BYU Hiring Ancient Scrip Prof
BYU is looking to hire a professor of ancient scripture in their department of Religious Education. For the entire posting go here.
Here is an excerpt from the listing. Below it are some thoughts.
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Oct
30
Oct
24
If All is Sacred
If all is sacred, is nothing sacred?
This is related to a previous discussion here at FPR.
The categories of “sacred” and “profane” have a long history in the study of religion. And attempts to collapse the sacred and profane can be understood many different ways. I actually find it valuable to consider “All as Sacred”; but not in the sense that “the sacred” is simply a spatial category. IMO, the sacred is a relational category contingent on how we perform within a given space. In other words the sacred is a mode of becoming involving multiple parties (us and God in most cases), rather than a state of being that exists independent of my performance and simply within a given space. In this light, everything is sacred in that there is a proper and an improper way of us performing life’s events (including the option of non-performance in cases that call for it). To perform it improperly is to desecrate a sacrality within ourselves. The sacred, IMO, need not be understood simply an external quality found in a given sphere.
Oct
24
Five Recommended books for Understanding the Old Testament
Five or so…
First, a good Bible or two, meant for understanding and personal study. Given only one choice, I’d recommend the Jewish Study Bible. The JPS translation is dynamic (thought-for-thought),the commentary is useful, and the essays included in the back are excellent. If I were to add a second Bible, I’d recommend the NIV Study Bible. It’s Evangelical and conservative, but I find it’s OT notes useful, the translation quite readable.
Oct
23
Offenders for a Word
The classic Daniel Peterson/Stephen Ricks historical defense of LDS doctrine, Offenders for a Word, has been put up on the FARMS website, along with a slew of other volumes.
Oct
17
Curses!
A discussion I had recently with a friend of mine reminded me of one of my other favorite soap boxes that I haven’t stood on in this forum before. No, it has nothing to do with swearing (in a traditional sense at least). Today I’m more interested in the sort of curses that God lays on peoples. Like on the Lamanites and stuff. And yeah I know that there is nothing new in the ‘Nacle so I’ll just say outright that I haven’t even looked elsewhere to see who has already broached the subject and what they said. Feel free to restate and/or link. Read more »
Filed under: Bible, Book of Mormon, Doctrine, LDS Church History, Marginalia, Personal Issues, Speculation
Oct
17
LDS at SBL: Roll call
The annual Society of Biblical Literature conference will be held next month in San Diego, in combination with the American Academy of Religion or AAR. ( The American School of Oriental Research or ASOR used to hold theirs concurrently as well.) SBL is probably the largest conference of its kind, lasting several days, with several thousand people in attendance. The best parts are the socializing and networking, and the Bookanalia, in which hundreds of academic book and software publishers set up booths and offer their wares at serious discount. I guess there are lectures to attend, too.
Numerous LDS presenters are on the list, a paper copy of which is sent to all registered to attend. Some are students or recently graduated, some participate in the bloggernaccle, and some are on faculty at BYU.
There is also a relatively new section, the “LDS and the Bible Consultation” (S19-72), which appears to have mostly LDS presenters, exceptions being Margaret Barker and Alden Thompson.
In short, it should be a good interesting conference.
Which among you will be in attendance? Roll call.
Oct
16
Have We Been Praying to Her All Along?
Submitted from an anonymous reader:
If “the song of the righteous is a prayer” (D&C 25:12), does singing “O My Father” constitute praying to Heavenly Mother? It does, after all, contain the line “Father, Mother, may I meet you / In your royal courts on high? / Then, at length, when I’ve completed / All you sent me forth to do / With your mutual approbation / Let me come and dwell with you.”
Oct
10
Conference Announcement at Prinecton
“Mormonism and American Politics”
Princeton University, November 9-10.
Mitt Romney’s run for the White House raises perennial questions about the place of religion in the public square and offers scholars an interesting occasion to reconsider the contested intersection of religion and politics. The media has made much of Romney’s religion and so have some sectors of the American public. What can we learn from public attitudes about Mormonism? Are the religious beliefs of a political candidate relevant to serving in office, and if so, how? Are there political implications to Mormonism? Do the legislative records and political careers of other Mormon politicians shed any light on this question? In what ways is Mormonism politically comparable to other religious groups?
This conference will explore some of these issues in four separate panels that will discuss 1) the earliest encounters of Mormonism and American politics, 2) Mormonism as a case study for church/state separation 3) media perceptions of Mormonism and 4) the role religious identity plays in the public square.
Participants include Richard Bushman, Richard Land, Kathleen Flake, Philip Barlow, Marci Hamilton, Alan Wolfe, Helen Whitney, Mark Silk, Noah Feldman, Sarah Barringer Gordon, Stephen Macedo, Thomas Griffith, Melissa Proctor, Robert George, Russell Arben Fox, Chris Karpowitz, David Campbell, John Green, and Francis Beckwith.
The event begins Friday, November 9th at 8:00 p.m. and continues until 5:00 Saturday, November 10th. It is free and open to the public.
For more information please see http://www.princeton.edu/~csrelig/
Oct
8
Jesus Christ: Inspiration and/or Aspiration
Are we morally creative agents?
A distinction that I’ve given some thought to lately is that between “Inspiration” and “Aspiration”. This isn’t to say that there necessarily has to be some deep divide between these two concepts, but it can be useful to think of them separately. I believe that most LDSs see Jesus Christ as more of an “aspiration” rather than an “inspiration”. This means that he is our model or our ambition (in the sense that we try to do as he has done), before he is our motivation to take creative action in our unique circumstances. This is not to say that we do not see him as our “inspiration”; but we tend to look at him (and “history” in general) as providing a “model”, “example”, or a “standard to attain to”; before a point of departure to help us forge our own particular paths in life. Once again, this isn’t to say that we do not already do this to some extent; but we tend to see ourselves trying to get where these examples of the past have already been more than seeing ourselves moving in a unique direction because of the inspiration they’ve been.
Oct
8
Holiness and Housework: The Sacred and the Mundane
One of the most influential theories for explaining religion over the last 50 years has been that religion is a system which divided people, places, and things into essentially two categories: the sacred and the profane. This view, popularized by Mircea Eliade, held that the sacred was a locus of holiness, where God could be encountered. Temples, churches, special times of the day for prayer, holy days, priests and priestesses, etc were examples of the sacred. The profane was everything else. Sometimes the profane was forbidden, but usually the profane was just the ordinary. This way of thinking about religion has come under some scrutiny for various reasons, but it is a useful way for thinking about Sister Beck’s controversial Conference talk.
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Oct
8
The myth of applying all scripture
An argument that I occasionally see floated in blogs is the argument that ideas are to be shunted aside simply because they neglect to consider all the scriptures. This is a strange argument to me. No single argumentative notion is capable of encompassing all scripture, or even most scripture. There may be one or two exceptions, but I would tend to think that they would be promoted by ideologues who dismiss counter-arguments without real consideration. Sure, all scripture may testify of Christ, but that argument reduces the Jews to a group of incompetents and ignoramuses. We need to accept that it helps us, in seeing the obviousness of Christ being testified of everywhere, that we are already Christian.
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Oct
6
The Excommunication of Father Feeney
In 1953, Pope Pius XII excommunicated Father Feeney for refusing to submit to ecclesiastical authority. The issue in question was Feeney’s rejection of the liberalization of Catholic Doctrine (a broad movement culminating in Vatican II). Specifically, Feeney was excommunicated for his insistence on the traditional, historical doctrine of the church, extra ecclesiam nulla salus (There is no salvation outside of the church). Feeney maintained that salvation was only for those who had been baptized, rejecting the idea that good people throughout history who may not have had the opportunity to know about the church could receive salvation. This conservative position earned him global fame and a direct confrontation with the Pope.
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Oct
4
Julian of Norwich and the Atonement
I don’t know if you have ever heard of Julian of Norwich. She’s a 14thcentury mystic, an anchoress, really, in Norwich, England. When she was thirty years old, she became so ill that her local priest came to administer the Last Rites. As she fixed her eyes on the crucifix, she experienced a series of sixteen visions (shewings), beginning with a vision of the blood running down Christ’s face as the crown of thorns was pressed home. She produced one version, called the Short Text, quite soon after her visions. Fifteen, or maybe twenty years later, she produced the Long Text, after she’d had time to think on what she’d seen and after she’d had one more visionary experience.
Her ideas about sin are, how shall we say it, unconventional, and especially so in comparison to Medieval Christianity. Where the church taught that Man was naughty and God was angry, Julian said that God was not and never had been angry and that sin was not “a deed,” that is, something that humans do, but that it was basically Man’s unawareness of God’s love and nearness. In a [hazel] nutshell, God didn’t blame Man. She knew she wasn’t in line with the church (ah yes, the Inquisition) and so she wrote in Chapter 50:
For I knew by the common teaching of Holy Church and by mine own feeling, that the blame of our sin continually hangeth upon us, from the first man unto the time that we come up unto heaven: then was this my marvel that I saw our Lord God shewing to us no more blame than if we were as clean and as holy as Angels be in heaven. And between these two contraries my reason was greatly travailed through my blindness, and could have no rest for dread that His blessed presence should pass from my sight and I be left in unknowing [of] how He beholdeth us in our sin. For either [it] behoved me to see in God that sin was all done away, or else me behoved to see in God how He seeth it, whereby I might truly know how it belongeth to me to see sin, and the manner of our blame…I cried inwardly, with all my might seeking unto God for help, saying thus: Ah! Lord Jesus, King of bliss, how shall I be eased? Who shall teach me and tell me that [thing] me needeth to know, if I may not at this time see it in Thee?
Oct
3
Is the “Family” the problem?
It is evident that the LDS church has made the institution of the nuclear family its centerpiece in both its external PR and internal emphasis. There are many wonderful things that can be said about such an approach. The rise and fall of the nuclear family in the 20th century is certainly an interesting moment in history and much can and should be said about this trend in the coming years. I have been doing a bit of reading lately that has got me thinking about the role of the family and the critiques it has faced by different religious thinkers.
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