One meme that is constantly bandied about the bloggernacle is the idea that people leave the church because they are too black and white in their thinking. That if people could just see more shades of gray then they wouldn’t be so disappointed in the shadier aspects of Mormon history. In fact, I think this view is very common amongst liberal leaning Mormons. I also think that this idea does more harm than good and ignores the issues and people it is meant to help. It is the liberal equivalent of the conservative Mormon’s “get your mind right by reading the scriptures and praying more.” And it is just as helpful. I see at least three problems with this idea.
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Ken Brown at the blog C. Orthodoxy started a meme asking bloggers involved in biblical studies what are the top 5 books or scholars which have influenced them the most. Here’s FPR’s contribution, organized by author:

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In previous posts in this series I have danced around the historicity question. In this post I will tackle this head on. The best advice I can give believers who are beginning to judge what is historical in scripture and what is not is the following (and yes I mean to yell this). YOU ARE TOO BIASED TO BE A GOOD JUDGE OF WHAT IS HISTORICAL AND WHAT IS NOT. You would do much better to focus on finding the best historical context in which to place the events and stories found in the scriptures. When you start to become uncomfortable about some of the answers you find, congratulations, you are now unbiased enough to start answering the historicity question. In fact, by that point, you will implicitly understand how to answer the historicity question and I won’t have to explain it to you.
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What follows is my review of the film <a href="http://www.untoldstoryofblackmormons.com/"Nobody Knows, The Untold Story of Black Mormons. I have divided it into three sections. The first section, “Review,” is just that, my review of the movie. I think it is important to separate reviewing the movie that was actually made, as opposed to one I expected or hoped for. The only critiques that matter are the ones in the “Review” section. The other two sections, “What I was expecting” and “What I would like to see but probably never will” should not be taken as criticism of the movie. The other sections represent my thoughts. Since my thoughts were not part of the movie making process, they don’t count as a review. Margaret Young and Darius Gray made a beautiful movie with a beautiful vision, and that’s what I hope to get across in the review proper.
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I like to think of FPR and FMH as the polar opposites of the bloggernacle. [Read more...]

In my previous post I mentioned that there are four major schools of thought when it comes to how much of the Old Testament is historical. By schools of thought I am describing approximate ranges of thought, not fixed positions.
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I’ve been trying to think of a way of introducing a series of posts I plan on writing. However, all of the introductions I have started writing have come off sounding incredibly stupid. So, I’ll just start out by saying that I have been thinking about archaeology, history, and the scriptures and I plan on writing a few posts about it.
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Now, let’s all do a little critical reading of the Bible together. [Read more...]

There are a couple of events in the Dallas area that I will be attending in the coming months. I thought others might like to know about them. Both are free and open to the public. If anyone wants to get together before or after I am open for that. If you don’t want to see me, I can’t say that I blame you, but the events should be pretty good.
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