General Authority Speaks on Caring for the Earth

April 12, 2013 by

Guest post by Nathan Waite. Nate got his MA in American studies and environmental humanities at the University of Utah.  (Editor’s note: It is well worth reading the entire piece but as a bonus find a related Dialogue article by Craig D. Galli linked at the end).

Update: Watch Elder Nash’s full remarks here.

Photo by Alan Smith

Photo by Alan Smith. Any guesses as to location?

Elder Marcus B. Nash, a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy and assistant executive director of the Church History Department, today represented the LDS perspective on a panel titled, “Ecological Protection, Environmental Degradation—Perspectives of Faith.”  Also represented were evangelical Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam. The panel was part of the Wallace Stegner Center’s annual symposium, being held at the University of Utah today and tomorrow. The symposium’s theme is “Religion, Faith, and the Environment.”

In a way this was not a groundbreaking talk; Elder Nash hewed closely to scripture and to the words of modern prophets. But I think that’s exactly why it is groundbreaking—he showed how a strong environmental strand is right there in Mormonism’s most basic, central theology. [Read more…]

Filed Under: addenda

Addenda: Female Healing: Lorenzo Snow

June 7, 2012 by

In continuing with the series, I would like to discuss a document that relates to Kris’s and my coauthored article, “Female Ritual Healing in Mormonism.” This was a project that took more than half a decade to finish, but as I mentioned at the JI, once you start looking, references are ubiquitous and I have located now well over a hundred additional documents since publishing, which relate to the topic.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: addenda, Mormon

Addenda: Adoption: Complex eternal family

June 4, 2012 by

In continuing with my addenda project, I’d like to highlight a document relating to my article, “Adoptive Sealing Ritual in Mormonism.” One of the arguments I present in this paper is that Wilford Woodruff’s 1894 revelation on adoptive sealing rituals resulted in “a shift away from micromanaging eternal relationships to a position of aspiration—a belief that a just God will ensure that no blessings are kept from the faithful.” (117) I’m convinced that this 1894 revelation is the single most important contributor to current Mormon beliefs regarding eternal families and the blessings of heaven.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: addenda, Mormon

Addenda: Last rites: Bodies, or an urban/rural disparity

May 12, 2012 by

In continuing with my addenda project, I’d like to highlight an advertisement from the 1900 Utah State Gazetteer and Business Directory: (1)

[Read more…]

Filed Under: addenda, Mormon

Addenda: Last rites: Deathbed blessing

May 8, 2012 by

I have the habit of creating addendum files for any project that I have worked on. Once an article is published for example, and I stumble across a relevant source document, I drop it in the appropriate file. For some projects, the files are rather large. In rereading some material, I thought that I would put up a couple of posts highlighting material that I think adds to anything previously published.

For this first post, I am sharing a document relating to deathbed blessings. [Read more…]

Filed Under: addenda, Mormon