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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Dr Jeffrey Chadwick, BYU Jerusalem Center

In his 1915 classic entitled Jesus the Christ, Elder James E. Talmage maintained that Jesus Christ was born on April 6 in the year 1 BC.¹ Talmage was apparently the first LDS writer to propose this particular date.  Nearly a century has passed since his book appeared, and in that time it has become practically axiomatic among Latter-day Saints that Jesus was born on April 6 of 1 BC.

The above quote comes from the January 2011 issue of BYU Studies.  Jeffrey Chadwick has undertaken a study to figure out when Jesus was born, and he comes to the conclusion that December was the correct month.  Trying to precisely date the birth of Jesus is problematic, because Luke and Matthew can’t even agree on when Jesus was born. Read more…

Daniel Peterson

Dan Wotherspoon put together a 4 hour interview with BYU Professor Daniel Peterson on a variety of topics.  It is available on the Mormon Stories Website or at iTunes.  I really enjoyed the interview, and decided to create a transcript for part 3 where Peterson talked about his (futile) experience trying to improve the church manuals.  On Part 3 at the 34:48 mark: Read more…

Life has been unusually busy of late.  Sorry I haven’t posted very often–I’ll try to get back on track.  A lot of my posts take some time to research, but Jarrod gave me a softball.  Rather than leave his comments on my “About page, I thought I could churn out a quick post (requiring no research).  It’s obvious that Jarrod wanted to debate some of the same ole, same ole.  Jarrod doesn’t raise any new issues–these have been debated ad nauseum before, but since he just happened along my blog, I thought we could discuss them again here, especially since the issue got raised this week in the Mitt Romney campaign.  On my About page, I wrote:

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Back in 2008, Jeff Spector introduced me to the concept of proof-texting.  I think we’re all familiar with the idea of taking a scripture out of context to support a certain religious belief.  However, I didn’t realize that this practice goes back thousands of years.  Charles Harrell and Greg Kofford Books has recently published a new book This is My Doctrine: the Development of Mormon Theology.  They noted that New Testament writers were guilty of proof-texting as well.

On page 8, Harrell describes what a proof-text is.

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In 1969 Leonard Arrington asked 50 prominent Mormons to identify the “five most eminent intellectuals in Mormon history.” The list was published in Dialogue.  Twenty-four years later, Dialogue decided to run the survey again.  It was re-published a few month ago in the Deseret News, and it has been a favorite bloggernacle topic for the past few months.  BH Roberts was #1 in both surveys.  In the 1969 survey, Joseph Smith was #3, but fell to #5 in 1993.

Concerning these surveys, Yale University Professor Harold Bloom said, Read more…

Due to a scheduling conflict, Sunstone was forced to find a new venue for this year’s conference. Rather than stay at the Sheraton in Salt Lake City as they have for the past few years, the conference moved to Weber State University in Ogden. I was only able to attend the Saturday conference, but wanted to give a recap of some of the presentations I attended.

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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…

Alma Allred wrote a chapter in the book titled Black and Mormon.  On page 37, he states:

I don’t believe that LDS scripture allows for a restriction against blacks’ holding the priesthood.  Nor do I think that LDS theology can reasonably maintain that today’s blacks are descendants of Cain or that ancient intermarriage with Canaanites perpetuated any racial curse.  Too many scriptures collide with those ideas for them to be valid.

I found this perspective intriguing and  had to learn more. Read more…

Kirtland Temple

There was a fascinating interview about the Kirtland Temple over at Mormon Expression.  It was so interesting, that I decided to transcribe it here.  John Larsen interviews historian John Hamer, and Barbara Walden, former Executive Director of the Kirtland Temple.  Both Barbara and John Hamer give some really cool information about the Kirtland Temple, and I wanted to share this with you all.

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I listened to an interview of Jana Reiss on Mormon Expression a few weeks ago, titled “Why Mormon Meetings are So Dull.”  She discussed a book called Sundays in America by Suzanne Strempek Shea. Shae is a novelist in Massachusetts who attended 52 church services over a year.  This author attended a Mormon Sacrament meeting.  Jana paraphrased Shae’s book: Read more…

The biblical account of the interactions between Joseph and Mary is very small.  To me, it almost makes Joseph and Mary appear 2-dimensional, and I never feel like I know them very well.  When Joseph discovered that Mary was pregnant before their wedding, we know that he considered cancelling the betrothal.  An angel intervened, and Joseph decided to continue with the wedding.  Many of us have imagined that this must have been very tough to deal with, but the details in the Bible of the interactions between Mary and Joseph have been quite sparse.

The Protevangelion fills in many of these details.   Read more…