While some corners of the LDS church’s intellectual health have been thriving, including in some aspects of church curriculum, the LDS Newsroom, Church History, the Maxwell Institute, and even BYU Religious Education and Deseret Book, other corners of the Church Educational System and the secretive committee that vets all potential hires, speakers, and academic boards at BYU, have been silently blacklisting, banning, and investigating LDS scholars. The anecdotal evidence is increasingly persuasive that there is a campaign in some quarters... Read more

Latter-day Saints are studying the Old Testament this year.  Unfortunately, many LDS readings of the Old Testament adopt a hermeneutic wherein the stories in Genesis provide moral role models.  It seems that we have come to see the scriptures as a kind of guide book for living a moral life, in spite of the fact that the stories never tell their readers to emulate any of the characters.  If we adopt this reading strategy, we miss important ways of engaging... Read more

There I was looking at all the fascinating differences between the First Book of Moses called Genesis in the KJV and the Book of Moses in the Pearl of Great Price … such as the global change from third person to first person (e.g. Genesis: “God said” > Moses: “I, God, said”) … when to my surprise I saw this anti-anthropomorphism: Genesis 3:8 KJV And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool... Read more

So, I am still thinking about the interpretive claim made by another blog that “God is a child sacrificing, misogynist, racial bigot.”  I started writing a post about the nature of interpretation and the naivety behind the myth that the scriptures contain a meaning prior to human interpretation. What I have found objectionable about this particular reading is not simply its conclusions, but the way it presents these conclusions as the outcome of an unbiased reading of scripture.  While I... Read more

I recently came across a phrase from feminist theologian Hannah Bacon that I really liked.  She talked about a “generous orthodoxy,” a term used “to identify orthodoxy as an emerging, incomplete process that is never closed in on itself, always receptive to the voice of the other.” (See Bacon, “A Very Particular Body: Assessing the Doctrine of Incarnation For Affirming the Sacramentality of Female Embodiment,” in Women and the Divine: Touching Transcendence, eds. Gillian Howie and J’annine Jobling (New York: Palgrave Mcmillan,... Read more

Given some of the discussion of Martin Luther King, Jr. in some LDS venues, I thought it would be a good time to reread my own tribute written five years ago. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/faithpromotingrumor/2009/01/an-american-prophet/   Read more

The story of the appearance of Jesus Christ to the brother of Jared is one of the highlights of the Book of Mormon.  Searching out who exactly the author or authors of this chapter are can be illuminating. Let’s take a look: I can see five authors – how many do you count? 1. Moroni. The Book of Ether, we are told, is transcribed by Moroni on to plates. Ether 1:1 states: AND now I, Moroni, proceed to give an... Read more

I once wrote about the Jacob (pseud)epigraphon in the book of Alma, which I said I would follow up on but never did, and I won’t do it here. Because there are even more Old Testament pseudepigrapha to write about that are not old but new! The current issue of the Ensign features an article written in the first person as though by Adam. It looks to be the initial article in a series called “Old Testament Prophets,” coinciding with... Read more

This is a repost of an earlier post of mine that seems relevant today. How should we evaluate and adjudicate doctrinal and practical matters? As LDS we look to scripture, authoritative statements by leaders, and to the history of LDS practice and thought. Appeals to these sources of authority, however, not only fail to yield definitive answers, but also obscure the authority with which they are invested. The authority by which these sources are invested is never itself investigated. The... Read more

I believe that I recall the last time I posted M*.  It was April 2012.  JMax was defending Mormon racism and inventing a new history of the exclusion of those of African descent into LDS priesthood and temple rites.  (You can read the post and comments here.)  After they closed the thread without explanation, I decided that I had too many things going on in my life and I unlisted them from my RSS reader. (more…) Read more