl and put them in the fridge until vague plans of doing something with them could be realized later. By that evening they were good and thawed, so I picked a couple off the top and popped them in my mouth. And although they had spent the better part of 2019 in our freezer, they were surprisingly fragrant and tasty, and I was immediately transported back to 400 East in Brigham City.

We’re in the middle of yet another heatwave—it’s been the hottest June ever, apparently—so this morning I got up at 5:30 a.m. to avoid the worst of the heat and go for a bike ride. But the sun had been up since 4:53 a.m. and by the time I got to the long, uphill part of my route on the east-facing flank of the local hill, I was gasping like a forgotten fish on the sun-baked deck of a Greek fishing boat. In the midst of my travails, I encountered a group of three elderly men. They too are regulars of the early morning fitness scene, and we run across each other every few weeks or so. We always greet in passing, but today one of them had a little more on tap. Looking somewhat bemused at the red-faced spectacle before them (they were walking downhill while I was spinning uphill), he called out: “Was haben Sie verbrochen, dass Sie heute nicht hitzefrei bekommen?” (What crime have you committed to not get a break from the heat today?)

In the summer of 2014 a German tourist went hiking with her dog leashed to her waist in the Austrian Alps. She was walking along a publicly maintained road leading through an alpine pasture when a small herd of mother cows and their calves charged the hiker’s dog from behind. Because the dog was fixed to her waist, and she did not hear the cows coming, the tourist ended up being trampled and suffered mortal injuries.

Last month, the The New York Times set its sights on children’s artwork, publishing two articles on sorting out the stuff your kids bring home—”I Love Throwing My Kids’ Artwork in the Garbage While They’re Sleeping” and “How to Keep Kids’ Art From Cluttering Up Your Home“—on the same day. I’m not sure what was in the air that April day that prompted the news powerhouse to devote two parenting features to the same topic, but I’m sure that most adults who care for children can relate to the problem of dealing with the things they bring home or make. My daughter’s artistic output hasn’t been nearly as prodigious since learning how to read, but for a while the preschool was asking us to bring in more paper since it was our kid who was using most of it.

Temple sealings for members in Austria have always (well, since at least 1955) started with a civil wedding—the temple sealing is not recognised by the state, and we Mormons are a law-abiding people—followed by a temple ceremony in a (distant) temple at the couple’s earliest convenience. As near as I can tell, no one batted an eye at this arrangement or worried about the dilution of the temple sealing—it was just the way things are, rendering unto Cæsar and God that which is theirs.

Today, the First Presidency announced that members all over the world will be able to follow suit: “a civil marriage between a man and a woman will no longer necessitate waiting a year for that couple to be married (or sealed) in a temple.” (See also this article with some fascinating history from historian par excellence Ardis Parshall.) As someone who married in Austria, I think this is a good move with the potential to disentangle the sealing from the legal and lawful business, strengthening both in the process.

A couple of weeks ago I started drafting a post entitled “What Does the Rome Temple Mean for the Church in Europe?” but didn’t get around to finishing it for a variety of reasons. Now I’m glad I didn’t because with the recently concluded General Conference some of those thoughts have been overtaken by events.

From my worm’s-eye view, the announcement of the Budapest temple is an encouraging sign of the church’s engagement in Europe, for it builds on a growing trend—e.g., the dedications of the Paris temple in 2017 and the Rome temple in March of this year and the planned dedication of the Lisbon temple this September and the re-dedication of the Frankfurt temple in October—of investing in an area of the church where membership density is low.

By now you have no doubt seen clips of a smirking Senator Lee of Utah pull America’s leg with his take-down of the Green New Deal from the floor of the “world’s greatest deliberative body.” This was, after all, two news cycles ago. But because I’m a day late and a dollar short by nature, I’m just now getting around to soliciting your views on his solution to climate change:

This is the real solution to climate change: babies. Climate change is an engineering problem—not social engineering but the real kind. It’s a challenge of creativity, ingenuity and, most of all, technological innovation. And problems of human imagination are not solved by more laws. They’re solved by more humans. More people mean bigger markets for more innovation. More babies will mean forward-looking adults, the sort we need to tackle long term, large-scale problems.

American babies in particular are likely going to be wealthier, better educated and more conservation-minded than children raised in still industrializing countries.

(The transcription is my own; if you find any mistakes, feel free to keep them.)