Life On Gold Plates

Life On Gold Plates 2009: Year in Review

2009-12-30T07:58:00.008-07:00

It's been a fun, but busy, year between working full time and going to school full time. In case you missed some of my stuff, here's a quick look at the highlights from the past year:

Over the last week LoGP hit the mark of 80,000 visits, which is pretty cool. The peak month was August when I blogged the FAIR conference. This year I was privileged to rub shoulders with many fine scholars and some of these meetings turned into blog posts. I shared a cab with Jan Shipps, listened to two lectures from Kathleen Flake (one in Boston, the other in Logan), and had a conversational lunch with journalist Krista Tippett. My first guest post ever was provided by Grant Hardy. In collaboration with David Keller and a few other folks I also initiated the Translation Witness Account project, which is an effort to gather all of the statements regarding the translation of the Book of Mormon into one location. This is still in process and I have no ETA and the TWA.

I had the opportunity to present a paper for the Society for Mormon Philosophy and Theology on the subject of soteriologial ecumenicism and C.S. Lewis. The paper is currently being peer reviewed by Dialogue, so hopefully it will be published next year. (Dialogue is also publishing a much-improved version of my book review of the Amasa Lyman biography next summer.) I had some left-overs from my C.S. Lewis research to present at the Salt Lake Sunstone symposium on the subject of how Lewis has been employed by Latter-day Saints and what Lewis might have known about the Church.

The antiquarian in me put together a post about the false start of a partial reconstruction of the Nauvoo Temple in the late 60s and the discovery of Hugh Nibley's first known publication (a sketch of a ship, of all things!). After live-blogging my notes of the 2009 FAIR conference I was happy to complete a series on faith and reason with Gregory L. Smith called "Consecrate Your Brain." I also investigated the production or structure of two newer church manuals, the Joseph Smith manual and the new Gospel Principles manual. Above all, it was the year of the book review at Life On Gold Plates. In case you missed one, here they all are:

Shawn Aaron McCraney, I Was a Born-Again Mormon
Edward Leo Lyman, Amasa Mason Lyman, Mormon Apostle and Apostate
Royal Skousen, The Book of Mormon: The Earliest Text
Michael R. Ash, Of Faith and Reason: 80 Evidences Supporting the Prophet Joseph Smith
Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, The Niche of Lights
Matthew B. Brown, Exploring the Connection Between Mormons and Masons
Richard Neitzel Holzapfel, Dana M. Pike, and David Rolph Seely, Jehovah and the World of the Old Testament
John R. Coats, Original Sinners: A New Interpretation of Genesis
Ronald G. Watt, The Mormon Passage of George D. Watt

Finally, my favorite posts this year. Three particularly stand out as worth reading. Here they are in no particular order:

1. Islam's Hijab [headscarf] and Mormon Garments: On Clothing as Broadcasting.
In this post I talk a little about religious vestments, their visibility, and the religious content clothing can hold.

2. "In their weakness, after the manner of their language": Joseph Smith's Revelations, Revisions, and Canonization.
Inspired by the Joseph Smith Papers Project, this post talks about the religious authority believers grant to their sacred scriptures. Looking at the recording and adjusting of Joseph Smith's revelations has interesting implications for how Latter-day Saints might understand the "word of God."

3. "The Death of the Old Order": Resurrection, Community, and Identity.
I feel like who I am is largely shaped by my surroundings, the people and places I know. I wonder how we will appear with the backdrop of immortality instead of this lone and dreary world.

Thanks to all the folks who take the time to read this stuff, and especially those who pitch in with advice and comments.

Review: Ronald G. Watt, "The Mormon Passage of George D. Watt"

2009-12-28T08:11:00.000-07:00

Title: The Mormon Passage of George D. Watt: First British Convert, Scribe for Zion
Author: Ronald G. Watt
Publisher: Utah State University Press
Genre: Biography
Year: 2009
Pages: 294, index
ISBN13: 9781439102091
Binding: Cloth
Price: 39.95

For over three decades historian Ronald G. Watt has researched and written about the life of his intriguing ancestor, George D. Watt, who is hailed as the first covert to Mormonism in Britain (21). Watt has published a few articles on his ancestor and this new biography extends that work.¹ The book is a simple, chronological overview of George’s life including sketches of his early days in Britain, his conversion to—and missions for—Mormonism, his work in the office of Brigham Young, his plural marriages, and his eventual exclusion to what he called “the category of rejected ones” when he was excommunicated from the Church (247).

George’s childhood in England is sparsely represented in the historical record but Watt traces a reasonable outline by describing the economic and social conditions of England. Upon joining Mormonism George became an ardent advocate of the new religion. During a mission to Edinburgh Watt began to develop the skill of writing in Pitman shorthand. This skill enabled him to take verbatim notes of contemporaneous sermons, meetings, and other events, making him a useful asset to the Church. In Nauvoo he was encouraged by his father-figure Willard Richards to make good use of this shorthand skill. In May 1845, for instance, Watt recorded most of the proceedings at the trial of the accused murderers of Joseph and Hyrum Smith. “Because anti-Mormons feared that the church would use the record for its own purposes,” Watt describes, “they searched those leaving the courthouse daily, including [George]. He thwarted their plan by secretly passing his notes out of a window to friends hourly and thus had no paper on his person when he left the courthouse each day” (51).

The biography contains interesting glimpses of early Church doctrine and practice. For instance, Watt was skeptical of the gifts of tongues and healing amongst elders in Britain. Further, during his mission in England in 1846 Watt advocated the indulgence in a little New Year’s Eve wine at a branch party. William Gibson, president of the branch, objected: “I told them I protested against such a thing & would not sanction it by my presence. Upon that Br Watt said it was a hard thing if men were not to be allowed a little whiskey on New Years day. For his part he could take it or leave it alone” (67).

In Utah Watt began freelance reporting for the Deseret News, edited by his friend and adopted father Willard Richards. Compensation was not adequately outlined which led to a breach between the men, George feeling underpaid and Richards feeling disrespected as a member of the First Presidency of the Church. Many harsh words were exchanged by letter between the men, but in the end they reconciled. At Richards’s death Watt reported on the funeral, “leaving he remains of one of the best and greatest men that ever trod the earth, to sleep in peace” (135).

Feeling inadequately compensated for his work in the Great Basin recording the sermons of Young and other Church leaders, George had received permission to publish selected sermons in England to sell and make a living. Thus began the Journal of Discourses which remains a critical source on early Mormonism. George also assisted in the development of the Deseret Alphabet, which the leaders of the Church hoped would help Saints of different tongues better communicate and read. Only a few books were published using the new script and it fell completely by the wayside after the death of Brigham Young.

Watt calls George a “man for all seasons,” describing his hobbies in acting, music, writing, and education (188). George participated in many early Utah organizations, often as a clerk. His associations included the Universal Scientific Society, Deseret Theological Institute, Deseret Typographical Association, Musical and Dramatic Company, Deseret Musical Association, and other such groups (188-193). George became an avid reader as well. Pictures of a few of George’s personal sketches round out a discussion of his hobbies and interests. (The book also contains a few useful maps and photographs to facilitate the narrative.)

George eventually became employed as one of Brigham Young’s clerks, though the president of the Church often chided him for being absent from the office. Indeed, George was an avid gardener and found himself devoted to the cultivation of fruits, vegetables, and silkworms as often as he was devoted to pencil and paper. Having added several plural wives to his family, who receive much due attention throughout the biography from Watt, George felt he needed better compensation. Young balked at the request leading to a falling out between the men, George storming from the president’s office leaving his papers behind. In the meantime, one of George’s plural wives, a half-sister named Jane who he did not know as a youth, had a falling out and the two divorced (161). George took to business after leaving Young’s employ. After opening a store he opposed the president’s efforts to form Mormon cooperative merchandising outlets to prevent Saints from patronizing gentile establishments. Young had selected George to travel the territory and describe the benefits of home manufacture, especially George’s specialty of silkworm cultivation. Watt describes how George soon “faced several disappointments that drove him away from the course that he had set for himself thirty years earlier. He preached faithfulness to the leaders of the church, but when the final analysis came, he did not always follow his own advice” (224). George began openly opposing Young’s economic policies during the sermons he had been sent to deliver to advocate the policies. When word reached Young he spoke with Watt and cleared up the matter. But soon Watt became attracted to the economic ideas of the Godbeites, a splinter group of former Mormons who advocated laissez-faire economics and spiritualism.

Watt concludes the biography by describing George’s move from Salt Lake City to Kaysville, where he lived in a community that largely viewed him as an apostate and outsider. After the death of Brigham Young, George sought to rejoin the church by writing a long philosophical and theological letter to new church president John Taylor. By then, Watt notes, “his beliefs appear to have rested primarily in Spiritualism and secondarily in Mormonism with science and philosophy interwoven into the fabric of the two” (257). George told Taylor he didn’t understand how a person could be “justly severed from the association of his friends purely on account of a change of conviction and faith if it is his wish still to be associated with them” (259). He wanted to be rebaptized, but wanted Taylor to know the state of his beliefs so he could make the final decision. He hesitated mailing the letter, adding several postscripts, including one which admitted his “mind gradually lost its fixedness” though he still believed there was some truth at the core of Mormonism and wanted to reunite with his former friends of the church. Despite this letter, George would have to wait to be restored to the church by relatives through proxy ordinances after his death (281).

A detailed description of the lives of George’s wives—all of whom remained members of the church following his death and worked together to care for the family—made for a unique conclusion to the biography. “In the final analysis,” Watt writes, “George D. Watt was a unique individual: a product of his time, yet very much his own person” (284). Watt does not spend unnecessary time and space making a history of the Church with interspersed commentary of how George D. Watt fit into the larger picture. Instead, he crafts a narrative that stays focused on George and his family. George, not the church, is the star and focus of the biography, making it a useful contribution to Mormon biography generally.

FOOTNOTES:

[1]
The articles are representative of Watt’s style and approach in the biography. See Ronald G. Watt, "Sailing the Old Ship Zion: The Life of George D. Watt." BYU Studies 18 (Fall 1977): 48-65; "The Beginnings of The Journal of Discourses: A Confrontation Between George D. Watt and Willard Richards," Utah Historical Quarterly 75:2 (Spring 2007): 134-148.

Review: John R. Coats, "Original Sinners: A New Interpretation of Genesis"

2009-12-23T13:17:00.002-07:00

Title: Original Sinners: A New Interpretation of Genesis
Author: John R. Coats
Publisher: Free Press
Genre: Religion
Year: 2009
Pages: 237
ISBN13: 9781439102091
Price: 25.00

John R. Coats doesn’t necessarily believe in a historical Garden of Eden but he still believes the Book of Genesis is as relevant today as it ever was. “If you’re alive and breathing and reading this,” he writes, “these stories and their characters have already shaped you, and in greater measure than you might think….Their moral, ethical, and spiritual DNA are embedded in the foundations of our civilization, in our awareness of who we are as a people and as individuals, our best and worst selves” (6). Coats was raised in the Southern Baptist faith, became an Episcopal priest, and left that ministry to become a life-improvement and management adviser. In this book he wishes to bracket the question of scriptural historicity and introduce readers to an alternate way to interpret the text—what he calls “the reflective use of scripture” (5). Whereas some readers regard Genesis as “the history of the world” and others “regard all of it as a silly story with naked people and a talking snake,” Coats takes a “third way…, to read the story as myth and metaphor, a medium for study but also for self-reflection” (23):

I was particularly interested in readers who find themselves in the middle of the modern debate between religious fundamentalists and the new atheists, the marginally religious to the nonreligious who may sense those genetic markers, who are curious about those stories and characters, but want neither to be saved by religion nor saved from it. How does one provide a way into these stories that neither discourages nor requires a religious point of view—that in fact does not require the reader to believe in anything beyond his or her own experience of being human? The answer was to take it entirely as story and metaphor, the characters as the ancient reflections of ourselves, their stories, our stories, mirrors in which to see our best and worst selves (212).

Coats's familiar, conversational writing style weaves personal experiences and historic interpretations into a selective overview of Genesis’s narratives in four sections. He occasionally steps outside of the book of Genesis itself to engage a few other Old Testament narratives, including Jonah, David and Goliath, and Saul and Samuel. Part one, “The Beginning,” features Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel, and Noah. Part two, “The Wanderers,” includes Jonah, Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Isaac. Part three, “The Blessing Thief,” regards Jacob (Israel ), Esau, Leah, and Rachel. Part four, “The Dream Reader,” concludes the narrative by following the story of Joseph and his brothers. Making liberal use of biblical “Source Theory”¹ he discusses later interpretations of the stories in selections of Jewish midrash, quotes from early Christian Fathers, and the works of contemporary scholars like Karen Armstrong and Harold Bloom.

Depending on the interpreter, different ideas have been extracted from scripture throughout history. Coats seeks to show how the way readers interpret the Fall of Adam and Eve, for example, determines much of how they view themselves. Depending on the source, Eve has been seen as “Inferior-Guilty Eve,” who foolishly caused all of the problems in the world by eating the fruit, making her weak and subordinate to men, or as “Hooker Eve,” the sexual bad girl depiction with the knowing smile and forbidden fruit. Coats finds more meaning in what he calls “Genesis Eve,” the depiction who is “strong, [but] vulnerable, neither apologetic about her womanhood nor tempted to cheapen it. She is carnal, neither afraid of sex nor only about sex. Her partner never says or implies that her sex is inferior to his own, or that she bears more, or less, responsibility for the incident at the tree, or the consequences that enveloped their lives as a result” (22). The Fall is not merely “a onetime occurrence, but an ongoing process” for each of us, when real people confront emotions of “jealousy, greed, stupidity, brilliance, cowardice, bravery, hate, love,” become self-aware, make decisions, and learn to discern right from wrong (2, 16-17).

Coats says he has been his Abel-like brother and sister’s keeper, but he’s also been their Cain-like killer, figuratively speaking. Thus, Genesis depicts life as a cycle of "falling from grace, regaining it, falling, regaining,” and recognizing this causes the Bible to lose “all purchase as a measure of one’s goodness or badness—loses its tyranny. Instead it shows itself to be a mirror in which to see one’s own humanity, one’s flaws of character, one’s strengths through the lives of the people found in its stories” (2).

Coats recognizes the drawbacks of his interpretive approach. He wonders aloud to the reader whether such a reflective interpretation help readers “to better understand these ancient texts, or am I ascribing meanings that are simply echoes of my own time and life? That is always the risk. Awaiting any attempt at biblical interpretation is the conscious and unconscious imposition of norms prevalent in one’s own time and place, these having become so ordinary, so natural, so obvious, that surely they must have been typical of human culture at all times and in all places” (78). Following Bloom he notes that multiple factors influence our reading, including “family, religion, education, where one was born, and even when one was born” (ibid.). We might entirely miss the point if we allow our preconceived ideas of what the text says dictate our reading. Despite that limitation, Coats embraces a utilitarian view of the scriptures (“I’m all for using what works,” Coats says, “and for me the Bible works well as a resource for mental health—that is, in its role as a repository of human stories that continue to aid my understanding of my own story, the world, and my relationship with others,” p. 60.) After all, “What good are these stories,” he asks, “if we can’t connect with them first at that primal, human level?” (113).

Throughout the book Coats emphasizes that he is not offering the only correct interpretation of a given biblical story, but there are definite moments when he seems to overreach the text. His psychoanalytical speculations about Noah turning into an alcoholic child abuser following the flood seem over the top, for instance (57-66). He admits that after his ordination as a priest he became “something of an iconoclast, with a thirst for shaking things up.” (139). Much of that iconoclasm is carried over into the book. Occasional self-disclosures indicate he is reluctant to proclaim any absolute truth about God, and feels that organized religion generally cannot maintain meaningful inspiration from God (see p. 72, for one example). A few of his self-disclosures may make some readers uncomfortable, including discussion of his acts of adultery during a previous marriage, or his old enraged threats toward a teenage daughter, or his sneaky political maneuverings within church leadership. Moreover, his likening of biblical characters to current situations is mostly projected through a middle-class white American lens. Perhaps readers who cannot relate to those particular experiences might be prompted to seek their own meaning within Genesis, which would make the book worth reading even for those who cannot necessarily relate to a Southern Baptist upbringing or an extra-marital affair. Original Sinners: A New Interpretation of Genesis is worth the read and offers plenty of forbidden fruit for thought. Coats’s easy-flowing dialog makes the often foreign-sounding stories of the book of Genesis seem much more accessible. As Coats notes: “Genesis does not portray every possible human challenge and metamorphosis. But it has more than I, and perhaps you, might have imagined” (213).

FOOTNOTES:

[1]
His brief discussion on source theory, or the Documentary hypothesis, on p. 6. gives a serviceable but simplistic explanation of different contributing authors to the biblical stories. At times he plays a bit fast and loose with the different sources, see p. 28. For an interesting take on the Documentary hypothesis from an LDS perspective, see Kevin L. Barney, “Reflections on the Documentary Hypothesis,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 33, no. 1 (2000): 57-99.

The Logic of Religious Studies and Kathleen Flake

2009-12-11T10:53:00.001-07:00

Kathleen Flake’s 2009 Arrington lecture gave a sneak preview of her research for an upcoming book on plural marriage and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.¹ Flake, associate professor of American religious history at Vanderbilt University, brings a unique list of qualifications to her study by combining elements of law, religious studies, ritual, and the skills of an historian. Using these tools Flake explores what she calls the “priestly logic” of plural marriage, seeking to understand not only how 19th century outsiders viewed the peculiar institution, but how practicing Mormons themselves made sense of it. Flake confines her study to the time period of 1852 (when Orson Pratt first declared the practice publicly) through 1890 when the first "manifesto" was issued by the president of the Church, "officially" ending the practice.² Flake argues that for all the negative reports of plural marriage—both from outside and within the Church—there were also some who flourished under the practice, or at least found a way to make it meaningful for their lives. The institution of marriage itself has not been a static practice and Flake recognizes the shifting opinions regarding the ideal marriage, attempting to contextualize Mormon views within the wider culture. By the 1800s in America marriages were beginning to be entered based on an idea of love rather than being strictly based upon economic or other considerations. Marriage for love became the preference, and then the norm. Flake cites a period poem called "Home" which encapsulates something of the ideal:

Two birds within one nest;
Two hearts within one breast;
Two spirits in one fair
Firm league of love and prayer,
Together bound for aye, together blest.³

Mormon Polygamy seemed to fly in the face of the Victorian idea of marriage depicted in this poem in practically every respect. Drawing on the accounts of sympathetic non-Mormons, Mormon leaders, and Mormon women who participated in the practice Flake wishes to describe the “priestly logic” of the practice, which involved priesthood, child bearing, family rearing, and kingdom building, all tied together in the ritual act of marriage.

It has been more than a hundred years since the Manifesto officially ended the practice of plural marriage for the LDS Church. Despite this passage of time, plural marriage has remained a large part of the American public’s perception of Mormonism generally. This is in large measure the result of the overwhelming role polygamy played in fictional and polemical literature, as well as political debates in the last half of the 19th century, in addition to Mormon splinter groups who continue living the practice. In what follows I want to briefly discuss a few strengths and weaknesses inherent to Flake’s described approach in order to help evaluate how religious studies can help us understand not only religion of the past, but our “living” religion in the present. This is an effort to turn the hearts of the children to the fathers, and the mothers.

But why talk about it at all? In a recent address to BYU graduates Elder M. Russell Ballard encouraged members not to allow the subject of plural marriage to dominate everyday conversations about the Church. “It’s now 2009,” Ballard stated, “Why are we still talking about it? It was a practice. It ended. We moved on. If people ask you about polygamy, just acknowledge it was once a practice but not now, and that people shouldn’t confuse any polygamists with our Church.” Church members would simply be “reinforcing stereotypes” by wasting their time “trying to justify the practice of polygamy during the Old Testament times or speculating as to why it was practiced for a time in the 19th century.”⁴ Flake described this approach of distancing the Church from current splinter groups in a USA Today article discussing the Church’s handling of plural marriage media coverage in 2008:

The biggest challenge facing the LDS church is not distinguishing their present from the fundamentalist present, but getting people to understand the difference between their past and the current practice of the fundamentalist groups. This initiative, I believe, is their first attempt to do that.⁵

One way to better differentiate past from present is to better illuminate the past. Better historical studies and publications on plural marriage than are currently available would not only alleviate confusion among non-Mormons, but also help Latter-day Saints who are interested in the subject better understand the past practice of plural marriage in their religious heritage.⁶ The subject is mentioned—if only barely—in official Church manuals, never as the focus of an entire lesson.⁷ The publication of an "official view" detailing the history of the plural marriage and the Church is not likely. However, recent academic efforts regarding other aspects of LDS history, including the Mountain Meadows Massacre and the ongoing Joseph Smith Papers Project,are encouraging prospects.⁸ Difficult historical subjects have become the purview of scholars more so than the General Authorities of the Church. Elder Ballard noted the subject of plural marriage—though not the best area for average member speculation—is a legitimate subject "for historians and scholars" to dissect.⁹

To this end, Kathleen Flake’s book The Politics of American Religious Identity: The Seating of Senator Reed Smoot, Mormon Apostle explores the "Mormon compromise" wherein the Church disavowed polygamy in the early 20th century. Elder Dallin H. Oaks lauded the book as the "best thing ever written" on the subject of the transition between the pre- and post-polygamy Church:

I have to say I’ve been a lifetime student and writer of Mormon legal history, at least. I learned many, many things in her book that I didn’t know. She captured it very, very well, and was able to stress also what remained unimpaired by the compromise. Other books have been published, but not in a way that would grab the awareness of the average Mormon.¹⁰

Flake’s general approach has certainly grabbed my awareness. Her background in religious studies makes her especially well-suited to tackle the difficult subject and make some sense of it for contemporary readers. Negative approaches to plural marriage have presented the practice by playing on current sexual mores and emphasizing what is seen to be wrong with the practice. By selecting certain problematic examples and relying on contemporary moral expectations the picture can look quite grim. A wholly positive approach might similarly select material from the historical record that paints the rosiest possible picture to alleviate uncomfortable feelings. Flake seeks a more nuanced and historically rigorous approach. Her current project on plural marriage, as discussed in her Arrington lecture, is an attempt to uncover the “emotional and priestly logic of plural marriage.” Of course, there will be no untainted or “objective” treatment of plural marriage, but Flake explains that her “academic approach tries to understand and explain. It is done out of curiosity and not out of judgment.” Without denying (or directly approaching) the involvement of God, Flake recognizes that religion is not merely something that is believed but is also lived. Religious Studies scholar Robert Orsi has noted that religion “is always religion-in-action, religion-in-relationships between people, between the way the world is and the way people imagine or want it to be.”¹¹ When religion is viewed in this light, different questions must be addressed. Flake’s main concern seems to be to adequately explain what participants in the practice thought they were doing rather than only talking about what we might think of their actions. What did their religion-in-action, or religion-in-relationship mean to them? Orsi says such an approach underscores the “interpretive challenge of the study of lived religion,” that is: “to develop the practice of disciplined attention to people’s signs and practices as they describe, understand, and use them, in the circumstances of their experiences, and to the structures and conditions within which these signs and practices emerge.”¹² Flake’s lecture leaned heavily on the views of women who participated in plural marriage and others who were able to observe polygamous households first-hand. She pays close attention to the prescribed rituals, as well as the perceptions of those who participated in them, to understand the logic of the practice.

Discovering such logic is much easier said than done, not only because individuals may interpret or experience their religion differently, but because the historical record itself is imperfect and tricky. The researcher must consider and account for potential polemic both praising and demeaning the practice. In many realms of historical studies the available written record has been largely composed by men, skewing the perspective of the researcher by omitting the direct views of women. Fortunately for researchers on Mormon plural marriage, many journals and diaries produced by women have been preserved. It is apparent that even this record is tricky, depending on the perspective of any given writer. According to Flake, works by women like Fanny Stenhouse represent the negative polemic. Still, readers “are rightly sympathetic with the plight of those who struggled in polygamy and many studies focus on these elements.” But Flake wishes to move beyond the perspective of Fanny and those who viewed the practice as she did, asking “what about those who made polygamy seem like a source of human flourishing?” Such examples, she notes, “deserve analysis, too.” In approaching the subject this way she is taking women’s perspectives seriously. Susan Starr Sered has argued that in the past, feminist scholarship has typically offered critiques of patricentric societies by focusing on the oppression of women. “Less is known,” she notes, “about the strategies that women have used to circumvent patriarchal institutions, the techniques women have created for making their own lives meaningful within androcentric culture.”¹³ Such questions transcend a simplistic feminist critique.

In order to recognize such strategies the researcher must pay less attention to contemporary views of the practice and give voice to those who actually participated. Or, as Sered notes:

As scholars learn to shift attention from what men and texts say about women to what women say about themselves, new conceptions of human religious experience begin to emerge.¹⁴

Not only will new understandings of the past come into sharper focus, but religious believers will expand their understanding of their own lived religion. Religion is not an abstract body of specific doctrines, but a fundamental part of how humans view themselves in the world. Such an examination of religion carries the risk of making the sacred profane, like dissecting a dead frog on a school desk. But it also carries the possibility of sacralizing the seemingly profane. “Once we begin looking for religion within the profane world rather than outside of it,” Orsi notes, “we begin to discover realms of religiosity that are not limited to those times, people, places, objects, and events that seem extraordinary; we begin to see religion as potentially interwoven with all other aspects of human existence.”¹⁵

This approach should be particularly appealing to Latter-day Saints, whose religion embodies what Terryl Givens calls the "blending and blurring of sacred and secular categories."¹⁶ This blending was apparently easier and more acceptable for Joseph Smith to execute. Leonard Arrington noted the difficulty of writing religious history for Mormons in words that may resonate with Flake, both of them being committed Mormons:

The professional in us fights against religious naiveté—believing too much. The religionist in us fights against secular naiveté—believing too little. And if this internal warfare weren’t enough, we have a similar two-front war externally—against non-Mormons who think we LDS historians believe too much, and against super-Mormons who think we believe not enough.¹⁷

Much like Arrington, Flake admirably navigates these waters to produce responsible interpretations. Flake’s cautious approach to religious history—her recognition of the “natural” and contextual aspects of religion, her moderate voice, and her attempt to walk the boundary between the purely secular and the purely religious—is a welcome and important addition to Mormon history.¹⁸

FOOTNOTES:

[1]
See my notes from her address: Kathleen Flake, "The Emotional and Priestly Logic of Plural Marriage," Arrington Mormon History Lecture, Logan, Utah, 1 October 2009. Unless otherwise noted, the quotes from Flake throughout this post are from my personal notes.

[2]
The lot fell to Elder Orson Pratt to deliver the first public announcement of the practice on 29 August 1852. See his discourse, "Celestial Marriage," Journal of Discourses, Liverpool: F. D. and S. W. Richards (1854-1886, 26 vols.), vol. 1, 53-66. It took time for the wheels to stop turning following official announcements to cease the practice. There were a few post-manifesto plural marriages solemnized in the LDS Church until around 1910. See D. Michael Quinn, "LDS Church Authority and New Plural Marriages, 1890-1904," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 18 (Spring 1985); Greg L. Smith, “Polygamy/Practiced after the Manifesto,” FAIRwiki.org.

[3]
Dora Greenwell, "Home," Poems, by the author of 'The patience of hope', Alexander Strahan and Co., Edinburgh (1861), 151.

[4]
M. Russell Ballard, "Engaging Without Being Defensive," speech delivered at the Brigham Young University graduation ceremony on 13 August 2009

[5]
Eric Gorski, "Mormons launch campaign to put distance between themselves and polygamists," USA Today, 26 June 2008.

[6]
Even Latter-day Saints who are aware of Joseph Smith’s practice of plural marriage still tend to perpetuate erroneous reasons for the practice, including the implication that there were more women than men in the Church or that Mormon widows simply needed help crossing the plains after being expelled from Illinois.

[7]
For an overview of how each current official teaching manual of the LDS Church treats plural marriage, see Blair Dee Hodges, “Plural Marriage as Discussed in the Church Today,” 20 August 2008, LifeOnGoldPlates.com.

[8]
Ronald W. Walker, Richard E. Turley, Glen M. Leonard, Massacre at Mountain Meadows, Oxford University Press (2008). The subject was also approached in the Church's official magazine. See Richard E. Turley Jr., “The Mountain Meadows Massacre,” Ensign, Sep. 2007, 14–21. On the Joseph Smith Papers project see http://josephsmithpapers.org.

[9]
Ballard, ibid. In the past, Mormon leaders such as Orson and Parley P. Pratt, B.H. Roberts, and Joseph Fielding Smith have spear-headed historical or doctrinal treatments on the Church. This role has decreased over time. Currently, Elder Marlin K. Jensen of the First Quorum of the Seventy serves as Church Historian and Recorder.

[10]
See "Elder Oaks Interview Transcript from PBS Documentary," newsroom.lds.org, 20 July 2007. Other works that might have escaped the attention of the average (American) Mormon include B. Carmon Hardy Solemn Covenant: The Mormon Polygamous Passage, University of Illinois Press (1992); Doing The Works of Abraham: Mormon Polygamy: Its Origin, Practice, and Demise, Arthur H. Clark Company (2007), Richard S. Van Wagoner, Mormon Polygamy: A History, Signature Books (1992), Kathryn Daynes, More Wives Than One: Transformation of the Mormon Marriage System 1840-1910, University of Illinois Press (2008). Martha Sonntag Bradley has written a useful bibliographic essay on LDS plural marriage studies. See "Out of the Closet and Into the Fire: The New Mormon Historians Take on Polygamy," in Excavating Mormon Pasts: The New Historiography of the Last Half Century, Kofford Books (2006), 303-322.

[11]
Robert A. Orsi, “Is the Study of Lived Religion Irrelevant to the World We Live In?” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, vol. 42, no. 2 (June 2003), pp. 169-174.

[12]
Orsi, 172.

[13]
Susan Starr Sered, Women As Ritual Experts: The Religious Lives of Elderly Jewish Women in Jerusalem, Oxford University Press (1996), 6.

[14]
Sered, 141.

[15]
Sered, 140.

[16]
Terryl Givens, "The Paradoxes of Mormon Culture," BYU Studies vol. 46, no. 2 (2007): 191-192. Givens explores this theme in-depth in his book People of Paradox: A History of Mormon Culture, Oxford University Press (2007). Brigham Young particularly appreciated this blurring: “When I saw Joseph Smith, he took heaven, figuratively speaking, and brought it down to earth; and he took the earth and brought it up, and opened up, in plainness and simplicity, the things of God; and that is the beauty of his mission,” Journal of Discourses, Liverpool: F. D. and S. W. Richards (1854-1886, 26 vols.), vol. 5, p. 332.

[17]
Leonard J. Arrington, “Reflections on the Founding and Purpose of the Mormon History Association, 1965-1983,” Journal of Mormon History 10 (1983): 101.

[18]
This particular description of Flake’s work parallels the description of Leonard J. Arrington’s in Ronald W. Walker, David J. Whittaker, James B. Allen, Mormon History, University of Illinois Press (2001), p. 64.

The Fall of Relationships, part 2

2009-12-09T10:22:00.003-07:00

Part 2 of 2
(In part 1 we left off with a conversation between Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden from John Milton's Paradise Lost, book IX. Eve was arguing that the two should separate for a short time in order to better dress the garden while Adam is against the idea.)

Eve has just questioned Adam's belief that the two of them need to stay together in order to best overcome temptation. Adam responds to Eve’s questioning the need to be together by invoking a third party in the relationship: what God advises or creates need not be questioned: “best are all things as the will / Of God ordain’d them,” (343-344). In the Genesis account God says “it is not good for man to be alone,”¹² and one of the reasons seems to be recognized implicitly by Milton—in addition to the need for general companionship they can also keep each other safe from temptation: “Not then mistrust, but tender love enjoins / That I should mind thee oft, and mind thou me” (37-38).¹³ As it turns out, close proximity can also be the very impetus for succumbing to temptation. Adam explains the true danger lies within the individual when one’s reason is tricked and the individual’s will follows the misguided reason, as will occur when the snake convinces Eve that partaking of the fruit is a good thing. Adam urges Eve not to seek temptation because surely it will find them. Ultimately, though, he relents with a poignant line: “Go; for thy stay, not free, absents thee more” (372). The concept of relationship is again invoked implicitly—the virtuous and happy relationship is the one freely chosen by each party in the face of a real alternative, or opposition. After the fall Adam will decry the idea of forcing compliance.¹⁴ That same idea of freely chosen interdependence is shown in his allowing Eve to separate from him. It also seems to reflect the attitude of God in placing them in the Garden with the possibility of a fall, as noted above. If they did not choose to remain in the Garden with Him, their inability to do otherwise would “absent them more.”

Eve reassures Adam by saying that the enemy wouldn’t seek her first anyway because that would be a very weak victory. This excuse hints that Eve is not yet seeing them as a pair—or at least she is no longer seeing them as such at this point. (Or If the foe’s goal is to get Adam, he could use Eve. It seems she doesn’t realize that her fall will virtually necessitate Adam’s, based on their relationship.¹⁵ “Thus saying,” the moment of fracture is made physical, “from her Husband’s hand her hand / Soft she withdrew” (385-386).¹⁶ There is irony in her having companionship with the serpent, conversing, and even submitting to him: “Lead then,” Eve tells the serpent to show her the tree—a command to be led! (631). Throughout their conversation Adam is not brought up; Eve acts alone and the relationship is further fractured as she decides without Adam and misses her noon lunch date with him (739). She goes as far as bowing at (and to) the tree which she appears to worship (800). Meanwhile, while Eve hasn’t been thinking of Adam he has been thinking much of her while making her a garland of flowers (so much for getting more “work” done, 840). Eve says the fruit is now her “Best guide.” It isn’t until this point that her thoughts recall the relationships between her, God and Adam. Her choice was individual. Perhaps God didn’t notice, she hopes, “But to Adam in what sort shall I appear?” (816-817). She thinks of their relationship, believing perhaps now it will not be more equal, but that she may now be superior. Evidently she misunderstood the power she already held in the relationship—after all, Adam had relented to her request to work alone and clearly possessed much love for her. Her feelings of formerly being subordinate are pronounced as she feels a surge of power and superiority. In reality it seems she has upset the balance between her and Adam under God. The relationship is completely fractured, but oddly she clings to it more now than before, fearing she will be replaced. She resolves that “Adam shall share with me in bliss or woe: / So dear I love him” (831-832).

Adam seeks her and finds her by the tree where she explains the serpent’s words and admits that she ate. She seeks to repair the relationship by offering him the fruit, “Thou therefore also taste, that equal lot / May join us” (881-882). As Adam noted earlier, problems (or sin) will occur when one’s reason is misled, and this is how Eve fell. Adam, on the other hand, makes the choice with his eyes wide open. Speaking to himself he says: “How art thou lost, how on a sudden lost,…/ And mee with thee hath ruin’d, for with thee / Certain my resolution is to Die; / How can I live without thee” (900, 906-908). Adam is internally committed to the relationship, but this commitment strains his relationship with God because he places his being together with Eve above God’s strict injunction to refrain from eating the fruit. Adam tries to console or reassure Eve; maybe the serpent ate first and will get all the blame, maybe God will forgo destroying us so the Adversary won’t mock his evident failure. “However I with thee have fixt my Lot…/ Our State cannot be sever’d, we are as one, / One Flesh; to lose thee were to lose myself” (958-959). This can be understood literally, if Adam really views his true self as consisting of a relationship with Eve then he cannot be “himself” without the other part. But this fractures the relationship between him and God—as noted, this is the moment of Adam’s greatest sin and greatest nobility at once.

The severance of Adam from God seals him to Eve spiritually, and now physically as they embrace (990). They also do more than embrace, and when it is over the changes have begun to take a more physically discernible effect. They are naked and ashamed, they cover themselves with fig leaves (as Adam instructs Eve), they realize the relationship between them and God is fractured, and the blaming begins. In fact, Book IX ends with unproductive accusations and bad attitudes manifesting “Anger, Hate, Mistrust, Suspicion, Discord” and other fall-related emotions (1123-1124). The relationship of Adam and Eve is fractured once more. “Thus they in mutual accusation spent / The fruitless hours, but neither self-condemning, / And of their vain contest appear’d no end” (1186-1189). Vain because it was self-centered as well as useless in terms of affecting resolution. This new conflict sets up the need for the reconciliation that will come through the rest of the epic. When the Son shows up to make them account for their actions, Milton again invokes the relationships: “Love was not in their looks, either to God / Or to each other” (Book X:111-112). The relationships need healing, but in order for that to happen the cycle of blame needs to be broken; someone needs to absorb or assume it in order to make it stop. After the punishments are doled out (Eve to have sorrow and pain in childbirth, Adam to earn bread by the sweat of his brow, the sentence of death upon them and their seed), the couple separates without discussion this time.

Adam’s anger seems fleeting and he is depicted as mentally accepting blame for the situation. The fault is “On mee, mee only” (832). When Eve comes to find him laying in his agony he turns against her in a rage, calling her “thou Serpent” (Book X:867). This is when Eve makes the heroic move, throwing herself at Adam’s feet, breaking the cycle of blame with the same words Adam had heard in his mind: “mee mee only” (936).¹⁷ Only her acceptance of the fault is offered vocally to Adam. She is the heroic martyr who shows tremendous patience by overlooking Adam’s massively misogynistic tirade, and begging him: “Between us two let there be peace” (924). This is a pathetic victory, a humiliating victory at the feet of another person, begging for reconciliation. One of Eve’s most admirable actions follows one of Adam’s worst. He relents and proclaims her “frailty and infirmer sex forgiv’n,” although Eve was the one with the strength and courage to fall at his feet and effect the resolution of the relationship! The relationship is repaired and it isn’t until that time that they are ready to repair the relationship with God again. Falling prostrate on the ground, as Eve had done to Adam earlier, “both confess’d / Humbly their faults, and pardon begg’d, with tears / Watering the ground” (1100-1102). God had likewise already been seeking reconciliation of the relationship, not only by sending the Son, but through “Prevenient grace,” which had descended from God to assist Adam and Eve in their repentance. Milton's depiction of the fall built around and through relationships, with each partner intimately effected by and effecting the others, is a fascinating approach to the paradigmatic Fall of Adam and Eve. ¹⁸

FOOTNOTES:

[1]
Genesis 2:18. The image is Michael Burgesse's engraving for Book 12, "Michael expels Adam & Eve; the Cherubim take their stations to guard Paradise." This engraving is from the 1688 folio edition of Paradise Lost, the first with illustrations. See Milton Texts at Emory University.

[13]
Multiple senses of “mind” are possible here and the reader is left to take their pick of exactly which sense applies where—“mind” as in obey, or watch over, or be mindful of, etc.

[14]
“…what could I do more? / I warned thee, I admonished thee, foretold / The danger, and the lurking enemy / That lay in wait; beyond this had been force, / And force upon free will hath here no place,” (Book IX:1170-1173).

[15]
One might also ask if Eve was being completely sincere here, believing herself a lesser “prize” to the adversary than Satan. Is she naive? Is she representing what Milton believed true womanhood should represent? Is she flattering Adam?

[16]
This break contrasts with their later embrace in the Garden after they have partaken of the fruit when “There they their fill of love and love’s disport / Took largely,” (Book IX:990, 1042-1043), and their final hand-holding at the conclusion: “The world was all before them, where to choose / Their place of rest, and providence their guide: / They hand in hand with wandering steps and sow, / Through Eden took their solitary way,” (Book XII: 646-649).

[17]
Compare this to her earlier “austere composure” in response to Adam’s apparent insensitivity in Book IX:272.

[18]
“Thus they in lowliest plight repentant stood / Praying, for from the mercy-seat above / Prevenient grace descending had removed / The stony from their hearts…” Book XI:3. Part of this grace could include the sending of messengers to instruct the couple prior to the fall, the initial warnings about the foe.

Milton's Fall of Adam and Eve as the Fall of Relationships

2009-12-07T10:09:00.000-07:00

Part 1 of 2
John Milton's Paradise Lost creatively recasts the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, the War in Heaven, and the promised redemption of humankind. In this paper I explore the conversations and personal speeches between Adam and Eve in books IX and X. These exchanges seem to depict the Fall as being built around relationships. The "relational Fall" of Adam and Eve took place within the context of at least four relationships, each of which alternately fracture and repair (1- Adam and Eve, 2- Adam and God, 3- Eve and God, 4- Eve, Adam, and God). At the outset of book IX when Milton invokes his muse and describes his literary efforts in writing the epic he laments that “the better fortitude of Patience and Heroic martyrdom” are often “unsung” in the great and popular epics. Paradise Lost can be seen as Milton's attempt to depict better examples of an heroic martyrdom—those which serve to repair broken relationships.¹ The heroic moments include the Son’s volunteering to take upon himself the sins of man, and on a lesser scale, Adam’s decision to partake of the fruit to remain with Eve and Eve’s throwing herself at the feet of Adam to ask forgiveness, she being the first to take personal responsibility for the trouble.²

In Book IX Adam and Eve are preparing to begin their daily work in Paradise.³ A conversation takes place in which Eve suggests they separate from each other for a while and Adam argues they ought to stay together. Their exchange reveals important aspects of their relationship which are later related to their respective and collective falls.

Eve feels they have more work than they can handle. By working separately they will accomplish more because they won’t be distracted by each other’s beauty or conversation (220-225).⁴ Adam responds that her idea is good and that it becomes her as a woman—she should be expected to promote good acts in her husband (234).⁵ Nevertheless, Adam says her reasoning for their separation is not sufficient: “Yet not so strictly hath our Lord impos’d / Labour.” God doesn’t mind their getting refreshment, “whether food, or talk between, / Food of the mind, or this sweet intercourse,” (235-238). The couple was created to be together and enjoy life in a relationship. Despite his misgivings, Adam begins to capitulate with an element of foreshadowing: “But if much converse perhaps Thee satiate, to short absence I could yield” (246-247). If she has already had her fill of conversation for the present it might be fine to take a break from each other. Of course, Eve proved more hungry than Adam expected. She later satiated her hunger in a conversation with a serpent and again by partaking of the apple (instances of “food” and “talk between” that Adam had mentioned above). Adam offers another reason they should stay together: according to Milton’s story they had earlier been warned of a certain foe who would try to spoil things for them and suggests that when they are together they are stronger against assault. Any adversary would be “Hopeless to circumvent us joined, where each / To other speedy aid might lend at need” (259-260). Adam seems to imply it is the aspect of relationship that will be the focus of the foe’s attack: “Whether his first design be to withdraw / Our fealty from God, or to disturb / Conjugal love…” (261-263). Ultimately the foe’s design includes each of those relationships.

Although Adam concludes his argument with a hint of chauvinism to discourage the separation,⁶ Eve’s response is restrained because she loves Adam and chooses to overlook his seeming unkindness.⁷ This trait of Eve’s will appear again in a more serious situation after she finds Adam lying on the ground in his misery once they both have partaken of the fruit and he angrily rebuffs her. But in this instance she maintains an “austere composure”(272). She is surprised to hear that Adam doubts her firmness to God and him—again emphasizing relationships. His fear that the foe could mislead her reveals his fear that her faith and love could be shaken or seduced by fraud. How, she asks, could he think that of her? Adam senses her hurt feelings and seeks to repair the breach. Throughout this conversation each person attempts to properly defer to the other. Perhaps this is why it takes several exchanges before the decision to separate temporarily is made, and why the ultimate decision does not seem like the most logical outcome of those exchanges. Adam tells Eve that the actual tempting would be an affront to her and would dishonor her (297). Besides, the foe is more likely to go after him first so he needs Eve nearby to strengthen him. (Is he being condescending?) And as she strengthens him, he notes that he can likewise strengthen her. This seems to be a pretty equal situation where they help each other. His advice, he being the “head” of the relationship, is spoken out of “care and Matrimonial love” (318-319). Their safest resort is in the context of relationship. Soon their relationship will be connected directly with their individual falls as well as their fall as a couple from God and the Garden.

Eve is not persuaded and tells Adam their state is pretty sorry if they have to be connected at the hip all the time (or at the ribs?). Besides, the foe would only dishonor himself, and his failed attempt would only serve to make Adam and Eve look all the better: “By us? who rather double honor gain” (332). If they can’t stand on their own, they have been created too weak by their Maker: “Let us not then suspect our happy State / Left so imperfect by our Maker wise, / As not secure to single or combin’d. / Frail is our happiness if this be so, / And Eden were no Eden” (337-340). Their faith, love and virtue are better if tried and proven true. For Milton, there is no true virtue if it is not truly tried and proved virtuous. In Milton’s Areopagitica he wrote in opposition to the pre-censorship of literature in England.⁸ Such censorship would make virtue meaningless: “If every action which is good or evil in man at ripe years were to be under…compulsion, what were virtue but a name?” Those who complain about God “suffering Adam to transgress” are “Foolish tongues! [W]hen God gave him reason, he gave him freedom to choose.” Otherwise, he would have been “a mere artificial Adam” in a puppet show.⁹ “We ourselves esteem not that of obedience, or love, or gift, which is of force; God therefore left him free."¹⁰ In a way, Eve is right when she says that if they are not as secure separately their happiness is “frail,” but she is incorrect in thinking such a circumstance could not be an Eden. Her attitude of not seeming to care about their current separation stands in stark contrast to her later horror at the thought of separation after she had partaken of the fruit. She realizes she will die: “then I shall be no more, / And Adam wedded to another Eve, / Shall live with her enjoying, I extinct; / A death to think” (827-830). Is it weak for Eve to want so badly to be with Adam? Her statement that “Eden were no Eden” if it is built on such interdependence stands in sharp contrast to the internal Eden, or the Eden of their relationship Eve later prefers, as I will discuss below. As Adam and Eve are being led out of the Garden, Eve tells Adam to “lead on; / In me is no delay; with thee to go, / Is to stay here [in Eden]; without thee here to stay, / Is to go hence unwilling,” (Book XII:614-617).¹¹

But they are not to that point yet. The pre-lapsarian argument about separating continues in the next post.

FOOTNOTES:

[1]
This post is the rough draft of a paper I wrote for English 5721 ("Milton") at the University of Utah. The notion of Eve’s action as representing a sort of “heroic martyrdom” is from Daniel W. Doerksen, "Let There be Peace": Eve as Redemptive Peacemaker in Paradise Lost, Book X," Milton Quarterly 31.4 (1997) 124-130. Professor Barry Weller qualified Doerksen’s claim, stating that Eve’s action was certainly illustrative of self-sacrifice but questions whether it qualifies as “martyrdom.” For him, depicting Eve’s action as an instance of heroic martyrdom seems hyperbolic. Instead, Milton uses the phrase to anticipate the sufferings of Christ more specifically. Nevertheless, Weller noted, “it is at least worth emphasizing that the admirable—even the partially admirable—actions of the poem entail a disregard of one’s own immediate interests,” (personal communication, 2 December 2009). This paper is focused on Paradise Lost. Only peripheral attention is given to some of Milton's other writings and none to that of his contemporaries. The image is Gustave Doré (1832 – 1883), Adam and Eve Driven out of Eden.

[2]
Eve's actions are especially noteworthy considering the circumstances. Milton depicted her decision to partake of the fruit as being the result of true deception by the serpent whereas Adam made a willful and knowing decision. In this sense it can be argued that Eve is actually less "blameworthy" than Adam, but nevertheless is the first to try to repair their broken relationship.

[3]
Depicting Adam and Eve's actions in the Garden as including work is interesting since the Biblical account doesn’t depict much work prior to the Fall, unless one counts Adam’s naming of the animals or God’s creation of Eve.

[4]
Eve tells Adam: “For while so near each other thus all day / Our task we choose, what wonder if so near / Looks intervene and smiles, or object new / Casual discourse draw on, which intermits / Our day’s work brought to little, though begun / Early, and the hour of supper comes unearned” (Book IX:220-225).

[5]
At first blush, Adam’s response to Eve seems a condescending and sexist. The reader may keep in mind Adam is being utterly sincere.

[6]
“…leave not the faithful side / That gave thee being, still shades thee and protects. / The wife, where danger or dishonor lurks, / Safest and seemliest by her husband stays, / Who guards her, or with her the worst endures” (266-269).

[7]
Already before the Fall it seems there are some tempting situations where blissful relationship could be threatened. After Adam concludes, Milton prefaces Eve’s response by describing her mindset: “To whom the virgin majesty of Eve, / As one who loves, and some unkindness meets, / With sweet austere composure thus replied” (270-272).

[8]
England's Licensing Order of 1643 reinstated pre-publication censorship whereby any publication had to be approved and authorized before being published. Milton wrote in opposition to this rule, though he evidently still supported the outright censorship of Catholic literature as well as post-publication censorship. See John Milton, author, Stephen Orgel, Jonathan Goldberg eds., The Major Works (Oxford World's Classics), Oxford University Press (2003), p. 821-822.

[9]
John Milton, “Areopagitica,” ibid., p. 252.

[10]
Milton, ibid., p. 252.

[11]
This re-defining of Eden is also described to Adam by Michael the archangel. While Eve is sleeping, Michael gives Adam an overview of the future of his seed and promises the hope of a Redeemer, saying: “then wilt thou not be loath / To leave this Paradise, but shalt possess / A paradise within thee, happier far,” Book XII:587.

"The Death of the Old Order": Resurrection, Community, and Identity

2009-12-02T10:03:00.014-07:00

Every few months someone stands up in Fast and Testimony meeting to express their gratitude for their spouse who they say has made them who they are today. In the past I have interpreted this by default to mean "I really love my spouse." But lately I've thought about the phrase more literally. I have realized more and more that who I am, my identity itself, is wrapped up tightly with my own spouse, my friends, my work associates, the community and country I live in, and the Church I belong to. I like to feel independent and largely self-determined. I like to act, but I have realized I am also "acted upon," for good and ill (2 Nephi 2: 13-14).

The revelations of Joseph Smith talk about what I've understood as eternal individuality. You and me are one of many eternal "intelligences":

Man was also in the beginning with God. Intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be (D&C 93:29).

The revelations discuss what seems like eternal community, past and future:

Now the Lord had shown unto me, Abraham, the intelligences that were organized before the world was; and among all these there were many of the noble and great ones... (Abraham 3:22).

And that same sociality which exists among us here will exist among us there, only it will be coupled with eternal glory, which glory we do not now enjoy" (D&C 130:2).

I'm considering the relationship between individuality and community and how one affects the other. Depending on the approach to the question and the tools used to assess it, we might arrive at different conclusions. An evolutionary biologist may see things differently than a clinical psychologist or a cultural anthropologist or a prophet of God. Right now I want to focus on how environment and community affect individuality, and I am taking it for granted that such is the case. In Fahreed Zakaria's book The Post-American World he talks about the effects of globalization. With better means of transportation and communication the world is shrinking in new ways. Signs of "westernization" are seen in countries all over the world. In Japan we might stop in at McDonald's or Starbucks, we'll hear Michael Jackson songs playing in stores. Some are seeing signs of the "death of the old order" with the rise of what Zakaria calls "mass culture." McDonald's, blue jeans and rock music are crowding out older ways of eating, dressing and singing. Zakaria notes there are still very distinctive differences in culture despite the increasing similarities, though Japan may seem to some like “another prosperous and modern Western country with some interesting quirks”¹. A full fourth of the world can speak and understand English on some level. Zakaria wonders whether a common language makes people think in similar ways.

All this is to say the proximity and accessibility leads to interchange of ideas, products, hairstyles, goals and desires. All of this change worries the status quo: “We have left the past behind and there is an underlying unease that there will be nothing left of us which is part of the old." Zakaria recognizes that many values are slower to change. Nevertheless, "in general, and over time, growing wealth and individual opportunity does produce a social transformation. Modernization brings about some form of women’s liberation. It overturns the hierarchy of age, religion, tradition, and feudal order. And all of this [thus far] makes societies look more and more like those in Europe and North America."²

People throughout the world not only help to shape but are shaped by the individuals around them and the larger communities of which they are a part. How does this idea of change affect the LDS views of individual intelligences and the continuation of sociality in the (anachronistically-called) afterlife? Will the very makeup of "degrees of glory" and those of whom those degrees are comprised provide such a different backdrop so as to change our very identities? The possibility of losing parts of our identity we currently consider important, maybe even fundamental. I've already seen some of this sloughing off occur in myself when I think back to who I was in High School and how the circumstances affected who I was. When I consider how much my surroundings, including those I love, affect who I am I can't help but wonder about who I will be in eternity. In certain ways the very act of resurrection will cause us to lose parts of ourselves, though I'm inclined to think it will be for the better. Suddenly, Eric Clapton's song became much more interesting to me.

Would you know my name
if i saw you in heaven?
Would it be the same
if i saw you in heaven?

FOOTNOTES:

[1]
Fahreed Zakaria, The Post-American World, W.W. Norton & Co. (2008), p. 79.

[2]
Zakaria, pp. 80-81.

[3]
Image: Sam Brown, "it's much less crowded on the inside" 24 April 2007, Exploding Dog Comics.

Review: "Jehovah and the World of the Old Testament"

2009-11-30T07:39:00.000-07:00

Title: Jehovah and the World of the Old Testament
Authors: Richard Neitzel Holzapfel, Dana M. Pike, and David Rolph Seely
Publisher: Deseret Book
Genre: Old Testament/Criticism, Interpretation
Year Published: 2009
Number of Pages: 397
ISBN13: 9781606411360
Price: $45.95

Every fourth year the Sunday School curriculum covers the enigmatic books of the Old Testament. Official Church manuals generally take a homiletic approach, emphasizing lessons from the scriptures for members to apply in their daily lives. This method has the benefit of making the Old Testament more accessible to contemporary Latter-day Saints in terms of practical gospel living, but the drawback of overlooking its complex historical and cultural context. This can be especially problematic when the focus of study includes far-removed stories involving murder, a global flood, parting seas, God-directed plagues and literal fire from heaven. Moreover, official LDS publications generally shy away from the more problematic aspects of the text as described in academic analysis. This is one reason Deseret Book’s new volume Jehovah and the World of the Old Testament is so useful. Church manuals generally do not encourage the use of outside sources during Sunday School lessons. The Old Testament manual encourages teachers to be “judicious” in their use of “commentaries and other nonscriptural sources of information.”¹ This direction carries both positive and negative side-effects, and it does not prevent the Deseret Book catalog from catering to Church curriculum each year. Though it may not be entirely appropriate for an average Sunday School lesson, this book has the potential to richly benefit many LDS students and teachers.

This beautiful volume is a large and graphically-rich introduction to the world of the Old Testament from an accessible academic perspective. Authors Richard Neitzel Holzapfel, Dana M. Pike, and David Rolph Seely did not attempt to write a traditional commentary of Old Testament doctrine or a comprehensive survey of daily life in ancient Israel. Instead, their work "introduces and helps illuminate the Old Testament in its ancient Israelite and broader ancient Near Eastern world" (Jehovah and the World of the Old Testament, p. 2). By making extensive use of the past two centuries of ancient Near East scholarship they examine two different “worlds” of the Old Testament. First: “the world within the Old Testament,” which includes the practices and beliefs outlined by the text itself. Second: the “historical world,” which included the Old Testament within it, “where political, social, and cultural connections and tensions developed among the Israelites and between the Israelites and their neighbors” (ibid.). Rather than shoe-horning the Old Testament into a Latter-day Saint paradigm or using it simply to teach some moral principles, the authors contextualize the narrative in history, drawing upon archeology, anthropology, and source criticism.²

The format of the book is virtually identical to its predecessor, Jesus Christ and the World of the New Testament.³ The chapters consist of summary narratives of biblical text interwoven with information and explanations of the cultural setting. Nearly every page includes beautiful photographs, original paintings,⁴ or an informative sidebar discussion. Cultural similarities are especially interesting to the authors, who draw comparisons to ancient Near East neighbors of the Israelites. The much-maligned Philistines are brought into sharper focus than the often-polemical Old Testament depiction allows. I was particularly struck by a small Philistine clay figurine of a woman mourning, her hands held together atop her head (244). The picture accompanies a discussion on Ancient Near Eastern signs of mourning and distress, shedding light on the meaning behind unfamiliar things like sackcloth, putting dust or ashes on one’s head, and the rending of clothing. All of this accompanies a thoughtful discussion of the Book of Job and the problem of evil, or why God allows suffering. Other Job-like stories from ancient Babylonian wisdom texts are described in another sidebar, humanizing the Israelite’s neighbors while describing their similarities and differences. Special sections of the book deal with specific topics like the Egyptians, Canaanites, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Abrahamic Covenant, Mosaic Covenant, Temple ritual, animal sacrifice, Solomon’s Temple, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Jewish ritual and holidays, the development of writing and the alphabet, Old Testament archaeology, and the story of how its books became canonized.

The authors carefully navigate issues that may be sensitive for some Latter-day Saint readers, including theories on the textual development of the Old Testament and the implications the Joseph Smith Translation has on the Bible. They point out that Joseph Smith’s textual interaction was not mainly a restoration of lost Hebrew text, but an inspired commentary from a modern prophet’s perspective to help illuminate otherwise difficult or unclear passages. They also briefly discuss the implications of the Documentary Hypothesis, which holds that later redactors either wrote or heavily edited the five books of Moses, imposing certain views onto earlier Israelite history. Granted, many readers already familiar with these issues will likely find the treatment too brief, but the fact that a discussion is included at all is exciting, especially in a volume published by Deseret Book.⁵ A few instances where the text has implications upon the Book of Mormon are also included, including a profile of Lehi in contrast to his contemporary Jerusalem prophets before Jerusalem’s destruction (327-328). Frequent discussions of historicity and the nature of ancient record keeping will give readers more realistic expectations of the text. The authors explain: “None of these narratives tells the complete story, and there is always more we wish we knew. The authors and redactors consciously selected, emphasized, and arranged their materials in a particular way for a reason, generally theological” (172). This might seem obvious to some readers, but I believe many Latter-day Saints would benefit from a more realistic understanding of the Old Testament as described by these authors. They spend a good deal of time discussing the kind of "history" readers should expect, which obviously differs both from modern academic standards and popular conceptions of what “history” is. The discussion on the various names of God may be surprising to some readers as the authors demonstrate how “Elohim” and “Jehovah” function as titles rather than the precise names for the Father and the Son as has become the general practice of Latter-day Saints (16-19). The authors are careful to point out whenever they are relying on what they call “a Restoration reading,” or an interpretation of a scripture that is uniquely Latter-day Saint (such as the meaning of Ezekiel’s “stick of Ephraim, p. 346) or uniquely Christian (such as Isaiah’s prophecy that “a virgin shall conceive,” referring to a more contemporary circumstance, and foreshadowing the birth of Christ, pp. 296-297).

Frankly, there is too much excellent information in this book to hope to include in a short review (Goliath was likely shorter than what the King James Version claims? See p. 199). The approach of the book is expansive. It treats an astounding amount of information in a remarkably brief number of pages. However, this format also leads to a few drawbacks. For the sake of brevity the authors occasionally move too fast, leaving me hungry for more but without good advice on where to get it. This is understandable, but a few “for further reading” recommendations in the footnotes would have been useful. In fact, there are no footnotes. References are cited in the text. Again, this is understandable since the book is crafted for general readership. At times, the brevity leads the authors to side-step sticky issues without fuller treatment. Horrible death-by-fire as related in the book of Numbers is almost humorously referred to as “a swift object lesson” for Israelites who rejected Moses (130). Noah’s flood is treated in less than a page without mention of different theories of its scope—worldwide or local (28). The authors get bonus points for including information on other flood stories that might have influenced the Noah account, however, including the so-called Gilgamesh Epic (27). Similar discussions introduce readers to the Babylonian creation epic (22), Hammurabi’s code and the Law of Moses (97-98), and the Wisdom literature of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, which parallels aphorisms of other ancient Near Eastern groups (238). Understanding the culture of the Old Testament will help readers better understand the Old Testament. It is refreshing to see such an academic, attractive, accessible book published by Deseret Book. Understanding the culture of the Old Testament helps readers better understand the Old Testament. It is refreshing to see an academic, attractive, accessible book for average readers published by Deseret Book.

FOOTNOTES:

[1]
“Helps for the Teacher,” Old Testament Gospel Doctrine Teacher’s Manual, p. v directs teachers as follows: “During class, keep discussions focused on the scriptures. Be judicious in your use of commentaries and other nonscriptural sources of information. Class members should be taught to seek knowledge and inspiration from the scriptures and the words of the latter-day prophets.”

[2]
Strictly speaking, the volume is clearly written through a Christian or Latter-day Saint paradigm, but the authors are conscious of other perspectives on the text generally and give readers a general understanding of several lenses.

[3]
Richard Neitzel Holzapfel, Thomas A. Wayment, Eric D. Huntsman, Jesus Christ and the World of the New Testament (Deseret Book, 2006).

[4]
Many of the paintings were painted by Balage Balogh and were specifically commissioned for this volume. Attention to historical accuracy and detail was important, right down to the dark red blood smeared on temple alters.

[5]
Issues like the Documentary Hypothesis have been discussed in LDS publications elsewhere, including articles in the FARMS Review and Dialogue. One especially useful treatment is Kevin L. Barney, “Reflections on the Documentary Hypothesis,” Dialogue: a Journal of Mormon Thought, Vol. 33 No. 1, Spring 2000: 57-99.

Amasa M. Lyman's Dundee Sermon: "Nature of the Mission of Jesus"

2009-11-23T11:36:00.001-07:00

B.H. Roberts believed apostle Amasa M. Lyman was "doubtless the most persuasive and forceful speaker in the church” during his prime.¹ Unfortunately for Lyman, one particular sermon doubtless garnered some attention from his fellow apostles and eventually led to Lyman's estrangement from the Quorum and ultimately, to excommunication. The 1862 sermon on the atonement of Christ was delivered at Dundee, Scotland and was published in the Latter-day Saints' Millennial Star. About five years later the sermon resulted in Lyman's being stripped of his apostleship after declining the opportunity to recant. Wilford Woodruff called Lyman's views on the atonement "the worst herricy man can preach." The majority of what Woodruff and others found objectionable is toward the conclusion of the sermon.²

The following is a full transcript of Lyman's sermon. It was not the only instance where Lyman shared his controversial views but it was cited as a primary reason for Lyman's trouble with the Quorum. I've marked the original (extremely lengthy) paragraphs with a pilcrow (¶). I've also added footnotes and compiled the sermon's scripture references in an ^appendix. A few footnotes mention patterns in the sermon but I haven't fully fleshed out my thoughts so they are preliminary.

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“‘Nature of the Mission of Jesus.’ A Discourse by President Amasa M. Lyman Delivered in Dundee, Scotland, March 16, 1862,” The Latter-day Saints’ Millennial Star, No. 14, Vol. 24, April 5, 1862, pp. 209-217.

¶ I feel grateful this morning, my friends, that I enjoy another opportunity of meeting with you, and to enjoy with you the comforts of the reflection that, though time has been passing since we last met, we still survive those whom its resistless current has borne away, to meet again, as we continue our labour for the attainment of that happiness, the existence of which renders sure to us the realization of our hopes, if we continue to act and live in harmony with the law and purposes of our being.

We have no matter to interest us but the truth, no labour in which to be engaged but in the acquirement of a knowledge of its principles and their application; and as the fountain of truth, from its boundless extent, is exhaustless, of course we have not acquired a knowledge of it all as yet. There remains an infinitude of knowledge yet to acquire; and if we could compare the little we know with what remains in the future to be learned, its comparative littleness in point of extent and magnitude, would appear. But small as the amount of knowledge may be that we possess, we know that the knowledge of the truth developed within us constitutes all of ability and capacity that we possess for the acquirement of intellectual or physical happiness.

To continue and extend this good work is the labour that should engage us continually, calling into exercise all of our ever-increasing powers for the development of human happiness. I have no labour in which to engage myself, only to exert what influence I may possess to lead people to an understanding of the truth, that they may be enlightened, consistent worshippers of God, consistently religious, and honestly devoted in their religion to the love of God and the truth, which brings freedom to the soul from the bondage of ignorance, sin, and death. And in order that they may be so, mankind must have knowledge; for how could we act consistently for the accomplishment of any purpose of which we were ignorant? We can only hope to act consistently by having a knowledge of the truth.

There is no great difficulty in understanding that the knowledge of the truth, as unfolding to our open minds to some extent the purposes of God in our being, is the first and most valuable blessing connected with our existence as intellectual human beings here upon the earth; for only by this knowledge so reveled can our actions be correctly [210] and consistently regulated, and all other blessings will follow as a natural consequence of the presence of this knowledge in the soul. We have not come here, then, to worship religion, or bow down to it with the soul’s reverence and adoration, good as it may be, valuable as it may be, and dearly as we may have learned to look upon it. Our worship on the present occasion should be an honest, earnest desire to know the truth of which we are ignorant, with a fixed determination to give that truth an application to ourselves. Then our worship would be acceptable to God, the object of our worship, and our offering would be pleasing in his sight.³ Such a worship would render a people offering it acceptable to God, for it would be honestly, consistently and intelligently offered by beings who understood the nature of their worship.

We should remember that the blessing that is to result from our worship and devotion to God, from all our services rendered to him, is the good that it will bring to ourselves. We can render to God no happiness, offer unto him no adoration or homage that would compensate him for seeing us degraded and damned, instead of seeing us saved and exalted to everlasting life and infinite happiness. This is the purpose for which we were made and constituted with the germ of every principle of greatness and power implanted within us, that under he enlightening and fructifying influence of the Gospel we might emerge from our condition of ignorance and nakedness to put on the habiliments of light and glory. It is the happiness resulting from a consistency and harmony of developed knowledge that makes heaven a place to be desired—a place where joy is developed without sorrow, where pleasure is unalloyed with anguish or pain, where death finds no habitation, and misery no abode; but where glory and happiness, truth, light, and life that has no sorrowing termination are continually found.

That this might be our lot, and that we might be raised to enjoy these blessings, was the purpose that induced our Father to give us a being upon the earth. Then no senseless worship, (and by senseless I mean that which is ignorantly offered, unguided by a knowledge of the truth,) no worship that is blindly and ignorantly presented, is acceptable before him; but that which is radiant in the light of truth, and that comes from a soul made free by the knowledge of God, is the only acceptable worship that can be rendered to him. That we may be enabled to become devoted to God, loving the truth because we comprehend its value and feel its emancipating influence upon the mind, awakening within us aspirations for glory and endless life, and feeling the chains that have held us in the bondage of ignorance bursting asunder, and emerging into that world of glowing light and fadeless glory to which our heavenly aspirations direct us,—to establish this upward and glorious tendency in the feelings of the soul, is the object for which religion has been revealed to us, that through the truth we acquire we may be prepared for this glory as children of God.

¶ This view of religion should influence us, because it is right. “Well now,” says one, “if I could only know that it is right! What are the evidences in support of its being so? Do the Scriptures tell us it is right?” Suppose they do not tell us anything about it at all, could we know, comprehend, or understand anything about it? Would we be capable of having developed within us a principle of truth, supposing that the record contained in the Bible had never reached us? I know we would be the same thinking beings we are now. Our minds would not be closed up, and our powers of thought and reflection rendered incapable of action, but we would think of everything we saw, everything that presented itself to our minds furnishing material for thought and reflection. Where would we find the evidences that this view of religion and worship would be acceptable to God as a right one, calculated to elevate his children and exalt them to happiness and glory in his presence? Why, within ourselves, where reflection has its origin. We are capable of knowing that if we pursue the path of truth and travel in the ways of peace, falsehood and contention can never lie at our doors. Could we appreciate the difference between being surrounded with turmoil and strife to being surrounded by scenes of an opposite character—[211] between the blessings of harmony and peace understood and appreciated and contention that was entirely in opposition to our feelings and desires, we would exert all our influence in favour of peace—peace continually rich in the development of happiness and blessing. There is no mind, however darkened by skepticism or unbelief, that could question this. It is a truth, and a plan that commends itself to every mind that is open to conviction. This, then, is my reason, and the reason I assign to you, that the worship I have described is acceptable to God, because it makes you and me feel better, and saves us from the curse of strife and contention. And as it relieves you and me, so it would release from this misery and wretchedness all who would give it an application as we do.

¶ Whether this view of the matter is consistent or not with truth and reason, many would feel a delicacy in coming to a conclusion, unless they could know it was consistent with the Scriptures. But what are the Scriptures? They are simply a record of a small portion of what God is said to have done with and for the inhabitants of the earth during a small portion of the time that the earth has been the home of humanity. The Apostle instructed the ancient Saints to “prove all things and hold fast that which is good;”⁴ and as the Scriptures form a part of all things, they are part of that which is to be proved, and, when found good, to be retained. But we have been taught that they are not only true and in every way sufficient for the salvation of man, but that they have been made, by a marvelous exercise of credulity, to extend over all the broad surface of human existence. There is no point so far remote in that dark and indefinite future that extends away before us, but they are made to extend there, and have their application to human beings with equal force upon all. This involves us in a great amount of difficulties, and a few of those which surround us are something like these:

We are told that the Scriptures contain what is necessary and requisite for the salvation of humanity, and that the fullness of the Gospel contained in them was not revealed till Jesus came preaching the Gospel of the kingdom of God.⁵ Considering it thus, the reflecting mind in a moment is troubled with this question—If it was necessary, when Jesus came into the world, that all the Gospel truth should be made known and sustained by all the power he had, and if it required that power for the proclamation of the Gospel and its ministration, that it should become a perfect to those who should believe it, what has been the condition of the many millions who have never had any understanding of it? What is to become of them? For if it was necessary at any one time to save men and women constituted as we are—if a knowledge of its principles was requisite to secure their salvation, does it not prove to us that it was and is necessary for every other person constituted as we are and sustaining the same relationship to God as we do. Now, from the light of the Gospel as it is revealed in the Scriptures of truth, and at the time when Jesus was its greatest exponent, we arrive at our conclusions that this being necessary at that time, it was always necessary,—that there never was a time when humanity did not need all that Jesus taught for the consummation of their exaltation and glory.

¶ Another of the difficulties which surround us in our efforts to arrive at a comprehension of the truth is that we suppose, under the influence of our education, (and our suppositions are according to our education,) that the Gospel was not revealed in its fullness until the meridian of time, when Jesus came, the great herald of mercy and expositor of the Gospel to man. A little calm reflection will lead us to know that this conception is erroneous and at war with the purposes of God. “Well, if that is so,” you may say, “how are we to become satisfied of it?” By looking at the mission of Jesus and the gospel he came to preach, not from where we are, but, leaving the mists of tradition, (the fogs of error that becloud the minds of men here,) travel backward on the stream of time to the point when the purpose of man’s being as the child of earth was formed by God, and the Gospel had a formation suited to his constitutional wants and requirements. We will find, when it first became a purpose in the mind of our Father that man should live on the earth, the point we seek. If we possess any degree of imaginative power, let us go back to that point, that we may learn, by contemplating man as he appeared there, the nature of his constitution as it was determined by the purpose of God, what he was constituted for, and the nature of that Gospel that was there prepared to be revealed in the future for all humanity. “But were there men there?” Oh, yes. If no others were there, “the man Christ Jesus” was there; and others were with him too, for it is said, “The morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.”⁶ “Well, if men were there, what kind of men were they? and how were they constituted?” Why, just as we are. I do not say they were weak and sickly as we are, nor corrupt as degenerated man has become. They were not the subjects of disease and pain, as we are; but they possessed the same constitution, with minds having the same properties as ours—possessing the same germs of greatness, influence, and power. Thus constituted, man was there, the subject of his Father’s care and provision—the leading object, the primal object that moved the mind of the Father in the great enterprise of developing intellectual humanity upon the earth—of sending out His children here upon the earth, that they might return to Him clothed in a fadeless glory and exalted to majesty and power in those abodes of celestial bliss where they might drink of the cup of felicity drawn from an exhaustless fountain.

Man thus constituted was man for whom the Saviour was prepared—man who had never sinned—who had never perpetrated a wrong. For man thus pure and holy, thus unstained by guilt or wrong, pure as the Father who had given him his constitution, the Saviour was prepared and the Gospel was ordained. “But was it decreed, then, that Jesus should die to save men who were thus pure and holy?” No: it did not form any part of the purpose of God that he should die. “What, then, was he ordained to as a Savior?” Why, to be a Prophet, Priest, and King,—a preacher of the Gospel of the kingdom of God. “What! was he ordained there to officiate thus, when in the meridian of time he should travel among his brethren shrouded in mortality?” Why, yes. When he came into the world, he told the people that he came to do the will of his Father, and none other work had he to do than he had seen his Father doing.⁷ What was the work he came doing? Read the history of John the Baptist as he went preaching from place to place, and continue it down until the time when Herod shut him up in prison, so that he could not preach to the people any longer, and there you will find that Jesus followed his forerunner in the great work of human instruction—that he came preaching the Gospel of the kingdom of God.⁸ Was it a part of his preaching to people that he came to pour out his life’s blood—that in its crimson tide the guilt of a sin-stricken world might be washed away? Did he speak of his death as the object to which their thoughts and attention should be turned? Why, he told them to cease from sinning and turn unto righteousness—to put evil and corruption from hem and live in purity and holiness before God. What did he say to the poor unfortunate woman brought before him, when her hypocritical accusers slunk in guilty silence away before the majesty of his rebuke? “He that is without sin, let him cast the first stone!” Looking up and seeing her standing with downcast eyes, he said, “Go thy way and sin no more.”⁹ That was the lesson he inculcated to all—“Cease to do evil, learn to do well.” I wish you to remember this incident in the history of Jesus—to treasure up this little portion of the Scriptures in your minds. It will not be unwieldy, or troublesome to carry; and when you wish to see the principle upon which God designed to save mankind, you will see there, when you look at it, a truthful reflection of the principles upon which he purposed to exalt poor sinful humanity—of how man, whom you saw so pure and holy before he became a denizen of the earth, was to return to the scenes of hallowed felicity from whence he had come; not on the crimson tide of Emmanuel’s blood poured forth on Calvary’s mount, but by ceasing the perpetration of those wrongs which have brought misery, suffering, and death upon the family of man. This is the Gospel that was de-[213] termined in yonder heavens before the foundations of earth were laid.

“But does not Scripture speak of Jesus as a ‘Lamb slain from the foundation of the world?’”¹⁰ “Why,” says one, “I supposed that it was predetermined before the world was that Jesus must die, and that naught but his blood could bring God’s children back to the home from whence they had simply gone abroad for a time.” Is it said so in the scriptures? No. This is the inference we draw from the fact that we see humanity cursed with sin till we travel back beyond that time when sin brought misery and death upon the race. We contemplate them as having the black stain of wrong fixed upon them; and seeing them thus, we conceive this to be something that had its origin in the purposes of our Father, which caused it to be predetermined that Jesus must die, or man could never return back again to the bosom of his Father. What was necessary, before man transgressed, that he should be saved? Why, simply, that he should be taught. The infant being, inhaling for the first time the free air of heaven with opening mind, simply needed to have principles of truth kept ceaselessly before it to lead from its undeveloped condition onward and upward to God. Instead of man’s becoming the corrupt degraded being we now behold him, he only needed healthy, truthful, and pure elements of knowledge imparted to him continuously, as his enlarging capacity prepared him to receive them, in order to become all that he was constituted to become as the child of God. Without this, he could not reach the high destiny that was made attainable for him. Was a Gospel combining the elements of this instruction prepared that it might bring happiness, blessing, and eternal life to man? Yes. But did not this Gospel have associated with it, as a necessary pre-requisite for man’s salvation, the death of Jesus? No; for if so, he failed to tell the people the true nature of the Gospel he preached and his mission among men, and the means by which eternal life was to be gained. He said it was eternal life to know God. He told this to men who were constituted to learn, who could receive not one lesson, but with minds constituted to receive knowledge eternally. This was the constitution of the human mind; and, for the benefit of men thus constituted, he said, when praying to the Father, “This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.”¹¹ This is what you and I need to know, that our worship may be acceptable to God as being first conducive to our happiness, enlightenment, and emancipation from the bonds of ignorance and death.¹² Shall we, with all these reasons before our minds, arrive at any other conclusion other than that man was constituted to become possessed of knowledge, and the Gospel constituted of what would lead him to the acquirement of that knowledge. The Gospel is nowhere said to be constituted of the death of Jesus. Where shall we find in the record of his teachings anything that would sustain such an idea? Nowhere. We see him as he was revealed among humanity, and read the truths he taught, so far as they have been transmitted to us through an imperfect medium; and we can see that his life was devoted to the truth, if the light of heaven has given to us any degree of understanding.¹³

¶ What, then, was the nature of the mission of Jesus when he came into the world? Some may be startled, doubtless, at the idea that it was not necessary, as having been predetermined and designed by the purposes of the Father, that Jesus should die. Did it ever occur to you how the death of Jesus could effect intellectual humanity? Did you ever think of it? But that we may entertain no wrong reflection on this point, I will call your attention to a parable spoken by Jesus, as recorded in Matthew xxi., 33—39, expressive of the nature of his mission.¹⁴ He speaks of an individual who owned a vineyard, and let it out to certain husbandmen; and when the season came round, he sent his servants to receive the fruits of it, or collect the rent, as would be said now. He had let the vineyard, and he sent his servants down to receive that which was justly his from those in whose care it was. But these men cast the servants out—beat one, killed another, and stoned a third, and would not pay the rent. Other embassies were sent and treated in the same manner as the first. At last the master [214] said, “I will send my son down to them. If they have abused my servants, they will not presume to abuse my son and heir.” What did the master say he was sending the son down for? Simply to collect the rent—to be the same representative of the master’s interests that the servants who preceded him were. How did the husbandmen receive the son? They said, This is the son and heir. If we can kill him and get him out of the way, then the inheritance will be our own, for there will be no heir to it. The result was, the son was killed the same as those who had been sent before him. If Jesus knew it was necessary that they should be killed, as a part of the mission they were sent to perform, he failed to say so. They were killed because of the wickedness and murderous designs of those to whom they were sent, and the purposes of the master in sending them were not then accomplished. If the rent had been faithfully and honestly paid, there would have been no wrong done, no murder committed. Why did they do this evil? —why commit the murders which stained their souls with guilt and crime? Because they followed after an evil thought, and, being seduced by corrupt reasoning, concluded that they would reap some advantage if they could cast out those who were sent to them. These servants and this dear son were alike killed. The same procuring causes led to the same result in the one case as in the other. I wish you to have Jesus’ own interpretation of his mission into the world. Jesus has shown how the servants and the son came, and how they were treated when they did come; but he never said it was necessary that they should die. That they did die is a sad fact. The mission of Jesus to the earth not only cost him poverty and misery, but it cost him his life. Now, when we look at this parable and consider, in connection with it, that eternal life is “to know God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent,” and that this knowledge alone can raise mankind from their misery and degradation to enjoy the blessings of salvation, we see clearly that the Gospel was prepared before the foundation of the world to educate men and lead them from their weakness and ignorance to knowledge, through which and by which alone they could become clothed with the habiliments of might and glory.

Men were all constituted alike to receive, understand, and acquire knowledge; and the great necessity with regard to the coming of Jesus was that man could not be redeemed and exalted without knowledge, which constitutes the Gospel “the power of God unto salvation,” that would enable man thus enlightened to comprehend the purpose of his own existence, and the nature of his relationship to the Father. That human action would become rightly and properly directed under its influence, the Gospel was prepared, because the moment God entertained the design to exalt humanity to glory and immortality within himself, the provision of the means that were required to accomplish his designs became a necessity. If it had not been so, Jesus would never have been put in jeopardy, nor any of the Prophets and Apostles have suffered from cruelty and persecution; but the very salvation of man depending upon his becoming enlightened rendered it imperative that that which would bring the Gospel within his reach should be done. Thus Jesus, at the time of his manifestation on the earth, became the great expositor of the Gospel. If he had declared that it was his blood that would cleanse us from sin, we would not have questioned it. “But does not the scripture say his blood cleanses from sin?” Why, yes. John speaks of “Him that loved the us and washed us from our sins in his own blood;”¹⁵ and if that was all we knew of John, we would be led to form our conclusions from that saying. But there are some other things to be considered concerning him before our thought ripens into conviction. He was one of those to whom Jesus said, hen opening his mission, as they toiled with their nets on the blue waters of Palestine, that if they would come with him, he would make them fishers of men. Did he become obedient to that call? Yes.¹⁶ Then, as through his future life, he rendered a ready response to the voice of him whom he learned to love so dearly. He was one of those who were baptized for the remission of sins; he was taught of Jesus and was ordained by him as his Apostle to represent him when he was gone. [215] Under the sound of the voice of Jesus, he learned those truths which he was to proclaim to the nations as Heaven’s ambassador and representative, and, in learning them, learned their worth—their priceless value, and learned to govern himself and regulate his actions by them. This is the way John became cleansed from sin—by acting consistently with the truth he had learned, and doing no wrong, and not by the blood of Jesus in any other way applied. Do you see any connection between the shedding of the blood of Jesus and the regeneration of the great Apostle John, the friend of Jesus, who shared with him his sorrows and rejoiced under his teachings, the beloved disciple who had leaned in the fondness of his soul upon the breast of that Master he so dearly loved, and who, when he regarded his own salvation, could not take into account all it had cost and leave out the tragedy of Calvary. He had seen him whom he had traveled and lived with—whom he had learned to appreciate and love with the heart’s fondest affections,—he had seen him in his sufferings and misery, and witnessed the excruciating agonies he endured in Gethsemane and on Calvary. Could he forget all this? No; the thoughts moved by the rising sympathy of the soul assumed consistency and form, and said, “Can I forget the cost of the proclamation that brought all that life and light to my soul which I enjoy—that said to the captive soul, ‘Go forth to life and glory and freedom,’ and which cost the lifeblood of my brother and my God?” This was the estimate made in the mind of the Apostle when he calculated the cost of what had brought salvation to him. Yet it was by doing just as Jesus told the poor frail woman to do—“Go thy way and sin no more.” It was thus, when John ceased to do sin, that he was cleansed from sin. I wish you to see and understand this, because I do not wish you in the future to bear record that I ever used an influence to lead humanity to believe that they could derive salvation, or a freedom from the consequences of sin, only by ceasing from sinning. I learn this from what I have learned of the Gospel.

Did Jesus go about seeking to procure his own death, that the world might benefit by it? No. Did he know that such would be his fate? Yes. Where did he learn that it would be so? Why, yonder in the heavens, before the foundation of the earth was laid, when the great scroll on which the records of humanity were written was spread out before him, and in the light of truth the history of humanity was read. It was known then that Jesus would thus die, that the wickedness and evil passions of mankind would cause his death. Then he was known as the “Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world.” He could not be known in any other character, because his mission was to lead him where men were vile and wicked—men who could believe they could gain some advantage by slaying the Son as they had slain the servants who preceded him. What I find fault with is that when we are told the blood of Jesus will cleanse us from all sin, without any effort on our part to do right, it is virtually a proclamation to us that we can do nothing for ourselves; and then we will sit down supinely waiting for the blood of Jesus to free us from the consequences of the wrongs we are committing—for the work that God has done or will do to take effect, when we are the authors of the wrongs that exist. It is you and I who do wrong, and from that wrong we want to be saved. How can we be saved from it but by ceasing to do the wrong? Did Jesus say the wicked who continue to do wrong shall be saved? No. With all the power he possessed as the Son of God, and with all the glory he was heir to, he could not save the sinner in his sins. He could only bless those who hearkened to the truth he taught and ceased to do wrong. Listen to his language when he looked upon the city where prophets had raised their warning voice again and again:—“O, Jerusalem! Jerusalem! how often would I have gathered you, as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, but ye would not!”¹⁷ If he had power, why did he weep over the city devoted to ruin? Why lament over its approaching desolation? Because its inhabitants would not listen to his offers of mercy. He reviewed how often Prophets had been sent to them and rejected, and how last of all the [216] darling of the Father had been send, whom they treated with contumely and bitter persecution; and yet he could not, with all the God-like charity and ability he possessed, save the unbelievers who still persisted n their iniquities. Who were saved? Why, those and those only who laid off their iniquities. They were the recipients of his mercy, and the only ones who could receive the blessings of the Gospel.

¶ I wish you to look upon this consistently, and reflect upon it. My remarks have not been made to insinuate any criticism upon the opinions of others, but I wish you to look upon them reasonably, because I wish to place before you an incentive to practice virtue, cultivate charity, and live lives of truthfulness. I would be as glad as any one if I could believe and understand that my salvation was sure simply because Jesus had died. What would there be to hinder me from being happy? But I cannot believe it, and I will show you a reason why. I cannot believe it, because, if I am a liar, there cannot people enough in the world leave off lying to constitute me a truthful man. Suppose I were to profess religion, and day after day continued lying, what would I be? Why, I should be a liar! Although numbered among a congregation of so-called believers, and consequently one of those taught to look forward to salvation as the reward of those who simply believe in Jesus, which they blindly suppose they do by adopting the false opinions of their teachers. If there is any one thing in the wide region of delusion more soul-destroying than another, it is this. What difference does it make to me, though I thus believe? I am a mean man, a false man, because I am a liar; consequently, an impure man. Yet by this false religion I am taught, with all that impunity and falsehood clinging around me, and without one effort to cast it off, to aspire to a seat in the mansions of perfect purity, where God reigns! “But,” says one, “we must forsake our wrongs in order for the blood of Jesus to cleanse us from our sins.” This is all I ask you to do. When you cease from all wrongs, I do not care what you say has cleansed you from sin; but I do not want you to believe that the blood of Jesus has cleansed you from all sin, and yet see you going down to perdition because you have continued to sin. I want you to understand that by practicing purity continually, by being righteous and holy, honest with our God and with one another,—by this means we will avoid doing evil. All is embraced in that creed that calls upon us to love our neighbor [sic] as ourselves and devote our hearts to God:—“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy might, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength; and thy neighbor as thyself.”¹⁸ You shall love your neighbor, the man and the woman with whom you associate as you love yourself. But who are your neighbors? All those people around us. Who acted the neighbor’s part to the poor, beaten, wounded, and robbed traveler [sic] who lay by the wayside? The Samaritan who relived his wants, dressed his wounds, and cared for him with a brother’s tenderness, or the Levite and Jew who passed by on the other side and left him to perish? Was not the Samaritan the best man as evinced by the discharge of the neighbor’s duty to the poor sufferer?¹⁹ Who were the Samaritan, the Jew, and the wounded traveler? Why, simply so many of God’s children, sent into the world for the same holy purpose. Why love your neighbor as well as yourself? Because he is just as good as you are, descended from the same high parentage as the Saviour who came into the world that sinners might be saved and exalted. For whom did he die? For you and me, and not for our neighbor? No; but alike for us all. He did not command his Apostles to go and preach to a few for whom he died, but to go and preach to “every creature,” saying, “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be damned.”²⁰ What would have been the utility or wisdom of extending their mission at all, of only a part could have been benefited by it? All were alike the objects of the Father’s parental care, and were alike provided for, if they could only do that which Jesus could not do for them, and which you and I would blush to ask him to do. You could not ask him to cease lying for you, to avoid corruptions for you, to become godly, pure, holy, and righteous [217] for you—a possession of the fulness of the principles which have exalted him to immortality and endless life. No. But if we practice the same principles, they will place us in a similar position of happiness and exaltation. You may ask God to help you and strengthen you; you may invoke his blessings to be ever round about you, and the genial influence of his Spirit is waiting to be with you, to bestow upon you the blessings you lack and desire to obtain. If you do not possess it, it is because you have not prepared a place for it to dwell with you. This is what I want you to see and understand; and that God may bless you and preserve you in your departure from doing wrong, in breaking off your sins by righteousness and your iniquities by turning unto God, is my prayer in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Reported by E.L. Sloan.

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Appendix 1

Scriptures Referenced:

Job 38:7.
Matthew 4:19 (Mark 1:17).
Matthew 14:3-14.
Matthew 21:33-39.
Matthew 22:37-39 (Mark 12:30-31; Luke 10:27).
Matthew 23:37 (Luke 13:34).
Mark 16:15-16.
Luke 10:30-37.
John 5:19.
John 8:2-11.
John 17:3.
1 Thessalonians 5:21.
Revelation 1:5.
Revelation 13:8.

FOOTNOTES:

[1]
B.H. Roberts, A Comprehensive History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Century 1 (Salt Lake City: Deseret News, 1930), 5:83. The illustration of Amasa Lyman is from Loretta Hefner's article, "From Apostle to Apostate: The Personal Struggle of Amasa Mason Lyman," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 16 (Spring 1983), p. 90.

[2]
Wilford Woodruff's Journal, ed. Scott G. Kenney (Signature Books, 1984), 6:321-22. Woodruff's journal entry for 26 December 1866 describes the circumstances: "The subject of A Sermon Preached by A Lyman and published in the Millennium Star April 5, 1862, in vol 24 was brought up & red & it was found to have done away with the Efficasy of the blood of Christ....When you do away with the blood of the Savior you do away with all the Gospel & plan of Salvation. If this doctrin as Preached by A Lyman . . . be preached & Published as the doctrins of the Church & not Contradicted by us it would not be long before there would be syms [schisms] in the Church. This doctrin as Preached in this Sermon is fals doctrin. If we do not believe that it was necessary for Christ to Shed his Blood to save the world, whare is our Church? It is nothing. This does not Set well upon my feelings. It is grievious to me to have the Apostles teach fals doctrins. Now if the Twelve will sit down quietly & not Contradict Such doctrin are they justified? No they are not," (Wilford Woodruff's Journal, 6:308—9). See also Daniel C. Peterson, “Editor's Introduction: ‘The Worst Herricy Man Can Preach,’" FARMS Review 12:1 (2000) and Loretta L. Hefner, "From Apostle to Apostate: The Personal Struggle of Amasa Mason Lyman," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 16 (Spring 1983), 90-104. Edward Leo Lyman counters some of Hefner's conclusions in his biography, Amasa Mason Lyman, Mormon Apostle and Apostate: A Study in Dedication, (University of Utah Press, 2009).

[3]
The pronouns “he”, “his,” and “him,” in reference to God the Father and Jesus Christ were typically not capitalized during this period of Church publications. That usage here should not be seen as reflecting a casual attitude towards the Father or the Son.

[4]
1 Thessalonians 5:21.

[5]
Typical proof-texts on the Bible’s sufficiency include 2 Timothy 3:16-17 and Revelation 22:18.

[6]
Job 38:7. For an interesting approach to this verse see Kevin Barney, “On Preexistence in the Bible,” FAIR (date unknown).

[7]
John 5:19.

[8]
Matthew 14:3-14.

[9]
John 8:2-11.

[10]
Revelation 13:8.

[11]
John 17:3.

[12]
Over the course of the sermon Amasa has replaced the concept of "sin" with "ignorance." Sin, ignorance and death were previously grouped together.

[13]
Amasa appeals to the imperfection of the Bible but apparently also believes it contains a sufficient amount of the sayings of Jesus in terms of Christ's mission and sacrifice. Also he appears to overlook Pauline Christology altogether.

[14]
Matthew 21:33-39.

[15]
Revelation 1:5.

[16]
Matthew 4:19; Mark 1:17.

[17]
Matthew 23:37; Luke 13:34.

[18]
Matthew 22:37-39; Mark 12:30-31; Luke 10:27.

[19]
Luke 10:30-37.

[20]
Mark 16:15-16.

Old Testament narratives, historicity, and a new commentary

2009-11-19T09:35:00.003-07:00

Deseret Book recently published a beautiful volume just in time for Christmas (and next year's Gospel Doctrine curriculum) called Jehovah and the World of the Old Testament. If you're anything like me you've struggled in the past to make much sense of some of the more miraculous or colorful Old Testament stories. This large photo-filled one-volume treatment of the OT has been a blast to read so far. It is more academic than homiletic. Rather than shoehorning the OT into an LDS paradigm, or using it just to teach some moral principles, the authors contextualize the narrative in history. Understanding the culture of the Old Testament helps us better understand the Old Testament. It's refreshing to see this sort of thing published by Deseret Book. I'm working on a full review, but for now here's a short excerpt from a sidebar in the book called "Interpreting Biblical Narratives." Hopefully this will give a sense of what to expect from this book. The information might seem obvious to many readers, but I believe many Latter-day Saints would benefit from a more realistic understanding of the Old Testament as described by these authors. They spend a good deal of time discussing the kind of "history" readers should expect from the OT, which obviously differs from modern academic standards.

_____________________________________
Interpreting Biblical Narratives
Although many Bible students have read and enjoyed narrative texts in the Old Testament, the following five important principles help to facilitate more insight, enjoyment, and accurate interpretation.

1. None of these narratives tells the complete story, and there is always more we wish we knew. The authors and redactors consciously selected, emphasized, and arranged their materials in a particular way for a reason, generally theological. Thus, it is helpful to regularly ask, "Why was this information included?" and "What purpose(s) does it serve?" [In many instances the authors discuss historical problems, anachronisms, inflated numbers, and other aspects of the "history."]

2. Remarkably, Old Testament narratives present what actually happened, which means they often provide negative examples, rather than just the "right" way to live. [The authors contrast this with other Ancient Near Eastern texts that do not discuss failures of leaders, but only extol their power. See, for instance, pg. 210.]

3. Old Testament narratives rarely teach doctrinal principles explicitly. Rather, they illustrate them. Readers need to consider what principles are being represented.

4. Likewise, these narratives do not usually explicitly state the "moral" to the story (no written "and thus we see" insights). Readers must judge what was right and what was wrong in an account based on information contained elsewhere in scripture. [Throughout the book the authors describe some of the more gruesome biblical narratives including rape, incest, murder, and other things that might make modern readers squeamish.Sometimes the moral is not explicitly spelled out in the biblical text itself, leaving readers hanging in a way.]

5. As is often observed, Jehovah is the main character or figure in the Old Testament narrative. Whether he is depicted as actively intervening in human affairs or not, the Bible depicts him as always there, blessing, cursing, and bringing about his purposes. [Thus, history is viewed from a theological, not academic, perspective.]

_____________________________________

See "Interpreting Biblical Narratives," Richard Neitzel Holzapfel, Dana M. Pike, David Rolph Seely, Jehovah and the World of the Old Testament, Deseret Book (2009), p. 172.

Early authoritative efforts to curb "badly written" LDS publications

2009-11-17T07:00:00.015-07:00

A transcript of Parley P. Pratt's "Regulations for the Publishing Department of the Latter-day Saints in the East" (1845).

"The views expressed herein are the responsibility of the author and do not necessarily represent the position of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints."

This disclaimer is found in most unofficial Church-themed publications, but it wasn't always so. Most (if not all) early publications by members of the Church didn't include such disclaimers until after the death of Joseph Smith. Interestingly, centralization of producing Church literature was motivated by finances as much as anything else. Financial considerations have been an important part of LDS publishing ever since Martin Harris mortgaged his farm for money used to print the Book of Mormon. From the very start, Latter-day Saints took full advantage of early 19th-century print culture to spread the gospel.

For example, in 1831 Joseph Smith received a revelation creating a Literary Firm to take charge of publishing revelations and receiving remuneration therefrom.¹ Missionaries produced their own tracts to warn of the impending Millennium and counter anti-Mormon accusations.² Several LDS newspapers disseminated news, sermons, revelations, political positions, birth, death and marriage notices, and other items of interest.³

Historian David J. Whittaker has analyzed early Mormon pamphleteering to shed light on how the Church begun to form a more centralized (or "official") voice. Among other significant factors, flooding the market with LDS tracts decreased the sales of works by apostles like Parley P. and Orson Pratt. Money that could have been better spent to fund construction of the Nauvoo Temple went to pamphlets that simply borrowed from earlier pamphlets or presented poorly-executed scriptural proof-texts. In 1845 Parley P. Pratt published "the first attempt to establish guidelines for publishing in the early Church."⁴ Following the death of Joseph Smith, leaders of the Church tried to keep things together using Church publications to promote unity, oppose schismatics, and to more effectively use tithing and other resources. Pratt's call for correlation was published in the New York Prophet in early January 1845 and reprinted in the Times and Seasons a week and a half later. Pratt emphasized several reasons for centralization including improving quality, decreasing redundancy and oversupply, and making better use of "vast sums" he felt should be used to help complete the temple. Another slightly understated—but perhaps most important factor—was the question of succession. Pratt noted that the only current "emporiums of light, truth, and news" are those "appointed by the Twelve" and "published by authority." Tellingly, the article directly following Pratt's also demonstrates the use of print media to warn members of the Church about schismatics. "BEWARE OF IMPOSTORS" cautions readers against Daniel and Nancy Botsford's "improper and erroneous efforts" to take advantage of charitable saints, in addition to their "reporting certain slanderous tales respecting the leaders and church at Nauvoo."⁵

The following is a full transcript of Pratt's article. It's an interesting glimpse at one of the initial steps toward what we might call "correlation."

__________________________________________

REGULATIONS FOR THE PUBLISHING DEPARTMENT
OF THE LATTER-DAY SAINTS IN THE EAST
Dear Brethren:-- Are you not all aware that very many, if not all, of our men, women and children are turning authors, and publishing works purporting to be illustrative of the doctrine of the saints. Some of them are badly written, and some of them are mixed with error, and very many of them which are true and useful are borrowed, in part or in full, from our standard works which are already extant, and therefore, these new vamped pieces or tracts are not particularly needed; besides, there is another consideration—vast sums are expended by men who have but little experience in publishing, and perhaps pay double for the paper and printing, and all this into the hands of those who feel no interest in our cause.

In this way thousands of dollars are drawn from the saints and from the elders, while the temple cause is neglected. All these things are out of order and must come to an end; or else those men who have experience, and whose business it is to write and publish the truth; will have to cease and have no more to do with publishing. For they, and the others too, cannot find support in the business so as to make the works pay for themselves.

We have now three departments, duly appointed by the presidency of the church, viz: the Nauvoo office, under the management of Mr. J. Taylor, the English department, under Brother W. Woodruff, and the New York publishing department, now committed to my charge.

These three great emporiums of light, truth, and news, are quite sufficient until the work enlarges and other similar establishments are appointed by the Twelve.

The church, therefore, is hereby instructed not to patronize, purchase, or support any publication pertaining to our cause, except they emanate from one of these three offices, and under the sanction and authority of those who are appointed to manage this matter.

Let the books, tracts, periodicals, pamphlets, &c. of Mr. B. Winchester and others no longer be patronized by the saints.⁶ Let the ‘Times and Seasons,’ ‘Neighbor,’ ‘Millennial Star,’ and ‘Prophet’ be well supported, together with the standard Hymn Book, Book of Mormon, and such other works as are, or may be, published by authority as approved standards; and this will be all the church is able to do at present. Considering the tithings for the temple, and the duties of charity and hospitality which are required of them.

The public are also cautioned that no works will be considered as a standard by the saints concerning their principles except they are published by the authorities above named.

P.P. PRATT.
New York, Jan. 1st, 1845.

[Editor's note:] We shall second the “regulations” of Elder Pratt: there is nothing like order in the kingdom of God.⁷

__________________________________________

FOOTNOTES:

[1]
See Doctrine and Covenants section 70; Steven C. Harper, Making Sense of the Doctrine and Covenants: A Guided Tour Through Modern Revelations, (Deseret Book, 2008), pp. 243-246. See also the entry for "The United Firm" at saintswithouthalos.com. Later efforts to publish canonical books were contingent on approval from Joseph Smith or other leading authorities. For example, Brigham Young deferred to Smith's judgment on publishing an edition of the Book of Mormon in England in 1840, though it seems he acted first and asked second (see Leonard J. Arrington, Brigham Young: American Moses, University of Illinois Press [1986], pp. 81, 84, 89). In 1839 Parley P. Pratt requested to publish an edition in the eastern states but was advised against it (see Parley P. Pratt to Joseph Smith, 22 November 1839; Hyrum Smith to Parley P. Pratt, 22 December 1839, in the Joseph Smith Collection, Church Archives; David J. Whittaker, "Early Mormon Pamphleteering," Journal of Mormon History Vol. 4 [1977], p.43).

[2]
These include works from leading Latter-day Saints like the Pratt brothers in addition to other missionaries who published on a smaller scale. Whittaker, ibid., pp. 35-49.

[3]
Latter-day Saint newspapers preceding Pratt's 1845 call for correlation included The Evening and Morning Star (June 1832-July 1833), Latter Day Saints' Messenger and Advocate (October 1834-March 1837), Elders' Journal (October-November 1837), Times and Seasons (November 1839-February 1846) and the Millennial Star (1840-1970). More secular-oriented papers included the Nauvoo Wasp which became the Nauvoo Neighbor (May 1833-October 1845), and the New York Prophet or The Prophet (August 1844-February 1845). The Gospel Reflector, published by Benjamin Winchester, was the first "independent" Mormon newspaper (January-June 1841). John E. Page also published two short-lived periodicals, Gospel Light (1843), and People's Organ (1844).

[4]
Whittaker, ibid., p. 44.

[5]
Calvin C. Pendleton, "BEWARE OF IMPOSTORS," Times and Seasons 6 (15 January 1845): 778.

[6]
Benjamin Winchester was an early convert to Mormonism who participated in Zion's Camp and became a member of the first Quorum of the Seventy. He was president of a large branch in Philadelphia and was one of the most prolific non-Apostle publishers in the early Church. He published five single-volume works and twelve issues of his periodical, Gospel Reflector. He was excommunicated in 1844 and despite being singled out in Pratt's article his publications evidently were not the direct cause of his excommunication. He became a follower of Sidney Rigdon during the so-called "succession crisis" after Joseph Smith was killed and his publications were marginalized by Parley Pratt on behalf of the Apostles. Winchester eventually left Mormonism altogether. See Whittaker, ibid., p. 43; "East of Nauvoo: Benjamin Winchester and the Early Mormon Church," Journal of Mormon History 21:2 (Fall 1995), pp. 31-83.

[7]
Parley P. Pratt, “Regulations For the Publishing Department of the Latter-day Saints in the East,” New York Prophet 1 (4 January 1845): 2; reprinted in Times and Seasons 6 (15 January 1845): 778.

Krista Tippett on Religious Dialogue and Curiosity

2009-11-11T09:06:00.004-07:00

Krista Tippett hosts the radio program Speaking of Faith, which deals with "religion, meaning, ethics, and ideas."¹ If you enjoy podcasts and you enjoy thinking about religion I can't think of a good reason not to listen to her program. Last night Tippett spoke at the Salt Lake City public library, but earlier in the day she had lunch with some students and faculty at the University of Utah and I was pleased to sit in. It was an informal conversation and I scribbled only a few notes, but wanted to highlight a few points we discussed.

Tippett is soft-spoken but intense and she described becoming more interested in how religion infuses life with meaning while covering politics in Berlin shortly before the wall fell. She said at the time she thought she was dealing with the big issues—weapons, war, government, conflict. She saw people living on the east side of the wall, saw the restrictions under which they lived, but who were able to create huge "inner lives." They made the most of the restrictions because their families became tightly-bound places of refuge and kinship. On the west side she saw people with many more opportunities and freedom making much less of what they had, doing less with more. She marveled at the difference and wondered how some were able to make their own days more important than the nuclear bomb. It was the stories of individuals that really struck her and led her to the show she hosts today which focuses largely on religious individuals and their stories.

One student noted that he felt her show maintained a good balance and demonstrated respect for religious values. He asked how she managed to create that atmosphere and Tippett described a few things she does to foster ecumenical discussion. She wants to understand how religion affects a person's everyday life and so doesn't often engage a guest in abstract questions but rather personal experiences. She had been inspired by Parker Palmer, a Quaker author/educator, who noted that conversations tend to focus on the intellect or the emotions. We are good at stating our opinions, we are good at showing our emotions, but Palmer emphasized the need to seek insight in the soul. In order to do so the environment is crucial, so Tippett tries to create a quiet, inviting, and trustworthy atmosphere. She said the best way she has found to do this is a "first-person approach" wherein people answer theological questions through the story of their own lives. Though it often hits the cutting room floor she begins each interview by asking the guest if there was a spiritual background to their childhood. She believes this is a non-threatening question that helps open the heart of the interviewee. This has the added benefit of personalizing another person's view of God. It "humanizes" their view of God by connecting a line between ideas and experiences. Tippett said she believes this helps open minds—people are less likely to dismiss the views of another when they have heard a more personal account of their beliefs.²

Finally, and most interesting to me, she talked about curiosity as a religious virtue. When a person is truly interested in learning about the views of another person real and fruitful dialogue can take place. Genuine curiosity helps people connect with each other, and it can help people connect with God.³

FOOTNOTES

[1]
Speaking of Faith is produced and distributed by American Public Media. See http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/.

[2]
Tippett said she doesn't usually make the entire entire revolve around this approach, but uses it as a way to break the ice. She noted that her interview with Robert Millett, a BYU professor and LDS writer, focused a good deal on these questions throughout the interview, however.

[3]
This was the subject of a recent episode on Speaking of Faith called "Curiosity over Assumptions."

I see through a glass darkly and I kinda like it

2009-11-05T08:33:00.002-07:00

It's the old dilemma about following imperfect prophets:

Is prophetic revelation a messy, imperfect process where doctrines and practices change and evolve over time and even prophets see through a glass darkly (like the rest of us)? Or do prophets and apostles really have the kind of clear, direct pipeline to God that merits unquestioning obedience? It seems like most members and leaders of the church like having it both ways.

The slippery slope goes like this: "If leaders in the past made mistakes (potentially the priesthood ban or something like it) then what about now?" I personally see the problem as part of a direct invitation to take more personal responsibility for our relationship to God. Sort of like when Nephi took things straight to God even though his dad had visions and so forth, and later when his dad "spoke as a man" leaving it up to Nephi to get some personal revelation on where to find some grub.

But what if you take some personal responsibility and you take an issue up with God and arrive at a different conclusion than the prophets? It seems that Mormon culture encourages questioning/asking, but always with the assumption that we will, of course, arrive at "the right answer."

I think the hope is there that we arrive at the "right answer," but in my own experience it hasn't always worked out that way. There have been times when my own answer differed or I didn't feel I received an answer at all either way. Granted this is not a common occurrence and it generally makes things a lot more difficult of course. But at the same time I recognize that I received my answer, not a charge to spread it as far and wide as I can.

Sure, go ahead--ask. But then you will get the right answer and it will be in agreement with whatever the prophet has told us. So what if it doesn't? Does that mean he's not a prophet? Or does that mean we are wrong? It seems like are the only two logical conclusions.

First, I don't know how often a prophet or president of the Church would be in direct communication with God face to face. I believe revelation from God more usually comes, even to our leaders, through the Spirit and is conditioned on the circumstances and capacities of the recipient.

Second, there's an old quote from Brigham Young I've thought a lot about. The crux of Brigham's argument is that we're responsible for ourselves. I know we often hear about the importance of following the counsel of the prophets and I believe that's good advice. I can certainly understand why leaders don't constantly say "but I may be, or probably am, wrong, so take it for what it is worth." I imagine they take their position very seriously and do the best they can. But at the same time, I have to be willing to live with a certain uncertainty in these matters. For me, that's all part of our little test down here:

What a pity it would be if we were led by one man to utter destruction! Are you afraid of this? I am more afraid that this people have so much confidence in their leaders that they will not inquire for themselves of God whether they are led by Him. I am fearful they settle down in a state of blind self-security, trusting their eternal destiny in the hands of their leaders with a reckless confidence that in itself would thwart the purposes of God in their salvation, and weaken that influence they could give to their leaders, did they know for themselves, by the revelations of Jesus, that they are led in the right way. Let every man and woman know, by the whispering of the Spirit of God to themselves, whether their leaders are walking in the path the Lord dictates, or not. This has been my exhortation continually....

Let all persons be fervent in prayer, until they know the things of God for themselves and become certain that they are walking in the path that leads to everlasting life; then will envy, the child of ignorance, vanish, and there will be no disposition in any man to place himself above another; for such a feeling meets no countenance in the order of heaven. Jesus Christ never wanted to be different from his father: they were and are one. If a people are led by the revelations of Jesus Christ, and they are cognizant of the fact through their faithfulness, there is no fear but they will be one in Christ Jesus, and see eye to eye. (Brigham Young, 12 January 1862, Journal of Discourses 9:150.)

This approach can make things more interesting. I see through a glass darkly and I kinda like it.

Review: BYU Studies 48:3 (2009)

2009-11-02T10:57:00.005-07:00

The latest BYU Studies is a phenomenal "special feature" issue with a series of articles discussing the latest Joseph Smith Papers volume. In September, the first volume of the "Revelations and Translations" series of the Joseph Smith Papers was published. This landmark volume contains the Book of Commandments and Revelations (BCR) which includes the earliest surviving manuscript versions of many of Joseph Smith’s revelations and the only prepublication manuscript copies of some of them. Seven of these revelations were never canonized.

John W. Welch, the issue's editor, can hardly contain his enthusiasm:

Imagine!...having the BCR is something akin to uncovering a discarded draft of the Declaration of Independence or some of the missing records used by Luke in preparing his gospel (p. 5).

This issue of BYU Studies includes four enjoyable papers on BCR that were presented in a plenary session of the 2009 Mormon History Association meeting in May 2009. These articles, written by members of the Joseph Smith Papers editorial team, provide details not included in the Revelations and Translations volume itself.

Robert J. Woodford, "Introducing A Book of Commandments and Revelations, A Major New Documentary 'Discovery,'" (pp. 7-17).

Woodford gives a brief overview BCR and its provenance, and identifies those (including himself) who worked on its publication preparation. He describes how researchers identified the way BCR was referenced for publishing the 1835 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants. He concludes with some suggestions for future research based on BCR. For example, analyzing alterations in the revelations raises historical and theological implications. The so-called Book of Mormon copyright revelation and a piece on the "pure language" are of interest. The dates revelations were received and the historical setting can be reevaluated. "Each researcher will find his own area of particular interest" now that the BCR has been published and made available (p. 16).

Robin Scott Jensen, "From Manuscript to Printed Page: An Analysis of the History of the Book of Commandments and Revelations," (pp. 19-52).

In this highly technical article Jensen more fully traces the provenance, context, and content of the BCR. He meticulously describes the physical makeup of the book as well as its significance to scholars. "When scholars approach newly discovered documents, several important questions arise. When and why was it created? Who created it? What was it used for?" (p. 21). For Jensen, reading the words on the page alone only yields half an answer to these questions. Only by studying the internal and external evidence, the manuscript words as well as the history of Mormonism and the nature of archival record keeping, can we fully appreciate the document in question. Jensen explains how "forensic paleography" helps researchers find out when a document was created, how it was used, and what it might have meant to the people involved in its creation. In other words, Jensen is asking questions about what the BCR can teach us about the very process of revelation itself.

Steven C. Harper, "Historical Headnotes and the Index of Contents in the Book of Commandments and Revelations," (pp. 53- 66).

John Whitmer, the principle scribe for the BCR, included interesting date and header information for many of the revelations, allowing researchers to reassess the date and context of many early revelations. Clues will help reassess timing of aspects of the Book of Mormon translation, the location of the organization of the Church, the date when section 20 was revealed (calling into question speculation about Christ's birthday being the 6th of April), the timing of the "parchment of John" revelation, the identity of James Covill, the circumstances surrounding a meeting where men were asked to testify to the truthfulness of Joseph Smith's revelations, and how early members understood the imperfect revelations from a 24-year-old ploughboy prophet. Harper notes his essay does not finish much historical reassessment, but is meant to encourage it by describing how the BCR's index of contents and historical headnotes can be examined by scholars.

Grant Underwood, "Revelation, Text, and Revision: Insight From the Book of Commandments and Revelations," (pp. 67-84).

Underwood explores how textual revisions shed "important light on the process by which Joseph Smith received, recorded, and published his revelations" (p. 67). What is revelation? A direct word-for-word message from God, or the human articulation of the message? Something in between? Tracking some changes between the BCR and later published versions of the revelations allows us to see how Joseph Smith and his contemporaries understood the process. For the most part Underwood says pre-July 1833 revisions were mostly grammatical and stylistic, or clarified meaning. After that point in preparation for publishing the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants changes were made to update, amplify, and incorporate newly revealed polity or doctrine (p. 68). He tracks who made most of the corrections, surprisingly few in the hand of Joseph Smith himself, who was the one called to make such changes. Underwood explains a "latitudinarian" view of the revelations, where Joseph trusted associates to make changes so long as the general sense was not adjusted. Thus, divine communication has a human component which needs to be taken into account, or as Jeffrey R. Holland stated: "The scriptures are not the ultimate source of knowledge for Latter-day Saints. They are manifestations of the ultimate source. The ultimate source of knowledge and authority for a Latter-day Saint is the living God" (p. 81). Underwood deftly utilizes scholarship on revelation from several different faith traditions and non-LDS scholars to help readers better understand revelation and the written word.

Ronald E. Romig provides a brief response to these papers and a short historical overview from the perspective of the Community of Christ (pp. 85-91). In the Book Review section Thomas Coens, an associate editor of the Papers of Andrew Jackson series gives a non-Mormon scholar's perspective on the landmark inaugural installment of the Joseph Smith Papers. He tips his cap to the rigorous scholarship involved in the Journals volume and provides a few personal thoughts on the volume. James B. Allen also reviews the Journals volume.

In addition to these special articles, the issue includes a piece on Eliza R. Snow's poetry, LDS athletic tournaments from 1950-1971, and book reviews of the Twilight series, Bushman's Very Short Introduction to Mormonism and a few other selections. A paperback copy of this issue is available for $9.95, or a digital copy can be downloaded for $7.00. See byustudies.byu.edu for more. This is a highly recommended issue.

Review: Matthew B. Brown's "Exploring the Connection Between Mormons and Masons"

2009-10-31T11:39:00.001-06:00

Title: Exploring the Connection Between Mormons and Masons
Author: Matthew B. Brown
Publisher: Covenant
Genre: Apologetics/History
Year: 2009
Pages: 211
ISBN13: 9781598118933
ISBN10: 1598118935
Price: 19.95

The connection between Latter-day Saint temple ceremonies and Freemasonry has yet to be fully explored. To be frank, the connections may never be adequately explored due to the obligations of privacy placed upon participants of the respective rites. Of course, this hasn’t stopped exposé artists from publishing details about Mormon and Mason rites—including Captain Morgan’s 1827 book on Masonry and the Salt Lake Tribune’s 1878 publication of a former Mormon’s recollections of LDS ceremonies. These pot-boilers only hamper fruitful dialog. Several brave cartographers have attempted to respectfully navigate the issues, providing various maps comparing the rites.¹ Matthew B. Brown’s latest book Exploring the Connection Between Mormons and Masons hopes to take the conversation “a few significant steps forward” (Brown, p. 1). Before discussing the specifics regarding Exploring, I want to provide a territorial guide of a few trails thus far trod—four general LDS approaches to the Mormon/Mason topic.² I’ll situate Exploring within that dialog then briefly review its contents chapter by chapter.

Maps of Masonism & Mormonry

1. The LDS endowment is a ritual that was revealed directly to Joseph Smith and is unchanging in every respect from all eternity. It has no relationship whatsoever to Masonic rituals.

This is the weakest of the four options. I don’t recall anyone ever making this claim, including Joseph Smith and his contemporaries. Even the most casual study of the two rituals would eliminate it as an explanation.

2. The LDS endowment has been revealed during different time periods beginning in antiquity. It was revealed during the time of Solomon’s Temple from whence the Masons acquired it. As part of the apostasy the endowment was changed over the centuries. It was revealed exactly as it was in the beginning to Joseph Smith in 1842, independent of his becoming a Mason.

Brown does a fine job of putting the first part of this theory to rest, pointing out there is no conclusive historical evidence showing a direct descent from Solomon’s Temple to current Freemasonry.

3. LDS and Masonic ceremonies share a connection to rituals used in Old and New Testament times. The Masons acquired certain specific elements of the ritual from the orthodox Christian Church (medieval monks, etc.) and passed it along with some changes, whereas the entire endowment was revealed anew to Joseph Smith, independent of his involvement in Freemasonry.

As discussed in the rest of the review, this is close to Brown’s position.

4. Joseph Smith used the 19th century Masonic ritual as a template for the development of the endowment ritual in addition to revealed instructions and scripture from God.

This is the approach of Greg Kearney and others.³

I personally see the best argument residing somewhere between options three and four, and that Masonry played some role in Joseph Smith’s formulating many of the already-revealed temple principles into an enacted and institutionalized ritual. There are interesting similarities between Masonic elements and early Christian initiation rites and ceremonies, but the historical record is too vague to provide a reliable genealogy of influence either way. Brown situates himself under number three, arguing that the elements of the endowment were fully revealed to Joseph Smith independent of Masonry.

Chapter 1: “The Lord’s House and the Mason’s Lodge” (pp. 7-23).
In the first chapter, Brown contrasts LDS Temples and Masonic lodges by answering a set of ten questions for each tradition. He is careful to employ “common courtesy” by using “respected” sources for each tradition and avoiding discussion of more private elements (p. 7). He is also careful to mainly contrast as opposed to compare; similarities are downplayed and differences exaggerated. He concludes: “The fundamental natures of the two institutions (as presently constituted) are completely opposite each other” (p. 14). This overstatement doesn’t fruitfully account for similarities that could better help members of the Church understand and appreciate the role ritual can play in binding a community together, be it Masonic or Mormon. Brown’s decision in this chapter to contrast the institutions “as presently constituted” misses the opportunity to compare similarities that existed during the milieu when Joseph first administered the endowment. The possibilities for comparison here are ripe!

For instance, consider Brown’s question: “Who is allowed to enter within their walls?” Comparing the requirements for entry is a fascinating subject and because interview requirements have changed over time for both groups an entire chapter could have been devoted to this question alone. Worthiness interviews, recommendation of current members, qualifications—and these possibilities are latent in only one of Brown’s ten questions from this short chapter.⁴ Again, the goal of the chapter seems to be to describe differences rather than to trace respective historical developments or influences.

Chapter 2 “From Stonemasons to Freemasons” (pp. 25-39).
This chapter digs at the foundations of Freemasonry as an institution to discover where it came from, as opposed to where the actual “practices” came from (p. 41). Brown rightly notes: “Masonic history is very problematic for historians” (p. 25).

This is probably Brown’s strongest historically-based chapter. After describing a few of the best available primary sources on the subject he explains the “romantic school” and the “authentic school” of Masonic history—the first is older, based largely on lore, while the second makes better use of contemporary academic tools. The authentic school has practically overturned the romantic idea that Masonry directly descended from workers on Solomon’s Temple. Brown follows suit—an important and responsible conclusion based on the available historical data and current thought on the matter. Even though the romantic idea is all but demolished, however, “there seems to be no solid consensus on where the Masonic organization and its rituals came from” (p. 28) so historians currently offer a best plausible case and leave it at that. In the rest of the chapter Brown does likewise, outlining the “operative” origins of the movement (consisting of actual masons of stone who created a sort of workers union in the 1300s) to the “speculative” Freemasons who “do not [necessarily] engage in any such physical activities but are concerned with integrating a system of ethics into their lives” (p. 28). Brown briefly describes religious, political and social influences, internecine Masonic debates, and the ideological backgrounds of key participants, up to 1813 when Joseph Smith turned eight years old (p. 34). This is a subject that could fill volumes but Brown does a workable job in fourteen pages. A full treatment from an LDS perspective has yet to be completed.

Chapter 3 “The Origins of Masonic Practice” (41-67).
This chapter is where much of the meat ought to be. It's also one of the most challenging historical questions of the venture. Exploring reads more like a summary of potential starting points than a set of documented conclusions here. For Brown, “Orthodox Christianity is the place to start looking when it comes to the question of Masonic origins” (p. 42). Though he leaves out many specifics, he lists similarities between Masonic lodges and early Christian churches in architecture, ornament, furniture, and symbolism. Next he notes a parallels between Masonic ceremonies and early Christian initiation rites including catechism formulae, dramatization, oaths and obligations, and secrecy.

Some of the parallels seem quite striking on the surface and I wish Brown spent more time detailing specific connections and actually arguing for (or demonstrating) connection or dependence; admittedly a particularly sticky realm for historians. This chapter seemed incomplete.

Chapter 4 “Freemasonry in Nauvoo” (69-83).
Brown breezes through the institution of Masonry at Nauvoo in fifteen pages. His history of the actual intersection of Masonry and Mormonism begins in this chapter in the year 1841. Unfortunately, this leaves unexplored the previous interactions Joseph Smith and other Mormons had with the institution prior to the petition to start a Nauvoo lodge—a critical gap in the book. (Fortunately he does include useful bios of nine participants of the first LDS endowment session including their Masonic involvement and degree in the next chapter, pp. 106-111.)

He argues that Masonry was implemented largely under the influence of John C. Bennett and there is “no evidence Joseph Smith played a direct role” in establishing a lodge among the Saints (pp. 69-70). Nevertheless, Brown says Joseph would have seen the attraction of Masonry in its capacity to forge alliances with non-Mormons and other influential people throughout Illinois. Or, in the words of Lorenzo Snow, it could help “obtain influence in furtherance of the purposes of the Lord.”⁵ After describing the process of installing a lodge at Nauvoo he notes Joseph Smith’s initiation into Freemasonry which took place on 15-16 March 1842 (p. 73). He dispels the myth that Joseph was made a “Mason at sight” in that Joseph actually participated in the Masonic initiation rituals (p. 74).

After a somewhat confusing table of dates listing when Joseph participated in other Masonic ceremonies Brown notes a forty-eight day interim between Joseph’s becoming a Master Mason on 16 March 1842 and his institution of the temple endowment on 4 May 1842 (p. 77). Over the next four pages he lists an “abbreviated day-by-day accounting of what the Prophet is known to have been doing during this time frame” as described in vol. 4 of the History of the Church (pp. 78-81). It’s unclear what is paraphrase and what is left out of this accounting, and Brown doesn’t investigate what sources the information in that volume of the History of the Church was gleaned from, so this accounting seems problematic.⁶

Brown concludes the chapter arguing that Joseph was “an exceptionally busy man who had little time to prepare for the inauguration of the endowment” during the forty-eight day interim he outlined, and his limited involvement with Masonry indicates he did not rely upon it to help formulate the endowment (p. 81). Instead, “when a much broader survey of time is taken by the student of the past and the events of history are scrutinized in a much more careful manner” it will become obvious that “the Nauvoo-era temple ordinances and doctrines did not suspiciously materialize after Joseph Smith became a Freemason” (pp. 85, 98). Which leads to the next chapter.

Chapter 5 “Return to Mount Zion” (pp. 85-102). 17
Here Brown traces a chronology from Joseph’s first conversations with the angel Moroni in 1823 to Joseph’s death in 1844, tracing revelations that would inform the endowment ceremony proper. Temple themes are pinpointed in the instructions from angelic messengers like Moroni, John the Baptist, Elias, Elijah and others, as well as chapters from the inspired translation of the Bible resulting in the Book of Moses. This is an interesting chapter arguing that the concepts, keys, and rituals of the endowment were made known to Joseph before he actually became a Freemason in 1842.

I enjoyed many of the parallels Brown included, he points out concepts in Doctrine and Covenants section 76 that I hadn’t considered in light of the Temple before, for instance. But at the same time Brown flatly rejects the possibility that Masonry provided a Joseph with a useful tool to help formulate the endowment, which has been a successful apologetic angle for other LDS writers.

Chapter 6 “A Provisional Temple” (pp. 105-123).
Next, Joseph’s institution of the endowment on 4 May, 1842 is described. Brown adroitly avoids specifics that might make Latter-day Saints uncomfortable outside of the sacred space of the temple. He includes Joseph’s interesting follow-up instructions to Brigham Young, that “this is not arranged right but we have done the best we could under the circumstances in which we are placed and I wish you to take this matter in hand and organize and systematize all these ceremonies.”⁷

This is another area that demands fuller attention than Exploring affords—how to untangle the endowment as given by Joseph compared to what later became more “set in stone” over time. Evidently, Joseph himself acknowledged some flexibility and adaptation regarding the endowment in his instructions to Young, who later assisted Wilford Woodruff and others in formulating the ritual. Brown rightly notes none of the brethren accused Joseph of stealing from the endowment despite their being Masons; indeed, they saw it as part of the restoration of apostatized elements of true religion. Discovering where the soul of the endowment meets its body, so to speak, is perhaps the most difficult task facing a Mormon historian on this subject.⁸ Again, this chapter left me wanting more.

Chapter 7 “History, Theory and Myth” (pp. 125-169).
The longest chapter addresses “fifteen of the more commonly championed ideas about the relationship between Mormonism and Masonry” (p. 125). In question two Brown argues directly against the idea that Joseph would have “borrowed” elements from Freemasons in constructing the endowment, emphasizing Joseph’s statement that the “ordinances must be kept in the very way God has appointed,” and that God would “not acknowledge that which He has not called, ordained, and chosen.”⁹ However, one should
still consider, in light of these statements, Joseph’s own instructions that the endowment still needed formulating even after his death. Moreover, this simply begs the question as to how influential God and man are in the process of revelation itself—an area budding with possibilities for analysis, especially with the Joseph Smith Papers Project in full motion.¹⁰

Brown confronts some of the statements of early Church leaders to the effect that the temple endowment is “true Masonry,” or “Freemasonry as being a counterfeit of the true Masonry of the Latter-day Saints.” He rightly concludes many of these Saints were informed by the “Romantic school” of Masonic origins tracing it back to Solomon’s Temple, and thus would have understood Masonry as being a more directly apostate version of the endowment (pp. 153-154). Earlier in the book he outlines a less direct, but still Christian-influenced source for many Masonic elements (see chapter 3).

Brown’s fifteen questions are interesting, but Exploring runs through them too quickly without enough time to sit near a stream and stretch ones legs before moving to the next turn in the trail and I could think of fifteen more before the book was over.

Appendices, etc.
Brown’s first appendix, “Early Mormon Symbolism” (pp. 171-177), is too skimpy to provide much food for thought, it is a list of some scripture references and quotes that touch on temple or Masonic elements from Mormon sources. The second appendix, “An LDS View of Derivation” (pp. 179-181), lists seven one-line quotes from early Mormons to the effect that similarities between Masonry and Mormonism exist “because Masonry is a product of apostasy or degeneration from a priesthood-based prototype” (p. 179). Perhaps it would have been better simply to include the quotes directly in one of the chapters instead. Brown doesn’t provide a rubric regarding the reliability of any given quote, though he sometimes notes the problematic nature of late reminiscences when they counter his theories.¹¹ A rubric isn’t necessarily required in every historical work, but it would have been useful for Brown to be more consistent or explicit regarding what quotes he employed or doubted. A thirteen-page selected bibliography and a thirteen page Index round out the book at 211 pages.

Conclusion
In sum, Exploring does not provide enough evidence of the direct dependence of Masonry on ancient Christian rites, though it outlines many interesting possibilities that deserve fuller attention. Overall it feels incomplete and I disagree with some of Brown’s conclusions. More importantly, I was more interested in questions Brown didn't ask, such as how do the shared elements inform Masons and Mormons differently? Why have Masonic rituals been resilient over so many centuries and how are they holding up currently compared to how temple ceremonies continue to inform the faith of today's Latter-day Saints? I enjoyed elements of the book that provided interesting food for thought from some of the revelations Joseph Smith received that later informed the endowment; there are enough leads to keep a reader busy if they want to dig into the sources. Exploring takes the third trail described in my imperfect taxonomy above, but the definitive work on the connection between Latter-day Saints and Freemasonry has yet to be fully mapped.

FOOTNOTES:

[1]
See for example, Michael W. Homer, “Similarity of Priesthood in Masonry”: The Relationship between Freemasonry and Mormonism,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 27 (Fall): 2-113, and Greg Kearney, "The Message and the Messenger: Latter-day Saints and Freemasonry," 2005 FAIR Conference.

[2]
My gratitude to Greg Kearney for his e-mailed advice as I suffered in bed with the dreadful swine flu. I have made a few adjustments to his proposal. The categories may overlap depending on who is making use of them and they only deal with similarities in rites; i.e., they do not address supposed Masonic elements of the Book of Mormon, etc. A definitive treatment of Mormonism and Masonry would do well to explore that angle, and though it was not within the purview of Brown’s book he includes some footnote references on the subject. I also left out the obvious option that Joseph Smith simply stole the Masonic ceremony. I do not accept that theory, but a book review isn’t the best place to counter it.

[3]
Michael Homer gives a more precise overview of the various positions and individuals who have employed them. See his article referenced in footnote 1 above.

[4]
Andrew F. Ehat’s BYU Master’s thesis has a wealth of information that describe how the first endowed members were selected and found worthy compared to the temple recommend interview process today. Ehat hasn’t circulated the thesis widely, it remains slightly flawed due to the inclusion of a few yet-debunked forgeries. See “Joseph Smith’s Introduction of Temple Ordinances and the 1844 Mormon Succession Question” (1982, 307 p.). See also Edward L. Kimball's "The History of LDS Temple Admission Standards," Journal of Mormon History Spring (1998): 135-175.

[5]
Brown, p. 71, cites Stan Larsen, ed., A Ministry of Meetings: The Apostolic Diaries of Rudger Clawson, (Signature Books and Smith Research Associates, 1993), p. 316.

[6]
For a useful collection of sources dealing with the compilation and reliability of the History of the Church, see “The Curriculum Department and the Search for the Authentic Joseph Smith,” Appendix II, LifeOnGoldPlates.com, 13 July 2009.

[7]
Brown, p. 112, citing Andrew F. Ehat, ed., “‘They Might Have Known That He Was Not a Fallen Prophet,’—The Nauvoo Journal of Joseph Fielding,” Brigham Young University Studies, Winter 1979, p. 159.

[8]
Up and coming historian Ben Park recently mused about this fascinating and sticky subject in “Joseph Smith, Thomas Dick, and the Tricky Task of Determining Influence,” juvenileinstructor.org, 12 October 2009. He argues it may be faulty to fall into an “either/or” dichotomy of influence without acknowledging how environment and culture plays a part in the revelatory process. Others fear the danger of not acknowledging the hand of God enough when environmental influences are emphasized. This is a long-standing puzzle for Mormon studies and religious history generally.

[9]
Brown, p. 128, citing Andrew F. Ehat and Lyndon W. Cook, eds., The Words of Joseph Smith: The Contemporary Accounts of the Nauvoo Discourses of the Prophet Joseph Smith, rev. ed. (Grandin Books, 1990), pp. 40-41. Brown also cites WJS pp. 209-216 where Joseph explains that the “order and ordinances of the kingdom were instituted in heaven before the world was” and they have “not been changed.” In the recorded notes Joseph specifies “baptism for the dead, washing, anointings, etc.” Again, I don’t see this as precluding adjustments for culture, space and time, though there are striking similarities across cultures that still puzzle anthropologists, sociologists and other researchers of cult and religion. In my view Brown is relying on Joseph’s recorded statements without fully exploring their implications or how they interact with available evidence regarding the temple. Again, Joseph’s statements to Brigham Young on the need to better formulate the endowment come to mind.

[10]
See BHodges, “‘In their weakness, after the manner of their language’: Joseph Smith's Revelations, Revisions, and Canonization,” lifeongoldplates.com, 21 October 2009. This is similar to ongoing conversations about Joseph Smith’s inspired translation of the Bible, and even the possibility of “expansions” in the Book of Mormon employing Joseph’s 19th century language to express ancient ideas in a meaningful way to contemporaries. Again, where “prophet meets God” in communication and language is a fascinating topic that deserves much thought and study.

[11]
The most obvious example of an interpretation of a historical source I strongly disagree with is from John D. Lee’s journal on Brown's pp. 149-151. Brown argues that “implements” refers to firewood and “degrees” refers to levels of a building, but it is evident Lee is simply using Masonic terms in the context of the LDS temple.

Visual Culture and LDS Church Art

2009-10-30T08:40:00.003-06:00

Part 1- The following paper is a rough draft of something I am tinkering with.
The study of "visual culture" has attracted the attention of sociologists and historians alike. In the book Practices of Looking, Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright examine painting, photography, film, television, and new media to understand how images shape—and are shaped by—the communities that view them. It's interesting to consider how the beliefs of Latter-day Saints shape and are shaped by images they employ in official publications. In this series I hope to explore questions of visual culture, history and religion.

Images are like language. They are representations used to “understand, describe, and define the world as we see it.”¹ On the surface, these systems of representation seem pretty straightforward: a picture shows us something, it represents an idea, feeling, or object. Sturken observes:

Images have been used to represent, make meaning of, and convey various sentiments about nature, society, and culture as well as to represent imaginary worlds and abstract concepts. Throughout much of history, for example, images, most of them paintings, have been used by religions to convey religious myths, church doctrines, and historical dramas…²

Debates about representation have been waged over whether images should be interpreted “as they really are” as if they simply mirrored back reality, or “whether in fact we construct the world and its meaning through the systems of representation we deploy.”³ In other words, we should consider whether we as viewers help create the meaning of the images we view.

Ideology and images
In order to explore the meaning of images we must recognize they aren't created in a vacuum. Images are produced within an ideology, the often unstated assumptions regarding how the world works.⁴ Images help produce ideologies and ideologies are also projected back onto images by viewers. As I will discuss below, religious and political groups often employ images to both shape and express values and beliefs.⁵

Images have at least two levels of meaning
Roland Barthes formulated the concept of the “denotative” and “connotative” meaning of images. Denotation is the literal or descriptive meaning of an image. This is when an image is believed to depict “documentary evidence of objective circumstances.”⁶ For example: criminal mug shots are used to capture distinct facial features, dimensions of height, tattoos, and identification numbers.

In addition, a mug shot can connote a more culturally specific meaning. The viewer of the mug shot sees the image in the context of understanding the circumstances behind the image. A criminal is someone who broke the law. The image can connote fear, sympathy, contempt, or other emotions. The connotation changes depending on the ideology of the person viewing the image. The meaning of the image changes depending on the viewer. Connotation is shaped by the cultural and historical context of the image and its viewers’ experienced knowledge of those circumstances.

Three interpretive positions of viewers
As viewers we can “decode” images in order to help them connote different things. Stuart Hall has outlined three decoding positions:⁷

(1) Dominant-hegemonic reading.
Viewers can identify with the hegemonic (or widely-accepted) position and receive the dominant message of an image…in an unquestioning manner.

(2) Negotiated reading.
Viewers can negotiate an interpretation from the image and its dominant meanings.

(3) Oppositional reading.
Finally, viewers can take an oppositional position, either by completely disagreeing with the ideological position embodied in an image or rejecting it altogether (by ignoring it, for example).

Sturken argues that a negotiated reading is often the most fruitful because the viewer is more engaged in finding personal meaning in the image: “Negotiation calls to mind the process of trade [as we] haggle with the dominant meanings of an image when we interpret it.”⁸

So far I've briefly outlined how images are created and interpreted within ideological frameworks. Next, I'll discuss the rise of the “historical art” genre and how it applies to religion. Understanding this context allows for a more responsibly negotiated reading of (albeit often mundane) LDS Church art.

FOOTNOTES:

[1]
Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright, Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture, Oxford University Press (2004), p. 12.

[2]
Sturken and Cartwright, Ibid., 13. The authors are not discussing “myth” in terms of a fable, but myth in terms of a foundational or shaping narrative that gives meaning to a group.

[3]
Ibid., 12.

[4]
Sturken and Cartwright define ideology as “the broad but indispensable, shared set of values and beliefs through which individuals live out their complex relations to a range of social structures” (Ibid., 21).

[5]
This is not to say that such images are mere propaganda, which follows “the crude process of using false representations to lure people into holding beliefs that may compromise their own interests” (Ibid.). Images can be used as propaganda to champion a given ideology but all images are created and help create ideology whether positively or negatively.

[6]
Sturken and Cartwright, Ibid., 19.

[7]
Ibid. 57.

[8]
Ibid.

The "Stone-In-Hat" Translation Method in Art

2009-10-27T09:49:00.003-06:00

It may sound silly, but one of the reasons I started the "Translation Witness Account" project is because I want a nice picture of Joseph Smith translating the Book of Mormon by use of his seer stone and hat.¹ Perhaps it really doesn't matter in the long run; it seems to be a small detail of a miraculous translation. Still, I find it fascinating and strange. The stone-in-hat method isn't typically described in detail among Mormons, but it hasn't been altogether ignored, either. Usually it is simply stated that Joseph translated the book "by the gift and power of God" using the "Urim and Thummim."² This description can be confusing because the title "Urim and Thummim" was applied to all translation devices—the Nephite "Interpreters" found with the plates as well as the various seer stones Joseph used. Moreover, Joseph appears to have adjusted the translation method over time, according to the accounts of witnesses.³

No official LDS art depicts the stone-in-hat method. Various versions show separating curtains, the plates in open view to scribes, Joseph reading the plates like a book, and other possible anomalies compared to various witness statements.⁴ It isn't clear whether artists who have tried to depict the translation were aware of the stone-in-hat method. Several LDS leaders have mentioned it in official Church publications, however, including B.H. Roberts.⁵ More recently, Elder Russell M. Nelson noted:

The details of this miraculous method of translation are still not fully known. Yet we do have a few precious insights. David Whitmer wrote:

“Joseph Smith would put the seer stone into a hat, and put his face in the hat, drawing it closely around his face to exclude the light; and in the darkness the spiritual light would shine. A piece of something resembling parchment would appear, and on that appeared the writing. One character at a time would appear, and under it was the interpretation in English. Brother Joseph would read off the English to Oliver Cowdery, who was his principal scribe, and when it was written down and repeated to Brother Joseph to see if it was correct, then it would disappear, and another character with the interpretation would appear. Thus the Book of Mormon was translated by the gift and power of God, and not by any power of man.”⁶

This post includes some of the art I have collected depicting the translation of the Book of Mormon. Because art can be a powerful teaching device, having something like an official depiction of the stone-in-hat method would help familiarize members of the Church with what otherwise might surprise them. Later this week I'll be posting a paper I have been working on regarding "Visual Culture, the Myth of Photographic Truth, and LDS Church Art."

The last three pictures demonstrate non-conventional styles and approaches depicting the translation. I'd like to see the stone-in-hat method presented in the former, more conventional style. In the end why does it matter? Familiarity would be one good reason. It would also help to have depictions that don't border on the homemade or cartoony.

Where's Liz Lemon-Swindle when you need her? Thoughts?

There are many other depictions of the translation, I might add more later.

FOOTNOTES:

[1]
The TWA project aims to gather all known witness statements regarding the translation of the Book of Mormon. Currently there is no single place to review all known witness explanations of the translation, so TWA will provide the most comprehensive source of witness statements possible in one convenient location.

[2]
Joseph Smith was reluctant to share specific details about the translation process. See BHodges "Joseph Smith's Descriptions of the Book of Mormon Translation," lifeongoldplates.com, 28 September 2009. W.W. Phelps appears to have been the first to use the name "Urim and Thummim" to describe the implements of interpretation in print. See "The Book of Mormon," 1/8 Evening and Morning Star (January 1833): 58.

[3]
See Mark Ashurst-McGee's excellent thesis, "A Pathway to Prophethood: Joseph Smith Junior as Rodsman, Village Seer, and Judeo-Christian Prophet," (Master's Thesis, University of Utah, Logan, Utah, 2000). See also Brant Gardner, "Joseph the Seer—or Why Did He Translate With a Rock in His Hat?" FAIR Conference address, 2009.

[4]
David Keller has compiled the curtain statements at fairblog.org. See "TWA Project: The Curtain Accounts," 24 October 2009.

[5]
Roberts discussed the seer stones in his Comprehensive History of the Church (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 1965), 1:129.

[6]
Russell M. Nelson, “A Treasured Testament,” Ensign, Jul 1993, 61, citing David Whitmer, An Address to All Believers in Christ, Richmond, Mo.: n.p., 1887, p. 12.

Picture captions:
1. "Joseph Smith Translating," Harold T. Kilbourn, circa 1970.
2. "Joseph Smith Translating the Book of Mormon," Del Parson, 1996.
3. "Joseph Smith Translating the Golden Plates," Harold T. Kilbourn, 1978.
4. "Joseph Smith Translates the Golden Plates," Robert Barrett, 1988.
5. From Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, 25:2 (Summer 1982), p. 48.
6. From Grant Palmer's An Insider's View of Mormon Origins.
7. From the anti-Mormon site imagesoftherestoration.org.

"In their weakness, after the manner of their language"

2009-10-21T10:05:00.011-06:00

Joseph Smith's Revelations, Revisions, and Canonization

The latest volume of the Joseph Smith Papers project is a massive work, and I'm not just talking about its bulky physical dimensions. It is pregnant with possibilities for Mormon scholarship.

Robin Jensen is a member of the Church History Department staff and an editor of the recent JSP volume. While making transcriptions of Joseph Smith's revelations Jensen has identified "Many additions, revisions, deletions, or other types of redactions were made by multiple people on the manuscript" between the time they were recorded, edited for publication, and updated as the needs of the Church grew.¹ Jensen explains that many "simple minor changes" were made in addition to "significant changes made to the text...sometimes entire phrases were added." For Jensen, this indicates the "non-static" nature of the revelations which were adapted to language and understanding of the recipients and the changing needs of the Church.²

Latter-day Saints shouldn't be surprised at such changes, given their acceptance of continuing revelation. Still, it raises questions about the malleability of a scripture canon. How do religious communities accept the authority of a canon that undergoes change? Bernard M. Levinson, a professor of Classical and Near Eastern Studies, has investigated the problems of canonization and innovation. For him, the very idea of canon is one of the distinctive advancements of major religious traditions like Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Text can be used to found, ground, and even change a religious community. Canon helps keep things together, but it also raises interesting problems—especially after the canon is closed. I think it can be argued that—despite Mormonism's theoretically "open canon"—the LDS Church faces similar problems as closed-canon groups because of the latent authority the scriptures (or "standard works") hold.³

Levinson astutely describes the problem:

By locating its font of revelation or contemplative insight in foundational sources, however, a culture confronts an almost inevitable difficulty. The essence of a canon is that it be stable, self-sufficient, and delimited....With such fixidity and textual sufficiency as its hallmarks, how can a canon be made to address the varying needs of later generations of religious communities?⁴

Levinson argues that scriptural exegesis (interpretation) arises to solve the problem.⁵ But can actually raise more problems by essentially calling into question the sufficiency or authority of the original. It can also break down the coherence of the scriptures when we realize they are not "uni-vocal," but represent different views from different prophets in different time periods.

Levinson goes on to explain how creative changes to old revelations are done when subsequent prophets and scribes adjust text, change translations, reinterpret older verses, and utilize several other strategies to adjust the morphing canon to changing conditions. Analyzing examples from the Old Testament, Levinson shows that such innovations were occurring before the canon was formulated, much like we see on a smaller scale in the Doctrine and Covenants revelations from Joseph Smith. Most studies in this area of biblical research focus on how later Targum and commentary adapt the canon, but Levinson shows how such changes are actually found throughout the formative period of the canon, or "inner-biblical exegesis."⁶

Granted, the time span for Joseph Smith's revelations is smaller than what we find in the Hebrew Bible. Nevertheless, his revelatory process seems to have remarkable similarities, even after quill hits parchment or pen hits paper. We see, as Levinson argues, that human voice isn’t diminished by canon, but actually augmented. Joseph Smith also demonstrated that canon includes the means to challenge, change, adapt, reject, and even substitute meaning. This refutes any easy dichotomies drawn between text and tradition, grammar and Spirit:⁷

Although chronologically prior, the canonical source is not ontologically prior, since the past is rethought and interpreted from the vantage point of the present. The authoritative source thus reveals hermeneutics. If canonization conventionally represents an anthologizing attempt to gain closure, then the texts of the Hebrew Bible [and Smith's revelations] militate in the opposite direction. They resist any simple notion of...Scripture as one-sidedly divine. They tolerate no such hierarchies or binary oppositions. Properly understood, the canon is radically open. It invites innovation, it demands interpretation, it challenges piety, it questions priority, it sanctifies subversion, it warrants difference, and it embeds critique.⁸

Or, to put the same idea in the language of revelation, consider the fascinating implications of what the Lord spoke through Joseph Smith (and how he said it!):

Behold, I am God and have spoken it; these commandments are of me, and were given unto my servants in their weakness, after the manner of their language, that they might come to understanding.⁹

FOOTNOTES:

[1]
Robin S. Jensen, "Revelation Book 1: Digging in," bycommonconsent.com, 23 September 2009. For another interesting review of the latest volume of the Joseph Smith Papers Project see Ardis E. Parshall, "First Impressions of the Joseph Smith Papers: Revelations Volume," keepapitchinin.org, 23 September 2009. Check out this nifty Family Home Evening lesson on the JSPP from Deseret Book, too. The photo is by Jason Olson, "Original Book of Commandments and Revelations is shown against backdrop of first two published Joseph Smith Papers volumes and a triple combination." See R. Scott Lloyd, "Word of the Lord: Latest Joseph Smith Papers volume presents facsimiles of early revelation manuscripts," Church News, 19 September 2009.

[2]
Jensen, Ibid., gives several specific examples of interesting changes in the revelations between their receipt and publication.

[3]
The volumes of scripture officially accepted by the LDS Church, include the Holy Bible, the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and Pearl of Great Price. These "Standard Works" are not strictly held as inerrant, but are held as normative for Church doctrine. See "Approaching Mormon Doctrine," LDS Newsroom, 4 May 2007.

[4]
Bernard M. Levinson, “You Must Not Add Anything to What I Command You: Paradoxes of Canon and Authorship in Ancient Israel,” Numen: International Review for the History of Religions, Vol. 50, No. 1 (2003), pp. 6-7. Levinson is a professor of Classical and Near Eastern Studies at the University of Minnesota.

[5]
"If the closed literary canon as the repository of revelation or insight is the source of stability for a religious tradition, exegesis provides vitality," Levinson, ibid., p. 8.

[6]
Levinson, ibid., p. 10.

[7]
Levinson, ibid., p. 49.

[8]
Levinson, ibid., p. 50.

[9]
D&C 1:24. The author of the epistle to the Romans intriguingly places another break in communication lines between the prophet and the weaker people: "I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh: for as ye have yielded your members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity; even so now yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness" (Romans 6:19). Or as the Weymouth translation puts it: "your human infirmity leads me to employ these familiar figures...." More about communication and revelation to come. This post is cross-posted at fairblog.org

Review: Al-Ghazali's "Niche of Lights"

2009-10-19T11:03:00.003-06:00

Title: The Niche of Lights: A parallel English-Arabic text translated, introduced, and annotated
Author: Abu Hamid al-Ghazali
Translator: David Buchman
Publisher: Brigham Young University Press
Genre: Theology/Philosophy
Year: 1998
Pages: 80
Binding: Cloth
ISBN: 0842523537
Price: 24.95

For many westerners, Islam remains hidden behind a veil simply waiting to be discovered and uncovered.¹ Brigham Young University in cooperation with scholars throughout the world has taken significant steps toward unveiling the history and thought of this global religion for the west. Since the late 1990s, BYU's Institute for the Study and Preservation of Ancient Religious Texts have sponsored the Islamic Translation Series (ITS) to better integrate Islamic studies into western academia. According to Daniel C. Peterson, ITS’s managing editor:

Islamic civilization represents nearly fourteen centuries of intense intellectual activity, and believers in Islam number in the hundreds of millions. The texts that will appear in the ITS are among the treasures of this great culture. But they are more than that. They are properly the inheritance of all the peoples of the world (Peterson, “Forward to the Series,” The Niche of Lights, p. x).

Following the command to “seek…out of the best books words of wisdom,” Latter-day Saints will enjoy The Niche of Lights by Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (1058-1111 C.E.), one of Islam’s most respected scholars and interpreters. Despite some theological differences, Latter-day Saints share al-Ghazali’s ultimate goal of knowing and returning to God.²

Al-Ghazali mastered law, theology, and philosophy in order to draw closer to God. Despite becoming more proficient in these areas than perhaps any previous Muslim, he nevertheless recognized something important was missing. Through his study of an Islamic movement called Sufism, he discovered “there is a knowledge of God that goes beyond the rational ability to know Him and is ‘unveiled’ (kashf) by God in the heart” (xx). Al-Ghazali played a key role in legitimizing elements of Sufism including the Islamic ideal that religion transcends both doing (by following the law) and knowing (by use of theology and philosophy)—its core consists of being and becoming. By understanding proper theories and adhering to proper practices humans can purify their hearts until God unveils Himself to them.

Toward the end of his life, a-Ghazali wrote The Niche of Lights, which discusses the nature of God as “light,” and explains how humans can be shielded from—or led to—His presence. Niche was written in response to a friend’s question. Al-Ghazali’s introduces the book by appearing to sandwich the answer directly into the question itself:

You asked me, O noble brother—may God lead you to search for the greatest felicity, train you to ascend to the highest summit, anoint your insight with the light of Reality, and cleanse all other than the Real from your inmost center—that I unfold for you the mysteries of the divine lights, along with an interpretation of the apparent meanings of those recited verses and narrated reports that allude to His divine lights (1).

The “recited verses” to which he refers are the so-called “Light Verses” of the Qur’an, which describe God as "the light of the heavens and the earth” (1). The “narrated reports” are called hadith, or the reported sayings of the prophet Muhammad which are generally as important to Muslims as the Qur'an itself. Al-Ghazali explores the verses and sayings throughout three chapters.

In the first chapter he begins his interpretation of the Qur’an by outlining a metaphysics of light, concluding that the “real light is God and that the name ‘light’ for everything else is sheer metaphor” (3). Extending from the First light is a hierarchy of lights ranging from least to greatest. Al-Ghazali includes a simple and beautiful metaphor to simplify this hierarchy of light. He compares it to the light from the moon passing through a window, reflects from a mirror onto an opposite wall, and reflects from there to shine on the floor. In each of these stages the light differs in brightness depending on its proximity to the original source of the light—the sun reflecting onto the moon. In this way he describes how the light of God is passed from Him to his creations through various intermediaries. This chapter is perhaps the most difficult of the three and al-Ghazali concludes it with a section called “Some encouragement.” If the discussion has been too difficult, he advises, “take for yourself words that are nearer to your understanding and more suitable to your weakness” for now. But don’t stop there: “Know that you can come to know…” (22).

In the second chapter al-Ghazali explains that the goal of human existence is to get nearer to God through an inner transformation. He outlines a hierarchy of beings ranging from humans, to angels, to God, and compares their respective likenesses to that of the stars, moon, and sun. On the pathway back to God the traveler passes through these stages or degrees of glory (p. 27-28). However, unbelievers will have difficulty recognizing revelation and light from God. The Qur’an compares the unbelievers to a man “in a fathomless ocean covered by a wave above which is another wave above which are clouds, darkness piled one upon the other.” Al-Ghazali interprets these to be the waves of appetites, sensory pleasures, hatred and arrogance and the clouds of “loathsome beliefs, lying opinions, and corrupt imaginings.” These separate unbelievers from the light and true knowledge of God (42).

The third chapter continues the discussion of being separated from God. Al-Ghazali provides his interpretation of the Veils hadith. This saying of Muhammad describes God as being separated from humans by “seventy veils of light and darkness.” According to al-Ghazali the veils come in three main kinds: veils of darkness, veils of light, and veils of darkness mixed with light (44). Veils of darkness cover the “atheists…who do not have faith in God and the last day” (45). Veils of darkness mixed with light represent those who believe in both true and false principles (47). Veils of light cover those who are drawing ever closer to God, but are difficult to penetrate (50). Individuals who pass through these veils are said to have finally “arrived” at the presence of God where further grades of experience are possible. This ultimate destination seems beyond al-Ghazali’s ability to describe and the book ends without a summary. “My request to the [original] questioner,” he concludes, “is that he ask God to forgive wherever my pen has transgressed and my foot has slipped, because delving into the flood of the divine mysteries is dangerous, and seeking to penetrate the divine lights from behind human veils is arduous, not easy” (53).

Niche is a fascinating book of questions and answers that will resonate with and challenge believers of many faith traditions. David Buchman’s careful translation is printed beside the Arabic script through Niche's fifty-three pages of metaphor, thick scriptural exegesis, and philosophy. A basic understanding of Islam will allow readers to better appreciate the book. Buchman’s introduction provides a serviceable background to twelfth century Islamic thought and the life of al-Ghazali. ITS is performing a tremendous service to religious studies. Those involved in the translation and publication project deserve much praise for making significant works like Niche and other “best books” accessible, affordable, and available to scholars, students, and the general public.

FOOTNOTES:

[1]
My own inadequate understanding of Islam compounded the difficulty of this review. Or in other words, I'm overwhelmed! (but happily). A useful introduction is John L. Esposito's Islam: The Straight Path, Oxford University Press (2005, revised third edition).

[2]
Doctrine & Covenants 88:118.

Ripples from a Salamander: 24 Years Later

2009-10-16T13:24:00.002-06:00

The “salamander letter” was said to have been written by Martin Harris in 1830. It gave a radically different description of Joseph’s Smith’s retrieval of the golden plates. Rather than the Angel Moroni, an “old spirit” directed Joseph to the “treasure” and then “transfigured himself from a white salamander.” As I mentioned yesterday, it has been 24 years since two bombs rocked Salt Lake City, killing two Mormons and injuring historical document dealer Mark Hofmann. Ripples of fear moved through the Mormon history community as investigators soon uncovered a twisted scheme of lies, forgery, and murder plotted by Hofmann himself.¹

Mourning for the loss of bomb victims Kathy Sheets and Steve Christensen (along with the aforementioned reverberations of fear) weren’t the only aftershocks from Hofmann’s strange attempt to make a fortune by casting doubt on the religion he no longer believed in. I was only three years old when the forgeries were exposed and Hofmann’s efforts went up in smoke. Once in a while I catch a slight whiff of burning amphibian while reading or researching Mormon history. Hearing about the experience of those who dealt with the letter in real time has helped me better understand how the letter still reverberates today.

First, the Salamander letter was another catalyst for Mormon historians to better evaluate the environment and culture of early Mormonism and the restoration of the gospel. Richard Bushman, Ronald Walker, Dean C. Jessee and other historians began plumbing the environmental influences with research questions that have spurred even richer historical treatments with more to come.² Other researchers began (or continued) fashioning more naturalistic explanations for Joseph Smith’s claims. Marvin Hill, John Brooke, D. Michael Quinn and others have produced scholarship that carries hints of the salamander (and in some ways, the salamander originally carried a hint of what was already being discussed by certain scholars).³

Second, the Salamander letter is a reminder that prophets and leaders of the Church are not infallible and all-knowing. President Hinckley’s public statements when the letter was made known to the public make it clear he was not entirely convinced of the document’s authenticity, but for the time being accepted the judgment of certain document and history experts. Joseph Smith received a revelation reminding him that a prophet is not granted to know all the designs of people who seek to destroy the Church:

But as you cannot always judge the righteous, or as you cannot always tell the wicked from the righteous, therefore I say unto you, hold your peace until I shall see fit to make all things known unto the world concerning the matter (D&C 10:37).⁴

Third, the Salamander letter reminds current historians to take care in the use of historical sources. In some instances, this is more hindrance than help. Researcher Ardis Parshall noted that she has to be wary of using any document that passed through Hofmann’s hands. For instance, while researching information on the Utah War she located the diary of one observer containing many interesting details that will have to be substantiated elsewhere because Hofmann possessed it at one point. She notes that the Church archive catalog is very good about noting the Hofmann connection on every record involved.⁵

Finally, the Salamander letter provides examples of how faithful members of the Church confronted difficult information. Consider Kevin Barney’s reaction:

The salamander letter is the only thing I ever recall encountering that gave my testimony a pretty good shake. Lots of people today say they thought it was a forgery even then, but at the time mainstream historians pretty much all thought it was authentic. I thought it was authentic.

But here’s a good lesson in what to do when you get rattled by something. Instead of rolling over and playing dead and giving up, I rolled up my sleeves and went to the library. I studied non-LDS historical articles on folk magic, having nothing to do with Mormonism. These articles were focused on an earlier period–17th century, as I recall–but there was a clear continuity with what was going on in backwoods upstate New York in the early 19th century. Once I had an historical context in which to understand these events, my concerns quickly melted away. I would have been fine even if the letter proved to be genuine. I haven’t been bothered by folk magic stuff since. So for me this exposure was actually a good thing in the long run.

I was Gospel Doctrine teacher in my Ward at the time and I devoted an entire lesson to the letter. It was an awesome lesson, and that experience is a large part of the reason I’m an advocate of inoculation. Because I knew how dangerous that material was, since it had even rattled me, yet at the end of that lesson I also knew that no one who sat in that room was going to lose faith over it. That realization made a powerful impression on me.⁶

FAIR volunteer McKay V. Jones explained how Kevin’s experience reminder her of her “fly ball” analogy:

When I was young, I had a problem mis-judging fly balls. I would instinctively run in on them, and when they were over my head, I would have to back-pedal or run back on them. It is much harder to catch a fly ball running back on it than running in on it. I learned to have my first step be *back*, even when it looked like it would be short. You can always run in on it if you misjudged it, but if you run in on it and have to go back on it, it’s a much more difficult catch.

With difficulties that throw us for a loop, we need to “step back” and study the issue in a way similar to what Kevin described. As Davis Bitton said in his “I don’t have a testimony of the history of the Church” talk, when one assesses in advance what the “worst case scenario” and “best case scenario” would be, the “worst case” is never remotely approached, and usually the “truth” is found to be somewhere between the two extremes. Managing expectations and “best & worst case” findings works wonders towards preventing shipwreck.⁷

These are just a few ripples in the water extending from the original explosion of document and gunpowder. In the face of future explosions it is wise to remember the patience exhibited by researchers whose efforts were borne out when the forgeries were exposed. Instead of rolling over and playing dead and giving up, we can roll up our sleeves and go to the library.

_____________________________________________________

FOOTNOTES

[1]
For a full transcript, images of the letter, and other links see BHodges, “Mark Hofmann and the Salamander Letter,” LifeOnGoldPlates.com, 15 October 2009. Photograph by Alex Monro, from "3 New Salamanders Are 'Ballistic,' Bright, Tiny," NationalGeographic.com, 4 January 2008. This post is cross-posted from fairblog.org.

[2]
BYU Studies Volume 24:4 (Fall 1984) contains interesting contemporaneous responses to the Salamander letter. See especially Ronald W. Walker, “Joseph Smith The Palmyra Seer.” Small elements of influence can be seen from Mark Ashurst-McGee’s work on seer stones and treasure guardians to Richard Bushman’s Smith biography Rough Stone Rolling and many works in-between.

[3]
Perhaps two of the more obvious examples of works with “salamander-shaped holes” (to borrow a phrase from Stephen E. Robinson) are D. Michael Quinn’s Early Mormonism and the Magic World View (revised and enlarged edition, Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1998), and Grant Palmer’s Insider’s View of Mormon Origins (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2002).

[4]
See the FAIRwiki article, “Church reaction to forgeries.”

[5]
Ardis Parshall (of the “Keep-a-Pitchin’-In” blog), personal e-mail, 16 October 2009. First edition copies of Dean C. Jessee’s Personal Writings of Joseph Smith (Shadow Mountain, 1984) included several not-then-debunked Hofmann forgeries. The younger, better looking edition (2002) omits them. D. Michael Quinn’s first edition of The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power (Signature Books, 1994) erroneously references a Hofmann forgery though they had been debunked for several years. The mistake was corrected for the 1997 printed edition. See the FAIRwiki article “Nauvoo Legion to rescue Joseph.”

[6]
Kevin Barney, personal e-mail, 16 October 2009.

[7]
Suzie McKay, personal e-mail, 16 October 2009. See Davis Bitton, “I Don’t Have a Testimony of the History of the Church,” 2004 FAIR Conference presentation.

Mark Hofmann and the Salamander Letter

2009-10-15T07:30:00.007-06:00

It's been 24 years today since Steven Christensen and Kathy Sheets were slain by bombs set by document forger/murderer Mark Hofmann. A while ago I was asked to sum up the "Salamander Letter" episode in 250 words or less. My results substantiate the claim that brevity is often more difficult than lengthiness ("lengthiness" seems like such a weak antonym for "brevity"). Here is my sub-250-word attempt. Beneath it I included a transcript and images of the actual Salamander letter. Any comments on what I could have done better are welcome:

On October 15, 1985 several bombs rocked Salt Lake City, Utah, killing two Mormons and injuring a third—historical document dealer Mark Hofmann. Investigators soon uncovered a twisted scheme of lies, forgery, and murder plotted by Hofmann himself.

Hofmann had “discovered” a stream of documents shedding negative light on LDS Church origins. He quickly began selling them to the Church and other collectors. The most famous of these documents, the “Salamander Letter,” sharply contradicted foundational LDS history. The letter, signed “Martin Harris,” recounted Smith’s discovery of golden plates. Rather than being led by a heavenly angel, however, a “white salamander” helped Smith discover the plates via magical money-digging.

Hofmann negotiated a complex deal with a General Authority and others to sell the document to a private individual who would donate the letter to the Church, but became desperate as the scheme began unraveling. To deflect attention away from himself, Hofmann planted three bombs—one inadvertently exploding in his own car, nearly killing him.

Hofmann’s sophisticated forgeries fooled many document specialists but innovative detectives discovered their fraudulence before Hoffman’s criminal trial began. In order to avoid the death penalty, he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and theft-by-deception in 1987 and received a life sentence. Hofmann’s forging hand was later destroyed during an attempted suicide and in 1988 a parole board ruled that Hofmann would spend his natural life in prison.

Transcript of the "Salamander Letter"

[Front]

                                             Palmyra October 23d 1830
Dear Sir
       Your letter of yesterday is received & I hasten to answer
as fully as I can—Joseph Smith Jr first come to my notice
in the year 1824 in the summer of that year I contracted
with his father to build a fence on my property in the
corse of that work I approach Joseph & ask how it is in a
half day you put up what requires your father & 2 brothers
a full day working together he says I have not been with
out assistance but can not say more only you better find
out the next day I take the older Smith by the arm & he
says Joseph can see any thing he wishes by looking at a
stone Joseph often sees Spirits here with great kettles of
coin money it was Spirits who brought up rock because
Joseph made no attempt on their money I latter dream
I converse with spirits which let me count their money
when I awake I have in my hand a dollar coin which
I take for a sign Joseph describes what I seen in every
particular says he the spirits are grieved so I through
back the dollar in the fall of the year 1827 I hear Joseph
found a gold bible I take Joseph aside & he says it is
true I found it 4 years ago with my stone but only just
got it because of the enchantment the old spirit come
to me 3 times in the same dream & says dig up the gold
but when I take it up the next morning the spirit
transfigured himself from a white salamander in the
bottom of the hole & struck me 3 times & held the treasure
& would not let me have it because I lay it down to cover
over the hole when the spirit says do not lay it down
Joseph says when can I have it the spirit says one year
from to day if you obay me look to the stone after a few
days he looks the spirit says bring your brother [^ Alvin] Joseph
says he is dead shall I bring what remains but the
spirit is gone Joseph goes to get the gold bible but the spirit
says you did not bring your brother you can not have
it look to the stone Joseph looks but can not see who
to bring the spirit says I tricked you again look to the
stone Joseph looks & sees his wife on the 22d day of Sept
1827 they get the gold bible--I give Joseph $50 to move him

[Reverse]

down to Pa Joseph says when you visit me I will give
you a sign he gives me some hiroglyphics I take then to
Utica Albany & New York in the last place Dr Mitchel
gives me an introduction to Professor Anthon says he
they are short hand Egyption the same what was used
in ancient times bring me the old book & I will trans[-]
late says I it is made of precious gold & is sealed from
from [sic] view says he I can not read a sealed book—
Joseph found some giant silver specticles with the plates he
puts them in an old hat & in the darkness reads the words
& in this way it is all translated & written down - about
the middle of June 1829 Joseph takes me together with
Oliver Cowderey & David Whitmer to have a view of the plates
our names are appended to the book of Mormon which I
had printed with my own money—space & time both
prevent me from writing more at present if there is any
thing further you wish to inquire I shall attend to it
Yours Respectfully
Martin Harris

W W Phelps Esq

                                             W W Phelps Esq
                                             Canandaigua N Y
_______________________________________________

For more on Mark Hofmann, see the FAIR wiki article "Mark Hofmann/Church reaction to forgeries."

Steve Mayfield and George Throckmorton, key players in Hofmann's prosecution, discussed the Hoffman case at the 2006 FAIR Conference. Videos of their presentation are available on YouTube.

The two best full works on the case are Richard E. Turley, Victims: The LDS Church and the Mark Hofmann Case, University of Illinois Press (1992) and Linda Sillitoe and Allen Roberts, Salamander: The Story of the Mormon Forgery Murders, Signature Books (1990).

Islam's Hijab and Mormon Garments: On Clothing as Broadcasting

2009-10-13T09:32:00.001-06:00

Hijab typically refers to the Muslim practice of "veiling" for women (in Arabic the word means "curtain" or "covering"). Muslims differ in their application of hijab—ranging from full body coverage to a scarf covering the hair—but the general outlook is that hijab is a form of modesty and religious identification. According to John Esposito, the custom was "assimilated from the conquered Persian and Byzantine societies...The Quran does not stipulate veiling,"¹ though it does emphasize the need for women to be modest in dress:

And say to the believing women that they should lower their gaze and guard their modesty;...that they should draw their veils over their bosoms and display their beauty only to their husbands, their fathers (Quran 24:31).²

Aside from practical matters, the initial intent of veiling included "the protection, honor, and distinction of women" and hijab was first adopted by "upper-class urban women who lived in great palaces and courts and enjoyed considerable mobility and opportunity."³ It spread more slowly to village and rural women.

In the West, the dominant view of the practice is that it is oppressive to women. Many Muslim women would disagree, but nevertheless the practice is contested even amongst Muslim-majority nations. In a recent Politics and Islam classroom discussion we focused on hijab and watched a film featuring interviews of Muslim women from three different countries. Though it was far from a comprehensive survey, the reactions from the women differed depending on the location. In Iran, women are forced to veil by law; all women in public must be veiled or they are punished. The common reaction of Iranian women when asked what hijab meant to them was that they had simply become used to it, not that it actually meant something to them religiously. When everyone is forced to veil is the religious meaning diminished for the individual? By contrast, women who work in government positions in secular Turkey are forced to un-veil. When Merve Kavakçı (pictured above) was elected to Parliament in 1999 she was shouted down and prevented from taking the oath of office because she wore hijab. It became a symbol of religious and political freedom for Kavakçı, in sharp contrast to Iranian women who are forced to veil. The film also featured women in the United States who explained their decision to wear hijab in terms of religious representation, being set apart from degrading immodesty, and the benefit of not being judged by their looks.⁴ I sensed a strong pride as well as a hint of separatism.

Strikingly, amidst the comments about politics, culture, and religion, none of the women in the video mentioned wearing hijab because of a command from Allah, or out of a desire to create or participate in a closer relationship to Allah, or those sorts of things. When I raised this point (which is admittedly just as likely to be the result of the editing and direction of the film) a young woman in my class who wears hijab pointed out that she chose to wear hijab for those very reasons, in addition to some of the other reasons mentioned by Muslim Americans in the film. She talked about being a representative of her religion wherever she goes because she wears hijab.

Such talk of religious clothing reminded me of the garment worn by endowed members of the LDS Church.⁵ Similar to hijab, the garment has been connected to the concept of modesty, but in contrast to hijab, it is worn under the clothing, much less conspicuously. President Boyd K. Packer made the connection:

The garment represents sacred covenants. It fosters modesty and becomes a shield and protection to the wearer. The wearing of such a garment does not prevent members from dressing in the fashionable clothing generally worn in the nations of the world. Only clothing that is immodest or extreme in style would be incompatible with wearing the garment.⁶

In addition to similar concepts of modesty and religious devotion, thinking of the garment compared to hijab brought up two other points: The idea that clothing is a broadcast and the responsibility that comes along with such broadcasting.

By calling clothing a "broadcast" I mean to say it can be used to send messages to others either deliberately or inadvertently. The injunction against judging a book by its cover is nice advice, but more often than not it is ignored on an interpersonal basis. What we wear and look like sends messages about the type of person we are, whether we would find such messages accurate or not. The young woman who was proud of her ability to broadcast her religion by use of hijab made me think of the heavy responsibility that could entail. For example, I thought of the bumper sticker on my car, the one with a particular political candidate. Every so often—when I make a bad turn, or forget to signal, or fail to let someone merge—I think of that bumper sticker and the message it sends. Will my poor behavior be combined with the bumper sticker in the mind of the driver I just accidentally cut off? Such broadcasting requires much confidence and perhaps more self-conscious hope for forgiveness. But for the most part I turn off that broadcast signal when I leave my car in the parking lot. This doesn't happen for the women in hijab. Still, the garment provides a personal reminder to Latter-day Saints regarding their relationship to God and the promises they've made as part of that relationship. Elder Carlos E. Asay's 1997 Ensign article on the garment puts it this way:

I like to think of the garment as the Lord’s way of letting us take part of the temple with us when we leave. It is true that we carry from the Lord’s house inspired teachings and sacred covenants written in our minds and hearts. However, the one tangible remembrance we carry with us back into the world is the garment. And though we cannot always be in the temple, a part of it can always be with us to bless our lives.⁷

It's interesting to think that my broadcast-by-clothing isn't as loud and it isn't as obviously received by others as is hijab. It gives me more to think about.

FOOTNOTES:

[1]
John L. Esposito, Islam: the Straight Path, Oxford University Press (2005, revised third edition), pp. 98-99. This is an admittedly over-simplified blog post to spur reflection rather than to provide anything close to a comprehensive analysis.

[2]
Men are also enjoined to "lower their gaze and be modest" as well, though there is no clothing stipulation (Quran 24:30).

[3]
Esposito, Ibid., p. 99.

[4]
I believe such individuals are likely still judged by their looks quite often, only for different reasons. The implication is that women can use their beauty to advance or be honored while other qualities of intelligence and so forth are overlooked, whereas hijab makes women more equal, and men more likely to respect their abilities.

[5]
For those unfamiliar with the LDS lingo regarding Temples and endowments, see Boyd K. Packer's introductory pamphlet "The Holy Temple" at LDS.org.

[6]
Boyd K. Packer, The Holy Temple, Deseret Book (1980), p. 75.

[7]
Carlos E. Asay, “The Temple Garment: ‘An Outward Expression of an Inward Commitment’,” Ensign, Aug. 1997, pp. 19-23.

Elder Holland on the Book of Mormon (with Helen Whitney)

2009-10-07T08:21:00.001-06:00

Jeffrey R. Holland's recent General Conference address created a stir at various online communities. When Elder Holland was interviewed by Helen Whitney for the PBS documentary "The Mormons" they discussed the historicity of the Book of Mormon. Here is an excerpt of that interview. The ellipses are in the original, the photo is from pbs.org.

Helen Whitney: The origins of the Book of Mormon have been criticized. There have been counterclaims to its origins. ... What are the counterclaims that you've taken seriously?

Jeffrey R. Holland: ... The Book of Mormon is ... a matter of faith, but it's there. It's readable. It sits on the table, and it won't go away. ... For me it is ... another testament of the divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ and the single most [important] piece of evidence, the declaration that Joseph Smith was a prophet. ...

I've thought about it a lot, read it often. ... I wrote a book about the Book of Mormon, partly just because I wanted my own conviction, my testimony, to be in print, even if only for my children's sake. I dismiss out of hand the early criticism that somehow this was a book that Joseph Smith wrote. The only thing more miraculous than an angel providing him with those plates and him translating them by divine inspiration would be that he sat down and wrote it with a ballpoint pen and a spiral notebook. There is no way, in my mind, with my understanding of his circumstances, his education, ... [he] could have written that book. My fourth great-grandfather -- this goes back to my mother's pioneer side of the family -- said when he heard of the Book of Mormon in England, he walked away from the service saying no good man would have written that, and no bad man could have written it. And for me, that's still the position.

So I disregard the idea that Joseph Smith could have written it. I certainly disregard that somebody more articulate or more experienced in ecclesiastical matters could have written it, like [Smith's close friend and adviser] Sidney Rigdon. Rigdon doesn't even come to the church until the Book of Mormon is out and in circulation for eight or nine months. ...

Now, in terms of more modern theories, there are those who say it's more mythical literature and spiritual, and not literal. That doesn't work for me. I don't understand that, and I can't go very far with that, because Joseph Smith said there were plates, and he said there was an angel. And if there weren't plates and there wasn't an angel, I have a bigger problem than whether the Book of Mormon is rich literature. ... I have to go with what the prophet said about the book, about its origins, about the literalness of the plates, the literalness of the vision -- and then the product speaks for itself.

I don't think we're through examining the depth, the richness, the profundity, the complexity, all of the literary and historical and religious issues that go into that book. I think we're still young at doing that. But the origins for me are the origins that the prophet Joseph said: a set of plates, given by an angel, translated by the gift and power of God. ...

[You say] there are stark choices in beliefs about the origins of the book. Explain why there's no middle way.

... If someone can find something in the Book of Mormon, anything that they love or respond to or find dear, I applaud that and say more power to you. That's what I find, too. And that should not in any way discount somebody's liking a passage here or a passage there or the whole idea of the book, but not agreeing to its origin, its divinity. ...

I think you'd be as aware as I am that that we have many people who are members of the church who do not have some burning conviction as to its origins, who have some other feeling about it that is not as committed to foundational statements and the premises of Mormonism. But we're not going to invite somebody out of the church over that any more than we would anything else about degrees of belief or steps of hope or steps of conviction. ... We would say: "This is the way I see it, and this is the faith I have; this is the foundation on which I'm going forward. If I can help you work toward that I'd be glad to, but I don't love you less; I don't distance you more; I don't say you're unacceptable to me as a person or even as a Latter-day Saint if you can't make that step or move to the beat of that drum." ... We really don't want to sound smug. We don't want to seem uncompromising and insensitive.

... There are some things we can't give away. There are some foundational stones. If you don't have those, you don't have anything. So the First Vision, the Book of Mormon, those are pretty basic things. ...

Was there one evening [on your mission when you felt your faith deepen]?

I can tell you that evening, and probably with any review of my ... missionary journal I could tell you the date. I can picture the night in Guildford, Surrey, England. Late -- probably should have been in bed. I was a good missionary, and I tried to keep the rules. You get up on time, and you go do your work, and you stay healthy. But I was reading later that night. It was early in my mission, and I can picture it. I can picture my room. ... It was pretty spare. But I can remember ... having just been studying the Book of Mormon. I can remember closing the book and sobbing. I absolutely sobbed. I wept. The front of my shirt was wet. My tie was wet. I was still dressed, still in missionary attire.

But I wept. I could not stop. And it wasn't homesickness. I've known homesickness. It wasn't the euphoria of the moment. I'd known euphoria and despair. ... It wasn't that. I'd had all those experiences. It was a declaration to my soul that this book was divine; that this was true; that God lived and loved us, and Jesus was the Christ, and prophets really were prophets, and it really did matter what you did in life, and heaven really did care. And I just wept. ...

There have been a number of people in your church who have been disciplined or excommunicated for stepping over some line[...]What about people who question the history of the Book of Mormon?

There are plenty of people who question the historicity of the Book of Mormon, and they are firmly in this church -- firmly, in their mind, in this church -- and the church isn't going to take action against that. [The church] probably will be genuinely disappointed, but there isn't going to be action against that, not until it starts to be advocacy: "Not only do I disbelieve in the authenticity of the Book of Mormon, I want you to disbelieve." At that point, we're going to have a conversation. A little of that is more tolerated than I think a lot of people think it should be. But I think we want to be tolerant any way we can. ... "Patient" maybe is a better word than "tolerant." We want to be patient and charitable to the extent that we can, but there is a degree beyond which we can't go. ...

A few comments on Elder Holland's conference address

2009-10-05T09:21:00.011-06:00

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland's Fall 2009 conference address on the Book of Mormon was stirring. Right after he concluded I received a text message from my mom, "Are you applauding?" His delivery reminded me of an experience related by Parley P. Pratt when he witnessed a similarly-powerful testimony of the book's divine origin:

"A very large church was opened for [Joseph Smith] to preach in, and about three thousand people assembled to hear him. Brother [Sidney] Rigdon spoke first, and dwelt on the Gospel, illustrating his doctrine by the Bible. When he was through, brother Joseph arose like a lion about to roar; and being full of the Holy Ghost, spoke in great power, bearing testimony of the visions he had seen, the ministering of angels which he had enjoyed; and how he had found the plates of the Book of Mormon, and translated them by the gift and power of God. He commenced by saying: 'If nobody else had the courage to testify of so glorious a message from Heaven, and of the finding of so glorious a record, he felt to do it in justice to the people, and leave the event with God.'"¹

Elder Holland has been a longtime preacher of the Book of Mormon. His 1966 Master of Arts thesis at Brigham Young University focused on the Book of Mormon² and in 1997 Deseret Book published his devotional analysis of the scripture.³

In his conference address, Holland noted several other theories critics of the Book of Mormon have advanced:

"For 179 years this book has been examined, and attacked. Denied and deconstructed. Targeted and torn apart, like perhaps no other book in modern religious history. Perhaps like no other book in any religious history; and still, it stands. Failed theories about its origins have been born, parroted and died. From Ethan Smith to Solomon Spalding, to deranged paranoid, to cunning genius. None of these frankly pathetic answers for this book has ever withstood examination, because there is no other answer than the one Joseph gave as its young, unlearned translator."

More about Solomon Spalding and Ethan Smith can be found at the FAIR wiki and elsewhere.⁴ Elder Holland declared his testimony that the Book of Mormon is of divine origin and was translated by Joseph Smith just as he claimed. He added his testimony to that of his great grandfather, George Cannon, who read the Book of Mormon twice through before exclaiming that the book was of God, for "no wicked man could write such a book as this; and no good man would write it, unless it were true and he were commanded of God to do so.” George Cannon was the father of George Q. Cannon, a member of the First Presidency under four Church presidents.⁵

Elder Holland also related a story many members might be surprised to find in the Doctrine and Covenants, when Hyrum Smith read from the Book of Mormon on the day the brothers left for Carthage Illinois as described by John Taylor:

"The same morning, after Hyrum had made ready to go...he read the following paragraph, near the close of the twelfth chapter of Ether, in the Book of Mormon, and turned down the leaf upon it: 'And it came to pass that I prayed unto the Lord that he would give unto the Gentiles grace, that they might have charity. And it came to pass that the Lord said unto me: If they have not charity it mattereth not unto thee, thou hast been faithful; wherefore thy garments shall be made clean. And because thou hast seen thy weakness, thou shalt be made strong, even unto the sitting down in the place which I have prepared in the mansions of my Father. And now I…bid farewell unto the Gentiles; yea, and also unto my brethren whom I love, until we shall meet before the judgment-seat of Christ, where all men shall know that my garments are not spotted with your blood.' The testators are now dead, and their testament is in force."⁶

Elder Holland said he was holding the very copy from which Hyrum had read—a somewhat unfamiliar printing with a black cover and gold gilding. It is a copy of the 1841 English edition commissioned by Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, and Parley P. Pratt—4,500 copies of which were printed by J. Tompkins at Liverpool, England. According to Royal Skousen, this edition was the first European edition of the Book of Mormon and "it is essentially a reprinting of the 1837 edition with British spellings."⁷

Elder Holland closed with a powerful personal witness and although the mp3 is already available at LDS.org,⁸ I look forward to reading the full talk when it becomes available:

"But my testimony of this record, and the peace it brings to the human heart, is as binding and unequivocal as was theirs. Like them, I give my name unto the world, to witness unto the world that that which I have seen, and like them, I lie not, God bearing witness of it. I ask that my testimony of the Book of Mormon and all that it implies, given today under my oath and my office, be recorded by men on earth and angels in heaven. I hope I have a few years left in my “last days,” but whether I do or do not, I want it absolutely clear, when I stand before the judgment bar of God, that I declared to the world, in the most straightforward language I could summon, that the Book of Mormon is true. That it came forth the way Joseph said it came forth, and was given to bring happiness and hope to the faithful in the travail of the last days."

Did you really like the address? Go read the Book of Mormon.

FOOTNOTES:

[1]
Parley P. Pratt, Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt, Deseret Book Co. (1938), pp. 298-99.

[2]
Jeffrey R. Holland, "An Analysis of Selected Changes in Major Book of Mormon Editions 1830-1920," Brigham Young University, 1966.

[3]
Jeffrey R. Holland, Christ and the New Covenant: The Messianic Message of the Book of Mormon, Deseret Book (1997).

[4]
See also John W. Welch, "View of the Hebrews: "An Unparallel"," in Reexploring the Book of Mormon, edited by John W. Welch, (Provo, Utah: FARMS, 1992), 83–87; Matthew Roper, "The Mythical "Manuscript Found" (Review of: Who Really Wrote the Book of Mormon? The Spalding Enigma)," FARMS Review 17/2 (2005): 7–140.

[5]
The original account is from Andrew Jenson, Latter-day Saint Biographical Encyclopedia, 4 vols. (Salt Lake City: Andrew Jenson History Company, 1901–36), 1:44. See also Susan Easton Black, ed., Stories from the Early Saints: Converted by the Book of Mormon, Bookcraft (1992) p. 26.

[6]
Doctrine & Covenants 135:4-5.The Book of Mormon references is Ether 12:36–38 in the current (1981) edition.

[7]
Royal Skousen, "Book of Mormon Editions (1030-1981)," Encyclopedia of Mormonism, Macmillan (1992), p. 175. The image of the actual copy Elder Holland displayed is from the BYU Religious Education Image Archive, photo by Kenneth R. Mays. For more click here. There is another claimant for this book. A same-edition copy owned by Bathsheba W. Smith was donated to the Church archives in 2007. Those making the donation showed a similar page fold and the Church News article seems to claim it was that edition from which Hyrum Smith read as described in D&C 135. A photo caption, however, notes that the leaf on the page was turned down, "perhaps in honor of Hyrum Smith." See John L. Hart, "Fabric of history: Geo. A. and Bathsheba Smith artifacts donated to Church," Church News, 5 May 2007. The copy previously owned by the Church and displayed by Elder Holland belonged to Joseph F. Smith, Hyrum's son. I favor it as being the more likely candidate as opposed to the copy owned by Hyrum's cousin's wife. Richard Turley, Assistant Church historian, clarified as follows: "One book descends from Mercy Fielding Smith and is the one Hyrum took from the shelf and marked before leaving for Carthage. It has a provenance statement in it written by Hyrum’s son Joseph F. Smith on December 25, 1898. It is housed in the Church History Library and is the volume held up by Elder Holland. Another recently donated copy is quite similar and descends from Bathsheba Smith. The same page is marked, but in our reasoned opinion, the person who marked that page was merely indicating the spot Hyrum marked. We don’t believe this is the volume Hyrum removed that day" (personal e-mail in my possession, 7 October, 2009). For more about the book see Emiley Morgan, "'A chain of testimony': 1841 copy of Book of Mormon stays preserved," Deseret News, 8 October 2009

[8]
The download is available at "179th Semiannual General Conference, October 2009," LDS.org.

Flake: "The Emotional and Priestly Logic of Plural Marriage"

2009-10-02T14:47:00.003-06:00

The following are my notes from Kathleen Flake's Arrington Lecture at the Logan Tabernacle, October 1, 2009. This post is an incomplete mix of paraphrase, summary, and direct quotes from my personal notes, no recording was utilized so keep that in mind. This is not a transcript. Stay tuned for the paper itself for better accuracy when the Arrington folks put it together for publishing. The footnotes were added by me. If you are involved with the student essay competition, be honest and use your own notes! This post is for the benefit of those who could not attend the presentation.

Introduction by Phillip Barlow
(Wherein he notes Flake's unique perspectives based on her areas of interest. History, law, religious studies, ritual, and memory):

Welcome to this historic building; a fitting wonderful place to have the series. Each autumn we look forward to distinguished scholar coming and sharing their thoughts on Mormon history. In the past we've listened to Ross Peterson, Ken Godfrey, Richard and Claudia Bushman, Thomas Alexander, etc. and Kathleen Flake distinguishes herself even in this impressive company. She is a historian of course, but distinguishes herself from other garden variety historians in her knowledge of other fields, she brings other dimensions to her work.

First, she knows the law and was a practicing attorney for 15 years before she was "clever enough to get serious" about the study of religious history. She wrote a book I like to call "Mr. Smoot Goes to Washington." However, she surrendered to the evils of normal academic nomenclature by titling it The Politics of American Religious Identity.¹

Next, she knows religious studies in the "formal sense of that term." Religious Studies can be construed as a topic: one approaches religion as philosopher or a theologian or whatever. But it is also a distinct discipline which investigates how belief relates to behavior. What does belief do for how the person lives out their lives? How does it shape and get shaped by communities? How does a new religion gain traction in the world when it is birthed and how is it sustained? It must change or die. How do they change without losing their identity and the essence of their founding vision?

She knows ritual. She has lovingly accused other scholars perhaps like me of being textually literate and ritually illiterate, and I think she is right.

She knows narrative; how to unpack them and how to create them.

Finally on my list, she knows how to think about memory and how it works among people and communities. This is an issue that is on the front burner in the historical profession right now, as well as among psychologists and others.

Paper by Kathleen Flake
(Wherein she discusses the research she has been doing for an upcoming book on plural marriage and then takes questions from the audience. Flake dissects the "priestly logic" of plural marriage by discussing how 19th century American outsiders viewed the practice and how Mormons themselves made sense of it. The time period Flake focused on is confined to post-1852 through 1890. She explores the intersection of 19th century American or "Victorian" marital ideals and Mormonisms "priestly" ideals comparing Methodist and LDS marital liturgy):

This was a fifty-page paper and I cut it down to twenty for this lecture. I am hoping your questions help me give the rest. The 19th century in America was a time of high romance and low tolerance for Mormonism. I seek to investigate the relationship between these two trends to better understand logic behind practice of plural marriage. When I speak of logic, I am not referring to an absolute, but rather a set of assertions based on specific premises and assumptions. People who share your premises and assumptions will think you are logical. The people who don’t will think you are wrong. My academic approach tries to understand and explain. It is done out of curiosity and not out of judgment. The question is: what did they think they were doing? Approaches from this direction often get misunderstood as endorsements. Remember: when I speak of the logic of plural marriage I am not endorsing it or arguing it was logical to any but those who practiced it, and not even to all of them. What meaning did they bring to the marriages that helped them make sense?

Fanny Stenhouse was one Mormon that the practice didn’t make sense to.² Fanny's views: polygamic Mormonism viewed woman as a "convenience." In the proper Gentile home a woman is viewed as the companion of the husband. This complaint of Fanny's is more apparent than any "immoral" problem with the practice; the lack of companionship was her big problem. She described the faces of women in and out of polygamy to make the contrast. The woman of polygamy's countenance is sorrowful; she receives only share of husbands love. Monogamous wife is happy, and no matter how small her husbands heart may be (not exactly a flattering comment for me [laughter]) as small as her husband's heart may be she knows she rules therein. She yearned for her husband's society and Mormonism deprived her of that so she couldn’t feel happy. Marriage for Mormons, she explained, had the chief object if increasing the kingdom rather than to seek the happiness of the individual couple.

Certainly there were other LDS women as miserable and angry as Fanny but they didn’t or couldn’t abandon it like she did. But some did leave a record of their travail and the support of their husband. We as readers are rightly sympathetic with the plight of those who struggled in polygamy and many studies focus on these elements. But what about those who made polygamy seem like a source of human flourishing? These examples deserve analysis, too. It is useful to turn to them when trying to understand the emotional logic. The indictments against the practice see it as another level of patriarchy and hierarchy. An issue of social control which oppressed women. It was designed to monopolize power or resources by creating dynastic alignments between a ruling class. These charges can all be made against regular marriage, too. So there is more here.

I am suspicious of any general tendency to see only one side of argument. I admit my own monogamous bias, but I am genuinely curious about the fact that some people did thrive under this form of human relationship. What did they think they were doing? How did they make sense of the marriages and what was the logic? My working thesis is that the Saints' rejection of 19th century romantic marital norms expressed a positive ethic and religious identity related to LDS priestly ideals. I suspect the 19th century conflict between monogamy and polygamy was about more than the number of people in a marriage. Perhaps the priestly character of early Mormon marriage contradicted early 19th century marital ideals.

Even the Mormons thought polygamy violated what seemed like universal norms. From the advantage of hindsight we know these norms weren't as stable or normal as they thought. The saying seems to apply here: "What is most strongly held is often clutched by a nervous hand." By the 1800s marriage had been in flux for a long time. The cultural changes in America involved issues of personhood and social contract, new economic issues and the free market, innovative theologies of man's agency and political revolution that overturned hierarchies both political and religious all played a part in how marriage was understood. This was a time of big change to an idea of marriage for love. Up to this time marriage had served the purpose of ensuring progeny or economic stability or achieving social mobility. This doesn’t mean people didn't love each other. It means love wasn't the reason for getting married at the start; rather, it was the ideal effect of marriage. By time of the Revolution, love as the main reason for marriage was preferred twice as often as wealth. In 50 more years the preference became the norm. One should get married for love. This was described in a poem called "Home" by Dora Greenwell:

Two birds within one nest;
Two hearts within one breast;
Two spirits in one fair
Firm league of love and prayer,
Together bound for aye, together blest.³

A recommended book on the history is Marriage, a History by Coontz.⁴ Love based marriage became the norm, the wife staying home and the man as breadwinner was the recipe for heaven on earth. This was "Victorian marriage," and the only good one in America. It was based on love and defined by soulful companionship; two became one. Equality in loving expression was the best way. Mormonisms practice seemed to contradict this approach to marriage in every respect.

Or at least that is what Elizabeth Kane expected in 1872 when she went with her husband Thomas to Utah.⁵ Elizabeth, a non-Mormon, visited LDS homes, spending the winter in St. George's polygamous society. Elizabeth married for love and deeply regretted any long separation from her husband. She was devotedly Presbyterian and strongly in favor of equality for women. Her account is a valuable one, she didn’t have to live the practice and she brought an open mind and a critical eye. She was surprised in Utah's polygamous homes, they were grand and simple. Relationships also appeared to conform to her ideal of Victorian domesticity. She recognized in many cases a depth of emotional attachment she considered romantic love. Wives were treated as individuals. When she was introduced to families it was not uncommon for wives to be brought separately, husbands treating each as she was the only "Mrs. X." The introduction would repeat and since each wife was given same opportunity for conversation it must have seemed to Elizabeth "like a 19th century version of Groundhog Day" [laughter]. These and other experiences showed a sense of parity she assumed impossible in such marriages. Even more surprising were the intense emotional attachments she found. For instance, the loss of a spouse was very difficult despite other spouses remaining. One husband carried a daguerreotype of a wife who had been dead for two years though he had three other wives. It seemed as though plural hearts could beat in one breast. She was also impressed by the relationships among the wives; the other wives lamented their loss of the woman in the daguerreotype and wept over her. Elizabeth Kane’s experiences surprised her. She wondered how a first wife could possibly give her husband to a new wife. At Nephi she was intimate with the household long enough to see tender intimacy between some wives themselves; a certain bond of daily habit and proximity; a friend whose interests are identical with her own, who can share their feelings and talk about difficult issues without violating the sacred confidence of the home and family. Elizabeth wondered: "can you image anything (while sober) more insane?" [laughter]. Elizabeth Kane’s analysis, tells story and talks to leaders.

Following the same line Claudia Bushman traced in a former Arrington lecture, these accounts show more than a morally laudable renouncement of jealousy by the women. They could love and respect their husbands, and the wives themselves often moved in an interesting counterpoint, almost like marriage relationship themselves. Some insist that "polygyny" is the more correct term, polygyny, gyn as in gynecologist; one man many women. But "polygamy," the label often used by the Saints, communicated the idea of the network of marriages—not just many wives—many spouses. Some of these could produce a firm league of love and prayer in a group. Emotional commitments could not be a closed circuit. Elizabeth noted a curious difference between Mormon women and the idea of the Eastern "harem." (Granted that her understanding of Muslim women mistreated their situation, but she was trying to emphasize the freedom aspect of the Mormon situation). They are more at liberty. they had management of families and households and outside business affairs, almost as if they were widows. In many cases they played those roles as de facto widows of husbands on lengthy missions. The men were then responsible for expanding the kingdom, the women for maintaining the members in stakes; each doing whatever necessary economically and otherwise to secure success for the kingdom. As Carol Cornwall Madsen has described, they were to preserve the physical and spiritual integrity of those within rather than of the institution itself.⁶ Self-representations of the women themselves showed women happy to be flourishing individually, etc., rather than surviving in a marriage by merely suppressing jealousy. A vibrant emotional independence was produced and was a virtue.

The ideal was not to single off and become one pair against or contrasting with all others. This was painfully illustrated by one domestic situation where a woman became so devoted to her husband that she followed him everywhere and was devoted to him even at the expense of her own children. This was not something the community was comfortable with. [I think I understood the story correctly here but this is the one spot I was a little unclear on.] As Fanny had pointed out, the women were instructed that the object of marriage was not the devotion of two souls to each other, the affection or indissoluble union of two people. Instead, it involved a certain dissolution of the self, which Fanny saw as the marital problem. It was a necessity, not a benefit of plural marriage for Fanny. But the women Elizabeth encountered experienced that problem as the solution. As one plural wife had described, though it (polygamy) be a fiery furnace it will prove the one thing needed to cleanse and purify us of selfishness, jealousy, and other mundane attributes.

I suggest it is the Victorian ideals of one pair soul-mates that Mormon polygamy most countered. The Mormon logic of marriage, in contrast, was priestly. First we need to talk about what I mean by priest.
A priest is one who has the right to access the actual powers of heaven—think of that 16-year-old who kneels at the table each Sunday and offers prayers on the bread and water—to mediate and exercise those heavenly powers for the benefit of others on the earth. This doesn't just apply to the title, the office of a priest in the LDS context. The most obvious example is the priests of Aaron who were set apart to make sacrifices for Israel to maintain their covenant with God. From the beginning, Mormons ordained men and made them into councils where mediating the powers of God occurred. Joseph Smith placed women into this structure when he ordained Emma to preside over the Female Relief Society. He instructed the Society that their duty was not only to relive the poor, but also to save souls. They were to be empowered to accomplish this by joining with the men in newly-revealed temple ceremonies. To restore the fulness of the priesthood it would require all. Why? Marriage itself was an order of the priesthood, without which highest heaven is not attained.

A lot could be said about this and I cut out thirty pages here but I just want to say one thing, a small thing, as it relates to emotional utility of the temple marriages that strived: The mutual interdependence involved, that both men and women needed each other to have the highest order as conferred through marriage, stood in opposition to the romantic oneness that defined men and women relations in Victorian marriage. (And I apologize to the men—I am focusing more on women here because it is assumed that polygamy was most oppressive to women and it is an obvious place to begin. You'll have to read my book for next chapter.) I want to look at the Temple rituals that created the marriages to see intention of the marriages.

Consider the priestly identity of those involved in the ceremony. I want to look at the two best sources we have on this. One is from Orson Pratt as part of his unenviable assignment in 1852 to explain polygamy to the world. The other is from an earlier ceremony performed by Newell Whitney, a Bishop in the church who married his daughter Sarah Ann to Joseph Smith in 1842. In this ceremony he did not explain his position or authority to perform the ceremony in terms of his church office. Instead, and significantly, he claimed a priestly office and sealed them "in my own name and in the name of my wife, your mother, and in the name of my holy progenitors, by the right of birth which is of priesthood, vested in me by revelation and commandment and promise of the living God."⁷ Having a father stand in and perform a wedding rather than going to a state official was not uncommon for earlier Puritans. For them, what really made the marriage official was the actual vows between people and anything else was icing on the cake. But there was something different here, Whitney said he used his authority and that of his wife and their holy progenitors, possessed by all of them. This was "by the right of birth which is of priesthood." So the marriage performed by Newell Knight of Sarah Ann to Joseph Smith was not just the Puritan way of marriage. He considered himself and his wife to have divine authority and it had been passed to them by birthright from progenitors. This was then vested in him officially by the Melchizedek priesthood. This authority was then given to the couple in the priestly rite, which can be seen in the instructions and blessings given to the bride and groom. Knight commanded the bride that if she agrees to the covenant of the sealing, she was to "observe all the rights between you both that belong to that condition" of being married. He referred to "rights" instead of "duties," duties being what we might expect a marriage ceremony to enjoin upon the couple. The ceremony is devoid of reference to duties (except a vow to be companions).

Compare this to the Methodist liturgy of 1845. The groom promised to love, honor, comfort, keep, the bride, and the bride promised to obey, serve, honor, and keep the groom. [Flake actually read from the liturgy here.] There is no mention of rights or priestly rights given to the couple. In fact, marriage was noted as being ordained as a remedy against sin. It was for those who don’t have the gift of celibacy in order to be undefiled. Well, that's throwing cold water on it! [laughter] Marriage is "a good and holy ordinance of God just like farming, building, cobbling and barbering," said John Calvin. The couple is given duties, and not surprisingly, none of them had a sanctifying dimension. Compare that to the Mormon ceremony. In the "name of the Lord" a command is given for "all those powers [vested in me] to concentrate in you and through you to your posterity forever." With these words couple is linked to the powers of their holy progenitors and parents, and the powers are vested, or belong to the bride and groom by virtue of that ceremony. Whitney used the priesthood authority to marry the couple and to convey the authority to them.

The contrast between Mormon and Methodist ceremonies could not be more extreme and in the Mormon case it included women in the priesthood. The fathers were not without the mothers in priesthood. Or in context here, an LDS version of "fair firm league" mentioned in the poem above: men are not patriarchs without matriarchs; women had their own commissions, though not that different from those of the men. Saints were not taught that the object of marriage was the indissoluble union of two souls, but union of more, including the progeny, too. Elizabeth Kane records her surprise at the lament of a mother grieving the loss of twin girls. She thought mothers would regret the birth of daughter as misfortune, knowing they too may enter a plural marriage, but this was not so. Elizabeth said the women believed in the grand calling of endowing souls with tabernacles so that they might accept redemption. Birth was coupled to redemption, souls were being saved, it was not simply about numerical increase.

This view was confirmed by Orson Pratt's 1852 account of plural marriage in which the groom and the bride were commanded to "be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, that you may have joy and rejoicing in your posterity in the day of the Lord Jesus"⁸ (or in the day of the resurrection). Plural marriage was bestowing the powers that made child bearing into priestly acts that gave access to heavenly powers. Women believed they had access to those powers through birth. These 19th century LDS rites were officiated in by women and men—women washing, anointing, and sealing babies for birth, men baptizing, ordaining, and sealing for life; women birthing into the word, men birthing into the resurrection. The process is Temple-centered, immersed in ritual covenants that held them all together in a network of people with saving powers. The Temple's purpose was to create that saving network. This speaks to Mormonisms most fundamental and enduring paradoxes: An attempt to create highly individuated persons which then makes them able to access the powers of heaven by attaching them to an earthly community of others. This community was secured by the required reciprocity of gender roles in sealing, and extended to others through additional marital and adoptive sealings. This enabled a level of psychological individuation that allowed radical independence, but this independence was in service to a highly-gendered priestly order. Each was capable of standing alone, but were placed together because of the network of covenant relationships.

The terms of the covenant, I believe, were first used in what I consider the first temple ritual, the revealed greeting for the Kirtland school of the prophets: "I salute you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, in token, or remembrance of the everlasting covenant, in which covenant I receive you to fellowship in a determination that is fixed, immovable and unchangeable, to be your friend and brother..." (but of course you could put other relationships in there) "through the grace of God, in the bonds of love, to walk in all the commandments of God blameless, in thanksgiving, forever and ever. Amen."⁹ I suggest this depicts the nature of love in plural marriage. It does not describe a love that is fixed and immovable, but a determination that is fixed and immovable. Love is subordinated to the primary covenant to Jesus Christ and required repentance and gratitude, and to receive each other in those bonds, forever.

For Fanny, the highest object of marriage was to know that she alone ruled in her husbands heart as its sole queen. Did those who strove in plural marriage desire to rule in each others hearts? Not if they kept their covenants. They had bigger ambitions. This is seen in Eliza R Snow's promise to the Relief Society: "You, my sisters, if you are faithful will become Queens of Queens, and Priestesses unto the Most High God. These are your callings."¹⁰ These callings dramatically challenged other norms of 19th century marriage; the thought that such marriages could survive only through indifference to "love" itself. And for some that may be true but for others, they lived on different terms. There was something in their marriage which would gladden the heart, and there could still be married lovers. Thank you.

Question and Answer:

Q: When will your book be published?

A: Ah, this is a question from our sponsor [laughter]. It will be published as soon as it's written, which usually takes about a year, so we should see it in 2011 perhaps. I can't believe it has taken that long.

Q [Thomas Alexander]: Did this priestly element change when the Relief Society was made into an auxiliary of the church instead of coordinate with the priesthood as it had been?

A: Jill Mulvey Derr, who is in the audience, has things to say about this; read Women of Covenant, if you don’t have that book your library is incomplete.¹¹ Things changed before that, when the Relief Society was first disbanded in 1843. It seems the fathers ate grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge in this case.¹² The LDS like other people in the Progressive era began to order itself bureaucratically, and I don't use that word pejoratively, this idea of auxiliary seemed to fit. I think we could look at 1890 and the loss of polygamy as a hit to the notion of women as part of the priestly order. We as LDS began to increasingly embrace romantic marriage, much of this was lost. It is there for us to see in the records and so forth, but...

Q: Were there any children born from the Whitney-Smith marriage?

A: Not that I have seen or heard about. We always assume marriage have sexual competent or else it was not a marriage. That wasn’t true of all sealings or marriages. Sealing is analogized to adoption or marriage, but it doesn't really fit either perfectly, including the assumption that these networks were sexual. Not that they weren’t sexual, but it is more complicated than that.

Q: Do these sort of ideas you describe go on in current polygamy in fundamentalist groups?

A: I haven't studied those groups, Martha Bradly has some information on this, I don't know.¹³

Q: You reminded me of that scripture that says man shall leave father and mother and cleave unto his wife. Cleavage here is actually a paradox, because the word can mean a union and also a place of separation. Is that correct?

A: That is a fun insight; he said "Cleave" is a word that can have opposite meanings, a sense of separation and sense of uniting.

Q: I wonder if you're finding primary source documents that will talk about the philosophy you describe, if it really describes the deeply held feelings that they had. Or were these feelings that the women you quoted formed over time?

A: He's asking about primary sources that support my hypothesis, besides Elizabeth Kane? The reason I use her is she has credibility and insider doesn’t and she had unique access. When the Saints engaged in defense of plural marriage they were speaking to the criticism of the opponents. You always match your argument to what you are accused of, a good lawyer knows that, like wrestlers on a mat, you bend your body depending on your enemy. So they are bent in a Protestant critique, and it is problematic getting past that superficial layer because they don’t expect Protestants to appreciate their logic, so they use Protestant logic to explain things. So it is highly politicize and twisted. And what were the men saying? What about their emotions? We can imagine how it is when you come home and your wife has her three friends there and they’ve been talking about you, right? [laughter].

Q: Talk more about hierarchy, the men and so forth and maybe what this has to do with the Proclamation to the Family.

A: When I spoke about hierarchy, it is implicit in everything I said about women. They were part of it in a particular way, though the sphere was different as to some things but not other things. What was the sense of hierarchy in Victorian marriage? Also, I make it a point to never talk about the proclamation to the family. I'll let you worry about that. As for hierarchy in Victorian marriage, it was one of the struggles. There was this upsetting of authority, democratic impulse during that period that changed the way people related to each other, Gordon Wood's thesis about the radicalization of the American Revolution talked about how the ways of relating changed from hierarchy to other notions of affinity.¹⁴ In Victorian marriage the man is superior to woman, a larger range of action and he's out building railroads, but they were also more equals in the house, mates, matches. And out of this develops a sense of benevolence to reform, to suffrage, women are going to use that notion of the overruling of patriarchy to assist them in getting their rights. You get a lot of passive aggression, we flatter him in public but in private he’s mud, etc.

Q: Were there other plural wives who expected companionship of a husband and felt they got ripped off?

A: Absolutely, there were those who felt surprised or betrayed. But once it becomes a social norm in Utah especially after the 1852 public announcement, no women would be surprised because they see it all around. But there are plenty of women who didn't like it and you see them quoted in many books. I don’t want to downplay their experience, my assumption is that women would be disappointed, so let's find women that weren’t disappointed, lets look at them and see what they were thinking.

Q: You say these were people remembering, but they weren’t going to the temple every week like we could. It seems that those for whom it worked were probably part of the small elite group?

A: Well that is the old problem of the elite; it is the elite people who write; they have a little more leisure time and means of education, so we have a problem on the record. Luckily with Mormonism we have a lot of writers. Elizabeth Kane was so useful because in that journey she is seeing all kinds of families, too, not just "elites." She tells a moving story of a blind man and his two wives, scratching out a living like two hens in the dirt out in St. George. She sees all kinds of marriages. This question also bumps into problem of political debate because they are the ones articulating the debate.

Q: My Great-grandfather had 4 wives, was a historian and an attorney, and he talks about his relationship with his wives. His third wife [unintelligible] divorced him and would not allow herself to live in same town as any of the other wives.

A: Yes, so the acrimony was so strong that the wife would not allow the other wives to live in the same town. The stories are as amusing as they are legion. I like the group of women who wanted to divorce the man but they were fine just living together [laughter], so sometimes there is comedy in addition to the strong tragedy.

Q: What proportion of LDS population between 1852 and 1890 were living in polygamous marriages. I've been taught it was a very small percentage.

A: Dr. Alexander has looked at that closely, I'll defer to him, but that question came up during the Smoot hearings and it was a very low number, I can't remember now, I'm terrible with numbers but it was something less than ten percent. Someone wrote a response to that saying ten percent not living it would be more accurate. [Thomas Alexander from the audience says it was about 25%.]

Q: [unintelligible]

A: Do I believe polygamy was a true revelation from God or did Joseph Smith concoct it? Well, historians don’t have a dog in that fight, we treat it as "this is what those people believed" and try to make sense of it that way; sorry cant help you on that one.

[Same man]: I didn’t think you could! [laughter]

Q: Were you saying that Mormons saw plural marriage as a protection against adultery?

A: No, that was the Methodist view, it was protection against sin. Methodists had the idea that the only way to holiness was through celibacy, that was the highest holy life, you were endangering yourself by engaging in this carnal physical order, but it is better to marry than to burn, better marry than go to hell, that's what Paul said. But if you marry, the church needs to bless it so the carnal preoccupations of marriage and sex itself don’t endanger your soul.

Q: You spoke about Newell Whitnmey and Orson Pratt, and a little back to the School of Prophets. What about Joseph Smith’s theology?

A: I am arguing that was Smith's theology; that the function of marriage was to endow individuals to access divine power so you can exercise it for the benefit of world. "You’ve heard the phrase 'Saviors on Mount Zion,' and that’s not just geneology work."

Q: How was plural marriage first presented and how did people take it, the initial respondents to the practice.

A: Here I was talking about the period after plural marriage became more normative. My reading of the record is that Joseph Smith tried various ways to introduce people to this and all of them had pretty much a bad reaction, and one by one there grew a core of followers up to about 200 people. But it was taught personally not publicly. People who accepted it as revelatory did so based on the fact that they themselves had received a revelation; this was never a matter of logical proof and reasonableness, but more about charismatic gifts, etc.

FOOTNOTES:
[1]
Kathleen Flake, The Politics of American Religious Identity: The Seating of Senator Reed Smoot, Mormon Apostle, University of North Carolina Press (2004). The book was the winner of the 2005 Mormon History Association "Best Book Award."

[2]
Fanny Stenhouse and her husband T.B. H. Stenhouse were converts who became outspoken opponents of Mormonism. For one view see Ronald W. Walker, "The Stenhouses and the Making of a Mormon Image," Journal of Mormon History 1 (1974): 51-52. Some of Fanny's work, including Tell It All, can be read on GoogleBooks.

[3]
"Home," by Dora Greenwell, Poems, by the author of 'The patience of hope', p. 151.

[4]
Stephanie Coontz, Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage, Viking Adult, 2005.

[5]
Flake made much use of Elizabeth Kane's A Gentile Account of Life in Utah's Dixie, 1872-73: Elizabeth Kane's St. George Journal.

[6]
Madsen is an emeritus professor of history at Brigham Young University and has written extensively on Mormon women in the 19th century.

[7]
This document can be found in H. Michael Marquardt, The Joseph Smith Revelations: Text and Commentary (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1999), 315-16.

[8]
Orson Pratt, The Seer, vol. 1, number 2, p. 32.

[9]
Doctrine and Covenants 88:133

[10]
Eliza R. Snow, "An Address," Women's Exponent, Vol. 2 (Sept. 1873), No. 8.

[11]
Jill Mulvey-Derr, Janath Russell Cannon, Maureen Ursenback Beecher, Women of Covenant: The Story of Relief Society, Deseret Book (2002).

[12]
Proverbial saying from Ezekiel 18:1-4, among other references.

[13]
Martha Sonntag Bradley wrote Kidnapped from That Land: The Government Raids on the Short Creek Polygamists, University of Utah Press (1993).

[14]
Gordon S. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution, Vintage (1993).