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…

Jana Riess has recently published a book called Flunking Sainthood in which she decides to spend 1 month participating in various spiritual rituals. For example, she spent one month fasting from sun up to sun down as a pious Muslim would do during Ramadan (though she picked the month of February because it had the fewest days), she spent another month observing the Sabbath as an Orthodox Jew would, she spent another month in mindfulness prayer, and many other spiritual practices from a variety of religious traditions. I really enjoyed the book–she has a witty sense of humor, but she claims to have failed nearly every spiritual practice for a year.

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KC Kern did a series of guest posts at Wheat and Tares called “Legend of the Lost Book of Gold”.  I thought he did a fantastic job discussing the theory.  In part 1, he discussed a story of Christian missionaries taught a group called the Karens that already worshiped a god called Y’wa.  Part 2 discusses the actual theory in more depth.  Part 3 discusses common objections to the theory, and Part 4 gives a conclusion to the series.  If you haven’t read the series, please check it out.

It’s been quite some time since I blogged about Book of Mormon geography theories.  KC Kern runs a website called Book of Mormon Online, and has recently updated his website with satellite images with Google maps of some of the theories.  (Click here.)  I always post stuff on my blog first, but there have been quite some heated comments with some imaginative maps at Mormon Matters (where I used to blog), such as the Malay Theory, the Baja Theory, Peru,  and the Great Lakes Theory.  KC has added the Sri Lanka Theory, as well as Rodney Meldrum’s Heartland Theory and the more conventional Central American Theory. I’m also impressed that he has Lehi’s route in the Arabian Peninsula (which seems to have more credibility than some of the other theories.)

The maps are pretty cool.  What do you think?

When it comes to religion, there are 2 main camps:  fundamentalists and modernists.  Perhaps you would prefer the term “conservative” and “liberal”; to some degree, these terms make sense.  Casey Paul Griffiths came out with an article in BYU studies back in January called “The Chicago Experiment” and said “the Church had inserted itself directly into the modernist-fundamentalist controversy”.³

Griffiths describes the battle on page 92.  Theological liberals are Read more…

I absolutely love the Mormon History Association conferences.  It is wonderful to talk to all the people that I have been writing about the past few years!  I’ve eaten lunch with Newell Bringhurst, breakfast with Richard Bushman, and received advice from Rick Turley, Gary Bergera, Armand Mauss and Barbara Walden.  Only John Hamer seems to be missing this year.

Yesterday, Paul Reeve, Associate Professor of History from the University of Utah told us that St. George was once more cosmopolitan in the early years.  It had more (raw numbers of) blacks, Chinese, Polynesians and Europeans in the early days of settlement until the past few decades.  It was a really interesting presentation.

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A few months ago, I received an advance copy of a new book by Philip Lindholm called Latter-day Dissent: At the Crossroads of Intellectual Inquiry and Ecclesiastical Authority.  The book is supposed to be released on Friday by Greg Kofford Books.  Lindholm interviews 5 of the “September Six”, as well as 3 others.

The September Six refer to a group of 6 intellectuals that were disciplined by the church in 1993. Read more…

I really appreciate a comment by Chris Spencer on my previous post Dueling Wordprint Studies.  In that post, I had discussed a controversial study completed by Stanford researchers Mathew Jockers, Daniela Witten, and Craig Criddle who concluded that 57% the Book of Mormon was authored by Sidney Rigdon and Solomon Spaulding.  (There was an interesting discussion at Mormon Matters as well.)  Part of the reason they had Rigdon and Spaulding as candidate authors was due to the Spaulding Theory.  Here’s a bit of background.

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A friend of mine recommended a book by Kary Doyle Smout called  The Creation/Evolution Controversy: A Battle for Cultural Power.  Kary is an Associate Professor of English at Washington and Lee University, and specializes in rhetoric.  I usually delve more into historical topics, so this was a bit of a change for me, but I enjoyed it.

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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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When I think  of the Baja California Peninsula, I think of the Baja 1000 off-road race where people take lots of vehicles and cross the deserts in all sorts of vehicles.  However, the father-son team of David and Lynn Rosenvall believe the Baja Peninsula (south of California in Mexico–its most famous city you may recognize is Tijuana) could be the location of Book of Mormon lands.  I’ve been promising to do a post on this theory, and it is time to review it in more detail.

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Sorry there was no post last week.  I had planned to put this one up, but this has turned out to be one of my longest posts since my Priesthood Ban post.  This post is over 6000 words (14 pages), so be forewarned.  I’ve combined three different videos, so that’s why it took so long.  I’ll color code these quotes so you know which videos these quotes come from.   The videos are Science of the Exodus, by National Geographic; Exodus Decoded, by Simcha Jacobovici; and Exodus Revealed, by Discovery Media Group.

What I found interesting was the fact that there were many similarities.  The same experts and evidence often appeared in multiple videos, yet often different conclusions were provided.  It reminds me of the debate concerning Book of Mormon evidence.

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.”

For more than 1700 years, Christians have been looking for Mount Sinai, the place where Moses received the 10 Commandments.  Constantine’s mother, Helena was probably the first Christian in search of Christian artifacts in the 4^th century.  Read more…

Dr. Carole Fontaine of the Andover Newton Theological School said, “Archeologists often find themselves hooted and hollered out of town, when they first suggest things like, ‘I’ve found Troy, or look, we’ve found Sodom and Gomorrah.’  But history has shown that in fact, the more you dig, the more you find.  It’s amazing how accurate the Bible sometimes turns out to be.”

This quote comes from an episode of History’s Mysteries: Sodom and Gomorrah.  It was originally aired in 2000 on the History Channel.  Read more…