With the Olympics started it looks like all of the VP chatter will have to wait until after the Summer Olympics. The question had been whether or not McCain, or Obama, or both would announce there veep choice before the summer games. Alas, that was mostly wishful thinking on the part of us political junkies. We Obama supporters (I have no idea as to whether this applies to anyone else at FPR, so I mean Obama supporters in general),... Read more
The struggle over religious authority, who is right and who is wrong, and more importantly, what counts as a convincing argument is particularly pronounced in monotheistic faiths. When you have one God, one prophet, one Law, there must be one way. In many ways, this problem is more pronounced in young religions who are less stable and have more at stake in unity, and lack the maturity of critical reflection. Early Christianity is a great case study (and in many... Read more
“Smells and bells” is a short-hand, colloquial way of speaking about high church liturgy, especially Orthodox and Catholic. It is sometimes contrasted with “Happy Clappy” low-church liturgy of Pentecostals, Baptists, and many “non-denominational” churches. I’d like to consider LDS liturgical life in contrast to the smells and bells form to uncover a bit about what sorts of knowledge and experience these rituals are meant to convey. (more…) Read more
I was recently introduced to the term “new order” Mormons (or is it new order Mormonism). This is apparently not a new term, but nonetheless new to me. Do any of our erudite FPR readers have an interpretation of the label “new order” as it relates to Mormonism? What are its origins? Does anyone still use it to describe themselves? Since thinking about what it means to be a “new order” Mormon, I have not been able to get... Read more
In honor of the 161st anniversary of the Saints entering the Salt Lake Valley, I would like to explore the relationship between two of the most profound spiritual movements of the 19th century: ante-bellum African American spirituals and the rise of Mormonism. While the vast majority of work with regard to African Americans and early Mormonism has focused on the explicit role that African Americans played in Mormonism, and LDS attitudes to African Americans, I would like to examine some... Read more
In our two previous posts we discussed the curriculum as well as what to cover in the theory and introductory courses for our new major. In this post I’d like to raise the issue of how the “areas of emphasis” should be structured and who/where we could draw from in creating classes from these areas. Areas of emphasis (or areas of study–AoS) are organized differently depending on the organizing committee’s perception of “religious studies” as well as the school’s strengths. Below... Read more
“Reconciliations and Reformulations”: A Conference for LDS Graduate Students in Religious Studies Harvard University, February 20-21, 2009 http://faithandknowledge.org Many Latter-day Saints experience their scholarship and their religion as clashing cultures, each with its competing values and contradictory conclusions. Religious studies students especially struggle to reconcile their faith and the knowledge they acquire in graduate school. The forms this reconciliation take–including the failure to achieve reconciliation–become crucial episodes in a student’s life history. The purpose of the Faith and Knowledge Conference... Read more
The “Vision of Gabriel,” (aka Hazon Gabriel) a newly discovered Hebrew text written in ink on stone out of the antiquities market, made a big splash in the media over the last few weeks, and received some amount of coverage in the bloggernacle as well. Paleojudaica has been keeping track of all the coverage. First discussed in 2007 among a small group of scholars, the text has recently hit the media in a big way. The announcement of this text... Read more
Every so often I like to drop in and chat with you Mormons about your understanding of my epistle. There’s always been a great deal of interest in this passage: James 1:2-8 2 Consider it all joy, my brothers, when you encounter various trials, 3 for you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. 4 And let perseverance be perfect, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. 5 But if any of you lacks... Read more
Some time ago someone made a comment on one of our threads characterizing the LDS notion of revelation as a “hot sensation brought on by emotionally charged media.” In regard to the role of revelation in the conversion experience, the writer also felt “challenged” by the need to explain the revelatory experience to an investigator because he or she had “expected divine communication to be more clear.” I share the writer’s distaste for the maudlin and sentimental in media, from... Read more
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