Mormon Heretic’s blog post this week, Comparing Correlation with the Supreme Court, inspired me to find out, or try to find, exactly what the manuals and LDS leaders say about teaching lessons from the church-provided lesson manuals. A survey of the manuals and talks as well as the Sunday School website will lead one to the following conclusion: It’s not that clear. Surprised? I didn’t think so.
OT SS Lesson #36 LDS Sunday School students will soon take a quick leap through 66 chapters of Isaiah in five forty-minute lessons. All too often, some uniquely Mormon interpretations are given to these chapters which merit a critical analysis. In this post I present six Mormonisms often used with the first few chapters of Isaiah which I believe hinder a deeper and more accurate understanding of these prophetic writings. Let us know if any of these interpretations show up in your Sunday School class!
As I mentioned before, I am enjoying Greg Prince’s biography of David O McKay. Under the McKay Administration, correlation of LDS church materials made a great deal of headway. While correlation has cut down on duplication of church materials, it has become a bit unwieldy. I found a quote by Paul Dunn that discussed how correlation has had some unintended side effects, and he likened these problems to the Supreme Court. We are all familiar with “legislating from the bench”, and there seems to be a similar problem with correlation. Paul Dunn gave an interview in 1995 and said...
OT SS Lesson #33 If your ward happens to be just a little bit behind on the Sunday School lessons, you might experience the synchronicity of having the Book of Jonah read on Yom Kippur. This year, the Jewish holiday falls on September 18 (close enough to Sunday the 19th!) and Jonah is traditionally read as part of the celebration. Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) is the holiest and most widely observed day on the Jewish calendar. It is a day of fasting, lengthy confession of sins, prayer, and repentance. Jonah’s prophecy is included in the liturgy for...
OT SS Lesson #32 After the Satan figure is given permission to afflict Job as a test of his faithfulness, three of Job’s friends, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, come to visit him, sitting with him in silence for seven days. On the seventh day, Job speaks, beginning a conversation in which each of the four men shares thoughts on Job’s afflictions and adversity in general in profound poetic statements. This is a lengthy dialogue between characters who alter their moods, question their motives, change their minds, and undercut each other with sarcasm and innuendo. Although Job comes closest to...
OT SS Lesson #31 Feminist readers of the scriptures are well aware of the passages in Proverbs 8 which personify Wisdom (GK Sophia, HEB Hokhmah). These passages affirm that Sophia was there when God made the earth and acted as a partner with God in the creation. This idea fits in well with my conceptualization of the male/female duality of the Divine. The passages can be interpreted as instructions to the earnest seeker to discover and follow the promptings of a Heavenly Mother:
OT SS Lesson #24 The following statement was made by the LDS Church last Wednesday in conjunction with the execution of Ronnie Lee Gardner by firing squad in Utah. I see this as a misunderstanding or a misrepresentation of what was taught in the past regarding the doctrine.
OT SS Lesson #23 The story of David and Jonathan is one of the most inspiring examples of true friendship anywhere. Our LDS SS manual firmly places this lesson within the mainstream view of Biblical exegesis, presenting the two as strong personal and platonic friends. As I studied the covenant made between these young men in 1 Samuel 18, I was touched by the loyalty shown by the young Jonathan, because he “loved as his own soul.” Because of this love, Jonathan relinquishes his hopes for his father’s throne in deference to God’s choice. In a symbolic and ceremonial...
OT SS Lesson #22 Ever since I was introduced to the word “liminal,” I have claimed it as my own. This word describes a threshold or a transitional position — a balancing point between two states of being. For many years I have felt poised on the threshold between two totally different ways of viewing the world. One is scientific and rational. The other is a place where angels materialize and shake your hand, where dreams have meaning, where God’s words come out of men’s mouths when they lay their hands on your head.
OT SS Lesson #21 When we lived in Saudi Arabia a few years ago, I obtained a faculty position in the fairly newly-formed department of Health and P.E. at a university which was strictly segregated by gender. The women’s side of the university operated independently, with our own female custodians, technical staff, professors and administration, and very little oversight from the male president. Our department consisted of five women, and we made all decisions collectively, with no titular head. After the first semester I was there, one of our staff meetings was dedicated to the question of whether we...
OT SS Lesson #20 Sometimes I wonder how women in the Judeo-Christian tradition got stuck with the gender role identifications they have. The Old Testament doesn’t include many detailed descriptions of women, but when they do appear, they are not what you’d think. To prove my point, I’m going to investigate two women featured in this week’s Sunday School lesson, plus Deborah the judge/prophetess, and the ubiquitous “virtuous woman” of Proverbs 37.
OT SS Lesson #19 You are going to talk about the Biblical Judges in this week’s Sunday School class, and the lesson’s got it pretty well covered (including a discussion of the Judge/Prophetess/Mother in Israel Deborah, yay!) You’ll have to let me know how your respective teachers covered her. But some of the Judges are peripheral and didn’t make it into the lesson materials. As is my wont to do, I’d like to investigate the marginal; the story that isn’t mentioned in the manual — that of Jephthah. Whenever I come across an odd story in the Old Testament,...
OT SS Lesson #18 The advantage of blogging the SS lessons instead of teaching them is that I get to cover the chapters that are totally skipped by correlation. (This one probably for good reason, but it deserves a mention SOMEWHERE.) Everyone knows that good Jews are circumcised. God instituted the covenant with Abraham, and faithful Jews have been performing this ordinance on their 8-day-old males ever since, right? WRONG!
I’m teaching the Priesthood lesson today. You may have had this lesson already; we may be a week behind you. Before I get into the lesson, I thought it might it might be nice to get some quotes on prayer. “There are two kinds of people: those that say to God ‘Thy will be done.’ And those to whom God says ‘Ok, have it your way.’ C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters. “Under certain circumstances profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.” Mark Twain.
I’m 1/16 th Chippewa and don’t even look a little Indian! I figure from my knee down is pure Chippewa and for whatever reason I am pretty proud of that. In the afterlife if possible I would like that section preserved if God sees fit. Below is my Great Grandmother and Grandmother — you can see even from one generation to the next how things change.
OT SS Lesson #13 At a Passover Seder this week, President Barack Obama’s message to American Jews focused on social justice. Obama said that the message of the Exodus teaches of oppression to be fought and freedom to be won, and that we all have a responsibility to fight against suffering and discrimination wherever we find it. Some Jewish journalists discussing the remarks saw them as a veiled reprimand against Israeli settlements in Palestinian territory. Others heartily agreed that Jews should be particularly sensitive to oppression. The American Prospect’s Adam Serwer enthused: “I’ve viewed Passover as an opportunity not...
OT SS Lesson #12 Whether dreams come from the unconscious mind or directly from God, they are valuable sources of revelation. Dreams can tell us important things about ourselves and our relationships that may remain veiled deep in the psyche if we are unskilled at interpreting the symbolic language from which they present. The great attainment of Joseph of Egypt and the message this scriptural character brings to readers of the Old Testament is the importance of developing an ability to decode symbolic dream messages and using them to integrate our conscious and subconscious knowledge.
OT SS Lesson #11 Lesson 11 in the Old Testament manual employs several stories from Genesis 34-39 to develop the theme of sexual morality. Joseph’s actions embody the “Lord’s standards” for morality and are contrasted with the actions of Shechem, Reuben, and Judah. You may notice that the featured characters in the lesson are all male. What shall a woman do with a lesson like this? I think the idea is for women to identify with Joseph — to be virtuous when facing temptation. But Joseph is a man, his responses are male-oriented, and intentionally or not this approach...
OT SS Lesson #10 Though it’s only an “additional teaching idea” in Lesson 12, Jacob’s ladder has captured my imagination due to some conversations I’ve recently had with Christian evangelicals. Jacob’s Dream woodcut, Lubeck Bible 1494
OT SS Lesson #9 This story is so very, very familiar to us that I think it’s important to look at it with a fresh perspective. So in this post I am including some pieces from media and the arts that force us to think about Genesis 22. I promise you in advance that some of these might be disturbing to you. Probably you will disagree with the portrayal of Abraham’s sacrifice in at least one, if not all, of these pieces. I hope you will share your reactions in the comments.
