Stephen Webb<\/a> to our ward today. \u00a0He was able to attend sacrament meeting and almost all of Sunday school with us, before he and I had to leave for the airport.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
He was, he said, very positively impressed.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
I was certainly happy to have him there, and we had an excellent conversation on the way up to the airport, ranging from temples (he recently attended the open house of the newly completed Indianapolis Indiana Temple), through the organization of Mormon wards, LDS hymnody, Catholic and Mormon responses to divorce, and Plotinian Neoplatonism and its afterlife among medieval Isma\u2019ili Shi\u2018ites.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Last night, during the question-and-answer session with him and Margaret Barker, he told our gathering that he considers Joseph Smith \u201ca prophet.\u201d \u00a0It would be interesting to \u201cunpack\u201d that statement, to know exactly what he means by it, but, certainly, his attitude toward Joseph is very positive.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
I\u2019m reminded of the famous Yale\u00a0literary scholar Harold Bloom, who is Jewish:<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhatever his lapses, Smith was an authentic religious genius, unique in our national history.\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n\u201cI also do not find it possible to doubt that Joseph Smith was an authentic prophet. Where in all of American history can we find his match? . . . \u00a0 In proportion to his importance and his complexity, [Joseph Smith] remains the least-studied personage, of an undiminished vitality, in our entire national saga.\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n\u2013 Harold Bloom, The American Religion: The Emergence of the Post-Christian Nation<\/em>\u00a0(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992), 82, 95<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u00a0 My wife and I brought\u00a0the Catholic philosopher Stephen Webb to our ward today. \u00a0He was able to attend sacrament meeting and almost all of Sunday school with us, before he and I had to leave for the airport. \u00a0 He was, he said, very positively impressed. \u00a0 I was certainly happy to have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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