Every Wednesday morning, the pope celebrates a Mass and holds a public audience. It is routine for popes to offer a homily at these occasions – a brief exhortation to his audience that normally follows uncontroversial and tedious paths: do good, attend Mass, or so forth. We had little reason to suspect that Pope Francis would be all that different. After all, he was widely reported to be a theological conservative, a “conventional choice” for the papacy, not that... Read more
The mulberry tree in my backyard has just blown seedpods all over the grass, but it’s a male, thank goodness, so we deal with neither the fruit nor the birds who would flock to eat that fruit. An arborist told me the tree is as old as the house (1928). Our church building, a block away, is on land that used to be a mulberry orchard, created to sustain the silkworms that LDS women so painstakingly cared for and harvested... Read more
The Community of Christ’s April 2013 USA National Conference in Independence, Missouri resoundingly approved the extension of the sacrament of marriage to same-sex couples and the ordination of individuals in monogamous same-sex relationships. That the Community of Christ, Mormonism’s most progressive denomination, has approved these measures through a democratic conference is perhaps unsurprising. Community of Christ laity and leaders are fond of saying that they are called to be a “prophetic people” rather than “a people with a prophet.”... Read more
This semester I taught early American religious history. We start with European settlement and end with the Civil War. A whole lot happens during this span of time. A whole lot changes—but maybe not as much as it first appears. During the semester, we looked at how conceptions of gender evolved over time. We began with Anne Hutchinson excommunicated and banished for opposing her Puritan ministers by stating that she had better, inside divine information than they did. Along the... Read more
Mother’s Day is a big deal in Mormonism. By some measures, Mother’s Day has the most elaborate rituals of any holiday celebrated in the LDS Church. Like Christmas and Easter, Mother’s Day is typically filled with special musical numbers and talks dedicated to the topic of the day. In addition to this, adult women receive a gift that is passed to them at the end of Sacrament Meeting. This year, my ward is also planning a special meeting in the... Read more
“Turn it Off,” one of The Book of Mormon Musical’s most catchy and popular songs, provides a clear example of recent representations of Mormons in popular culture. The musical focuses on the story of two nineteen-year-old Mormon missionaries who travel to Uganda to proselytize and who quickly discover a world that is more complex than their upbringing and their missionary training have led them to expect. In “Turn it Off,” a more experienced missionary attempts to cheer up the elders... Read more
Earlier this week, Elizabeth Smart shared memories of her abduction that sent a powerful message about the way we should teach youth about sex. She said that after she had been raped, she had little motivation to escape her captor: “[it was easy] to feel like you no longer have worth, you no longer have value. Why would it even be worth screaming out? Why would it even make a difference if you are rescued? Your life still has no... Read more
I’ll begin this post in italics, mostly so that—since this is my first post here at Peculiar People—I can introduce myself, at least briefly. My name is Joe Spencer. I’m a PhD student in philosophy at the University of New Mexico, where I work on contemporary French philosophy (Louis Althusser, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Alain Badiou, Jacques Rancière, Giorgio Agamben) and the history of early analytic philosophy (Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Alfred Tarski, Rudolf Carnap). I’m a regular—if... Read more
During Conference in October 2007, at the end of General Relief Society President Julie Beck’s now-famous talk, “Mothers Who Know,” I made a derisive sound from my perch on the living room couch. Once again, began a commentator’s voice inside my head, a talk for Mormon women that focuses largely on domestic roles: “nurturing,” “homemaking,” “cooking, washing clothes and dishes, and keeping an orderly home,” and “Latter-day Saint women should be the best homemakers in the world.” My mother, who... Read more
This past weekend I was in Washington, DC, attending the third decennial symposium (entitled “A Time of War, a Time of Peace”) of the LDS National Security Professionals Society. This is a small but serious group of Latter-day Saints who work in various sectors of the sprawling U.S. national security apparatus; participants included people from the military, State Department, Defense Department, CIA, National Defense University, Congressional Research Office, “clandestine services,” and so forth. To their credit, they also went out... Read more
Peculiar People
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In