Mending a Fractured World

January 30, 2013 By Benjamin Park

In his Bancroft Prize-winning book, Age of Fracture, Daniel Rodgers tells the story of how, following the 1970s, America’s intellectual world fell apart. Ideas that were taken for granted during the mid-twentieth century, like national consensus, gender norms, racial identities, historical meaning, and market-based capitalism, fragmented into numerous directions. The social unrest of the 1960s (which challenged traditional assumptions), the end of the Cold War (which eliminated the nation’s most potent unifying rhetorical mobilization), and the culture war battles (which politicized... Read more

Picketing Zion

January 23, 2013 By Rachael

Pants, now prayers. Some LDS feminists have raised the banner again and invited members to send letters to general authorities petitioning that women give prayers in General Conference. Once again, it’s a fairly (strategically?) trivial issue that has become symbolic in the effort to bring policy and practice in closer alignment. I’ve done some more thinking about appropriate responses to concerns with Church policies. Last time, I suggested reorienting our expectations and proactively fulfilling some of those needs that the... Read more

Why I Pray

January 16, 2013 By Kate Holbrook

Last August I discovered a little cancer in my eye, ocular melanoma. For a week or so I was scanned and tested and faced the possibility of my imminent demise. Dramatic. Then I had my left eye removed, which rid me of the cancer but the wound did not heal. Months and followup surgeries later, my eye looks to be healing properly and I am cancer free. Lucky as I am, these months have given me plenty of time to... Read more

French Polynesia and Mormonization: Rethinking Mormon Origins

January 14, 2013 By David Howlett

On January 3, the Community of Christ’s First Presidency called Maureva M. Arnaud Tchong to serve in the Council of Twelve Apostles. The current mission center president over 60 congregations in French Polynesia, Arnaud will be the first individual of native Polynesian heritage to serve as an apostle in any church descended from Joseph Smith’s nineteenth-century Restoration movement. She will also be the first woman from outside of the United States to serve in the Community of Christ’s Council of... Read more

Time Travel, American Style

January 9, 2013 By Susanna Morrill

In my classes, I argue that Christian worldviews, especially Protestant worldviews, have helped to shape how we in this culture experience time. The way we understand time, in turn, determines how we move through space, how we structure our daily lives, even how we develop systems of personal and cultural ethics. Usually I focus on how postmillennialism lies deep in the foundations of American culture: how the idea that we can and should work towards an ultimate perfection has become... Read more

Issues in Mormon Feminism

January 7, 2013 By Taylor Petrey

In 1993, high-ranking LDS leader Elder Boyd K. Packer famously warned that feminists, intellectuals, and homosexuals were the three “dangers” to the Church. A decade later journalist Peggy Fletcher Stack asked, “Where Have all the Mormon Feminists Gone?” (Salt Lake Trib. 10/04/2003). Twenty years after Packer’s warning, and ten years since Stack pronounced them extinct, Mormon feminists have made a roaring comeback and these days regularly make national news. There are stars like Joanna Brooks who was featured in just... Read more

A Church without Words

January 2, 2013 By Heidi Harris

I go to a church where there are no words. Well, that’s not entirely true. To be more honest, I would have to say that I go to a church where there are many words, but none for me. You see, for the past year and a half, I’ve been attending a German LDS congregation and, let’s be real here, I simply do not know the language. True, I can pick out pieces from a heartwarming story about a loyal... Read more

Asking Hard Questions of a God Who Weeps

December 26, 2012 By Emily Belanger

A few months ago I learned a hard lesson about public questions and faith, when a long-time friend chose my facebook wall as a place to tell me that I didn’t seem to have a testimony of the Church. I’ve written about this experience on another blog, where I attempted to sort through the encounter and its implications. Recently I was reminded of this experience when the Wear Pants to Church debacle broke across facebook. As outspoken feminists encountered surprisingly... Read more

Finding a Bit of Comfort in the Image of Mormonism That Americans Most Respect

December 19, 2012 By Cristine Hutchison-Jones

About a week ago, I decided to write my next post on a recurrent popular representation of the Mormons that we didn’t see much of during Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign: the image of Mormon violence. I was going to talk about why I think this image didn’t surface during the recent Mormon moment, and whether or not I think it has a future now that the moment is over. But since last Friday, we have all watched in horror... Read more

Pants, Doctrine, and Culture, and Why Maybe We Shouldn’t Worry

December 14, 2012 By Rachael

And the Mormon Moment grabs the spotlight again- with Pantspocalypse! A nutshell attempt: Mormon feminist Stephanie Lauritzen vents online about the slow, tip-toeing steps Mormon Feminism has tried to take towards gender equality over the past decades. She urges women to “stop playing nice” and model American suffragists by “starting a revolution” of civil disobedience to effect (mostly) cultural and policy-related changes. She and other women form the group All Enlisted, whose first move is to unite all LDS women... Read more