Mormon Heretic

I transcribed a bit more of the Jana Riess interview from Mormon Stories.  There have been many posts (such as this one by Mike S) lamenting the fact that the activity rates seem to be slowing for the LDS Church.  I thought it was interesting that John Dehlin acknowledged that atheists are having a hard time keeping their children “in the fold” as well.

For a bit of background, Jana Riess was raised by an atheistic dad, and her mom wasn’t very religious either.  Yet, Jana felt pulled toward religious faith, joining with the Presbyterians before embracing Mormonism.  John questioned why it is hard for atheists to keep their children away from religion.  This corresponds immediately after their conversation that I transcribed previously. Read more…

Back in April, Rick Reilly of ESPN.com discussed Jimmer Fredette.  Reilly said “If his last college game is what he’s bringing to the NBA, then I’d say, in five years, he’s got a really good chance to be your Provo area Isuzu dealer.”  In another article, he said, “I’ll donate $5,000 if he starts a game, any game, his first year in the league. I’m serious.”

Well, Reilly made out the check this week when Jimmer started a pre-season game for the Sacramento Kings.  Quoting from Reilly, “In the check’s memo line, I wrote: Crow.” Read more…

Tom Brokaw during a rehearsal, courtesy http://newsroom.lds.org/article/mormon-tabernacle-choir-tom-brokaw-remember-9-11

The past few days have brought a series of news stories remembering the terrible tragedy that happened 10 years ago.  I was curious to see if there would be any differences in our church services.  On the one hand, Music and the Spoken Word invited NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw to narrate a special tribute to the tragedy called Rising Above.  I watched the re-run of it Sunday night (since my church meetings were scheduled at the same time.)  I also note that President Monson wrote an op-ed piece in the Washington Post sharing thoughts about the tragedy.

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Many people refer to “the Apocrypha” as if it is a clearly defined set of books.  The work “apocrypha” means literally “things hidden away.”  In modern usage, an apocryphal book is any book not part of the Bible.  In that sense, the Book of Mormon could be called an apocryphal book; there is a new book called American Apocrypha: Essays on the Book of Mormon.  It is a collection of essays by scholars specifically addressing the Book of Mormon.

We often think that the Bible has a set number of books.  However, this is not true.   Read more…

I just finished a book called Have a Little Faith by Mitch Albom.  Mitch is asked by his rabbi to deliver his eulogy, and the book details his efforts to get more acquainted with the rabbi.  There is a wonderful message about gratitude and happiness that I wanted to share for Thanksgiving.

The rabbi was aging, and spent some time in the hospital.  Pages 97-99 detail an interesting insight into one of these visits. Read more…

Mitch Albom wrote a book titled Have a Little Faith.  Mitch grew up Jewish, but as he left for college and started a career in sports writing, he left many of his Jewish roots behind.  Years later, his rabbi approached him with a special request.  From page 1 of his book,

“Will you do my eulogy?”

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I don’t ever think I’ve done 2 posts in one day before, but I want to address this other issue that we have been discussing in the Strangite post.  I’d like to discuss both Biblical and Book of Mormon archaeology.  Most people believe the Bible is on solid archaeological footing, but that isn’t actually true.  Many books have questionable authorship, and many places remain unidentified.  In a previous post, I discussed Questions about the Exodus: there isn’t a shred of evidence that it actually happened.  During Passover celebrations in 2001, Rabbi David Wolpe created international headlines in Israel by proclaiming to his Jewish congregation in Los Angeles, “the way the Bible describes the Exodus is not the way it happened, if it happened at all.”

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I’ve been having a heated discussion over at Christian Forums.  Someone there linked to my article on Theosis.  I was a bit nervous, as these types of forums can be not only heated, but strongly biased against our church.   I decided to jump into the fray, and while there are some people there with some strong knowledge of ancient church history and the Bible, there are quite a few that seem intent on distorting and misrepresenting LDS theology.  So, I don’t really recommend participating there.

I did learn that it’s not just the LDS that are picked on, so at least they have that going for them.  When I complained that another person by the handle of Pheobe Ann posted a distorted view of LDS theology, another person there by the handle Skylark said,

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I have to thank Ray for sending me an email with this link from a website called Online Christian Colleges.  They listed a  post on their blog titled, 50 Best Blogs About Mormon Living.  Ray let me and Clean Cut know that our 3 blogs were list.  I hope Ray doesn’t mind me sharing his observation:

I have no idea how they came up with this list, but all three of us are on it!  (and I like the descriptions of the blogs, which means someone actually has read them closely enough to describe them)

Ray

I received a pingback from my previous post on Theosis from someone at Christian Forums.  I have another post on President Lorenzo Snow’s famous couplet, “As man now is, God once was; as God now is, man may be.”

I’ve had a few exchanges with people over there.  Since I spent so much time, I thought I would highlight some of these exchanges here and show a Biblical basis for Exaltation.
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For my birthday, my wife gave me Dan Brown’s newest novel, The Lost Symbol.  I don’t typically read novels–I prefer sports, history, religion, or biographies–but I read The DaVinci Code and loved it.  Angels & Demons was pretty good.  I had heard rumors that Dan Brown’s book was going to deal with Masonry and Mormonism, so I was looking forward to see a good conspiracy novel.  Well, it turns out the Masonry part was right, but the Mormon part was pretty benign.  There were only 2 obvious–but benign references–to Mormonism.  Some of the plot has some indirect parallels to Mormon thought, though the book focuses more on seeming pagan practices than Mormon ideas.  Anyway, this was fun to read, and I thought I’d try to give a few nibbles from the book, without giving away too much plot.  So, here’s a taste of how related it is to Mormonism (which isn’t much).  I’m not going to give away too much that relates specifically to the main plot, but if you want to read it fresh, you should quit reading now.

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I came across this recent article at Christianity Today describing meetings between evangelicals and Mormons.  Here are some interesting excerpts from the article:

LDS president Thomas S. Monson and his two counselors permitted Standing Together, an alliance of 90 Utah evangelical churches, to use the historic Salt Lake City Tabernacle for a September 13 revival meeting. Throngs of evangelicals and Mormons enjoyed gospel songs and prayed together.

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The 8th Article of Faith for the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints states:

8 We believe the ^aBible to be the ^bword of God as far as it is translated ^ccorrectly;

This has to be one of the most oft-quoted articles of faith by members of the LDS church.  In one of my previous posts on Scripture Literalism, the comments referred to Biblical inerrancy and literalism.  Some evangelicals believe that the Bible is both inerrant and literal, and take great issue with the Mormon stance on the Bible.  They don’t believe there are any mistranslations, and that every word in the Bible was spoken by God.  Many of these people discount any contradictions in the Bible.

The Documentary Hypothesis is a theory that seems to identify at least four different authors/editors of the first five books in the Bible (also called the Torah in Judaism, or the Pentateuch.)  I think many Mormons would find great agreement with the Documentary Hypothesis, though they might not agree with every part of the theory.

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