Mormon Heretic

Last October, I wrote a post titled, Mormon Women Blessing the Sick, as a follow up to my post on Women with Priesthood in Ancient Christianity.  Jonathon Stapley was the first to comment, saying

Equating early Mormon female healing with evidence of female priesthood is folly. Kris’ and my paper on female ritual healing is finally coming out in January (JMH). We treat most of your questions and clean up the historiography a bit.

In the interim here is our paper on the development of Mormon healing to 1847, including the role of women.

Well, I didn’t actually equate healing with female priesthood, but there is an interesting connection.  I am finally getting around to reviewing Jonathan and Kristine Wright’s (abbrev SW) paper which was published in the Journal of Mormon History in the summer of 2009.   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…

A few months ago, I picked up a book called Lost Books of the Bible by William Hone on the clearance rack at Barnes and Noble.  It is one of the coolest books I have ever picked up.  There are 26 ancient books included in the compilation, dating to the earliest centuries after Christ.  These ancient writings include books such as The Gospel of Nicodemus, The Apostle’s Creed, the Epistle of Polycarp to the Philippians, the Letters of Herod and Pilate, to name just a few.

The first 4 books deal with the childhood of Jesus.  With the Christmas season approaching, I wanted to share some of these really cool stories about Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.  I think you’ll enjoy learning some of the extra-biblical stories.  Honestly, I don’t think I’ve read so much cool stuff about the life of Jesus.  I want to start with the Gospel of the Birth of Mary, and discuss some of these other ancient writings in coming weeks.  Some of these stories overlap, and I think it will be interesting to see the different, sometimes conflicting accounts over the coming weeks.

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As a follow up to my previous article discussing female priesthood holders in Ancient Christianity, I thought it would be interesting to discuss a now discontinued practice of Mormon women anointing and blessing the sick.  Did you know that Mormon women used to wash, anoint with oil, and lay hands on the sick until 1946?  Linda King Newell outlines the history of this practice in a Sunstone article called “A Gift Given: a Gift Taken”.  When questioned the propriety of women laying hands on the sick to heal, what do you think Joseph Smith’s response was?

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I attended Sunstone back in August.  Bridget Jack Jeffries (who runs a blog called Clobberblog), gave a fascinating presentation on female priesthood holders in the ancient Christian church.  Bridget is a “never Mormon” that attended BYU, graduating in 2005.  She “seduced” (her words, not mine) and married a BYU priesthood holder while there, and she is currently studying the History of Christianity in America at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School near Chicago.  She has done some fascinating research on women and the priesthood in early Christianity that I wanted to share.

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Anne Wilde wrote the chapter on Fundamentalist Mormonism in Hamer/Bringhurst’s book Scattering of the Saints.  I’ve always viewed Fundamentalist Mormons like an embarrassing relative, and I haven’t really wanted to learn much about them.  However, Anne’s chapter was incredibly interesting, and I learned that Fundamentalist Mormonism is much more diverse than I realized.

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I wanted to get this post up sooner, but I’ve been really busy correcting final exams.  I really enjoyed the last day of Sunstone, since I was able to attend all day, rather than a session here or there.  Don Bradley gave a presentation titled “Dating Fanny Alger”, a bit of a play on words.  I remember he gave a funny line to the effect of “By all accounts, she was hot!”  Anyway, Bradley tried to pin down when the “affair” happened.  Apparently, Emma discovered Joseph and Fanny late at night in the barn.  According to Bradley, Alger appeared pregnant.  Emma threw a fit, and threw Alger out of the house.  (Apparently Alger had been working as a sort of nanny.)

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Apostle Paul Savage of the Church of Christ with Elijah Message

Sunstone has been going on since Wednesday here in Salt Lake City.  It ends tomorrow, and I thought I would give a few words about the conference.  I have been blogging at Mormon Matters for about a year and a half, and have never met any other bloggers here….until this week!  It has been nice to nice BiV and Stephen Marsh.  I hope to meet others tomorrow.  It was also nice to meet with a few apostles.

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I really miss my book club, but I am participating in the Stay LDS Book Club.  The first book that we have decided to read is Left to Tell by Immaculee Ilibagiza.  It is her story of the Rwandan Genocide.  I previously discussed the movie Hotel Rwanda, describing the events from Paul Russebagina’s point of view.  Immaculee has an incredibly inspiring story as well.  The book is intensely moving.

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CoC Independence Temple at Sunset

All trip long, I have been looking forward to attending the Community of Christ Devotional at the Independence Temple.  The meeting began at 8:30 AM, and was a wonderful hour of singing and spoken word.  Professor Alex Baugh of BYU, and Apostle Susan Skoor of the Community of Christ

CoC Apostle Susan Skoor

gave background on many hymns written or revised by WW Phelps.  It was a truly inspiring meeting.  I haven’t enjoyed singing that much since I was in the MTC!

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After Christmas, we decided to finally upgrade our television, and got a new 55 inch HD LCD.  It’s pretty nice.  As part of the package, we are able to download Netflix directly to the television.  The first Netflix movie I watched on my new television was Ken Burns’ America: The Shakers (1985).  I picked it because I remembered that there was a mission to the Shakers in D&C 49.

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I just finished the book by Sarah Baringer Gordon,  The Mormon Question.  It was a very different book from the previous book I read, More Wives than One, by Kathryn Daynes.  Gordon has degrees in both Law and Religion.  She looked at Constitutional theory and the arguments before the Supreme Court and Congress as the government made many attempts to shut down polygamy.

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Today is Joseph’s 204th birthday.  (He was born in 1805 for those of you curious about the math.)  Since Dec 22 is the first day of winter, and the day with the shortest amount of sunlight, I’ve heard people say that Joseph’s birth was symbolic.  Joseph was bringing light into the world after a period of darkness.  That’s interesting.

As most of you know, Joseph died June 27, 1844 in a hail of gunfire at the Carthage jail, leaving behind a pregnant wife and 3 young boys: Joseph SMITH III (age 11 1/2),  Frederick Granger Williams SMITH (age 8), Alexander Hale SMITH (age 6).  Emma gave birth to David Hyrum SMITH on Nov 18, 1844, 5 months after Joseph’s death .  (Emma gave birth to 10 children in all, though most of them died at or near birth.  Don Carlos SMITH lived just 15 months from 13 Jun 1840 – 15 Sep 1841.)

Three years after Joseph’s death, Emma married a man by the name of Lewis Bidamon.  Most astonishing to me is the day she picked for her wedding: Joseph’s birthday, 23 Dec 1847. Read more…