Terry Foraker is the son of a Mormon mother and an agnostic father. His ancestry on both sides, however, has connections with LDS history: His maternal grandmother kept house for Ezra Taft Benson’s family as a young woman, and one of his distant relatives on his father’s side was Senator Joseph Benson Foraker of Ohio, who defended the LDS church during the Reed Smoot hearings. Terry works for Graybar Electric Company in St. Louis, Missouri. He recently completed the coursework for his B.S. in Business Administration from City University of Seattle and plans to do graduate work in Organizational Psychology after a reasonable period of recuperation. An obsessive reader on psychology, Asperger’s Syndrome, musical theater, and all things Mormon, Terry is an aspiring amateur writer. He is married with three children and serves as Elders Quorum Instructor and Assistant Family History consultant in his ward. Author Profile: Terry Foraker
Terry Foraker is the son of a Mormon mother and an agnostic father. His ancestry on both sides, however, has connections with LDS history: His maternal grandmother kept house for Ezra Taft Benson’s family as a young woman, and one of his distant relatives on his father’s side was Senator Joseph Benson Foraker of Ohio, who defended the LDS church during the Reed Smoot hearings. Terry works for Graybar Electric Company in St. Louis, Missouri. He recently completed the coursework for his B.S. in Business Administration from City University of Seattle and plans to do graduate work in Organizational Psychology after a reasonable period of recuperation. An obsessive reader on psychology, Asperger’s Syndrome, musical theater, and all things Mormon, Terry is an aspiring amateur writer. He is married with three children and serves as Elders Quorum Instructor and Assistant Family History consultant in his ward. Author Archive for 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 organized in 1830, a 19-year-old named Orson Pratt was introduced to the restored gospel through his older brother, Parley P. Pratt. Within a few years he would become one of the original members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and a tireless missionary, writer, theologian, and philosopher. Through his sermons and especially his writings he helped inaugurate a tradition of rigorous inquiry within the church. He is still regarded as one of the greatest minds the church has known. Continue reading…
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Welcome to Bookends, a new column where I give you a peek over my shoulder at what I am currently reading and hopefully toss out a quasi-thoughtful question or two.
The other night I finished listening to the audio version of The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. (There are actually two or three audio versions floating around; I recommend the one read by John Cleese of Monty Python fame. He brilliantly brings out both the pomposity and the sinister humor in the work; this recording won the Grammy award for best spoken word recording of 1988.) For some reason I find myself drawn to Screwtape (either the audio or print edition) this time of year, perhaps because after a surfeit of Christmas cheer I am in generally in need of a healthy dose of comic cynicism. For those who have not yet read or listened to Screwtape, it consists of a series of letters written by Screwtape, a sort of middle manager in the realms of hell (referred to by Screwtape as the “lowerarchy”) to his nephew Wormwood, who is a brand-new tempter assigned to a young Englishman, referred to simply as “the Patient.” (Incidentally, proper names are seldom used in this book. God is referred to as “the Enemy” and Satan is “Our Father Below.” The only exceptions are the rather nasty-sounding names assigned to Screwtape’s colleagues: Slubgob, Triptweeze, Glubose, and so on.) While discussing the two malefactors’ attempts to undo the Patient spiritually, the letters also contain some keen psychological insights into human nature. The book’s setting during the Second World War made it particularly timely and topical, as it was written during that period. Continue reading…
