When I learned that historian and Librarian of Congress Daniel Boorstin was giving the commencement address at my university graduation, I couldn’t have been more thrilled. People around me in the audience expressed disappointment it wasn’t someone like Bill Cosby or Bono. But Boorstin had long been one of my intellectual heroes, and I had read everything of his I could get my hands on. The theme he chose to speak on was “Leadership and the Amateur Spirit,” a theme he also explores in chapter 18 of his book Hidden History.

He pointed out that ‘amateur’ has become a dirty word to many people, to their discredit. Boorstin writes,

The true leader is an amateur in the proper, original sense of the word. The amateur (from Latin amator, “lover”; from amare, “to love”) does something for the love of it. He pursues his enterprise not for money, not to please the crowd, not for professional prestige [JSB-I highly recommend people explore the etymology of that word as well; prestige may not seem so, well, prestigious anymore] or for assured promotion and retirement at the end–but because he loves it. If he can’t help doing it, it’s not because of the forces pushing from behind but because of his fresh, amateur’s vision of what lies ahead.

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I know apologetics is a dirty word among some of us here, but I am having a great time at the 2008 Annual FAIR Conference in Sandy, UT. I have heard about the importance of innoculating believers against opposing arguments, about how the Book of Mormon might have located within the context of Mayan ideas about kingship, initiation, and ascension. I have heard a delightful and moving presentation (it brought me and many others to tears) by our own Margaret Blair Young and Darius Gray (sorry folks, you’re going to have to wait a little longer for their DVD!). (I didn’t get a chance to say so in person Margaret because I was buttonholed by another attendee on the way up, and you were mobbed anyway, but you and Darius did a great job!) Now I am listening to a panel discussion on philosophy, religion, and apologetics. I am a horrible multitasker, so I am not going to liveblog what’s going on, but you can look at FAIR’s open conference thread here.

Boyd K. Packer a few years ago said, “Let no one underestimate the power of faith in the ordinary Latter-day Saints.” I wanted to write to tell you about some otherwise ordinary Latter-day Saints I know who are doing some extraordinary things. Several months ago, I through some business associations I met Ron and his daughter Shauna. I knew right away that they were great people, people who make me proud to be a fellow Latter-day Saint.

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If you needed any (further) proof that I am an odd duck, you have it in the fact that I always enjoy Fast & Testimony meeting. Not only do I like the classic, approved form of testimony, but I also enjoy the other, deprecated forms that irritate so many people, including Dallin H. Oaks. I enjoy the thank-imony, the travel-imony, the spouse-imony, the health-imony, and even the roommate-imony.

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Here are some gems from this year’s Priesthood and Relief Society Manual. The more I read of Joseph Smith, the more dense and insightful his thinking seems. The list, of course, is mine. Feel free to add your own!
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Nearly all of these come from Joseph Fielding Smiths’ Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, so it is possible that some of these quotes are not present in our manual due to historiographical reasons, and I have made no investigation into the validity of these quotes. Others, of course, were not included due to space or subject matter considerations. As with the other list, these are my favorites. Feel free to add your own in the comments. Read more »

We’re quite a fertile bunch here at MM, I think, and with our own impending birth in my family, I too have uteruses on the brain (but definitely not, what with all the aches, pains, nausea, fatigue, any uterus envy). Two completely separate bits of reading I was doing during the same time period jolted me with a new idea:

We are all familiar with God’s parting words to Adam and Eve as they were expelled from the garden. God says to Eve, “I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children.” (Genesis 3: 16) Could it be, I wondered, rather than merely being a curse, that this pain in childbirth was a direct and literal consequence of the physical changes resulting from the Fall?

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There is a story Pope Benedict XVI likes to tell. I like it too. I’ll translate it slightly to make it a little more relevant to our readership.

A boy, a Deacon, is in school when a teacher stops him. “Young man,” the teacher says, “I will give you a silver dollar if you can tell me where God is.”

The Deacon thinks about it and replies, “Mister Jones, I will give you two silver dollars if you can tell me where he is not.”

The question of gay marriage, and what to do about it, has been examined from a moral, political, legal, and sociological framework, and no doubt will continue to be so for some time to come. The Church may choose to advocate (and even provide support to) various political initiatives as they see fit. While those initiatives may be worthwhile and worth the effort, ultimately, I think they are doomed. I could be wrong about this, as my powers of political prediction are quite poor. So while I wish the Church luck in whatever political initiatives they choose to undertake, and will try to help where I am able, I strongly feel that there is a much more effective approach available to it, one that plays to the LDS Church’s strengths.

My proposal is to look at traditional marriage not as a question of constitutional law, civil rights, or even sociology and the protection of children. All those areas are framed in such a way to work against the Church’s position. No matter how right they may be, they’re going to come out sounding defensive, if not hateful and divisive.

For these reasons, though it sounds crazy, I am convinced the Church needs to fight the good fight for traditional marriage in the domain of branding and trademark law. And instead of playing defense, they need to start playing offense.

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A good friend of mine was quite the ladies’ man in High School. During General Conference, he took a particularly, ahem, frisky, girl with him down to the Tabernacle to attend a Saturday session. After the session they went back to his truck, which was parked along first avenue just a block east of the Church Office Building. They took advantage of the warm spring day and indulged their youthful passions in an enthusiastic makeout session.

They were horizontal in the truck when they heard footsteps approaching through their rolled-down window. My friend didn’t think too much of it at first, so focused was he on the attractive young woman in the car. But the footsteps got nearer and nearer, until they finally stopped right beside the truck. My friend looked up and saw L. Tom Perry looking down at the two of them.

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I’ve heard that phrase applied twice recently to the Iraq War. First time it came out of Jimmy Carter’s mouth, and just last week, Madeleine Albright made the same claim. Even if you sympathize with Carter and Albright’s dim view of the second Iraq war, the long term consequences are not completely known, so whatever the deficiencies of the Iraq war, for now their belief must be classified as a prediction, not a careful judgment made by informed consideration of American history. Though they used the word ‘history,’ that statement is not really about history. (Another possibility, though I prefer the other one, is that Carter and Albright just don’t know much American history.)

My purpose in bringing this up is not, please no, to reopen wounds or reignite a debate that few of us can have dispassionately and respectfully. Instead, it is to ask (the current Iraq war excluded) what is the worst foreign policy blunder ever made by this country? In other words, let’s open some different partisan wounds! That way, at some future date when we can evaluate the Iraq war with the full benefit of hindsight, we will be able to place the Iraq war and all its associated costs and consequences, foreseen and unforeseen, in proper perspective. I will propose several here, but I think–whatever your partisan affiliation–you could probably find foreign policy decisions that were much more catastrophic than the Iraq war will turn out to be, even if the worst things people say about it come to pass. A cynic could say to Carter and Albright, “You think the Iraq war is a disaster? Don’t worry. We could do a lot worse. And we have!”

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In my concluding post on Rough Stone Rolling, I thought we’d explore the question of history and how (or even if) it can illuminate religious faith. What are the duties of a scholar? What is naturalistic history and is it always bound to offend believers? Can history arbitrate the truth claims of a religion? Does a book like Bushman’s help us learn more about Joseph Smith and help deepen our faith?

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We have heard a lot of controversy about using Obama’s middle name, Hussein (most people probably don’t even know who it refers to), but few have inquired about where his first name comes from (Newsweek this week talks about how Senator Obama switched from referring to himself as Barry to Barack, but never tells you what Barack means.) So here, perhaps for the first time, you can learn what his first name means and where it comes from.

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Most of these postings on Joseph Smith’s history and Bushman’s biography of him have focused on the interplay between scholarship and faith. Here let’s turn the focus completely inward: Are there parts of Joseph Smith’s story that are so damaging we should avoid discussing them outside the domains of specialists, assuring that the rank-and-file members never hear anything that might trouble their faith? Does Bushman focus too much on the earthy and unflattering aspects of Joseph Smith’s character in his book? Should we counsel our Latter-day Saint friends and neighbors of fragile faith to avoid this book?

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One of the questions I’ve had for a long time is what caused the Missouri (and Nauvoo, and Kirtland) persecutions. As a believer, I think it’s pretty clear that many of the neighbors of the early Mormons were clearly possessed by Satan, stirred up to the most incredible, out-of-proportion vitriol. But that characterization isn’t a historical argument. If we say that is the proximate cause, which I think is plausible religiously, it still doesn’t answer the question historically. So why did the Mormons provoke such persecutions? It’s indisputable that Mormonism was (is?) far and away the most persecuted religious sect in American history, and America has been full of oddball religions. Was it simply that Mormonism was too successful? Or did the Mormons invite this persecution somehow?

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On a separate post we were discussing whether Joseph Smith was a mystic. I was delighted with the thoughtful and interesting discussion that followed. That thread is one of those cases where many of the comments surpass the original post in both quality and rigor of thought. Whether you think Joseph Smith was a mystic or whether you agree with me that he wasn’t, I think it’s undeniable that many of the texts cited as being mystical are more properly considered apocalyptic.

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How does Joseph’s flagship religious tract, Book of Mormon, compare to the works of famous mystics like William Blake, Swedenborg, the Bagavad Gita, the Kaballah, or even Nostradamus? As mystical literature, I’m afraid, the Book of Mormon is very disappointing. It’s too naturalistic, and there’s not enough fantasy. While Krishna is flying around in his airplanes, Coriantumr is decapitating Shiz. While Swedenborg is communing with heavenly spirits in the celestial realms, Ammon is chopping off some arms. And it’s too easy to understand; you want vague and poetic stuff, that people really have to chew on, and are never quite sure they’ve understood. That’ll keep their attention. And when they’re wrong, we can always just claim the interpretation was wrong, rather than the holy revealed text itself.

The only parts of the Book of Mormon that do that were either censored (the “sealed portion”) or cribbed from Isaiah, and you could have saved yourself three bucks and just read the original from the Bible, but anyway Ezekiel’s the Old Testament prophet to go with if you really want to trip out. If you’re going to invent a new scripture, the Book of Mormon is exactly the opposite kind of book a mystic would write.

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Dan Ellsworth: Rough Stone Rolling presented a mixed picture of the history of Joseph’s revelations. I came away from the book believing that Joseph had authentic revelations, “apocryphal” insights that seem less trustworthy, and some plain old misfires from time to time. I know that seems like a deflating concept to a lot of people – that Joseph could err in his discernment on occasion – and I admit I occasionally found myself disappointed and saddened to read of Joseph’s mistakes. Read more »

Bushman points out that the First Vision was not an unusual thing for the time and, while controversial, was certainly not out of place in the “burnt over district.” But you cannot say the same thing for this extraordinary idea about translating. Translation in Joseph Smith’s day, as it is in ours, was considered a learned exercise, something for the Charles Anthons of the world. Nothing in his background could prepare him for being a seer and translator, aside from a few unhelpful hints in the Bible and perhaps some folk magic (though there is no case of it being used to translate that I know of). Smith’s best source of his role as a translator came to him as he was translating, since the Book of Mormon itself treats the topic extensively, most notably with King Mosiah. Here the assumption by Vogel, Metcalfe, etc. falls down, I think, because their argument that Joseph absorbed, fermented, and then regurgitated controversies and preoccupations of his milieu had no precedent for seership or translating. Visions, yes. Treasure-digging, yes. Charismatic, apocalyptic prophets, check. Controversial sexual and family practices, check. Mound-building Indians, yes. (Though not, it is very important to clarify, the kind of vast and highly developed civilizations depicted in the Book of Mormon; that was considered ridiculous and in fact invited quite a bit of ridicule by Joseph’s peers). Read more »

Dan Ellsworth: One of the most profound insights RSR provided into Joseph’s psyche was Joseph’s effort to redeem his own father. Reading of Joseph’s reaction to the baptism of his father – weeping for a good part of the day – was a huge eye-opener for me. It was clear that Joseph saw in that ordinance a redemptive power he deeply wanted his father to experience. And it was hard for me to imagine a religious fraud, as many claim Joseph to be, responding the way he did to that event. Here is how Bushman portrays the event on page 110 in RSR:

Following the organization of the Church of Christ, Joseph Smith Sr. was baptized in a small stream on Hyrum’s farm. Lucy said that Joseph Jr. grasped his father’s hand as he came out of the water and cried out, “Oh! My God I have lived to see my father baptized into the true church of Jesus Christ”! According to Joseph Knight, Joseph “bast out with greaf and joy and seamed as tho the whole world Could not hold him.” He “went out into the Lot and appeard to want to git out of site of every Body and would sob and Crie and seamed to Be so full that he could not live.” Knight and Oliver Cowdery went after Joseph and finally brought him back to the house. “He was the most wrot upon that I ever saw any man,” Knight said. “His joy semed to Be full.” Some great tension had been relieved.

That is not the response of a fraud. Read more »