By Common Consent, a Mormon Blog

Alma 39-42

The Latter-day Saint scriptural tradition contains two great cautionary tales about sex: the first is the story of King David, who saw Bathsheba bathing on the roof and summoned her to his quarters—an assignation that ended with the betrayal and murder of Bathsheba’s husband. The second is the story of Corianton, the son of Alma the Younger, who abandoned his missionary duties among the Zoramites and dallied with “the harlot Isabel”—thus imperiling the entire mission and bringing disrepute on the followers of Christ.

On the surface, these cautionary tales seem to have the same message, which is something like, “don’t follow your sexual impulses (except under carefully controlled circumstances) or bad stuff will happen.” It’s a message that Mormons hear a lot. But when we start looking at the differences between the two stories, we start to see very different understandings of human sexuality and religion at work. And, in this case, the differences are much more important than the similarities. [Read more…]

The Nephites in the time of Alma and Korihor apparently had principles of law that recognized the importance of religious freedom, like our First Amendment free exercise guarantee. But the nature of that freedom–what it protected, the reasons they gave for it, and how they thought about it–were different from our concept of religious freedom. [Read more…]

In 1841, Lutherans and Anglicans decided that there were enough Protestants in the region of Jerusalem that they should be served by a formal church functionary. The region of service was to include Syria, “Iraq,” (the term at the time was “Chaldea”) Egypt, and Ethiopia. As you can imagine, such a scheme was bound to leave controversy and discomfort in its wake. And your imagination would be correct if it did that.
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This post comes to us from Jessica Young, who is working on a database of funding sources for Mormon Studies research.

Today, I have a very important announcement. Hopefully it is about something you never knew you needed, but soon won’t be able to live without.

Right now the very first (and only, to my knowledge) database for fellowships, grants, scholarships, and awards for Mormon studies research is underway. We anticipate launching the site on 1 September 2016, provided all goes to plan.

In the meantime, we need your help! [Read more…]

Yesterday I taught lesson 29 on Alma 36-39. I thought I would try to break down for you how I approach teaching a class like that and how in fact this particular class went. When you stand up in that room and begin the class, you really don’t have any idea how things are going to go or what direction the class might take the lesson which, especially if you’re an introvert, could be (in Alma’s words) an “inexpressible horror” (Alma 36:14), but more often (for me at least) is simply exhilirating. [Read more…]

Too often in my own life I have looked for the one right story to live by. The older I get, the more I am aware that there is not one ‘best’ narrative, or even a few ‘best’ narratives. I need a quantity, a gigantic sum of narratives to survive and thrive in Mormonism.

The other day while driving in a hot car with my two children as they handed out requests faster and more outlandish than I could possibly ever deliver on, I got to thinking about  conference talks about motherhood that I’ve heard my whole life.  The remembrance of them, however,  did not feel like an act of solidarity in the moment.

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Alma 30

Imagine that a man comes into town and starts preaching a religion that flatly contradicts what most people believe. Nearly everything he says offends religious orthodoxy, and the most powerful members of the community regularly refute him in public. Despite this, he starts to make progress with the people–especially the ones on the margins of society. Enough people convert to his religion to make him a concern to the authorities, who arrest him, detain him, subject him to violent treatment–and then expel from the community. Would you say that this man was treated justly? [Read more…]

I drive by miles of cornfields every day to and from work.  I watch as the fluttering leaves and straight stalks slowly grow.  I pass only two or three cars on my 20 mile commute.   I arrive at work energized, ready to meet with students, plan lectures, research, and write.  And I return home relaxed, looking forward to watering my tomato and herb garden and then cooking a homemade dinner.  On my frequent traveling adventures doing student oversight or recruiting, I enjoy the time in other places, but look forward to returning home to the peace of this place of belonging that I’ve created.   After a year of upheaval and change, I did not expect to find this harmony.  But one day, I looked around and realized that I was happy.  It was an unexpected moment of grace that has continued with me—quiet in my heart—the whole summer. [Read more…]

“I have no god”, Barabbas answered at last. . .
“Why then do you bear this ‘Christos Iesus” carved on your disk?”
“Because I want to believe,” Barabbas said

This is not a book review, but it is a meditation inspired by a remarkable book that I read last week. The book is the short novel Barabbas (1950) by the Nobel-Prize winning Swedish novelist Pär Lagerkvist. Barabbas imagines the life of the murderer and thief who was pardoned on the day that Jesus was crucified. Because it is not a book review, it contains spoilers. You have been warned.

The Barabbas that Lagerkvist creates is the first Christian in one important sense: he was the first member of the human race to be redeemed by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. The redemption is immediate and tangible. He is literally released from a death sentence because Christ is crucified. In this way he becomes a stand in for all people who are ransomed from sin and death by the atonement of Jesus Christ. (Symbolism and all; great literature works that way). [Read more…]

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The Sin of Certainty is a confessional book about how biblical scholar Peter Enns came to understand “belief” and “faith” less in terms of facts and knowledge, and more in terms of trust and love. Many Christians, Enns says, place being “correct” about God at the center of faith, which sets them on a shaky foundation that sometimes results in crisis and loss of that very belief. Enns speaks from personal experience here. He’s encountered what he calls “uh-oh moments,” times when what he thought he knew no longer seemed viable in the least. Such moments may be God’s way of inviting us to a more nuanced, closer relationship, breaking down the barriers of certainty in order to let faith flourish within our messy human lives:

“I feel it is part of the mystery of faith that things normally do not line up entirely, and so when they don’t, it is not a signal to me that the journey is at an end but that I am still on it” (154). [Read more…]

Alma 31

“Father God, in the name of Jesus, Lord, we’re so thankful for the life of Donald Trump. We’re thankful that you are guiding him, that you are giving him the words to unite this party, this country, that we together can defeat the liberal Democratic Party, to keep us divided and not united. Because we are the United States of America, and we are the conservative party under God.”—Pastor Mark Burns at the Republican National Convention, July 18, 2016

When Pastor Mark Burns gave the closing prayer at the Republican convention last night, he made it clear that Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party are enemies of God who must be destroyed. People were shocked by his directness; political parties usually dial down their martial rhetoric at conventions to appeal to swing voters who may still think fondly–or at least non-Satanically–about the other side. But we shouldn’t be that surprised: the good Reverend’s basic message–that God loves our side the best–is something close to a human universal. [Read more…]

While looking for something else, deep in a desk drawer I stumbled upon my notes for a fireside I was asked to give on the captioned subject in my ward back in 2011. I thought I would share them here in case some of you may find them useful. [Read more…]

A few weeks ago, I participated in a town hall about rapes on college campuses. Madi Barney, Erin Alberty and Jodi Peterson were fantastic participants; I was glad to be there and listen to Madi’s experience, Jodi’s excellent advice and Erin’s solid reporting. BYU’s Julie Valentine provided a prerecorded message and it, too, was very powerful. I didn’t have much to say for my part, other than I think BYU should apologize and that an honor code that shields rapists is a false sort of purity. It’s been a couple of weeks, and I don’t know what impact that town hall actually has had — or what’s next. It was clear that this was only the very beginning of a longer and more difficult process. Here are a few things that might be worth talking about some more.

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John 20:11-29

¹¹ But Mary stood without at the sepulchre weeping: and as she wept, she stooped down, and looked into the sepulchre,¹² And seeth two angels in white sitting, the one at the head, and the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain.

¹³ And they say unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? She saith unto them, Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him. [Read more…]

(For this project I’m using, The Book of Mormon: The Earliest Text, Edited by Royal Skousen).

Alma 30:44 (in part)

All things denote there is a God;
yea, even the earth, and all things that is upon the face of it,
yea, and its motion,
yea, and also all the planets, which move in their regular form,
doth witness that there is a Supreme Creator.

lectio

Responding to Korihor’s claims to the contrary, Alma argues there is a God. Korihor is identified as an ‘anti-Christ,’ because he “began to preach unto the people that there should be no Christ.” (Alma 30: 12). He also argues that God, “is a being which never hath been seen nor known, which never was, nor never will be.” (Alma 30: 28) [Read more…]

Alma 23-24

A fair amount of ingenious criticism has gone into explaining why the Lamanites who converted to Christianity and joined the Nephites called themselves by the strange name, “Anti-Nephi-Lehies”—which means something like, Lehites who were against the Nephites.” It doesn’t seem to make any sense. [Read more…]

Pres. Uchtdorf’s talk from the latest Women’s Conference is now a book.  I reviewed the talk here, and my opinion was that it was a great success given the audience. His story about a young girl reluctantly visiting her spinster great-aunt was particularly on point given the inclusion of 8-year-olds in the “Women’s” conference. His talk was inclusive of all sorts of women: singles, married, with children, without, cat people, women with messy houses, career women, depressed (but not clinically) women, eccentric dressers, women whose lives are different than they had planned, etc. Just like Relief Society should be an amalgam of sisters of different life experiences. [Read more…]

This post will attempt to take a closer look at “what this passage is about”: the heart of Abinadi’s message on the Father and the Son. This is the last post in my series critiquing Book of Mormon Central’s piece on Mosiah 15. In previous parts I addressed what I thought was some loose use of the word “Trinity,” the way the piece uses the 1916 First Presidency statement on the Father and the Son, and the way the piece draws a parallel between Abinadi and one aspect of Mayan religion. [Read more…]

My ten year-old daughter is lying on the floor of my office, colorful cards stacked in neat piles- sorted into categories she finds interesting and wants to learn more about, and a stack to the side which she says “these women did good things, but their work doesn’t fit with my personality.” This is in sharp contrast to the scattered mess of colorful cards on the floor earlier, when my 12 year-old son was perusing them. He’s not a big reader, and the fact he sat and pored over the stories is a testament to the compelling nature of the work. (He’s currently quite upset that Indira Gandhi’s bodyguards plotted in her assassination.) [Read more…]

Alma 8-16; 17-20

Literature makes meaning through structure. One of the most important ways that it does this is by constructing parallel narratives and inviting us to read them together. Anyone who has stayed awake all the way through Hamlet knows that Hamlet and Fortinbras are parallel stories—young princes who must find ways to avenge their fathers without sacrificing their states.  Much of what Hamlet means lies in the comparisons and contrasts between these two parallel narratives. [Read more…]