Orson Hyde blazes the trail for every Temple and Family History consultant ever since.
Category: News and Politics
Politics – Current Events – Media
Ein Ruf aus der Wüste 4.10: Orson Hyde on continuing revelation
The teachings are familiar, but the images are surprising.
Ein Ruf aus der Wüste 4.9: Orson Hyde on blessing and baptizing children
This short sections feels quite familiar.
Counterpoint: A Feeling of Loss–On Murals and Temples
I lived a significant portion of my life in Logan, Utah and frequently attended the temple during the time that I lived there. I had a lot of beautiful and sacred experiences while doing so, but I also rarely attended that temple without experiencing some feelings of loss. In the late 1970s, in order to introduce the use of filmed endowments to that temple, the building was gutted and almost all of the paintings, stained glass, chandeliers, furniture, and other furnishings were stowed away in archives in Salt Lake City or Provo, sent to other temple and Church office buildings for use, or given away. The murals and the ornate “gold room” sealing room decorations couldn’t be removed intact and the parts that weren’t cut out as souvenirs were destroyed. The temple they built inside the shell of the original was far more efficient, more structurally sound, and had better air conditioning, but lost most of what the pioneer Saints had lovingly contributed to the house of the Lord. President Spencer W. Kimball reportedly expressed regret at the loss of the pioneer craftsmanship, which is the same reason I felt some feelings of loss when I visited. To see the furnishings from the older iteration of the temple, I had to visit the Church History Museum in Salt Lake City rather than the temple itself (until that, too, was renovated and the section about historic Utah temples removed).[1] While the…
Point: It’s just art
Hezekiah didn’t consult with artists or historians before destroying the bronze snake Moses had made. He didn’t even try to preserve it somewhere else for its cultural value.
Ein Ruf aus der Wüste 4.8: Orson Hyde on confession and disfellowship
On the confession of sin and the treatment of members acting contrary to law
Ein Ruf aus der Wüste 4.7: Orson Hyde on the sacrament
For Hyde, the sacrament seems to be not quite as strictly symbolical as it is for us, and more directly tied to guilt and confession. Also, will Sunday always be the Sabbath?
Redux: Responding to bigoted but famous texts—by Seuss and Doyle
The recent controversy over the decision of the literary estate of Theodore Seuss Geisel to stop selling six of his Dr. Seuss books because of their bigoted depictions of minorities reminded me of a somewhat similar situation. Nearly 10 years ago, I wrote the post Responding to Bigoted but Famous Texts about a Virginia school district and a controversy over a book featuring the beloved literary character Sherlock Holmes. The book was the first Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet, and the villains of the story were, of course, Mormons. Like some news stories over the Dr. Seuss books, the few news stories over the Virigina school district and A Study in Scarlet misunderstood the situation. In the latter situation, one resident of Albemarle County, Virginia, suggested that if A Study in Scarlet is used in the school curriculum, it needs to be done with appropriate context and a thoughtful lesson, so that the bigotry against Mormons in the text is blunted. In response to my post 10 years ago, Jim Stern, one of the residents involved in the discussions, explained the situation in detail, and made it clear that there hadn’t been any attempt to censor A Study in Scarlet. In retrospect, Jim’s statements helped me see some of the middle ground in these discussions. It’s very easy to make charges of censorship any time the availability of a literary work changes. But there are, I think, many issues that…
Ein Ruf aus der Wüste 4.6: Orson Hyde on confirmation
What is a priesthood ordinance’s method of action? What Hyde describes in this short article seems to be both less direct, and to emphasize the mediation of the priesthood and the priest conducting an ordinance, more than we typically would today. The gift of the Holy Ghost also seems conspicuously absent.
Ein Ruf aus der Wüste 4.5: Hyde on baptism
Also, Native Americans make an appearance.
Ein Ruf aus der Wüste 4.4: Orson Hyde on repentance
Most of this article is not actually about repentance.
Ein Ruf aus der Wüste 4.3: Orson Hyde on faith
Orson Hyde’s lecture on faith seems a lot like the Lectures on Faith.
Ein Ruf aus der Wüste 4.2: Orson Hyde on new scripture
Everything makes sense until the last sentence.
Ein Ruf aus der Wüste 4.1: Orson Hyde on the Godhead
Orson Hyde’s explication of doctrine, like the Articles of Faith, begins with the nature of God, although Hyde’s treatment is about 30 times as long.
Ein Ruf aus der Wüste 3: Orson Hyde on priesthood
The subject of the priesthood office has by itself already caused more contention, bitterness and jealousy between the Catholic and the Protestant church than all remaining matters of dispute combined.
Ein Ruf aus der Wüste: translating the name of the church in 1842
The translator thought about it and…just gave up.
What do people look up about the Church on Wikipedia?
The following is Stephen Cranny’s second guest post here at Times & Seasons. Stephen Cranney is a Washington DC-based data scientist and Non-Resident Fellow at Baylor’s Institute for the Studies of Religion. He has produced over 20 peer-reviewed articles and five children. When somebody is looking up material about the Latter-day Saint movement on their own, which themes draw their attention? What do they look up? Despite all the attention given to the media’s role in narrative-shaping, the fact is that Wikipedia is still the primary go-to source of information for most things that happened longer than a day ago. While many people are keeping their ears to the ground about the latest media response to this or that, I’m consistently surprised at how little Wikipedia makes an appearance in discussions about framing, so I decided to systematically analyze the Church’s presence on Wikipedia using software I wrote (available on my Github page here). By knowing what people are looking up vis-a-vis the Church, we get a sense of what people are interested in learning about the Church. In my experience, it seems people often associate the Church with very particular subject(s) (polygamy, LGBT issues, etc.), and they implicitly assume that those issues similarly loom large in the consciousness of others, when in fact that particular issue may never cross into the same stream of thought as the Church for most people. My program builds out a citation network of Wikipedia…
Let Your Light So Shine
You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden; nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Your light must shine before people in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven. (Matthew 5:14-16, New American Standard Bible) Take care not to practice your righteousness in the sight of people, to be noticed by them; otherwise you have no reward with your Father who is in heaven. So when you give to the poor, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, so that they will be praised by people. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. But when you give to the poor, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your charitable giving will be in secret; and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. (Matthew 6:1-4, NASB) What are we to make of these two seemingly irreconcilable directives from the Sermon on the Mount? The first directs the Christian to shine his light “before people in such a way that they may see your good works”; the second directs him to “take care not…
America, election and the International Church
Over a month ago, I was asked by the Salt Lake Tribune what a reelection of Donald Trump would imply for the International Church. The reasoning of the journalist was that Trump’s performance as President of the United States, especially his handling of the covid-19 pandemic, was severely damaging not only his status in the world but also of the USA as a nation and world leader. Consequently, was the reasoning, conversion to a church that is primarily seen as a USA church, would be hampered. The Utrecht Ward in 2000 My reaction at the time—when reelection was still possible—was that 1. The moral status of the USA has already been suffering over a long time; 2. Indeed Trump’s administration had done great harm to it; 3. In our eyes the notions of ‘manifest destiny’ and ‘American exceptionalism’ have little meaning other than a self-congratulatory discourse. The fact that the Book of Mormon situates itself in the Americas is important, but that seems to be mainly in Mexico and Guatemala, countries on which I hear little in terms of ‘destiny’, manifest or other. But it is hard to see how the Church could have be established as it is anywhere else but in the US of A. The association between the USA and the Church is still strong, and the attraction of the Church in many countries in the world, does rely for a considerable part on the appeal of…
The Book of Mormon, Modern America, and, of course, Nazis
In her provocative work Eichmann in Jerusalem, Hannah Arendt proposes a fascinating insight. “Evil in the Third Reich had lost the quality by which most people recognize it—the quality of temptation,” she writes. “Many Germans and many Nazis, probably an overwhelming majority of them, must have been tempted not to murder, not to rob, not to let their neighbors go off to their doom…and not to become accomplices in all these crimes by benefiting from them. But, God knows, they had learned how to resist temptation.” As Arendt explains, defining evil as temptation—as something that we are not allowed to do, that must be withstood at all costs, can create significant repercussions. We feel honorable when we overcome temptation because it takes courage and strength of character to do so, and it’s something that we owe, not only to ourselves, but to our communities. What happens, then, to a society where Christian acts of compassion, acceptance, forgiveness, welfare, and understanding become seen by its members as temptation—and therefore the evil—against which we are expected to fight? One of the things that the Third Reich did spectacularly well was to convince its adherents that they were truly fighting for the greater good for all of humanity, and that the terrible things that they had to do to towards accomplishing that good, while unfortunate, were nonetheless necessary. To be kind they first had to be cruel. To be generous they first had…
A New Update on the New Hymnbook
Last week, the Church released some new updates about the new hymnbook and children’s songbook. The short and sweet version is that we’re still several years away from the books being published and that the process and the books themselves are evolving (both due, at least in part, to the sheer volume of material that is being evaluated for inclusion and current world circumstances). We’ll look into the specifics in a minute (and I’d love to have some discussion about what you think about the projects from what we know), but first I’ll take a moment to link this to previous discussions I’ve posted about the new hymnbook (which, in turn, link to the previous news releases on the Church’s site): The New LDS Hymnbook: Changes and Possibilities (discussion about original announcement June 2018) Updates on the New Hymnbook (discussion from the last time we received new information about the hymnbook and children’s songbook May 2019) “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing” Throughout the Restoration (discussion about the history and likelihood of the titular hymn being included in the new hymnal) Spanish Hymns and the Future Hymnbook (discussion about which hymns original to the Spanish hymnals of the Church may be included in the new hymnal) The sheer amount of material that is being evaluated is overwhelming. According to the new article on the Church’s site, over 16,000 original hymns, songs, and texts were submitted for consideration. About 55% of…
Times & Seasons welcomes back Mary Grey
We last heard from Mary while she was living in Jerusalem, and we’re excited to welcome back her insights as we round out the year. In addition to her stint in Jerusalem, Mary has lived on the east coast and overseas in England—though she’s a Utah native and currently resides in Utah Valley with her husband and children. She’s an avid reader, a committed student of the gospel and religious studies more broadly, and has spent a number of years teaching both seminary and institute. Welcome back Mary!
The Abortion Status Quo is Untenable
I appreciated the tone and intent of Michael Austin’s By Common Consent post responding to Terryl Givens’ post at Public Square. He correctly identifies the question of abortion as one of competing rights: the right of the unborn human being to life set against the right of the mother to preserve her bodily integrity, but he makes two crucial mistakes. First, he is too hasty in his application of the organ donation argument to abortion. According to that argument, since we do not require anyone to donate blood or organs to someone in need, surely we cannot require a pregnant mother to donate her body, either. Although this line of reasoning has strong intuitive appeal at first glance, the appeal vanishes if we probe a little deeper. Consider two scenarios (neither of which is an analogy for pregnancy or abortion; we’ll get to that later): Alice has a rare genetic condition. Because of this, Alice needs a kidney transplant. Bob is the only potential donor. If he refuses, then Alice dies. Bob steals Alice’s kidneys and sells them on the black market. Because of this, Alice needs a kidney transplant. Bob is the only potential donor. If he refuses, then Alice dies. Now, I agree with Michael that the state cannot compel Bob to donate his kidney. In either case, he has the inviolable right to refuse to donate his organs. That doesn’t change the reality that, in the second…
Pro-Life: A Fiercely Held Moderate Position
The Legal Status of Abortion, Revisited I’ve talked to Terryl Givens (my dad) a few times since his article on abortion for Public Square came out. Both of us are disappointed, but not at all surprised, by some of the reactions from fellow Latter-day Saints. I’ll dive into one such response–a post from Sam Brunson at By Common Consent–but only after taking a minute to underscore the difference between an extreme position and a fiercely-held moderate position. There’s a reason why the first section in Terryl’s piece is an explanation of the current legal status of abortion in the United States. Unlike many other developed nations, where abortion laws were gradually liberalized through democratic means, the democratic process in the United States was short-circuited by the Roe vs. Wade decision (along with Doe vs. Bolton). As Terryl explained, American abortion law since Roe is an extreme outlier: “America is one of very few countries in the world that permit abortion through the 9th month of pregnancy.” If the spectrum of possible abortion laws runs from “never and under no circumstances” to “always and under any circumstances,” our present situation is very close to the “any circumstances” extreme. In his rejoinder, Sam rightly points out that Roe is not the last word on the legality of abortion in the United States. Decades of laws and court cases–including return trips to the Supreme Court–have created an extremely complex legal landscape full of…
Perils on every side
Our unhappy political moment has unfortunately corrected a longstanding asymmetry in ideologically-driven exit options.
“Come, Follow Me” and The Family: A Proclamation to the World
The “Come, Follow Me” manuals for 2021’s course of study are available online now. Looking ahead to the next year, I have been curious to see if they were going to stick strictly to the scriptures related to the history of our modern dispensation (Doctrine and Covenants and parts of the Pearl of Great Price), or if they were going to focus on our Church’s history via the Saints volumes and have relevant sections of the scriptures discussed along the way. The authors the manuals chose to go with the former, focusing on the scriptures—with a major exception. On the week of December 13-19, 2021, rather than studying canonized sections of the Doctrine and Covenants or the Pearl of Great Price, we’re studying “The Family: A Proclamation to the World.” The implications of the proclamation being the one of only two documents that is not part of the Standard Works being studied as the central text for a week sends a signal—the manual’s authors seems to feel that the proclamation is on par with the canonized scriptures in importance. Yet, the proclamation is not officially accepted as part of our canon at this time. To me, this indicates that either someone in Salt Lake City has possibly set a goal for the document to join the Standard Works by the end of next year or this is a move in a process of essentially canonizing the proclamation without actually putting…
The delicious detail of Benjamin Park’s book The Kingdom of Nauvoo
I recently read (okay, listened to) Benjamin Park’s book Kingdom of Nauvoo: The Rise and Fall of a Religious Empire on the American Frontier. Park has produced a rich piece of scholarship with fascinating details about the period, some of them from documents released just in the past few years. Much of what I enjoy from these histories are the rich detail they provide of both important and quotidian events. For example, here’s a depiction of the first baptism for the dead: “The first vicarious ritual, which saw [Jane] Neyman baptized on behalf of her son in the Mississippi River on September 13 [1840], was haphazardly done. The man performing the ritual, Harvey Olmstead, made up the rite’s wording on the spot; the woman serving as witness, Vienna Jaques, rode into the water on the back of a horse so that she could hear what Olmstead said. Many others followed suit.” While not a surprise, it’s useful for me to remember how many of the practices that today seem so carefully regulated had more spontaneous origins. (Park talks more about the first vicarious baptism in a blog post.) Here’s another detail that I enjoyed. In 1844, Joseph Smith and others sent an emissary to speak with Sam Houston to discuss potential settlement in Texas: “After recording portions of the conversation in Smith’s diary, Richards took care to cross out the reference to Texas and Houston and instead wrote the names backward…
Calls to the Quorum of the Twelve: An Analysis
For something relatively out of the blue, I want to take a moment to consider potential future candidates for the Quorum of the Twelve. The Quorum of the Twelve and the First Presidency are the highest in authority in the Church and are important in policy making and in defining the doctrine of the Church, so the people who are chosen to serve in these quorums are important to Church members. I believe that it’s best to not talk about these types of things in the aftermath of a death in their ranks (or when the possibility of such is likely in the near future), so I figure now is as good of time as any to discuss the issue. In the modern Church, most things are run by councils where several individuals have the ability to express their thoughts and often have an opportunity to accept or reject a proposal. That is a part of the administrative genius of the Church that Joseph Smith put in place to insure that things could continue after the death of charismatic leaders, such as himself, and to increase the likelihood that things are being done in accordance with God’s will (more people checking something, the more likely they are to catch errors). This system seems to carry over to the selection of a new apostle. President Hugh B. Brown (1883-1975) recalled that: In calling a new apostle the president of the church…
They’re not wrong
They’re not wrong. Not about everything.
I disagree with their choice of candidate. What they want would have—has had—disastrous results, but that doesn’t mean they’re entirely wrong.
Producing Ancient Scripture: Q&A with Editors Mark Ashurst-McGee and Mike MacKay
Following on Chad’s recent discussions, I’m happy to share another offering in what has become a T&S mini–series on the recent volume Producing Ancient Scripture: Joseph Smith’s Translation Projects in the Development of Mormon Christianity (Salt Lake City, UT: The University of Utah Press, 2020). Editors Mark Ashurst-McGee and Mike MacKay here respond to my questions on the genesis of the volume and its implications. The intriguing question of “what we talk about when we talk about Joseph Smith’s translation activities” has enjoyed extraordinary scholarly attention in 2020. Producing Ancient Scripture offers an embarrassment of riches, with twenty authors approaching the question from historical, textual, psychological, and theological perspectives. It is the most comprehensive volume on the topic to date, and the avenues it marks now define the groundwork of the field. This is a landmark book. It brings together 20 scholars from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds for a deep dive into what it means when we talk about Joseph Smith’s work as a translator. How did the volume originate, and why is it a necessary contribution at this moment? Mike: In 2013, the translation of the Book of Mormon was a hotly debated topic at the Joseph Smith Papers Project and the Church’s new Gospel Topics essay on the subject was being discussed. I had worked on the topic for the Papers and was working on a book for Latter-day Saints about the translation and publication of the…