![\"Munkacsy](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2015\/12\/800px-Munkacsy_-_christ_before_pilate.jpg\")
<\/a>I wish you a happy and blessed Good Friday.<\/p>\n
I wrote an article for Easter weekend that appeared late last night in Meridian Magazine <\/em>and\u00a0I hope that you\u2019ll give it a look: \u201cThe Resurrection Was So Real, It Transformed Ordinary Men into Fearless Witnesses.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n Our 2026 Easter message, written by Janet Ewell<\/a>, has just been published on the website of the Interpreter Foundation: \u201cEaster and Doctrine and Covenants 138: Our Harrowing of Hell, Our Descensus Christi ad Inferos<\/em>, Our Anastasis\u201d<\/a>:<\/p>\n Abstract:<\/strong> Easter should be a feast for all our senses. Early Christians recounted the events between Christ\u2019s death and Resurrection with joy, and much in their accounts is familiar to us. Doctrine and Covenants 138 describes and celebrates Christ\u2019s visit to the world of the spirits between his death and Resurrection. As this revelation becomes part of our Easter celebration, we, like the early Christians before us, will find our Easter to be the feast of feasts.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n I hope that you\u2019ll enjoy it, and that you\u2019ll read it either today (Friday) or tomorrow (Saturday), for which it\u2019s especially apropos.<\/p>\n 1 Onward, Christian soldiers, Refrain: One of the first steps in a serious, intellectually honest disagreement is to attempt to understand (and perhaps even to restate) the differing position of a discussion partner in such a way that she would recognize it as expressing her own actual opinion.<\/p>\n As regards the teapot-tempest that a few zealous critics have whipped up in one or two corners of the internet about the recent placement of Michael Hall\u2019s bronze sculpture of Jesus Christ Carrying the Cross<\/em> at Temple Square, this is a summary of my viewpoint that was posted just this morning at the Peterson Obsession Board:<\/p>\n I am now suggesting, the proffered summary says, that the Church\u2019s use of \u201ccross symbology\u201d on Temple Square \u201cis just akin to an illustration of New Testament happenings\u201d and that it indicates no significant shift from the past stance of Church leaders, at least one of whom expressly described \u201ccross symbology\u201d as \u201crepugnant.\u201d<\/p>\n [Acknowledged as indisputably true: \u00a0Whether other leaders of the Church used that precise word or not, there is certainly no shortage of statements from them expressing disapproval of \u201ccross symbology\u201d or, at least, no support for it. \u00a0As I said just the other day in my first response to this little controversy, a historical \u201cLatter-day Saint disinclination to use the cross as a symbol\u201d is \u201ctraditional (and undeniable).\u201d \u00a0Curiously, though, \u201cOnward, Christian Soldiers\u201d \u2014 see above \u2014 has been in the Latter-day Saint hymnal since the 1920s \u2014 or, in other words, for roughly a century.]<\/p>\n Please permit me to correct<\/em> that purported summary: \u00a0I don\u2019t think that the Michael Hall statue of Jesus Christ Carrying the Cross<\/em> is an instance of \u201ccross symbology\u201d any more than I regard Harry Anderson\u2019s illustration of The Crucifixion<\/em>, above, as an example of \u201ccross symbology\u201d \u2014 or of \u201ccloud symbology\u201d or \u201cthief symbology\u201d or \u201cancient Jew symbology\u201d or \u201cRoman soldier symbology\u201d or \u201ckneeling woman symbology\u201d). \u00a0Nor do I consider it \u201cjust akin to an illustration of New Testament happenings.\u201d \u00a0It\u2019s not<\/em> merely \u201cakin.\u201d \u00a0It absolutely is<\/em> an illustration of New Testament happenings. \u00a0A cross is an important part of the story of Jesus in the New Testament, just as a manger is (and just as the \u201cSea of Galilee\u201d and the Jordan River and fishing boats are).<\/em> \u00a0The story of Christ cannot be fully told without reference to the cross. \u00a0His crucifixion is, umm, a rather important part<\/em> of that story:<\/p>\n I offer an analogy: \u00a0Latter-day Saint artists have created many illustrations of the martyrdom of Joseph Smith in Carthage Jail. \u00a0These illustrations have, in every case that I can recall, depicted the mob\u2019s use of guns. \u00a0But such illustrations aren\u2019t instances of \u201cgun symbology\u201d among the Saints, nor of any \u201cadoration\u201d of those guns nor of a liturgical veneration of them. \u00a0The guns are depicted because they\u2019re an essential part of Joseph Smith\u2019s story. \u00a0Simply that. \u00a0So with the cross for part of the story of Jesus.<\/p>\n Although it\u2019s true that Latter-day Saints and the Church leaders who emerge from their ranks have historically rejected the veneration or \u201cadoration\u201d of the cross that is common in several Christian traditions (most of all on Good Friday, which happens to be today), it simply isn\u2019t<\/em> true, despite one poster\u2019s declaration, that Latter-day Saints \u201chave rejected all portrayals of the cross of Jesus as \u2018repugnant\u2019 and as not in keeping with the Mormon [sic<\/em>] faith.\u201d \u00a0In my prior comments on this subject (here<\/a> and here<\/a> and here<\/a>), I\u2019ve already provided specific visual counterexamples demonstrating that claim to be flatly false. \u00a0(See, too, this clip<\/a> from an official Church video of The Life of Jesus Christ<\/em>.)<\/p>\n Placing Michael Hall\u2019s statue on Temple Square indicates no reversal on the use of \u201ccross symbology.\u201d \u00a0We haven\u2019t adopted<\/em> \u201ccross symbology.\u201d<\/p>\n I think that this will be my last comment on the subject. \u00a0I\u2019m confident that most who read what I\u2019ve said on this topic have had no difficulty understanding what I\u2019ve said. \u00a0And I have no confidence at all that those who refuse to try to understand what I\u2019ve written, or who pretend to misunderstand it, will experience a change of heart.<\/p>\n That said, I will observe that, in recent years, I\u2019ve seen a few Latter-day Saint women wearing crosses as jewelry (which, by the way, doesn\u2019t bother me even slightly). \u00a0I think that Latter-day Saint objections to the cross have faded a bit over the past couple of generations, and I\u2019ll speculate that this may be related to a general fading of anti-Catholicism in (and beyond) our ranks. \u00a0Almost all of our early converts, in the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, came out of Protestantism, and they brought their hostility to Catholicism with them back when intra-Christian sectarian rivalries were much more intense than they are now. \u00a0But Protestant and ambient anti-Catholicism has also waned, I think \u2014 it was a big issue with John F. Kennedy, but \u00a0Joe Biden\u2019s Catholicism was scarcely mentioned \u2014 and, as our missionaries have had more and more success in Latin America and elsewhere abroad (but also in the United States), a large number of our converts are now themselves former Catholics. \u00a0They don\u2019t necessarily bring an aversion to the cross with them.<\/p>\n Please enjoy Conference!<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0 I wish you a happy and blessed Good Friday. I wrote an article for Easter weekend that appeared late last night in Meridian Magazine and\u00a0I hope that you\u2019ll give it a look: \u201cThe Resurrection Was So Real, It Transformed Ordinary Men into Fearless Witnesses.\u201d Our 2026 Easter message, written by Janet Ewell, has just […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":28969,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[9815,35139,9812,9824,2905,788],"class_list":["post-115576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-descensus","tag-doctrine-and-covenants-138","tag-harrowing-of-hell","tag-joseph-f-smith","tag-latter-day-saint","tag-mormon"],"yoast_head":"\n<\/a>
\nmarching as to war,
\nWith the cross of Jesus
\ngoing on before!
\nChrist, the royal Master,
\nleads against the foe;
\nForward into battle,
\nsee his banner go!<\/p>\n
\nOnward, Christian soldiers,
\nmarching as to war,
\nWith the cross of Jesus
\ngoing on before!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/a>