Faith-Promoting Rumor
We’re please to continue our series with a Spotlight on the University of California, Santa Barbara, provided by PhD student Stephen Flemming. Steve, as most are aware, blogs on JI. You can find out more about him here. (more…) Read more
We’re please to continue our series with a Spotlight on the University of California, Santa Barbara, provided by PhD student Stephen Flemming. Steve, as most are aware, blogs on JI. You can find out more about him here. (more…) Read more
Testimony is clearly a central component of Latter-day Saint thought and culture. Testimony is a sacred discourse, with all of the power and potential that the sacred holds. One of my VCR-repair professors once came to church and remarked about the ubiquitousness of the term and how it is employed at the end of every talk and lesson. We devote entire sacrament meetings to the vocalization and production of this kind of utterance. Even in our publications and blogs, we... Read more
The follow post was written by oudenos as part of our continuing series on graduate education. Fall is approaching and applications to Humanities and Religious Studies PhD programs become due as early as the first week of December. Last year FPR posted a series of discussions concerning PhD students’ experiences in various programs at various institutions. This post is an attempt to revisit and revive those discussions for the sake of this year’s crop of applicants. Specifically, I want to... Read more
I’m a big fan of The Teaching Company. They have lots of good stuff on the Bible, world religions, and a bunch of lesser topics as well, like arts, philosophy, etc. It’s particularly interesting to hear Bart Ehrman and Luke T. Johnson lecture on Paul, since they have such contrasting approaches. (more…) Read more
Michel Foucault traces the West’s shift in concern from sexual acts to sexual desires to second-century Greek thought, a shift which was fully embraced and completed by Christianity, in his series, The History of Sexuality. This transition to concern for desires, the interrogation of desires, the confession of desires, and the hermeneutics of desire inform the modern conceptualization of the self, specifically the idea that our desires, when they are properly known to us through the act of interpreting them,... Read more
The parable of the Good Samaritan is well known and much beloved. The image of the caring Samaritan tending to the bruised and bleeding traveler speaks to the goodness of mankind; despite the self-love of the world. I have noticed that this parable often shows up in secular moral theory as an example of an acceptable religious concept for the public square (See “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited” by John Rawls). It is also used in a number of... Read more
[Note: In analyzing the passage describing Corianton’s sins, I do not seek to undermine in any way the Church’s emphasis on sexual purity. The benefits of chastity are marvelous and ineffable.] I’d like to consider Alma 39:5: Know ye not, my son, that these things are an abomination in the sight of the Lord; yea, most abominable above all sins save it be the shedding of innocent blood or denying the Holy Ghost? Traditionally, “these things” has been interpreted to... Read more
This is the topic for the newest Public Square discussion over at Patheos. I particularly like the article “What Happened to the Common Good?” by some Chris Henrichsen fellow. Check it out. Read more
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... Read more
Edit: This post is in response to the Thomas Marsh discussion here. I was recently present for the Thomas Marsh lesson in a ward not my own. Being aware of the larger context, that for Marsh, the milk issue was really the straw that broke the camel’s back, I felt compelled to speak up. The problem is always how to do so constructively, especially in a ward where they don’t know you at all. Here’s what I said. (more…) Read more
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