By Common Consent, a Mormon Blog

Richard L. Saunders
The 1920 Edition of the Book of Mormon: A Centennial Adventure in Latter-day Saint Book History
The W. W. Phelps Society and Greg Kofford Books, Salt Lake City, Utah, 2021
Hardcover: $79.95
ISBN 978-1-58958-775-5

I’ll just get this out of the way up front: Richard L. Saunders has produced an admirable and fascinating work of book history. It’s detail, accuracy, and breadth match the highest standards. Moreover, in spite of its swim in technicalities, it is a fun read.

Book history is a powerful tool in the study of religion and in the case of Mormonism, it is especially useful, given Mormonism’s reliance on recent texts. And Richard Saunders has experience to recommend his work. Author of Printing in Deseret: Mormons, Economy, Politics, and Utah Incunabula 1849-1851 (Univ. of Utah Press, 2000), he brings expertise to the project. Learning how the Saints have read and produced their books in the past provides a great advantage to historians and scholars of religion. In particular, The 1920 Edition shows how the Utah Church and its imprint efforts displayed a multi-jection of personalities, culture, technology, principle, politics, and text.

Books are not just content. They are material artifacts. They demonstrate the intellectual landscape of the past in unique, often neglected ways. Book history provides a window into the past that shows the many bargains made between some ideal text and its material image.

Saunders’s work on The 1920 Edition is remarkable on several grounds, but one I want to single out is the deep dive into the ways the LDS Church tried to print its works. For example, while early twentieth-century church imprints, including works like James E. Talmage’s Articles of Faith or Jesus the Christ bear marks that link them to local presses such as, “Deseret News Press,” they were frequently produced by commercial presses in the eastern half of the United States. The print technology used to produce such books is a study in itself. Ferreting out that information is a hallmark of fine book history. Saunders pulls it off. There is really nothing like it in the Latter-day Saint book genre.

One may guess that so well known a text as the Book of Mormon would make a discussion of a ninety year anniversary edition a trivial matter. Nothing could be further from the truth. Go forth and find out why. It’s a solid journey. Greg Kofford Books and the W. W. Phelps Society deserve to be lauded for this work. I highly recommend this book. Go ahead and get that Christmas gift early. Libraries, take note.

BCC Press loves John Bennion. He is one of the lions of Mormon literature. His 1991 collection Breeding Leah & Other Stories was one of the first collections of Mormon-is stories to be real literature–you know, the stuff that you can teach to college students and write about for academic journals and be proud that your little subculture of a subculture produces. And his 2000 novel, Falling Toward Heaven joined the ranks of truly top-flight Mormon novels. His more recent books—mystery novels set on the Utah frontier during the waning days of polygamy—are smart, engrossing, and fun (see review here and here).

A good friend told me today that they sang “Onward Christian Soldiers” in his ward. It seemed odd, he said, to be singing about war at a time when our leaders have instructed us to pray for peace. “We pray that this armed conflict will end quickly,” said the First Presidency message released last month after Russia attacked Ukraine, “and that peace will prevail among nations and within our own hearts.“

This seemed like a reasonable point, and it propelled me to take a few minutes looking through our hymnal to see how many of our hymns are essentially martial ballads or songs about war. The number I got was 11—not overwhelming, but also not trivial.

It’s spring, and, as we all know, this is the time that Persephone is released from the underworld and returns to Demeter, who, in joy and gratitude, makes the flowers bloom and the weather fair. And nothing says Spring like poetry, and, at BCC Press, we are all about poetry. From now until Mother’s Day, you can get an amazing deal on some amazing poetry by and about women—strong women, lawless women, mothers, daughters, maidens and crones. So celebrate with Demeter and check out our amazing deals on poetry that matters.

Ever since LDS Apostle (not-yet-President) Russell M. Nelson’s “Divine Love” talk appeared in the Ensign magazine way back in 2003, the question of whether God “unconditionally loves” his children has been a “hot topic” in LDS doctrinal conversation. This is deeply unfortunate, for the subject shouldn’t be controversial. Alas, the way the topic of “divine love” is portrayed in that talk has caused immense confusion, primarily among two groups of people — those who feel deeply perplexed, even damaged by it, and those who engage in (usually) knee-jerk defenses of it. I recognize the desire of many LDS to locate the source of the confusion outside the talk, rather than within it. Unfortunately, this desire, while well-meaning, is misplaced. The fault lies primarily in the talk itself, I will argue, not in the interpreters who are misinterpreting it (though I grant that many are indeed misinterpreting its intended meaning).

Having an eternal gender does not mean an unchanged or static gender. If having a static gender were the intended meaning of “gender is eternal,” the authors of the text could have written “gender is static,” “gender never changes,” “don’t be trans,” or “God doesn’t want your gender to change,” but that is not what the text says. The text says gender is an essential characteristic of an eternal existence and purpose. This allows a lot of room for interpretation and dynamic change.—Blaire Ostler, Queer Mormon Theology, p. 56

There can be no doubt that, for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, gender is eternal. It says so right in the Proclamation on the Family “Gender,” it says, “is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose.” There, that settles it.

Except it doesn’t. It doesn’t say what happens when premortal, mortal, and eternal definitions of gender don’t align, and we know they don’t always align. Not does it say that the eternalness of gender must always fall into one of two binary choices. And it doesn’t specify what kind of “gender” we mean when we talk about an eternal and everlasting characteristic of human beings.

Recently, the Church History Library released digital versions of the Relief Society General Board minutes. This is a wonderful resource and it contains excellent clues about social issues facing Latter-day Saints and one of more important ways in which the church began a broad interface with organizations of descendants of the Benevolent Empire as well as secular institutions devoted to and run by women. It also affords excellent leads for those (like me) who want to see how women in the church interacted with the teachings, policies, practices, and economies of the church especially in the Intermountain West of first half of the twentieth century. Dive in!

The Short Answer: About $275,000,000 a year.

The Long Answer: Read on

BYU is a private institution and can do whatever it wants to do. If you don’t believe me, read any comment section on any recent article about BYU’s accreditation status, labor practices, or student policies. Enforced wokeness is for public schools only, or private schools that just don’t know any better. By refusing to sup at the government’s table, the BYUs free themselves from the tyranny of the government’s yoke. Or so the story goes.

Michael Ing is a BYU alumnus and an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Indiana University. This letter was sent to the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities, BYU’s regional accreditor, during the public comment period of BYU’s reaccreditation visit. The Commission will accept written comments from any member of the public through March 6. Comments should be addressed to: NWCCU at: Attn: Third Party Comment, 8060 165th Ave NE, Ste 100, Redmond, WA 98052.

2/28/22

To Whom It May Concern:

I write in accordance with Brigham Young University’s cycle of reaccreditation with the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities. I write as a graduate of BYU (BA, 2002), an associate professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Indiana University, and an active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I am writing with regard to credit granted for Religious Education courses.

by Abigail J., CES Employee

“Are you opting in or out?” Employees at all CES institutions have been discussing this question in careful conversations recently, since the Powers that Be announced a new policy not only requiring all new CES employees—including faculty and staff at the BYUs—to “hold and be worthy to hold” a current temple recommend as a condition of employment, but also asking current employees to “adopt this standard voluntarily.” Conversations have increased in urgency and angst as employees have received additional announcements, emails, and verbal reminders to declare their decision to opt in or not. [fn1] [fn2] [fn3]

Warner Woodworth’s new book Radiant Mormonism is an actual event, and an important one at that. If you don’t believe us, listen to Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr. Mohammad Yunus, the founder of Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, and a worldwide leader in micro-finance. Yunus pioneered the practice of giving small, simple-interest loans that impoverished people can use to start their own businesses and raise themselves from poverty. This is what Dr. Yunus has to say:

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.

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

One of the great things about the Hebrew Bible is that it never quite does what it is supposed to do. Like many of its main characters, the text itself is a trickster. It serves its own ends and refuses to cooperate with our flannel-board versions of the story (Kids, think of a really big iPad where you have to stick the pictures to the screen yourself). Every time we think we know what the text is saying, it shifts the narrative and says something different.

Sodom and Gomorrah took center stage last week in the churchwide seminary curriculum. The teacher’s manual specifically identifies the “very grievous sin” which caused God to destroy the city as “homosexual behavior,” saying it was “widely accepted and practiced among the inhabitants.” The lesson briefly lists “other sins” identified by a later prophet—Ezekiel—including pride, idleness, and oppression of the poor and needy. But the rest of the lesson is spent on sections including “The Law of Chastity,” “Doctrinal Truths That Help Us Understand Why Homosexual Behavior Is a Serious Sin,” and “Sexual Purity.”

It’s a good idea to talk to your kids about this if they’re in seminary. It offers a great opportunity to think about the importance of reading scripture in context.

It is not by design—but it is certainly a happy accident—that BCC Press is releasing Scott Abbott’s Dwelling in the Promised Land as a Stranger at a time when Brigham Young University is in the news for a number of controversial things. It has always been challenging for the Church’s flagship institution of higher education to balance the competing demands of its mission to provide its students with both an excellent university education and a distinctive religious experience. There are a lot of places where these two things come into conflict, and in its history, BYU has managed to find most of them.

Like about 20% of the English-speaking world—and a much higher portion of my personal friends and acquaintances—I play Wordle every day. I start at exactly midnight, play the day’s Wordle, and then post my result to Facebook, where dozens of friends post their scores, commiserate with me when my score sucks, and celebrate with me when it doesn’t. It has become an important ritual in my life.

Last Night I was watching the Jeopardy college tournament, and I was inspired to bring a game show approach to the topic of the moment by sorting out the winners and losers:

“The ancient man approached God (or even the gods) as the accused person approaches his judge. For the modern man, the roles are quite reversed. He is the judge: God is in the dock. He is quite a kindly judge; if God should have a reasonable defense for being the god who permits war, poverty, and disease, he is ready to listen to it. The trial may even end in God’s acquittal. But the important thing is that man is on the bench and God is in the dock.” —C.S. Lewis, “God in the Dock”

In his classic essay, “God in the Dock,” C.S. Lewis spoke to the difficulties he encountered when he tried to talk about religion with modern secular audiences. The core of the problem, as he outlines it, is that people expect God to conform to their secular moral perspectives. God, he lamented, is constantly on trial in the modern world because people are not willing to let go of their own assumptions about right and wrong. [Read more…]

by John S.

Recently the Church Educational System (CES) announced that “all new employees who are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will be required to hold and be worthy to hold a current temple recommend. Church members already working at CES institutions will be invited to adopt this standard voluntarily.”