Teaching Men to Fish: The Morality of HIstory Teaching

Final Blog Reflection

2010-12-18T13:09:00.001-08:00

1. The technology that will be most useful to me is the stock market simulation Rick introduced to me. It provides a great way for students to actually understand how the free market works and, more to my purposes, how the free market has been known to collapse (either due to internal or external pressure).

2. I will use this technology to help my students get their hands dirty. If students don't *feel* a topic, they will not learn it except as a hoop to jump through. Students can learn to trade stocks, form corporations, and appeal to the government for assistance, thus teaching them the nature of today's economy in all of its messiness.

3. My goal as a teacher is to give students independent learning skills so that they know how to analyze truth claims. I am a history instructor; most of my students will not pursue history as a career. Therefore, my job is to use history as a venue for showing students how evidence can be used and misused. One of the ways this class will help me do that is through the class wiki assignment. I want all students to feel like they have a vested interest in the outcome of the class; they are part of a community, and communities help its members.

Final blog post for class: Haunting moral questions

2010-12-14T17:13:00.000-08:00

The more I think about how best to teach history, the more I realize that if our history doesn't *haunt* the students, then it's not very effective. By haunt, I only mean that the lesson material resonates in their bones, that it isn't merely the cold analysis of a science or math class. After all, most who teach history would suggest that at some level, we're teaching students how to be good citizens, how to be active thinkers. In essence, we're teaching them a kind of morality (and those involved in education know that that's hardly right-wing nuttery--the quasi-socialist Goodspeed made a name for himself by discussing the "Moral Foundations" of education).

So how to break that resonance barrier The key is that students need to *actually* see how the topic they're studying is part of contemporary discourse. I've considered a few ways. I'll use specific history units to illustrate, but these techniques can be applied across the board with a little ingenuity.

1) Re-enact the Salem Witch Trials without informing the students before hand. Have one of your more dramatic students play the role of Bridget Bishop, for example. Make sure she does a *good* job, enough to scare her fellow students a little (you might also want to pick someone who has a pretty strong rapport with her fellow students--the kind that endure one class period of insanity :). After about 5-10 minutes of that, inform the students what just happened. Have them write down a "journal account" of what they saw.

2) Have students compile a soundtrack to a favorite war--the Civil War, the Vietnam War, etc, using contemporary songs to illustrate various battles, episodes in the war. They form groups and must agree on the final song selections (requiring that they sharpen their debating skills). Have them present their soundtracks to the class and defend their song choices. This helps them to conceptualize the wars in ways that they genuinely understand.

3) Model a totalitarian government. One student is chosen as a chairman who exacts all control over the grades of other students. If they are late, fail to tell the chairman where they will be at a particular time, or do not pay due deference to the state, then they lose points. The teacher acts as the #2 man, basically advising the chairman on how best to maintain control over his people. And make sure you're *serious* about this. Send people to check up on where each student says they're going to be. It's complicated, but it provokes the students into understanding exactly what the 20th-century totalitarian experience was about.

This, in my mind, is the best way for students to start asking the great moral questions about human nature, the role of government, and the reality of war. Just some Saturday morning thoughts.

Last week's blog post

2010-12-13T09:11:00.000-08:00

I'm now finishing up writing my first multiple-choice examination. Especially in history teaching, these exams are infamous for being mind-numbingly difficult and worse still, largely irrelevant. Here's how I work to ensure the relevance of my questions:

1) A focus on cultural literacy

I look for the terms that are used in common, educated discourse about a particular topic. This way, I'm emphasizing knowledge as a part of community discussion rather than for its own sake. I want students to walk away from the exam with the ability to recognize once-obscure names as a part of a larger milieu: "I remember answering a question about so-and-so, etc." This will help them not to feel like fools when having conversations on the topic.

2) Direct it back to the Big Ideas

Even when using obscure names, those obscure names should reveal something about Big Ideas. If they do not, then according to the dictates of cold, historical logic, they should remain obscure. For example, most people don't know the name Anthony Johnson from Russell Stevenson; however, if they understand that Anthony Johnson was one of the first African-American slaveholders in America, then he helps to evoke a larger thought process about the birth of race slavery in America.

3) Truth will out

Multiple-choice exams are good b/c they don't give the student the opportunity to haze their ignorance in a lot of moralizing and platitudes. But for them to succeed, But it also leaves the students vulnerable to their own misunderstandings. It definitely reveals how little/how much they know of the facts of history, even if it's raw knowledge. Multiple-choice exams are therefore quite important for determining if they have the requisite facts running around in their head in order to have an intelligent conversation about the topic.

Multiple choice exams can be highly useful if used properly but utterly ridiculous if not. Next up: grading final essay exams.

Project Proposal

2010-11-29T09:56:00.000-08:00

For my project proposal, I will learn how to use Virtual Stock Exchange. I haven't been exposed to this technology before, so it should be interesting, to say the least. It will help me to teach the Great Depression as well as the idea of "stock market bubbles."

Chalk and eraser style

2010-11-26T12:35:00.000-08:00

So every once in a while, I like to go au natural with my teaching. Not naked, mind you (though that would add a certain dynamic to the lecture)--rather, I like to go sans technology. Kick up the chalk, tell a few stories, and ask a few questions. Of course, this isn't exactly smiled upon these days, esp. when our kids live at the speed of text.

How to do it? It's something I working up to, even now. But I've formulated these three keys to doing an au natural lecture right:

1) Every story is boring; every story is exciting

I think about the famous historians of our generation (I use the term loosely, if only b/c some of these writers are frowned upon by the academy, and sometimes for good reasons): McCullough, Goodwin, Ellis, and Ulrich--all of them knew something about details, about characters, and about anecdotes. They wrote their stories as though someone might actually care about who these people are. Their characters could be boring under most circumstances--yet they know how to contextualize them in ways that go beyond "he was a man of his times."

2) Show the power
No one likes hearing a story about the pathetically oppressed--even stories of Communism highlight the "people's revolt," riots, and populist action. Showing the character's *agency* under even horrible circumstances moves students more than any analysis ever can (Elizabeth Smart is a good example of this).

3) Be a little quirky
Go out of the box occasionally--it'll jolt the students out of their txtmsg stupr. Get happy, get sad, even get a *little* angry at the topics being discussed. Bottom line: get something.

No one else in America cares about history, except in some sort of abstract way. If we don't do it, then their historical understanding is hosed.

It's been a long time, blog...

2010-11-23T15:11:00.000-08:00

Welcome back, friends of history teaching. I had surgery last week, so I've been a bit MIA for the past little while. That said, my thoughts on teaching for the week.

Surgery is a funny thing. The same tools used to kill a person can also be used to help a person heal. There's blood, lowered heart rate, even the risk of death when a person "goes under." Yet we do it--all in the hopes that we can attain some greater good.

Forgive me for waxing metaphorical, but I see the teaching of history in the same way, and I wish that more teachers would share this vision. When I present an issue during my classroom lecture, I find that I generally am not doing it to "uplift" but to pose moral questions. I *want* my students to sweat over the questions I present. If they walk away from class thinking about slavery, workers' rights, or war all with a smile on their face as they think about their date that night, then I have indeed failed. The truth cuts, hopefully to the core.

So maybe I should just teach all history classes with the intent of overturning everything they know, upending worldviews, and shifting paradigms? That's generally what most "activist" history teachers do. Yet in our delight as we see our students sweat, I have to constantly remind myself that I too am wielding a surgeon's scalpel. Am I carefully helping the student to rid themselves of what could be cancerous ignorance or am I just cutting recklessly, doing "surgery" after "surgery" with no regard to the students' capacities to embrace new understanding and truth? Without care, our delight in questioning assumptions can culminate not in enlightened students but in crushed ones who have trust issues towards.

This has been a little stream of consciousness-esque, so let's boil it down to brass tacks. I'm going to teach a class on the Mountain Meadows Massacre at some point in my life (so I anticipate--I do live in Utah, after all). That's a difficult topic for Utahns to comprehend. It brings to bare all kinds of issues about Mormon exceptionalism, zealotry, and Utah-federal relations. It is also loaded with a century's worth of bitterness and activism. In such a context, it's easy to react violently: to see ignorance and wield the "surgeon's scalpel" in the defense of truth. Yet the reality is that such a reaction sheds more heat than light. The best reaction is the reaction of the skilled surgeon: calmness, measured response, and even a little sedation. Then...and only then...can we as teachers hope to remove the tumors of ignorance that burden our students minds.

Multimedia Project

2010-11-12T17:33:00.000-08:00

This is a short film on the role of Walter Cronkite in forming American public opinion during the Vietnam War.

Another non-linguistic mode of teaching

2010-10-30T09:26:00.000-07:00

I am preparing a lesson plan for teaching the Vietnam War during the Nixon era. I want especially to highlight how Nixon was able to break the New Deal coalition to his own advantage. Here are the plans. Any thoughts are welcome.

I am going to recreate the atmosphere surrounding the "Hard Hat Riot" of 1970. I am going to divide the room up into three theaters. The left side of the room (student's perspective) will have a Vietnam War-era musician singing Country Joe McDonald's I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die. The right side of the room will have men dressed as construction workers carrying an American flag and chanting "USA! USA! USA!" and "Love it or Leave it!" The center portion of the room will have footage of President Richard Nixon giving his "Great Silent Majority" speech. I will have each group perform their part separately, then I will play them altogether, with it culminating in an imitation riot at the end between the VN singers and the construction workers (a mild one, to be sure :).

After this little bit of socio-political theater, I am going to have the students write out whom they sympathized with the most. Even more, I want them to write out three similarities and three differences of all the different factions by using a three part Venn diagram. I think it will help give them some perspective on the idea of civil dissent in America.

Thoughts? Compliments? Snide remarks?

Instructional Video Storyboard

2010-10-26T14:57:00.000-07:00

Enclosed is my storyboard for my instructional video.

Storyboard

View more presentations from russellwades.

Wedding in Vegas

2010-10-24T18:02:00.000-07:00

So I just had what could well be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Wedding. in. Vegas. On the sidewalk. Lots of people around. Phil Collins music in the background. Random people walking by cheering as my relatives said I-do. A Shrek impersonator approximately 100 feet away. Yet in the midst of this mayhem, the happy couple had forgotten one key element: the marriage certificate. So we, the happy-go-lucky-wedding-party sat by while the best man ran back to the car so the Reverend could proceed with the ceremony. Awkward.

Those of you who know my teaching style know that I have tendencies towards the unorthodox. I'm proud of it; call me the House of history teaching. So this Vegas experience resonated with my mischievous side, the side that likes to see unconventionality, kitsch, and edginess. But the reality remained the same: all the edginess in the world could not compensate for following protocl, getting the paperwork, and making sure the trains run on time.

I see my role as a history teacher in the same way. I could be innovative, funny, and mind-blowing, but if I can get their papers back in a timely manner, if I can't keep the classroom under control, and if I can't play to "the man" and his never-ending thirst for more paperwork, then I might as well get a new job.

Just one lesson learned in Vegas.

YouTube analysis

2010-10-15T17:50:00.000-07:00

This is my analysis of YouTube video clips.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMIcCY1mB3E">Video #1

Purpose and Character:

The purpose and character of this clip is the broadcasting of his/her friend's innovative wedding procession. The original purpose of the wedding processional was largely for the entertainment of the audience; the recording was intended to extend the entertainment value of the procession to the YouTube viewing community.

The question: did the wedding procession derive its routine from the music or did it seek to co-opt it for personal gain? Given that the content of the music is romantic in nature, their decision to use it as a backdrop for a wedding routine fits with the original intent of the music. It meets the need for the promotion of the public good and does not garner a profit from it. In my estimation, this situation falls under the Fair Use doctrine.

Nature of the Work:

As a published song, the work is already in public dissemination. While it does not communicate facts, it communicates commonly expressed emotions. Therefore, since the wedding party was staying true to the fundamental nature of the work, their use of the music again fall under the Fair Use doctrine.

Amount and Sustainability:

On this point, the video is clearly more sketchy. It uses the song in its entirety. Since even samples need to now be licensed, the wedding party's use of the song wanders into the category of copyright violation.

Effect on Work's Value

This is regarding whether this kind of use of the song would undermine its value, if such usage were widespread. To the contrary, this kind of widespread usage would make the song more popular and therefore increase the musician's marketability. On this point, the song falls under the Fair Use doctrine.

Video #2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOfZLb33uCg&ob=av2e">Video #2

Purpose and Nature:

This Weird Al Yankovic music video is intended to parody "Gangster Paradise." Since it is derivative of the original music video and not transformative of the original material, Weird Al's work falls under the Fair Use doctrine (though Weird Al always gets the approval of the artists before he makes a music video).

Group Analysis of a Monograph

2010-10-15T17:32:00.000-07:00

So you're a history instructor, and you want your students to know how a book is put together. But for crying out loud, the book is 300 pages long and far too dense for your cute little high school juniors to digest.

The solution...

Break it down according to chapters. Have the students form the same number of groups as there are chapters in the books. Then have each students present the essence of the book to the rest of the class. Walk them through how/why the book is structured as it is. Emphasis the role of each chapter in forming the argument or key elements/turning points of the narrative. This allows the students to see how a book works in scholarship, and it also teaches them how to distill a complex argument in simple terms to an audience.

Haunting Moral Questions

2010-10-09T10:12:00.000-07:00

Free Market/Home Schooling vs. State-run Education

2010-10-02T23:31:00.000-07:00

My sister-in-law has recently decided to her homeschool her children. Being the free market man I am (more on a gut level than an intellectual level, to be sure), I'm generally all for a mother taking hold of her children's education. There's something to be said for wanting to devote your personal lifetime not only to your child's moral education but to their cognitive education as well.

But...

Let's face it: those who embrace home-schooling often do it out of semi-ideological reasons. They don't trust those corrupted school districts. They view the home as a kind of "Fortress Zion" (which it should be), but transfer that model to how they see *everything* else around them. Their home is under siege, and a key weapon in defending it is a strange faux history that pays almost no attention to the complexities of the documentation. Books on the Constitution can't be trusted unless written by David McCullough. Thomas Jefferson's extensive involvement in slavery is bypassed: "he was merely a man of his time" while his words in the Declaration are fawned over as transcending time itself. Add to this that the curricula used, while claiming to be LDS-friendly, is more Calvinist through its dogged insistence in the absolute predestination of all things rah-rah-rah American (at least for white landholders). I do not believe my sister-in-law fits into this category. I pray that she does not.

Academics tend to simply curl their lips in sneering at these types. But I firmly believe that there is a way to build bridges between the homeschoolers and the academic historians. Any tips?

War Games

2010-09-25T10:20:00.000-07:00

I would like to introduce my students to the realities of archival research. To teach them about archival research, we are going to recreate a war. I will divide the class into two teams. Before the war, each student will produce their own primary document to describe how they are feeling about the war, what they expect, and why they're "fighting" it. Each team will have designated leaders in order to recreate the military structure.

I will find a location (preferably a park with places to hide, thus enhancing the guerilla aspects). The students will draw up operation- and tactic-level battle plans on how they will take down the most soldiers from the other team. The war will last until the other team is either decimated or surrenders. When the students return to class (after having dried off, they will write their recollections of the war. They will name names: whose fault was the loss? Who was the most heroic? Who shirked their duties?

The major assignment associated with this course will the writing of a "primary source" narrative based on the documents the students produce. Additionally, I will insert some documents written by students I have specifically instructed not to participate. These documents will consist of hearsay, conjecture, or their own personal communications with the combatants. I might also insert a "forged" document or two, depending on how bright the students are.

This will enable the students to get a feel for the historian's work. How do historians choose what stays in the book and what gets left out? How do they choose what to emphasize? This project will provide an excellent opportunity for students to understand how difficult it is to truly understand "what really happened."

Gadgets and Gizmos a-plenty

2010-09-22T10:29:00.000-07:00

I chose two gadgets: one practical and the other fun

1) The "Followers" Gadget
I want to know who loves me and what their needs are. By knowing who is on the Russ-boat, I can know how to best meet the needs of those who follow my work. Further, I can connect to them through having access to their blogs.

2) The Daily General Knowledge Gadget
I want my blog to be an e-house of learning. What better way than through contributing to my readers' knowledge random fact upon fact, precept upon precept.

My Choices of Blog/Twitter Subscriptions

2010-09-18T23:17:00.000-07:00

Blogs of Choice:

1) Hope Foundation: What's Working in Schools
http://hopefoundation.org/hope/blog/

This looks to be a practically-minded blog founded by a think-tank. Good for wonkish thought; not good if you're looking for someone to relate to.
2) A Passion for Teaching and Opinions
http://ukiahcoachbrown.blogspot.com/

A good ra-ra website for those more interested in basically maintaining the status quo in how Constitutional history is taught. I'm skeptical.

3) Charter School Insights
http://charterinsights.blogspot.com/

Charter schools are the best hybrid I know in appealing to individual parents' needs without abandoning the public school system. We need to talk more about how best to make this approach work.

4) Education Policy Blog
http://educationpolicyblog.blogspot.com/

I hate politics, but politics determine where the money goes. Hate them or love them, politics matter.

5) The Education Optimists
http://eduoptimists.blogspot.com/

A feel-good site for people who need a teaching pick-me-up.

Twitter:
1) Education Sector
http://twitter.com/EducationSector

Looks useful in spreading the latest political think-tanking from Washington.
2) Best Education
http://twitter.com/BestEducation

A blog intended for parents to help them get the most out of their education. This Twitter site will help teachers understand how best to meet parents' needs.

Columbus and the Price of Modernity

2010-09-18T22:58:00.000-07:00

I teach a History 220 class in the BYU Salt Lake Center. Only one of the students is actually a history major. When I was introducing the class to the glorious truth that is Thomas Paine, I was met with awkward, painful, stares.

"Everyone knows who Thomas Paine is, right?" More awkwardness.

"Was he the archbishop of Canterbury?" The people I work with.

Yet, I realized something beautiful about this scenario. My class is woefully illiterate in matters of history. Henry VIII is simply another in a long line of who-knows, who-cares royalty. The Revolution was important if only because it allows us to have our IPods and Big Macs today.

But during one lecture, I caught a glimpse of what might be in a moment of true transparency. I asked my students to reconcile for me the verses in 1 Nephi 13 (typically interpreted as referring to Columbus et al.) with the reality that the Columbian Exchange decimated millions of Arawak natives in the Caribbean. The class almost universally justified the conquest based on the Europeans' superior "civilization," as eggs that make modernity's omelette, or as simply what people do. In any case, why are we fretting over it?

In the midst of this hayday of imperial hagiography, one student looked thoughtfully at the numbers of deaths in front of him. Hardly the historian, he was simply taking the class to get a GE out of the way. He cocked back his head, pursed his lips, and mused thoughtfully: "8 million...that's a lot of people." Connection. All of this from simply putting a number on a well-designed PowerPoint slide.

He may not remember the name of Cortes, Vespucci, or Henry the Navigator. But if he knows the difference between 8 million people and "the price of modernity," my work there will have been a success.

Self-Reliance in an Akha School

2010-08-20T18:23:00.000-07:00

After working with a number of Akha children at an anti-human trafficking school in Chiang Rai, Thailand, it was brought to my attention how real the threat of human trafficking is. One of the best defenses against human trafficking is real-world, practical education. When children are well-trained, they become economic boons rather than burdens to their parents.

When I was chatting with the school's director about what she needed most right now to further this work, her request was simple: a sewing machine. This would teach the children vital tailoring skills that they could use to sell wares at the night market. Of all the things they could ask for,a sewing machine is a relatively simple request, one that a couple hundred American dollars can procure without anyone breaking a sweat.
Yet with this simple gift, we're not just giving them a handout: we're purchasing a tool that will give these kids vital life training that will both bless their families economically and provide them the foundation for a productive life in the years to come.

Please donate. These kids are shrewd, capable, and ready to learn. They're good kids who are fighting very adult problems. The reward will be more than apparent when you see the pictures of the happy students gaining new skills to provide for both their families and community.

HELP International Donations

2010-05-06T13:43:00.001-07:00

Friends,

I have not posted on this website in many, many moons. Frankly, Facebook has proven to be far more effective in spreading my thoughts--both great and small--to those who care to listen.

But now, I have something a little more significant to share, so I'm looking to spread it in as many ways as possible. I will going to Thailand this summer to do humanitarian work in the Hmong community of northern Thailand. Those of you who know me know that I speak Hmong, and that I *love* to speak Hmong. I will be assessing needs when I get on site, teach some English, and perhaps even build a few stoves.

However, as we all know, these endeavors can be pricey. So I am soliciting your assistance to help meet the needs of the Hmong people whom I love so much. While I will certainly gain personally from the experience, it will be only because I am using my talents and abilities to help an underprivileged people living in a less-than-prosperous region.

So please donate whatever you can. One dollar, five dollars, ten dollars. This isn't some overhead-heavy, sensationalistic enterprise like you see on television. This is Russ. And I just want to give back.

Just click on the button below to make your payment through PayPal. Every dime will be worth it and well-spent.

Blood Brothers: Mormons, Genocide, and the Nixon administration

2008-12-16T23:41:00.000-08:00

Charles Radford, a Navy yeoman, present some fascinating questions about Latter-day Saints’ relationship with the government, the law, and politicians. Charles Radford was serving as a navyman aboard a ship in India. He was an active, married Latter-day Saint. In various venues, Radford was a trained stenographer who took down highly-secretive government documents about war actions in various sections of the globe. And he was a spy for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

A colorful case in point: in March 1971, East Pakistan won the majority of the seats in the National Assembly. This would center power in the ethnically distinct Bengali East Pakistan region. However, the Western military dictator, Yahya Khan would have none of it. He sent his forces to repress the Eastern Bengalis en masse, killing hundreds of thousands of East Bengalis. This would culminate in a flood of refugees to Eastern India—somewhere to the tune of 10 million. This obviously caused strains for the Indo-Pak relations. War broke out quickly—a war which the East Pakistanis won. They eventually broke off and declared themselves to be an independent Bangladesh. Around this same time, a low-level bureaucrat in Dakka, Bangladesh named Archer Blood sent a barely classified (marked with only “secret” instead of “top secret”) memo declaring the U.S. government to be “morally bankrupt” for its complacency on the issue.

Radford had access to key U.S. documents regarding U.S. policy during this war. During the famed India-Pakistan War in 1971, Nixon notably declared the United States to be neutral. However, Nixon was privately “tilting” in their direction, a reality that Radford leaked to fellow Latter-day Saint Jack Anderson, a prominent newsman for the Washington Post through stolen documents . This was no mere geopolitical move, however; Jack Anderson would win a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the incident. Anderson would later find himself on Nixon’s enemies list and even a possible target of assassination. G. Gordon Liddy even talked to a doctor about putting LSD in his soup. Nixon’s men were also considered trying to tie Anderson and Radford together through a possible homosexual relationship. I do not take that claim at all seriously—this is Nixon after all (and my M.A. thesis is on Nixon—this is a man I know something about).

Faithful Latter-day Saints—what are we to do? Anderson was as active as they come. Radford as well. Was Radford’s actions justified given the horrific situation of genocide taking place? Anderson revealed secret documents about the powers-that-be to the world. Was he standing up for the right or failing to follow Christ’s counsel to “render unto Caesar” and Paul’s counsel to let the powers that be reign supreme until Christ comes again?

Stephanie Meyer and the New Mormon Anti-Feminism

2008-11-23T12:50:00.000-08:00

Ah...the title of that already sounds like the rant of a leftist in the New Yorker doesn't it? Fret not, my friends...this is very good news.

So who knew that a Mormon housewife would be able to tap into the collective psyche of teenie-boppers girls world-wide? One might ask what makes them so gullible, so predictable, so prone to manipulation? But this, my friends, misses the point entirely.

The first common understanding we must reach is that the Twilight series is not only fundamentally anti-feminist but that it spits in the face of the feminist critique at every turn. The heroine is vulnerable and wildly susceptible to Edward's innate goodness. She's a tad erratic, always pushing Edward to go further than he wants to...upon which he, the level-headed priesthood holder that he is, always steadies the rudder and returns their impassioned love back to the boiling cauldron of teenage hormones.

So what would make girls scream over repressiveness? It seems downright puritanical when compared with even other relatively mild romances like Titanic or even your B+ grade chick flick. Never mind the relatively graphic battle scenes, scenes that should send your average girls back to watch Grey's Anatomy with her roommates, shuddering at how "scary" it all was. Instead, they scream with delight as Edward battles back evil. And no, you are not in the Twilight Zone...you're in the zone of piles of money based on seemingly ham-handed cinema that hardly rises above Dudley Do-right and his sniveling counterpart of a villain.

So what has happened to the fair daughters of Hannah-Montana America? Welcome to the next phase of American feminism, a backlash against a feminism that has been sucked dry of its femininity through the vampire of nihlism. The young women are simply exhausted with the feminist mantras. American feminism feels it will succeed when women can be as great of CEOs, presidents, doctors, and lawyers as men are. The success of Twilight shows a younger feminism bucking against women who have forgotten that being erratic can be charming, that being a clutz can be loveable, and that men can be something more than a super-tight "life partner."

Oh don't you worry...the old school 60s feminists rail against Twilight...Bella won't even get an abortion to save her life, after all!. But no matter to the adoring fans...Bella is loved. That's what matters.

Just as Harry Potter has defined a childhood, so too can Twilight define womanhood for the coming decade. Don't be surprised if in about 10 years, you see the now-young women expecting a little more from their male acquaintances if they want the time of day. When men get assertive, they might wonder why he's not like a better gentleman (as the name, "Edward" subconsciously rings through their mind). Meyer's popularity might just be enough to cause a slight tectonic shift in the gender dynamics in America.

Censorship by Candlelight

2008-11-18T13:14:00.001-08:00

You remember those cheesy re-enactments your priesthood/young women’s leaders made you do as teenagers? (ok, so some think they’re cheesy, others get a buzz out of them, and others just want to prove to the ladies that they’re “pioneer material” *manly grunt*)? These events are rituals intended to reinforce our identity as a people...our indulgence in the sociocultural phenomenon the Maurice Halbwachs called “collective memory.” “Collective memory” is seen by scholars as something to be analyzed, pieced together, ripped apart, and even enjoyed. One thing you don’t do...above all else...is take it personally.

Yet as I was listening that brilliant musical by Stephen Sondheim, Company, I heard an interesting tune about a man who was ruminating on what married life was like. The song bespoke a confusion: “Sorry, grateful/ Regretful, happy.” Everything and nothing in his life is because of her. Why, he says, look for answers about what marriage does when none seem to materialize? He always wonders “what might have been” if he had not met his wife. Essentially, the singer tells us, he and his wife had no established narrative of how they got together. Sure, he could tell us the precise events...but there was no sense of inevitability. No sense of “one and only-ness.” It’s a common aphroism in LDS (and really, general lore) that you know you should marry someone not when you can imagine living with that person but when you can’t imagine living without them. Not exactly President Kimball’s “any two righteous people can marry if they’re willing to pay the price” line...

Therefore, my statement is less about the actuality of “one and only”-ness and more about how the Holy Ghost conveys revelation. I have come to truly believe that since the gospel will never be truly demonstrated through empirical methods, we have to access the knowledge through other means. Yet we are talking about historical claims here...events that happened at a place and time. We can’t exactly “faith” our way through these things...at least using the pop culture’s definition of faith. There must be another way of establishing knowledge about divine truths...not the least of which is eternal marriage.

Full disclosure: this argument is blatantly teleological. It’s an argument based on what is and not on what might have been. For a historian, being so focused on the present might get one accused of “presentism,” one of the nastiest insults a historian can level at you. The founding premise of history is that we might understand why things happened the way they happen; this often requires that we understand what did not happen.

But there’s a reason that historians aren’t marriage/family therapists. Imagine me telling my wife: “I could have married so-and-so, but because of timing issues, global warming, the economy, and the shift in cultural norms because of event X, I’m with you instead.” Ah, I can feel the glow of the candlelight dinner. So I suggest to you that healthy marriages are fundamentally a-historical. It creates a contrived history out of a chaos of knowledge. After all, from a strictly historical stand-point, a couple has no business saying that they were “meant to be together” out of the thousands of individuals they would probably never meet. A good marriage requires the massaging of one’s history towards the current relationship, self-censorship if you will. You don’t talk about the ex, certainly not with any adoration. If one does indulge in memories, those memories are funneled into the present circumstances, even if by all other accounts they should not be. Those that cannot fit into the present are sloughed off as irrelevant or becomes points of contention.

So I say unto my married friends...revel in censorship. It might make your candlelight dinners a little more pleasant.

Why I'm Proud of America

2008-11-05T04:55:00.000-08:00

I didn't vote for Obama. I have many concerns about his policies and associations.

But I was proud of America last night. America is now the first Western nation to elect a minority as its President. Only 50 years ago, now-President Obama would have been staring attack dogs in the street of Montgomery. One hundred years ago, he could have been lynched as the white community looked on, considering his death to be a form of family entertainment. Now we've finally decided to get serious about breaking down the race barrier.

So here's to you, MLK Jr...

Villains in the Mormon Mind

2008-11-01T08:30:00.001-07:00

Everyone loves a good villain…the bellowing laugh with hands thrown up in the air utter triumph. As a child, I found Dr. Claw of Inspector Gadget fame to be wildly amusing. The Joker has quickly reached pop-culture stardom as people would practice their Joker impressions of “Why So Serious?” Good cartoonish villainy makes for good parties.

Hadyn White maintains that every history, in spite of its claims to objectivity, is constructed in literary fashion with traditional literary tropes such as villains, comic reliefs, and heroes. Indeed, White would conclude, we see our very world as a story…and therefore, the job of a historian is to point out our way of making history more than the history itself. Hence, the title of his magnum opus, Metahistory.

So who gets under our collective skin? You know…the folks who have been able to get inside our heads and poke us where it hurts? As we will find (surprise, surprise), there is no one archetype for the Mormon villain. Each of these villains represents a strand of our thought our culture that has been particularly vulnerable. We will see the Benedict Arnolds, the political activists, the heretics, and the downright scoundrels. Some have even worn a denim jumper or two in their lifetime…

Some observations are in order:

A) Some of these individuals, I guarantee, will be seen as heroes by Mormon Matters readers. However, as I’m sure these readers recognize, these heroic efforts are generally those of a dissenter…and in order for a dissenter to become famous, s/he has to tick off the powers that be in large numbers. So alas…they make the list.

B) Most of these villains have varying degrees of admirable traits. We’re talking about perception and not reality. I, for one, would gladly eat lunch with most “villains” on this list.

So behold…

10. Emma Smith

Poor sister Emma…while she is beloved as a heroine in much of the contemporary Church (of course, we all have the resident Emma-hater), Emma was not always perceived as one. In the aftermath of the Exodus from Nauvoo, Emma not only stayed behind but also kept several of Joseph’s personal belongings that Brigham believed belonged to the Church. In addition, she offered some support to Joseph III in establishing the RLDS church. Her son, David, eventually went to a mental institution in the aftermath of learning of his father’s polygamy while he served an RLDS mission to Utah–thus blackening her name even further with the Utah leadership. Brigham Young even accused her of trying poison Joseph and called her a “child of hell.” Thankfully, we can appreciate Emma for her tremendous accomplishments now.

9. Sidney Rigdon

Sidney has, quite sadly, been classified among the “crazy uncles” category of Mormon history. Yet he served for nearly ten years as the Joseph Smith’s proverbial Aaron. Despite his impressive service and considerable contribution to the Church with his Campbellite congregation, he has something on record to annoy just about every faction of the Church–from “when the prophet has spoken the thinking is done” orthodoxy to the postmodern, “scripture is inspired fiction” free-wheelers. In the months leading up to the Missouri War, he proved his capacity to inflame when giving the famous Salt Sermon–which implied that the expulsion of prominent apostates such as W.W. Phelps and Oliver Cowdery would be forthcoming. He became the bete noire of the succession crisis as he attempted to convince the Latter-day Saints that Joseph Smith had appointed him to be the leader. In historical memory, Rigdon has not been painted in the darkest hues; his villainy is often viewed as delusions and nothing more–delusions that could easily be brushed off into the ash-bin of history

8. Albert Sydney Johnson

A significant figure in 19th-century American military history in his own right, it’s ironic indeed that his greatest legacy is outside scholarly circles is as a part of an anticlimactic military operation that saw no bonafide engagement of enemies: the Utah War. He led, in all, over 5,000 troops to put down a supposed rebellion of Utah against the federal government. Congress widely opposed the expedition (most notably Sam Houston), and eventually would deem it “Buchanan’s blunder.” However, Utah remained under military occupation (albeit limited) For modern Latter-day Saints, Johnson serves more as a symbol of the animosity between the pioneers and the federal government than as an actual executor

7. John D. Lee A looming figure in not only Mormon history, but in the history of the West, John D. Lee has been kicked around as the football in the hands of Mountain Meadows historians. Aside from the elephant in the room that is the MMM, John D. Lee was otherwise a hard-working LDS who contriubted significantly to his community.

Having Been depicted as everything from a loyal scapegoat and hack to a renegade, John D. Lee has borne much of the blame for the attacks. Juanita Brooks’ research demonstrated that Lee’s excommunication and execution was simply meant to relieve pressure from the federal authorities’ constant haranguing. Walker, et. al. has concluded that John D. Lee played a central role in the massacre in both planning and deed (the topic looms too large for extensive treatment in this, a rather superfluous article by comparison–see the book that needs no introduction, Massacre at Mountain Meadows, for more info). In either interpretation, Lee’s name is often one of the few names to be mentioned within popular discourse about the massacre, in spite of the dozens of Iron County militiamen participation. Lee has come to symbolize the violent streak–if there be one–within 19th-century Mormonism–the crazy uncle in the attic.

6. Fawn Brodie
Niece of President David O. McKay and husband of a famed of nuclear theorist, Bernard Brodie, who helped to craft Eisenhower-era nuclear deterrence strategy; Fawn Brodie made fame in both critical and liberal Mormon circles by publishing one of the first scholarly biographies of Joseph Smith to reach wide circulation, No Man Knows My History. Brodie was roundly denounced and excommunicated within a year of publication. Whether she deserved such denunciation or not (I’m intentionally avoiding that elephant in the room), Brodie’s name has come to symbolize the “pointy-headed intellectual” stock character for modern Mormons. One of my contacts has informed me that when Richard Bushman presented Rough Stone Rolling to Knopf, they initially hesitated. Bushman responded that they owed him one: “After all, you published Brodie.” The argument was persuasive.

From Independence to Darfur

2008-10-29T12:21:00.001-07:00

The central question: Why aren't Mormons more radical??

A diaspora refers to the spreading of a people from their initial homeland to foreign regions. The population seeks to retain its characteristics even as they fend off the dominant culture in which they live. Latter-day Saints gathered in Utah from numerous nations; now the base of Utah Mormons have expanded back to the urban centers of New York, Boston, Washington, D.C. and elsewhere. We haven't had the Zionist mojo for some time (I don't exactly chant "Next Year in Jackson County" when I go to bed at night). What has that meant for the creation of culture?

Generally, in my cloistered academic world, diasporic and collective oppression carries a great deal of literary capital. If you can demonstrate how your identity has been unjustly persecuted by a dominant culture, you have "street cred." in talking about oppression. Yet we are woefully "square" in such areas; we're establishment men of the "Ask no questions and you'll be told no lies" brand. I don't suggest that we attempt to become a political action group or that we begin shouting about getting Missouri reparations. However, I do suggest that we, as a people, can and should identify more closely with oppressed peoples with whom we share a history in singular ways.

Similarities
1. Expelled en masseorders from the highest level of government
2. Lived under military occupation
3. Described using racialized terms (the famous anti-polygamy decision directly compared Mormons to Asiatic and African peoples)
4. Experienced directed assaults on our way life at the point of gun

Friends, while this is not precisely the same as racial oppression, in general, this is the stuff of which the "big ideas" about the oppressed masses is made. After all, there was a time when Mormons considered the term, "American" to be an insult. Yet now, Mormons will jump behind the Sean Hannitys and Toby Keiths of the world in justifying almost any military action.

While I hardly believe we're losing our identity (we do a very good job of being a "peculiar people" sometimes--and I really do mean that in a positive sense), I do wonder why we are where we are in American society when by all accounts, we should be a flaming radical like Franz Fanon. Granted, we did not experience the African slave trade, but we did experience systematic, institutionalized oppression from the highest levels of government.

But most importantly, why don't we give a hoot about populations who suffer worldwide? Perhaps our wealth and our ease have jammed our sensory nerves for "the fellow persecuted." Maybe we are comfortable in our consolidated position as only a frowned-upon church.

Maybe Darfur is a little closer to Independence than maps tell us...

Theological Realpolitik: The Church and What It Can't Do

2008-10-27T09:12:00.000-07:00

The most recent argument concerning the church's involvement in Prop. 8 goes thusly:

1) The Church supports traditional gender relations

2) The Church does not speak out extensively (except for a few platitudes about how we proclaim peace) on major world issues (such as the Iraq War and Darfur)

3) Therefore, the Church is "on the wrong side of history."

I rank this is one of the most worst arguments--on either side--on the Prop. 8 issue.

So let's address the merit of each premise--in turn--and discuss its relationship to the conclusion (#3).

1) Traditional gender relations

Somehow, the Church supporting the legitimization of sexual unions that has given mankind its very existence for the past gazillion years has been construed as being "on the wrong side of history." It should be noted that they are using the concept of history in the classical sense of cultural Marxism--that of "progress," of the unfolding of a new chapter--as though the newness or "presentness" (this should be a code-word to you historians out there--"presentism"--which is high-browed insult of the first order to a serious historian) of a thing made it inherently worthwhile or useful. The idea of progress is a nebulous word, devoid of any real meaning. Ultimately, it boils down to a sugary glaze for anyone's political agenda. Its usage tells us nothing about an idea's merit.

I don't think I will insult the reader by laying out the benefits heterosexuality has given to the world. Frankly, it deserves a "privileged status" if for no other reason than because we owe our existence to it. Even Ancient Greece held monogamy in high regard (in spite of the popular stories surrounding their allowance of homosexuality), noting that Cecrops, a partially divine early king of Athens, both civilized mankind and establish monogamy as the divine order.

So it's odd indeed that the Church would be on the "wrong side of history," the same history that gives this writer his very life.

2) The Church does not mobilize politically for human rights abuses

To be sure, the constant streams of comments in General Conference about the wars in the world and about how Satan rules over the peoples with blood should indicate that Church is quite aware of human rights abuses. Alexander Morrison, a member of the seventy, has done work with the U.N. in researching tropical diseases.

This is correct. But why is it? Notice...the Church doesn't even mobilize for every moral issue. It has to be a winnable one--one where the Church can command influence. Whenever a federal amendment is proposed for homosexual marriage, the Church does no more than issue a two-line statement expressing its general support. Why? Because it does not command the human resources necessary to carry out an effective campaign on a national level. The author of the cited piece seems to be outraged at the Church for recognizing what it can and cannot do.

Let's imagine that every Latter-day Saint in the Church donated five dollars to a Save Darfur fund (and the Church has donated about 17 million to humanitarian aid in conflicts worldwide--not just Darfur--in 2006 alone). Let's say President Monson condemned it specifically (note, they have offered ample condemnation of these things in general)...where would be then where we aren't now? Does that suddenly give them "street cred" in the eyes of progressives? Perhaps it would have an impact on policymakers; but perhaps it would not.

In California, on the other hand, there is a mass of human and monetary resources that can carry out what the Church (and I) see as good policy. Disagree on the policy if you wish, but intelligent people should be able to distinguish some between a campaign that will have an immediate impact and a conflict where complex geopolitical actors are tragically pulling the strings. The Church has a built-in The most the Church can do in such circumstances is provide humanitarian aid and teach its members to abhor such bloodshed. Speaking for myself, LDS doctrine has successfully taught me and countless others to do just that.

In any case, to argue that the Church is "on the wrong side of history" is at best a limited and provincial argument that defines history as nothing more than the fodder for a political tract.

True, it's on the Huffington Post--but an outrageous argument becomes no less outrageous simply because it comes from someone known for their intellectual laxity. Additionally, I have seen this argument gain some traction amongst otherwise knowledgable people.

But it won't under my watch.

I'm a little outraged right now

2008-10-21T13:38:00.000-07:00

I was familiar with the U.S. manual on counterinsurgency published in 2004. I had even read parts of it (for a class...I was pressed for time and just absorbed enough to make through the seminar without sounding dumb).

I read today that the military adviser in host country where counterinsurgency operations are taking place (read: Iraq) need not concern himself with that country's democratization or with the democratic process. Even Captain Moroni bothered to get the voice of the people to support his lifting of the writ of habeas corpus, as it were.

Not that this a surprised to me, but normally, one must piece together egregious acts of the government. Here we have it plain as day.

I love America, but this is outrageous.

Lies, Damned Lies, and Birth Certificates

2008-10-21T12:01:00.000-07:00

I have been deceived.

Alas, I must print my mea culpa here and state the truth clearly that no one may misunderstand...

Obama is not whom he says he is...

Here is the smoking gun evidence...clear as crystal...*sob* I have been deceived *SOB*...

Why the Law Does and Does Not Matter

2008-10-18T21:17:00.000-07:00

An odd title, coming from me...considering that I see myself as a hardliner for evidence/legal reasoning. But frankly, Proposition 8, while a decidedly legal maneuver, actually has very little to do with "the law."

For us to believe that there is no connection between the societal values which we hold and the laws that we as a society pass is not sustainable by appeals to any sort of appeal to case studies. Yet homosexual activists, even the California Supreme Court, suggest that opening marital opportunities to homosexual just gives them more civil rights, that it has no effect on heterosexuals, that any opposition to these privileges must be born of good old-fashioned bigotry.

By sustaining the California Supreme Court decision, we are not just offering economic benefits to homosexual couples. I wish we were. However, just as a marriage license and a speeding ticket are not just pieces of paper but are cultural rudders, as it were, the legal definition of marriage as heterosexual is similarly a cultural rudder that would have not only legal implications but also fuzzier but more wide-reaching implications concerning our collective worldview. Legal decisions, alas, have consequences. I've discussed these consequences elsewhere...but how do they come about?

Discourse
The first is in our discourse...the "rectification of names." Bill Clinton famously refused to call the Rwandan massacres "genocide" because of the responsibility to act that naming would bring. To think that we can just words/metaphors loosely without it affecting our reasoning would be fallacious. In other words, words and ideas have consequences, as Richard Weaver has famously argued. There's a reason thinkers debated the number of angels dancing on the head of the pin was of tremendous importance to Middle Ages thinkers...because that question directly addressed how they saw the fundamental reality of the world...of time and space. That we discount it as nonsense simply shows that we no longer use ideas as our governing assumptions. The idea of heterosexuality, of homosexuality...it's all considered to be an artificial creation of our own minds which has, its heart, nothingness. And the idea that ideas aren't significant is itself a significant intellectual development for the modern world. We can no longer question the abstract utility of a movement, but only in terms of dollars and cents. Invoke the concept of morality and you'll be a right-wing demagogue (though I myself am averse to the term for merely tactical reasons).

State antagonism
Simply put, we can't trust that the state is our friend. While religions may not be required to perform gay marriages, taking the Court at its word, the state has now established itself to be directly at odds with the interests of various religious groups. And who has the greater power of dissemination when it comes to the spreading of ideology? As one scholar noted, the state holds the power of the Repressive State Apparatus (the public school system and the Courts), so while their precise ruling may give some wiggle room to churches to act as they will, the educational system will be mobilized as an ideological "means of production" (in Marxist theory) to assure the state's decision. We are wrong if we think the state to be a passive entity that simply follows our bidding at election time.

As my friend Ashly noted, we are essentially burning our conceptions of sexuality and gender at the altar of the government's god. Parents who oppose it cannot be notified of its teaching or even opt out of their children being taught it. The state has its interests. My opponents suggest that we are invoking fear...and yes, I am (fear is really the staple of all politics at some level...liberal or conservative). So suggesting that I use fear really sheds little light on the subject...they need to demonstrate to me that my fears cannot plausibly materialize. Given the track record, they will be hard-pressed to do so.

So let's not think that we're just offering civil rights to an oppressed group. That's a compelling narrative, but let's recognize that the forces against Prop. 8 are the same forces that will try to mold our next generation in the government's image.

Hate Crimes?

2008-10-17T08:47:00.001-07:00

SO I'm not a fan of hate crime legislation...largely because I just hate crime in general. A white man's death is no less tragic when sparked by his religion than a black man's death is over the color of his skin. Both are terrible blemishes on the human condition.

That said, indulge me a little as I dabble in some Mormon "persecution complex." Read this story . A Brazilian man in Massachusetts killed his wife and stepson (quite brutally...with a hammer). Why? He states quite clearly that it was because of her activity in the Mormon church and her efforts to get him to join.

Where is the Anti-Defamation League right now? What are the hate crimes advocates?

Yes, this is straight-up tribalism...but I also think that I've seen horrific crimes like this get enormous play on the media. Not that I ever thought the televised media was a fair portrayer of reality...

Just Leave Joe Alone

2008-10-16T22:49:00.000-07:00

Everyone, for some bizarre, now knows the name of a small-businessman in Toledo, OH. I won't even mention his name here...if you want to read about it, just read something, anything about the debates.

All the man did was ask Senator Obama a question. He never wanted to be a mascot. He just wanted to have an opinion--and even if that opinion is wrong, he has a right to be wrong in peace. Conspiracy theorists have attempted to tie him to Charles Keating of the old days from McCain's Keating five scandal with scanty connections that at best tell us that this small businessman might be *gasp* pro-business. This fellow was just being an interested citizen, and now the media is looking to make him look like the dark underside of the American Everyman.

Yes, he might be incorrect about some of Obama's positions...yes, he might not have jumped through all the bureaucratic hoops of his profession (he's a plumber, but he's not licensed as such). No, he hasn't paid some back taxes. But guess what? How many of us can honestly say that we understand the tax proposals of the candidates, esp. when we get our news from a diet of television soundbytes? How many bother to read factcheck.org to get news faster than the speed of spin, as it were?

Finally, heaven knows how many richer individuals there are who carry out far greater misdeeds under the radar yet slip by without detection--just because they have the weight to throw around. Meanwhile, if Joe slips a little in the proposed earnings for the 3rd quarter of a possible business venture, he's dismissed as a Republican hack.

Let Joe be a single father in peace.

Righteous Gentiles Part I

2008-10-14T17:46:00.001-07:00

So, in honor of the broad-mindedness that is, well, me (insert pretentious laugh here), I would like to suggest a list of the top ten “Righteous Gentiles.” In orthodox Judaism, these are known as gerim toshavim, “resident aliens.” These are Gentiles who either formally or informally have associated themselves with the people of the Jews by agreeing to abide by the mitzvot or Noachian laws.

What great men/women among our people have demonstrated similar affinity for our cause, while they themselves remain outside the fray of the Mormon center?

My criteria...

A. They must be well-regarded on either the folk or elite level, and their contributions must be perceived as distinctively Mormon (even if they are not).

B. They aren’t necessary “righteous” by our standards, but their names must have currency among our people as a sympathizer (whether they were actually sympathizers or not is irrelevant)

The List--10th through 5th

10. G.K. Chesterton

A British author and Christian apologist well-renowned for his series of novels, The Father Brown Mysteries as well as his vigorous critiques of secularism and modernity, Chesterton has reached wide audiences amongst all Christians of essentially any Christian faith. Even though he was vehemently opposed to any deviation from Catholic orthodoxy and even levelled a mild critique against Mormons, I rank him #10. Chesterton has been quoted often enough by general authorities and leaders to be comparable with C.S. Lewis. Bruce C. Hafen devoted an entire talk (one of those typically well-worn talks on balancing faith and reason and so-on) to a single quotation by Chesterton. While most of his renown has come from Elder Maxwell’s extensive usage of him, Maxwell alone has made Chesterton’s name worth noting.

9. Richard Muow and co.

The president of Fuller Theological Seminary, Muosw is less known as a person and more known as a symbol. In 2004, Muow declared, at the Mormon Tabernacle, to thousands of LDS that evangelicals “have sinned against you.” He proceeded to provide a mea culpa on behalf of the Evangelical community, stating that they have spread lies and untruths about Mormons and their beliefs. His remarks set off a firestorm within the Intermountain evangelical outreach center, some suggesting that his remarks were only going to empower Mormons more in their wrong-headed beliefs that they were mainstream Christians. This, of course, only increased Muow’s cachet amongst the Utah circles as an evangelical who was finally willing to tell the truth against the roar of the masses. Such things carry tremendous pathos to the Mormons as a people.

Muow’s admission was the culmination for a golden age of Evangelical-Mormon dialogue, starting with Stephen Robinson’s collaborative work with Craig Blomberg, a Protestant scholar of the New Testament at the Denver Seminary in Colorado: How Wide the Divide?: An Evangelical and a Mormon in Conversation. In essence, Muow, Robinson, and Blomberg represented the actualization of many Mormons’ hopes—albeit fleeting— that evangelical leaders might finally acknowledge that we do share some core beliefs and that we are *gasp* indeed Christians.

8. Alexander Doniphan

Doniphan should be noted in his own right for his contributions as a military commander during the Mexican War. Indeed, he has been so noted, as the litany of schools in Missouri have been named after him. But Mormons, of course, have other reasons for the soft spot for ole’ Al in their collective conscience.

Doniphan was an attorney living in Missouri at the time of the Saints’ expulsion from Jackson county in 1833. Doniphan provided legal representation for Joseph Smith during the bazillion legal hearings he had to trudge through in the Missouri era. He refused to execute Joseph when General Lucas commanded him to do so—at risk of court martial and perhaps execution himself. As a member of the Missouri state legislature, he worked to create Caldwell County as a settlement for the Saints in the wake of the expulsion from Jackson county. While he never particularly liked Joseph Smith or his religion, Doniphan will be, for the time being, remembered as a lover of liberty and justice to the Mormon mind.

7. Klaus Baer

The Egyptologist extraordinaire who made made himself famous as the great middle-way on matters concerning the Abraham papyri. Baer instructed Hugh Nibley in Egyptian in 1959 and became attached to the Joseph Smith papyri from that point on. When some of the original papyri were discovered in 1966, Baer, as commissioned by Dialogue, provided a highly agnostic translation of the documents. While devoutly agnostic, Baer refused to jump on board with the critics in declaring Joseph Smith to be a fraud. Indeed, in one letter to the Tanners, he instructed them that similar translation difficulties can be found in the New Testament and that these difficulties cannot be used to delegitimize faith. While Baer does not quite constitute a hero for Mormon thought, he demonstrates the cool-headed scholarship that refuses to point fingers—a tendency most Mormon intellectuals appreciate even if they do not agree with.

6. Margaret Barker

A scholar of Old Testament studies who studied at University of Cambridge, Barker has written widely on monotheism amongst the Canaanites. What has made her a Blessed Gentile? Her scholarship has touched all of Mormon gurus’ soft spots: Enoch, temple theology, and questions re: the plurality of gods. Her most famous work within Mormon circles, The Great Angel: A Study of Israel’s Second God wherein she argues that “the Lord” was indeed seen as a Son of God in early Israelite theology. While her work is certainly unusual in her field, that she is a Cambridge-trained scholar of Old Testament studies has helped Latter-day Saints feel an added sense of legitimacy in their intellectual claims.

5. Jan Shipps

Called “the beloved Gentile” by higher-ups within the Church and the “Jane Goodall of Mormon studies” by others, Jan Shipps almost single-handedly made the study of Mormonism into a mainstream fashion rather than just the niche studies of academics. Before Jan Shipp, few credible scholars indeed commented with any degree of favorability to the Church. Jan Shipps has provided a dominant wherein scholars can understand Mormonism without judging its veracity. It was Shipps who proposed that we stop seeking to determine whether Joseph’s visions were correct or not, but rather, she suggested we look to determine what kind of collective meaning these visions had to the people who experienced them. While Bushman has taken a similar approach, his orthodoxy in the Church has been an obstacle (albeit, one that could be overcome). Shipps has demonstrated that one can study Joseph Smith’s story and still be a sympathetic non-believer.

And if she’s really the Jane Gooddall of Mormons, maybe the Mormon creationists should re-think their position…

Why Mormons are Terrible Politicians...and Why I Love It

2008-10-14T16:08:00.000-07:00

Perhaps you've heard the news? In case you haven't, the crusades are on, boys!

When was the last time you heard a LDS leader talk like this? Perhaps I've been blessed by a spate of reasonable leaders and Saints, but it's been a while for me. While pastors are spouting off high-flung rhetoric, our leaders are really doing a terrible job of being politicians. They aren't creating an "other," they aren't using the language of militancy. They don't even use variation in the tone of their voice. How woefully boring. Just logistics and oft-cited remarks, delivered with an almost a statistical enthusiasm. As though they were going over numbers from the quarterly report.

I would never trust them as political consultants...and thank heavens!

How Postmodernism Finally Infected the Evangelical Right

2008-10-11T16:34:00.000-07:00

As I said, I'm not a biologist. I don't know about the bones of Piltdown man (though I certainly should) or the wingspan of sundry fowls. But I do believe that thinking is inspired of God.

As a now KY resident (I paid my taxes last year), I must shake my head in shame at the dichotomy that our Christian cousins draw between science and God. Case in point? This in-your-face affront to the God-given intellect...

The Creation Museum...a tribute to the idea that being a Christian doesn't fix stupid (as a favored columnist of mine noted). A tribute to the idea that provincial familiarity is often preferred to grand reality. And given the cultural identification some are ascribing to visiting, a tribute to how postmodernism has even affected the Christian right. Somehow, subverting the scientific process and truth-seeking becomes acceptable because they're preserving their identity as a "peculiar people."

Can everyone do me a favor and work hard to avoid flirting with the Christian Right by adopting their rhetoric? We as Latter-day Saints can and must do better. Unfortunately, many of the scientific overtures towards religion are being made by highly sympathetic, but also agnostic scientists like Brian Greene. Mind you, I have deep respect for Dr. Greene because of his willingness to avoid the hate that lurks over the likes of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. And even Dawkins is willing to grant that there are well-regarded scientists who believe--even if their belief absolutely baffle him.

Will we make similar overtures to the contributions of biological science? It is not enough for us to merely passively place science on the shelf...that smacks of intentional ignorance, which is something that those outside (and many within) the religious tradition find abhorrent. We must actively give credence to scientific contributions while being prepared with our own, genuine (as opposed to folk) orthodoxy.

Why Feminists Should Vote for Prop. 8

2008-10-10T23:53:00.000-07:00

would make a terrible politician. I have my opinions, but I hate holding hands politically with folks whom I find abhorrent in their argumentation. Heaven help me if I had to "pal around with" bigots (as Sarah Palin would say). I prefer to cut my own path...and be lonely in the process if necessary. Indeed, my approach makes me few friends...I have to fight back the opposition while fending off folks who are trying to "help" me.

So some may wonder why I talk so much about this topic. One reason, of course, is because it's more than a little controversial. And I would be lying if I said I didn't dig that. I like getting into hot water; it keeps me clean, as one wise philosopher once noted. The other reason is pragmatic. I would write as vociferously about the Iraq war, but there are plenty of others who do that and far more eloquently. I would write about global warming, but other than cutting back on my gas guzzling, write a few letters, and appear in a few rallies, there's not much that I can contribute that can't be done better by someone else. Plus I am not a scientist so will probably not be able to form the kind of opinion I need to feel passionately about it. I fear that if I were to start reading up on it, I would not be able to tell up from down. But I digress...

Feminism has been the ideology d'jour to promote the rights of homosexual couples. It is understandable that they would. After all, it was Adrienne Rich, the famed literary critic a la feminism (that's a shout out to Ashley Sanders...hi Ash!) who argued that women by their very natures lesbians and had only been coerced or had sold themselves for the economic securities of heterosexuality. Elaine Showalter, while more moderate in her remarks, has argued that women should stop both protesting and imitating, as both demonstrate their dependence on men. Touche, Sister Showalter ONe might look to others such as Nancy Chowderow or Nancy Jones for more solid feminist analysis.

I recognize that in citing feminists in opposition to homosexual marriage, I am severely bucking academic orthodoxy. But last I checked, academics liked doing that, so they should be willing to indulge me a little as I do the same.

But must I accept their conclusions if I accept their reasoning? If I accept that women have been oppressed, must we conclude that they should just stay to themselves? As the prominent feminist historian, Joan Scott noted, such a practice would equate ghettoization of the worst order. Typically we speak of ghettoization in literature...now they're speaking of lives!

Furthermore, legitimzing lesbian unions seems to be the ultimate DELEGITMIZATION of women's contribution to our society. By legitimizing them, we are suggesting that woman ultimately have nothing to offer a child that a man can't offer. No singularity. No special perks. They would become simply homo sapiens in skirts. Men would begin having easier access to adoptive services on the basis of financial well-being (all other things being equal of course). And worse, they're concluding that anything a female mother can do, a man can do just as well. Before women know it, they've been cut out of the pie in their efforts to protest against men.

Legitimizing homosexual unions is concluding that one's female identity is nothing more than a genetic quirk that has nothing to do with parenting. Femininity is a construct...something that man can give and man can take away. Look at a bit of Foucault's work History of Sexuality --such tenets are accepted within the academy and out on the street. One's gender is fluid and can be played with at will. Within religious circles, they're not doing much better on this question...all they've got is "God made me this way"...and even then, that gender is only life-long, not to have much relevance in the life hereafter.

But, Russ, what a caricature you draw! Not really. If men can come to dominate the power structures, then homosexual men would do the same. The best way to preserve women's claim to power in the parenting structure is to support Prop. 8 if only for adoption purposes. As Showalter noted, stop trying to imitate men and start exercising your own power by keeping the men from taking away the parental rights that are properly yours.

But don't listen to me...I'm just a man. You know how important your role as a woman is to society. Fight for it. Drink it up. Live it.

Stopping Time: On Why Some Remain Unconverted

2008-10-08T16:04:00.001-07:00

I have a friend who identifies himself as one. Unfortunately, methinks that the term becomes yet another auspice under which one can volley criticisms at the Church..."I'm just being open and transparent." For me, being an "open Mormon" is something quite different.

I had an interesting conversation with a woman today. Missionaries (being as overly-sensitive as they are to any kind of vigorous discussion) would call it a bash. I disagree heartily...I called it posing and answering meaningful questions...and frankly, it prompted her to listen more than she would have. So you can doubt my strategy if you like, but I saw it work (ah the great paradox...I just used the "just bear your testimony" technique to demonstrate how one can do more than "just bear your testimony").

Her stance, while very respectful, was almost tautological in its approach. She had determined that Joseph Smith was a fraud...and therefore could funnel (at least in her own mind) all new information through that lens. I wondered...why? I had a very difficult time believing that she was that closed to the Spirit that she would be unwilling to entertain the possibility. Perhaps it was the "false traditions of her fathers," yet so many overcome such limitations. Why not her? Her agency? Well, that's not very comforting...I'm still left believing that she ultimately chose to fight the spirit of revelation. There must be a different explanation.

Orson F. Whitney portrayed it perfectly:

Perhaps the Lord needs such men on the outside of his Church, to help it along. They are among its auxiliaries, and can do more good for the cause where the Lord has placed them, than anywhere else… Hence, some are drawn into the fold and receive a testimony of Truth, while others remain unconverted…the beauties and glories of the gospel being veiled temporarily from their view, for wise purpose. The Lord will open their eyes in his own due time…God is using more than one people for the accomplishment of his great and marvelous work. The Latter Day Saints cannot do it all. It is too vast, too arduous for any one people…We have no quarrel with the Gentiles. They are our partners in a certain sense.

One might compare these perceptions to a person's reaction to Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity concerning the speed of light and time perception (not a physicist, so if I'm dead wrong, you can correct me--but if I'm right, then you can say: "What a well-rounded person he is"). Basically, if one travels at the speed of light, then the perception of time slows down until time essentially ceases to exist to those outside one's frame of reference. One's length decreases. Poppycock, a simple-minded critic would say. They'll take their regular old 24-hour days, thank you very much.

We must understand that we are asking investigators to do something similar...stop time. It's possible, but it's utterly fantastic, even absurd to the uninitiated. And what if taking such ideas seriously would cause them to lose faith in their families, in everything? I've seen what happens when individuals open themselves up fully to radically different after their worldview has fallen apart...the new paradigm consumes them. They lose balance in life. They become a creature of ideology.

Is it possible, as President Whitney said, that some are kept from the truth not only because they know where to find it but also because the Lord would rather have them elsewhere for the time being? If the Pope joined the Church, there would not likely be massive Mormon baptisms, but charges of scandal, of madness, of intrigue. If Mother Theresa had become a member, could she have retained her credibility? Could it not be the Pope, Mother Theresa and others are/were doing their parts in the vast work of temporal and spiritual salvation? While they might be introducing incorrect doctrines, isn't it possible that the Lord plans on getting that straightened out later...in the meantime, he needed Mother Theresa's humanitarianism, Martin Luther's defiance, and Isaac Newton's mind?

Why "Hotel California" Makes for Great Sacrament Meeting material

2008-10-07T08:59:00.000-07:00

Yes, I know that the song, "Hotel California" is among those well-worn classics where everyone thinks they "know" what the song means...just like everyone knows the "lessons of Vietnam," the interpretation of "Bye, Bye, Miss American Pie," and what their respective gender is looking for a relationship.

However, if I didn't see that I had something to add, I would certainly refrain from the melee of interpretations. And I understand some of them are l(to seriously understate) less-than-edifying. And it's possible that this is not a new interpretation. But I like it, so if it isn't new...tough. And I won't take you threw the historiography of interpretation for the song...I have neither the time nor you have the patience (or even the desire, really...). That said...

Hotel Caliifornia, written, performed, and made legendary by The Eagles, tells the story of a desert traveler who happens across on an old mission in old California. A woman greets him, holding up a light in the doorway. Her hair "tiffany-twisted" (prob. meaning an obsession with Tiffany's, the jeweler), she receives him into a world of luxury, "pretty boys," and dancing. People eat to their hearts content, but still, as it were, "cannot kill the beast." "We are prisoners here," the women notes, "of our own device." Meanwhile, voices haunt the man, saying "Welcome to the Hotel California, such a lovely place, such a lovely face, such a lovely face/ They livin' it up at the hotel California/What a nice surprise, bring your alibis." Before long, the man finds himself going mad and tries to leave. The clerk stops him and says: "We are programmed to receive; you can checkout anytime you like, but you can never leave."

Now for the fun part...interpretation! In doing so, I must of necessity be slightly outrageous and assume that I know precisely what it means and that anyone who disagrees with me is a fool (reminds me of Voltaire who quipped: "'I always made one prayer to God, a very short one. Here it is: 'O Lord, make our enemies quite ridiculous!' God granted it.'). But I tend to think, given what the clerk says about how one can never leave, that the hotel is an imagined edifice. And what are they prisoners of? Whatever it is, they freely choose it...and it is a prison of luxury. Finally,it is prison that is considered to be a bit of an indulgence..."what a nice surprise, bring your alibis" For what are alibis needed if it is a place you would want to tell people about? And finally, notice the aroma surrounding the hotel...colitas (a marijuana bud). Whether these individuals are high or not, the imagery suggests that the joy they are having is an artificial one, wrapped in the haze of drug-induced happiness. Most significantly, one cannot leave this prison once it is indulged in. It becomes a mindset, not a location. A way of life.

I suggest that Hotel California can be usefully read as a critique of materialism. Elder Holland said this much when he spoke of materialism as a "great and spacious building in which the soap opera, Vain Imaginations is playing incessantly."

I'll write a note in honor of the next person to use "Hotel California" lyrics in a talk.

Girls' State Meets Legally Blonde

2008-10-03T09:42:00.000-07:00

Aside from the expletive in the flow-chart (my apologies for that...but this was just too priceless to let pass), this flow-chart is highly apropo to Palin's debate style.

I believe she's a bright woman. She's better than all of this. But unfortunately, she's forcing me to take that position on faith. I like faith when we're talking about life's purpose. I don't like it when we're talking about politics.

Bo Gritz and Mormons Gone Mad--MUST we claim him?

2008-09-27T23:24:00.001-07:00

As I was meandering about last fall at the Vietnam War conference at the University of Kentucky, I began chatting with a historian about his work on POWs and how non-state actors came to play a role in U.S. foreign policy in the post Vietnam War era. Normally, this would be another airy conversation that academics do for a living. Just then (and not coincidentally, given the topic material), I had a flashback.

(insert dream sequence)
As a youth, a man tells me he's voting for a man named Bo Gritz.

"Sir, why are you voting for him?"

"Because he believes in liberty, my boy! And he's a Mormon."

I never forgot that name...

(Imagine me reading alone in a library...subtly creepy music playing in background...the kind you might hear on Bourne Identity):

The name lingered among the articles. I learned that after serving in Vietnam, he embarked on a "Save the POWs" campaign that consumed a goodly part of a lifetime. He organized big big time, big show commando expeditions into Burma and Laos to save former POWs in Laos and North Vietnam. One counterterrorist Delta Force coordinator noted that they were geared to launch POW rescue missions until Bo Gritz would come onto the scene and make some major announcement.

It gets more bizarre. According to Gritz's account,William Shatner, Clint Eastwood, and Ronald Reagan had joined in planning of the rescue operations in Laos. Shatner and Eastwood saw the makings of good movie material, you see...so they agreed to pay for the mission provided that they get the copyrights for making a movie. Reagan supposedly even told Gritz that he would "start World War III to get them out." The story gets fuzzy around here, as the story goes that Gritz was ambushed by anti-communist militia. Did these hardened anti-communists (probably leftovers of the Hmong mercenaries) just let Gritz walk away after he kindly explained that he was just trying to be Rambo? It's very hard to say.

Gritz went on to live in a grand netherworld of Christian militantism and the hard right-wing: "Guns, God, and Gritz" was his campaign slogan in 1992 (when my father voted for him). He had a legitimate achievement...he helped to negotiate an end to the Randy Weaver stand off in Ruby Ridge, Idaho (Weaver was another hard-right winger who was basically armed to the teeth...let's just say the FBI was getting suspicious). He made a name for himself by insisting that the CIA was selling drugs to fund its in Laos (old news btw...that charge had been made by Alfred McCoy in 1973). He began teaching paramilitary tactics in a program called SPIKE (Specially Prepared Individuals for Key Events) on his utopian ranch called, "Almost Heaven" (also armed to the teeth with weaponry). After all, the U.S. was on the verge of moral and economic collapse.

And he, my friends, was one of our own...he later left the Church. The precise reasons are not clear...the rumors range from a refusal to pay taxes and therefore the Church's withholding of a recommend to the Church's stance against his paramilitary activities. I think an all of the above would fit well...the gospel net is wide indeed.

(Snapping back into reality)

"So," I ask the historian, "you talk to manyveterans/POW activists" (remember, activists by their nature try to jar you a little).

"Quite a few, yes."

"Have you ever talked to Bo Gritz?"

"No way, dude," says he. "He's scary"

Gospel Memory, Fallible Beauty

2008-09-22T20:26:00.000-07:00

While I hardly want to be schmaltzy, I had a powerful experience this evening involving memory... this governing variable of my mind. I have often noted to my acquaintances that the genius of the gospel is its ability to co-opt and integrate. Let's say I've been staring down a rather vexing personal conundrum for several years (and I'll spare you the ranting...no really, it can be really obnoxious to the uninitiated). It's one that has, quite honestly, taken a toll on my testimony. Strangely enough, it has almost no relationship to the great ambiguities of our age. Not Joseph Smith, not Brigham Young, not terminal illness or the priesthood ban, not even crass local leaders or uncomfortable political positions. But it did erode my faith just the same, and all the more because it rubs me right where it hurts.

So I'm sitting in my car tonight eating my beef baja chalupa and feeling annoyed at planet earth for no particularly good reason. I begin to listening to an old song that I heard often during a difficult period of my mission...and it struck a resonant chord with me then.The song is not impressive by any traditional standards. Its lyrics were cliche and well-worn. But its content appealed to the emotions of my mission...in some ways, I felt as though I were on my mission again. And suddenly, I felt as though I were facing the same problems I had faced on my mission, only in a different form. The result? I stare at myself in the mirror, look myself in the eye and honestly believe that I can handle this. My painful conundrum was suddenly recast in terms I had once known and loved. It's become sadly cliche to speak of how "remember" is one of the most commonly used words in scriptures. I don't speak of the data kinds of memory...but of the personal kind. You know, the kind that will bring men to blows, to marriage, and to causes greater than themselves. So I ask...in an era when memory is disparaged, Is there a place in the gospel for a recognition of both memory's power and its vulnerability?

In the world of academia, memory is, at best, smiled condescendingly upon as an interesting element of identity-formation in some developing nation. It's fallible and fickle, malleable and manipulatable. Yes, we acknowledge, we all must deal with it, but no one should like it. It's something to be deconstructed and re-trained to comply with the tenets of the academy. If you dare use to promote any kind of agenda whatsoever, the professors suggest, be prepared to be wrong. The popular conclusion often drawn from these realizations is essentially a nihlistic agnosticism.

Dabble in the esoteric with me for a moment. Compare memory a bit to Platonic thought. In Plato's Tmaneus, he spoke of a concept called khora, an utterly abstract reeptacle of sorts through which the divine virtue was transmitted into material being. Most significantly, according to Derrida, khora must be by its very nature formless and without definition. Timaneus tells us that if we were to look at khora, we look at like we would a dream. Essentially (barring some serious divine intervention), no one can see khora or know its nature. It only functions as a governing regulator between the ideal and the real. I submit to you that in a gospel context, the memory serves a similar function--with the significant qualification that the holder of the memory can access it much fuller ways that Plato could with khora. I would suggest that our memory and our testimony are intricately related and almost synonymous.

Where is testimony equated with memory in scripture? Where is it not? How often do we hear the newly-converted speak of how they suddenly "see" God's hand working in their lives even when they didn't recognize it? How about where Christ tells us that the Holy Ghost will "bring all things to your remembrance"?

Yet scholarship would tell me that since memory can be so manipulated, how could I ever seriously let such nostalgia influence me in any meaningful way? If state-makers can create a common identity with monuments, marching bands, and banners, why can't my own mind be fooling me into making sense out of an irrational situation? Indeed, Maurice Halbwachs, the patron saint on the sociological study of collective (and by extension) individual memory, noted that collective and even individual memory derives from the social sphere.

How do we protect our memory from these polarized pollutions of both misinformation and information overload? Perhaps we can suppose that memory, as the mind's most fragile instrument can also be its most beautiful work of art. Perhaps memory's beauty, as God would have it, is as at least as much in what it ignores as what it remembers. A perfect awareness of the thoughts, words, and actions alone of every man, woman, and child would not effectively give one a perfect understanding of one's place in the cosmos. Love just might.

Homosexual Marriage and World Poverty

2008-09-21T21:09:00.000-07:00

My friends, a common refrain we hear from critics of the Church's position on gay marriage is that the money being spent on this endeavor could be used in so many other worthwhile pursuits such as poverty, literacy education, and elsewhere (to be sure, the Church already is actively involved in these things). Of all the criticisms of the Church's position, it is this one to which I am most sensitive. It churns my stomach to hear of the funds spent on most political campaigns. It's not surprising then to hear that I might cringe at the sound of millions being poured into sound bytes and banners...most of which, in my experience, use misinformation and distortion to promote even a worthwhile message. Yet I support the Church's fundamental decision.

But how? Cognitive dissonance? Provinciality? On the monetary issue, those who do accept the Bible as in any way indicative of good morality (and I recognize that not all do...gosh, even I am not comfortable with the conquest of Canaan) might recognize the story where the women washes Jesus' feet with spikenard...a luxurious ointment that could have brought a year's worth of wages. Jesus reprimanded Judas for not recognizing the symbolic significance at work.

Therefore...as I see it, there are two reasons:

1) Organizational agency
2) Societal trends

Alas, what I am about to say might smack of the dreaded "fear tactics" so loathed by those on both sides of the aisle. However, when the state begins to approve of a policy that a special interest group fundamentally opposes, it is not unreasonable to suppose (as has happened in other cases) that the government will, as a matter of political necessity, stop associating with that special interest group in matters related to the point of disagreement. In other words, it would not be unreasonable to suppose that, as has happened previously in Mormon history, that the government would impose penalties on the Church for refusing to fall in line with the government support for same-sex marriage. The worst case scenario plausible could be that LDS bishops could no longer conduct marriages. In more a dramatic (and far less likely) situation, the government might even cease to recognize LDS marriages as legally binding. It's an extreme situation, I recognize. Given the past relationship between the Boy Scouts and various institutions, however, I am somewhat skeptical that the Church could retain its autonomy in matters marital.

2)
As far as the superiority of homes with a father and a mother to homes where only a single parent is present, the research is solid. Proponents of homosexual marriage maintain that a homosexual couple can effectively replicate the male/female roles. This, however, is based on a tremendous assumption that gender, as opposed to biologically sexual makeup, is a construct that can be pieced together at one's will. One can become an effective mother in behavior if not in biology (see Michel Foucault's History of Sexuality work for some of the philosophical underpinnings of the homosexual agenda's argument). The other response is that so many children need homes and don't have them; why don't we let them at least have a loving homosexual couple?

True, a "homosexual couple" can adopt right now, but only one of them can act as guardian. The other is no different from a boyfriend/girlfriend. Marriage adds leverage to whomever is trying to adopt; by granting marital status to homosexuals, we would therefore be putting them on the same level as another competent heterosexual couple in terms of gender. However, two gay men would have more earning power than a heterosexual couple would. Suddenly, all other things being equal, a homosexual couple could win custody of a child based on their ability to financially provide.

This is a difficult issue for me, for I do not want to be the blindly-driven ideologue who refuses to consider the needs of children. I am not among those who suggest that children will be more likely to become homosexual...evidence suggests that they are not at all more likely. However, to say that we won't be sending a message to the children would be incorrect. One very significant message would be that men/women are expendable as genders. According to this line of thinking, neither women nor men have significant contributions to make that can't be made by their counterpart. So while it might solve an immediate problem of providing food and shelter for children, it would come at a societal price of engineering a new model of gendered parenting?

Are we willing to pay it?

Grace Works

2008-09-19T07:19:00.000-07:00

So a question to mineself...the snide remark d'jour of critics of the Church concerns the Church's supposedly recent campaign to emphasize 1) their Christianity and 2) the centrality of grace in their theology (hence the recent addition of the subtitle, "Another Testament of Jesus Christ" to the Book of Mormon). They argue that it's all an effort to placate Christian conservatives who insist that we believe in "do-it-yourself" salvation,

Now whatever the merits of that criticism (I, for one, am skeptical...if there has been an increased emphasis on Jesus Christ, it is more a response to secularization than to Christian conservatism), I must concur that upon listening to some testimony meetings, one might wonder precisely where Jesus fits in our theology. On the issue of faith/works, we are all too often intent on "not being Protestant," so we might get a little uncomfortable talking about how it is only by grace we can do good works or about how depraved we are without the Atonement. We much prefer our bicycle analogies where we can at least earn a few pennies on our own.

We also tend to compartmentalize the gospel into principles, convenient, easily packaged, spiritual MREs that are have little sense of interconnectedness. Thus, we can talk about the law of tithing, the law of chastity, the laws of mercy and justice...even bear our testimony of them, all without remembering that w/o the Atonement, we should not be fond, but fearful of these laws. We forget who it was that stared these laws in the eye on our behalf...and won.

So ultimately, we must bow to the cross and the tomb with every gospel topic. I don't think anyone would disagree with that, but nor do I think we do that. This is the kind of idea that will spur a lot of head-nodding, and "how true, Brother Stevensons" and "Absolutely." But such responses, I've found, end discussion and might even serve as a mechanism wherein we keep a subversive idea at arms length.

If we are speaking of a true principle, we simply cannot isolate it from the Atonement. Whether we speak of evolution, love, gravity, tithing...all must hinge on the Atonement. It is therefore pointless to talk about how wonderful tithing is without discussing how wonderful Jesus is. One might as well compliment an opera singer on her make-up, a first-rate mechanic on the quality of his car jack, or a chef for his toque.

The Raw Nerve: Palin and the Politics of the Visceral...

2008-09-17T10:55:00.001-07:00

I love those moments when we see a collective societal nerve whacked dead on...the ramifications, however ugly, are also quite revealing and even educational. Indeed, individuals with complex sociopolitical identities are wont to do this (Reed Smoot...the first legitimate Mormon politician; Jack Johnson, the great black boxer who defeated Jim Jeffries; Andrew Sullivan, the self-proclaimed Reagan Conservative-Irish-Catholic-Gay). When you cross societal boundaries and refuse to be categorized, the results will not be pretty or pleasant...though there might be a touch of fun in them just to keep the viewing public from getting burned out from all of the societal experimentation. Sarah Palin, like other great transformers of American politics, is challenging the status quo for better or for worse and has received her due attention for doing so. As a cultural symbol, she should fascinate the turtlenecks and latte sippers...even if their fascination is of a bemused, condescending kind...such as a 19th-century British anthropologist might have engendered towards colonial India.

The actual response has been much darker. We learn precisely how knee-jerk the intellectual structure of power can be when its values are mocked. And Palin indeed does mock them and takes delight in doing so. When she should be worried about the mental strain of child-rearing and overpopulation, she has five. When she should be waxing eloquent about gender identity and how her run is realigning women's place in the world, instead, she talks about "her hunk." When she should be telling her kids to use birth control, she's telling her kids to make families. How obscene.

The response? As Dana Nelson has pointed out, the intellectual elite are far better at self-analysis and "woe is us" than organization; here, they seem to have transcended their immobilization so that they can unleash the full fury of their discipline upon her. Deconstructionism--"she's not really a woman." Theology--"she's Pontius Pilate." Feminism--"No, you don't understand...she's REALLY not a woman." Absurdly, she is depicted as out-of touch with the problems of American women...you know, that giving birth business is so out-of-vogue. And blue-collar work? Religion? All esoteric abstractions...now gender constructs...*sigh of longing* now that's practical. Whoopi Goldberg opined that Palin's speech reminded her of the Nazis. That's not to mention that Whoopi is apparently afraid that McCain would enslave African-Americans

Oh...and let's just stop the nonsense about experience in foreign policy. Henry Kissinger was nothing nigh of brilliant of matters of foreign policy...could navigate the bureaucracy masterfully...and in so doing disenfranchise various populations in the process (whether we speak of East Timor, Taiwan, the Bangladeshis, or the Allende regime). And Kissinger is loathed by the Left (and justifiably so). So when we talk of experience, we mean the correct

Silly season indeed.

No, when you control the means of production (hat tip to Marx), you determine the dissemination of the products sold. Alas, the cultural left have decided to mobilize their tremendous opinion-making power against this affront to their values, this moose in the Left's china closet.

PC Unplugged: I love Islam, but seriously folks...

2008-09-15T21:45:00.001-07:00

SO my friends, it pains me to write this...after all, I have a deep and abiding respect for the Muslim people. I believe that Muhummad was a great figure who performed a great service to the peoples of the Middle East in helping to root out polytheism (though the militaristic edge is not exactly comforting...). So I run the risk of being associated with the camo. wearing right-wing nut jobs when I say this...

The British legal system has lost its collective mind and any sense it has of state sovereignty...http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/3522 (a decidedly opinionated piece about it). Whatever the merits or lack thereof found in Sharia law, the snowslide is being opened widely to radicalism and ultimately, the British state sanctioning of domestic abuse. What if another London bombing takes place? To whom will the Sharia court be subject? Can the Supreme Court of England/Wales declare primacy? If so, then why allow such a contrary legal body within the structure's midst?

Will the judges be strict constructionists or broad constructionists? What about if a British person commits a crime against a Muslim? Who will be the legal experts?
Worst of all, does Britain think so little of its own tradition of domestic freedom (even if that freedom was exclusively domestic and middle/upper-class) that it's telling what few ideals it had to take a flying leap? In the name of multiculturalism, the British gov't has just levied an enormous blow against the legal integrity of Britain's structures. All in the name of the multiculturalism.

And trust me...I know a little something about cultural sensitivity. You can't survive in a Hmong community without it. It's essential for civility...but you can't have competing legal structures and still call yourself a state that believes in equal protection.

Absurd.

The Mormons Who Munch

2008-09-13T13:40:00.001-07:00

OK, so I'm as guilty as the next guy for being so Mo-centric (as opposed to ethnocentric). But just do a compare/contrast with me on how this song checks against Mormon conceptions of "being a woman."

Your insights would be much appreciated.

Tactical Morality: A Different Model of Obedience

2008-09-12T13:55:00.001-07:00

I revisit an old topic that is becoming increasingly relevant, especially in a culture where not only is bad called good and vice versa, but where neither is called anything. Indeed, we see this same element in part within our own theology where, as Joseph taught, "some things that are right under once circumstnace might be wrong in another." Our theology needs (and fortunately, has) a set of "inner controls" to keep its wild force in check and therefore, retain its usefulness to the world.

Being a Latter-day Saint graduate student in liberal arts can make for some interestingly awkward (or awkwardly interesting) conversations. Most of my effort is spent demonstrating to them that I can read WHOLE books and speak in complete sentences, that I don't care for the Left Behind series, that I find C.S. Lewis to be only occasionaly insightful, and that I don't believe Jesus drives a tank. And yet I am willing to believe that a prophet of God came out of the upstate New York woodwork. Their thoughts probably vacilate between, "Radically instense!" or "Shouldn't you be fixing moonshine somewhere?" Except that I don't drink moonshine. Always full of surprises! So then there are all of the classic accounts of awkward moments at pubs, strange looks about the reason I know Hmong ("cultural imperialist," they mutter under their breath), and various other oddities.

So at the end of the day, I ask: "Why?" The discussions about the reasons for the Word of Wisdom rage ad nauseum. Tit-for-tats continue about why we dress modestly, go to Church on Sunday, or do anything that we do ad absurdium. Is it written in the heavens, my heart crieth out, that one glass of wine a month is worse for you than two gallons of soda a day? Yet one earns sharp talk about health habits whereas the other gets a temple recommend thrown in the batch.

My answer? Postmodernism. Image politics. Divinely-inspired PR. Perhaps it sounds a little too Karl Rove-ish for some folks' tastes, but it is well founded in scripture and modern revelation. Elder Maxswell taught: "We will find that not only are there strategic signposts of morality, but there are also tactical standards of morality with which we must be concerned if we are to preserve our identity in the way that is most helpful to us and to our fellowmen." He cites Sampson's long hair; there was nothing inherently strengthening about hair. He notes Paul's injunction to the women that they keep their heads covered; there is no theology in Jewish or Christian that tells us anything about the goodness or evil inherent woman's hair. What were these images for? Tactics...and seldom are tactics a reflection of eternal principles. Sampson needed to distinguish himself from the otherwise unrighteous Phillistines. The women, feeling a sense of equality from the Pauline epistles ("Ye are all one in Christ") felt reasonably inclined to shed a certain aspect of their gender. Paul counseled against it if only to keep them distinct from the ladies of loose morals who were also known by their refusal to wear a head-covering.

How much of what we do is dictated because we want to be "peculiar"? BYU's honor code? The Word of Wisdom? Modesty? perhaps BYU's honor code (what's better looking to the press than 30,000 clean-cut, modestly-dressed 18-25 year olds)? Notice, this possibility should not be used delegitimize the commandments. After all, Elder Maxwell continued that the "prophet would help us set the tone of tactical morality when such is needed."

Can image politics be the latest way to articulate the message while staying in touch with the postmodern tone of the times? What think you?

A Moment of Reflection on 9/11

2008-09-11T09:54:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Never-land...where that odd September day (waving hand) "never happened." Sure, if you do google news, you'll find a few memorials, speeches, calls to remember the dead, etc. But that's hardly the deep-seated, visceral pain that we knew all so well seven years ago. The fixation on the television. The inability to even reason clearly. Believe it or not, I gave a speech in high school on Bin Laden (whose name I pronounced, "Bean Lah-Deen"--betraying my folksy heritage. Hey, we all have our skeletons).

Yes, Steven Jones and his crowd claim that Bush knew about it beforehand, even planned it. I highly doubt it, if only because, as Benjamin Franklin said, the only way you can get two Americans to keep a secret is by shooting one of them.

But neither am I the all-seeing eye, nor does it particularly matter as far as how I feel about it. We learn the same lesson...evil is real, there are conspiring men, and even a war-hater like me who wants out of Iraq recognizes that it would be a greater injustice to sit back and pontificate on the "decline of the West" and American imperialism coming home to roost while people are dying. Intellectualism, at such times, is not just distracting...it's nigh unto criminal.

If by some freak chance a family member/friend of the 9/11 victims visits this blog, I salute you...just for taking a few in the jaw simply because you're American.

God bless.

A Rather Amusing Jab at Sarah Palin..."Like a Bad Diseny Movie."

2008-09-11T06:11:00.000-07:00

So he's an actor...he knows how to be a social commentator/comedian all at once. But I must admit...his comparison to the "bad Disney movie" is quite entertaining...indeed, that's probably why people like Palin. You know the movies I'm talking about...feisty mother just living her life and then some politician perchance sees her take on the hockey coach/other mothers...(cue light Southern accent for added folksy factor): "Hmmm...where I come from, we call that good foreign policy."

And yes, if he thinks dinosaurs lifespans make for a legitimate litmus test, I don't want to hear any crowing from the left (even if I agree with them) about how pro-life/traditional marriage positions equate hard-wired bigotry. For the record, Sarah Palin has NEVER said that she buys into the old-school creationist model that the earth is only 6,000 years old. If one must use a litmus test (and I do not...I was considering Giuliani back in the day), which is more sound? What one thinks of an old rock that ceased to be relevant aprx. 3 million years ago? Or a belief that gender doesn't exist except as a social nicety?

Cancer or a Musty Old Document: A Real Trial of Faith

2008-09-06T11:51:00.000-07:00

Humble readers, those who know (and, quite logically, love) me best, you know that I enjoy good sparring matches with secular critics of the faith. The old evangelical wing of anti-Mormonism is old, worn-out. The days of the Bible-bash should be consigned to the dust-bin of history. In general, who really believes the Bible any more? Sure, your average Joe Schlunk will tell his kids how they need to get religion, how they should follow the Sermon on the Mount, and other things that seem vaguely reminiscent of a bull-rally for investing in a firm...devoid of a coherent doctrinal or ideological base. The difference is that the commodity they're asking their kids to buy is self-sustenance. It's basically the stuff of "The More You Know" commercials. And who really buys into that stuff unless you're over 21 and/or have kids?

So I suggest that the real questions of faith no longer deal with original sin, faith and works. These issues have simply become litmus tests for one's cultural identity ("Are you a Christian aka 'one of us'?"). And yet, the secular critics tend to be remarkably backward looking in their critiques of Mormonism. Even those within our faith who consider themselves (and rightfully so) educated bemoan how difficult it is to keep faith with all their newly-found knowledge of Church history. "Believing history" and "faithful history" dominate such discussions, as though Christ's central message to his followers was: "Here's what you say when they ask you about polygamy..."

And lest you think me to be trashing my fellow thinkers, I am not; I speak as one who has been (and in some ways, still am) there. We think of ourselves as enlightened and we shake our heads slowly when we see our brethren/sistren drop some horrifically ignorant/malapropo comment about Mormon history or doctrine. To be sure, many of us thinkers have suffered soul-wrenching tragedy. So I don't suggest we are all removed from the cold realities of life. But many of us, even if we aren't, still seek to be because we couldn't handle the realities of mortality.

So I wonder...in all our complaining about the problems that we face as "thinkers," do we realize that the person who just claimed that Joseph was never physically intimate with his plural wives might have given several priesthood blessings to his son to no avail? Or that the woman he still insists that African-Americans were neutral in the premortal existence just saw her temple marriage of 30 years fall apart because her husband ran off with his secretary? Which set of facts are more trying? A musty old document discussing some arcane sermon of Brigham Young or the lurking doubts that you have failed as a father, a spouse? A new mental process or the in-your-face possibility that God, if he's there, really doesn't care? One wears you down gradually; the other slams you to your knees in a rainy park (and I'm not being sensational; I just heard an account of this yesterday). Historical facts hint, wink, imply. The facts of cancer, of marriage grab you by the lapels and throw you on your face.

A call to my fellow thinkers; perhaps our focus/fetish with balancing reason with spirituality, while commendable and laudable, should also be balanced with an extra dose of charity. Perhaps we can learn something from the factually challenged...and it has nothing to do with archives.

Friendly Fire: When "the System" of Mormonism--not just Brother Smith--Gets You Down

2008-09-03T17:59:00.000-07:00

As I was musing on the cosmos the other day (and musing is what I do), I was browsing a prominent blog on Mormonism where one particularly prolific poster mentioned the danger of theological "friendly fire" fatalities, even within the Church.

Friendly fire, at least in the non-military man's terms (I looked up an article on it and found it be far too complex for this late in the day), is a military attack intended for the enemy but which ultimately ends up killing a fellow soldier. Perhaps we object to such an overtly military metaphor to our faith, yet we are more than willing (indeed, I am willing) to accept military metaphors throughout 1/3 of the Book of Mormon and numerous hymns ("Onward Christian Soldiers, marching as to war"). If military metaphors so often define our plight, then is it wrong to discuss this very real element of warfare? Is it possible that in our zeal to preach, we end up killing those whom we are trying to protect?

An interesting concept indeed. And the application is not wholly novel...at least one other theologian has used the term in Christian theology. But instead of thinking about how we are the victims of friendly fire, as this author does (and we're always the victims, aren't we? *wink*), I wonder more about those of us who are the unwitting snipers, who, in the twilight of the battlefield, sometimes confuse the shadowy figure that is our brother for the shadowy figure we call "false doctrine," "moral relativism," or any other buzz-word in the Church. I know, I know...it's an old trope for folks to blather on about how we "can't force on others how we perceive things." To be a little colloquial, no freaking duh! And no, I'm not offering up some nutrition-less diet of universalism, etc. That attitude just leads to a bunch of smiling individualists who don't really know what there is to smile about.

Yet I am suggesting that even active members sometimes do not walk around with theological bullet-proof vests...nor should we always expect them to. I must admit...I have often been altogether too quick to rip out the old reliable, "The Church is perfect, but its members aren't." Has anyone ever heard of that comment actually comforting a person? If pressed, how would you define the Church? A paper chart hierarchy? A collective of individuals striving for a similar goal? How can honestly separate "the Church" from ourselves? That argument only serves to give us a false sense of self-exoneration, an excuse to mutter to ourselves when hearing about the offended: "*Harumph* Well, there's somebody who doesn't have a testimony..." or, more sympathetically, "Once they just realize the love of Gospel for them...oh well...we do what we can do..."

I can feel for the latter of the positions. Yet I suggest: "The way that Christ oftenworks is through us." And what if we are the ones who have levied the fire? How easy it is to let ourselves off because we convince ourselves that "we're just telling things as we see it...I don't sugar coat things." Unfortunately, a continued lack of sugar can cause spiritual hypoglycemia...with its attendant problems of blurred vision, weak knees. And it is our duty as Latter Day Saints to strengthen the weak knees and to help lift the scales from the eyes.

All I suggest is that when we hurt someone, let us cry over them...even if we accidentally pulled the trigger. And the beauty of the gospel is that the Atonement can give our tears a healing power that even military doctors cannot.

How to Create a Neanderthal: Power Structures and the Academic Elite

2008-09-01T10:13:00.001-07:00

You like that, Foucault? Never thought that postmodernism could become (insert thundering voice of the divine) "the structure of power."

So as I sit in my left-wingish graduate seminars, I can't help but get the impression that individuals are surprised that I can speak in complete sentences. First, I'm Mormon, second, I'm from the West, and third, I'm conservative? As our good friend from seriouslysoblessed.blogspot.com would say, "Ew, ew, ew..."

Every organization, ideological structure, or -ism has its methods of negotiating the existence of dissent (for some excellent writings on this, read Gramsci and Raymond Williams...alas, I haven't the mood right now to indulge in academic abstractions). While it's an old cliche that probably belongs on right-wing, gun-toting, squirrel-eating blogs, I would suggest to you that the academic-liberal agenda (I say academic because it's quite different from mainstream liberalism), for its talk of free-wheeling debate and intellectual exchange, is ultimately interested in the maintenance of its own power base of assumptions ("gender is a construct," "everything is a construct," "your mom is a construct") far more than intellectual exchange as a virtue unto itself. It is not immune to the power structures that eliminate dissent. It uses metaphors, images, and power-plays to stand guard over its ideological territory.

What images do they use? I find it amusing that academics must, by necessity, position themselves in the image of "dissenter," "the burr in the saddle," the rage against the machine. Whether the dissenter wears a tie or wears nothing at all (or even nothing but a tie), the important thing is not that they are "correct" (what is "correct" anyway?), but that they are seeking to dismantle the structures of power. They might couch their subversion in language such as "cultural analysis" or even "academic freedom" (and can someone remind us what "liberty" is, again? Wake me when you're finished citing Enlightenment thinkers...that's SO establishment).

And the conservative caricature? Conservatives tote guns, like to talk about Mexicans as the "Spanish people," hate latte. They think Jesus drives a tank, find "Left Behind" to be inspirational literature, and think Derrida is the spawn of Satan. They oppose abortion because they hate women, support heterosexual marriage because homosexuals must be monsters who ultimately want to marry horses, and support the war because Islam is the Mormonism that they can actually go to war with and get away with it.

But what do they, the liberals/progressives, really want?. Do they want universal health-care? Isolationism? Circumscribed engagement? Do they really just want free access to abortions? Same-sex marriage? "Equal rights"? Will they be happy with these accomplishments?

I suggest that academic-progressives either 1) want to employ the Foucaultian power structures that they spend all day making snide remarks about or 2) want to watch the cultural/ideological world burn. A caricature, I know...but you know how it goes with blogs...we have to shock you into paying attention :)

I'm reminded of an exchange between an RAF officer and a veteran imperial official during a visit to what we now know as Iraq while it was still under British mandate during the 20s. The RAF officer mentioned that those fighting World War I for something greater than mere acquisition. His veteran acquaintance responded: "Oh you mean Brave Little Belgium, a World Safe for Democracy?" "Something like that." "Oh come now sir. That's rather an academic line, don't you think?"

"Academic freedom," not surprisingly, strikes me as a rather "academic line" as well.

Jell-O Does a Body Good?: Attractiveness and the Physical-Spiritual Dichotomy in Mormon Culture

2008-08-27T07:29:00.000-07:00

I found out something rather sad recently; a friend of mine has been diagnosed with Anorexia Nervosa (along with her other oh-so-pleasant issues). While it would be wrong to blame men for these things, neither do I think that we could go w/o some self-reflection. On the converse, while men are not often diagnosed with it (though it does happen), do women similarly hold standards to where they expect their guy to essentially be a freak of nature (at least a freak that happens to conform with their particular idea of beauty)? For our talk of spiritual compatibility, at the end of the day, are we just as superficial as the next Joe or Jane? Is the primary difference that active Latter Day Saints know how to keep their urges in check? What is the relationship between romance and spirituality, between noticing a pretty figure and "recognizing" (perhaps even in a Saturday's Warrior sort-of-way...heaven forgive me for ever enjoying that PR-nightmare of Mormon cinema) a "sweet spirit."

While I do not propose to delve into that can of worms about the difference between men and women concerning physical attractiveness, I do notice that the men in the Latter Day Saint community are no less concerned with physical attractiveness than most men...they just might describe their attractiveness in a more tamed way. From my experience, Mormons are not immune to the hormones that make the world go around. Yet the instructions we receive related to dating are remarkably (and rightfully, in my view) asexual. The cute aphorism in marriage is always to "marry your best friend." Yet we all know that many of us had that super-tight friend of the opposite gender that we wouldn't be caught dead marrying. We just didn't like them "in that way."

In my interactions with my fellows, when girls are beautiful, the first personality characteristic they are assumed to have is not spirituality. Rather, they are assumed to be "fun," "bubbly." And there are just as many complaints at BYU about guys going after the thin, could-find-shade-under-barbed-wire, girls as anywhere else. How often do we ask the rhetorical question of the beautiful single adults: "How is it that you are not married?" Not so with our resident "sweet spirits." Do we tend to mentally consign them to a life of lonely competence...perhaps working as a librarian somewhere? So I wonder: Have we set up a dichotomy between "spiritual" people and "beautiful" people?

And how vulnerable are we Latter Day Saints to the impact of the media? Sure, we might dismiss them as morally bankrupt and call admiring them our "guilty pleasures," but let's be honest: if the most morally questionable Hollywood star were to miraculously have an Alma experience and become the best Mormon YSA in her respective ward, you can bet that s/he would bump even the most solid guy/girl down the list for dates.

For men, (and I risk being seriously contradicted here), I am going to suggest that few men (LDS or otherwise) would call Cameron Diaz, the Brittany Spears of yesteryear, or most supermodels anything less than very attractive (provided some of them lose the heroin eyes and their horrifically layered makeup). but how much would even LDS men be willing to sacrifice by way of personality if the girls they were dating looked like them?

And for women, how many women would pick a younger version of Mitt Romney over the guys they are currently dating (imagine for a moment that Mitt Romney was not going to be ridiculously wealthy)? Or having a worthy priesthood holder who looked like Michael Phelps? If media is the source and marriage is eternal, then we must sadly conclude that much of our eternal life/marriage depends on that evil empire that we denounce week after week.

Or is theology for an explanation? Do Latter Day Saints Since we view the body in definitely more positive terms than traditional Christian orthodoxy does, do we tend to place a greater emphasis on physical attractiveness? Does this explain Utah's excellent ranking in national obesity rankings? (it ranks 45th?)

Finally, if I am correct, I wonder whether deconstructing such media images is worthwhile for the Latter Day Saint...can/should the LDS man/woman "deprogram" their preferences? I leave our friendly readers to decide.

Holy War: Tired of the Well-Worn Athiest Critique

2008-08-22T07:37:00.000-07:00

"More lives have been taken in the name of God than for any other cause. I have seen grown men kill each other over who has the best imaginary friend."

And folks accuse the Christian Right (which I do not affiliate with) of using bumper sticker argumentation! Yet the typical response we give is normally a silently uttered sigh and an invisible roll of the eyes, followed by a few remarks about how "we can't blame God for what his creations do." And why not?? If, as Christian orthodoxy suggests, God is indeed "the First Cause" and free will is largely an illusion or at least no more than a product of decisions God made eons ago (which we must conclude if us, in all of our complexity, ex nihilo).

Since, by and large, the already-convinced read this blog, I must acknowledge that I will probably not be moving any hearts to a new vistas. In addition, if I sound cavalier when talking about terrible things, it is sad necessity. All too often, argumentation requires coldness, at least when one is faced with space limitations.

It's a well-worn (and well-worn) trope of the recently popularized Athiesm movement a la Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. Indeed, some fellow Latter Day Saint historians writing on the Mountain Meadows Massacre place their inquiry squarely into this discourse, asking rhetorically whether citizens would be "better off without religion." They seem to prefer that we worship ourselves (leading us to believe that whatever we do is right? Would that not have the same horrific effects that the wars of religion have had??)

Our critics assume that religiously motivated attacks are particularly heinous (one might ask Eugenia Ginzburg...the 18-year survivor of the Gulag...whether she was thanking her lucky stars that Stalin didn't say his prayers daily...spoiler: she wasn't...she even had a few moments of religious conversion herself as her German friend began reciting the Psalms to her as she traveled on the Siberian railway to Vladivastok...touching indeed). They might cite some terrible crimes (such as the Mountain Meadows Massacre or a few others) to demonstrate how terrible they were...though I'm pretty sure I could find equally terrible instances from folks who hadn't gone to church, read scriptures, or said a prayer in years.

And here is where the critics find themselves indulging in a bit of tautology: "Well, any war/violence is promoted by a "faith" of some kind, even if it is in a secular faith in Pol Pot or Stalin." Odd, indeed. If we believe that names and labels can inform us at all...and aren't just cogs to promote some kind of Foucaultian power structure...is it really honest to blame Stalinism on the idea of faith? Would the critics prefer that our religion be small, mnanageable, and ultimately insignificant?

It useful for critics to believe that -isms make the world go around...not people. As David Horowitz (who, while pursuing certain noble goals which I share, all too often resembles a right-wing hack) so noted: "To the revolutionary, 'the people' matter far more than the people themselves." It reminds me of my friend in Utah (who shall remain nameless) who, though wildly articulate, has a penchant for knee-jerkness when she sees an injustice. Blame religion, blame capitalism, even blame communism...but just make sure you blame the ideological system. Doing so helps the thinker to feel particularly big, like an ideological dragon-slayer. Normally, no solution is proposed other than ideological genocide. Interestingly, just as these theorists accuse the religious fanatics of "otherizing" the enemy, so do they "otherize" the ideas they attack.

Indeed, I would suggest that when we speak of religion as a motivator for war, we cannot view it as an independent variable that influences one's prejudices aside and apart from other motivations. They speak as though belief in a higher power alone is cause sufficient to bring about pain and suffering; never mind that the patient might also have other diseases that could kill even more quickly. The Israel-Palestine conflict, for example, has far more to do with secular nationalism of the 19th century. heodor Herzl wanted Israel to be a secular state; indeed, German rabbis opposed the formation of his World Zionist Organization. Indeed, the Ottoman empire of the 19th century, while no Shangrila of religious cooperation was hardly the madness we see now in "occupied territories" of the Middle East.

Motivations for war are often-multi-layered...and those who suggest otherwise are either polemicists or ill-informed. They speak as though every soldier were muttering "Allahu Akhbar" or "Every Knee Shall Bow" while wielding his sword or firing his gun. The best evidence we have regarding the Mountain Meadows Massacre, for example, does not draw a direct correlation between the emigrant trains' religion and the militia's decision to kill them. These prejudices only surfaced after it was known that an army of thousands were en route. Indeed, if religion were an inevitable cause for war, What are we to make of the times of tolerance in world history? Maria Menocai has written an excellent work on the vibrant culture of arts and sciences which medieval Spain produced through a convergence of Muslim, Judaic, and Christian faiths.

My friends, let us all do better at answering the athiest critique of war. It is as much of a bumper sticker campaign as anything you will see in on the pickup trucks of backwoods Appalachia.

Mormon Academicus: Mormon Intelligentsia and the Crises of Orthodoxy

2008-08-18T22:43:00.000-07:00

I’ve been a nerd since long before Bill Gates made nerdiness kind of cool. When I played
basketball, the other team would call out: “Don’t be ball hogs; give Russ the ball! *he he*” The rest of the time, I was roaming the halls, in almost pedantic fashion, as people would ask me to name for them the Presidents of the United States aka my willingness to be a freak show so that I could win friends...I really needed a life...

So as one utterly lacking a life, I did what most good, quality no-lifers do...go to graduate school. Traumatic. The structures that I had known all my life crumbled beneath my feet. Assumptions, core values, and folk beliefs were attacked at every turn by friend and foe alike. Before too long, I just didn’t know what to believe anymore...the earth was shaking underneath my feet...

*Quivering lips* *slight sobbing* I had come to the disturbing realization that the ivory tower was a cult...

Surprised? Whatever one wants to say about the Molly Mormons, Peter Priesthoods, or Dark Princes of Mormon anti-intellectualism, I quickly learned that if academism was the purest form of freedom, then academism was an odd form of freedom indeed. After more than a seminars where the conclusion seemed to be (ad nauseum) that we should blame *groan* dead white men for (name your favorite social problem), that goodness and evil were basically constructs, at least when uttered by a Christian’s mouth. So I come to you as an “academic-in-exile”–to borrow from Lavina Anderson’s fitting phrase...an academic apostate of sorts. I see my relationship to academics as D. Michael Quinn sees his relationship to modern Mormonism (though I do lack that nice bonus called a Yale degree).

Full transperancy: I am a touch bitter. And I am going through an academic crisis of faith. But hey, I’m in good company. Nietzsche went through it (except that the brain tumor didn’t exactly help the situation either). I do not suppose myself able to cover all of the intersections between traditional academism and Mormonism in so small a post. Rather, I point to the distorting influence academism can have when it is divorced from their attendant, checking-and-balancing, gospel principles. Lest anyone think that I bear ill-feelings against any particular Mormon intellectual, please know that much of my disillusionment comes from personal experience...and alas, I have never had the chance to meet any of the famous Mormon dissidents.

In 1990, the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu wrote his wildly entertaining (though obnoxiously esoteric) book, Homo Academicus–a sociological study of academics as a social class. He calls his study a “comic scenario, that of Don Juan deceived or the miser robbed.” The analyzers of man become the analyzed. Bourdieu notes early that “no groups love an ‘informer,’ especially perhaps when the transgressor or traitor can claim to share in their own highest values.” So I come to you also as a fellow-believer in the life of the mind...as a believer that the “best books” (see D&C 93) are not *eyeroll* just the scriptures (as my hardline friends have once suggested). I visit your happy e-home as first a seeker of truth (my Latter Day Saint faith), second, a Mormon (that being defined as a cultural association), and third, a nominal informant.

As I spent the summer in Utah, I felt like the stock figure of the Mafia member who goes straight and tells the cops about the Mafia’s dirty secrets. I was the anthropologist returning with his ethnographic study on that most fascinating class of natives called “graduate students.” What was their manner of dress? What kinds of foods do they eat? Did they have “noble savages”?

If the traditional Gentile scholar might be called Homo Academicus, what then might be the makeup of the Mormonus Academicus? In particular, what does that native called “the dissenter” think, feel? What are his/her mating habits? Eating habits? How does it relate with other native peoples? Do they live in a “limited geography” or are they spread across the continent? Thus, in my travels as ethnographer/former Mafia man of the mind, I have observed four tendencies amongst the Mormon intelleligensia. I do not suggest that the “dissenter pathology” is any worse or better than that borne of other ideological systems. Indeed, in 1971, Elder Maxwell himself noted that without the attendant virtues of love, absolute truth is prone to create behavioral abnormalities

1) Sticking it to the Man a.k.a post-structuralism unplugged

Dissent is really just deconstruction with a political agenda. While I am aware about the ideological tussles between post-structuralism, feminism, and the whole litany of other -isms, one element they share is the foundation that Michel Foucault established. To Foucault (and others such as Derrida, Sarte), we owe credit for realigning how we view intellectual politics. To grossly oversimply, Foucault essentially redefined ideas as “structures of power” that were created to ensure racial and sexual superiority–not exactly something that makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside. Furthermore, Foucault (and others) emphasized the corrupted nature of language...so corrupt that to pretend there was any essential meaning to it was to only delude oneself.

Yet what happens when the tools of this analysis are turned on itself? What happens when post-structuralism itself becomes the so-feared watchword of Foucault: le structure de pouvoir (“the structures of power”)? What happens when the language of postmodern thought realizes its hypocritical state? The words revolt against us...and society shuts down. Post-structuralism unleashed eventually turns on itself, for what happens after one deconstructs an idea? S/he is left with remnants of ideas...which also must be dismantled and subverted. Before long, all that remains is the idea of the post-modern itself. The truest form of postmodernism, it seems, is simply a desire to watch the ideological world...not sparing one’s own house. Therefore, breaking down a hierarchy of any kind.–especially that old bugaboo of religious hierarchy–becomes a prime target.

And within academia and Mormon academic circles, this is certainly the case...yet the holders of that power carefully seek to retain their minority status. They must protect their own house. They do so by reminding their listeners that they deal with “anti-intellectualism in high places.” To retain their status, the mainstream membership of the church must be established as “the Other.” And thus the stock stereotypes are rolled out: denim jumpers, high-pitched primary voices, and wealthy businessmen. Accounts of side remarks made in the foyer about “those ‘intellectuals’” are stringed together. Common phrases within the Church are associated with intellectual laziness or even dishonesty (“‘Meat before meat,’ y’know, just means you keep the wool over their eyes until they like how wool feels...”). Given the plenitude of records in this church, there are enough bizarre remarks to provide more than enough fodder. As long as the structures of power cease to be in the hands of the hierarchy or even those Jell-O lovers from the other side of the family tree.

2) Martyrdom

The academic culture that associates itself with Mormonism seem to have made a particularly noisy show about joining in with the cult of the dissenter: generally with blaring bands and waving banners (Gileadi being one of the prime exceptions). It is hardly new...any academic who studies anything at all about the 20th century probably sees him/herself as some kind of activist. The current Church organization certainly helps some: whereas traditional Protestant culture had normalized dissent as a modus operandi, the hierarchical Church provides dissenters a full venue in which they can be the martyr to “the Corporation of the First Presidency”–like a lamb to the slaughter.

A powerful mythology about the Martyrs is developed, mythology that even seeps into mainstream LDS discourse (“Don’t learn too much; you’ll lose your testimony”). The book of martyrs (not unlike the Book of Life) is kept whereby future dissenters might find inspiration. Legends are circulated about the final days of the martyr: how he was ill or she faced a boardroom of twelve Stepford husbands. That the General Authorities all wear business suits certainly don’t help their cause in the minds of the dissent-cultists–robber barons and Enron executives wear business suits too.

Lucian Aurelius criticized the early Christians tendency toward suicide in this manner; suicide was honorable enough–if only they wouldn’t make such a theatrical show of it.

3) Reclaim the Heathen

As with academic culture, there is a real sense that the Mormon intelligentsia–being so misunderstood by the masses, friends, and family–need each other for emotional support in their endeavors. We have told ourselves: “They just don’t understand (actually, they often do, in my experience) about our need for the truth.”

But the battle goes on. The missionary work must be done subtly, the most astute suggest to themselves.

They make subversive comments in Sunday School...not too much (and they mustn’t bear their testimony about Christ or Joseph Smith’s prophetic role–that would turn the subversion into a faith-building exercise...can’t have that). They “ mention “members would be surprised to know that...” often. They seem to revel in Joseph’s (and others–except for fellow dissenter...don’t mess) flaws.

But they always remember their undergirding principle: milk before meat.

4) The Mormon Academy: Extensions of Power

To believe that Mormon academics don’t like the power that their research brings them is, I suspect, quite wrong. I, in my humble gospel doctrine classes, even began to soak in some the egotism borne of so many “such a good lesson” remarks. What happens when the deconstructers (or the dissenters) are questioned? The response is swift: retrenchment, “steps backward,” apologia. In such an environment, dissent has become its own idol with its own religion, rites, and sacrifices. Its priests who gather at academic symposia imply that mainstream members should kiss their rings (which oddly resemble newly-minted PhDs). As one professor mentioned to me, liberal arts take words even more seriously than students of scriptural studies...and frankly, he’s right. I can’t say I have ever studied a verse of scripture as in-depth as we have ever studied one particular paragraph of Derrida. And the reason we study it that much? Because, we’re told, Derrida was communicating some kind of truth that our minds had not fully grasped yet; we should just study our “scriptures” harder.

Those that do receive the privilege of becoming a member of their loyal following become folks who need deprogramming against the wiles of “the Correlation Committee.” If they do not, then the heathens must be cast aside as a mentally atrophied "conservative," at best a slave to the ideological state apparati (hat tip to Althusser) and at worst a knuckle-dragging neanderthal who really does like his Jell-O mold with carrots. If you defend the hierarchy, you must be merely a cog in the machine, a hack.

Since Joseph himself seriously sought to “revolutionize the whole world” with his theology, we thus have even no less than Ralph Nader appealing to the Latter Day Saint’s tradition of “revelation, resistance, and dissent” when speaking at the (in)famous alternative commencement (one which I attended). In The Mormons, it is interesting indeed that nearly all the academics whose research was highlighted per se were lukewarm or excommunicated Mormon scholars. Avraham Gilealdi, one of the September Six who later rejoined the Church, was not mentioned once. Prodigal sons apparently don’t always make for good press.

What kind of results does this cult of dissent bring about? After all, it is not the truth-seeking that gives academics the reputation they have in the church. q

As the Church has moved into the torrent of information publicized about it over the previous decade, it has been the conservatives who stare down the tanks and who face the lynch mob of “broad-minded” secular critics. Yet in the face of this attack led by the arson's torches, the conservative must demonstrate that he too can brandish fire of his own. And while the mob is bent on watching the world burn, the conservative can respond with a simple gesture: a firedance.

Something I can’t really do...but I am in desperate need of a hobby...

Should I Come Out of the Closet?: The lessons Asthma taught me

2008-08-17T19:23:00.000-07:00

I have a problem. I was ashamed of it growing up. When it was found out, the other folks in school would look upon me in that "you're-not-one-of-us" kind of way. It showed in my eyes, and frankly, the girls were not exactly attracted by it. But it now it is time that I be honest with myself, that I let myself "be free." I want to tell the world...I have almost died from asthma on three different occasions. And I'm proud of it.

Believe it or not though, this post is actually not about asthma, though asthma will play a role. It's about the cliche (yet cachet) themes, that dominate the bull sessions, organizational behavior seminars, and "team-building" activities: love, determination, faith, and kindness--those qualities that still manage to strike a chord within humanity's (and I don't use the term carelessly) collective experience Yet it is also about the here, now, and pain that we can all help to ease...the pain of those in our faith with same-sex attraction (SSA).

First, to any fellow Saints who struggle with same-gender attraction:

I understand that Latter Day Saints have had a checkered record in our treatment of those who deal with this issue. I offer no excuse or apologia for it. Chesterton noted that if any doctrine from the gospel of Christ were unleashed from its other virtues, that doctrine would become either lame or wild. While I believe the man-woman family unit to be of the utmost, even vital importance as a matter of doctrine, I also believe, as a matter of doctrine, that our idealization of this unit does not give us the license to paint those who struggle as inherently sinful or odd. It is our error that we do. In saying this, I speak in the most solemn tones of orthodoxy--and of the business-suit Brethren kind. As we have with other groups that differ from us (whether they be the intelligentsia, minorities, or otherwise), many Latter Day Saints have failed you in our efforts to love, to "clumsily try to comfort (or chastise) you." And for this, I offer my heartfelt regrets.

I would also make a request...while I shake my head in shame at those who have either intentionally or unintentionally isolated you from us, I would also beg you to not isolate yourselves from us. Believe it or not, you are not the only ones I know who face trials that could theoretically prevent a fulfilling life of marital bliss. Even more common are those who have faced in-born ailments that prove to be tremendous trials. I have been there, my friends. I faced a double-lung collapse, a drama-filled LifeFlight trip through a cloudy sky that almost had to turn around. I had to learn to walk again. Other friends, while bright in mind (almost brilliant), face the tremendous obstacle of a cursed wheelchair. As one such friend said to me: "There had better be some SERIOUS payback in the afterlife."

I recognize that, unfortunately, these individuals might have a leg up, in the eyes of those with SSA. After all, they're viewed as "special." Yet let me tell you from personal experience that any ailment can turn a "special" person into a very, very bitter one. My ailments came with the package for me...I did not choose them. And on more than one occasion, I have quite frankly done some complaining against both God and my parents for my troubles. Didn't exactly fit that nice picture of the pious, sickly Tiny Tim or magisterial Neal A. Maxwell who either just wants everyone to have a smiley button or even more, can raise the roof of the Latter Day Saint mind with contemplations on discipleship. Elder Maxwell came through as he did because of a lifetime of preparation. I refused to prepare, and thus, I had an axe to grind against the man upstairs. Asthma might have blessed far more than it did; instead, I insisted on turning it into my personal trump card to use against my dear Heavenly Dad.

Some might suggest that sexual temptation is a "special" kind of temptation, a kind of personal fulfillment that is given us by God, a fundamental characteristic. We have faithful and single Latter Day Saints (I know one) who view sexual intimacy as A SERIOUS temptation. Indeed, their almost-addiction to this almost messes up their lives. But if mastered, think of how they could succor their fellow Saints!! This goes for almost every temptation…most temptations bring a sense of fulfillment at one level or another...whether it be a sense of martyrdom (pride) or self-righteousness (more pride).

So why shouldn't I identify myself as an Asthmatic with "Asthma Pride"? Because it simply isn't healthy. Yes, asthma is fundamental to my being in that it is indeed hard-wired into me. Yes, it influences many things I do. If I so desired it (and I have desired it before), I could make asthma into my defining characteristic. I recognize that your trial is of a particular kind...and much more difficult as you cannot give full expression to your feelings whereas heterosexuals are granted more room. Then again, there are many things that I, others can't ever do that you have had full room to do, at least physically (owning pets, even reaching in the cupboard for a glass). How much better it is, I’ve found, to find joy in the things that are available to me. This will help prevent suicide more than “consciousness-building” exercises. Trust me…I know what it’s like (in ways other than asthma) to dwell on one aspect of a person’s identity while letting the other elements atrophy. It’s not healthy and has only brought me pain.

Now lest anyone thinks I am letting my fellow Saints off scot-free...

As most of us have seen, major gospel conundrums (such as the problem of pain or of evil's existence in the world) are seldom fixed with a few comforting words about how "natural" heterosexuality is. And those awkward glances that we are all capable of? Yeah, those don't help either. And while, yes, homosexuality is a sin, it does not behoove us to blare this tune with a marching band and sparkling banners. We, as a people, can do better and serve those who deal with these issues more effectively. I myself need to do better.

"But they dress so differently and talk about it all the time!" Yes, perhaps they do. And from the Lord's perspective, they would ultimately be happier if they tried His way (which does not, contrary to MOrmon folk doctrine, constitute just "doing the right things" aka marry and "fake it"). But if we claim to have the absolute truth about mankind's existence, that truth needs to be coupled with absolute love. How that love can be shown is something that is seldom revealed beforehand...but signs(read: miracles) of love follow those who believe in Christ's love. And most remarkably, you will hear the miracles being uttered by your own lips. We would (I hope) happily help the paralyzed with their wheelchair, pick up some dropped things by limbless man, or *gasp* talk to a fellow Saint who had broken the law of chastity. Are we capable of treating those with same-gender attraction with similar charity? I hope I can.

I understand...this requires that we revisit what it means to have same-sex attraction. We must stop viewing the feelings as sinful, instead viewing them as the product of a world where we come closer to Christ through a world filled with irony, imperfection, and experience beyond our everyday walk of life. I do not ask that any of us forsake or dilute the principles in the Proclamation; I ask that we not divorce the Proclamation from its accompanying virtues of peace, temperance, and kindness. I ask that we view our SSA brothers and sisters in terms no different than we view people who must face a limited lifestyle due to confinement to a wheelchair or other physical limitations. They have much to offer us. My religion says to take all the good we can--giving the gospel teachings and standards their proper due. Otherwise, we will face our SSA brothers and sisters in the afterlife and feel very sorry indeed that there was a soul we might have blessed, in spite of their very temporary/mortal condition.

"Poor Sister Jones": Approaching Physical Disability within the LDS Culture

2008-08-13T00:25:00.000-07:00

I was talking with my very good friend the other day about the mysteries of the kingdom...and more particularly, the mysteries of the genders (the grand irony: I can make more reasonable sense out of the meaning of the word, Kolob, than this intricate web of complexities called, "gender relations"). My friend thinks on her feet and has a strong wit about her. Yet when it comes to dating and marriage, she faces one stumbling-block: she is in a wheelchair.

Does the image of the glowing newly-weds standing in front of the temple so captivate us that we simply have a difficult time imagining the bridge/groom sitting instead?

To be sure, there are many filters that we use in choosing a spouse, most of them fairly irrational. Height, weight, hair color...none of these have anything to do with the eternal merits of a spouse. Yet it is quite common for at least men (and more than a few women, I know) to declare that certain characteristics are just a complete "turn off." More than a few girls can't be taller than their boyfriends, many guys can't stand too much of a waistline. The merit of this approach (which I fear is one of the inescapable bonds of a mortal existence) is another topic for a different. But I will say this: we don't often hear the overweight or the acne-filled faces approached at Church with "comforting words" about their lack of marriage potential in this life...my friend does...and far too often.

How do we treat the disabled within our faith? I must admit...I am hardly one to preach, but I can certainly ask a few piercing questions of myself (in hopes that you all might profit thereby). We speak of the disabled in glowing terms (and deservedly so). They face such trials "that the glory of God might be shown within them." They are on the fast-track to the celestial kingdom. They will receive blessings untold for staying true in the midst of such difficulties, we say. I know how this phenomenon is...much of my childhood was beset by numerous medical trips (I was even the poster child for the March of Dimes!). Folks constantly pestered me about my health, asked me how it was, if I had been feeling better. They would offer effortless words of rather cheap consolation about how sports weren't really that big of a deal (and if you had stellar musical talent, let's face it...they were...unless, of course, you were willing to sell your social soul for a mess of pottage to that roaming band of Star Trek worshippers...yes, you know precisely whom I'm speaking about).

Yet Chesterton spoke poignantly when he noted: "If disease is beautiful, it is generally some one else's disease. A blind man may be picturesque; but it requires two eyes to see the picture." These same individuals whom we call "blessed," we also tend to "otherize," placing them in their own special category that plays by its own rules. You might object, suggesting that those with mental disabilities really do have special needs that do not fit with accepted societal norms. Tis true indeed...yet I speak not of these but of the fully cognizant disabled...those with wit, verve, physical beauty, indeed, even brilliance. Some might even be able to drive a car (they have wonderful hand controlled cars these days). Their mode of transportation is simply a set of wheels rather than a pair of legs.

Yet these same disabled hear from their fellow Saints comments about how there will be some great guy/girl waiting for them in the afterlife (Translation: "So you're saying that not only do I get have a sucky situation on earth, but that I also get to have it alone?? Thanks for pointing that out.") These are well-meaning comments intended to comfort, but they assume that our fellow Saint both needs and wants to hear such unoriginal news, as though they are supposed to just melt with joy because Brother X told them that they were essentially unmarry-able in this life.

These situations lead me to think that we tend to not treat the disabled as fellow Saints but as venues to perform our imagined roles as "comforters," as a proverbial workout gym to release that extra "comforting energy." When the love workout is over, one walks home feeling himself to have been so charitable to that poor girl/boy in the wheelchair. When the play is over, the actor/actress smile confidently to themselves at their ability to "mourn with those that mourn," never minding that the audience hears about the play constantly from the performers in his/her own head or that they don't exactly appreciate sitting being acted upon in this very important matter of eternity by those who fancy themselves to be amateur therapists. Eternal marriage equals a fulness of joy/blessings, men are that they might have joy...can we see this might not exactly strike the sister as comforting?

I do not entirely blame those who say these things, esp. when they really do try to help. I believe the Spirit really does come into play here, even if it means helping to insulate the hearer from my stupid remarks. As Elder Neal A. Maxwell wrote: "To those of you who so suffer and who, nevertheless, so endure and so testify by the eloquence of your examples, we salute you in Christ! Please forgive those of us who clumsily try to comfort you. We know from whence your true comfort comes."

Please, my friends, be wise in dating

2008-08-04T00:04:00.000-07:00

So summer lovin' has hit its full force...with young lovers everywhere to be slammed with that perfect storm of hormones, compatibility, and spirituality. We want it. We crave it. Some of us would die for it.

My friends, all I ask is that we all just "be wise" in our dating. As Elder Packer so noted, "The gospel does not exempt us from common sense." The gospel is an intricate system of theological, biological, sociological, and psychological checks and balances...with the Atonement being the foundation. Once any of these elements are thrown out of check...we see gospel-based eccentricity (rather difficult to address as the victim of it uses gospel language to justify their particular fetish).

In other words, no matter how good a kisser the person is, how successful s/he may be, or how promising the compatibility looks, just think twice, nay, thrice...actually, many times over. Jesus Christ is a God of miracles and therefore can provide marriage partners through his channels of Providence that can even force a crusty-old skeptic like me to catch his breath with wonderment, but if we convince ourselves that we might as well do it now, because, after all, "we know that it's right," then we wish additional grief upon ourselves. A confirmation of rightness alone does not itself require haste in a decision's execution. I am in no position to dictate specifics to any couple; however, as a guiding principle, I urge moderation in some readers' haste to marry. Certainly, the marriage could still, and often will, come together with all its attendant beauty...but should we make an already-difficult endeavor more taxing? I think not.

Polygamy, Part Deux

2008-07-31T21:55:00.000-07:00

Clarification from the former post: Contrary to my previous argument, there is reliable evidence of intimacy in Joseph's marriage...Joseph F. Smith collected affidavits from Joseph's plural wives in 1892 as the RLDS church was suggesting that either polygamy never happened or that it was in a symbolic sense...Joseph's wives insisted that they were consummated marriages (while this is disconcerting, it shouldn't overly trouble us...marriage is marriage is marriage...what else do you expect?)

So the big question...Joseph obviously was not entirely upfront with Emma about his plural marriages...yet the "rumors of Joseph's [dishonesty] have been greatly exaggerated."

First, let's not fool ourselves...this idea of Joseph's wives falling under his charismatic swooning is a load of malarkey. It was not chick-flick material: "Yes, Brother JOseph...oh-how-I'm-swooning, Brother Joseph..." This business scared the living daylights out of them. Some found it reprehensible. Mary Elizabeth Rollins Lightner told him to scram at first...she only agreed after an angel appeared to her. Cordelia Cox turned him down...cold. She was sealed to him posthumously. Emily Partridge also turned him down...and only did it with the coaxing of Heber C. Kimball. Benjamin Johnson, when hearing from Joseph that he wanted to marry his sister Almera, told him straight up that he would "kill him as surely as the Lord lives" if Joseph had anything but impure motives. Lucy Walker turned him down twice before she had a manifestation.

Why would Joseph tell anything less than forthright about his marital plans? Why would he publicly denounce polygamy even as he privately practiced it? The easy answer--the kind meant to generally close down discussion and the kind of pundits and politicians to prefer? Joseph was a libidinous megalomaniacal power-monger. Of course, this belief was held by some of Joseph's contemporaries...even close friends, even Emma at times (William Clayton recalled her telling Joseph that hif he wanted to "indulge himself," she would as well...fear not, fellow Saints...the tit-for-tat of marital disagreements of this proportions should not be taken seriously). Yet as Bushman notes so well, questions of hypocrisy send us off the trail of the historical Joseph. We must attempt to discern what made up the incongruity or give up hope for holding Joseph as a kind of moral figure...as a believing Latter Day Saint, I prefer the former.

To set the stage, we hearken back to that odd-named girl who kind of started it all : Fanny Alger. Why didn't Joseph tell Emma about her to begin with? The scholarship tells us (Daniel Bachman's thesis, primarily) that Joseph probably questioned what plural marriage was all about in 1831 (according to Joseph Noble, the man who married Joseph to his first plural wife in Nauvoo, the inquiries took place during the Joseph Smith Translation). The records from there, as stated before, are murky; we don't know for sure whether she married in 1833 or 1835. If Bushman is correct, Joseph first saw the angel commanding him to embrace it in 1834...a date that would fit with the 1835 chronology. In either case, Joseph recognized that the time to practice it had not yet arrived (as he told Lyman Johnson, a witness to the JST while Joseph lived in the John Johnson home). Depending on whose chronology we accept, we might ask the question of what caused Joseph to wait so long...perhaps up to 4 years. The Joseph of previous years was brimming over with energy to follow the revelations...he was a Joseph who would round up a hundred men to go fight a battle 1000 miles away, marching most of the way. It was not in Joseph's character, especially not in the libididnal Joseph portrayed by the critics, to put off a command of this nature.

Furthermore, the Joseph that emerges in the documents, save for the deception, is one who is utterly bound up in Emma. And one who seems only On one occasion, he even noted: "If you desire my love, do not speak evil of Emma." He signed his letters "Affectionately, Yours" and nursed over her in times of ill health. He told visitors about how adorable his children were and how he couldn't help but love their mother. And when he did propose, he did it in strange ways...presenting sealed envelopes and hesitantly so (as he did for Emily Partridge), approaching male relatives (as he did for my great-great aunt and for Almera Johnson). Joseph the libertine seemed to be utterly lacking in "game."

Finally, we err if we suppose that all plural marriages were conducted w/o Emma's knowledge. Even Todd Compton, no friend of traditional LDS orthodoxy, claims that Emma knew of and approved of Eliza R. Snow (interesting...given that there was likely a physical altercation that led to leave the Mansion House). Emily and Elizabeth Partridge (even though they had married Joseph two months earlier without her knowledge), the Lawrence sisters...all of them were handpicked by Emma at one point or another. Melissa Lot believed that she was married with Emma's explicit approval. Finally, it would have been absurd to think that Joseph never addressed the Fanny issue with Emma...given that Fanny was turned out of house by Emma and the whispers that abounded as Johnson and Hancock inform us. At times, Emma was quite complicit in protecting the sanctity of Joseph's time with other wives (as my aunt Lucy attests).

So what of those occasions when Joseph did deceive? We know little of the specifics behind the Alger marriage--seemingly the most problematic one since we have no evidence that Joseph tried to teach Emma; we simply have a few late accounts claiming that they saw Joseph and Fanny being "sealed" (doctrinally impossible, by the way, as Joseph did not receive the sealing keys until the next year). And we also have little evidence of how Joseph handled the situation or what he told his wife except that he went to Michigan on a mission during the fall of 1835...a seemingly convenient time to let the domestic steam settle So did he explain the principle? It seems odd that Emma could ever buy Joseph's later talk of celestial marriage if he described the Alger incident as a mere fling.

Those who have seen marital troubles involving infidelity know that while love can be regained, trust is a fragile thing indeed. Joseph must have explained Alger in terms of plural marriage...otherwise, Emma would have seen the "marriages" later on as more Fannys dressed up in religious clothing. Indeed, Emma ended up turning out Eliza R. Snow, quite violently, later on as well...yet she still managed to accept plural marriage at certain levels even after that time. Therefore, while Emma's vitriolic opposition to plural marriage is understandable (when asked in early summer 1844--after Joseph had allowed her to burn what is now section 132--where the revelation came from, she responded tartly: "Straight from hell, madam"), we cannot say with reason that her ignorance was complete. When biographers talk about the intrigue involved in Emma starting a morality campaign in the Relief Society in early 1842, Emma almost certainly knew of the doctrine, even if she did not know of Joseph's marriages.

Furthermore, Joseph recognized that plural marriage was explosive...he had already caught whiffs of the outcomes of such rumors in 1832 when he was tarred and feathered in Hiram, OH. And with Joseph hardline (and again, understandable) obsession with loyalty in the Nauvoo era, he believed that Emma could not be trusted with these teachings given her vacillations. This was not just a matter of deceiving a wife; this was a matter of walking an awkward line between following the command of God without throwing his life to the wolves. He sincerely believed that teaching the doctrine would put his life in danger (we see this in many accounts...Louisa Beaman--whose father, incidentally, was a money-digger in Joseph's earlier years, tried to steal the plates from Joseph, and then converted, George Robinson, others). Given this belief, it becomes all the more remarkable that he continued to practice it...believing what he did about its explosiveness (one account by the Nauvoo Stake President, to be sure, claims he disavowed it entirely in the weeks leading up to the martyrdom). And the marriages were not, of course, performed without common (or physically taxing...all noted that in these years, Emma began to look more gaunt than she had in previous years) discussion about it. Joseph even offered to buy Emma a horse once if she would promise to never use the phrase "spiritual wife" around him again.

So why did Joseph deceive? When he did, it was likely not for lack of trying to teach otherwise. And probably because he believed his life was in danger. JOseph's previous flirtations with danger might lead one to think that he would keep these kinds of experiments to a minimum...consolidate his base. Instead, he threatens it by asking relatives of prominent members who practically threaten his life for even bringing up the issue (the friendly Benjamin Johnson did). We shouldn't see Joseph the egoist; we should a Joseph who really is scared stiff.

Alas, I have left much out. I have not addressed where John C. Bennett brought Sarah Pratt on board with him, accusing Joseph of seducing Pratt (though evidence suggests that Bennett was doing the seducing--it's odd that John was feeding Sarah most of the information about Joseph). Nor have I addressed Orson Pratt's return to the faith in spite of his wife's accusations (again, remarkable given that he was excommunicated for first listening to his wife).

I have not answered all the questions, but I hope I have answered some...please do share one way or the other. These are irksome issues that are seldom wrapped up neatly even with a faithful depiction, but I hope to have shed some light on the subject.

Stay tuned...

The Awkward Conversation: My Faith and Polygamy

2008-07-29T23:37:00.000-07:00

Recently, our group stumbled upon the topic of polygamy during a social setting. Conversation clipped along nicely until a dear sister said: "If we can steer the conversation in a different direction, that would be nice...polygamy pretty much belongs on the faith-shelf right now." Awkward silence. So right when we thought we have nicely tucked away that rather *ahem* different *cough* chapter of our history into the archives, we have that oh-so-pleasant flurry of news coverage where we see folks wearing pioneer clothes carted away in buses. Polygamy is at the fore once again.

So many writers (not all, but many) on polygamy have made quite the show about the loss of their faith in the wake of writing about their research on polygamy. The first and greatest self-proclaimed martyr in academia was D. Michael Quinn. Also note Stanley Ivins and B. Carmon Hardy. All researched polygamy--particularly post-Manifesto polygamy--and all lost their faith. They generally claim that polygamy in itself did not deal the death-blow, but an uncooperative church bureaucracy that just did not appreciate their scholarship. Is this really such a third-rail issue...a hot potato that, if touched, will either cost one his faith, his membership, or both?

The next two posts will deal with two topics...fittingly, the beginning and the end: 1) The earliest proto-polygamist marriages (as Kathryn Daynes calls them) and 2) the end of polygamy after the Manifesto and what the nature of that end says about how we view church leadership. Both deal with awkward questions of honesty that require a cool head to navigate both faithfully and with faith (an expectation that I can only hope to meet).

The primary questions relating to Joseph Smith's marriages are three: 1) Why did he do it?, 2) Why did he keep it from Emma and society?

1) Why did he do it?

His first practice of plural marriage was in 1833/5 (depending on whose chronology you accept) with the 17-year old Fanny Alger in Kirtland, OH. The age should not disturb us in the least...it's a well-established fact that marriage ages, on par, were much lower then. The accounts swirling this marriage are legion...many historians simply accept it as an extramarital affair carte blanche. Yet the evidence suggests otherwise. We have two primary accounts of Joseph's marriage to Fanny. Both are written several decades ex post facto; both are second-hand. While both disagree on the particulars, both do agree that Joseph Smith saw his involvement with Alger as a marriage. One account, that of Mosiah Hancock, even notes that his father performed the ceremony. The matter was not publicly discussed, however.

Later, Oliver Cowdery caught wind of it...and he was livid. Yet why was he? The debate rages indeed...scholars fight over whether Oliver Cowdery himself practiced polygamy. In 1838, he wrote in a letter that the Alger marriage was a "dirty, filthy affair." Other leaders such as David Patten, Thomas B. Marsh, and Brigham Young were unaware of the marriage until Cowdery himself made it public. The question of what Oliver knew and when he knew is sketchy here...for a sizable amount of evidence suggests that Oliver knew about polygamy from the days of translating the Bible in 1831. As this is more testimonial than evidence, I will save the reader from a death so awful as wading through evidentiary analysis. In any regard, during Oliver's high council hearing in 1838, Joseph insisted that Oliver acknowledge that he had never deemed the Alger incident adultery...and that Oliver, "as his bosom friend had been intrusted (sic) with many things." Oliver Cowdery most likely could not have been as morally opposed to polygamy as he claimed...he did after all insist on returning to Utah to live with the Saints. Thus, the reasons for the Alger marriage must remain murky due to lack of evidence...Oliver's scandal thesis is suspect and the other theses leave to much to question given their late receipt in polygamy-laced Utah.

Later marriages give us more clues. Joseph married something on the order of 27-33 wives (Stan Ivins numbered it much more highly, but his methodology was sloppy, associating Smith names in Nauvoo with Joseph Smith rather carelessly). Lucy Walker, my great-great aunt, claimed it was "not a love matter" but that she was called to place her life on a sacrifical alter, as it were. Mary Elizabeth Rollins Lightner claims to have had dreams hinting at a future marriage. Others such as Emily and Elizabeth Partridge tell us very little about their thoughts in the autobiography.
The question is, however...why did Joseph marry so many women when simply marrying a few might have satisfied the practice of the ancients? I would suggest this is an important question...for if we were to place licentious motives on Joseph, then we could hardly expect the cooperation from such a large number of women. Furthermore, not all of these women were young women in their attractive years. One was Brigham Young's sister, Fanny Young...a woman preparing herself for a life of spinsterhood. If Joseph simply saw this as a way of fulfilling his libido, then it would have been an odd method indeed. In almost all cases, Joseph made no secret of the marriage to the family...indeed, he often asked these family members (such as Levi Hancock in the case of Fanny Alger or William HOlmes Walker in the case of Lucy Walker) to be intermediaries. Joseph's polygamy simply does not resemble what most of us would consider to be secret, forbidden loves. Polygamy seemed to be a family affair.

I conclude that, as an answer to 1) and to 3), Joseph did not see polygamy primarily as a method to satisfy sexual urges. We have no reason to believe that intimacy was withheld from many of these relationships (in fact, we have little evidence at all...the best Todd Compton could come up with is evidence that the marriage certificates and affidavits indicated that Joseph and wife X were married for both "time" and "eternity"...or that they were married "in very deed." Weak evidence, in myopinion). However, we might do well to actually think for a second that marriage might possibly be about something more than physical intimacy...just perhaps. As Bushman argues, we can see a thread of loneliness throughout Joseph's life...death, death, death. While Fanny Alger does not have any evidence of the "eternal marriage" doctrine associated with her, it is quite contemporaneous with the Nauvoo marriages. Joseph, who himself wishes for death on more than one occasion in his own writings, quite possibly saw himself as being more than a little alone in the world. He wishes for death to come upon him. Yet he calls the society of the Saints--there's our cooperative Spirit--"the order of the Son of God." An enduring society was divine. I have not done research into the law of adoption (adopting oneself to various prominent Church leaders) but such an application of the sealing principle even at this early stage would not surprise me. Joseph wanted to create a familial network in both ritual and reality that could last through the eons (See Bushman's chapter on "Stories of Eternity" for more on this). Plural marriages, including those to women who were already married, could be easily seen within this context (though we must be honest...Joseph also believed that he was foreordained to be their husband in the premortal life...it is interesting that only one or two confirm this detail...most are like Lucy and do not discuss the rationale much if at all). While we might not know Joseph's thoughts on these things (the comments we have from him are almost non-existent), it is not outrageous to suppose that Joseph's talk of foreordination not be seen in a Saturday's Warrior context but in the context of extending his family network to encompass as many of his trusted friends (who were few indeed) as possible. In at least one purported "rendezvous" with a plural wife, part of the meeting was to give his plural wife's father a blessing to seal him up to eternal life. Not exactly the idea of an Italian restaurant style romantic evening.

While we might view such a concept with some skepticism given the polygamy connotations, neither should we be utterly averse to it. Ultimately, we believe that we are one family and as a family, should expect to be sealed to each other at some point once we show that we can handle the joy, sorrow, pain, and triumph of the families we do have.

Stay tuned...more on Joseph's plural marriages coming up soon...btw, I'm still a believer!!

The Blackmark: My Faith and the Mountain Meadows Massacre

2008-07-27T17:55:00.000-07:00

It's a mystery that never needed to be one. I've known about it since I grammar school; yet my fellow Saints express shock and horror even as they engage in a twisted apologetics as they react to this heinous event--as though denial were a litmus test for determining one's Saintliness. Perhaps some suggest I use sensational terms? I suggest that those who believe so are, at best, ill-informed.

The events of that day need no retelling here; a fine book to be published over the next month will be discussing that in its fullest detail. The question I address: what is the faithful Latter-Day Saint--one who is faithful to both the present-day Church as well as his pioneer forebearers--to make of this terrible massacre? Was the supposedly peaceful Latter Day Saint faith of the 19th century simply window-dressing for a violent ideology of Christian-esque jihad? Furthermore, and more immediately relevant, what have we done with the memory of the victims? We must come to grips with our past if we are to engage a modern world in an information age.

I dare not try to quantify my stance on this issue into a series of premises/hypotheses for in doing so I run the risk of treating this as a geometric proof, as a problem distant from the hearts and minds of our people. It must not be so. While hard-headed evidentiary analysis is as necessary here as discussing issues like "barley in America," we must not trick ourselves into thinking that such an approach is sufficient for the descendants of those children who lived through the massacre (all adults over the age of seven were killed; the children were taken in by LDS families). We must ask if Jesus would deconstruct the tragedy in such terms...if he would offer shotgun responses and quick, easy answers. As I recall, when faced with death (and this death was of a far more natural cause), he offered no answers. He only wept.

But alas, I must enumerate the issues in some way...if this is not to be another emo-filled post about coming to grips with our past (tomes have been written on the subject; I will not burden you with more). So I pose tihs question to you, my friends, and hope to ffer some insight on it...

Was 19th-century Mormonism a violent faith masquerading as an empire of peace?

Whether authors talk of the Danites, blood atonement, or the Mountain Meadows Massacre, this is a favorite theme...that Mormons were really throat-cutting, tyrannical fanatics who saw the outside world as infidels...we were the "Mahomedians" of the American West. How much truth is there to it?

I am willing--though not particularly inclined--to entertain the notion that Mormonism indeed had a violent streak...but as Elder Packer has noted, such streaks must be taken within their proper context...as a product more of time and place than of theology. It is true that this period was marked by tremendous religious zeal on the part of the brethren, Jedediah Grant and Brigham Young in particular (though some research by Paul Peterson suggests that this zeal was far more pomp than circumstance). Part of these teachings were that certain individuals had committed crimes so heinous (adultery, murder, and some theft) that atonement was only possible by the shedding of one's own blood. Therefore, it has been supposed, Brigham Young sent vigilantes such as Bill Hickman's Danite Band to rid them of apostates (though the obvious presence of prominent apostates like T.B.H. Stenhouse and William Godbe argue against such a theory). Was this general doctrine taught widely? When one strings together all the comments made about it, then it might seem as though it was in the spirit of the age--and a rather bizarre spirit at that. Critics, both then and now, make this teaching into a method of retribution against apostates--merely the product of a power-crazed theocracy. Hence Mountain Meadows...

Yet I ask students of this to simply strip away the religious language from the principle and ask themselves if it sounds much different than how any cabal would view its territory. When we have areas even now where landowners see their land as property, it is a tragic reality that the American West was a hard-scrabble place where death over a card-game was not unheard of. Bertram Wyatt-Brown notes that in the 19th-century South, duals over honor were engaged in if only for the mere amusement of it. While there has been some debate over the role of violence as a general cultural norm in the West, it is nevertheless quite documentable that the vigilante group was harbored within frontier areas (which even extends back to the Whiskey Rebellion). Vigilantism derives from the concept of popular sovereignty, that the voice of the People is the voice of God. While I need to do more research on the subject, the frontier has traditionally been associated with such vigilantism...it is not unreasonable to suppose that the vigilantism that had such a place in Gentile culture (indeed, in the death of Joseph Smith) would easily carry over to the Mormon frontier. Mountain Meadows then was traditional vigilante action carried out with a religious banner...

Elsewhere in the west, violence in cattle towns has been alternatively described as prevalent, limited, and tolerated--depending on the historian (see Bonnie Christensen, 2002 and Richard White, 1991). The historian runs into problems in actually defining "homicide," given the cultural norms about "justified" killings on the frontier (see Thomas Noel's review of Robert McGrath's work for his argument that "justified" killings did not constitute "homicide" to the Western authorities). Since the Mormons had inherited a siege mentality from their reception in Missouri and Illinois already--where they saw first-hand the effects of vigilantism--it is tragically unsurprising that these values would be juxtaposed on the virgin wilderness.

The key here is that the theological rhetoric was more the product of a convergence of Mormon theology about repentance, the isolation of Utah Mormons, and the cultural heritage of vigilantism. What is jarring to the modern ear is the theologizing of violence...modern ears are relatively desensitized to the idea of a violent West. Otherwise, stealing horses, land disputes...hardly what we could call capital crimes--often brought on a lynching (Bill Longely and James Averell are both notable examples of this). The violent streak in Mormonism, if there was one at all, was not unlike the violence of its time. If it acted like a sovereign power unto itself, as Bushman has noted, it's because the state governments had treated them like foreign aliens. Given the violence elsewhere, the number of deaths in other frontier states dwarves the number of deaths in Utah...only the case of Thomas Coleman, a black man, shows the key elements of such execution...and his was a case where he flirted with a white woman. Sadly, in such cases, we have racism mingled with vigilantism all in the language of a theoretical doctrine. And aside from the belief that a man's blood must be shed (thus Utah's use of the firing squad), we have no instances of this "blood atonement" being actualized as a policy of the state.

And most importantly, if such a violent streak were a real element of Brigham Young's personality, then the Fancher party provided the ideal opportunity for its fullest expression. Yet he demurred, sending them that telling note via Jonathan Haslam ("Let them alone..."). If blood atonement were the real source of this killing, then the perpetrators might have sold it to him as such, and he might have accepted it. Yet he did not. There is much, even abundant, guilt in this matter...but we do the dead no service by placing it at the wrong feet.

So can a believer recognize a violent streak in Mormonism and still call himself a Mormon? Yes...absolutely. No faith...not Hindu, Buddhist, or Christian...is without one. We can be proud of pioneer forebearers, we can mourn their failings...but let us not believe that we must forsake them. Our faith is strong in spite of this horrendous act...we can condemn it with a clear conscience.

Saving ourselves from ourselves: Mormonism, me, and homosexual marriage

2008-07-18T13:36:00.000-07:00

Much ink has been spilled about this topic. It has ranged from the polemical to the sentimental to the sensational. Yet as a supporter of my Church's policy on homosexual marriage, I find myself in a remarkably awkward position. More than one friend has hinted or openly accused me of being part of a Mormon hack, another sheep in the Church's army of the hoi polloi. Worse to these friends, I am simply propagating the same arguments that were used to justify prohibiting the priesthood from being held by all men. Others suggest that I am co-conspirator of sorts...that I'm providing cover for those who simply want to fall lock-step into the Church's position. Furthermore, I seem to barely be a faithful supporter of democracy...after all, do I not want to create a privileged class of people--heterosexual couples--who have access to rights exclusive to them? How utterly un-American...and conservatives think that Obama is the elitist...never mind that I'm also a hateful bigot who subscribes to fear tactics and sensationalism...ah, the lonely life I lead...

To these, my friends, I am simply a mob leader in the "When the prophet has spoken, the thinking is done" faction of the Church. Perhaps I protesteth too much, but alas, my friends, it becomes necessary for me to articulate how a thinking member of the faith can find homosexual marriage not only theologically unsound but also politically unwise.

"Russ," my liberal friends ask, "how can you support a policy that is so oppressive to those who simply seek to have fulfilling relationships just as you do?" And in some ways, I sympathize with my friends' accusations...I cringe at most arguments that both fellow members and even church leaders make in support of our policy. Many, like cotton candy, dissolve on contact. Others simply make an appeal to priesthood authority...a noble gesture, but ironically, utterly incongruent with the many teachings of the brethren on the topic (though one is certainly not in want of quotes representing the other school of thought). In spite of these arguments, I want to submit that one need not accept them in order to still place faith in the gospel, in Jesus Christ, indeed, in the Church's policy on this matter that does indeed address the nature of creation itself. Let's discuss theology then...

Did not my Church use the fallacious reasoning about the "naturalness" of racial separation to support the priesthood ban? At some levels, yes (with Hugh B. Brown being a notable proponent of civil rights). Can I call it fallacious while still calling myself a believer? Absolutely (Jeffrey R. Holland and Dallin H. Oaks have done likewise). The Lord has not been terribly prone to giving reasons for his policies...thus causing certain ideological rifts within the Church about the reasons for the priesthood ban. Yet the policy was firmly in place...whatever J. Reuben Clark meant in 1949 when he said it was "inspired," a belief in prophetic revelation requires that we give some credence to what they say. Can we discuss the racism of Brigham Young? Certainly. Can we cite tactless quotes from the leadership? Of course, we can...with impunity (for I have done so). Can our well-thought out discussions actually have an impact on church leadership's positions? Yes (see Lester Bush's 1973 article as an example). One can question the judgment, the rationale, the evidence of any given leader...it's just when you take upon yourself the mantle of the Church.

So to my fellow believers...Bottom line: we can toss around leaders' reasoning all we like and learn some interesting things about their modes of analysis...but if we believe that the Church is something more than a smokeless, teetotalling, abstinent club of 19th-century loving storytellers, we simply must accept the Church's bottom line on these issues.

So with that...let's discuss the philosophical ramifications of homosexual marriage outside of theology...

Typically, the first line of attack for homosexual marriage is an appeal to freedom and liberty...as it should be as well. Yet I would agree with Chesterton that terming this policy "liberal" or "free" is simply an "accident of words." Freedom, alas, is not a sovereign virtue...when isolated from other virtues, as Chesterton notes, it spins out of control. Freedom, when it serves individual ends, ultimately cooks itself in its own juice. Individual freedom does not societal freedom make.

Yet how would homosexual marriage REALLY impact society? Come now, my friends suggest, no scare tactics. No talk of men marrying beasts. Agreed. But to suggest that simply allowing homosexual marriage would broaden the scope of American liberty amounts to some sleight-of-hand...activists on both sides know that we are talking about, for better or for worse, the state's redefinition of marriage, indeed, even gender. Homosexual marriage essentially binds the state to granting tax benefits, adoption rights to a union that does not serve the human populace's interest in sustaining itself. This is a classic case of individual liberty being valued above collective interest.

Furthermore, we would indeed be laying the most blatant attack on feminism in the recent past...one that ought to make Betty Friedan and Adrienne Rich recoil. Homosexual marriage bases its case on a primary assumption that gender is constructed and that, therefore, it can be tossed aside at will. The rightness or wrongness of this assumption is beyond the scope of my bit, but I will suggest that such a position is dangerous for feminism indeed. We essentially maintain that women (or men, for that matter) are simply a convenience, an accident of nature...that they have no unique contribution to make to society that men cannot duplicate.

Homosexual marriage legitimizes the legal blending of the sexes. Man is no longer a man...nor woman a woman. We talk rightly of the women's objectification...yet supporters of homosexual marriage have little to say about women's delegitimization in the home. Liberal thought indeed...feminists have fooled themselves into thinking that separating the sexes will lead to their liberation; au contraire...can we all say "gender ghettoization"?

Thus we see (hat tip to Mormon rhetoric)...freedom does not always support its own cause. Therefore, if the state wants to make any pretension to valuing the distinctive contributions of the genders, it would be well to maintain marriage's privileged, even elite status. It might be tyranny...but only in the same sense that every other distinction is tyranny...and it prevents from the far greater tyranny that is our own appetite for individualistic urges.

High Times in P-town

2008-07-17T11:37:00.000-07:00

The day that I call returning to Provo a "dose of reality" is a red-letter day indeed. I just spent the past week in the land of the East...romping through the backwoods of central Pennsylvania, wondering at why certain sister missionaries are, well, sister missionaries rather than residents at Wymount, and eating pathetic excuses for hot dogs sold by barely-English speaking street vendors.

Provo is an odd place...no sane person will deny that. In academia, we're organization men instead of thinkers. In dating, a "yes" belies a "no" (which is only articulated after that $25 bowl of sauteed mushrooms), a "no" all too often implies a "maybe," and a "maybe" suggests that you should just quietly disappear without too much spectacle. And lest the "you're just bitter" faction of our ideological coalition that is the Church, please note 1) their gender and 2) where they tend to be on Friday nights.

But I digress.

G.K Chesterton suggests that stepping into a family (or might I suggest, into the self-styled BYU image of familiality):

We do step into a world which is incalculable, into a world which has its own strange laws, into a world which could do without us, into a world we have not made. In other words, when we step into the family we step into a fairy-tale.

So even if Provo is a strange fairy-tale, it's "our strangeness" and certainly is no more strange than a city (NYC, for example) where men purchase larger-than-life stuffed dinosaurs, where the highest form of existence is gawking, laughing, or crying at the newest Broadway production (which is ultimately men/women being paid to be somebody they aren't), where people are, quite literally, little more than stumbling blocks on your way to the next subway entrance. Even more, we live in a world where gender relations are valued as something eternal and not a convenience styled for merely a "particular period of one's life." As Chesterton notes elsewhere, "The aesthete (read: stereotypical urbane New Yorker) aims at harmony rather than beauty. If his hair does not match the mauve sunset against which he is standing, he hurriedly dyes his hair another shade of mauve. If his wife does not go with the wall-paper, he gets a divorce." I exaggerate, but alas, would that it were more absurd than it was.

I make snide remarks about Provo (particularly about Provo dating) often...and I enjoy doing it and have no intention of refraining anytime soon. Yet, as Chesterton notes, "All exaggerations are right, if they exaggerate the right thing." We may live in a caricature, but in a fallen world, caricatures may be the best some of us can do. A righteous absurdity is better than no absurdity at all--for the latter almost certainly leads to an "Our Town" complacency that leaves the human race unexalted.

Provo may be absurd, but even as Elaine Stritch famously offered backhanded compliments to various classes of foolish women in her famed "Ladies Who Lunch" number in Company, Provo deserves praise for its Provo-ness.

I'll drink to that.

So I've Got Nothing...

2008-07-08T10:23:00.000-07:00

Yeah. I know. Because I'm a "blogger," that means I should always have something witty, insightful, or razor-sharp to say. Maybe Utah has made me stupid. Maybe bitterness has made me stupid. Whatever it is, I have absolutely nothing brilliant to say this morning except that everyone should eat. And breathe. And be happy.

The end.

Beauty, Power, Corruption

2008-06-20T13:09:00.000-07:00

A short, but hopefully, well-packaged thought from your friendly neighborhood, scholar-saint in pursuit of truth, wisdom, and a touch of the absurd (provided that it is truthfully wise, absurdly truthful, et al)

A syllogism...

Beauty is power, power corrupts, therefore, beauty corrupts...

Ladies, believe it or not, Doctrine and Covenants 121 applies to you too. You know the old reliable technique of replacing a scriptural individual's name with your own? Let's try it again, shall we?

Doctrine and Covenants 121: 36-37, 39, 41-42
36 That the rights of beauty are inseparably connected with the powers of heaven, and that the powers of heaven cannot be controlled nor handled only upon the principles of righteousness.
37 That they may be conferred upon us, it is true; but when we undertake to cover our sins, or to gratify our pride, our vain ambition, or to exercise control or dominion or compulsion upon the souls of the children of men, in any degree of unrighteousness, behold, the heavens withdraw themselves; the Spirit of the Lord is grieved...
39 We have learned by sad experience that it is the nature and disposition of almost all (wo)men, as soon as they get a little authority, as they suppose, they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion.
41 No power or influence can or ought to be maintained by virtue of beauty, only by persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned;
42 By kindness, and pure bknowledge, which shall greatly enlarge the soul without hypocrisy, and without guile—

(Editorial Aside for quibblers--yes, I'm quite aware that I omitted passages that relate more directly to the priesthood functioning in the church. Surprise! The comparison is not flawless...but are you really telling me that you have a sound doctrinal reason to disagree with what was quoted?)

Thus in classic fashion, if you don't like this, it must be because you take the truth to be hard...And no, I'm not bitter (perhaps I protesteth too much?)...I'm just a watchdog seeking to keep his countrymen safe...

Obama and the Mormon Vote

2008-06-16T20:33:00.000-07:00

OK, OK, we know that Obama supports civil unions and abortion...it's old news...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hj1hCDjwG6M

But let's face it...if Obama keeps making speeches like this, he might effectively peel off a respectable chunk of the social conservative vote, especially those of us hardliners who are tired of hearing about the liberal elitists who think that life is all about the Tony Awards and the most recent brand of cheese. Frankly, McCain could never make a speech like this, if only because his choices prevent from doing so credibly. I'm not saying I'll vote for Obama, nor will one speech do the job. But if Obama can meet the social conservatives half-way, they will see that Obama can do/say for them what McCain simply cannot. Maybe those social conservatives will be simply victims of what critics call Obama's Jedi-like power to swoon and croon.

In any case, speeches like this might just be the spoonful of "sugar to help the liberal medicine/poison go down.

Russell Stevenson IS a cartoon character...

2008-06-13T12:44:00.000-07:00

Friends and countrymen...I have just descended to the depths of poverty...and am selling my voice for filthy lucre...the shame, the shame...

Alas, I will be the voice for a cartoon character on a BYU independent study instructional DVD...next thing you know...I'll be selling weed...

Kirby Heybourne: Needy Father or Sell-out?

2008-06-11T09:39:00.000-07:00

I will add my two e-bits to the pot and suggest that the recent controversy surround Kirby Heyborne's (you know...Mr. Mormon cinema...he was the RM and also played significant parts in Singles Ward, Saints and Soldiers, and The Best Two Years) cameo in a Miller Lite Beer commercial. Heyborne has recently defended his action as Heavenly Father's way of helping him "stay afloat for another year." See his full remarks here. From my conversations (largely within Happy Valley), however, Heyborne is universally seen as a sell-out. To these folks, however Heyborne wants to spin it, he is still profiting from a business that is not compatible with the LDS lifestyle.

Herein is a major fault-line in gospel thought. Yes, he who does not take care of his household is "worse than an infidel." And sometimes, the early Latter Day Saints were to become friends with the "mammon of unrighteousness." But how far can this approach be taken w/o leading us to simply becoming a part of a wicked bureaucracy where we can all distance ourselves from the fundamental evil of the company/institution? Could a faithful Latter Day Saint be a white collar desk clerk for Playboy? Could a faithful Latter Day Saint work as a product rep. for Coors? Awkward questions indeed.

Addendum

Upon further reflection and some prodding from a good friend of mine, I have thought some about Heyborne's predicament. It's true...new, less-than-well-known actors make approximately 1,000 dollars more than crap/year. And when you're in da biz, there's something to be said for taking care of one's family. From a strict public relations point-of-view, I still wish he hadn't done it, wish he had taken any other odd-job, but then again, there are many things that I wish my family/friends (including myself) wouldn't do. And yet I still care about them deeply...and these are people I know. I certainly wouldn't make a personal attack over the blogosphere. I don't even know Heyborne. If I had known him personally and had been on close terms, I might have even privately expressed what I did in this blog. For public consumption, however, I should have tempered my remarks to fit the requirements of the charity that befits Latter Day Saints, should have shown my concern without such a biting edge. In previous posts, I have confined my remarks to the criticism of ideas, trends, culture. Such things can be fixed on an individual level w/o anyone losing face. But in the temple we are instructed to speak kindly of others individually...that includes individuals in the public eye.

So Kirby...you'll never read this. But let it be the known that anyone who keeps their temple worthiness up deserves my silence and everyone--temple-worthy or otherwise--deserves my charity. As Augustine noted: "In the essentials, unity, in the non-essentials, liberty, and in all things, charity."

Feedback on my proposed article

2008-06-11T09:06:00.000-07:00

This is an article I am looking to send to the Ensign...tell me what you all think. Snide remarks welcome, as long as they are restricted to comments on my age, weight, physical appearance, or intelligence...

Article

“We sure got those Mormons at Waco!” a fellow student snarled in my graduate course.

“You know they aren’t members of our faith–at all?” I pressed.

“Well...”

“No, you know that, right?” my face almost certainly flushing with indignation. Nice work, Stevenson. The missionaries will have a fun time when they meet him. Gathering my books, I wearily prepared to discuss some matters with my professor. Another student stopped me.

“So Russ, do you really believe everything your Church teaches?” Dave asked, almost certainly believing that I must be a “cultural Mormon.” Batting a thousand!

“Yes, you might say I’m a card-carrying member...” Silence. But over the following lunch, we engaged in a friendly, intellectually respectable, and challenging discussion about the truth of the Book of Mormon and my convictions as a follower of Christ.

The world of the Latter Day Saint graduate student is a world fraught with intellectual adventure, danger, and even a touch of humor. During my time as a graduate student, I have talked about ideas with a broad array of scholars, all of whom espouse competing philosophies. As I sit in seminars with these distinguished thinkers, we toss around and turn inside out theories about government, freedom, culture, and even gender. While one might honestly debate the value of such discussions, such activities raise larger, even more significant questions for any Latter Day Saint seeking to judge the value of secular scholarship within our faith that is dependent upon a world which most have not seen or heard. While those outside of the academic profession might find such questions to be esoteric or even irrelevant, I have learned the more immediate urgency to Elder Neal A. Maxwell’s and Elder Dallin H. Oaks’ counsel to become bilingual in the thinking of men and the ways of God, to speak unto men in their own language “without losing the mother tongue of faith.” Even more significantly, I have learned that those of our faith have a unique contribution to make for those who pursue the “life of the mind.”

Homo Academicus

As I attended graduate school, I saw a culture that seemed at pains to define itself. On more than a few occasions, I have heard professors refer with a revealing light-heartedness that the academic profession was “all an act” and “delusional.” Even more, as I sat in the seminars of big, messy ideas, I could not help but wondering about these ideas’ capacity to transform a soul. They could answer the “whys” without addressing—even touching—the bigger question of “Why?” Concepts of gender, family, and social systems were discussed as though they were merely pieces of clay to be molded according to the whim of the scholar. To paraphrase one professor, when you’re a scholar, you write the definitions. Such an approach has often left me wondering what the value of such study is. I struggled with this problem—after all, the fundamentals of our faith, as Elder Bruce C. Hafen has suggested, are “potent, clear, and unambiguous.” Are we not simply encouraging an undue emphasis on the wisdom of man? Why, then, should time be spent even discussing the slippery secular doctrines has to share in the “unambiguous” gospel context?

In such circumstances, Elder Hafen notes, we to do with apparent paradoxes wherein Christ tells to “let [our] light so shine before men, that they may see your good works” while still warning us: “Do not your alms before men, to be seen of them.” Yet Elder Hafen insists that we should not merely avert our eyes from the awkwardness in such ambiguity; we should face it.

I have seen that the gospel actually provides the most robust ground for discussion and for the exchange of ideas. To paraphrase G.K. Chesterton, the gospel fundamentals “may be walls but they are the walls of a playground.” But as with most playgrounds, even they can be dangerous places if they are not used in the ways they were intended.

Elder Hafen has argued that folks “use” these playgrounds in three ways: 1) we either filter out the problems, preferring instead the cure of a “firm handshake, an enthusiastic greeting, and a smiley button” or we become zealots, clinging to often unrealistic ideals with a white-knuckle grip; 2) we begin to idolize ambiguity as we are constantly looking for “somebody’s bubble…so that [we] can pop it with our shiny [intellectual] pin, and 3) we recognize the ambiguity without giving up our commitment to the principles and values we hold precious. As Elder Haften notes, “We not only view things with our eyes wide open but with our hearts wide open as well.” I have struggled to answer the problems of “Why” in the academic discipline through using academic methods; I soon learned that just as with any other gospel principle, ambiguity is best tempered by the Christ-like virtues of faith, charity, and fellowship. The engine of academic study performs its function well, but only when well-oiled with mercy and friendship

Academic Bilingualism

Yet, for much of my life, I often ignored such ambiguities in favor of the easier voice in insisting on drawing a hard-line in the sand—or more accurately, on carrying a chip on my shoulder. With a decisive flourish of the hand and a stiffened jaw, I found it easy to disagree with those who had differing–though equally valuable–perspectives of gospel principles. As might be imagined, such an approach—in both form and content—did not help me to win over many individuals to the offerings of the Restoration in nourishing both mind and spirit. President Hugh B. Brown quoted an ancient prayer: “From the cowardice that shrinks from new truths, from the laziness that is content with half-truths, from the arrogance that thinks it knows all truth, Oh God of Truth, deliver us.” As I have pursued the study of church history, I have found that we really have nothing to fear, that as President Brown continued, “only error need fear the freedom of thought.”

Furthermore, I saw the examples of Joseph Smith during the School of the Prophets as they sought diligently to learn languages, history, politics, and other disciplines. I have seen that “speaking to men after the manner of their own language” does not simply entail using the vocabulary of a farmer but also the pithiness of the professor. Graduate education has helped me to develop a rock-solid insistence on documentation, context, and frankness in letting the evidence I examine inform the testimony I share. I have seen that we enjoy all the benefits of both individual reasoning and individual revelation. As Elder Maxwell has noted, while we speak of the disciple-scholar, we are, after all, without these hyphens in the kingdom for we are just disciples, “men and women of Christ.” Scholarship, it seems, can merely be another facet of one’s discipleship.

Conclusion

While academia can easily overcome a person’s mindset, neither do we need to cast it off as though it were a leech on the spirit. As Elder Maxwell has said, the gospel sheds light on all of the human landscape, so a good Latter Day Saint does not need to hide from truth or become overwhelmed by it. Graduate education in the liberal arts has provided me an ideal opportunity to learn how to intergrate spiritual truth along with the scholarly process. This experience has taught me that when secularly-minded individuals pose questions, they are not always seeking to destroy faith; they often do want to understand. And they can have some understanding provided that we learn some of their language "without losing the mother tongue of faith."

A Survey...

2008-06-09T12:14:00.000-07:00

Gentle readers,

I ask you all a question. This last week, I was speaking with a fellow member of the Church when he said something I found borderline outrageous and at the very least, suspicious. I would like to see if others have seen similar comments.

I was explaining that a friend of mine had been in a physically abusive relationship. Often, the response is that the conversations becomes more grave (and rightfully so). The fellow member, however, responded: "Was it closed-hand? Because if so, I want to kill him." I respond that I saw no moral difference between the two. Meanwhile, I'm thinking: "So if it was open-hand, then what would you do?"

Have you all seen this response among fellow members of the Church? This was not my first time, though it certainly is not common. I just wonder though how often the male members of our faith absorb such assumptions. What have you all heard? Do share. Maybe this guy was an exception, but maybe not. We have too many blessings to let such a silly distinction reak havoc in our homes.

Just when we thought we were free...

2008-06-05T11:23:00.001-07:00

Nope...some smart aleck Mormon artist decides to put another stain on the gospel arts by creating a sequel to Saturday's Warrior. That's right, Doug Stewart, the self-annointed founding father of pop Mormon cinema, has deemed that it is not enough for our parents to watch Jimmy Flanders anguish over whether the world should shed itself of its population ("zero population is the answer my friends"--what a lovely way of caricaturizing "the world"). As it's been said, "An author is a fool who, not content with boring those he lives with, insists on boring future generations." Saturday's Warrior had begun its descent into history...as it should. It had its time and its audience...can we please keep the "Land Before Time" syndrome away from our backyard?

Friends...why must we insist on schlock and schmaltz in our artistic productions? And if we must endure it (schlock and schmaltz often serve other key services for a community), can't we at least have it be true to mainstream doctrine? (though, even I must admit that Saturday's Warrior has more founding in certain, isolated teachings than we give it credit for).

Katherine Gee...SAVE US!!

On the slaying of Laban...

2008-05-17T10:51:00.000-07:00

So a classic (ad nauseum) question of theology: does God's immediate command supersede his established, written law? Folks cite Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac as an example (it isn't; the Mosaic law was not for another thousand years). But another, more poignant example is Nephi's killing of Laban...Nephi knew the law...was this not a case of God declaring an exception? Now when and to what degree God can declare exceptions is a can of worms I will not indulge in here. However, I will suggest to you, friendly readers, that we really should stop using the Nephi example. It's far too complicated for easy dissemination. But alas, we insist upon easy, cheap examples, so perhaps my words will be in vain...the life of the misunderstood...:)

Basically, according to John Welch, Nephi's killing did not fit comfortably under the Mosaic law (see Ex. 21:12-14, Deut. 19:4-13, and Num. 35:9-34). "Murder" as they considered it involved two characteristics: premeditation and a lack of divine providence. Nephi's text explicitly declares that it was not premeditated ("not knowing beforehand...") and that God had delivered him into his hands. On the first point, the question is: was Nephi willing? Was he entirely aware of the consequences of his actions? Both the Septuagaint and the Hebrew Bible give us clues--both offer passages that allow a killer an escape clause provided that the killing was done "at unawares." Of course, what made one unawares? The Hebrew text offers a definition that suggests a momentary lack of judgment on the part of the killer or some ignorance of the law. The Greek suggests a more telling word--akousios--lit. "unwillingly"--a word used to described the throwing over of cargo to save passengers. The question was a hot one for ancient jurists, according to Welch. Even Aristotle expresses some angst about fully assigning guilt to those who kill for "some noble purpose," though he ultimately does describe this is a "voluntary act." In either the Hebrew or the Greek context, however, while Nephi may have been indicted as being negligent for believing that his killing of Laban was a good deed, the law may have exhonerated him from the more heinous crime of murder.

Secondly, Nephi could have argued that God had delivered him into his hands, a concept that is drawn almost verbatim from Exodus 21:13. It is fairly significant that this phrase, of all phrases, was what the Spirit whispered to him that night. Indeed, the passage from which this is drawn was memorized by all Jewish students...repeated often and in numerous locales (at breakfast, walking down the street, etc.). The Lord was telling Nephi that there was legal covering for him...and that he would not be held guilty under the law. After all, the texts in question also tell us that those who do commit "involuntary" murder are provided an escape, "a city of refuge." The Lord did just that...indeed, providing him a country of refuge as Nephi was about to leave Israel entirely.

I do not suggest that there is an outright legal covering for all sticky acts (polygamy, murder, etc.). This is merely a question of argumentation--we should stop using the Nephi example to discuss the transcendence of God's immediate will over his written law. The example is messy and introduces more problems than it solves.

When the Salesmen Call...

2008-05-14T22:02:00.001-07:00

So a young man wants to make a few dollars over the summer months doing good honest labor. A worthy goal indeed. Yet at what cost? A few months rent? Food? Perhaps such things cost a tad bit more...

While there many, many honest summer salesmen out there (heavens, my brother did it himself), based on reports from credible sources, I fear that the system is not doing good things for our people. And when I say "our people," I mean none other than the Mormon core. For example, APX security systems are based directly out of Provo, Utah. Yet certain salesmen have, to their own detriment, shown themselves to be a little too shrewd of operators. Unfortunately, these young men probably did not think twice about what they were doing...they certainly meant no harm and most likely did not anticipate the consequences of being so hasty. But the consequences were less-than-pleasant for this elderly lady...

Like I said...so many good people do it...but friends and countrymen...do beware...the recruiters at BYU are so blatant in their exploitation of missionary skills...all for the sake of money...

When the Salesmen Call: Summer Sales...Honest Labor or Corrupting INfluence

2008-05-14T21:27:00.000-07:00

So a young man wants to make a few dollars over the summer months doing good honest labor. A worthy goal indeed. Yet at what cost? A few months rent? Food? Perhaps such things cost a tad bit more...

While there many, many honest summer salesmen out there (heavens, my brother did it himself), based on reports from credible sources, I fear that the system is not doing good things for our people. And when I say "our people," I mean none other than the Mormon core. For example, APX security systems are based directly out of Provo, Utah. Yet certain salesmen have, to their own detriment, shown themselves to be a little too shrewd of operators. . Unfortunately, these young men probably did not think twice about what they were doing...they certainly meant no harm and most likely did not anticipate the consequences of being so hasty. But the consequences were less-than-pleasant for this elderly lady...

Like I said...so many good people do it...but friends and countrymen...do beware...the recruiters at BYU are so blatant in their exploitation of missionary skills...all for the sake of money...

A LIterary Gospel: How Literature has to Fight the Good Fight Too

2008-05-13T15:17:00.000-07:00

In my conversations (electronic and otherwise) with literary-minded folk concerning the merits of Mrs. Stephanie Meyers work, I have received a most interesting criticism:

I find it ironic to praise the restraint in these books when sex is still at the forefront.

This venerable respondent has, unwittingly, paid me a great honor. My praise is, of all things, "ironic." Such criticism makes compliments hardly necessary. The praise is ironic, even deliciously so, because Meyer has effectively taken the discourse of mainstream teeny-bopperism, turned it on its head, and made it popular all the while. Would I call it Shakespearean? Heavens no...at the end of the day, the book really is about a bunch sniveling adolescents who are trying to keep their fangs to themselves. But while not great and abiding literature, it poses the question of how Latter Day literature is to make inroad with the populace? JOseph Smith remarked that he saw it to be his duty to make that which was righteous also popular (this in the context of his presidential campaign). Will we have a rise in abstinence because of Twilight? I'm skeptical...but what are we left without Twilight? Sixteen, Cosmopolitan, and heaven knows what else. Never mind the other idiocies that predominate primetime television. Sexual relations are part of the discourse; ignoring them will only alienate readers into thinking the book is drawn straight from the black-and-white era. Never mind that Twilight only addresses in the most oblique of ways.
If you're going to co-opt a sentiment, this is the way to do it; make abstinence kind of hip. Frankly, Meyer's argument that abstinence only makes the romance all the more magical is nothing more radical than what Brent Barlow has taught in BYU marriage and family classes for years.

If sexuality is going to be a construct (as intelligentsia and mass society claim--though in different terms), let's play the political game, mold it to the way we want, and spread abstinence through every means possible. Otherwise, we risk slipping into "Fortress Zion" mentality, hunkering down and "taking care of our own" (the backhanded compliment so many missionaries hear), and letting the collective assumptions and soul of morality go to waste (and the terrorists win...just kidding). If we don't mind sexuality in literature, why not focus on real sexuality, the sexuality that was instilled in us for divine purposes.

Do we realize that we are losing the culture war? Folks might read the Bible, but few believe it. The classroom is hardly effective; too many bureaucratic forces put up road blocks. Better to beat the cultural elite at their own game, produce our own talented writers who can promote the gospel in the marketplace of ideas...and as Meyer has done, win a few million fans doing it.

Can a Latter Day Saint write a book that does not address such issues in some substantive way these days? Heaven help us if they can't. We don't do much lobbying in Congress (save for an occasional gay marriage crusade or some alcohol issues), and the courts are hardly in our favor. Tapping into the power of the mind that really makes up society is the best venue that remains, and for all of its provinciality, Meyer has done a commendable job in recapturing the romance of abstinence.

Christian pop culture: An Eternal Oxymoron...Part II

2008-05-12T15:13:00.000-07:00

So I ran across this story about a Mormon author who, in the most unlikely of ways, has actually conveyed a solid gospel message in a manner that is attracting millions (in both in readership and in dollars)...

Stephanie Meyer...mother of three...BYU grad...orthodox Mormon

The content of the books are not of particular interest to me...I never was a fantasy fan to begin with and I even found Harry POtter barely over the threshold of tolerability. The Chronicles of Narnia? Please...unless I'm hunting for a good C.S. Lewis quip for a talk, I find my inspiration elsewhere...

But Stephanie Meyer demands my respect...she has made sexual restraint slightly chic (at least in her literary world...whether it transfers into actual ideological revolution...well, I'll leave that for the literary Marxists to decide). We talk of the need to produce literature that demonstrates the drama of the gospel...but all we normally get is, well, esoteric pieces with songs that cast overpopulation as the root of evil (money, political power, lust...for some reason, these manage to slip by our goodly brother artists). If only in number of copies sold (which, while no sign of literary merit, is a sign of widespread appeal), is becoming an effective mouthpiece of the values of middle American Christianity. More significantly, she is crossing over in ways that the Christian subculture folks are failing to do. Congratulations, Sister Meyers. you've done us proud.

Christian pop culture: An Eternal Oxymoron

2008-05-12T07:05:00.000-07:00

A fascinating piece on evangelical Christian pop-culture...on how the "Jesus is my homeboy" crowd is doing in the cultural marketplace of ideas...

According to this columnist, they're tanking. Evangelical Christians are beginning to see that their meager attempts to be funny, hip, or subversive are just woeful attempts to co-opt what the secularists have been doing for for over a century. Christian rock seems to be little more than a few synthesizers playing a few prolonged orchestral chords, all the while with the name "Jesus" intoned in the manner of a love song. Christian raves, Christian pro-wrestling, and many more offshoots provide Christians their own alternate reality in which they can live comfortably without fear of pollution. Yet one (namely, I) might ask: for being evangelistic, front-line cultural warriors, these niche-based artists seem to be at best using 22 rifles against the enemies' AK-47s. Worst case, they aren't even willing to get out of the bunker.

Of course, this posting might come uncomfortably close to we LDS connoisseurs of LDS products. Admit it; we've all imbibed of the EFY subculture in our times at some point. We've all either bought LDS themed T-shirts, Peter Breinholt/JOseph: A Nashville Tribute cds, and Greg Hansen calendars. Is this wrong? Most certainly not...I like some of them myself (though the "I Know that My Redeemer Lives" song on the EFY cd is a little soothingly sketchy). We've all watched Saturday's Warrior, though some of us might compare the experience to an awkward family reunion where we have to endure the odd views of our strange Utah relatives. Some of us might have even seen a beautiful CTR ring that seems to draw more attention to itself than to "the right" (available to you for three easy installments of 119.95...that's only 475.00...just call 1-800-BUY-ZION for more information).

Such a mentality, unfortunately, is the illegitimate son of a very legitimate principle. Call it the "Fortress Zion" paradigm--we talk of our homes, family, church as being a fortress against the outside world; it is not an enormous leap to believe that since this fortress is under attack, that we must hunker down and weather the storm. This mentality gives expression in our tendencies to limit our friendly associations to members (I do it too), to only participate exclusively in Church humanitarian projects (if we participate at all), and to consider the works of Sherri Dew (poignant though they may be) as the pinnacle of our cultural edifice. As Elder Neal A. Maxwell has noted: the love of the gospel leads us into the fray, not away from Ninevah.

As a caveat, I only question Deseret Book because it is a cooperation that publishes many, many things by many authors with doctrinally unsound positions. As such, I believe that it must be seen as an entity separate from the church. I suppose the broader question is this...what relationship does having a distinct cultural identity have to our spirituality/theology? How "peculiar" must we be? And do we have something to offer society that the evangelical culture does not? While other utopian societies demonized dancing, the arts...the Mormons were the first to bring it to the West. President Kimball remarked: "Members of the Church should be peers or superiors to any others in natural ability, extended training, plus the Holy Spirit which should bring them light and truth."

In other words, we need to give a good name to the scholarship, the art, the music of the Christian faithful. Jewish scholarship has been wonderfully represented, but their orthodoxy has largely crumbled under the weight of modernity. Christian scholarship has melted under the heat of the culture wars. Mormons remain as the wild card.

Sticking it to Obama

2008-05-10T08:10:00.001-07:00

Tired of reading stories from journalists transfixed by Obama's almost mythical ability to pacify and conciliate?

Read this...

Tortured Logic: What Latter Day Saints are to make of torture...

2008-05-05T07:06:00.000-07:00

I read this article today on a Latter Day Saint interpreter/interrogater in Iraq who committed suicide when she saw the interrogation techniques being used (now I know it's the Huffington Post, but you can confirm the facts of the case through other sources). This raises some questions for me...

1) It's one thing to be in direct combat, where you essentially kill or be killed (as horrific as even that situation is). What of those who are asked by their leaders to interrogate criminals who are defenseless? How much accountability do they have?

2) How should Moroni be used as our exemplar in this situation? He did not torture...he saw the subjects of the interrogation as battlefield combatants and killed them on the spot if they would not swear an oath to give up their arms and their aggressive ideology of war.

3) Let's just remember that we join an infamous fraternity when we torture...(the Gulag, the concentration camps--both the South African and Nazi versions, and many notable others)...

It's one thing to think about this ruffian, hardened CIA agents who live on the edge of morality...it's quite another to think of a Latter Day Saint daughter of Zion (a returned missionary, no less) who's driven to madness by this parallel universe...

Spiritual Optometry

2008-04-26T13:13:00.000-07:00

You know what? I've got a pathbreaking insight that is going to shake up the discipline of the social sciences forever...

Life is tough.

But if you think that was revolutionary, try this one on for size...

Life is wonderful.

Let's face it: at the end of the day, all of us are going through similar experiences through one venue or another. As the widow of Charles Lindbergh noted (I'm paraphrasing out of blatant laziness in my desire to research): if suffering created wisdom, then all the world would be wise. Yet we know that the world...indeed, even our next door neighbor might not be particularly wise.

This is the beauty of the gospel--it grants us the privilege of living the deliberate life. A life sharpened by emotions, dulled by pleasure, and fulfilled by love. The gospel invites us to laugh, mourn, and cry (out of both joy and pain). To use C.S. Lewis' tired analogy about how the gospel is like the sun (he doesn't believe in it b/c he sees it but because he by it he sees everything else), the gospel gives us a divinely inspired narrative. Why so much emphasis on "the plan," after all...we all know that there's madness in the world far beyond what we Americans can comprehend beyond the token CNN news clip?

Because the existence of "the plan" isn't the point--many of those have been offered. It's the wonderful duality of the plan that so blesses us: we aren't just a class of the created order to fulfill the whims of a distant sovereign, we aren't just another stage in life's scheme only to be winnowed off as weak link. We have the impertinence to maintain that there's more to life than simply praising a distant Logos (which is what all of Christianity basically does, even if they don't realize it) or than trying to out-Darwin our neighbor after we convince ourselves that we are the "fittest" meant to survive economically, etc. In such circumstances, yes, life pretty much sucks...especially if you're the one being Darwin-ed. We can convince ourselves that such things are "reality," but then again, Zion is a "reality." Reality can be a democratic experience...

In other words, the beauty of life does, even in a gospel sense, depend on the eye of the beholder...the question remains as to how often we go to our spiritual optometrists...

Random Insight

2008-04-18T11:50:00.000-07:00

So you know how guys and girls make so many sweeping statements about how one or the other gender reacts? Perhaps some of them might be based in reality...but methinks that most of the time we do it to protect ourselves...that way, we feel safe in exposing this most sensitive part of who we are...whether guys describe girls in a sweepingly negative way (protecting themselves against a past wound by creating the feminine "other) or guys describe themselves in neutral or positive ways (protecting themselves against transperancy by trying to make themselves look mainstream."

Next time you hear someone say "Guys think..." or "Girls think..."--listen carefully...they're sharing very sensitive information...

A Story to Tell: The Encroaching Fear of Nothingness or How Mormons have a Lock on the Market of Meaning

2008-04-18T09:38:00.000-07:00

Having made my share of snide remarks about the sloppy use of vocab, analogies, and their obsessions with suffering, etc. within Latter Day Saint grassroots culture, I have to say this: most of them are ultimately fighting the greatest enemy: nothingness...meaninglessness. I believe the gospel is adaptable...even moldable to the greatest problems of the day. In Joseph Smith's time, outright athiesm simlpy was not en vogue...certainly, new theories that would provide the intellectual stimulus for nihlism (in an eternal sense) were beginning to surface (Marxism, Darwinism--both biological and social, etc.). At the time, it was most important to carve out a place in the free market of religions, an already crowded market place at that. This would explain the more aggressive proseltying tactics (let's face it: our ancestors loved to Bible thump).

Few people really believe the Bible that much these days (see this Harris Poll for stats on this...only 1/3)--the traditional foundations of Christianity in America are not what they once were. Where they can be found, I am not sure. But what is taking its place? The once authoritative voice for orthodox Christianity is no longer sturdy...what happens when individuals get slammed with life, death, marriage, divorce, etc.? Given the traditional foundation's absence, believers are left with nothing but their own personal whims. And this works for many...they can (unconsciouly), comfortably believe in their whims within the framework of the absurdly subjective culture of deconstructionism...true, their beliefs can be torn to shreds, but so can everyone else's, they say...why can't we all just get along and let ourselves live in our own faith (which really means, our own "delusion)? This, my friends, is not faith...it's preference. Faith is not much of a faith if you don't believe it to be transportable to others. If you believe the eternal cosmos exist only in your mind, I regret to inform you that your cosmos are not much of a cosmos.

This is the real enemy...the fear of nihlism...and we do whatever it takes to avoid it...ranging from fly fishing to hiking to mass-attending to (in its more horrific forms) drinking cyanide-laced Kool-Aid. And, my friends, Mormons have a lock on that market...no one else can better tell us of "the plan." True, most will make some token gesture: "I know God has a plan for me." Why the plan exists, though, they don't know. Why did God create man? They don't know...non-Mormon theologians essentially say that he created us for his own good pleasure (which requires that God take pleasure in suffering...awkward). We suggest that God created us to become like him. Indeed, those outside the faith think it blasphemy, think it against God's nature for him to have peers. We, on the other hand, insist that God's nature require that he have peers. For most, the plan comes down to "God created us, worship him...period." That's not very encouraging for people who are looking a cancer patient or refugee in the eye.

In other words, friends, we don't just have a message to share...we have a story to tell.

Invisible Bullets

2008-04-16T13:13:00.000-07:00

Methinks that I cling to intellectualism...maybe I'm just bitter because all the religious people seem happier than I do...

Well, now my friends I'm feeling like it's "Big Question/Sweeping Statement" time...yes, I speak of those "big ideas" that tend to be absurdly abstract, horrifically vague, and almost hopelessly Ivory Towerish...

But then again, who is better equipped to handle such questions than a faithful, thinking Latter Day Saint? Who else has the beautifully practical wisdom of Boyd K. Packer: "It has always been my feeling that the doctrines of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are not vague, nor mysterious, nor elusive. Rather, the gospel is what we do in our everyday lives, or, perhaps I ought to say, the gospel is what we ought to do." Meanwhile, Elder Neal A. Maxwell graces us with such provocative ruminations about almost every known philosophical question, ranging from faith and intellect, agency and omniscience, government, politics, and more. Our intellectual tools are well-equipped to such a task...

Stephen Greenblatt wrote a remarkable piece entitled "Invisible Bullets" some years ago. In the piece, he recounts a Thomas Harriott's visit to the Virginia colony of the New World and his first contact with the Algonquin tribes. Through an examination of Harriott's own account of the visit, Greenblatt posits a model through which cultural supremacy is gathered and maintained. Greenblatt starts with a discussion of athiesm in the early 17th-century, noting Machiavelli's comments that religion was the most effect form of civic discipline, that Moses was simply a learned magician, and that, as Christopher Marlowe noted, Harriott could do better than Moses at fooling dupes into buying into the act. Finally, Greenblatt discusses how Harriott depicts his interactions with and superiority over the Algonquin tribes. What does it come to, Greenblatt asks: technological superiority of the same brand as Moses over the Hebrew. How is it then that Harriott is able to talk of such notions that are so utterly subversive to his own conception of God? Here is where Greenblatt's model comes, and where it gets interesting for faithful Later Day Saints.

Greenblatt maintains that when an individual encounters a notion subversive to their own views, they engage in a three-step process: test, reorder, and explain. In so doing, we place the encounter at a sufficient distance from our core values, thus protecting ourselves from their subversive influences. By distancing ourselves, we contain the potential harm. Nevertheless, Greenblatt insists, attaining such a safe distance requires including the subversive elements in one's dialogue first. When Harriott discusses such foreign notions as aristocratic birth and demonology, we are not affected. We contain the effects these subversive notions have on us by distancing ourselves through place and time.

We also see this also in romantic comedies, in soap operas, and war films where a romantically involved couple hurl stinging insults yet are expected to get together in the end, where a terminally ill lover expresses her eternal romance. We see this when we read a story about a drug-dealer who meets the Mormon missionaries and then goes to prison later drugs later ("they planted a seed"). When someone loses a loved one to an accident, we talk about "the plan," about "experience," and about the refining capacity of suffering. Containment is our way of holding off meaninglessness, even as the book or movie jerks us through "our own constantly shifting allegiences."

Indeed, the Book of Mormon itself should be a horrendously subversive document to our sensibilities...an entire people essentially destroying themselves through pride, vainglory, and their own depravity? Yet Mormon/Moroni go through the same process as Harriott: they test (see Mormon chpts. 6 when Mormon faces cold reality about his people's agency: "Oh ye fair ones, how could ye have departed from the ways of the Lord"), they record (compare Greenblatt's description: "the moments in which we hear voices that seem to dwell realms apart" from the power structure to Moroni's "I speak unto you as though ye were present"--"you" meaning the only hope for writing the BOM") and explaining ("For the purpose of convincing Jew and Gentile that Jesus is the Christ"). Wherein there was once madness, now there is sense.

How can we adopt this to our own purposes? After all, this might sound like academic mumbo-jumbo, but we do it all the time. Is it good? Is it bad? Stay tuned.

Retraction

2008-04-13T19:06:00.000-07:00

I offer an addendum to the post: "Exaggeration: A Gospel Necessity." I have been sufficiently rebutted by the following scripture coupled with this talk: Mosiah 4:15 and Elder Callister's masterwork on the necessity for refinement in the celestial kingdom.

The first: it's simple...when you're sober, you are precise, cool, even-handed. No hyperbole necessary. Plus, this completely contradicts the sense of balance that pervades teachings about the gospel ("see that you do these things in wisdom and in order").

The second...we must ask the question of how careful the Lord is when using language. Does he use hyperbole, metaphor, and sometimes deconstructible analogies when describing gospel principles? Yes, sometimes. However, such teachings were openly considered to be inferior to the purer stuff given to the apostles (see Matthew 13).

Point being, while exaggeration might be employed, it is definitely not the celestial modus operandi...

Ruminations

2008-04-10T08:15:00.000-07:00

So last night Arthur I had a tangled web of a conversation...teeming with ideas, tangents, tidbits, and outliers. Sorting it out would not only burden the reader with seemingly mindless meanderings of a couple o' wannabe ivory towerniks, it would also be assuming that the words of a couple good ole' boys are actually fit to print! Presumptuous indeed!

That said, here was a major theme that directed the ebb and flow of our conversation. What is a construct? Generally, it is considered a set of ideas or practices that exists within particularized circumstances in history or contemporary society: femininity, dancing, sports. All of these practices carry with them certain values, norms, boundaries that must not be crossed if one wants to engage in that society. Most often, the assumption behind discussing such things is that constructs must be "deconstructed"--we point out cases where images of femininity have changed, where "church ball" (typically seen as a time where men can exercise their masculinity in good brotherly associations) becomes a barroom brawl (sans alcohol). We look at how dancing amongst the early Saints and dancing among modern Saints are radically different from each other(my ancestors would drop their mouths in horro at seeing a BYU dance competition). So if such things are constructs where not all parts of it are directly expressions of a gospel principle (which they obviously are, otherwise, there would have been no change), then what are we to make of it when the Prophet asks us to do things that have no obvious relationship to gospel principles: women wearing one pair of earrings, men (at least when Harold B. Lee was prophet--though the "statue of limitations" on revelation, as Arthur noted, is still fuzzy) being clean-shaven, etc. Is it possible to accept the "realities" (I use "reality" because most postmodern theorists would cry foul that I even dare admit to pure truth) of social, gender, and national constructions while stay holding true to the teachings of the prophets concerning family and society?

In other words, is there such a thing as a heaven-sent construct? When we hear that women are naturally more nurturing, must we sweat over defending ourselves against social theorists who insist that such ideas are simply invented so society (feminists read: "men") can prevent women from infiltrating the positions of power? Given that the "natural" argument is the generalized one and ultimately unprovable, we thus find ourselves at a disadvantage with the feminists...all they have to do is point out the exception. Could we not entertain the notion that the question of "natural" nurturing is an ex post facto explanation along the lines of those propagated about why blacks did not receive the priesthood?

Believe it or not, discourse and consensus might be possible between secular academicians and Latter Day Saints. What think y'all?

Conference and Living-ness: The absolute relevance of the prophets to our day

2008-04-09T16:01:00.000-07:00

General conference was fantabulous...President Monson made a very interesting plea at the end of his Sunday morning session: come back. In any context, it would be a very nice gesture of Christian fellowhsip. In this context, it is that and more...President Hunter used very similar language when he became the prophet in 1994. What does this similarity of language tell us?

Incidentally, not long before President Hunter became the prophet, there had been a highly publicized series of excommunications against LDS academics--the (in)famous D. Michael Quinn being among them. President Hunter, like President Monson, implored those that harbored ill-will, those that were hurt or afraid, that they should come back and let the Church dry their tears. Incidentally, we have faced some measure of these same events recently. With the publication of Richard Bushman's biography, the forthcoming publication on the Mountain Meadows Massacre, and the general airing out of the Church's differences from mainstream Christianity, it is significant that President Monson extended his call to the "critic and to the transgressor."

And finally, when we're told to follow the living prophets...what does that mean precisely? I kind find volumes of writings from prophets of the recent past...indeed, I can find talks from apostles who spoke when Kimball, Benson, and Hunter were propherts. Therefore, how do we view those words? How valid are they to today's issues? How about when we quote J. Reuben Clark, Neal A. Maxwell, Brigham Young, or Heber J. Grant?

And for those who want some interesting, official insight into what makes doctrine as such, check out the newsroom.lds.org...do a search for "Approaching Mormon Doctrine"...interesting stuff there...

Response to Arthur (that might be interesting for others to hear)

2008-04-09T11:54:00.001-07:00

And sadly, I know the naivete of my own position. If I were writing a church manual on how to handle scholarship within a gospel context, I would almost certainly write something different. It would emphasize, simply put, the importance of developing a truth-seeking edge and intellectual rigor. It would not attempt to give many answers--it would focus on how to engage in "faithful questioning." And I would include Hugh B. Brown's classic talk, "An Eternal Question: Freedom of the Mind."

But you are right: when I hear an instructor say that s/he's going to give some "historical context," my stomach normally begins to turn a little. And you are also right about the reasons why they do not teach missionaries church history...I believe it is because 1) most people don't care about history that much and 2) what I call my "fat man" metaphor. Inconvenient history (polygamy, polyandry, MMM, etc.) makes for excess fat on the body of the church...but we don't burn it off by simply denying its existence. We exercise, we work, we lift weights so that our own body's processes can overpower these semi-natural obstacles. If you looked at my 14-year old photo, you would say I was a fat kid...and I still don't like that photo. But the reality is that I was still Russ--and I'm not ashamed of that Russ. He just had some things to learn--some things were keeping him back from being what he could be. Now I'm Russ in (slightly) better form, both socially and physically.

Before we can come to this realization, however, we must recognize that there really is fat...and that seeing the fat for what it is does not constitute heresy. My (slightly megalomanaical) attempt here is to shift the intellectual center of gravity within the grassroots culture of the Church (these days, the upper-echelons, at least collectively, are very much in favor of intellectual pursuits in a frank manner, so I understand).

And all, right here, on (www.russell-stevenson.blogspot.com)...

Thoughts on Pursuing Scholarship in the Church

2008-04-07T11:55:00.000-07:00

It's official: scholars, especially those in the humanities/social sciences, are the whipping boys for the grassroots of the church. I've blogged on this before, but it was a while ago, so hey why not?

I just extend a call to all of my bloggers who have ever been faced with a theoretical, historical, or philosophical question concerning doctrine or church history...FIND THE ANSWERS! I just had an opportunity to talk with a future pastor last night...wonderful experience. Good man and a helping soul...but sure enough, I began talking w/him about politics, religion, and (the good Mormon politico that I am) Mitt Romney. His first response: "I don't THINK Romney's a polygamist" (emphasis his)...

Now I could have said that we don't practice that anymore, such things are things of the past. Next question (even if unspoken): why did you practice it AT ALL? Well, there's answer #1): there were more women than men, etc. etc. blah blah (which is not supported by the evidence but whatever you like...) and #2) well, that's just what was commanded by God. Neither of these answers (even though the latter is correct) make for good discourse...too many atrocities have been justified using similar rationales.

Fortunately, I was equipped for such a question...I knew it would come up at some point so I immersed myself in the more controversial aspects of the practice (though I'm FAR, FAR from knowing everything)...I was equipped to give him a decent answer in language that accurately reflected our morality, our faith in our fathers' morality, and our willingness to stomach how our fathers' viewed marital systems. If I had not immersed myself in this information, I would be left saying: "Well, we just don't do that anymore." And that, I've found, generally leaves more questions than answers...

My friends...it is for this reason that we MUST NOT be afraid of our history...we can have zeal AND knowledge simultaneously. And there are great resources that can provide us with INTELLECTUALLY RESPECTABLE answers to the stickiest of questions. In this age of publicity, we must be willing to engage the public questions of the day--polygamy, the Mountain Meadows Massacre. The Church has even invested a mountain of money in publishing Joseph Smith's papers in their entirety just to demonstrate this spirit of willingness to engage the public. We, as good Latter Day Saints, must do no less.

Now THIS, mein amigos, is fascinating stuff...

2008-04-02T17:43:00.000-07:00

Willpower...why don't we do what we want to do sometimes?

This study suggests that when we expend our willpower on one task, we might lose it in another. Common sense, but it's sometimes nice to see it in print. So if you're spending all your willpower in not eating chocolate, don't expect to have a iron will in studying for your examinations. If you're in a draining relationship that requires willpower to maintain, don't be surprised to see other goals experience a slowdown as well.

Just some thoughts as I imbibe in some early Christian history (Pliny the Younger was a punk).

Mother Theresa, Mormonism, and Faith: "I look, and do not see; listen and do not hear"

2008-04-01T09:50:00.000-07:00

Another day in the ivory tower...yeah, anybody who tells you that academia is free-wheeling, undogmatic study in search of truth is a dirty liar, woefully mistaken. In fact, they probably haven't set foot in a grad. seminar. There is a culture, even a sacred culture, that is sanctified in ways at least as rigid as any Christian doctrinal system...in many ways, more so. AKA...any talk of religion being doctrinaire while academia is the all-seeing eye of truth...well, pots loves calling kettles...ahem...

So a recent revelation: Mother Theresa faced a spiritual crisis for the vast majority of her life. As she herself noted, even as she was teaching about the love of God, she could not feel it...indeed, she doubted God's very existence. Her cheery demeanor was a front, "a mask" or a "cloak that covers everything." She worried at what seemed to be a chain of unanswered prayers: "The more I want him--the less I am wanted." Even more, she wondered at her purpose in even laboring: "What do I labor for? If there be no God, there can be no soul--if there is no soul then Jesus--you also are not true"). Theresa, it might be said by some (though not by me), was living a double life.

While this talk does not inherently equate athiestic temptations, it is heady stuff for those of the faith--any faith. It poses piercing questions about ourselves, how we see God and revelation. One acquaintance suggested that Theresa faced this anguish because "she was not baptized into the Mormon church." While I am an enormous proponent of missionary work and baptisms, I would suggest that this stance questions the stance taken by the First Presidency: individuals outside the faith can be afforded portions (some greater, others lesser) of the Spirit. Think of this: MOther Theresa was one of the great humanitarians of our time (alongside Herbert Hoover--another post) and faced gnawing doubts about the existence of God. With our supposed "testimonies," how much good do we do? Theresa managed to do better with her few bits of truth than I do with its fulness. If Latter Day Saints are to make any claim to greater light and truth, we (and really, I) must do better.

Exaggeration: A Gospel Necessity

2008-03-31T08:10:00.000-07:00

A strange title? Yes. An exaggerated one? Perhaps. By the time you're done reading this post, hopefully, I'll have triggered a minature chain reaction in how you understand the purposes of exaggeration...and hence, more sympathy when you see it at home, at church, and for you readers of modern history, even when you read scholarly monographs (though it sickens me to think that I could ever have sympathy for the chattering class).

The gospel we believe is, in its purest form, a gospel of balance. It defies hysterics, insists on coolness, and dodges the doctrinal fire-and-brimstone of traditional Catholicism and Protestantism. At once firm and fragile, the system of principles we accept as truth constitute a delicately-balanced structure of weights and counterweights. Mercy and justice, joy and pain, "there is opposition in all things" (2 Ne. 2:11) (I'll sidestep the question of how evil fits into the plan...for now ;). As Elder Maxwell once noted in his fine work, That Ye May Believe, truth is not homogenous, but rather, competes within itself for the attention of its adherents. Within this context, we must see the gospel not as a monolithic entity but as a system of moving parts...a system that is only oiled by the blessings of the Atonement...

So what is the significance here? I would suggest to you that by understanding this model of gospel interrelatedness, we can better understand some of the teachings we hear. Perhaps, on numerous occasions, you've heard individuals say various principles are the "key" or the "most important" principles for living righteously or receiving God's blessings. I conducted a search on lds.org of the terms "most important" and "principle"; I found that numerous principles have been referred to as the "most important." Here is a small sampling: self-examination,
obedience , and love,

Now obviously, there is a great deal of overlap here; however, if words mean anything at all to us (and they do...otherwise He wouldn't have gone to the trouble of having his prophet translate hundreds of pages into published form), then we must address how all three of these principles (and doubtless others as heard in talks, lessons, etc.) can be the most important at once.

It's a matter of discourse practicality and a little tinge of public relations. If, when asked to speak, all we droned about every time is that the gospel was a system of doctrinal checks and balances, it would become quite tiresome indeed. However, if you examine the teaching methods of the prophets and apostles, both ancient and modern, they are generally quite free-wheeling, even sprawling...touching on this doctrine or that precept without as much regard for transition statements segues as we think of them. Granted the scriptures are not a bunch of random statements, but we seldom see an ideas devopment over the course of a few verses, instead giving a snippet and leaving the reader to sort it out for him/herself. Why is that?

I would suggest that these teachings are meant to be sprawling b/c the gospel in its purest form cannot be viewed in the context of one of its parts. Yet, in order for the idea to become readily accessible to us, we must compartmentalize the teachings. And while this compartmentalization can sometimes have unpleasant side effects (the "laundry list" gospel wherein we, unaware of our inconsistencies, pleasantly go about holding self-contradictory views that are reversible on a dime: "Do what you feel is right" vs. "Keep your promises"--both are correct teachings in given circumstances, but neither are absolute), if we engage the compartmentalization with a knowledge of its side effects, then we can preserve the benefits while discarding the unpleasantries.

So with this in mind, I try not to be confused at the numerous talks that describe some gospel platitude as being the keystone principle (as an example, I've heard that "gospel is there to comfort the irritable and irritate the comfortable"). While we can still isolate principles for individualized analysis, we must still be on guard lest our speech become sloppy...such sloppiness tends to confuse and define faith all at once. And such a tendency is perilous business when a soul is at stake.

Femininity, Attractiveness, and the Cult of Pious Beauty

2008-03-28T14:06:00.000-07:00

So in my time, I sometimes listen to occasional piece by Jack the Johnson. One is called "Posters." Some telling lines speaking of many typical girls:

"Looking at herself but wishing she was someone else
Because the body of the doll it don't look like hers at all

So she straps it on, she sucks it in, she throws it up, and gives a grin
Laughing at herself because she knows she ain't that at all

It was said by a University of Minnesota Professor that Brigham Young University is a campus that is "sexually charged." What makes for a campus of this brand? Is it obsession over body image, over dates, over hairstyles? What makes the romantic soul of BYU tick? Do LDS compare favorably with other college age students in terms of how they view themselves...do they have heatlhy attitudes about romance? I do not have answers to these question; however, they do present a begged question: "What does the gospel and the prophets have to say about body image?" Indeed, it is a real issue, and it is hard to simply brush off with a "Well, you just need to know that you're just fine" or that "Boys aren't THAT concerned with your waistline." Unfortunately, few believe such advice, and in the case of the latter, the woeful truth is that some actually are concerned. However, as Elder Packer noted, doctrine understood changes behavior best. Let's plumb the depts...see what we can find on this current social problem.

President Faust has declared that "femininity is not just lipstick, stylish hairdos, and trendy clothes. It is the divine adornment of humanity." President Faust continued, decrying the presence of women boxers and wrestlers in the sports arena. Therefore, to President Faust, femininity seems to rest on making distinctions between the sexes. Is there anything inherently wrong, immoral about women boxing or wrestling? I would suggest that its wrongness comes not in its substance but more as a symbol that walls between the genders are breaking down...the practical outcome of which means that gender roles are blurred.

But I digress...the reality is that females are encouraged on the grassroots level to enhance femininity. While we constantly hear about the need to avoid vanity, there coexists with that teaching a similar drive to get married...indeed, even President David O. McKay noted: "It is not my purpose to discourage efforts to enhance physical beauty. When given by birth, it should be nurtured in childhood, cherished in girlhood, and protected in womanhood. When not inherited, it should be developed and sought after in every legitimate and healthful manner."

Therefore, where is the "golden mean" between the doctrines against vanity and for pious beauty? And more importantly, how can these pro-beauty sentiments be kept in check, lest they spiral into the harmful influences of self-centeredness, elitism and outright brattiness? Some of my female viewers may question whether it is so bad that beautiful people tend to cluster together...after all, should not we associate with those who resemble most our values? We don't actually have to be friendswith those poor souls who are plagued by less-than-attractive features, do we? Of course, you act pleasant enough around them, but we all know that deep in your gut, you're looking around you thinking: "If a cute guy/girl walked in here, I could outflirt any guy/girl in the room..." You know that when another guy/girl might talk about how a guy/girl was flirting with her, you're thinking that the other guy/girl must've been 1) desperate, 2) charitable, or 3) of that school called the "recreational" school of flirting...

Maybe we justify these tendencies by dropping some tripe about how we know our own talents and magnify them. Yeah...just like Washington lobbyists "magnify" their talent for persuasion and Mafia hitmen magnify their talents of marksmanship...

Their must be an element of pious beauty...and one that does not deny the realities of our physical beauty and our gospel. Brethren and sistren, please do opine...President Kimball (and in some ways, the Proclamation) suggests that learning about what it means to be a man/woman is a key element of our lifetime in mortality. Maybe we could have some light shed on it via scriptures, quotes, and especially personal experience.

Confidence: The Delusion of Champions

2008-03-27T12:22:00.000-07:00

Proceeding onward and upward...

Before doing so though, a word about "discourses." We need to recognize that there is not a Mormon rhetoric--there are Mormon rhetorics. They swirl around us through a sacrament meeting w/o our knowing it. There is a discourse of obedience ("Follow the Brethren"), a discourse of sacrifice ("Come Come Ye Saints"--this fits under other rubrics too, but I would argue sacrifice is the overarching theme when we discuss this hymn), a discourse of dating, of individualism ("Read it for yourself"), a discourse of Atonement and so forth. And not all of these discourses fully blend with each other well, nor do they fully represent the gospel...we must cut through the discourses to see what kind of subterranean gospel currents are at work. We must not get bogged down in the lapping waves on the surface--though such movements are essential for negotiating our way through the Church in real-time. So why doesn't the Lord just give it to us plain? 1) We're humans; we are incapable of such daring-do and 2) it would miss the point entirely. It would be like giving food to a lion as we're trying to train it in hunting...let's begin.

Obsessing over agency w/o its mother reality of Christ's atonement might well be seen as the highest form of adolescent rebellion. From the scriptures, we learn that agency is in actuality a product of the Atonement: "And because they are redeemed from the fall, they are free forever" (2 Nephi 2:26). Yet, I fear, in our efforts to distinguish ourselves from our evangelical brothers/sisters, we emphasize free agency and its enforcement at the expense of agency's source. All too often, self-esteem is blended and sometimes, wrongfully (though often rightfully) w/this emphasis on free agency: "Good choices lead to good self-esteem."

But certainly we are to have self-esteem; as Elder Packer once pronounced: when he hears us struggle with problems aimlessly, he wants to thunder that we're children of God and have the powers of divinity within us. Additionally, for a God who is willing to weep over the wickedness of his children, it is hard for me to see a God nodding with approval as his child is sitting in the corner telling themselves repeatedly that are simply not making the cut. The NT provides us some creative tension on this point (the OT is similarly ambiguous on self-esteem; the Hebrew word for pride is remarkably ambiguous, as it is used to describe God's greatness as well...we'll discuss the NT just b/c it's more easily palatable for those who aren't ready to grapple with the commands to destroy the inhabitants of Canaan). Interestingly, the Greek word for "pride" in the NT essentially means "to shine more than"--again, remarkably ambiguous. Additionally, we are told "let our light so shine." It's obvious that we all have varied talents, and these talents will, of necessity, stand out above the rest.

And yet, and yet, the discourse of personal righteousness MUST be contextualized within the Atonement. Many of us do not seem adequately equipped for such a contextualization, certainly not with our discourse tools readily available. Part of that is obviously due to the transcendence of the event..."no tongue can describe." Yet I also think that this intimidating reality has the unintended side effect of scaring us into not even approaching the reality of the Atonement head on...its implications for everything we do. It's much easier to tell somebody to pay 10%, to give food to the missionaries, even to be chaste, then to teach them how to get know a man whom we call resurrected. And with that, we can easily call him righteous. There are good reasons why the first question of the temple recommend interview has nothing to do with individual activities and everything to do with Christ. This pseudo-gospel of checklist Mormonism is really just Calvinism warmed-over--a stable social order of shared values and goals as everyone anxiously hopes that their good works is a sign that that they're saved. It makes for a good social order, but whither the belief in Christ? As good ole' Chet noted: Calvinism (and its illegitimate descendant, Latter-Day Calvinism), was a "highly credible mistake."

Yet Mormonism is audacious enough to claim that it can be done. Self-esteem means, to us, that we find the vital center of time and all eternity--the garden of Gethsemane. Once the center of eternity is found, the center of our lives will be found as well. Without the center in place, Chet's quip becomes disturbingly correct: Shall I tell you where the men are who believe most in themselves? For I can tell you. I know of men who believe in themselves more colossally than Napoleon or Caesar. I know where flames the fixed star of certainty and success. I can guide you to the thrones of the Supermen. The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums…" (even if they're in asylums that bring home six-figures).

Confidence--the Winner's Delusions?...Part I

2008-03-27T08:06:00.001-07:00

Self-esteem is a particularly awkward gospel principle. First, some conceptual background/baggage/problematization/contextualization--take your pick...

Whereas our faith's culture tends to create this aura of mystique around "drawing the line," "making a stand," not all gospel principles function this way (though a great many do). Because of this emphasis on definitive gospel action, we run the risk of applying this model to the entirety our lives. And if we all we do is draw lines, we will most certainly create a picture of faith; the question is whether that picture is something that belongs in an art museum, on a fridge, or, worse still, in the first-grade classroom. By defining our faith by a metaphor, we must accept the consequences/limitations of that metaphor. Therefore, if faith merely becomes an act of defiance, a decision, an execution...well, such a model, I would suggest, fails to address the process leading up to the decisionary moment. And the faithful listener is left wondering if there is anything more to life than a conglommerate of decisions.

I would suggest that Latter Day Saints need to be open to a variety of models in their self-conceptualization of righteousness. A common formulation of righteousness often comes in the idea of using agency wisely, properly. Yet what are the consequences of using this model? Our righteousness becomes compartmentalized, a list of good things. While this model is effective in that it allows anyone who does A,B, and C to call themselves good people, it also threatens (though seldom actualizes) the threat of having "the form of godliness" while "denying the power thereof."

Part II--Applying this discrepancy to a real world gospel question...

"This is No Crackpot Church"

2008-03-24T14:53:00.001-07:00

Another winner from the Nice Guy...

He might be right...BUT, you know a candidate is having to prove to his constituents that he does not have leanings towards crackpotism...

Hope in a Jar

2008-03-24T00:02:00.000-07:00

Interesting title, eh? Well, ladies, it's the name of a fascinating book being used in one of the graduate seminars. And it's about? Makeup...that bain of every woman's existence. But yet it might be called "hope"--the ramifications are tremendous...

We need not go into the books arguments here, but I do have this question ladies...why do you wear makeup? What does it say about ourselves, our society? In sum, do you think that this title is basically correct or off the mark? Why or why not?

Talk to me.

Tactical Morality

2008-03-22T10:16:00.001-07:00

My friends...

I have stumbled across a bit of wisdom that I find fascinating...please do give me your thoughts on it...

Elder Neal A. Maxwell gave a talk at the Behavioral Sciences Symposium at BYU back in 1976. In this talk, he drops a tantalizingly revolutionary method of examining the commandments by which we live. He suggests that not only fundamental, eternal principles play a role in our salvation, but also that mundane, largely symbolic standards can save us as well. How so?

Elder Maxwell maintains that in order for us to be of any assistance at all in the salvation of others, we must be able "preserve our identity in the way that is most helpful to us and to our fellowmen." The preservation of this identity involves a real element of "tactical morality"--morality that is focused on not "unintentionally [assuming] the appearance of evil in its various cultural customs and dispensational dimensions." Cultural norms, therefore, become significant not because there is a law written in the heavens that, for example, we must not drink coffee or that women must only wear one pair of earrings. They are significant if only to prove that we are different from the rest. He cites Paul in 1 Cor. chpt. 7 where he instructs the sisters to keep their heads covered during prayer. Why? Was there anything inherently wrong with having the head uncovered? At the time, the cultural norm was that only women of loose morals went around with their heads uncovered. Additionally, the cultural norm had been that only men went without a head covering. Given Paul's otherwise progressive doctrines about women's roles ("All are one in Christ"), some sisters, so I've read, almost certainly began believing that they should not have to conform to the cultural standard. After all, were not all equal and should not both genders be treated similarly? Paul responded that they were missing the point: 1) removing the head covering would make them look as the adulteress if they removed their head-covering, and 2) it would constitute a symbolic blending of gender roles. This cultural norm served an important function, even if it had a limited relationship to gospel teachings.

Elder Maxwell's provides a neat answer to a number of questions as to why we keep some of the standards we do. Why do temple recommend interviews prohibit coffee while allowing numerous soda drinks to pass by? Is there something magical about the 16th birthday where suddenly the teenager becomes prepared for dating? Why not the 17th birthday? Why is it that the standards of modesty are indeed quite different from the standards of modesty in the early 19th-century? After all, if our ancestors were to see the standards of the vast majority of Latter Day Saint girls, they would bemoan the state of Zion. And yet the Church has never encouraged wearing dresses or bonnets. In fact, to ask such questions, Elder Maxwell maintains, is to miss the point in the same way the New Testament sisters did. Cultural norms DO play a role in our moral standards.

So those who wonder about why keep the standards we do...in some ways, you don't have to wonder because no one has claimed that there is anything inherent to them. It's about "preserving our identity," about being different for its own sake. I like it...it has a radical edge to it...we get all the benefits of being a straight-out non-conformist ("So why don't you party it up?" "Just trying to express myself") AND it sends a more powerful message than most other forms of non-conformity (which are far more common than what we do). Someone who's straight-out Goth might get a "well, he's just doing his own thing." But a Latter Day Saint who turns down a drink? That raises eyebrows...

Academia, Mormons, and the Ivory Tower

2008-03-21T19:56:00.000-07:00

So I just returned from an oh-so-lovely jaunt with my fellow academics. Graduate school has a way of clearing up one's view of world, much in the same way a 2x4 clears up the thinking of a donkey. And that's no compliment...

Tonight, I think I saw the academic community for what it is: a cloistered, slightly delusional, crew of self-congratulating elitists. Harsh words for some of my own people? Perhaps, but it is only because I feel that academics have betrayed academia--and traitors have no illustrious legacy in my world.

Tonight, I listened as a professor decried the evils of the religious right all the while seriouslyclaiming that he could not fill out an NCAA bracket; his wife was a psychic and had not informed him of the eventual outcome. I watched as professors chatted with professors about theorists, obscure books, and arcane theories, most of which your work-a-day hoi polloi would dismiss as, at best, irrelevant, and at worst, a near-criminal use of their tax dollars. Bush-bashing is considered a given, almost a religious rite necessary for purification from the sins of common society.

Yet I cannot distance myself from the academic process, a process that has done so much for me. Rather, I am disappointed that the process I found so noble in adolescence is so crudely political. While this comes as no surprise to most, I really believed that academics, so intent on the pursuit of truth, would have at least some freedom from the taint of schoolyard alliances.

These feelings run hot, paradoxically, because I might not be as passionate as I could be about the issues and get upset at anyone who is; perhaps I am not really a democrat (note the small "d"). Why? I trace it to my Latter Day Saint faith--a seemingly odd source until we consider the real political dynamic. Aside from a couple social issues, the politics and culture of the Latter Day Saints really makes for the American wild card. Our cultural roots produces enough ambiguity that we might, if we chose, march to our own political drum. Harold Bloom has accused us of blending too neatly into the American right; perhaps on the grassroots level he is right. Once Latter Day Saints recognize this, Utah--indeed, the whole of the intermountain West might be in play again. Democrats would be more than happy to overlook our stances on abortion and same-sex marriage--such things happen all the time (see Joe Lieberman's endorsement of McCain).

We do not recognize our own potential. Maybe I'll write a book someday about Mormons, the Wild Card in America, about how we have sold our political birthright for a mess of political porridge (namely Republican support for our same-sex marriage and pro-life stances). We do not need the Republican party or any party for these views to be legitimized. We can support constitutional amendments on same-sex marriage; you know that the instant we begin making overtures to the Democrats on other issues, they would be more than happy to take over a key Republican stronghold for the small price of softening their rhetoric on abortion and not demonizing for supporting a marriage amendment.

Latter Day Saints...recognize your power. As a Latter Day Saint first, a conservative second, and an academic third, I hope that Utah Latter Day Saints can show the political world that they're not easily manipulable...unlike the constituencies of the Huckster.

The Hero With A Thousand Faces

2008-03-18T18:23:00.001-07:00

You all know it...you just don't know that you know it. So Joseph Campbell writes this book called (guess what?) The Hero With a Thousand Faces. He argues that all hero myths derive from a single typology, a single archetype.

So now we get into the fun stuff...Campbell argues that "the hero" leaves his home of comfort, goes in search of a token or prize, and in doing so, begins to question his relationship to reality. Ultimately, s/he realizes a previously unrecognized potential , comes to terms with him/herself, and ultimately saves the society from whence he came.

Here's the scoop...look at the specifics of Campbell's "hero cycle" (see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hero_with_a_Thousand_Faces). Any comparisons to made with how we ourselves as heroes in mortality in light of the plan of salvation? Similarities? Differences? Most importantly, what can we learn from Campbell? Search ye therefore out of the best books, no? (and to my uberly-orthodox friends, yes, there are more "best books" than the standard works...at least Joseph Smith thought so).

I Am Legend

2008-03-18T15:52:00.000-07:00

A profound movie...even if much of it is traditional save-mankind-from-the-aliens hackney. But there is meaning here, my friends...you might even use it as a (gasp) gospel object lesson...

But before I share my two bits...I'll give an e-drink to the man/woman who comes up with the best gospel application...GO!