Category: News and Politics

Politics – Current Events – Media

A Brief Note on Alma and Corianton

by  •  • 3 Comments

Alma the Younger strikes me as one of the sterner of the prophets, which makes sense if you consider his background. I know a few people in my life who have had similar, if less spectacular trajectories. It’s not an ironclad rule that those who wander tend to be more intense about obedience on their return, but it’s at least a correlation. And that has colored how I read his words, especially in the letters / commands to his sons and especially in the chapters addressed to Corianton.  Something changed for me as I read these chapters in preparation for my Gospel Doctrine lesson last week, however. I noticed for the first time that although chapter 39 is the one I always remember and although it is full of memorable lines (“I would to God that ye had not been guilty of so great a crime,” vs. 7) it’s a relatively short portion of the total addressed to Corianton. After dealing directly with Corianton’s screwups in chapter 39, Alma never mentions them again in chapters 40 – 42. That ratio seems important. We, as parents and leaders, may tend to get stuck on the “you done wrong” portion and kind of hammer that home. Alma the Younger very plainly states what Corianton did wrong but then doesn’t belabor it. He sustains the conversation for a long time, but never returns to that topic.  This called to mind another famous verse,…

Read more →

It Matters Why the Church is Pro-Life

by  •  • 53 Comments

Edited with author’s note on the comments at end of post. Abortion is a hot-button issue. Maybe the hot-button issue. That’s why–after finishing a draft of this post in November of 2019–I sat on it for almost a year. I’ve rewritten it and am posting it because I’ve realized it’s important to understand not only the what of the Church’s position, but also the why.  This is tough, since the Church has a publicly available policy on abortion but no single, authoritative theological rationale for the policy. This provides a certain amount of leeway in interpreting and applying the Church’s policy, although not nearly as much as some Latter-day Saints would like to believe.   Let’s begin with the Church’s official position on abortion: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints believes in the sanctity of human life. Therefore, the Church opposes elective abortion for personal or social convenience, and counsels its members not to submit to, perform, encourage, pay for, or arrange for such abortions. The Church allows for possible exceptions for its members when: Pregnancy results from rape or incest, or A competent physician determines that the life or health of the mother is in serious jeopardy, or A competent physician determines that the fetus has severe defects that will not allow the baby to survive beyond birth. The Church teaches its members that even these rare exceptions do not justify abortion automatically. Abortion is a most serious…

Read more →

All Are Alike Unto God

by  •  • 22 Comments

I’ve been thinking about the issue of race in the Church (and the history of the temple and priesthood ban in particular) a lot lately.  As part of that thinking, I am working on a series of posts wrestling with the oft-proposed idea of an apology for the ban, but I did have something I wanted to share as a middle of the road approach before I get into the more in-depth discussions. One thing that could be done to help address the issue of both historical and ongoing racism within the Church would be to publicize a brief document treated with similar weight and importance as “The Family: A Proclamation to the World” or “The Living Christ: The Testimony of The Apostles” during general conference.  The positive aspects of this approach are that: a) It doesn’t require Church leaders to say anything they haven’t already said, b) It makes it clear that they what has been said before is authoritative rather than a series of PR stunts, c) It gives members a concise resource to draw upon in understanding and representing the Church’s stance on issues of racism, and d) It sidesteps the thorny issues surrounding the idea of releasing an apology for the ban.  As an exercise in curiosity, I tried to compile many of the most important statements of Church leaders and official statements of the Church on the subject into a document with a similar word…

Read more →

Covid-19 and religious freedom?

by  •  • 34 Comments

This is a comment and reflection on David Bednar’s speech on corona and religious freedom, to be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGU7GG5t6Ek Of course religious freedom is an important value in human civilization, and, yes, of course it has to be defended, David Bednar, of the Twelve, was completely right in taking up that issue, especially in the week devoted to that principle. The United States were founded on it, and the first colonists—after the Amerindians and some loads of ‘boat refugees’ from the Middle East—fled Europe just because the lack of it. Bednar’s recent discourse on TV was a warm-but-stern plea for keeping a watchful eye on anything that would impinge on that freedom. No problem. My issue here is the link with covid-19. Bednar was, seemingly, shocked by the pervasive effects of the government measures against the virus, i.e. the lockdown. With just a few executive governmental measures he saw all church meetings disappear, the April General Conference trim down to a video-happening and thought the Church under attack, at least its basic freedom severely curtailed. His reasoning is that we are a church of gathering, and that is what is no longer possible, so our rights to worship according to our faith seem to be very fragile. Well, the nation of gathering has long disappeared from our discourse, and at the time—about a century ago—it meant something quite different from having umpteen ward meetings; if so, all churches would…

Read more →

Statues in the Balance

by  •  • 41 Comments

One of my favorite episodes of the science fiction TV series Firefly is the “Jaynestown” episode.  In it, a self-serving mercenary of questionable moral character ends up visiting a planet he has been to before.  In the past, he’d attempted to rob the local aristocrat, but in the process of making a get-away, he had to jettison the money, dropping it over a village of oppressed laborers in the process.  The villagers didn’t know, however, that it was an accident or that Jayne had fully intended to keep the money for himself rather than sharing it with them, so by the time the Firefly crew visits the town, Jayne had become a local hero, a Robin Hood figure honored by a statue.  Distressed by this undeserved adulation, Jayne tries to convince the local folks that they shouldn’t look up to him, but they refuse to accept that he is not the legend they have made him out to be, with one of the villagers even sacrificing his life to save Jayne’s life.  At the end of the episode, once the crew has left the planet, Jayne discusses his distress with the captain, Mal, who tells him that: “It’s my estimation that every man ever got a statue made of him was one kind of sommbitch or another.” These days aren’t particularly good times to be a statue.  With the recent renaissance of the civil rights movement working to root out…

Read more →

Is Activity Increasing Among US-based Latter-day Saints?

by  •  • 12 Comments

The following is a guest post from Stephen Cranny. 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. I calculated the percent of people who self-identify as Latter-day Saints who are “active” (attend Church about once a week) from the early 70s to today. The estimates are a little unstable because of the small numbers involved, but suggest that “activity” has actually been increasing. The numbers are derived from the General Social Survey, a large, representative survey of the US taken almost every year that has questions on just about every major behavioral, demographic, and social variable, including religious affiliation. Because there are only a handful of Latter-day Saints each year, I combined years to get larger samples for each point so that the trend wasn’t so bumpy. The 1972-1976 bracket at the beginning, for example, pools together all the self-identified Latter-day Saints in the GSS survey from 1972-1976, the next bracket includes all the self-identified Latter-day Saints from 1977-1983, and so forth. I used the supplied “survey weights,” multipliers attached to each respondent to make sure that the survey sample as a whole is representative (so if the survey captured half as many of one demographic as there are in the US, that person’s response would be worth twice as much in terms of averages). The code is on…

Read more →

Hasten to Prepare

by  •  • 43 Comments

At the “Be One” celebration in 2018, President Dallin H. Oaks discussed the frustration he experienced as a member of the Church before the ban on individuals of black African descent holding the priesthood or receiving saving temple ordinances was lifted.  He said that he “observed the pain and frustration experienced by those who suffered these restrictions and those who criticized them and sought for reasons. I studied the reasons then being given and could not feel confirmation of the truth of any of them.”  As he “witnessed the pain of black brothers and sisters,” he “longed for their relief.”  When that restriction was lifted in 1978, he wept for joy.  At the “Be One” celebration, he acknowledged that “the hearts and practices of individual members did not come suddenly and universally,” with some embracing the revelation and its implications of racial equality while others, to this day, have “continued the attitudes of racism that have been painful to so many throughout the world.”  He went on to state that, “as we look to the future, one of the most important effects of the revelation on the priesthood is its divine call to abandon attitudes of prejudice against any group of God’s children. … As servants of God … we should hasten to prepare our attitudes and our actions—institutionally and personally—to abandon all personal prejudices.”[1]  This was (and is) a weighty and important call to both members of the Church…

Read more →

Reflections on Meetings in the Church of Christ

by  •  • 34 Comments

One of my favorite quotes of all time about Mormonism focuses on the concept of Zion.  “Zion-building is not preparation for heaven.  It is heaven, in embryo.  The process of sanctifying disciples of Christ, constituting them into a community of love and harmony, does not qualify individuals for heaven; sanctification and celestial relationality are the essence of heaven.  Zion, in this conception, is both an ideal and a transitional stage into the salvation toward which all Christians strive.”[1]  Fiona and Terryl Givens have captured here what I find to be one of the most essential parts of my religion—the development of a community based on love and discipleship to Christ.  That, to me, is one of the core reasons for the Church—to provide a place where we can begin to learn and practice the things that are necessary for us to live in a heavenly community, even though the lived experience often falls short of that goal. Now, there was something profoundly ironic about studying the founding of the Nephite Christian church during a time that we are unable to attend worship services in the modern Church in last week’s “Come, Follow Me” curriculum.  I was grateful for the chance to do so, however, since there will come a time, sooner or later, that the current situation stabilizes enough to return to regular Church meetings and each of us will need to make the decision about returning to those meetings. …

Read more →

Art and Christ in Church Buildings

by  •  • 13 Comments

Yesterday, the Church released new guidelines about the appearance church meetinghouse.  The latest in the series of Christocentric reforms during President Nelson’s tenure, the intent of the guidelines is to help “create a feeling of reverence and dignity” in the spaces that “establish the first impression and feelings that individuals receive when entering a meetinghouse.”  In line with the recent strong emphasis on Jesus the Christ’s role in the Church that began with insistence on using the Church’s full name and continued with the shift from using the Angel Moroni to the Christus statue as the Church’s primary symbol, “framed artwork that focuses on the Savior should always be displayed” in these meetinghouse spaces.  Steps are to be taken to remove artwork, furniture, display cases, etc. that do not fall in line with these requirements (either to other parts of the building or from the building altogether) and a list of approved artwork has been issued. In many ways, I feel that this is a good move on the Church’s part.  As indicated in the First Presidency letter, the entrances and foyers are the first impression people have of the meetinghouse interior and set the tone as they come in.  Removing some of the clutter provides a neater appearance.  The artwork will help focus attention on Jesus Christ.  Those will both be a good thing as we enter the building and are mentally preparing ourselves for the sacrament and other…

Read more →

Sacraments in the Time of Cholera

by  •  • 6 Comments

Our kwanzan cherry has started to shed its exuberant blossoms. The hues inhabit the world that exists in my mind between purple and pink. The tree can only hold those flowers aloft for a few days, maybe a week. A splash of love and color, and then they are gone. I’m standing on the park strip in front of our house, in a black-and-white mask my middle daughter bought from her favorite leotard company early in the pandemic.

Read more →

Quodlibet: Vaccination

by  •  • 24 Comments

Whereas disease, as now with COVID-19, causes death to many and harm to many more, and worsens poverty and hunger even among those it does not strike directly, and causes fear in those who await infection and its consequences, and inflicts sorrow and grief on those who lose family and beloved friends; while Jesus, in His atoning mercy

Read more →

Seek After These Things

by  •  • 12 Comments

There is a part of me that is deeply drawn to the Christian religions that have existed for hundreds or thousands of years.  Perhaps that comes from my fascination with history (particularly the Byzantine Empire), perhaps from beautiful experiences with choral music written by Christians from the Renaissance up through our own day.  Perhaps some comes from spending the better part of a decade involved in the music ministry of a small Presbyterian Church in northern Utah.  And perhaps some comes from my fascination with theology and learning how different people have addressed the difficulties associated with the subject over the centuries.  Whatever the case, there is something in me that longs for the best that Christianity has to offer in transcending this world and bringing humankind into God’s presence. Yet, on the other hand I feel cut off from that tradition because of my belief in the Great Apostasy. It is one of the ironies of our religion that we seek to be recognized as Christian while simultaneously dismissing Christian religions as apostate.  It is also one of my personal mental tensions to feel drawn to the past and to the best that other religions offer, but to feel unable to fully embrace those things at church without worrying about betraying my own community to some degree. Perhaps Joseph Smith felt something of that same tug-of-war.  On the one hand, he believed that “<mankind> did not come unto the…

Read more →

Empty Tomb, Empty Heart: An Easter Sermon

by  •  • 6 Comments

  Last Sunday, my extended family gathered by videoconference to share Easter communion. My sister Rachel Frandsen Jardine delivered this sermon from her home in Lima, Peru. It moved me as much as anything I’ve ever heard in a chapel. Thanks to Rachel for allowing me to share it here.  At Easter, we try to grasp the heart of Christianity. This season, I have found myself reflecting on the idea of emptiness. Here’s Luke’s story of the Resurrection in which the emptiness of the tomb is very important. On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: ‘The Son of Man must be delivered over to the hands of sinners, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.’ ” Then they remembered his words. When they came back from the tomb, they…

Read more →

A Tale of Two Statues

by  •  • 28 Comments

There are several statues that exist at Temple Square in Salt Lake City, but two stand out as the most well-known and prominent.  The first is the Angel Moroni, standing at the highest spire of the Salt Lake Temple.  Created by Cyrus E. Dallin, the statue of the angel represents the Book of Mormon prophet who finished the record and later delivered it to Joseph Smith.  Regarded as a fulfillment of the apocalyptic prophecy of an “angel flying in midheaven, with an eternal gospel to proclaim to those who live on the earth,”[1] replicas or variations of the statue have been placed on most Latter-day Saint temples as a symbol of the Restoration of the gospel.[2]  The second is the Christus statue held in the northwest visitor’s center, overlooking a green area and the historic Tabernacle.  A copy of the original sculpture held at the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Our Lady in Copenhagen, Denmark, created by Danish sculpture Bertel Thorvaldsen, the Christus statue replica has been located at Temple Square since 1966.  Other replicas have since been used by the Church at the World’s Fair and at visitors’ centers near 16 temples as well as two other locations as a symbol of our commitment to Jesus Christ.  Together, these two powerful statues represent different aspects of our history and belief—the one focusing on the legacy of Joseph Smith, the second on the legacy of Jesus of Nazareth. While the two…

Read more →

When the ox can’t escape the mire

by  •  • 5 Comments
Not actually the Uintahs but still nice

Sam Brown is a friend of Times & Seasons and teaches pulmonary and critical care medicine at the University of Utah School of Medicine. When I became a God-believer three decades ago, I think I understood something about the sacred stillness of the sabbath from my time camping beside the alpine lakes of the high Uintahs. One feels embarrassed to think of those cool blue worlds as oases when they are surrounded by glistening verdure and flickering stands of aspens, but spiritually I couldn’t turn my eyes away from them. Those lakes and their sheltering mountains were key components of my movement out of atheism. Not because they proved God, but because they carried God.

Read more →

COVID, Conference, and Choir

by  •  • 8 Comments

The world is facing extraordinary times.  With the COVID-19 pandemic raging worldwide, everyone is (or soon will be) feeling an impact from it in one way or another.  It will likely leave some lasting changes on our society.  Within the Church, it provides us with an extraordinary opportunity to reflect on how we have been doing things and to consider how we can change and possibly improve.  In the age of technology that we live in, there are plenty of opportunities available, such as the has been shown with how the Church is handling general conference. In the past, pandemics and epidemics have changed how the Church has done things.  Towards the end of WWI, a the most severe pandemic in recent history spread across the world, infecting nearly a quarter of the world’s population, shutting down many countries for a time, and killing somewhere between 17 million to 50 million people between January 1918 and December 1920.  During the ongoing battle with this H1N1 influenza virus, the spring 1919 General Conference was delayed from April until June.  Beyond the impact on the timing of general conference, the Spanish flu influenced a few other events and policies in the Church.  It was that pandemic that spurred the Church to change the Sacramental water from being partaken from a shared cup to using separate cups.[1]  It was also in this era of massive death due to the Great War and the…

Read more →

General Conference Activities for Children

by  •  • 5 Comments

It’s General Conference weekend! That means ten hours of hearing from prophets and apostles and other inspired leaders of the Church. It also means eight hours of trying to keep children engaged (at best) or occupied (at least). Our household favorite is this: Before each session, each person picks a gospel word. (We don’t allow variations on the names of deity “out of reverence or respect to the name of the Supreme Being” and “to avoid the too frequent repetition of his name.”) We associate each word with a particular bowl of some small candy, like M&Ms or chocolate chips. Then the kids listen for the words: whenever a word is used, all kids get a piece of the designated candy, and we mark it on a white board to see who “wins” the session. What are your favorite activities to keep your young ones engaged with General Conference? The Church provides several printable options, include a conference notebook, conference bingo, and drawings of the Prophet and the Apostles that can be colored in. Other commercial enterprises and individuals have put together their own packets. I’ve created a coloring sheet so that kids can keep an eye out for our inspired women leaders in the Relief Society, Young Women, and Primary General Presidencies and color an outline of their blouse (or top of their dress), which you can download here and see below. Happy conference!

Read more →

In (tentative) defense of “translation” (and other conceptual “abuses”)

by  •  • 19 Comments

“The life of the common law has been in the unceasing abuse of its elementary ideas.” So observed S. F. C. Milsom, a Cambridge legal historian and one of the greatest scholars of the common law. It was important to the authority of the common law that it demonstrate continuity– so important that leading common lawyers and judges like Edward Coke and Matthew Hale could insist that the law had never changed. Its authority lay in the assumption that its precepts had always been there, “the memory of man runneth not to the contrary.” And yet the world changed drastically over the course of centuries, and it was essential that the law adapt in order to remain viable. How did it manage to maintain continuity but also adapt? By “abus[ing] its elementary ideas,” as Milsom says. By continuing to use many of the same terms and concepts, but using these in different ways (often supported by fictions), declining to notice or dwell on the abuses or adaptations. In this way, the magnificent achievement of the common law has been able to span centuries, always the same, always changing. I suspect that something similar happens– and must happen– in any kind of living tradition. Old ideas and terms get “abused,” used in new ways, in order maintain the necessary connection with the past while also adjusting to new conditions and challenges. Of course, this process invites criticisms, of different kinds. One…

Read more →

Church Without Churches

by  •  • 9 Comments

When my bishop announced that we would not be holding usual church services last Sunday, my main feeling was one of short-term relief: I absolutely love my calling as Gospel Doctrine teacher (I never want any other!), but I simply didn’t know where I was going to find time to prepare a lesson that weekend with all the other commitments that I had going on. My second feeling was one of excitement. I’ve long believed that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints exists to serve families (rather than the other way around) and so the recent moves towards home-centered church have been very exciting for me. However–big caveat here–I haven’t actually been that great at following through in my own family. So I looked at this as an opportunity to really redouble my efforts to make our home one where we talk, study, and practice the Gospel. My impression is that these feelings–short-term, half-joking relief at getting one freebie combined with a determination to rise to the occasion in our homes–was pretty common among fellow Latter-day Saints. So I was surprised when I realized the optimistic attitude was not shared by many of our fellow Christians. My first clue was Lyman Stone, whom I follow on Twitter, and who is really not a fan of closing churches. This is surprising because, in all other respects, he takes the Covid-19 pandemic very, very seriously. (In on small part because…

Read more →

Teach me to walk . . . .

by  •  • Comments Off on Teach me to walk . . . .

My wife and I held our own service this morning– we read a scripture, listened to several conference talks– and it was uplifting, but perhaps less of an investment than on most Sundays; so this evening my wife said, “Let’s sing some hymns.” So we went to the piano, and then she said, “Let’s sing some Primary songs,” so we got out the big blue book and sang for maybe an hour, just the two of us. “Can a little child like me/ thank the Father fittingly?” “He sent his son.” “I feel my Savior’s love.” “Love one another.” I’m not much of a singer, but the songs “took me back,” as they say. Took me back to when my Mom was Primary president and we sang some of those same songs– back before the Sexual Revolution or the Beatles or even the Beach Boys. Those seem like such simple, innocent times. Took me back to my many years as Primary pianist, more than a decade in all, in more than one ward. I used to sit at the piano and watch the children and think how pure and precious they are, and how innocent– and how things are going to get so much more complicated for them as they grow older. By now all of them are grown and mostly gone. A few still live in the ward or nearby, and although I don’t do Facebook, my wife does,…

Read more →

Going it alone?

by  •  • 2 Comments

We all have our flaws and our inexcusable shortcomings– Mormons as well as non-Mormons. We sometimes offend or injure others, ignorantly or thoughtlessly or sometimes even maliciously. Mormons as well as non-Mormons. These failings can make religious fellowship difficult– painful rather than uplifting, as it should be. In recent discussions on this blog, people have shared painful experiences they have had in the church. It is impossible, I think, not to be moved by some of these experiences. Sometimes a person will conclude that participation in church is more of a hindrance than a benefit, and that they would be better off just going their own way– nurturing their faith on their own, perhaps, trying to live a Christ-like life, but not subjecting themselves to the offense and pain they encounter in church settings. Sometimes I’m of that mind myself. So I definitely can sympathize with that choice. I can’t say that it is necessarily wrong for everyone. Even so, I think the scriptures are clear that this is not by and large what the Lord wants us to do. He wants us to gather together in twos and threes and more in His name, to worship and to strengthen each other. My own experience suggests that this is the preferred course. It demands patience, often, and humility. But flawed as we are, we need each other. Sunday before last, I participated in an LDS worship service at Donovan State…

Read more →

Reacting to Covid-19—How Will We Help?

by  •  • Comments Off on Reacting to Covid-19—How Will We Help?

All those who have traveled on commercial airlines know the instructions: In case of a loss of cabin pressure, put the drop-down mask on yourself first, and then on your child (or companion or others, I presume). The same idea applies to any disaster: secure your own situation first, then help others. This applies to the Novel Coronavirus aka Covid-19 as well.

Read more →

The Necessity of Weakness

by  •  • 2 Comments

In honor of the late business professor and Latter-day Saint leader Clayton Christensen, I’ve been reading his book How Will You Measure Your Life? In many ways, the book is a breath of fresh air: instead of giving tactical advice, Christensen focuses on training us how to view and analyze our situations, our intentions, our actions, and our desires — and then devise our own tactics and strategies to become the people we want to be. This sort of metacognition isn’t based solely on anecdotal evidence (hallelujah!) and is broadly applicable outside of the business context. Even better, Christensen focuses on ensuring that his readers achieve success that matters emotionally — that is, not wealth, or power, or status, but deliberately crafting one’s vocation, relationships, and identity. I recommend the book. However, as I read, I detected an assumption that I’ve seen in many Latter-day Saint contexts: that living reflectively and in accordance with our moral principles will, and should, bring improvements in commonly-acknowledged, measurable categories. If we live life properly, work hard, and work smart, we will achieve success on the Lord’s terms: inner peace, meaningful community, financial security (if not prosperity), and fulfilling family relationships. (Here I move beyond Christensen, identifying tropes common enough that I hope I need not exhaust myself in finding illustrations.)  There are two issues I can identify with this framework. First, it might incorporate values that shouldn’t necessarily be assumed to be Christian…

Read more →

The Christian story and the Mormon story

by  •  • 19 Comments

There is the Christian story, and there is the Mormon story; and we understand them to make up a single story. But which story is primary and which secondary? Which is the whole of which the other is a part? Logically and theologically, it seems, the Christian story ought to be primary. The Mormon story presupposes and depends on the Christian story.  Put it this way: You can set aside or bracket or reject the Mormon story and still embrace the Christian story. Lots of people do that. It doesn’t work the other way around. Take the Christianity out of Mormon thought and culture, and what of real value would be left? True, not everyone agrees with this point. I’ve known an occasional member who, if I understood correctly, would hold to and emphasize the distinctively Mormon elements (the material from the King Follett discourse, maybe) while deemphasizing or backgrounding the more standard Christian elements. The idea is that Mormonism will eventually stand to Christianity as Christianity stands to Judaism– an idea I associate with the historian Jan Shipps. But this seems an untenable position. What would Mormonism be if you take away our beliefs in the Atonement and the Resurrection? Maybe some project of elevating ourselves through ongoing self-perfecting into some sort of Nietzschean supermen? Except that without the Atonement and Resurrection, how and when would we manage to do this? It looks pretty grotesque. So logically (or if…

Read more →

Six Funerals and the idea of Legacy

by  •  • 19 Comments

While I was at BYU years ago one of my best friends asked me to go with him and his wife to Cedar City to the Utah Shakespearean Festival. His wife’s father had served a mission with the founder, Fred Adams, and her family had gone frequently over the years since Adams founded the festival. Thirty-four years later, I still go to the festival each summer with the same group of friends. So when I learned that Fred Adams passed away February 5th at the age of 89, I mourned because of his influence on my life. I was particularly impressed by the human Fred Adams portrayed at his funeral. Fred’s passing is just the most recent of six that have had an impact on me over the past year. I have long admired Fred’s vision and persistence in creating an institution that benefits the lives of hundreds of thousands. Part of me has a longing to create something as significant as the Utah Shakespeare Festival. His death followed close on the passing of Clayton Christensen. He too was someone lauded as much for how he treated the individual as his accomplishments. [I found this podcast tribute notable for pointing out that Christensen practiced what he preached at work as well as at Church.] Like Adams, I admired Christensen for his accomplishments and for his integrity. These losses were significantly less personal than others I experienced. Last year a neighbor,…

Read more →

Prophetic credentials, prophetic content (Sam’s rebuttal)

by  •  • 16 Comments

My friend Sam called me yesterday and he came right to the point. “I’ve been reading your report of our conversation last week, and I’ve also been reading some of the responses, and I think that there is some confusion that I would like to clear up.” “What do you mean?” I asked. “Well, you remember that I took the view that even in the worst case hypothetical scenario– even if it could somehow be proven that Joseph Smith’s claims were fraudulent– there would still be good reason for people to remain faithful members of the church. The church’s teachings about God and Christ and salvation– and how to live– would still be true. The fellowship and service would still be uplifting. And so forth.” “Yes, I remember.” “Well, a common refrain among the commenters was that the historical claims are our basis for believing what the church teaches, so if those claims were disproven we’d no longer have any reason to put any trust in those teachings, or in the church.” “The commenters raised a lot of different points. But I think that was one of them, yes.” “And I think that’s a mistake. I think it reflects a fundamentally mistaken view of how and why we believe.” “How so?” “Here’s one way of putting the point. The picture in that objection is of a prophet– Elijah, Joseph Smith, Thomas S. Monson– who comes proffering his prophetic credentials and…

Read more →