Author: Jonathan Green

Jonathan Green has been described as a scholar of German, master of trivia, and academic vagabond. He is an instructor of German in the Department of Modern and Classical Languages at the University of North Dakota. His books include Printing and Prophecy: Prognostication and Media Change, 1450– 1550 (2011), and The Strange and Terrible Visions of Wilhelm Friess: Paths of Prophecy in Reformation Europe (2014).

Don’t hate me just because my trek was awesome

by Jonathan Green • January 9, 2014 • 14 Comments

When it comes to handcart reenactments, we spend too much time on all the wrong questions, questions like: How much physical suffering is needed for a youth-appropriate spiritual experience? Personally, I’d like to minimize the suffering in my spiritual experiences, thank you very much. Or anxious hand-wringing, like: Do handcart reenactments distort the historically authentic experiences of pioneers who traveled to Utah by various means and responded in individually determined ways to the contingent experience of physical exertion and deprivation over which a superstructure of religious Exodus narrative had been established amid a plethora of competing counter-narratives? Again, I’m not terribly interested; perfect authenticity is not only boring, it’s inauthentic. Instead, the question we should be asking ourselves is What kind of awesome ward activities can we justify thanks to the examples of pioneer ancestors and/or revered persons of non-direct ancestry?

BYU-Idaho: the next ten years (II)

by Jonathan Green • December 26, 2013 • 26 Comments

To keep the rest of this post in context, let me repeat that I think Rexburg is a fantastic place, that BYU-Idaho has gotten the most important things right in its transformation from a junior college into a four-year university, and that its dress code is not a terribly important issue. The university’s path forward to becoming the kind of university it hopes to be, although not simple, is clear enough. Another tricky question for the future of the university is how to strike the right balance between local heritage versus consistency with the system flagship in Provo: How much BYU, and how much Idaho?

BYU-Idaho: the next ten years (I)

by Jonathan Green • November 6, 2013 • 20 Comments

BYU-Idaho is much different today than it was in 2001, when it changed its name from Ricks College and started to offer bachelor’s degrees. It shouldn’t detract from the accomplishments of the last decade to say that the university is still a work in progress; institutional change takes a generation. There are more changes in store, challenges that soon need to be faced, and pitfalls that have to be avoided.

Five things you should know about the BYU-Idaho dress code

by Jonathan Green • September 19, 2013 • 66 Comments

There are five things you should know about the BYU-Idaho dress code. The first thing—that BYU-Idaho has a dress code—is probably redundant, since that seems to be the only thing that people outside of Rexburg hear about BYU-Idaho.

What BYU-Idaho does right

by Jonathan Green • September 5, 2013 • 37 Comments

You might be surprised to learn that the church maintains not one but two large universities, including one about 280 miles north of Provo. The existence of BYU-Idaho is one of those things that seems to easily escape notice, even for Mormons in the middle of a vigorous debate about what must be done about BYU and LDS higher education. While the low level of scrutiny that BYU-Idaho receives is in general salutary for the university, it’s unfortunate for the discussions of higher education, as some of the most interesting experiments in the American university system today are being conducted in Rexburg, Idaho.

Rexburg

by Jonathan Green • August 19, 2013 • 44 Comments

What is it like to move to Rexburg? If you’ve ever driven across the country, you’ve probably stopped for gas or lunch in some town you’ve never heard of and observed in astonishment that people not only live there, but appear to lead lives as happy and meaningful as any other American. Those lives may include more baseball or rodeo than you would choose for yourself, but the people there seem content enough. You see parks and schools and streets with decent-looking houses and a reasonable number of stores, and you wonder what it would be like if you lived there. Moving to Rexburg is like stopping for gas in a place like that and failing to get back on the highway to wherever it was you thought you were going.

The aporias of the meethinghouse library

by Jonathan Green • June 28, 2013 • 17 Comments

One of the rare privileges of being Sunday School President in a Mormon congregation – second only to holding the keys for sounding the bells to end class on the hour – is the occasional opportunity to fill in for the meetinghouse librarian.

Firing professors, June 1993. A personal view.

by Jonathan Green • June 18, 2013 • 31 Comments

Twenty years ago, I held up one half of the largest sign at a student protest in response to the non-renewals of two BYU professors.

Joseph Smith and the failure of the Reformation

by Jonathan Green • April 10, 2013 • 39 Comments

One of the paradoxes of Mormonism is the heroic status it grants Martin Luther while simultaneously rejecting all of his central teachings. Mormon teachings and the basic narrative of the Restoration in some cases even suggest that the Reformation, however necessary it may have been, was not only incorrect, but also that it was a failure.

Why I wear a tie to church

by Jonathan Green • March 28, 2013 • 72 Comments

Not long ago, on the way to church one Sunday, my son, recently turned twelve, asked me, “Why do I have to wear a tie to church?” Instead of directly answering that question, which would reveal his parents’ rather curtailed ability to compel behavior in their almost-teenage children much earlier than I’d like and short-circuit the altogether salutary process of his exploring those limits in person, I told him why I wear a tie to church.

Lehi/Nephi. Orality, literacy, prophecy

by Jonathan Green • February 19, 2013 • 16 Comments

If we think of orality and literacy not as a binary opposition but as encompassing a broad spectrum of attitudes toward and uses of the spoken and written word, then we might find that Lehi and Nephi stand on opposite sides of a fundamental shift.

Literacy and orality in Mormonism

by Jonathan Green • January 23, 2013 • 11 Comments

It would be surprising, and disappointing, if Mormons didn’t sound a bit odd when we speak, or if Mormon verbal art were indistinguishable from any other literary text.

A Mormon holiday: Purgation Sunday

by Jonathan Green • January 6, 2013 • 5 Comments

As others have noted, Mormonism does not have much of a liturgical year, and the role of holidays in Mormon theology is quite attenuated. I propose we designate the first Fast Sunday in January as Purgation Sunday.

The Council in the Preexistence (medieval Antichrist edition)

by Jonathan Green • December 26, 2012 • 7 Comments

In the twelfth century, Walter of Chatillon wrote a rather pessimistic appraisal of the world’s condition.

Missions and language learning

by Jonathan Green • December 13, 2012 • 20 Comments

How well does the average missionary who goes to a foreign country learn his or her mission language?

Missions and language training

by Jonathan Green • November 22, 2012 • 48 Comments

Will lowering the age of missionaries to 18/19 from 19/21 hurt the language preparation of missionaries serving foreign-language missions? Perhaps, although there are some possible steps one could take to counteract that. Which steps to take, or whether to take any steps at all, depends on how much language skills are affected, and on how much you think foreign language preparation matters for missionaries.

Your Candidate is going to lose

by Jonathan Green • November 5, 2012 • 26 Comments

I regret to inform you that Your Candidate is going to lose. Some tough days are ahead. I’m sorry. It will be tempting to blame Your Candidate for his loss, but the truth is that he actually did a pretty good job. The economy, world affairs, the weather – they just didn’t go his way. Still, he made the most of the hand he was dealt, gave some good speeches, got in some good lines in what were the best presidential debates in a long time. Your Candidate was the best candidate Your Party had, and he gave The Other Guy a pretty good run for his money. The Other Guy will be in the White House for the next four years, but there’s nothing mysterious about his victory. There was no grand conspiracy, no nefarious manipulation of the voting process that thwarted the will of the people. The Other Guy will be president because that’s how the votes in the American electoral system tallied up. To the extent that you are an American, the Other Guy will be your president for the next four years. I know you don’t like to hear it, but sometimes you have to face bad news head on. Your Candidate and The Other Guy represented different sets of values, varying priorities, and disparate approaches to government – and the American people chose The Other Guy this time. There will be some tough days ahead.…

Romantik

by Jonathan Green • July 7, 2012 • 9 Comments

Heinrich von Ofterdingen by Novalis is one of the founding documents of Romanticism. The novel is perhaps most famous for the title figure’s vision of a blue flower in the first chapter. What is not as well known is how Heinrich’s family drama is also the ecclesiology of Mormonism.

“For whose coming I am seeking”: Quote-unquote Roger Williams

by Jonathan Green • June 15, 2012 • 20 Comments

In Ensign articles and in General Conference addresses, it is not unusual to find appeals to people before 1830 who thought that Christianity had slipped into general apostasy. One of the most prominent of these is Roger Williams (1603-1683), to whom the following statement is attributed.

Notes from the ApostaCon

by Jonathan Green • March 3, 2012 • 19 Comments

Following “Exploring Mormon Conceptions of the Apostasy,” a conference organized by Miranda Wilcox and held this last Thursday and Friday at BYU, I heard several people say that it was the best conference of any kind they had ever participated in. I don’t think that was merely a polite exaggeration.

The Lost Books of the Bible (1609 Catholic edition)

by Jonathan Green • February 19, 2012 • 12 Comments

In 1609, Johannes Uber published the first part of his Very Useful and Necessary Disputation Concerning the Holy Bible (Von der heiligen Bibel sehr nützliche und nötige Disputation, VD17 1:050537Y) in which he argued for two points. First, that the Bible was no longer whole “because of the many lost holy books that the holy prophets and apostles wrote and referred to in their writings”; and second, that therefore those who leave the Catholic Church and rely only on the Bible cannot find salvation.

Ars moriendi

by Jonathan Green • December 20, 2011 • 19 Comments

Yesterday I dedicated the grave of my grandfather, Verl Bagley, who by one measure spent his life at the end of the earth.

History of a book

by Jonathan Green • December 11, 2011 • 16 Comments

So I wrote a book. Not a Mormon book, but one in my academic field. I’ve been working on the book since just before my youngest daughter was born. She started first grade in September, and the book was published last week. The idea for the book came to me in 2005,

In Praise of Thanktimonies

by Jonathan Green • November 23, 2011 • 18 Comments

Not all targets of our reflexive contempt are well chosen. Expressions of mere gratitude in our monthly testimony meetings are dismissed as ‘thanktimonies’ because they don’t quite cover any of the things a public expression of religious conviction is supposed to be about. But I think this disdain is misplaced, like scoffing at children for riding bicycles when they could instead careen around the neighborhood in outsized cars in which they cannot work the pedals and see over the dashboard at the same time.

Where do BYU students come from?

by Jonathan Green • November 1, 2011 • 35 Comments

The Chronicle of Higher Education has given us a new statistical toy to play with.

A Mother There? Notes on Paulsen and Pulido

by Jonathan Green • September 14, 2011 • 35 Comments

David Paulsen and Martin Pulido’s survey of statements concerning Heavenly Mother in Mormon thought, recently published in BYU Studies, has earned a good amount of attention. It’s a thorough survey, and I only have two relatively minor criticisms. In addition, the article restricts itself to surveying statements rather than analyzing them, and I see a few possibilities for future analysis. Mostly I want to make a couple observations about the article, primarily that it doesn’t say quite as much as one might think.

Scent of a Mormon

by Jonathan Green • August 8, 2011 • 25 Comments

The program for the annual convention of the Modern Language Association regularly includes the following request: The Committee on Disability Issues in the Profession reminds attendees that refraining from using perfume, cologne, and other scented products will help ensure the comfort of everyone at the convention.

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