The Meetinghouse and the Temple

Michael Haycock has a bachelor’s from Yale and a master’s in religion from Claremont Graduate University.  He currently serves as the Ecumenical/Christian Life Coordinator at Georgetown.  Views are, of course, his own.

LDS theology is like the double helix of DNA, unzipped:  it has two parallel strands that circle around each other, but which rarely connect. 

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On one strand rests the Meetinghouse, with much of the Christianity we received through scripture ancient and modern and which we share with much of Christendom. 

On the other is the Temple, the divine anthropology of the eternal family, and eternal progression, which we hold unique among Christian faiths. [1]

I am convinced that much of the theological friction within the LDS Church is born of the gaps between these two theological strands, amplified by official near-silence on how to bind them together. [Read more…]

And in His name all oppression shall cease

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This post started as a reaction to President Dallin H. Oaks’s commentary on religious freedom published Tuesday in the Deseret News.  It morphed into a Christmastime commentary on social justice.  It still dissects Oaks’s words, but that’s relegated to the very end. 

Born into humble circumstances.  Trained as a carpenter.  Rejected as a prophet.  Crucified as a rabble-rouser because he dared speak truth to both secular and religious oppressive power.  Jesus Christ is my model of an activist. [Read more…]

FHE / Christmas Activity Idea: Gingerbread Churches!

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On Halloween earlier this year, I hosted a German-themed party to celebrate the 500-year-anniversary of the Protestant Reformation.  I’ve been meaning to do a complete write-up but the time slipped away.  Better late than never!  I’ve decided to split my write-up into two posts.

First, I’m converting one of the core party activities into a Family Home Evening lesson plan.  (Alternatively, use it to occupy your kids and their friends for an afternoon while they’re home from school over Christmas Break!)

Pictured:  The Gingerbread Churches made at my Protestant Reformation Party.

[Read more…]

1309-1417: Avignon and the Papal Schism

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For two centuries before the official launch of the Protestant Reformation, corruption and strife in the papacy prompted calls for reform within the Catholic Church.  Back in the early 14th century, the Pope had fled Rome and set up the offices of the church in Avignon, France.  There, over the next 100 years, a series of Popes created ways to increase religious taxes and fiscal intakes, funding construction of a grand palace of opulence (pictured).  As one Italian poet described Avignon, it is “a receptacle of all that is most wicked and abominable…In this city there is no piety, no reverence or fear of God, no faith or charity, nothing that is holy, just, equitable, or humane.”

Two women, later canonized by the Catholic church, led the calls to repentance.  St. Bridget implored Pope Gregory XI to show humility — “Why in thy Court dost thou suffer unchecked the foulest pride, insatiable avarice, execrable wantonness, and all-devouring simony? … Arise and seek bravely to reform the Church which I have purchased with my blood, and it shall be restored to its former state, though now a brothel is more respected than it.”  [Read more…]

“Turtle Soup and Venison with a Gold Spoon”: God and Bounderby in a Christian Nation

“There’s not a Hand in this town, sir, man, woman, or child, but has one ultimate object in life. That object is, to be fed on turtle soup and venison with a gold spoon. Now, they’re not a-going—none of ’em—ever to be fed on turtle soup and venison with a gold spoon. And now you know the place.”–Josiah Bounderby in Charles Dickens’  Hard Times

GIF-CD-HT-HJosiah Bounderby of Coketown, the wealthy industrialist in Charles Dickens’ Hard Times, holds two mutually exclusive opinions that govern nearly all of his thoughts. First, he believes that poverty is a choice, and that anyone who wants a better life can do what he did and become a factory owner. Second, he believes that people who want to improve their lives are greedy agitators trying to pick his pocket. To all such people, he attributes the single motive of wanting “to to be fed on turtle and soup and venison with a gold spoon.” Who could support such extravagant choices in cuisine and cutlery?  [Read more…]

Defending God’s Sovereignty (Who is God?, Part 2)

The title of this post is a lie: I’m not going to defend God’s sovereignty, not really anyway. I’m not not going to do it for two reasons. First, because I have no theological belief about God’s nature or power or personality or sovereignty firm enough to qualify as something that I am genuinely capable of “defending.” Frankly, God is a mystery to me, and I tend to believe that He wants it to be that way, for His own mostly unknowable reasons. Second, because to engage in a defense means to present an argument–in this case, one against the position that Jason has sketched out, which presents some questions and possibilities in connection with the idea that the Mormon notion of God presents Him as vulnerable, not sovereign–and while I’d like to think I’m at least minimally well-read in the theological literature, my disagreement with him, and my belief that the God which Christians like ourselves worship is not essentially vulnerable, but rather is essentially sovereign, is rooted in other perceptions that lack the rigor of theological argument. The best I can do, then, is talk about where those perceptions came from, and what they’ve meant to me. [Read more…]

Does America Need a Civil Religion?

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res]

The website Patheos has revived their excellent feature “The Public Square” with one of the more interesting topics that can be asked in conjunction with religion and public life: namely, that of civil religion. I was asked to contribute something–in no more than 800 words, which anyone who knows me knows is difficult. I’m attaching below the unedited version of what they ran; I strongly encourage you to read all the contributions, as there is some good thinking on display there: [Read more…]

The Three Trees: A Folk Tale for Good Friday

[An old and oft-told story, one which gets better with age.]

Once upon a time, three trees stood in a forest high on a mountain, dreaming of what they might become one day.

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Reader Question Box #8: “is Tim Tebow Mormon?”

Reader Question Box is a series where we answer questions that show up in our website traffic monitoring statistics as Google search terms that led people to us. Copious oddities are to be found in the search term logs, and some worthwhile questions. (In case you missed our previous editions: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7)

Question: is Tim Tebow Mormon?
Answer: This search has been lighting up our google stats all week long. Answer: No, but if he follows the excellent advice given him from a very, very reliable source (see video), he will be soon! We think Tim Tebow would fit right in.
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Stop Saying That!!

In the last few days, in response to the dustup over Mormonism’s “cult” status, lots of Mormons have been insisting that of course we are Christian, that it’s unkind of Evangelical Christians to say that we’re not. The argument that we are Christians generally includes reference to 1) the name of our church (“Jesus Christ” is even in a big font!), 2) a citation of 2 Nephi 25:26 (“And we talk of Christ, we rejoice in Christ, we preach of Christ, we prophesy of Christ, and we write according to our prophecies, that our children may know to what source they may look for a remission of their sins”) 3) personal belief in Christ as Savior, and 4) our efforts to follow Jesus, to “be like Him.” [Read more…]

The Seeker: Hell Hath No Fury

Rob Bell, a prominent evangelical pastor in Michigan, suggests that heaven may be universal, and that everyone has a place in heaven, whatever that may turn out to be, regardless of his deeds. [Read more…]