Several years ago, I took a trip to Egypt with a group of students at the BYU Jerusalem Center. We spent several days touring the country, and returned to Cairo from Luxor on a sleeping train that Thursday night. The accommodations were dirty and bug-infested, and we arrived at the hotel on Friday morning tired, dirty, and road-weary. Since Friday is the Muslim day of prayer, we used it as our Sabbath (just as we celebrated the Sabbath on Saturday... Read more
The Associated Press reported in the early 1980s that “The CIA does some of its most successful recruiting in predominantly LDS Utah.”[1] (more…) Read more
While chatting with a new LDS convert recently, he asked how long I had been a member of the Church. I told him that I’d actually been one from the very beginning—that my parents had been practicing members of the faith when I was born, and that I had been raised in a more or less orthodox household. In fact, I mentioned, much my family’s participation in the Church ran back some five or six generations, when early forbears made... Read more
As I have moved farther and farther away from the Independence, Missouri headquarters of the Community of Christ (RLDS church) over the past decade, I have attended increasingly smaller congregations. First, it was church with 30 people in Iowa City during grad school. Then it was church with 20 people in Worthington, Ohio when I took my first academic job. Third, it was church with 15 people in Freeport, Maine. And now, I live in an area of upstate New... Read more
I am excited to read the new collection of essays on food and religion in North America (Religion, Food, and Eating in North America), published by Columbia University Press and edited by Benjamin E. Zeller, Marie W. Dallam, Reid L. Neilson, and Nora L. Rubel. We don’t know nearly enough about the intersection of food and religious practices and religious identity. And this extends beyond institutionally based religious identity and to the intersection between food and what Catherine Albanese would... Read more
In the preceding post (part 1), I work through a set of exegetical preliminaries to any theological engagement with D&C 25, the revelation to Emma Smith. I take as my task now to begin addressing the revelation at that more interpretive level. I’ll give my attention to three isolable themes in particular in the course of this post, each with clear implications for feminist interests. (more…) Read more
This and the post following it (part 2) are pieces I wrote a few years ago as a guest blogger at another Mormon-themed blog. I’ve reworked them a bit, but I’ve largely left them as I originally wrote them. I think they’re worth a revisit now for a host of (largely obvious) reasons I won’t go into. I’ll say that my having written them in the first place and my posting them now shouldn’t be construed as either supportive or... Read more
One of my most familiar childhood religious memories is waking up at the end of the General Conference broadcast, sprawled full-length on the floor with the marks of the carpet in my cheek. “This has been the [ordinal number] conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” the familiar voice intoned over the postlude. As the camera panned around the trees at Temple Square, I would pan around the living room to get the lay of the land.... Read more
The issue of women’s ordination in the LDS church is at least in its fourth decade. In the 1970’s, and especially in the 1980’s after the expansion of the priesthood to all worthy males in 1978, LDS women and men have published and organized in favor in women’s ordination. Such movements have been common in other American churches, which vigorously debated the issues during the 20th century. Movements for women’s ordination exist in nearly every denomination which has not... Read more
Just over a week ago, the New York Times ran a well-considered and well-written (not to mention, front-page above-the-fold) in-depth examination of the expanding role of women in the LDS Church. The portrait it paints is even-handed, nuanced, and insightful, even if a bit discomforting for the increasing number of women and men who share the sentiment expressed by Joanna Brooks that the “great unfinished business of the church is gender equality.” Although the modifications may seem minute, and the... Read more
Peculiar People
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In