By Common Consent, a Mormon Blog

It’s not hard to dunk on the Church when it comes to race issues. 42 years ago today, the First Presidency announced to Church leaders that the priesthood and temple ban on black members would end. 42 years is not a long time! The Church really is a particularly white subset of American Christianity, and yet we have consistently provided the message that we are not racist, that we treat all people as God has directed us. Joanna Brooks’ new book, Mormonism and White Supremacy, probably won’t tell the world or the Church anything it doesn’t already know — Church leaders have said and done a lot of terrible things throughout our history. Her perspectives on Mormon* racial innocence are provocative, and while her interpretations might sometimes be debatable, her book is timely and a worthwhile catalyst for self-examination.
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But it came to pass that whosoever did not belong to the church of God began to persecute those that did belong to the church of God, and had taken upon them the name of Christ. (Alma 1: 19)

One of the most important skills in understanding scripture, or reading any other kind of text, consists of knowing when to read with, and when to read against, the narrator.

Finally, there is the risk of embrace. . . . I open my arms, make a movement of the self towards the other, the enemy, and do not know whether I will be misunderstood, despised, even violated, or whether my action will be appreciated, understood, and reciprocated. I can become a savior or a victim—possibly both. Embrace is grace, and ‘grace is a gamble, always.

–Miraslov Volf, Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation

Much has been written about the classic prisoner’s dilemma scenario. To put the matter succinctly, a prisoner’s dilemma is created when two parties are faced with the choice of cooperating or not cooperating with each other in a situation with the following components:

1. If they both choose to cooperate, they will both be rewarded.
2. If they both choose not to cooperate, they will both be punished.
3. If they make different choices, then cooperator will be punished more–and the non-cooperator will be rewarded more–than would be the case if both made the same choice.

I’ve been rereading Steve Peck’s The Tragedy of King Leere and I’m convinced that it is one of the best works of Mormon fiction there is, but not just because Peck’s work is insanely creative or because his world-building is so hauntingly convincing. I believe it is a masterpiece because no one else captures the Mormon notions of stewardship, personal responsibility and family bonds better than Steve. This is your summer read. [Read more…]

When Joseph Smith, Hyrum Smith, Lyman Wight, Alexander McRae, and Caleb Baldwin (Sidney Rigdon has been released on bail some months before after he delivered a touching sermon to onlookers at the jail) were released from Liberty Jail in the spring of 1839 to journey under escort to a Boone County trial court, the escorting officers let the prisoners escape. While they headed for Illinois, they traveled under the guise of land speculators. After they arrived in Quincy, Ill. where a large number of Saints had landed and were being helped by the local populous, they related one humorous story about their journey. Lyman Wight’s son (16 years old at the time of the Qunicy episode) told this story many years later (consider the usual memory fault warnings).

All the escapees took aliases. Alexander McRay [McRae] was “Mr. Brown”. They stopped at a ranch for some refreshment and hopefully to stay overnight. The next morning, everyone had gone outdoors except for McRay and the ranch owner. The owner “asked him his name said he had forgotten it. and Bro. McRay had also forgotten it- and it had the effect to cause Bro McRay to take a terrible cramp in his stomic [sic] it come near throughing [throwing] him into spasims. The man ran out where some of the other Brethren were and told them that their Friend was verry sick. They went in and said Mr Brown what is the matter with you. what have you been eating &c— that relieved Mr Brown to such an extent that he began to get Better right away. In the meantime the Proprieter had brought in a jug of whisky from some where and reccommended Mr Brown to take a glass of Whiskey—–thought it would help him. He down [did] so, and the others, they that were disposed that way—which were nearly all—took some for fear the desease [disease] was contagious. After they got to our house in Quincy and had been offered [a] stimulent of some kind to drink they [the escapees] would recommend to give Bro McRay some first, [as] he has the cramp and cant tell his name”[1]

I wonder how long it took McRae to live that down. And Whiskey: maybe it does cure a memory lapse.

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[1] Orange L. Wight, Reminiscences, MS 405, LDS Church History Library. Wight suggested in his account that the sheriff was bribed.

Some years ago my friend Bryan Buchanan discovered a treasure in the Brigham Young office files. In January of 1846 an otherwise unknown man named Bernard Gadol sent Brigham Young unsolicited a translation of the first chapter of the Book of Mormon (equaling 1 Nephi 1:1 – 1 Nephi 5:22 in modern editions) into Hebrew. He offered to do more such translations into Hebrew, German and French in exchange for a team to take him with the Church into the wilderness. At the time Young was (as my first managing partner used to say) “up to his ass in alligators” and never responded. Absolutely nothing further is known of Gadol (although if Ardis sees this and takes it as a challenge, I won’t try to stop her from looking). His request might suggest he was a member, but he does not appear in early membership records.

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I would have had the assignment this morning to speak in one of the branches in my area, but for the suspension of church meetings. So the branch president asked me to share an email message with the members of the branch. This post is based on that message.

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For the last few weeks, and for the rest of the summer, pretty much my whole day job is to plan various scenarios under which a university might open in the fall. It turns out this is a job with about a billion moving pieces, any one of which could blow up at any time and make it impossible to launch a semester. 

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.

Fair warning: this is going to be one of those posts where I ask you to do something at the end–to post YOUR ideal foyer art (or, at least, a link to your ideal foyer art if there are copyright issues) and explain why. Because I really want to know. And because I want to document a space on the Internet where BCC’s legions of readers register their preferences for the LDS foyers of the future.

This guest post is written by James Jones. James is the producer and co-host of Beyond The Block, a podcast centering the marginalized in Mormonism. He’s a musician and voice over artist based in Boston, MA where he serves as his ward’s interfaith specialist, liturgical arts specialist, and an ordinance worker.

This week, we in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will be studying Mosiah 18-24. It is a curious case study on how the Lord helps the oppressed deal with their oppression. We have two stories highlighting the oppression of two groups of people. Both groups were in bondage and facing physical and emotional abuse. They couldn’t do much about it as they were outnumbered and outgunned. Both groups, unable to fight back or reason with their abusers, submitted to their subjugation and prayed to the Lord for help. This led to their deliverance in the form of exodus.

I reread these stories in the middle of yet more black death, this time, the young man Ahmaud Arbery. Just in the last five years, we’ve seen literally hundreds of headlines about unarmed black men being gunned down by police officers and white vigilantes under questionable circumstances. There have been few arrests, even fewer convictions – I can count the latter on one hand – and no significant reform as a result of any of the killings. Each one hurts, but this one hit different. As an incident on video where the victim is an unarmed black man posing no threat to anyone and the killers are armed civilians, it might be the most glaring example of the intoxicating power of whiteness in recent memory. [Read more…]

An analysis of art in the age of mechanical reproduction must do justice to these relationships, for they lead us to an all-important insight: for the first time in world history, mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual. To an ever greater degree the work of art reproduced becomes the work of art designed for reproducibility. . . . Instead of being based on ritual, it begins to be based on another practice – politics. –Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”

As of today, it appears, the art in meetinghouse foyers in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will be limited to 22 officially approved reproductions. Most of the paintings will be familiar to Latter-day Saints. They are mainly the ones by Del Parson and Harry Anderson that Mormons have been using for years. But there are a few newer ones too, including one of Jesus in what appears to be the African Savannah holding a black child. I call this one “Diversity Jesus.”

All of the Jesuses in the approved collection are lilly-white and vaguely Scandanavian. Diversity Jesus is the whitest of all, with shoulder-length hair and piercing blue eyes highlighted by his equally blue robe. If someone told me that this was a painting of Kenny Loggins circa 1975, rather than a Middle-Eastern Jew from the Ancient Roman period, I would not be terribly surprised.

Becca Robinson has been teaching college-level rhetoric and writing since 2008 and raising backyard chickens since 2011. She lives in Eastern Idaho.

By now anyone who reads this blog has probably seen someone they know share the “Plandemic” video on social media, or at least seen references to it. This post is adapted from a Facebook post I wrote in response to several of my own family members and friends who had shared it (with varying degrees of credulity) on their social media feeds within the past few days. While it is important to address the video’s falsehoods, that’s not what this post is really about. Rather than respond to the specific claims of the video, my purpose is to explain why sharing it is dangerously irresponsible (which is why I haven’t linked to it here) and why conspiracy theories like it flourish especially in times of crisis.

This guest post is from Madison Daniels, of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.

In the opening hours of March 18th, the Wasatch fault groaned and let out an exasperated sigh. She is dealing with a lot and she is tired. A 5.7 earthquake thundered across northern Utah and rattled a people already anxious about so much. Not two weeks later, the Earth shuddered once more, with a 6.5 quake in Idaho. It was one hell of a March.
While the Coronaquakes of 2020 didn’t claim any lives or injure any people, they did cause a fair amount of property damage. The most obvious and photogenic being Angel Moroni dropping his golden trumpet. Photos of the trumpetless Moroni spread like wildfire through the news and social media. The iconic symbol of modern Mormonism stood, if only for a moment, without his single solitary voice.
At the risk of reading too much into symbolic (herbal)tea leaves, let me speak to what has been swirling in my mind for a while now. [Read more…]

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My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
–Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Ozymandias” 

Shelly’s great poem “Ozymandias” teaches us that civilization is a fragile thing. Human history is not a march of progress from barbarism to shopping malls. We do not always move forward in wisdom, intelligence, and technology, or in economic or political accomplishment. Sometimes we go backward. And sometimes we collapse.

Taylor Kerby, a full-time educator, is an alumnus of Claremont Graduate University, where he earned Masters’ degrees in Education and Religion.

My wife and I were in Puerto Rico when the world shut down. Somehow we had talked our parents into watching our two daughters for the duration of our trip and were in paradise enjoying what was essentially a second honeymoon. When we left Phoenix, the coronavirus was still something happening somewhere else; one of those very real world problems that existed only on news reports. The island got its first case of the virus just before we left, being about a week behind the continental states. During our stay, our experience with the virus came only through news of school closures and travel restrictions back home, all of which contrasted sharply with the island’s continued normalcy, which left us with the false impression that these stories were obviously temporary. I am a school teacher and even joked that I hoped I’d end up with an extra week on top of our spring break.

Wading thigh-deep through the world’s sadness one archetypal spring, I wanted Easter to come. I was winding once again through the cycles of winter and summer and the spaces in between. In retrospect, that season portended this terrible pandemic in its sadness and in its timing. I remember craving the glory of the empty tomb, the wet eyes eternally dried, the Jesus of Nazareth now undeniably the Christ. I needed Easter to be the answer to my woes.

But Easter is not the answer. It’s something else entirely. [Read more…]