Let’s perform a thought experiment. Pretend like there is no Mormon Church at all. But one day Jesus Christ returns and the Millennium beings. Christians around the world rejoice! They were right all along about Jesus being the Son of God. But after Jesus has been here for a while, word gets out; it turns out that many of the doctrines of all Christian religions weren’t true after all. For example, substance theology turned out to not be true. Instead Jesus and the Father are separate people that share a common will. Their oneness is complete, but so is...
Monthly Archives: February 2008
My Open Letter to Glenn Beck
Well, I’m back after a bit of an illness. I don’t know if this post will generate any interest, but I thought I’d share it. A Letter to Glenn Beck February 29, 2008 Dear Mr. Beck: First, let me tell you that I am not a regular viewer of your program. My politics is to the left of yours, and so I naturally gravitate toward other broadcasters. You make no bones about being a conservative. I appreciate this openness.
What Do Joseph Smith and Gladys Knight Have in Common?
When I was a kid in Southern California, it was obvious to me that there were two kinds of people in the world: Mormons and the rest. As I got older, the rest became more differentiated; there were Catholics and Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Baptists, Syrian Orthodox, Church of Christers, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Seventh-day Adventists and even some people who claimed to have no religion at all. I was puzzled at one family’s celebration of Christmas when they apparently didn’t really even belong to any particular religion that I could discern. As I attended high school and early-morning seminary, I began...
The Parable of the Elephant
Sometimes I recall nuggets of spiritual wisdom but cannot remember when or where I picked them up. One in particular has increasingly taken on new meanings for me as I’ve wrestled with some of life’s tougher questions. You might call it the “Parable of the Elephant.” This is how it goes, as best I remember, with a few adaptations of my own:
My Mormon Midlife Crisis
I always thought the midlife crisis was just a cliché. But now I’m 41, and I’m finding myself in the midst of an all-too-real midlife phase of questioning myself, my identity, and my place in life, with accompanying feelings of anxiety, dissatisfaction, and disillusionment. Nearly all these feelings focus on my career situation. I’m ten years into a wonderful second marriage, so that’s not affected. But I sense the crisis spilling over somewhat into my religion/faith. For this post, I thought I would do a bit of self-inventory in the spirit of “I’ll show you mine if you’ll show...
Why we need more apostates
Explosive Church growth has had a real impact on one of the core experiences many LDS had growing up — knowing apostates. The lack of them hampers us and in many ways we need more apostates. After all, it used to be that everyone, while growing up, would know at least one ex-apostate, someone who had left the Church and returned. Sure, the bloggernacle has some (e.g. Bookslinger), but someone on-line is a poor substitute for having someone in your ward or stake that you get to know and interact with. So we have a need for more apostates.
Neo-Fundamentalism Part 3: LDS Premillennialism
Mormons in 1830 were in league with a slew of millennialist faiths (Shakers, Campellites, and Adventists) on the brink of actualized utopia after the resurgence of premillennialism. The Second Great Awakening was typically seen as symbolic of the “refreshing of times” as spoke by Peter and a rejection of the philosophical polemics of the religious aspects of the Age of Reason. The only thing to do was to wait for Jesus to put His capstone on the Romantic Age. According to Bushman, early Mormon converts were imminent millennialists. Even Joseph himself was sure of its coming. The establishment of...
A Baptist Point of View of Being the One True “Church”
One stumbling block to communication between Mormons and other types of Christians is our use of the word “church” — sometimes at least — as a synonym for “religion.” The word “church,” as used in the New Testament, meant an assembly or congregation. (Presumably the entire body of believers in Jesus in the case of the New Testament.) Modernly the word “church” has also come to mean the building that congregation meets in, as well as the specific denomination that congregation is aligned with. By comparison, the word “religion” usually refers to a set of beliefs about the nature of the...
A style of our own
Whenever I heard about a “style of our own” I thought back to Moroni’s robe and David O McKay’s vision of the City of God. When I mentioned that I got accused of just wanting clothing that let me see into the bosoms of others, and a friend quipped up that he was interested in a dress code that banned underwear. But seriously, why aren’t we dressed like the angels, why don’t we encourage men to go unshaven, to reject “the great unisex conspiracy” that C. S. Lewis said came of the devil and resulted in the apostasy of...
The Danzig Case: Does the LDS Church Influence Members to Oppose Same Sex Marriage?
Many of you may be aware of an ongoing case in Utah involving Peter and Mary Danzig. I’m not going to summarize here, as you can read about the details on various sites, but I’ll post links to the back-stories below. This post is just about opening a conversation. The core issues I feel are under debate are about how much involvement the LDS church officially has in the opposition of same sex marriage. The Danzigs resigned their membership because they felt the church was pressuring them to act against their own consciences. The church says (in a very...
Why I Am Not a Disaffected Mormon
There seem to be a number of disaffected Mormons lurking the Bloggernacle these days. I am not one of them. Here is why.
Discrimination Like I’ve Ever Seen Before
In Little Rock, Ark on a relatively calm September day in 1957 the all-white Central High School tries to blocked nine African American students from entering the school. Governor Orval Faubus tries in vain to stop the students from attending the school even though 3 years earlier Brown v. Board of Education deemed segregation to be illegal in public schools. It took the actions of The President of the United States of America, Dwight D. Eisenhower, with the help of federal troops and the National Guard to persuade Governor Faubus to allow these nine students to enter the school....
A Veil Runs Through It: A Mormon Cosmogony
The Earth we perceive with our physical eyes is billions of years in age. Life began to inhabit this sphere eons ago and evolved to fill the world through a process of natural selection. Several millions of years ago the ancestors of humankind diverged from our nearest surviving cousins and our basic physical form was achieved perhaps 200,000 years ago. Unlike some of their religious contemporaries, early Mormons did not reject or fear science; they embraced it. Their cosmology (view of the universe) expanded the Biblical scope of creation to include souls on worlds without number. Their cosmogony (explanation...
A guide to edifying Others
It is easy to realize that you are right and everyone else is wrong. A number of people have asked just what they should do about that once they realize the gross errors the rest of the world has fallen into and the way the world is sinning against them. The following is a guide.
Bookends #2: Book of Mormon Studies–Orson Pratt
Today’s post is by Terry Foraker. Ever since its initial publication in 1830, the Book of Mormon has been the subject of countless studies. This post is the first of a series to introduce those who may be familiar with these studies to some of the more prominent of these writings as a starting point. While the series is not meant to be comprehensive, and though it is admittedly saturated with my own bias, hopefully it will be a helpful introduction to the rich literature examining the Book of Mormon from a variety of angles.Shortly after the Church was...
BYU and the Honor Code
As a current BYU student, I am bound by the “honor code,” a document that all students are required to sign in order to enroll. (Link here) While BYU has stressed the importance of a wholesome environment since the Karl Mäser days, it wasn’t until the 1940′s that an official document was drafted, primarily with the goal of promoting academic honesty and curbing cheating on campus. At the time, it was sponsored by more or less a student club, but apparently it was successful enough that President Wilkinson saw fit to officially adopt it, and eventually it became applied...
Cultural Doctrines: The Unsaid Sermon
In 1991, Dr. Robert F. Bohn gave this great talk at the Sunstone Symposium titled “Cultural vs. Gospel Doctrine and the ‘Unsaid Sermon Phenomenon’”. I recently listened to the recording and found it poignant, practical, helpful, and encouraging. As an illustration of the topic, here’s an example: Original quote from a sermon: “When that earthquake hit when I was on my mission, there were many deaths, but I felt calm because I knew that God protects his faithful missionaries.” The false notion, or Unsaid Sermon: “My son was killed on his mission. I wonder if he was unfaithful.“
The Improbable versus the Even More Improbable: The Existence of Jesus
The following article, despite appearances, is not about whether or not Jesus existed. I accept that He did exist as an article of faith. This article is actually about a certain flawed way of thinking that we all sometimes fall into. As such, I admit up front that I know next to nothing about the historicity of Jesus. If you think you’re going to learn a lot about this subject by reading my post, you’re wrong. All that I know on this subject I got off Wikipedia from this article. Go read it yourself and draw your own conclusions....
The Ammon Approach: Redefining Missionary Work
When it comes to Church growth, the Church sets high expectations for itself. Likening the Church to that scriptural stone that rolls forth to fill the whole earth, Church members may expect to see exponential Church growth, with significant year-over-year gains in the number of convert baptisms. However, over the past several years, the number of annual convert baptisms has actually dipped and plateaued somewhat, corresponding in part with a decrease in the number of full-time missionaries. Moreover, retention of new converts remains a challenge, as we are often reminded by Church leaders. In this situation, it is natural...
Overview and Discussion of Church Growth
According to Beliefnet.com the 10 largest churches of 2007 in the US are: