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MORMON EXPERIENCE SCHOLARSHIP ISSUES & ART
PERSPECTIVISM AND JOSEPH SMITH by Harold Bloom (p.18)
Curt Bench decides he has “MORE FAITH THAN I’D THOUGHT” (p.20)
ROSEVIEW THE FOURTH Brown fiction contest winner by Carol B. Quist (p.40)
A TRUE AND LIVING CHURCH by Brian Chapman (p.50)
A KOLOB IN OUR SOLAR SYSTEM? by David Allred (p.58)
Book reviews by John-Charles Duffy, Ann M. Johnson, and Brett Alan Sanders (p.62)
UPDATE Mitt’s Mormonism remains primary media focus; new films; more! (p.74)
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Please visit WWW.SUNSTONEONLINE.COM for more information SUNSTONE SYMPOSIUM WEST
21 APRIL 2007 Clarion Hotel San Francisco Airport, SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA
8–11 AUGUST 2007 Salt Lake Sheraton City Centre Hotel A call for PROPOSALS DEADLINE: 1 MAY 2007 Sunstone welcomes presentations 2007 Salt Lake on any theological or contemporary moral/ethical issue and its intersection with Mormonism, as well as studies of historical and contemporary events, movements, SUNSTONE and figures. This year we also SUNSTONE especially encourage proposals focusing on this year’s special Symposium theme: THE PUBLIC FACES OF MORMONISM. Please submit a proposal!
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MORMON EXPERIENCE, SCHOLARSHIP, ISSUES, & ART MARCH 2007 Issue 145 FEATURES 18 Harold Bloom ...... PERSPECTIVISM AND JOSEPH SMITH 20 Curt Bench ...... MORE FAITH THAN I’D THOUGHT 25 Members of the Mormon ...... TRANSFIGURATION: PARALLELS AND Transhumanist Association COMPLEMENTS BETWEEN MORMONISM AND TRANSHUMANISM 40 Carol B. Quist...... ROSEVIEW THE FOURTH 2004 Brookie & D. K. Brown Fiction Contest Moonstone Winner 43 Eric Samuelsen ...... PECULIARITIES: NCMO POETRY 39 Jay Udall ...... ESCHATOLOGY 49 Cecil Morris...... WEEDING
SUNSTONE (ISSN 0363-1370) is published by The Sunstone 57 Mikal Lofgren ...... FALLING Education Foundation, Inc., a non-profit corporation with no 61 Kristin Berkey-Abbott ...... LUNAR ECLIPSE official ties to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Articles represent the opinions of the writers only. COLUMNS SUNSTONE is indexed in the Index to Book Reviews in Religion 4 Various...... TOUCHSTONES: Possessions and Religion Indexes: RIO/RIT/IBBR 1975–on CD-ROM. 7 Kristine Haglund...... OF GOOD REPORT: Mothering Sunday Submissions may be on IBM-PC compatible computer discs 8 Steven L. Mayfield ...... IN MEMORIAM: Bob Vernon (MS Word or WordPerfect format), or by e-mail attachment. 9 Dan Wotherspoon ...... FROM THE EDITOR: Finding a Way Through Submissions should not exceed 8,000 words and must be accompanied by a signed letter giving permission for the CORNUCOPIA manuscript to be filed in the Sunstone Collection at the 12 Vickie Eastman ...... HAVING EYES TO SEE: Hiding in Plain Sight University of Utah Marriott Library (all literary rights are retained by authors). Manuscripts will not be returned; authors will be 12 Alison Takenaka...... MARGIN NOTES: An Off-Road Journey with notified concerning acceptance within ninety days. Eyes Wide Shut 14 Anonymous ...... RIGHTEOUS DOMINION: A Soft Answer SUNSTONE is interested in feature- and column-length articles relevant to Mormonism from a variety of perspectives, news 15 James P. Harris...... A PLACE FOR EVERY TRUTH: stories about Mormons and the LDS Church, and short reflections “Our Household Is Blessed Indeed” and commentary. Poetry submissions should have one poem per 15 Brian H. Stuy ...... THE REST OF THE STORY: The Transfiguration page, with the poet’s name and address on each page; a self- addressed, stamped envelope should accompany each 17 ...... SUGAR BEET: New Gym Helps Patrons Exercise submission. Short poems—haiku, limericks, couplets, and one- Their Agency; HMO Bans Preexistent Conditions liners—are very welcome. Short stories are selected only through the annual Brookie and D. K. Brown Memorial Fiction Contest 50 Brian Chapman...... FROM THE PULPIT: A True and Living Church (next submission deadline: 30 June 2007; $5 fee per story). 55 D. Jeff Burton ...... BRAVING THE BORDERLANDS. . . : Letters for publication should be identified. SUNSTONE does Temptation and the Knowledge Clash not acknowledge receipt of letters to the editor. Letters addressed to specific authors will be forwarded, unopened, to them. 58 David Allred ...... BOUNDS AND CONDITIONS: A Kolob in Our Solar System? SUNSTONE will not provide subscriber addresses 70 Grant H. Palmer ...... TURNING THE TIME OVER TO. . . : to mail list solicitors without permission. The “Born Again” Saint Send all correspondence and manuscripts to: 72 Carol Lynn Pearson...... INTERVIEW: Pioneers on This Frontier SUNSTONE 80 B. H. Roberts ...... AN OLIVE LEAF: “Eternal, Restless Thought” 343 N. Third West Salt Lake City, UT 84103-1215 (801) 355-5926 REVIEWS fax: (801) 355-4043 62 John-Charles Duffy ...... FAITHFUL SCHOLARSHIP GOES TO WASHINGTON email: [email protected] The Worlds of Joseph Smith, ed. John W. Welch website: www.sunstoneonline.com 64 Ann M. Johnson...... BOOKNOTE: The Mormon Tabernacle Enquirer United States subscriptions to SUNSTONE are $36 for 6 issues, ed. Christopher Kimball Bigelow $65 for 12 issues, and $90 for 18 issues. International 65 Brett Alan Sanders...... “HE WAS SOLITARY, REBELLIOUS, AND HARD subscriptions are $48 for 6 issues; $89 for 12 issues; $126 for 18 TO BE GOVERNED” issues. All payments must be in U.S. funds drawn on a U.S. bank. What Jesus Meant, by Garry Wills All international subscriptions will be sent via surface mail. Bona fide student and missionary subscriptions are $10 less than the above rates. A $10 service charge will be deducted from UPDATE refund amount on cancelations. 74 ...... Romney’s Mormonism still dominates most media Printed by coverage; four-hour documentary on Mormonism and a feature film on the Mountain Meadows Massacre will be Copyright © 2007, The Sunstone Education Foundation. released soon; the Church revamps its website; LDS All rights reserved. support for war in Iraq dwindling; and more! Printed in the United States of America. Cover image by Christopher Henderson 02-03_letters.qxp 3/28/2007 11:49 AM Page 2
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YEA, YEA NAY, NAY
lieve, and yet these blessings are denied me. Founded in 1974 TO AFFIRM THAT SCOTT KENNEY 1974–1978 In order to have those blessings, I would ALLEN D. ROBERTS 1978–1980 WE BELONG have to do the one thing that all of these cou- PEGGY FLETCHER 1978–1986 DANIEL H. RECTOR 1986–1991 Y COPY OF THE NOVEMBER 2006 ples—with the Church’s blessing—have LINDA JEAN STEPHENSON 1991–1992 worked hardest to avoid. I would have to end ELBERT EUGENE PECK 1986–2001 M SUNSTONE was read and passed along Editor to other church members within a few days the loving relationship that has sustained me DAN WOTHERSPOON Publisher of receipt. “For Better, For Worse, For and nurtured me for fifteen years now, the re- WILLIAM STANFORD Apostasy?” really spoke to the experience of lationship that, ironically, has given me the Associate Editor CAROL B. QUIST many of my LDS friends over the years. stability and strength that I needed to grow Managing Editor For me, one of the greatest values of back into a new and stronger sense of faith as ALLEN HILL a Latter-day Saint. Section Editors SUNSTONE is that it provides a place where PHYLLIS BAKER, Fiction Contest committed Mormons can learn about other The sentiment expressed in the article by SCOT DENHALTER, Cybersaints ALAN AND VICKIE EASTMAN, Righteous Dominion LDS with the same concerns, experiences, Ruth Ogden perfectly expresses my own feel- ALLEN HILL, Touchstones ings about my relationship with my partner: RICK JEPSON, Bounds and Conditions and struggles in life. It is so important to HUGO OLAIZ, News/Update have someone to talk and listen to. Feeling “Not being able to be with the spouse of my DIXIE PARTRIDGE, Poetry BOYD PETERSEN, Mormonism and politics you are the only one with these reactions and choice—that doesn’t sound like any type of MARY ELLEN ROBERTSON, Women’s studies experiences but not having people to talk heaven I would choose.” With Ruth, I find MICHAEL SCHOENFELD, Sunstone Gallery DARRON SMITH, The Long-Promised Day? and listen to, would, I think, be the surest strength in my personal hope and growing ALISON TAKENAKA, Margin Notes conviction that “we choose our families of cre- BRAD AND CHERIE WOODWORTH, Book reviews way to leave the Mormon community. Editorial Assistants Mormonism is a big tent, a big world ation here, and we will choose them there.” JOHN-CHARLES DUFFY, REBECCA ENGLAND, HUGO OLAIZ which includes a lot of different kinds of peo- Just as it has been a challenge for individu- Recording/Digitizing Engineers BRIAN MULVEY, MATT WRIGHT ple who experience religious faith in different als who have left the Church to deal with the Photographer and Recording Assistant ways. We are much stronger when most of us emotions and fears this evokes in their part- STEVE MAYFIELD find space in that tent. For me, the magazine, ners, I have had to deal with anxiety and anger Contributing Columnists MICHAEL AUSTIN, D. JEFF BURTON, JAMES P. HARRIS the symposiums, and the Sunstone commu- in a partner who feels betrayed by my re- MICHAEL NIELSEN, JANA RIESS, BRIAN H. STUY nity are a way to affirm that we belong. newed faith in the LDS gospel. Just as Ronda Cartoonists JEANETTE ATWOOD, JONATHAN CLARK, GWEN DUTCHER Sunstone, both the magazine and the sympo- Callister feared that her spouse’s loss of faith in JONNY HAWKINS, MACADE, RYAN WAYMENT siums, strengthens my testimony. Thinking, eternal marriage was a rejection of their mar- Much-Appreciated Volunteers SUSAN ANDERSEN, PHYLLIS BAKER, DON AND LUCINDA struggling, need not undermine faith. riage, my partner has feared that my embrace GUSTAVSON, BARBARA HAUGSOEN, LEANN HILLAM of LDS doctrine was the first step in a path that BEVERLY HOPPE, T. K. HORVATH, ERIC JONES STEVE MAYFIELD, KATHY WILSON, MATT WRIGHT KEN DRIGGS could only end in my rejection of him. Atlanta, Georgia Because present Church policies forbid me from being re-baptized until I am either THE SUNSTONE EDUCATION LOSS AND RENEWAL celibate or married to a woman, and because FOUNDATION the official policy of the Church is to view The mission of The Sunstone Education Foundation is to READ “FOR BETTER, FOR WORSE, FOR our relationship as sinful, my partner’s fears sponsor open forums of Mormon thought and experience. Under the motto, “Faith Seeking Understanding,” we ex- I Apostasy?” (SUNSTONE, November 2006) are grounded in reality. Because of the amine and express the rich spiritual, intellectual, social, and artistic qualities of Mormon history and contempo- with great personal interest. I have several church’s political opposition to the legaliza- rary life. We encourage humanitarian service, honest in- quiry, and responsible interchange of ideas that is close friends who have struggled with the tion or any other kind of normalization of respectful of all people and what they hold sacred. problem of changing faith or loss of faith in a our relationship, he and other gay folks see Executive Director DAN WOTHERSPOON spouse. I have seen it twice from the point of my choice to worship and affiliate with the Board of Directors view of the spouse who was leaving the faith, Church as a political and social betrayal. And MICHAEL J. STEVENS, chair BILL BRADSHAW, D. JEFF BURTON, LAURA L. BUSH and now I am seeing it from the point of view even though my prayers to understand the LAURA R. COMPTON, DOE DAUGHTREY, JOHN P. DEHLIN of a spouse who holds on to faith. While these will of God in relation to my partner have led NADINE R. HANSEN, KIM MCCALL, ELBERT EUGENE PECK J. FREDERICK (TOBY) PINGREE, JANA BOUCK REMY issues are not unique to Latter-day Saints, faith to repeated assurances through the Holy J. BONNER RITCHIE, MARY ELLEN ROBERTSON RORY T. SWENSEN, MATT THURSTON, EARL M. WUNDERLI differences for Latter-day Saints seem often Spirit that I should continue to honor every Publisher/Business Manager more vexing or more intense than those expe- commitment I have made to him, the fact WILLIAM STANFORD rienced by people of other faiths, if only be- that I have even been willing to ask the ques- Sunstone Mercantile Director/Office Manager CAROL B. QUIST cause of LDS beliefs about the eternal family. tion has been painful—painful to him and Symposium Organizers I could not help but read some of these doubly painful to me. LAURA COMPTON, RICHARD RANDS, Sunstone West MOLLY BENNION, Northwest stories with a certain amount of envy. As a Nevertheless, my growing faith as a DOE DAUGHTREY, LAURA BUSH, Arizona gay man in a committed same-sex relation- Latter-day Saint has clarified and crystallized STEVE ECCLES, Dallas ALLEN HILL, Salt Lake City ship, who is also a believing Latter-day Saint, my love for my partner. In many ways, be- National Advisory Board I am struck by a sense of irony whenever I cause of gospel principles that I have incor- MOLLY BENNION, BELLAMY BROWN, RENEE CARLSON BLAINE CARLTON, DOUGLAS CONDIE, JOHN COX read accounts by people who no longer “be- porated more and more into my life, my love ROBERT FILLERUP, GREG KOFFORD, GLEN LAMBERT PATRICK MCKENZIE, CARRIE MILES, RONALD L. MOLEN lieve” but continue to be active, hold callings, for him is now deeper and truer than it ever MARY ANN MORGAN, GEORGE D. SMITH JR., NICHOLAS SMITH and participate fully in the communal, sacra- has been. I have been blessed, and I believe LORIE WINDER STROMBERG, JANET TARJAN JOHN TARJAN, NOLA W. WALLACE mental, and ritual life of the Church. I be- we have been blessed in our relationship,
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through my faith. So I have no complaints. I was saddened, therefore, to read in the My prayers are with all couples and fami- letters section of the September issue the lies who struggle with the loss—or the re- negative response of one reader who, it newal—of faith. seems to me, missed the whole point of the JOHN GUSTAV-WRATHALL article. The response asserted that leaving Minneapolis, Minnesota our minds empty in meditation was essen- tially useless. I was surprised by this attitude, TIMELESS SENTIMENTS having had many experiences with medita- tion where “emptying” the mind has been HE “UPDATE” SECTION OF THE very fruitful. In fact, coming to our God with T November 2006 SUNSTONE mentions a desire to simply be open to what we will re- two instances of post-publication censorship ceive might be more effective at times than in the Ensign. Luckily, my mother has kept a coming with a mind full of wants and needs copy of every Ensign issue since 1971, so she and things to pray about. was able to send me a copy of one of the arti- I am writing to thank Brother McLemore cles mentioned in the story: “A Different for a stellar article that was much needed. I Kind of Tithe,” by Helen Candland Stark hope that we can realize that there are many published in the month of my birth. methods of learning to commune with God, I enjoyed the article very much. How and we need not deny that one way is good for wonderful to read a mix of quotations from someone else because the way(s) we approach the Bible, Zuni Indian literature, Henry God are different. Thank God for all our sis- David Thoreau, and Brigham Young regard- ters and brothers in the world to learn from. ing stewardship of the earth. Why not tithe ANNA-KARIN SMITH our urges to subdue, conquer, and tame the Portland, Oregon earth by protecting at least a tenth of it, for its own sake and ours? In places, the article Letters for publication are edited for seems dated, but overall its arguments are clarity, tone, and space. Send them to www.forthosewhowonder.com timeless. I’d love to see SUNSTONE pursue it [email protected]. FREE DOWNLOADS! for possible printing in a future issue. Or per- If you wish to write letters to authors, haps you could run an analysis of it and a address them to that author, care of SUNSTONE, $7 • LDS Bookstores • ISBN 1-883992-06-0 fuller history of its publication and subse- 343 N. Third West, Salt Lake City, UT 84103. quent deletion from the Church’s official on- We will forward them unopened. line and CD-ROM editions? Thank you to whoever gathers the inter- esting tidbits in “Update.” JOANNE CASE Iowa City, Iowa
EDITOR’S NOTE: Hugo Olaiz has been SUNSTONE’S news editor and primary tidbit gatherer for the past five-plus years. We’re very grateful for him, too! LEARNING FROM ALL REALLY APPRECIATED PHILIP G. I McLemore’s “Mormon Mantras: A Journey of Spiritual Transformation,” the feature arti- cle of the April 2006 SUNSTONE. The last few years especially, I have struggled with the “equation theory” of spirituality—that doing this + this + that = feeling God’s love and ac- ceptance. Brother McLemore’s article rang true with me more than anything has in a long time. I really appreciated his gentle and articulate layout of some very practical ways to incorporate meditation into our own spir- itual practice. I was glad to read his descrip- tion of how to seek and to feel God’s love JEANETTE ATWOOD without necessarily feeling that we have For my talk on Joseph Smith, I’d like to express my appreciation for earned the right to do so. Rough Stone Rolling as well as that one episode of South Park.
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TOUCHSTONES through the markets, touring gardens. There were beggars nearly every place we visited, many of them amputees. I knew I needed to avoid giving handouts or I would be besieged OSSESSIONS by dozens of people asking for the same. So I P kept my hands in my pockets and looked into their eyes and felt heartsick and smug. Contemplating the price that had bought my mobility. Feeling my own betrayal. LIVING IN THIS vibrating sensation like a cellphone ringer JANA BOUCK REMY notifying me that I had ten minutes to get my Irvine, California PARTICULAR TIME leg plugged in or I’d lose power altogether. We raced home and made it just in time. The THE LEXUS EPIPHANY OMETIMES I MAKE jokes about adventure was more thrilling than a car chase being a “bionic woman” or a “cyborg.” scene in a spy movie. IKE MOST COLLEGE freshman, I went S Having a prosthetic leg with a com- My patriarchal blessing says that I will L to school for one reason: to make puter-controlled knee joint lends itself to have a special testimony to bear about living money. However, I didn’t just want to make such comparisons. Truth be told, the first in this particular time in history. One way I money. I wanted to make as much money as thing I’d reach for if there was a house fire have interpreted that message is with my possible. My plan was to complete an MBA in and we needed to exit quickly wouldn’t be abundant gratitude for living in an era when finance, head off to Wall Street, and spend the family photo albums. I’d reach for my ro- I have sophisticated technology to replace the next thirty years reading stock ticker botic leg. It would make sense, given that the my missing limb. Perhaps that’s not what the symbols. leg cost as much as a luxury car. And, of patriarch meant when he pronounced my I started off pretty well, acing my account- course, because it’s essential for my mobility. blessing, but it seems apt to me. ing classes, landing an internship with a ma- I’ve been robotic for about three years. Some days, however, I feel guilty about jor bank, and trying my hand at some When I first learned that my insurance owning a leg that costs more than fifty thou- discriminate stock picking. One event would pay for a computerized knee joint, I sand dollars. I think of my limbless sisters changed all that. was thrilled to adopt the technology. I knew and brothers in other circumstances, and I re- I was living in New Jersey at the time and that it meant more stability, fewer falls, and a alize that dozens—if not hundreds—of low- stumbled upon Thoreau. Walden Pond was a more natural gait. My prosthetist duly tech limbs could be purchased for the price of mere five hours away, so one night, I packed, warned me not to get it wet, to charge the my computerized leg. I contemplate the new drove to Concord, bought the book, and battery every night for at least three hours, amputees returning home from Iraq or the camped near Walden Pond. The next morn- and to notify him at the first sign of any mal- thousands of people throughout the world ing, I started reading at 7 a.m. What followed function. who live in daily fear of loss of life and limb. was the most profound experience I have My kids were thrilled with my leg and its Last year, my leg malfunctioned while I ever had. Ever. robotic possibilities. We wondered what was traveling in Asia, perhaps a result of us- Within the first few pages, I felt pene- might happen if an evil genius repro- ing a faulty power adapter for charging it. trated by the book. My dialogue with the text grammed my leg and forced me to rob banks Although there was no way to get the com- became instantly conversational. I felt as if or steal diamonds? We giggled long and hard puter repaired during my trip, I was able to Thoreau were standing there, searing my about that scenario. The first time my battery continue my travels with my knee stiff— soul with his powerfully incisive gaze. And started running low, I was standing in a gro- walking as if wearing a cast. Despite the im- then, without asking permission, sitting me cery checkout line with my son and daugh- pairment, I carried on with typical tourist down for a lecture. ter. We heard the telltale beeps, and I felt the activities: scaling the Great Wall, strolling His ideas were so pithy that they came to me dripping with substance, his meanings so thick that they could be taken in only by swallowing them whole. His judgment both OUCHSTONES is a SUNSTONE section that debuted in the December 2005 issue. condemned and redeemed me all at once. I It was inspired by “Readers Write” in The SUN magazine. TOUCHSTONES topics learned that day that the seven deadly sins T are intentionally broad in order to give room for personal expression. Writing style is are paltry compared to the sacrilege of ne- not as important as the contributor’s thoughtfulness, humor, and sincerity. SUNSTONE glecting real depth of life. There is no savior reserves the right to edit pieces, but contributors will have the opportunity to approve or dis- who can grant clemency for throwing away approve of editorial changes prior to publication. life’s marrow. It was on that day that I de- To submit a reflection, please send it typed and double-spaced to SUNSTONE, 343 North cided to become a philosopher and spend Third West, Salt Lake City, Utah, 84103. Electronic submissions can be sent via email to my life seeking wisdom. TOUCHSTONES editor Allen Hill at: [email protected]. Due to space limitations, Since then, I have had many flashbacks to submissions should be kept somewhere around 400 words, but we are willing to make my former dreams. These experiences are of- exceptions for exceptional pieces. Please submit right away for upcoming topics. ten triggered by seeing a new car or vacation THE WARD commercial or flipping past CNBC. These Upcoming Topics: tempting images make me wonder if the { FAMILY DINNER grass really might be greener on the other side.
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However, recently I had the opposite ex- jeans, a book, and contact lens solution. months, my only cargo, a suitcase. I came perience. While walking out to catch my bus, I returned to Utah with three backpacks back with . . . it’s too embarrassing to quan- I saw a brand-new Lexus. This time, rather full of tchotchkes. It took enormous strength tify. Well, okay: twenty pairs of shoes. But than being struck with self doubt, I felt for to unpeel each clump of toys, CDs, shapkas, why not open my wallet and unleash a little the first time in my life that my understand- and chocolate from those packs. It would enthusiasm onto objects? I’m ardently com- ing was worth far, far, more than that person’s take eight writing sheds to house all of these mitted to each pair. There’s a story in each Lexus. I smiled to myself and realized I just things. While abroad, I kept a journal about sole (to which my fourteen-year-old brother, might become a philosopher after all. the cathedrals and parks I’d visited, but I who recently got the closet tour, will testify). ALDEN STOUT haven’t read it since I got back. Touching the I might start looking at trips not as an escape West Lafayette, Indiana furry hats and painted dolls is much more from possessions but a chance to become im- fun. What better way to possess a journey? passioned by exotic items. Never mind en- TRACKING YOUR LIFE— Possessions are an amiable way to mark countering new faces and testing out my experiences and track successes. By replacing Russian. The best part of traveling might be ONE TCHOTCHKE actual memories with the simple story an stockpiling souvenirs. AT A TIME item tells, you can give your amygdala a re- CHELSEA BUSH freshing break. For example, I keep all of my Salt Lake City, Utah FTER TRAIPSING THROUGH Moscow schoolbooks from college, yet to read them A a few summers back, I decided that I again would be repellent. I just like to look at VALUE wanted to live my life as one big vacation. I them all lined up on the bookshelf. The dis- would be freer and clearer-headed if my life play is a rewarding sight whereas the real WO POSSESSIONS IN my life stand in were unbound by clutter—if, instead of bag- memory of the achievement is one of sleep T contrast—my MP3 player and my per- gage, I simply had a bag. Author Annie deprivation, debt, and a cadaverous social sonal journal. Dillard, who dutifully folds herself away into life. My MP3 player is a little contraption that a writing shed in the woods, inspires me. All In another attempt to nobly evict my not only plays tons of music but also displays one really needs in order to subsist are some worldly things, I went to California for five pictures, plays video, broadcasts FM radio,
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has a voice recorder, and many more cool HOW DID WE GET HERE? paid cash, avoided debt, and put every “ex- functions. When I first got it, I spent several tra” cent either into paying down the mort- days fiddling with its various features and IVE YEARS AGO, I called insurance gage or into an investment. uploading music, video, and pictures. F companies to find one to write a policy My girlfriends felt sorry for me. My an- However, the novelty quickly ran out, and for our new home purchase and was repeat- cient Chevy Corsica vibrated noticeably (and now I have a completely full, seldom-used, edly told, “I’m sorry, ma’am, but we are not audibly) at stoplights, and the ceiling fabric ultra-tiny digital device sitting on my shelf. presently writing policies on executive sagged until it rested on the top of my head. My journal has taken different forms homes.” Executive homes. How did we get When the carpet in our family room became through the years. When I was younger, it here? unbearably dog-damaged, my husband was a book with pages that I filled more or A line in my husband’s patriarchal bless- ripped it out. We lived with cold, concrete less diligently as the weeks and months ing tells him that he “won’t waste time and floors for more than two years before a girl- screamed by. Over time, the book has been effort on the trinkets of life.” He let me read friend, who was employed at a tile outlet, of- succeeded by a file on my computer, which is his blessing before we married, and the line fered us her employee discount if we would very convenient as I never run out of space caused me consternation. I’d always been use it to buy tile to cover the floor. and benefit from the spelling and grammar rather fond of life’s trinkets—particularly Then 9-11 hit. Our house was nearly paid check! I enjoy writing every week, making an those which are multi-faceted and glimmer- off. We were about to have many more extra account of my personal endeavors and the ing. But I wanted to marry him, so I congrat- cents than ever before, but the stock market developments and progress of my family. For ulated myself for winning someone who’d was looking unstable and less appealing to better or for worse, my journal contains my knuckle right down to the business of ob- us. One day, our family was driving through life story—often not very interesting, but taining trinkets for me instead of wasting his an upscale neighborhood and, on a whim, personally valuable nonetheless. I often refer time and effort before getting them. my husband picked up a flyer about a house. to it as I try to recall details from events in my But dental school was expensive. Diapers He showed it to me and, laughing, asked if past, and my wife and kids love to look were expensive. Food and clothing were ex- I’d like to live there. I looked at the asking through it and learn new tidbits about their pensive. Pre-school, music lessons, doctor’s price, and my mind automatically did the husband and father. visits, Legos, and American Girl dolls were math. “Honey,” I said, “we could.” Though my MP3 player has a much expensive. Camp was expensive. College and “Yeah, right.” He stared at the flyer. Then higher market value than my journal, there is missions loomed, and my husband had com- he looked at me, stunned, as he realized that, no question in my mind which is more valu- mitted himself to a full career in the Public quite by accident, we really could “move up.” able. Health Service, which meant he was paid on Several months later, we moved into our JONATHAN H. WESTOVER the military’s scale. I soon came to appreciate own “executive home” in a prestigious golf Tooele, Utah his no-nonsense approach to finances: We course community. I drove up in a used, late model Mercury Voyager that I thought was fancy because it had a cup holder, and Bret drove up in a 1980-something Volkswagen Cabriolet convertible, the tears in the soft top flapping in the breeze like the American flag on the an- tennae. The illegals cleaning the homes next door drove away in newer, better vehicles than we had arrived in. But we lived here. Of course, we are still us. Both cars have been replaced, but the great room in our new home has been empty for the five years we’ve lived here. If I wanted furniture in it, all I’d have to do is go choose it. But every time I consider doing that, habit kicks in and I think “I can’t afford it.” Nearly every week- end, Bret and I shop garage sales because we like to and because we like being together. It’s what we do. Someday I’ll probably furnish my great room with the discards from someone else’s executive
JONNY HAWKINS home. And no one will know the difference. “Vince prides himself on his open mind, and you’d be surprised LISA TORCASSO DOWNING at some of the things that crawl into it.” Heath, Texas
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OF GOOD REPORT THIS IS THE CHURCH (Broomall First Ward, ca. 1997) where the Relief Society made a quilt for my first baby. Where sisters who had hardly anything themselves made OTHERING UNDAY me extravagant dinners, brought presents. M S Where they came to the door of the chapel in pairs some Sunday mornings, one to take my By Kristine Haglund never-sleeping baby in her arms, and one to hold me while I sobbed that this was impos- N THE ANGLICAN calendar, the fourth THIS IS THE CHURCH where my Beehive sible and I couldn’t do it. This is the church Sunday of Lent is often called advisor wrote a poem for me in the front of a where I learned that I could do it. I “Refreshment Sunday.” This nomencla- journal—a poem that anchored me through ture derives not from treats in the cultural a terribly insecure adolescence, reassuring THIS IS THE CHURCH where my bishop, hall after church, but from a tradition of re- me that at least one wise woman saw who I who had been invited to my baby daughter’s laxing the rules of the Lenten fast on this day was and loved me for it. half-birthday party on a Sunday, picked up a to provide refreshment from the austerity of cake at Baskin-Robbins on his way to our the Lenten season. It is also called THIS IS THE CHURCH (Marburg Branch, ca. house because I called in tears to un-invite “Mothering Sunday” because it was the tradi- 1982) where I learned German from the his family after dropping the cake onto the tional time for people to travel to their home- Sunbeam manual and the hymnal. It is the bottom of the oven and torching it. towns or villages to visit their “mother church where the psalms came alive for me in church.” Children and youth who were ser- Luther’s translation, and my understanding of THIS IS THE CHURCH where five people vants in the cities were allowed to go home God was utterly transformed by a single came up to me after a new bishop (known to on this Sunday, and so it gradually became phrase: “denn der Herr ist freundlich.” In the have a somewhat, um, authoritarian disposi- also a day to honor mothers. King James Version, this is translated, “for the tion and lots of opinions that conflicted with I choose this occasion to celebrate the Lord is good.” But “freundlich” was also my all-too-well-known ones) was sustained, mothering of my mother church. It may be a simply “friendly” in the everyday parlance of to ask if I would be okay. This is the church bit difficult to think of the Mormon church an eighth-grader trying to approach God. where that bishop gave me one of the most this way. Our day-to-day experience can con- powerful and beautiful priesthood blessings dition us to more readily see the stern, patri- THIS IS THE CHURCH (Franklin Ward, ca. I’ve ever received, about five minutes after I archal face of our church. And yet, and yet. . . 1986) where the bishop’s son asked me to yelled at him for interrupting the Beehive prom before my 16th birthday because his class I was teaching so he could set me apart THIS IS THE CHURCH (Chapel Hill Branch, dad thought I needed to go on a date. I did. on his timetable. This is the church where I ca. 1974) where I first played “Go Tell Aunt Really. (“So, Kris, would you like to go to the started to grow up. Rhody” in Primary, while the teachers sang prom?” “Well, yeah, I guess that would be “Lord, Dismiss Us with Thy Blessing.” It is fun, but I don’t think anyone will ask me.”) IKE most mothers, the Church is a where bishops and ward music chairs made flawed instrument of love and grace. space for me in the worship program THIS IS THE CHURCH (University Ward, ca. L We need to understand the flaws be- throughout my growing up, maybe not be- 1988) where a kind bishop lectured me about cause we are shaped by them too, but we cause my scratchy violin-playing was so up- the virtues of eating and sleeping regularly, by should not, in our minute examination of lifting, but because they loved me and saw way of a Harvard Business School case about them, miss the grace. As Laurel Ulrich writes in that I needed to worship with my little fiddle. the Singer Sewing Machine Company. her essay, “Lusterware,” “If you find any earthly institution that is ten percent divine, embrace it THIS IS THE CHURCH (Los Alamos Ward, THIS IS THE CHURCH (Ann Arbor Institute with all your heart!”1 And so I do. It is a com- ca. 1977) where my Sunday School teacher Branch, ca. September 1993) where my plicated embrace, sometimes as awkward as at let me climb out the window and hide under branch president asked me to come into his a junior high school dance, with too much toe- the lilac bushes for most of Sunday School office because I had looked “troubled” during crunching. I stumble and keep trying. time once a month or so because he saw that sacrament meeting. He let me pour out my Oh, refresh us, oh, refresh us, I was a sad little girl who needed time and rage and grief about the intellectuals facing Trav’ling through this wilderness. quiet and a place where no one expected me discipline in Salt Lake City, quietly pulled out Thanks we give and adoration to answer questions and be the teacher’s pet. his file of newspaper clippings on the sub- For the gospel’s joyful sound. ject, and shared his own questions—which May the fruits of our salvation THIS IS THE CHURCH where my Merrie were different than mine, and to which he of- In our hearts and lives abound.2 Miss teachers tolerated (to varying degrees) fered no comforting answers—then sent me my wrath about polygamy and tried to teach off to play the hymns in Relief Society. NOTES me to crochet anyway. 1. Emma Lou Thayne and Laurel Thatcher KRISTINE HAGLUND’s tax return lists her occupation as “freelance pundit.” In practice, Ulrich, All God’s Critters Got a Place in the Choir (Salt this means she is very bossy to her three children, and she blogs at bycommonconsent.com. Lake City: Aspen Books, 1995), 166. You can share your opinions with her (if you dare) at [email protected]. This 2. John Fawcett, “Lord, Dismiss Us with Thy Blessing,” Hymns of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter- essay is drawn from a guestblogger post she wrote for Feminist Mormon Housewives day Saints (Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ (http://www.feministmormonhousewives.org). of Latter-day Saints, 1985), no. 163.
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IN MEMORIAM (you name it) about Mormonism—good, bad, or ugly. We taped every lecture, news re- port, television show, or radio interview that we learned about. If Bob couldn’t tape it, I OB ERNON would. We’d joke that if neither one of us B V could record something, well, it just wasn’t worth taping. Bob and I had an unofficial By Steven L. Mayfield business we called “B&S Taping.” As a result of this quest, there was no space in Bob’s home or office not filled with With great sadness, we announce the sudden passing of boxes, papers, tapes, and books. Each bed- long-time Sunstone supporter Robert Gerard Vernon in room was a separate library, and we used to January 2007. Born 9 July 1935 to Adelaide Neilson laugh that he needed a jungle guide to get (later McAllister) and Weston Vernon II, Bob—as through his house. It could be messy, but it everyone knew him—was reared in Manhattan and was his mess, and he loved it. And Bob’s col- spent summers in Logan, Utah. After receiving a polit- lection is very valuable in the preservation of ical science degree from the University of Utah, he things Mormon, for back in the days of reel- served an LDS mission in West Germany and later to-reel tape recording, and long before earned a law degree from Columbia. In the last few groups such as Sunstone began taping things years, Bob became very active in the Sons of Utah themselves, it was Bob who captured many Pioneers and served as president of one of the Salt Lake LDS-related events for posterity. City chapters. Bob married and later divorced Kathryn Barnes UT Bob was not one-dimensional. He with whom he had three children: David, Linda, and loved to go to plays and operas, and Richard Vernon. They and their spouses survive him, as B occasionally (even if you didn’t ask) do a granddaughter and grandson. Another grandchild he’d sing for you. Bob had a beautiful voice is on the way. Also surviving are older brother Weston and frequently sang in ward choirs and mu- Vernon III; a sister, Maridon McAllister Morrison; and a sical presentations. He would also tape- brother, Kenneth McAllister. record musical programs from the TV and We will greatly miss Bob’s steadfast support of both radio and has a very impressive collection, ROBERT GERARD VERNON magazine and symposium and the clever humor he in- which will soon be in the University of Utah July 1935–January 2007 jected into all our gatherings. Archives for all to use and hear. Bob also loved his family and took care of his mother until she died a few years ago. He FIRST MET Bob about 1992 when I at- Bob was constantly on the go. He was al- spent many hours of his own time working on tended some now-forgotten lecture on ways fashionably late but always willing to family wills and estates. He loved and was I Mormonism in Salt Lake City. Bob was at discuss and debate topics of religion, music, very close to his stepfather, Stanley McAllister, the front of the auditorium, this white-haired and life experiences. He was a lawyer by pro- who was a prominent businessman and fellow with glasses in a floppy suit and tie, fession but found his greatest joy in things church leader in New York in the 40s, 50s, hovering over a tape recorder. Afterward, I, “Mormon.” And like me, he wanted to collect and 60s. A few years ago at the Mormon along with several others, asked him about any book, article, magazine, tape, video, CD History Association conference in Cedar City, getting copies of the tape he had just made. This caused him some befuddlement as he had no way to duplicate the tapes. I, how- ever, had a high-speed tape duplicator, so I offered my services if Bob would trust me with his master tape. Thus began a fifteen- year association with a person who would become much more than a friend. Bob quickly became my “bud,” someone with whom I would spend long hours on the telephone discussing various news items and events, mostly involving the LDS Church. Actually I first “met” Bob, or rather learned of him, in 1982 through a series of articles in the Denver Post called “Utah—The Church , 22 NOVEMBER 1982 State.” In one of the articles, the reporter de- tailed how he had followed Bob and his DENVER POST family as they attended church and carried THE VERNON FAMILY, 1982 on their daily activities as members of the The Vernons (from left to right) are Linda, Robert, Richard, Kathy, and David LDS Church in Salt Lake City. (with a family friend walking behind Kathy).
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Bob was supremely happy giving a paper FROM THE EDITOR about McAllister. (Even though I messed up the visuals, it was a great presentation!) Bob always liked to talk about his Vernon, Nielson, and McAllister family history and FINDING A WAY THROUGH his own family. When a grandchild was born, he’d proudly wear a button with the child’s By Dan Wotherspoon picture on it and the notation, “Ask me about my grandbaby!” He loved his siblings, other relatives, and children very much and talked about them all the time. He also enjoyed dis- A FEW THOUGHTS of my own about Bob Vernon. Several things were certain in any en- cussing his life adventures, from his mission counter with Bob: in Germany, to his experience as a seasonal 1. He’d be smiling. worker at the Grand Canyon while attending 2. He’d be excited to share something he’d been reading or doing. the University of Utah, to law school in New 3. You were in for a long conversation! York City. And Bob always maintained long- All these things were very endearing. lasting friendships with companions, co- I can’t help but smile when I think about Bob. The combination of slight dishevelment, workers, or friends from each place he went. a mind that raced two hundred miles an hour, and an open, helping heart who put good It was always fun to run into Bob around intentions into action—even if those actions didn’t always seem particularly well organ- town or in some bookstore. One time while I ized—made Bob one of those unique and memorable characters whom I will never forget was photographing a traffic accident (I am a and will always recall with fondness. crime scene photographer for the Salt Lake Though not a scholar in the sense of publishing or breaking new ground in areas of in- City Police Department), I noticed Bob in his quiry, Bob was nevertheless a fine student of Mormonism—of its origins and development car waiting to get around the accident. He as well as contemporary issues. Once his material has been pulled together and cataloged, didn’t see me, so I walked up to his car, researchers using the University of Utah library archives will benefit from Bob’s energetic banged on the roof, and yelled that he saving of everything—especially the audio and video recordings he made of LDS presenta- couldn’t stop there. First seeing just a uni- tions. As Steve Mayfield mentions in his reflection, many of these discussions are preserved form, he was shocked and befuddled. Then only because Bob had the foresight to capture them—was bold enough to bring his equip- he saw me smiling, realized the joke, and ment, monitor the recording processes, and manage the many other tasks required to (after his heart slowed down a bit) couldn’t create and preserve such things. stop laughing. Bob drove what can only be I will personally miss Bob very much. Sunstone and other Mormon groups will miss his described as a “tank.” How he loved that car! ever-present self, huge heart, and excellent mind and insights. After it got dented in a hit-and-run accident, Bob at first wanted to get it repaired. But after FOR EACH SUNSTONE issue, there are always many people to thank for behind-the-scenes a while, he liked the “trophy” of being a sur- kindnesses and efforts that have helped things come to fruition. For this issue, I want to es- vivor, evidence that his car was “tough.” pecially single out Brad Woodworth’s wonderful help in soliciting and editing the reflection by Harold Bloom (page 18). Brad’s assistance involved consistent follow-through for the T his funeral, someone mentioned past eighteen months as Professor Bloom was forced to postpone writing for us because of that Bob is now at rest with his health setbacks and other projects that screamed for his attention. New Haven neighbors of family and friends, finally gaining Bloom’s, Brad and his wife Cherie have done a great deal to keep Bloom’s attention tuned A into Joseph Smith and contemporary Mormonism, of which he wrote so insightfully in his peace from the world. But if I know Bob, he’s in the next life seeking out historians, profes- The American Religion (Simon and Schuster, 1992). We’re very excited that Professor Bloom sors, and maybe a prophet or apostle, asking has chosen to publish a few more thoughts now, fifteen years after that landmark book. questions and seeking answers to long-re- Thank you, Professor! Thank you, Brad, for all you have done in making this happen! searched problems and questions, and not being shy about offering a comment or two! I loved this man. He was indeed my friend, ’VE ENJOYED WORKING with and get- early nineteenth-century group of English my bud, and my brother. Even now when I ting to know several members of the textile artisans who, protesting the effects of read something or see something on TV or I Mormon Transhumanist Association in the Industrial Revolution on their way of life, hear an interview on the radio, I go to the preparing the cover article for this SUNSTONE set about destroying wool and cotton mills phone and start to call Bob only to realize issue. Among other things, the experience and textile machines.1 Most neo-Luddite once more that he is not there. At least not has led me to begin thinking again about is- voices eschew similar tactics of destruction, physically. But he is in my memory and heart, sues that once weighed heavily on my mind but like the original Luddites, they are united and I will always cherish the times, the events, but which had slipped from the forefront of by a strong interest in preserving and main- the symposiums, and the phone calls that I my consciousness. taining a high quality of life in the midst of shared with him. Thanks, Bob. God bless. For a few years beginning about 1995, if great and rapid technological advancement. you were to ask me to describe the gist of my Kirkpatrick Sale describes one of the primary STEVE MAYFIELD is a Salt Lake Police philosophical and theological ponderings, I tasks of the neo-Luddite movement as Department crime scene photographer and a would have quickly mentioned many ele- laying out as clearly and fully as long-time volunteer Sunstone taping engineer ments of what is often called “neo-Luddism.” possible the costs and conse- and photographer. The term hearkens back to the Luddites, an quences of our technologies, in the
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near term and the long, so that these writings gave me some of the most pen- dramatically increased human longevity. But even those overwhelmed by the etrating analyses of many dynamics I was even though I accept that we are following an ease/comfort/speed/power of high- then interested in.3 arc that leads to even greater interdepen- tech gadgetry . . . are forced to un- Several factors ultimately led to my dence between humans and machines, I’m a derstand at what price it all comes waning interest in neo-Luddism per se bit discomforted by the seeming enthusiasm and who is paying for it. What pur- (though I’ve still found myself revisiting that many Transhumanists have for flourishing pose does this machine serve? section of my bookshelves many times in the primarily through human and technological What problem has become so great intervening years). But the chief factor was melding—non-organic enhancements to our that it needs this solution? Is this the tendency of most of the movement’s brains, skin, skeletal structure, sense organs, invention nothing but, as Thoreau leading voices to look backwards more often and so forth. The article envisions that hu- put it, an improved means to an than forwards—to advocate withdrawal from, mans are to one day have “the ability to com- unimproved end? . . . Will this in- rather than finding a way through, the indus- municate complex thoughts and emotions vention concentrate or disperse trial complex and our society’s technological instantaneously without visual aids or power, encourage or discourage adolescence. While I very much value the speech,” enjoy “higher awareness of even dis- self-worth? Can society at large af- wisdom of native traditions and find myself tant environs,” be able to perfectly control ford it? Can the biosphere?2 drawn at times toward the gospel of sim- “individual desires, moods, or mental states,” At the time I was introduced to the move- plicity, ultimately I’ve come to realize that, and have “increased capacity to experience ment, much of my interest in neo-Luddite baseline, I’m a pragmatist and an optimist. I joy, love, pleasure, and other emotions” (page critiques grew out of my strong affinity for have a strong trust in our ability as humans 32). I want to stand firmly with the camp environmentalism and also for the vision and to rise to the challenges occasioned by pre- that recognizes these as capabilities we can promise of Zion. (I was in the middle of sent-day myopias regarding our planet and and should work toward developing through writing my doctoral dissertation on resources what we must face in order to survive and spiritual disciplines regardless of whether we in Mormon thought for ecological sustain- thrive. I also trust our ability to rise to the also pursue technologies that can aid us in ability.) I recognized that any future to which challenges inherent in the technologies now acquiring such capacities. one might apply the label “Zion” would re- emerging and the clear trend they show to- I don’t rule out the possibility that quire a healthy integration of environmental ward even greater interdependence between Transhumanists may be right about the in- wisdom—including an economy geared to- human beings and the machines we create. evitability of a period in human and techno- ward sustainability instead of simply toward logical evolution when advances come so growth—and strong religious sensibilities. HERE are several claims at the fore- rapidly and are of such magnitude that we Because neo-Luddite writings focus on the front of Transhumanist conversa- will not be able to predict or direct them connections between technology, economic T tions, to which the article in this issue (what Transhumanists call the “Singularity”). forces, and environmental impact, and on the was my first introduction, that I’m not quite But I would much rather throw my efforts be- shift in spiritual values that are embedded in ready to embrace. I am absolutely for human hind creating a future resembling that articu- the ideals of modernism and furthered by the intellectual and biological flourishing. I am lated by Bill Joy, chief scientist of Sun unchecked march of technological advance, even willing to consider as a good the ideal of Microsystems. Using Star Trek as an example, sunstone now has a travel store through sunstone’s new travel store, you can give a donation to the foundation without directly spending a dime!
YTB Travel has created a program through which non-profit organizations such as Sunstone receive 40 percent of all commissions generated by airline, cruise, lodging, rental car, vacation, event ticket, and flower bookings made through an organization’s travel store. www.ytbtravel.com/sunstone
We invite you and other Sunstone If, and only, if, our rates are equal to or based travel store are competitive with supporters to come to the Sunstone less than those you find elsewhere, we’d those of all other online booking engines Travel Store and comparison shop simply ask that you book through our available such as Travelocity, Orbitz, before you book your next trip. You can travel store. This way you can support and Expedia. use the web address above or access Sunstone in continuing its mission. As it through a button on the Sunstone you’ll see, the prices, user interface, and William Stanford website WWW.SUNSTONEONLINE.COM. services you receive at Sunstone’s YTB- SUNSTONE publisher
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Joy shares his hope that the centuries to come erally open and embracing of new tech- moral principles are vital in preparing for the will be filled “with strong moral values, em- nology, we have a better chance of turning it “risks and responsibilities associated with fu- bodied in codes like the Prime Directive: to to our advantage than if we try to ban or pro- ture advances,” and that it is imperative to not interfere in the development of less tech- hibit it.” I also stand behind the Transhu- strive to persuade others of this wisdom nologically advanced civilizations,” a vision manist sense that “we need to create forums (page 30). dominated by “ethical humans, not robots.”4 where people can rationally debate” all as- NOTES I’m likewise cautious when I meet enthu- pects of the unfolding technological and siasm for colonizing other planets—in the human future (page 27) . 1. Good introductions to both Neo-Luddism and same way I want to reject attitudes about an Luddism are available at www.wikipedia.org/wiki/ imminent Second Coming that are fed, at ’M excited by the brief introduction to Neo-Luddism and www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite (accessed 26 March 2007). least in part, by a pessimism about our ability Transhumanism I’ve received through 2. Kirkpatrick Sale, Rebels Against the Future: The to work together to solve current societal I the past several months of working with Luddites and Their War on the Industrial Revolution— problems. I like the idea of exploring the the Mormon Transhumanist Association in Lessons for the Computer Age (Reading, Mass.: galaxy, but not if the enthusiasm for extrater- readying their article for SUNSTONE readers. I Addison-Wesley, 1996), 273–74. restrial exploration is driven by a sense of our plan to read much more in their discussions 3. During this period, I took part in a Salt Lake having botched things up on planet Earth so and see where I might contribute. But I’m Sunstone Symposium panel, “Uncomfortable Ambigu- ity: Technology and Community in the Twenty-first badly that our extinction here is inevitable even more pleased that the Mormon Trans- Century” (tape/CD/download SL96–233). and sending a remnant to new worlds is the humanist Association exists—that bright, 4. Bill Joy, “Why the Future Doesn't Need Us,” only way the human species can survive. well-grounded Latter-day Saints have staked available at http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/ Transhumanists are, of course, not united in out a claim at the Transhumanist table. I find 8.04/ joy_pr.html (accessed 26 March 2007). This voice or enthusiasm for all of these claims, their readings of many familiar but under- April 2000 Wired magazine article is a watershed piece but the voices are there and I believe deserve studied scriptural passages and prophetic ut- in the discussion of unfolding technologies. In it, Joy, critique. terances fascinating. But mostly I share with who is no neo-Luddite and whose credentials in the high-tech world are impeccable, speaks of his con- These and a few other cautions aside, I them a strong sense that science and tech- cerns about the coming age of artificial intelligence, fully embrace the gist of the Transhumanist nology should advance “according to nanotechnology, molecular manipulation, and other Declaration which argues that “by being gen- wisdom and inspiration,” that spiritual and major aspects of future described by Transhumanists.
The Sunstone Education Foundation is pleased to announce: THE 2007 R. L. “BUZZ” CAPENER MEMORIAL WRITING CONTEST IN COMPARATIVE RELIGIOUS STUDIES
THE SUNSTONE EDUCATION FOUNDATION R. L. “Buzz” Capener to honor the memory of publication elsewhere, will not be submitted invites submissions of papers to the 2007 R. L. his life of faith, acceptance of diversity, and the to other forums until after the contest, and “Buzz” Capener Memorial Writing Contest in pursuit of truth. that, if the entry wins, SUNSTONE magazine Comparative Religious Studies. has one-time, first-publication rights. PRIZES: A total of $1,000.00 will be awarded: The contest originates in the conviction • $750 for the best submission 4. Winners will be selected by anonymous that the study of Mormon theology and doctrine • $250 for the runner-up evaluations supplied by judges appointed by can greatly benefit from examination in the Sunstone Education Foundation and the a comparative context with other Christian RULES: R. L. “Buzz” Capener Memorial Writing and non-Christian traditions. The contest 1. Only one entry may be submitted by any Contest organizing committee. Sunstone encourages entries that bring LDS concepts author or team of authors. Four copies must will announce the winners in SUNSTONE and practices into discussion with the world- be postmarked or reach the Sunstone offices magazine at WW.SUNSTONEONLINE.COM. views, doctrines, and rituals of other faiths, before or on 30 APRIL 2007. Entries will not trusting that the comparative act will enrich the be returned. Failure to comply with these rules will result in understanding of each. Papers should exhibit 2. Each entry must be 8,000 words or fewer disqualification. sound scholarship but also be accessible to a (exclusive of footnotes). Entries must be broad, non-specialist readership. typed, double-spaced, on one side of white The papers, without author identification, The 2006 Capener Contest winners were: paper, paginated, and stapled in the upper will be judged by qualified scholars of • First Place—“Saving the Dead: A left corner. Author names should not appear Mormonism and religious studies. The winners Comparative Study of Post-Funerary Rites on any page of the entry. will be invited to give their papers at the 2007 in Japanese and Mormon Culture,” by Salt Lake Sunstone Symposium to be held 3. Each entry must be accompanied by a cover John Dewey Remy (SUNSTONE, 8–11 August, and the winning articles will be letter that states the essay’s title and the au- November 2006) published in a future issue of SUNSTONE thor’s (or authors’) name, address, tele- • Second Place—“The Sacramental magazine. Only the winners will be notified phone number, and email address. Each Worldview: A Philosophical Comparison of personally of the results. After the judging is cover letter must be signed and attest that Joseph Smith’s Magical View of complete, all non-winning entrants will be free the entry is the person or team’s work, that Ordinances with a Liberation View of to submit their essays elsewhere. it has not been previously published, that Sacraments,” by Dennis Potter The contest is sponsored by the family of it is not currently being considered for (SUNSTONE, December 2006)
343 NORTH THIRD WEST SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH 84103–1215 SUNSTONE
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CORNUCOPIA
SUNSTONE invites short musings: chatty reports, cultural trend Margin Notes sightings, theological meditations. All lovely things of good report, please share them. Send to:
HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT And their eyes were opened, and they knew him; and he vanished out of their sight. —LUKE 24:31 Y HUSBAND AND I RECENTLY VISITED THE Monterey Bay Aquarium in California. To our de- ’M A BIG FAN OF TITLES. FOR ME, A TITLE HAS THE M light, the giant octopus was especially active during power to set the tone and mood for a whole text. In an ef- our visit. It was big and reddish pink and had spread out all I fort to make sense of what happened to me during 2006, over the glass of its display tank. We were struck with the I’ve titled the year: “Beyond Damascus and Emmaus or Bust.” beauty of its sinuous movements, its suckers attaching and re- Fantastic things happened on those two holy roads. The ac- attaching in a graceful underwater ballet. We counted its arms count of Saul becoming Paul on the Damascus road is found in (yes, eight!), inspected its nearly hidden mouth, and admired Acts 9:1–18; Cleopas and his companion’s mystical encounter the vigor and energy of its movements. with the Savior on the road to Emmaus is recounted in Luke We had forgotten to bring a camera with which we could 24:13–32. I can almost hear a soundtrack for each of them: record this wonderful sight, so we returned the next day to try “Amazing Grace” fading to “A Poor, Wayfaring Man of Grief.” to catch the octopus in its dance again. When we arrived, The journey toward my Damascus-like transformation in however, the tank appeared completely empty. No octopus 2006 includes a four-year prologue of wandering and won- anywhere! We knew they were hard to spot, so we looked dering how, in the course of a physical relocation, I could have carefully, high and low, but in vain. Finally, another visitor had possibly changed from a totally acceptable, die-hard moderate, us look in one corner of the exhibit—a place we thought we hard-working, free-thinking, freely speaking, fiercely be- had thoroughly scanned already. Our octopus was right in lieving, devout dynamo to an overtly unacceptable, socially front of us, its arms tucked into a rocky crevice and only its deflated, semi-available, non-thinking, verbally suppressed, head exposed. Its color and shape now matched exactly the privately meditating, internally Zen, Christian. Feeling as if I rocks of its habitat, blending in to the point of near invisibility. were living under a gag order in an anti-intellectual zone and We had difficulty reconciling what looked like a brown rocky clearly sensing the gossiping castigation of ward members, I bump with the magnificent, powerful, reddish creature we had became a worry for my ecclesiastical leaders. Externally I was admired the day before. It was in plain sight, but we had to still active in my Sunday attendance, still keeping up with my change the way we were looking in order to see it. visiting teaching, still contributing to the compassionate serv- I couldn’t help but think of the Heavenly Mother, who, I be- ice emergencies in the ward, still totally committed to magni- lieve, also is hiding in plain sight. Like many LDS women, I fying my callings. But internally I was spending most of my en- quietly believe she is the Holy Ghost, the third member of the ergy lurking under the radar of ward society and having the Godhead, with a job description that exactly suits her: the least amount of contact possible with Church members during provider of light, knowledge, and comfort—a powerful and the week. I was in a pre-Damascus mindset—feeling chastised ever-present force in the lives of her children on earth. and abandoned by God, wondering what subtle correction I Completing the celestial family along with the Father and the had missed when I was flying high that had led to my current Son, she performs the labor of salvation for the human family. crash of spirit and convinced that I, like Saul, had been struck If this idea were to become accepted doctrine, what a strong down for a time without sight. spiritual role model she would be for women—the Queen of Exasperated and seeking a solution, early in 2006, I de- Heaven, known at last! Perhaps all it takes is a shift in our cided something had to give. What happened next was a gift. thinking and the way we look for her, and we will see her right The thought came to me that perhaps what I needed to do was before our eyes. to make peace with my sightlessness and learn to savor what VICKIE EASTMAN my other senses were taking in. And so I surrendered to living Salt Lake City, Utah an unlit, off-road faith that I had never risked before. I didn’t
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try to appease the gossiping, disapproving factions in my ninth-grade year, I began studying New Testament theology at ward. I simply shut my eyes to them and ventured out in faith. a Catholic school. There I learned about how much the apos- While I was strengthening this resolve, I happened to meet tles didn’t know (and thus weren’t held accountable for) before a former minister’s son who had abandoned organized religion they received the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. It took me awhile to for many of the same reasons that were troubling me. The adjust to this portrayal of the apostles as frequently floun- human foibles of imperfect believers had blocked his view of dering fellows who found themselves caught up in the chaotic, God, and ultimately he left his religious practice because he hyper-political mess of the final three years of Christ’s life. I couldn’t see Christ reflected in the members of his faith. In his still remember the tolerance and compassion Sister Kathleen search for life beyond organized religion, my friend found a conveyed as she taught us about the Road to Emmaus, de- sense of humor and tolerance for a vast array of quirks and scribing how Christ’s disciples had been basically “flying blind” quacks. I took this lesson in forebearance from him, learned to in their pre-Pentecostal state. light my path with patience and laughter, and progressed with Ultimately, I came to feel a bit of that same compassion to- my plan to turn a blind eye to the too-obvious human failings ward the apostles. Learning about their human side endeared among those beside me in the pews and look for the godliness them to me. The fact that my faith was imperfect didn’t seem beyond. Over time, magically, mysteriously, I came to see as big a deal once I came to understand that it hadn’t been easy Christ reflected in them. to fully recognize the divinity of Christ even when walking at From my Primary lessons growing up, I had thought that his elbow and sharing every meal with him. I began to see the Christ’s apostles were near-perfect, enlightened demigods who virtue in blindness and unknowing in a religious context. basically got to sit around on the beach within arm’s reach of In my “Damascus and Emmaus” year, I came to understand Jesus. I could almost hear the sound of the surf in the back- how much I needed to reflect that same kind of tolerance and ground and the hushed whispers of the multitudes who in- compassion toward my fellow churchgoers and toward myself haled every syllable of the Savior’s teachings as they fell from in order to see Christ in them and in me. As I learned to do so, his lips. I inserted myself into airbrushed art and wished to be our impulse to change each other vanished, the ward leader- as intimate with Christ as were Peter, James, and John. ship came to no longer see me as someone in spiritual jeop- But when my family moved to Guam halfway through my ardy, and, like Paul as he received Ananias’s healing touch, I no
All-seeing eye WE’LL ALWAYS HAVE . . . NAUVOO?
OME READERS OF THE DESERET Book 2007 Winter catalog may S have been a little startled when they saw Paris’s Arc de Triomphe and Nauvoo’s LDS temple juxtaposed in an ad for Deseret Book’s Time Out tours. “Spring is near,” the ad reads, “Nauvoo or Paris await you.” Nauvoo or Paris? Isn’t that an odd pairing? Not at all! The City of Light and the City of Joseph share so many similar- ities that only the most hardened skeptic could fail to recognize the parallels. Consider: One was built on the horse- shoe bend of the Seine; the other, on the horseshoe bend of the Mississippi. Both are well known for their places to visit (Paris: The Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, the Notre Dame Cathedral; Nauvoo: The Joseph Smith Homestead, the Red Brick Store, the Mansion House). Both have renowned people buried there (Paris: Napoleon Bonaparte, Oscar Wilde, Jim Morrison; Nauvoo: Joseph, Emma, and Hyrum Smith). And both have seen their fair share of historical crises (Paris: the French Revolution of 1789; Nauvoo: the Mormon War of 1844). You may not be able to stay in the Ritz if you visit Nauvoo, but you can probably find room at the Nauvoo Family Inn & Suites. And both cities have seen, alas, their fair share of recent economic struggles—Paris: a steady decline of its manufac- turing industries; Nauvoo: the 2003 closure of the Nauvoo Blue Cheese Factory.
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longer felt condemned by the Divine. At times, my five years of decided that the best way for us to register our protest would wandering in the wilderness has felt like forty, but the rocky be to walk out while the letter was being read. So that is what road feels justified now. Without this season of blindness, my we did. off-road journey might never have yielded moments of illumi- Following the meeting, I wrote a letter to my bishop de- nation that felt like gazing into the face of God. tailing my objection to the Church’s involvement in what I ALISON TAKENAKA considered to be a partisan, anti-gay exercise primarily in- Essex Junction, Vermont tended to stir up the conservative voter base. I considered the vote to be political grandstanding, since those sponsoring the NOTE: The purpose of Margin Notes is to invite brief commen- amendment knew that it did not have a chance of winning ap- taries on passages from scripture or some other religious text. As the proval. I half expected to be called into the bishop’s office to title indicates, authors could use their literal margin notes as a discuss the matter. springboard toward a discussion of their experience or views on the Three days passed, and a knock came at my door. It was my passage. Margin Notes submissions should be no more than 500 bishop, holding a beautiful bouquet of flowers in a vase. He words long. Please submit reflections to editor Alison Takenaka had come, he said, because he had seen my public gesture and at: [email protected]. read my letter and wanted me to know that I am appreciated and loved in the ward. He had taken a similar gift to my friend. I invited him in, and we had a friendly chat. I know that he Righteous Dominion supports the Church in these affairs, and he knows that flowers will not buy me off. I told him that that I appreciated A SOFT ANSWER his kind and loving response but that he needn’t bring flowers every time I disagree with Church policies! N MAY 2006, I LEARNED IN ADVANCE THAT A FIRST In the sense of either of us persuading the other to our point Presidency letter would be read in every U.S. ward the of view, nothing changed because of his visit except that ten- I next Sunday urging members to call their senators in sup- sion relaxed and good feelings prevailed. Although I may be at port of an upcoming vote for a “Marriage Amendment” to the odds with the corporate church from time to time, I’m very U.S. Constitution. I mentioned this to a friend of mine, and we grateful to know that this bishop also cares for the black sheep
Closing Hymn THE END OF THE MORMONS
THE MORMONS HAD A GOOD RUN, BUT NOW IT’S ALL COME TO AN END. Since 1998, the members of this band, none of whom is LDS, have been playing punk music in Mormon missionary garb, including helmets, backpacks, dark pants, white shirts, and ties. And how well did these Mormons rock? According to Los Angeles Alternative’s Ryan Kluthe, “Most Mormon followers convert after witnessing a live show.” Vince O’Campo, the band’s guitarist, says the name for the band came to him serendipitously. “One day, coming home from work, I saw some Mormon missionaries riding along the side of the road. And then it hit me. How cool and surreal would it look for Mormons to be on stage at some dive bar playing rock music? Genius!” Since their inception, the Mormons have released one album, taped a show for channel LATV, and played at Muse Music in downtown Provo. They were featured in the Salt Lake Tribune, Los Angeles Alternative, and even BYU’s NewsNet. This past January, however, O’Campo posted a message announcing the band’s imminent end. “The sad fact of the matter is that The Mormons have. . . suffered a hard blow,” he wrote. “Johnny (drums) & Louie (guitar) have decided that being in The Mormons is too hard for them. . . This is very likely to be the final blow in our long history.” HTTP://HOME.COMCAST.NET/~MOOFEET/ST2.JPG SUNSTONE wishes The Mormons all the best. And—who knows? Perhaps Johnny and Louie, who decided it was “too hard” being Mormons, can now start their own band. We suggest they name it “The Jack Mormons.”
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in his flock. “A soft answer turneth away wrath” (Proverbs Joseph F. Smith, Anthon H. Lund [Second Counselor 15:1). in the First Presidency] and Francis M. Lyman ANONYMOUS [President of the Quorum of the Twelve], and the prayer of dedication was offered by President [Joseph NOTE: Righteous Dominion presents stories of leaders and others F.] Smith. We feel that our household is blessed in- who are true exemplars of the love of Christ, who have touched lives deed under such ministry. through their flexibility or their understanding that people are more John R. Talmage, the youngest of the Talmage children important than programs. Please email your stories to column edi- (born 1 February 1911) was a few months shy of his second tors Alan and Vickie Eastman at: [email protected] birthday at the time of the dedication. In his brief biography of his father, The Talmage Story (Bookcraft, 1972), he writes of this occasion: A Place for Every Truth Shortly after moving into their new home, James and May [his wife] entertained the General Authorities of “OUR HOUSEHOLD IS the Church in October, 1912 at a housewarming made forever memorable by the dedicatory prayer BLESSED INDEED” pronounced by President Joseph F. Smith. This made the already-precious home more impressive still, and This regular column features incidents from and glimpses into the set a solemnly joyous tone for the future years. (189) life and ministry of Elder James E. Talmage as compiled by James P. In his journals, Elder Talmage documents some of his inter- Harris, who is currently working on a full-length biography of this actions with other General Authorities and the kindnesses ex- fascinating Mormon apostle. The column title is adopted from the tended to him. Few entries compare to his enthusiasm for this statement inscribed on the apostle’s tombstone: “Within the Gospel dedicatory occasion. Then-Presiding Bishop Charles W. Nibley of Jesus Christ there is room and place for every truth thus far hosted an annual dinner for the General Authorities around learned by man or yet to be made known.” the time of October General Conference. The dinner included entertainment and was always noted in Elder Talmage’s PRACTICE PECULIAR TO MEMBERS OF THE journal. He also notes some private dinner engagements with Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is that of other Church officials. However, a private home dedication A dedicating their homes. Typically, the father of the like his appears to be a unique event. home, being the presiding priesthood holder, dedicates the At the time of the dedication, Elder Talmage had been an dwelling. In homes lacking a priesthood holder, a home apostle for less than a year and was the quorum’s junior teacher or other Church representative can offer a dedicatory apostle. He may have been “star struck” to have persons he prayer. In one case, at least, the presiding authority who dedi- had long honored come to his home for this special event. cated a home was the President of the Church. Among the members of the Quorum of the Twelve who were Elder James E. Talmage was ordained a member of the present at the Talmage home dedication were future LDS Quorum of the Twelve Apostles on 8 December 1911. Soon Church presidents Heber J. Grant, David O. McKay, and after Elder Talmage’s call, the Talmages purchased a home at Joseph Fielding Smith. George Albert Smith was out of town at 304 First Avenue in Salt Lake City. The family officially moved the time. into the house on 1 April 1912. In his journal entry of 17 October 1912, Elder Talmage notes two important events. The first sentence is typical of his The Rest of the Story Thursday journal entries: “Attended Council meeting of the First Presidency and the Twelve in the Temple.” THE TRANSFIGURATION The second paragraph, somewhat lengthy (and shortened here), demonstrates Talmage’s excitement over a special occa- HE STORY OF THE TRANSFIGURATION OF JESUS sion for his family: is recounted in all three Synoptic Gospels (Matthew This is a day long to be remembered by our family. T 17:1–13; Mark 9:2–13, Luke 9:28–36). In all three re- This evening we were honored in having as our guests countings, Moses and Elijah appear to Jesus. Moses, the law- the First Presidency, the Twelve Apostles, the giver, was present to symbolize the fulfilling of the Law. Elijah, Presiding Patriarch, and the Presidency of the Ensign the greatest of the lesser prophets, symbolized the Prophets. Stake. Except for absences due to illness or equally Mormon commentaries on this event generally emphasize unavoidable causes, all the brethren of the councils its significance as the moment when Jesus, Moses, and Elijah named above were present and with them their wives. gave priesthood keys to Peter, James, and John. “In conse- . . . The proceedings of the evening were pleasant and quence of the same Priesthood,” John Taylor taught, “Elias was impressive. The special feature was the dedication of translated, and got associated with Moses behind the vail, and our new home which took place immediately after became his companion in bringing a message of comfort to dinner. Impressive remarks were made by Presidents Jesus and his companions on the Mount” (Journal of Discourses
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7:370). “This Priesthood is everlasting,” Joseph Smith in- suggested that he and James and John, who were witnesses of structed in 1839. “The Saviour, Moses and Elias gave the keys the event, should build three tabernacles (“sukot”)—one for to Peter, James and John, on the mount, when they were trans- Christ and the others for Moses and Elijah. Putting aside the figured before him” (Journal of Discourses 6:238). Thus, for question of whether the transfiguration episode involved the most Mormons, the appearance of Moses and Elijah to Jesus bestowal of priesthood (an idea not suggested in any non-LDS and his disciples primarily represented a dispensational biblical commentaries), in Peter’s mind, then, this event fore- transfer of priesthood authority, an ancient precursor to a sim- shadowed the beginning of the messianic age, when the Law ilar event that took place in the Kirtland Temple in 1836, and the Prophets were fulfilled in Jesus, the light of the world. when Moses, Elias, and Elijah appeared and restored keys to For the event’s witnesses, the kingdom of God was being re- Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery. stored in all its legal (the Law) and spiritual (the Prophets) For this reason, less often recognized among Latter-day ramifications. To commemorate the event, Peter desired to Saints is the connection of this event with the Jewish “Feast of build the tabernacles as a testimony of his conviction that he the Tabernacles.” Leviticus 23:41–42 states that the Feast of now realized that Christ was the Messiah and that his reign the Tabernacles was to be held on the 15th through 21st days had begun. All three transfiguration accounts come after Jesus of the seventh month, which in the time of Christ was around promises his disciples that “there be some standing here, October. It was to be a feast of thanksgiving following the which shall not taste of death, till they see the kingdom of yearly harvest and a time of rejoicing for the light (“Shekinah”) God” (Luke 9:27; c.f. Mark 9:1; Matthew 16:28). that had guided the children of Israel through the wilderness. That LDS commentators miss the connection with the Feast The Jews were to build tabernacles (“sukot”) in which they of Tabernacles and focus instead on priesthood bestowal may lived for seven days. These booths were intentionally tempo- be because the Joseph Smith Translation for Mark 9:3 indicates rary, constructed of tree branches on three sides, with the front that the Elias present at the transfiguration was not Elijah but open. The roof was covered with palm branches, allowing rain John the Baptist, who appeared to Joseph and Oliver in 1829 to enter and the stars to be seen. The booths were designed to to restore the Aaronic Priesthood. (“Elias” is the Greek form of remind Israel of their travels in the wilderness and the provi- “Elijah.” I will treat the subject of Elias in a forthcoming “Rest sions of God on their behalf. The Jews held this feast to be the of the Story” article.) The LDS Bible Dictionary does agree with most important of all their feasts, since it represented God’s the standard interpretations of the dating of the transfiguration saving providences to His children, and it was tied closely to event—that it occurred in October—though the Bible the future coming of the Messiah and his reign. Dictionary does not note that this is when the Jews celebrated Many of these elements are present in the New Testament the Feast of the Tabernacles. transfiguration episode. Following Christ’s transfiguration, in BRIAN H. STUY which his body became as a bright light (“Shekinah”), Peter Lehi, Utah
Sunstone is pleased to announce the winners of the 2007 Eugene England Memorial Personal Essay Contest
1st Place ($200 prize) 3rd Place ($100 prize), submitted an essay to the “The Calling,” by STEPHEN R. “A Love Story,” KATHRYN contest, which received a record CARTER, Lyman, Wyoming MAUGHAN, New York, New York number of entries.
2nd Place ($150 prize), Congratulations to each winning The winning essays will appear “Loving a Killer Whale,” author! And thank you very in issues of SUNSTONE this year. JOANIE TIDWELL, Preston, Idaho much to each writer who Please watch for them!
343 NORTH THIRD WEST SUNSTONE SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH 84103–1215
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Forget it. Just forget it. We don’t want you to buy the funniest Mormon book ever written. Nope. You can’t talk us into it now. We refuse to let on that you can buy The Mormon Tabernacle Enquirer (chock full of The Sugar Beet’s best articles) at Borders or zarahemlabooks.com. You’ve procrastinated the day of your repentance, and now it’s eternally too late. See you in the lower kingdom, buddy.
NEW GYM HELPS PATRONS Bangerter paused for a moment to regain his composure. “When someone contracts a disease that is a predetermined EXERCISE THEIR AGENCY part of their mortal program,” he continued, “they need to by Christopher Bigelow either get healed by their bishop or endure to the end. It doesn’t do any good to incur needless medical expenses ALPINE, UT—Latter-day Saints are continually advised to along the way.” keep their agency in tip-top shape by exercising it on a regular To enforce the new policy, it is rumored that Altius will be basis. However, there has been no convenient, effective way to sending out testimony meeting spies. If they catch anyone fit regular agency exercise into a busy schedule—until now. talking about the spiritual benefits of a particular medical Opening this week is the new Choose the Right Gym, condition, Altius will allegedly cut off any further benefits where members can exercise their agency until they are spir- treating that condition. itually buff and then maintain their fitness. Set up like an ob- Bangerter did add, however, that the premortally afflicted stacle course, the gym features a progressively harder should continue to pay their health insurance premiums just pathway of tempting choices. It starts out with chocolate, in case they encounter health problems with no spiritual progresses through Coke, poker, and R-rated movies, and precursors. culminates with pornography, prescription painkillers, and Book of Mormon DNA evidence. Patrons who make a wrong choice are given an electric WHAT ARE WE SNACKING ON shock through a wireless device. “Just a half-hour three DURING SUNDAY SCHOOL? times a week at our gym will keep your agency at peak per- formance,” said proprietor Carl Johansen. “When you need the strength in real situations, you’ll be ready.” • Peep Stone Pebbles • Flakes of Brass • Oats and Covenants of HMO BANS PREEXISTENT the Priesthood • Chocolate Sugar BoMs CONDITIONS • Cream O’ Helaman SANDY, UT—In an effort to brake ever-increasing health in- • Alphas and Omegas surance expenses, Utah-based Altius Healthcare Corporation • Wheaties and Taries is no longer honoring claims for conditions contracted in • Priesthood Pops premortality. Altius has developed a new rubric that helps • Smiths-a-Plenty determine when a mental or physical condition stems from • Lucky Charms Signs tests the person agreed to undergo during mortality. & Tokens “We mourn when we think that we may have been • Sacrament-O’s working counter to the plan of salvation,” said Altius CEO • Cinnamon Clusters Jeffrey Bangerter. “All those prescriptions, all those opera- O’ Polygamists tions, all those hospital stays to alleviate a condition that • Mountain Meadows heaven itself had ordained for the spiritual benefit of those Munchies struggling souls. Not only did we help them cheat on the • Golden Fruity Bits test, but we also paid for it!” O’ Vicarious Sufferin’
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One of the world’s most celebrated literary and cultural critics asks: “How much of Joseph abides in contemporary Salt Lake City?” PERSPECTIVISM AND JOSEPH SMITH
By Harold Bloom
RECALL A LUNCH DECADES AGO WITH THREE nuity between Smith and Gordon B. Hinckley, I am unable to friends whom I continue to miss: the Southern historian see it. No disrespect is intended by that observation, which I C. Vann Woodward, the poet-novelist Robert Penn may be only another consequence of perspectivism. Warren, and the historian of American religion Sydney As an outsider, I wonder if the Mormons are not in danger Ahlstrom. Woodward and Warren, fierce anti-Emersonians, of becoming just another American mainline Protestant de- teased me (as usual) about the Sage of Concord, and Ahlstrom nomination. I gather (subject to correction) that Mormon con- silently enjoyed their banter and my counter-banter, such as it verts now are likelier to emerge from Asia or Africa than from may have been. I remember saying on that occasion that the United States, which is hardly a deprecatory remark. Emerson allowed you no option: you could be an Emersonian Fifteen years ago, I thought that conversion to Mormonism or an enemy of Emerson, but not neutral. There hardly seemed might make it the religion of the American West, but why to be a dispassionate stance available. should Americans embrace what presents itself in such all-too- A literary critic necessarily is more at home with Emerson familiar garb? The prophet Joseph announced the divinity of than with Joseph Smith, though I would name them both the human: by now he is Enoch, whom the Hebrews called (with Walt Whitman) as our authentic American prophets. Yet Metatron, the lesser Yahweh or Angel of the Divine Presence. my appreciation of the prophet, seer, and revelator Joseph has What has the Adam/God identity, carried on by Brigham limitations, because my perspectives, varied as they can be, Young, to do with the contemporary Gospel out of Salt Lake have their own difficulties. The more I brood on Joseph Smith, City? I become uncertain whether either Mormon or “Gentile” per- Perspectivism alone cannot answer that question, yet my spectives can encompass him. Something is always missing, as inability to understand some of my Mormon friends in their he himself prophesied. We don’t know him. attitudes towards the prophet-seer-revelator Hinckley surely “Sincerity” seems to me an inappropriate category in con- does emanate from inevitable differences in perspective, sidering Smith. Ezekiel and Jeremiah were scarcely sane, on Mormon and Gentile. This time around I cannot even place the evidence of their utterances. All bad poetry is sincere, quotation marks around the word Gentile, since at seventy-six Oscar Wilde advised us. Poetry and prophecy are near-allied, I scarcely can absorb its supposed relevance to me, as someone and I would blink if asked: “Is Yahweh sincere?” Judaic reli- of the Jewish persuasion. gious tradition teaches me to trust and love Yahweh, whom in fact I dislike and certainly do not trust at all. I keep urging him HE MOST RELEVANT term for the prophet Joseph is to go away, but he won’t, to my chagrin. The United States Max Weber’s charisma, and part of what remains in this fiercely persecuted the original Mormons: no one ought to T perspectivizing essay will be a note upon the phenom- forget that Joseph and his brother Hyrum were murdered by enon of charisma and Joseph Smith’s astonishing exemplifica- the Illinois state militia. As an outsider, I am puzzled by the tion of it. There are a few observations I find necessary before I current Salt Lake City hierarchy. If there is any spiritual conti- embark upon consideration of the charismatic Joseph. We speak of “Jesus of Nazareth,” but there was no Nazareth HAROLD BLOOM is Sterling Professor of the Humanities at Yale University. In 1992, he wrote the highly provocative study, The American at that supposed time; the correct term presumably is Jesus the Religion: The Emergence of the Post-Christian Nation, which included Nazarene, a Davidic grouping of spirituals. In any case, all extensive reflections on Joseph Smith and Mormonism that are still res- quests for the historical Jesus have failed dismally in my ami- onating throughout contemporary Mormon studies. Among his other books able judgment. But then, we have no evidence for a historical focusing on religion are The Book of J (1990), Omens of Millennium: Moses, let alone for the actual human beings who made the The Gnosis of Angels, Dreams, and Resurrection (1996), and Jesus Hebrew Covenants: Noah, Abraham, Jacob who became Israel. and Yahweh: The Names Divine (2005). William Blake wrote that all religion consists in choosing
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forms of worship from poetic tales and men thus forgot that all The hierarchy or Tower of Power can be viewed either as deities reside in the human breast. I am certain—as prophets, the apotheosis of Joseph or as his obliteration: is any middle seers, and revelators go—Smith was closer to Blake than position possible on this? We are caught here in Max Weber’s Hinckley is. dialectic of charisma and bureaucracy, for which Weber em- I have a fair number of Mormon intellectual friends, and ployed Friedrich Schiller’s formulation: the “disenchantment some of them surprise me by insisting that they are Christians. of the world.” Perhaps this essay should be retitled: “The dis- Perhaps, but with rather a distance, tends to be my silent re- enchantment of Joseph Smith.” All enchantment—erotic, spir- sponse. I have never understood why the magnificent itual, literary—depends upon partial or incomplete knowl- Sigmund Freud, who did not trust in the Covenant, though he edge. I believe Joseph when he says we don’t know him; to me, belonged to the Vienna Chapter of B’nai B’rith (“The Sons of it is the most important statement of his life. You can’t rou- the Covenant”), nevertheless insisted that monotheism was an tinize Smith: the Mountain of Names, when it was shown to intellectual advance over polytheism. Joseph Smith, Brigham me, transcended any reaction I could summon. Young, and John Taylor—three authentic American heroes, faults and all—were not even monotheists, but henotheists: they believed in a plurality of Gods, as I believe Joseph presumably the prophet Hinckley does not. when he says Milton, Blake, and Emily Dickinson were all Christ- we don’t ian sects of one each. Mormonism is not a know him; Christian sect, because it is (or should be) heno- to me, it is theist, and if you can be a Christian, Muslim, or Jew the most without even being a monotheist, then may all important the angels bless you! I remember several statement of long and learned conver- sations I enjoyed with his life. You Sterling McMurrin during my Salt Lake City sojourn can’t routinize in the late 1980s. He was generous enough to say Smith. we shared much the same
vision of the Prophet PHOTO OF HAROLD BLOOM BY GREGORY BOTTS, NEW YORK CITY Joseph, except that he felt (rightly) I neglected Freemasonry. With so distinguished a HE BEST WRITINGS on Joseph Smith avoid reduc- chider, I since have mended on this matter. The Rosicrucians tiveness. “What was he or she really like?” too often always were a fiction, but they seem to have transferred to the T turns out to mean: “What is the very worst thing you Masons the whole complex of Hermetist and Gnostic specula- can say about him or her that is essentially accurate?” tion, ancient and Renaissance. Researchers doubtless will con- Pragmatically, that is reductiveness, and takes us nowhere with tinue to find occult, Hermetist, and Kabbalist sources for Smith. Evidently he manifested the gift of grace: he was a Joseph Smith, yet I suspect he made or remade all arcane spec- charismatic. So was Brigham Young. Joseph could be un- ulations for himself. He was a Sufi who doubtless knew scrupulous, and Young could be brutal. What they accom- nothing of Sufism. What he most distinctly was not was an- plished was to turn a religion into a people, which was a repe- other American Protestant revivalist. Mitt Romney would not tition of the ancient Hebrew procedure. like my saying this, but if he truly followed Smith, Young, and I conclude by dismissing the routinization of Joseph’s Taylor, then he could not honestly present himself to the elec- charisma. We are left with three entities: the Mormon people, torate as a Christian. If Joseph Smith was a Protestant, then the Gentile cosmos, and Smith. I suspect that the Mormon and Muhammad was a Catholic. Perspective again is the crucial el- the Gentile perspectives alike always will leave Joseph in dark- ement: how much of Joseph abides in contemporary Salt Lake ness. Something will go on being an absence. We will not City? know him. Did he know himself?
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These are my people, my brothers and sisters, this is my Church, and my religion—and I love them all.
MORE FAITH THAN I’D THOUGHT
By Curt Bench
HEN ASKED TO PRESENT THIS OR THOSE OF us who sometimes reflection, I agonized over how have questions or doubts and who W many pillars of faith one should F worry that those who say that faith and have and did some research. I discovered one doubt cannot exist at the same time might be of the first mentions of pillars in the Book of right, there is great comfort in the exchange Genesis. It was in conjunction with Lot, who between Jesus and the man who brought to had only one: his wife. Thereafter I discovered him his son to be healed: the Two Pillars of Hercules and the Five Pillars of Islam. Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things Eventually I came upon T. E. Lawrence’s The Seven Pillars of are possible to him that believeth. And straightway Wisdom. I thought: if he can come up with seven pillars, I can the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, do . . . at least half that. So, I came up with four. Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief. (Mark In this very personal essay, I briefly examine my own pillars 9:23–24) and explain how they were built and judge how well they’re Hermann Hesse affirms the coexistence of these two ele- standing up after a half century of construction, repairs, and ments: “Faith and doubt go hand in hand; they are comple- rebuilding. As I contemplated this daunting task, I wondered mentaries. One who never doubts will never truly believe.”1 In how much faith I really have and worried that it isn’t enough an Easter sermon, the Rev. Jay Sidebotham points out that “the to qualify for Sunstone’s venerable “Pillars of My Faith” series. gospels make sure we realize that many disciples responded to But at least one friend reassured me by saying, “I’d bet you the Easter news with doubt and skepticism.” Sidebotham have more faith than you think.” I wondered if that were true quotes author Frederick Buechner, who said “If there’s no since I have more than my share of skepticism and sometimes room for doubt, there is no room for me.”2 Tennyson’s words even cynicism. resonate with me: “There lives more faith in honest doubt, be- But such debating is not really my fault: I have a genetic dis- lieve me, than in half the creeds.”3 order. I was born with a “why” chromosome which causes me For many years now, I have identified more with Richard to question everything. I understand that this condition, while Poll’s “Liahona Saints” than with “Iron Rod Saints.” According rare, is nevertheless quite prevalent among SUNSTONE readers, to Poll, an Iron Rod Saint and other known cases are scattered throughout the world. does not look for questions but for answers and in the This condition is known to cause severe agitation and even hy- gospel—as he or she understands it—finds or is con- pertension when a sufferer hears an authority figure say or ask fident that the answer to every important question can things such as: “Because I told you so!”; “Why do you have to be found. The Liahona Saint, on the other hand, is ask so many questions?”; or “The thinking has been done; the preoccupied with questions and skeptical of answers, debate is over.” finding in the gospel—as he or she understands it— answers to enough important questions so as to func- CURT BENCH is the owner of Benchmark Books in Salt tion purposefully without answers to the rest.4 Lake City, which specializes in new, used, out-of-print Joan Chittister, a well-known Benedictine sister and author, and rare LDS books. He published The First Mormon writes that in her spiritual journey, she eventually “found the Book: A Celebration of the 1830 Book of Mormon 5 with an Original Leaf (Red Butte Press, 2000). He and answers to be worse than the questions could ever be.” his wife Pat are the parents of four grown children, two sons and two Many great scriptures and treatises attempt to explain faith daughters. and what it is. Alma 32:21 explains what faith is not: “And
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now as I said concerning faith—faith is not to have a perfect yearning for truth or longing to commune with God, to feel knowledge of things; therefore if ye have faith ye hope for that he is there and that he knows me and loves me. things which are not seen, which are true.” For some reason in Sometimes I feel he is there, and at other times I wonder why, the Church today, it seems unacceptable to say “I believe” or “I if he loves us, he seems so distant and seemingly uncaring. feel” something is true. Unless we “know” whatever it is There have been times when I was mad at God, such as “without a doubt” or “beyond a shadow of a doubt,” it is im- when my youngest son, Landon, developed epilepsy as a tod- plied that we are spiritually or morally lacking. dler and we watched him have dozens of grand mal seizures, This state of affairs is confusing to those of us who give cre- writhing on the floor, unconscious. The day we took him to dence to the scores of references in scripture and other writ- the hospital, he had a seizure as I held him in my arms and ings that faith is a belief or confidence, not a definite knowl- turned him over to the E.R. staff. Months of seizures became edge, that a principle or idea is true. It is noteworthy that all years. Various medications were tried and discarded. Blessings but one of our own “Articles of Faith” begin simply with, “We were given and prayers offered, and it seemed that they, too, believe.” For me and others, there can be shadows of doubt. A were discarded. I poured out my anger and grief to the shadow does not cause total darkness—it brings only a cast of heavens, but they seemed sealed. But then the seizures became gray. Through my years of experience with life, religion, and less frequent and eventually stopped altogether. Landon is
Just as with thinking, I say, let there be too much reading rather than too little. For good or ill, books and reading have helped make me who I am today.
CURT BENCH SURROUNDED BY GOOD FRIENDS AND GOOD BOOKS
the world in general, I have come to believe that far more is now twenty and has not had a seizure since he was five years gray than black or white. Things that once seemed clear and old. sure are more obscure and tentative. I can relate better to Paul, Late one night about six years ago, I felt severe chest pain who said, “For now we see through a glass darkly,” seeing only which turned out to be a dissecting aortic aneurysm. I was “in part” (I Corinthians 13:12). The trials and realities of life rushed to the hospital, and just before going into the O.R. for can sometimes dampen or even threaten to destroy one’s faith, emergency surgery, I received a priesthood blessing. Some ten but the fact that they do not extinguish it makes faith all the hours later, I emerged, alive, but with a “zipper” and some more real for me and gives me hope. hardware in my chest. Later I was told that I had been very close to death and that more than half the patients with this HOPE type of aneurysm die. Holding the place until faith develops . . . Fortunately, an excellent medical team performed well while loved ones prayed for me and exercised faith. Under the HIS PREAMBLE LEADS me to my first pillar—the circumstances, I did not have much time to exercise my own Pillar of Hope. Without doubt (oh, sorry, I mean faith before my operation, but I did not believe I would die. I T clearly), I often have more hope than faith. Sometimes, certainly had hope—a yearning and a desire to live, for I had hope is a substitute for faith, taking its place until belief or so much to live for. faith develops. I like many of the synonyms for hope: desire, There is no doubt in some minds that a miracle occurred expectation, dream, yearning, or longing. I find myself that night. Others may think the doctors did what they do
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best, and the patient survived. The same reasoning might one another words of wisdom; yea, seek ye out of the apply to Landon’s seizures. Regardless, I am happy to give the best books words of wisdom; seek learning, even by doctors and medicine and God the credit for preserving my life study and also by faith. and taking away my son’s affliction. I can’t explain what hap- I figure that when God commands us to read books, we’d pened, but I am extremely grateful for the way everything better do it. turned out. For most of my life, I have read and studied a variety of books and subjects: fiction, history, biography, scripture, and BOOKS many others. Reading, especially history, can be very pleasur- Just as with thinking, let there be too much able but is sometimes disturbing. In the search for religious reading rather than too little. truth, both author and reader bump up against some un- pleasant facts and come out bruised—or worse. Those who HOUGH IT MAY seem a bit unusual, maybe even a bit are not well-grounded or open to the idea that even human be- wobbly, my next pillar is formed of books. Since child- ings called by God to do important things are still human may T hood, I have loved books and reading. I grew up in a even have their faith damaged. Some who develop doubts or Los Angeles suburb and frequently went to the beach with have questions about Church history or doctrine, for example, friends. When we were going to be there for several hours, I may find few who will sympathize or understand their
My families are pillars of strength and love that constantly prop me up.
THE BENCHES FOLLOWING CURT’S 2000 SURGERY (Surrounding Curt, from left to right): Landon, Pat, Chris, Gordon (Curt’s father), Brittany, Emily
would take a book to read, earning the not-affectionately- dilemma or crisis of faith. They may be treated with pity, or meant nickname “bookworm” from my friends. I would later worse, suspicion and condemnation. become a bibliophile, develop into a bibliomaniac, and finally Someone recently told me that his brother read and studied further degenerate into a biblioholic. At the monthly B.A. Church-related subjects extensively and became so disturbed meetings, I stand and say, “My name is Curt, and I am a biblio- that he quit studying. I often see this sort of thing in my busi- holic.” Desiderius Erasmus must have been talking about me ness of selling LDS books to people all along the Mormon when he said, “When I get a little money, I buy books; and if spectrum. Many individuals have called or come to our store any is left, I buy food and clothes.”6 So was James Logan, who who are hurt, confused, or angry that as they have read widely said, “Books are my disease.”7 I’m not sure this will comfort my and then asked questions of friends, family, or leaders, they wife, Pat, but S. J. Adair Fitzgerald and I have this in common: have been rebuffed, warned, or even punished. This is tragic “I have no mistress but my books.”8 Thomas Jefferson could and unnecessary. If we possess the truth, then what do we have have been speaking for me when he wrote, “I cannot live to hide or be ashamed of? As Saints, should we not at least “be without books.”9 I also love films, but after Richard Dutcher willing to bear one another’s burdens, that they may be light” told some of us a few years ago about his forthcoming film on and “mourn with those that mourn” and “comfort those that Joseph Smith, I said to him, “I think I’ll wait for the book.” stand in need of comfort” (Mosiah 18:8–9)? Have we not been I have taken seriously the admonition in D&C 88:118. told to leave the ninety and nine to search out and bring back And as all have not faith, seek ye diligently and teach the one?
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Just as with thinking, I say, let there be too much reading may not always like them or what they do. It is the same with rather than too little. Books should be our friends—and even the Church. I sometimes do not like something it does or cer- pillars—not our enemies, and we can draw great strength and tain individuals in it, but I still love it and them. Just as I occa- comfort from them. Although we can’t take the books with us sionally become annoyed or angry with a member of my when we leave this life (though if there is a way, I’ll find it), we family, I may feel the same way toward the Church. But let an can take the knowledge we glean from them. I have a faithful outsider attack my family or Church, and I will jump to their LDS friend who told me that after having read as much defense. I am at least a fourth-generation Mormon on more Church history as I have, I must have a lot of faith to remain an than one side of the family. active member. I simply reply that for good or ill, books and Growing up Mormon in southern California, I was one of reading have helped make me who I am today. about twenty Latter-day Saints in my high school. Much to the embarrassment of my friends, an LDS buddy and I used to FRIENDS take our scriptures to school and would bash with the Sharing without fear of censure or judgment. Jehovah’s Witnesses during lunch period or argue with RLDS friends after class. I went to early morning seminary for four LTHOUGH SOME PEOPLE would not necessarily call years, served several youth missions and later a full-time mis- some of my friends towering pillars of strength, they sion, played Church sports, was active in the ward Boy Scout A are pillars of faith and hope to me. Many friends have troop (in which I proudly achieved the exalted rank of “First had incalculable influence for good on me throughout my life. Class”), participated in annual road shows—just about every- Many have set an example of faith and what it means to be a thing Latter-day Saint youths can do. true latter-day Christian. They are models I have tried, not al- My parents were devout members who gave years of service ways successfully, to follow. in various callings. They did the best they could, loved us, I belong to a small group that calls itself the Latter-day raised us in the Church and taught us the principles of the Latitudinarians, inspired by the 17th-century Anglicans who gospel. Even so, two of their four children left the faith as downplayed dogma and allowed wide latitude and tolerance teenagers, and one brother who had severe problems with sub- in religious beliefs. We frequently have lunch together and talk stance abuse, took his own life at age thirty-three. At an early about many things, including the gospel, the Church, and the age, I saw free agency in action and learned that as dear as challenges and questions that sometimes arise in our journeys freedom to choose is, sometimes the consequences of wrong with them. We have probably never been accused of being pil- choices can be devastating. My oldest brother and I stayed in lars of faith standing firm; more likely, we’re probably more the Church and made it an integral part of our lives. My like drunken sailors trying to hold each other up. But we can second brother does not attend church, but he’s as good a talk about anything without fear of censure or judgment; no person as you’d want to meet and a great one to have in your topic is taboo. We may tease each other, but we’re safe from corner. criticism or disparagement. I feel very fortunate to have a safe My wife Pat and I have always been active and committed place to be—with friends who care and give support—be- Church members, have held numerous leadership and cause I know many who do not have such a source of strength. teaching positions, and have tried to live the gospel principles When one of us is despondent or angry about something that we always espoused. All four of our children participated ac- happened or was said in a Church meeting, the others offer en- tively in the Church during their formative years, and al- couragement and sympathy. We talk the problems out and try though not all of them are fully participating today, they have to help each other resolve them. Though it may not always each grown into loving, caring, moral adults. Almost as impor- seem like it at the time, we often come away stronger and more tant, they love books, reading, and learning. Each has had a determined to live as good Mormons and Christians. powerful impact on my life in more ways than I can count. They are now as much my friends as they are my children. FAMILY Not long ago, Pat was released as our ward Relief Society Let an outsider attack my family or Church, president. She is loved and appreciated by ward members, es- and I will jump to their defense. pecially by the Relief Society sisters, many of whom were the recipients of her love and concern—as well as her delicious Y FINAL PILLAR consists of two families: my nat- hot meals. A natural caregiver, Pat (and my kids, too, of ural family, which includes my birth family and my course) cared for (and put up with) me daily during the long, M wife and children, and the Church, which I view as difficult recovery from my operation, helping me get through a a family of sorts. Both are occasionally dysfunctional and un- very trying time of my life, mentally and physically. She is one forgiving but also harmonious and loving. For Latter-day of the most giving and unselfish persons I know—a genuine Saints, these two “families” are sometimes so intertwined that follower of Jesus Christ. Because of those qualities, she puts up separating them is difficult. Both have their share of skeletons with my occasional heterodoxy and loves me anyway. My fam- in the closet, black sheep, crazy aunts and uncles, and ele- ilies are pillars of strength and love who constantly prop me phants in the living room that everyone sees but won’t talk up. After many years, I have at last learned to separate the about. We always love members of our family even though we Church and Mormon culture from the gospel. In 1984, I was
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greatly heartened by Elder Ronald Poelman’s conference talk, saw this man, not as an enemy or irritant, but as a brother in “The Gospel and the Church” but dismayed when I found out the priesthood and the Church. It was an amazing transfor- he was told to make substantial changes in content and video- mation, totally unbidden, unexpected, and mystifying—but tape the talk again. In the original talk, he said: nevertheless very real. From that moment on, nothing he or Both the gospel of Jesus Christ and the Church of his wife said or did bothered me; in fact, we talked and Jesus Christ are true. However, there is a distinction laughed together often and got along very well. I found out between them which is significant and it is very im- they were actually very nice and generous people. I had badly portant that this distinction be understood. Of equal misjudged them, and I believe God helped me see that and importance is understanding the essential relation- healed me spiritually. ship between the gospel and the Church. Failure to distinguish between the two and to comprehend their N MAY 2005, my family and I attended the Mormon proper relationship may lead to confusion and mis- History Association meeting in Kirtland, Ohio, the scene of placed priorities with unrealistic and therefore failed I much crucial LDS history. One day, more than three hun- expectations. This in turn may result in diminished dred of us, members of both the LDS Church and the benefits and blessings and, in extreme instances, even Community of Christ (formerly the Reorganized Church), met disaffections. . . . in the Kirtland Temple and listened to talks and sang some of The gospel is the substance of the divine plan for the original hymns of the Restoration. A select choir, divided personal, individual salvation and exaltation. The into four groups and standing in the corners of the temple’s Church is the delivery system that provides the means main floor, sang and then was joined by the congregation. It and resources to implement this plan in each individ- was one of the most powerful and moving experiences of my ual’s life.10 life. The sound was so fervent and heavenly that I almost ex- In his classic essay, “Why the Church is as True as the pected a repetition of the Pentecostal event the original Saints Gospel,” Eugene England writes: experienced during the 1836 dedication of the temple. By the In the life of the true Church, as in a good marriage, time it was over, few eyes were dry. I even saw one veteran and there are constant opportunities for all to serve, espe- somewhat hardened historian emerge with tear-filled eyes. One cially to learn to serve people we would not normally friend in the choir, who calls himself a “Mormon agnostic,” was choose to serve—or possibly even associate with— so filled with emotion, he could not finish one of the songs. I’m and thus there are opportunities to learn to love un- sure many felt as strongly as I did that these are my people, my conditionally (which, after all, is the most important brothers and sisters, this is my Church, and my religion, and I thing to learn in the gospel).11 love them all. Perhaps there is a logical, natural explanation for Seven years ago, I had an amazing spiritual experience. As all these experiences and feelings; but if so, I don’t know what these are rare for me, I call them “Random Acts of Inspiration.” they are and feel I must attribute them to God. Though rare and mysterious, they are powerful and fortify my In spite of my fears, uncertainties, questions, doubts, and faith because I can’t explain them in any other way than spiri- grumbling, perhaps my friend was right. Maybe I do have tually. My wife and I were on a BYU Travel Study tour in the more faith than I originally thought after all. Holy Land, and in our group was a middle-aged couple who were very loud and obnoxious. The husband constantly NOTES cracked jokes or told us all about what we were seeing because they had been there ahead of the group and had previewed 1. Hermann Hesse, Reflections (New York: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1974), many of the sites. He loved being the center of attention, and 291. we were getting very annoyed. I didn’t know how I was going 2. Jay Sidebotham, “Friends of Thomas,” sermon given 27 April 2003, St. Bartholomew’s Church, New York City. to stand being with them for nearly two weeks, and we avoided 3. Alfred Lord Tennyson, “In Memoriam A. H. H.,” Canto 96. them as much as possible. My discomfort was spoiling the oth- 4. Richard D. Poll, “What the Church Means to People Like Me,” Dialogue: erwise great visual and spiritual experience of the Holy Land. A Journal of Mormon Thought 2 (Winter 1967): 107-17. One day we went to the Orson Hyde Memorial on the 5. Joan Chittister, Called to Question: A Spiritual Memoir (Lanham, MD: Sheed & Ward, 2004), 2. Mount of Olives. One of the men in the group was quite ill 6. Desiderius Erasmus, http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Desiderius_Erasmus and asked us to give him a blessing. As we stood on the (accessed 2 February 2007). mount, the men in the group consecrated some olive oil we 7. James Logan, cited in Edwin Wolf II, The Library of James Logan: had bought locally. As luck had it, I was standing right next to 1674–1751 (Philadelphia: The Library Company of Philadelphia, 1974). 8. S. J. Adair Fitzgerald, “My Books,” quoted in Rob Kaplan and Harold the irritating boor. But as we formed a prayer circle, he put Rabinowitz, Speaking of Books: The Best Things Ever Said About Books and Book his hand on my shoulder, and I felt as if an electric current Collecting (New York: Crown, 2001), 62. passed through me. I had to turn my head away as tears 9. Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, 10 June 1815. Quoted in Lester J. Cappon, ed., The Adams-Jefferson Letters (Chapel Hill: University of North flooded my eyes, and I felt all my ill feelings and anger to- Carolina Press, 1987) 443. ward this man drain from my whole being. As they flowed 10. SUNSTONE, October 1990, 50. away, they were replaced by feelings of love and forgiveness. 11. Eugene England, Why the Church Is as True as the Gospel (Salt Lake City: A warm sense of calm and peace came over me. I suddenly Bookcraft, 1986), 4–5.
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How can one work toward a future that is understood only vaguely, if at all? What is the effect of faith that is not active? Might active faith in Mormon visions of the future be essential to realizing them? TRANSFIGURATION PARALLELS AND COMPLEMENTS BETWEEN MORMONISM AND TRANSHUMANISM
By Members of the Mormon Transhumanist Association
We must assume our existence as broadly as we in any expectation to be revealed in the last times, which way can; everything, even the unheard-of, must be pos- their minds were pointed to by the angels, as held in sible in it. This is at bottom the only courage that is de- reserve for the fulness of their glory; manded of us: to have courage for the most strange, the A time to come in the which nothing shall be with- most singular and the most inexplicable that we may en- held, whether there be one God or many gods, they counter. shall be manifest. All thrones and dominions, princi- —RAINER MARIA RILKE1 palities and powers, shall be revealed and set forth upon all who have endured valiantly for the gospel of ORMON TRADITION TEACHES THAT, THROUGH- Jesus Christ. And also, if there be bounds set to the out time, God has inspired and endowed humanity heavens or to the seas, or to the dry land, or to the M with knowledge and power in various dispensa- sun, moon, or stars— tions, or epochal transitions in the relationship between di- All the times of their revolutions, all the appointed vinity and humanity. In ours, the “dispensation of the fulness days, months, and years, and all the days of their of times,” God is restoring all the knowledge and power of past days, months, and years, and all their glories, laws, dispensations while continuing to inspire and endow us more and set times, shall be revealed in the days of the dis- rapidly than in the past, to prepare for a greater future. pensation of the fulness of times— Joseph Smith proclaimed that knowledge restored and According to that which was ordained in the midst gained in our dispensation would be broad, encompassing mat- of the Council of the Eternal God of all other gods be- ters related to history, astronomy, geology, theology, and more: fore this world was, that should be reserved unto the God shall give unto you knowledge by his Holy Spirit, finishing and the end thereof, when every man shall yea, by the unspeakable gift of the Holy Ghost, that enter into his eternal presence and into his immortal has not been revealed since the world was until now; rest. (D&C 121:26–32) Which our forefathers have awaited with anxious Smith taught further that the inspiration and endowments gained in our dispensation would provide a foundation for You can learn more about the Mormon Transhumanist greater knowledge and power in future dispensations: Association at WWW.TRANSFIGURISM.ORG or by contacting We are the favored people that God has made choice [email protected]. of to bring about the Latter-day glory; it is left for us
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to see, participate in and help to roll for- our dispensation and the continuing advancement of God’s ward the Latter-day glory, “the dispensation work, Mormon tradition includes diverse specific teachings of the fulness of times, when God will and prophecies concerning conditions, events, and possibili- gather together all things that are in ties for his children during this pivotal time. The scriptures heaven, and all things that are upon the and prophetic commentary are replete with references to a day earth,” “even in one”. . . of transfiguration, humans becoming physically immortal, the The blessings of the Most High will rest resurrection of the dead, renewal of this world, and the dis- upon our tabernacles, and our name will covery and creation of worlds without end. However, the be handed down to future ages; our chil- prophecies do not describe in detail the causes of their fulfill- dren will rise up and call us blessed; and ment and only hint about the human acts that need to occur generations yet unborn will dwell with pe- before such things come to be. culiar delight upon the scenes that we have Given this vagueness, many Mormons find it difficult to ex- passed through, the privations we have ercise faith in ideas and teachings like these except in abstract overcome in laying the foundation of a ways. Hence, some respond to these teachings by concluding work that brought about the glory and that certain ideas are simply beyond our mortal capacity to un- blessing which they will realize; a work derstand. This response leads in turn to the question: What is that God and angels have contemplated the practical value of a belief in something one cannot under- with delight for generations past; that fired stand? How can one possibly have faith in an idea if one does the souls of the ancient patriarchs and not understand it? This criticism is especially challenging to prophets; a work that is destined to bring Mormonism, which emphasizes the importance of faith mani- about the destruction of the powers of fest in works. How can one work toward a future that is un- darkness, the renovation of the earth, the derstood only vaguely, if at all? glory of God, and the salvation of the We, the contributors to this article, felt much this same way. human family.2 During conversations across several years, we have observed The Bible and latter-day prophets also indicate that, although our faith was active in relation to many tenets of that God’s work will proceed more rapidly at the Mormonism, it was mostly passive in relation to the more con- end of our dispensation: crete aspects of future salvation: transfiguration and resurrec- For in those days shall be affliction, such tion to physical immortality, the paradisiacal glory of millen- as was not from the beginning of the cre- nial Earth, the organization of new worlds, and so forth. We ation which God created unto this time, found our passivity toward these ideas troubling. What is the neither shall be. And except that the Lord effect of faith that is not active? Is it even faith? If not, how can had shortened those days, no flesh should we change so that our faith is active in these ideas that we be saved: but for the elect’s sake, whom he value? Beyond that, we wondered: Might active faith in these hath chosen, he hath shortened the days. ideas be essential to realizing them? (Mark 13:19–20) As we discussed ways to promote active faith in a Mormon view of the future, we observed that, in the broadest sense, sci- The work of God is being carried on far be- ence and technology are among the most obvious manifesta- yond that which we can see with our nat- tions of active faith in the future: fighting disease and illness, ural eyes. The work of the preparation of improving communications, cleaning and beautifying environ- the earth, and of its inhabitants, is pressing ments, and extending life spans. This realization led us to ask forward with a rapidity that we who are how we could promote the application of science and tech- taking part in it do not realize. . . . He is op- nology to a Mormon view of the future, to bring these into dia- erating among the nations of the earth. His logue with the plan of salvation, and specifically Mormon ideas spirit has gone forth; and it is accom- about the exaltation of humanity to godhood. Questions like plishing that which He said should be ac- this eventually led us to become acquainted with complished. And this great work of the last Transhumanism. In hindsight, this discovery seems to have days will be cut short in righteousness.3 been inevitable. The parallels and complements between In addition to these broad teachings regarding Mormon and Transhumanist views of the future are remarkable.
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WHAT IS TRANSHUMANISM?
RANSHUMANISM IS A young and dynamic ideology that is drawing persons of widely varying perspectives TRANSHUMANIST into careful consideration of the future, and, in partic- T DECLARATION ular, the future evolution of humanity. Their common expecta- tion is that technological advancement will enable humans to 1. Humanity will be radically transform themselves gradually into persons whose capacities changed by technology so radically exceed contemporary capacities that the term in the future. We “human” may no longer adequately describe them. foresee the feasibility Transhumanists call these future persons “neohumans” or of redesigning the “posthumans” and refer to those in process of becoming them, human condition, as “transhumans.” including such Transhumanists generally trace their origins to humanism. parameters as the Pre-Socratic Greek philosophers looked beyond traditional inevitability of aging, limitations gods for scientific explanations of the world. Seventeenth-cen- on human and tury astronomer Galileo Galilei deferred to human observation artificial intellects, when conflicting with ecclesiastical authority. Eighteenth-cen- unchosen psychology, tury scientist Marquis de Condorcet claimed that medical sci- suffering, and our ence could be used to extend human life. confinement to the planet Although contemporary self-identifying Transhumanists are earth. predominantly secular, religious humanism has made substan- tial contributions to the emergence of Transhumanism in the 2. Systematic research should be broadest sense. Early Christians taught of identifying with put into understanding these coming developments and their Christ and becoming gods. Thirteenth-century Scholastic the- long-term consequences. ologians continued the recurring synthesis of Christianity with 3. Transhumanists think that by being generally open and popular science. Nineteenth-century theologian Nikolai embracing of new technology, we have a better chance of Fyodorov proclaimed that the common task of humanity turning it to our advantage than if we try to ban or prohibit it. should be the resuscitative resurrection of our ancestors. Likewise, as we will present more fully, the prophet Joseph 4. Transhumanists advocate the moral right for those who so Smith and subsequent Mormon leaders could be counted wish to use technology to extend their mental and physical among religious humanists whose ideas have informed the (including reproductive) capacities and to improve their emergence of Transhumanism. control over their own lives. We seek personal growth beyond An identifiable Transhumanist movement began in the last our current biological limitations. few decades of the twentieth century. In the 1960s, futurist Fereidoun M. Esfandiary, who later changed his name to “FM- 5. In planning for the future, it is mandatory to take into 2030” (in reference to his hope that he would live to celebrate account the prospect of dramatic progress in technological capabilities. It would be tragic if the potential benefits failed his 100th birthday which would have come in 2030), began to materialize because of technophobia and unnecessary identifying as “transhumans” persons who behave in a manner 4 prohibitions. On the other hand, it would also be tragic if conducive to a posthuman future. In the late 1980s, philoso- intelligent life went extinct because of some disaster or war pher Max More formalized a Transhumanist doctrine, advo- involving advanced technologies. cating the “Principles of Extropy” for continuously improving the human condition.5 In the late 1990s, a group of influential 6. We need to create forums where people can rationally debate Transhumanists authored the “Transhumanist Declaration,” what needs to be done, and a social order where responsible stating various ethical positions related to the use of and plan- decisions can be implemented. ning for technological advances (see Figure 1). Of the Transhumanist organizations that have formed, the 7. Transhumanism advocates the well-being of all sentience
leading organization is the World Transhumanist Association Transhumanist Declaration (whether in artificial intellects, humans, posthumans, or non-human animals) and encompasses many principles of (WTA), founded in 1998 by philosophers Nick Bostrom and 6 modern humanism. Transhumanism does not support any David Pearce. The WTA has worldwide membership that cur- particular party, politician, or political platform. rently exceeds 4000 persons in several geographically divided chapters and special-interest affiliates. Other contemporary or- Available at: ganizations with significant influence among Transhumanists http://transhumanism.org/index.php/WTA/declaration include the Extropy Institute,7 the Foresight Institute,8 the Immortality Institute,9 the Institute for Ethics and Emerging FIGURE 1
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SUNSTONE For Mormons willing to engage OR MORMONS WILLING TO ENGAGE TRANSHUMANISM, F the future events toward which they look are based not only in esoteric teachings and prophecies but also in the predictions of rational and scientifically committed persons looking at the future.
Technologies,10 and the Today, we are leveraging past technologies of physics, Singularity Institute for chemistry, biology, and brains to create a new technology: Artificial Intelligence.11 human technology, or that which we more commonly refer to In 2006, the WTA when we use the word “technology.” Human technology has voted to recognize the accelerated the rate of technological advance to such an extent Mormon Transhumanist that we can now observe the acceleration trend, as illustrated Association as its first religious special-interest affiliate.12 by advances in computing. Consequently, Transhumanists an- ticipate that we will experience, sooner than commonly ex- A TRANSHUMANIST VIEW OF THE FUTURE pected, increasingly dramatic advances that reflect the current technological paradigm, the Fourth Epoch. As futurist Ray Transhumanists view human nature as a work-in- Kurzweil states: progress, a half-baked beginning that we can learn to Combining the endowment of rational and abstract remold in desirable ways. Current humanity need not thought with our opposable thumb, our species ush- be the endpoint of evolution. Transhumanists hope ered in the fourth epoch and the next level of indirec- that by responsible use of science, technology, and tion: the evolution of human-created technology . . . other rational means, we shall eventually manage to most advanced mammals have added about one cubic become posthuman, beings with vastly greater capac- inch of brain matter every hundred thousand years, ities than present human beings have. whereas we are roughly doubling the computational —NICK BOSTROM13 capacity of computers every year.14 Gordon Moore, one of the founders of Intel Corporation, HE FOLLOWING IS a common Transhumanist view observed in the 1960s that the ratio of complexity to cost for of the future, with a focus on accurately portraying the computer components doubled approximately every two T view rather than defending it. Although not all years. Today this observation is known among computer sci- Transhumanists will agree with every aspect of this view, it re- entists as “Moore’s Law.” In its original formulation, Moore’s flects the ideas of persons who are generally recognized to Law reflected the rate of advance of the transistor-based com- have significantly influenced Transhumanism. Though we at- puter architecture of the time. More recently, Kurzweil recog- tempt to give an overall sense of major Transhumanist themes, nized that Moore’s Law also accounts for the rate of advance of in this brief introduction, we highlight the aspects that we in previous computer architectures (electromechanical, relay, and the Mormon Transhumanist Association believe closely par- vacuum tube computing) and subsequent computer architec- allel Mormon teaching and prophecy. In a later section, we will tures (integrated circuit computing), and that the rate of ad- explicitly identify the parallels and complements. vance has been increasing. Furthermore, Kurzweil observed that Moore’s Law could be generalized to describe accurately The Fourth Epoch the rate of technological advance broadly, well beyond the field of computing. This generalization of Moore’s Law is known THROUGHOUT history, technology has advanced through among futurists as the “Law of Accelerating Returns,”15 which epochal paradigms, each building on the technologies of pre- holds that technology as a whole is advancing, and will con- vious paradigms to progress at an accelerating rate. The word tinue to advance, at an exponential rate. “technology” is typically used to describe practical applications An exponential view of technological change contrasts with of human knowledge. Here the word is used more broadly to the intuitive linear view. We commonly expect future advances mean that which extends abilities, whether it be of humans or to occur at a rate similar to that of the past. Such an expecta- otherwise. In this sense, technology includes the laws of tion may approximate actual experience over short periods of physics and chemistry, which Transhumanists understand as exponential advance. However, over long periods, such an ex- foundational technologies characteristic of the first epochal pectation results in surprises. paradigm. The Second Epoch began with the emergence of bi- The story of the king and the mathematician illustrates the ological technologies such as DNA. The Third Epoch began contrast between an exponential view and the intuitive linear with the evolution of brains and intelligence. view.16 As the story goes, a king wanted to reward a mathemati-
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cian for service to the kingdom. The mathematician asked only prevalence of superhuman intelligence, and predicts this will for rice, the number of grains to be determined by placing a occur around 2045, when $1,000 will buy computing power single grain on the first square of a chess board and doubling equivalent to that of all human brains and when overall com- the number of grains on each subsequent square. The king puting power will far surpass that of all human intelligence quickly decreed that the mathematician should receive the re- combined today.19 quested reward. As servants began to place grains on the chess Transhumanists recognize that the advent of the Singularity board, it appeared to the king that the mathematician had re- is associated with serious—even existential—risks that should quested a small reward. After filling the first row, there were a be earnestly reviewed and mitigated. Indeed, the need to in- mere 255 grains—not even enough to fill a bowl. However, the crease awareness of and open a dialogue about these risks has king’s perspective changed dramatically when, before his ser- been among the primary motivators for the formation of vants had placed grains on even half the squares, the board Transhumanist organizations. In particular, our interest in could no longer contain the accumulated grains (16,777,215 adding a spiritual dimension to this dialogue was in large part grains on the first three rows). Soon, the king realized he would what prompted us to form the Mormon Transhumanist be unable to fulfill his decree (18,446,744,073,709,551,615 Association, which affirms: “We feel a duty to use science and grains on the whole board), even if he were to give his entire technology according to wisdom and inspiration, to identify kingdom to the mathematician. Like the king, most of us have and prepare for risks and responsibilities associated with fu- difficulty anticipating the full implications of exponential ture advances, and to persuade others to do likewise.” (See growth. Figure 2.)
The Technological Singularity Transhumans
BASED on an exponential view, Transhumanists anticipate that “TRANSHUMANS” is the name Transhumanists give to persons increasingly frequent technological advances will culminate in who are evolving from a human to a neohuman state through dramatic advances so rapid and astounding that, given current the application of technology to the human condition. limitations, we cannot predict or direct them. However, the ex- Although the dramatic advances of the Singularity will enable ponential view also suggests we as humans may also adapt, en- most of this evolution, it has already begun. We are all trans- hancing our minds and bodies, and even our world, to such a humans to the extent that we have applied human technology degree that we transcend these limitations and maintain an to our being—orthodontics and vaccinations, for example. The ability to predict and direct technological advances. extent to which the average human applies technology to her Transhumanists call this future period, the “Singularity.” being has been increasing at an exponential and accelerating Kurzweil writes: (meta-exponential) rate. However, as in the story of the king What, then, is the Singularity? It’s a future period and the mathematician, most of us simply have not yet realized during which the pace of technological change will be how profoundly, and eventually rapidly, technology will change so rapid, its impact so deep, that human life will be irreversibly trans- formed. Although neither utopian nor dystopian, this epoch will transform the concepts that we rely on to give meaning to our lives, from our business models to the cycle of human life, including death itself.17 Mathematician Vernor Vinge associates the Singularity with the advent of superhuman intelli- gence: computers capable of re- cursively producing yet more in- telligent computers at yet faster rates. Writing in 1993, Vinge pre-
dicted the Singularity will occur , MARKETING PRECEDES THE MIRACLE between 2005 and 2030.18 In slight contrast to Vinge, Kurzweil
associates the Singularity with a CALVIN GRONDAHL
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the form of new drugs or gene therapies. Following closely on the heels of the genetics revolu- tion, the nanotech revolution is likely to begin in the 2020s. Nanotech will extend human abilities through miniaturization, enabling us to manipulate materials at an atomic scale. In his book, Engines of Creation, scientist Eric Drexler outlined in some detail a universal molecular assembler that may be realized during this time.21 Drexler envisions an atomic-scale builder directed by a computer that can create molecular structures, including copies of itself to assist in constructing complex structures in short periods of time. Although still theoretical, the essential physical properties of a molecular assembler, such as being able to manipulate individual atoms, have been demonstrated in the laboratory, and contemporary engi- neers are working, with increasing success, on imple- menting various components of the assembler as proofs- of-concept.22 Such advances in miniaturization may shift genetic defect and enhancement treatments from drug to Association nanotech solutions.
Affirmation of the The third revolution, in robotics, is likely to occur in the 2030s. By this time, non-biological computing AFFIRMATION OF THE MORMON power should readily exceed the computing power of TRANSHUMANIST ASSOCIATION non-enhanced human brains. As understanding of and Mormon Transhumanist control over biology increases, humans would also learn 1. We seek the spiritual and physical exaltation of individuals and to integrate biological and information technology. their anatomies, as well as communities and their environments, Robotics would take on increasingly sophisticated forms according to their wills, desires, and laws, to the that may be visually and tactilely indistinguishable from extent they are not oppressive. biological bodies. Robotic interfaces would make it pos- sible for humans to transfer their experiences and knowl- 2. We believe that scientific knowledge and technological power are among the means ordained of God to enable such exaltation, in- edge to one another, or to non-biological substrates to cluding realization of diverse prophetic visions of transfiguration, enable indefinite extension of life. The emergence of immortality, resurrection, renewal of this world, and the discovery strong artificial intelligence, in non-biological or en- and creation of worlds without end. hanced biological form, would lead to the advent of the Singularity. 3. We feel a duty to use science and technology according to wisdom Even today, in advance of the revolutions outlined and inspiration, to identify and prepare for risks and responsibili- above, humans are beginning to enhance their bodies in ties associated with future advances, and to persuade others to do ways that were previously impossible. For example, likewise. LASIK eye surgery is now commonplace and can im- prove patients’ eyesight beyond native abilities. FIGURE 2 Pacemakers are widely used to extend human lives in ways that biology alone cannot. Prosthetics and cosmetic us over time. Looking forward, Kurzweil identifies three areas surgery are other examples of enhancements and recon- in which overlapping revolutions are likely to occur as we ap- structions that, although formerly beyond our capabili- proach the Singularity: genetics, nanotech, and robotics.20 ties, have become conventional. The genetics revolution is likely to occur within the next decade. Exponential growth in computing power has made it Worlds within Worlds possible to sequence DNA strands rapidly and facilitate the de- coding of complex protein-folding sequences. A recent monu- ALTHOUGH, by definition, the Singularity will change mental achievement, and another example of the surprising our nature and that of our world in currently unpre- nature of exponential growth, is the Human Genome Project. dictable ways, we can speculate regarding possible post- When the project began in 1990, critics pointed out that it Singularity futures, assisted to some extent by the appli- would take thousands of years to finish, given the speed at cation of logic to extrapolations from current trends. which it began, but fifteen years later, it was completed. The For example, a common task to which computers are genetics revolution would enable us to treat defects in and applied today is that of simulation. Flight and automo- make enhancements to our biological state, with treatments in bile simulators have been available both to the military
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and for entertainment for many years. Financial simulators IS A SIMULATED WORLD “REAL”? have become important for investors, as medical simulators have improved our ability to train surgeons. Many persons RE YOU LIVING IN A WORLD COMPUTED BY NEO- enjoy playing games such as SimCity that simulate urban plan- human gods? Snickering and rolling of eyes may ensue, ning. Entire worlds are simulated, for both scientific and en- A yet the question is only the latest of an ancient and pres- tigious kind. Plato taught that the world of experience is but a sil- tertainment purposes, such as the popular virtual world houette of a world of eternal Forms, which in turn is a silhouette named “Second Life,” in which persons buy and sell real estate, of the Good. Descartes required divine benevolence to achieve hold meetings, even dance, and generally engage in a virtual confidence in experience, and Berkeley positioned God as the life through the proxy of their avatars—virtual representations immediate cause of experience. These and others remind us of of themselves. the uncertainty of matters beyond our physical and spiritual ex- Over time, the quality of simulations has greatly improved. perience. Users of early flight simulators saw only bumpy black and This metaphysical uncertainty also presents itself to us in less white outlines of abstract geometric features representing ter- sophisticated ways. From the time we are children, we joke that rain above an equally coarse rendition of a cockpit. Today, full- we might now be dreaming or hallucinating—“what have you color, three-dimensional geographies and other aircraft can be been smoking?” After watching a psycho-thriller film, we catch wrapped around a user inside a machine that moves to provide ourselves questioning our own mental stability. During a long road trip through the desert, we see the distant mirage and for realistic physical sensations. wonder whether we always recognize other illusions in our exper- As the computing power available to us continues to ad- ience. vance exponentially, it seems reasonable to suppose that one of Common sense leads most of us, most of the time, to ignore the things we might do is to run increasingly detailed simula- or laugh away metaphysical uncertainty, and proceed with confi- tions of our world or worlds like it. As the level of detail in- dence in experience. As William James put it: “The greatest em- creases and the user interface improves, it would become ever piricists are only so upon reflection and when left to their in- more difficult to discern any difference between our world and stincts they dogmatize like infallible popes.”1 This may not be the simulated worlds, to the point that, for all practical pur- such a bad thing. poses, “simulation” or “virtual” would no longer accurately de- Whether we are dreaming, hallucinating, or psychopathic, and scribe those worlds or the apparently conscious persons in whether we are living in a world computed by neohuman gods, them. our experience now remains the most real we know. We continue in pain and pleasure, misery and joy. Our memories neither de- In his paper entitled “Are You Living in a Computer crease nor increase in poignancy. Our power to help or hinder is Simulation?” philosopher Nick Bostrom identifies and ex- unchanged. The smile on the face of the beaming child and the pounds on some interesting logical ramifications associated tear in the eye of the reminiscing centenarian remain as mean- with the possibility of running simulations detailed enough to ingful. Nick Bostrom writes: include persons like us. To paraphrase, he argues that at least No clarity is gained by asserting that the world isn’t one of the following is true: “really real” if we are in a simulation. The simulated (1) our civilization will never achieve the computing world that we experience would, however, be only a power required to run detailed world simulations; part of reality. Reality would also contain the computer (2) civilizations that achieve such computing power that runs the simulation, the civilization that built the never run a significant number of detailed world computer, and perhaps many simulations; or other simulations and much else beside.2 (3) we almost certainly live in a detailed world simu- lation ourselves. (The notes for this sidebar In other words, if ever we manage to run a world simulation appear on page 39) that is detailed enough to be indistinguishable from our own, we should assume it is extremely unlikely that ours is the only or the first civilization to do so. It follows that there is a high probability that both (a) we are living in such a world our- selves, and (b) the world running our world is itself run by an- other, and so forth in possibly infinite regression. This argu- ment is known among futurists as the Simulation Argument. For some, the first thing that comes to mind when they read of the Simulation Argument is The Matrix, a popular film that portrays a world in which humans are imprisoned in a simula- tion and used as an energy source for the machines running the simulation. However, this dystopian portrayal is not neces- sary. To the contrary, it seems a more balanced portrayal would better account for the ramifications of worlds within worlds, as
described by Bostrom: Is a simulated world real?
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SUNSTONE In addition to wondering about the N ADDITION TO WONDERING ABOUT THE MEANS BY WHICH GOD I will bring about the resurrection, Mormons can work faithfully toward the promotion of related scientific research. In addition to speculating about scriptural mysteries, Mormons can apply the scriptures to their lives in more pragmatic ways by investing some of their time and resources in the ethical advancement of technology.
For example, if nobody can be sure that • the ability to communicate complex thoughts and they are at the basement-level, then every- emotions instantaneously without visual aids or body would have to consider the possi- speech bility that their actions will be rewarded or • expanded sensory inputs that enable higher punished, based perhaps on moral criteria, awareness of even distant environs by their simulators. An afterlife would be a • superhuman strength and agility real possibility. Because of this funda- • perfect control of individual desires, moods, mental uncertainty, even the basement civ- or mental states ilization may have a reason to behave ethi- • increased capacity to experience joy, love, pleasure, cally. The fact that it has such a reason for and other emotions. moral behavior would of course add to Not all concepts of posthumans are associated with bodies— everybody else’s reason for behaving biological or otherwise. Some Transhumanists desire to morally, and so on, in truly virtuous circle. abandon bodies entirely and “upload” their identities into some One might get a kind of universal ethical type of network or computer system where they would be free imperative, which it would be in every- from the perceived demands and constraints of bodily form. body’s self-interest to obey, as it were “from Neohumans, in whatever form they evolve into, may in- nowhere.”23 teract, directly or indirectly, with humans as neohuman “gods.”25 Their interactions with humans may include restoring Neohumans dead humans to life, as speculated by mathematician Frank Tipler, or simulating human worlds.26 Nick Bostrom writes: TRANSHUMANISTS use the terms “neohumans” Although all the elements of such a system can be nat- or “posthumans” to refer to persons who have ad- uralistic, even physical, it is possible to draw some vanced to the point that, according to present stan- loose analogies with religious conceptions of the dards, one may no longer consider or recognize world. In some ways, the posthumans running a sim- them to be human. Although descriptions of this ulation are like gods in relation to the people inhab- state differ and accommodate a wide variety of per- iting the simulation: the posthumans created the spectives, most Transhumanists see some form of world we see; they are of superior intelligence; they are radically enhanced personhood as their ultimate “omnipotent” in the sense that they can interfere in the objective.24 workings of our world even in ways that violate its This should not imply that becoming neohuman physical laws; and they are “omniscient” in the sense is a final destination. Neohumans would continue that they can monitor everything that happens.27 to advance and progress. The term is used simply to distinguish between humanity’s current state and A MORMON VIEW OF THE FUTURE its future possibilities, as well as these can be envi- sioned at present. It is also inevitable that visions of S STATED EARLIER, we, the members of the Mor- a neohuman future will evolve as time goes on. As mon Transhumanist Association, feel that the many imagined now, possible neohuman traits, all in- A significant changes on the horizon make it important volving technological enhancements to current for Latter-day Saints to become actively involved in shaping human capacities, include: the future by mining pertinent gospel insights for injection • highly advanced intellectual capabilities, into the wider Transhumanist discussion. While Mormon greater than ours in magnitude as ours teachings about the future are vague in many respects, so, are greater than those of other animals too, are the various Transhumanist scenarios. That vagueness • physical bodies that are immune to dis- makes sense within the context of Mormon teachings that ease and aging present the unfolding creation as following a particular tra-
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jectory, with perhaps a basic framing and thrust, that has And in that day whatsoever any man shall ask, it been followed “worlds without end,” allowing for genuine shall be given unto him. prophetic insight without predetermining the future. The And in that day Satan shall not have power to Mormon understanding is that the power of God is used to tempt any man. work with, not control, creation. And there shall be no sorrow because there is no In this section, we provide a brief overview of some signifi- death. cant Mormon notions about future events, especially those In that day an infant shall not die until he is old; that touch on human flourishing and our potential godhood. and his life shall be as the age of a tree; As with the previous section, our goal is to describe rather than And when he dies he shall not sleep, that is to say defend these teachings, and we will focus primarily on those in the earth, but shall be changed in the twinkling of for which we sense there are strong Transhumanist parallels. In an eye, and shall be caught up, and his rest shall be the final section, we’ll explicitly address the parallels and com- glorious. plements, and share more about our own interests and hopes Yea, verily I say unto you, in that day when the for helping to shape the future through applying Mormon un- Lord shall come, he shall reveal all things— derstandings. Things which have passed, and hidden things which no man knew, things of the earth, by which it The Dispensation of the Fulness of Times was made, and the purpose and the end thereof— Things most precious, things that are above, and WE opened this article with a brief discussion of the “dispen- things that are beneath, things that are in the earth, sation of the fulness of times.” It is in this dispensation that and upon the earth, and in heaven. (D&C 101:26–34) God is bringing together “a whole and complete and perfect Joseph Smith frequently expressed the imminence of the union” in which a “welding together of dispensations, and Millennium and encouraged us to prepare for it: keys, and powers, and glories should take place,” and in When I contemplate the rapidity with which the great which “those things which never have been revealed from the and glorious day of the coming of the Son of Man ad- foundation of the world . . . shall be revealed unto babes and vances, when He shall come to receive His Saints unto sucklings” (D&C 128:18). According to Joseph Smith, this Himself, where they shall dwell in His presence, and dispensation will see “a work that is destined to bring about be crowned with glory and immortality . . . I cry out the destruction of the powers of darkness, the renovation of in my heart, What manner of persons ought we to be the earth, the glory of God, and the salvation of the human in all holy conversation and godliness!30 family.”28 The dispensation of the fulness of times is also char- Brigham Young suggested that many of us may not even acterized by the speed at which God’s work progresses. As know when the Millennium has already begun: George Q. Cannon stated, “The work of the preparation of the Will the Saints arise from the dead? Yes. Who will earth, and of its inhabitants, is pressing forward with a ra- know it? But a few. When the resurrection com- pidity that we who are taking part in it do not realize. . . . mences, I say but few will know it . . . Will the Saints [T]his great work of the last days will be cut short in right- rise from the dead before the world is converted? Yes. eousness.”29 . . . When the Millennium is ushered in, no man or woman will know anything about it, only by the Transfiguration, the Millennium, Immortality power of God. He will rule and reign, and His glory shall be in Zion, and the wicked will not know it is MORMON tradition teaches of an imminent “day of transfigu- the hand of our God.31 ration,” expanding across a millennial period of time, when Prophets have envisioned that, during the Millennium, we mortals are transfigured and resurrected to immortality (see and other forms of life will be immortal. While immortality D&C 63:20–21). The Millennium is an imminent and widely might be defined as achieving a perfect physical state, it is an unexpected future period, during which a progressive transfig- ideal with diverse manifestations. Joseph Smith taught that uration and resurrection to immortality will occur as our being raised to an immortal state may involve moving from knowledge and power continue to increase. The advent of the lesser to greater manifestations of immortality and that such Millennium is associated with disruptive changes in world progressions may involve ceremonial ordinances: conditions, culminating in the return of Christ. Despite its im- Now the doctrine of translation is a power which be- minence, many will not expect the Millennium to occur when longs to this Priesthood. There are many things which it does, but a few will recognize the signs of its coming. belong to the powers of the Priesthood and the keys The Doctrine and Covenants describes conditions during thereof, that have been kept hid from before the foun- the Millennium, including some aspects of transfiguration, as dation of the world; they are hid from the wise and follows: prudent to be revealed in the last times.32 And in that day the enmity of man, and the enmity of beasts, yea, the enmity of all flesh, shall cease from be- Michael the archangel (Adam) holds the keys of the fore my face. resurrection and after a man is raised from the dead,
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SUNSTONE Whether tomorrow is wonderful HETHER TOMORROW IS WONDERFUL OR HORRIBLE W may depend on the extent to which persons with good minds and loving hearts become actively involved in shaping the future.
has an immortal habitants for yet another that is greater. Joseph Smith used our body and receives an world as an example, indicating that, even as it serves as a ce- ordination to hold lestial heaven, its inhabitants would continue to learn of yet the keys of the resur- greater heavens: rection from under This earth, in its sanctified and immortal state, will be the hands of Michael made like unto crystal and will be a Urim and or those having au- Thummim to the inhabitants who dwell thereon, thority, he then has whereby all things pertaining to an inferior kingdom, the power to raise the dead, and not before.33 or all kingdoms of a lower order, will be manifest to those who dwell on it; and this earth will be Christ’s. Brigham Young speculated: Then the white stone mentioned in Revelation 2:17, I have friends on the earth, for God would raise them will become a Urim and Thummim to each individual up for me to do my work. That is not all; by and by who receives one, whereby things pertaining to a the Lord will say to the sleeping dust, awake and higher order of kingdoms will be made known; And a come forth out of your graves. I am on hand; the Lord white stone is given to each of those who come into wakes me up or sends somebody to do it that pos- the celestial kingdom. . . .(D&C 130:9–11) sesses the keys of the resurrection. My dust is waked up; my spirit is re-united to it, and it is made a celes- Gods tial body filled with immortality and eternal life.34 LATTER-DAY prophets have proclaimed that there is a plurality Worlds without End of gods, each of which became so by emulating God, and that becoming gods ourselves is the ultimate destiny of humanity as MORMON tradition teaches that the eternities consist of innu- children of God. These prophets envision that humans will join merable heavens of types and degrees toward which our world in the creation of worlds and heavens and the development of may advance. These heavens are inhabited by a plurality of gods other gods, expanding our influence throughout eternity and whom we may join as we emulate and become as God. Prophets engaging in yet greater works. Joseph Smith stated: proclaim that innumerable worlds of diverse types and varying Here, then, is eternal life—to know the only wise and degrees have been and will be created. Further, they envision true God; and you have got to learn how to be Gods that these worlds advance through processes such as transfigu- yourselves, and to be kings and priests to God, the ration and resurrection, becoming heavens according to the de- same as all Gods have done before you—namely, by sire and work of their inhabitants and preparing their inhabi- going from one small degree to another, and from a tants for yet greater heavens. Brigham Young taught: small capacity to a great one—from grace to grace, You may now be inclined to say, “We wish to hear the from exaltation to exaltation, until you attain to the mysteries of the kingdoms of the Gods who have ex- resurrection of the dead, and are able to dwell in ever- isted from eternity, and of all the kingdoms in which lasting burnings and to sit in glory, as do those who sit they will dwell; we desire to have these things por- enthroned in everlasting power.36 trayed to our understandings.” Allow me to inform As Gods, we would join in the creation of worlds and you that you are in the midst of it all now, that you are heavens: in just as good a kingdom as you will ever attain to, We believe there are many, very many, who have en- from now to all eternity, unless you make it your- tered into power, glory, might, and dominion, and are selves by the grace of God, by the will of God, which gathering around them thrones, and have power to is a code of laws perfectly calculated to govern and organize elements, and make worlds, and bring into control eternal matter.35 existence intelligent beings in all their variety, who, if The work of creating innumerable worlds and heavens may they are faithful and obedient to their calling and cre- have neither beginning nor end. This idea is expressed in a ation, will in their turn be exalted in [the] eternal Mormon hymn by William Phelps entitled “If You Could Hie kingdoms of the Gods.37 to Kolob.” (See Figure 3.) Moreover, there may be no end to the advance of heavens, as one heavenly degree prepares its in- These children . . . through their faithfulness to the
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gospel, will progress and develop in knowledge, intel- ligence and power, in future eternities, until they shall be able to go out into space where there is unorgan- ized matter and call together the necessary elements, and through their knowledge of and control over the laws and powers of nature, to organize matter into worlds on which their posterity may dwell, and over which they shall rule as gods.38
PARALLELS AND COMPLEMENTS
N THIS FINAL section, we briefly identify some of the parallels between Transhumanist and Mormon views. We I first note parallels—places where we see the sensibilities of the two groups matching very closely. We then present com- IF YOU COULD HIE TO KOLOB plements—spots within the two frameworks where we see William W. Phelps one might benefit from the insights of the other. If you could hie to Kolob in the twinkling of an eye, And then continue onward with that same speed to fly, TRANSHUMANIST PARALLELS WITH THE MORMON VIEW Do you think that you could ever, through all eternity, Find out the generation where Gods began to be? THE Transhumanist and Mormon views parallel each other generally as follows: Or see the grand beginning, where space did not extend? • The present is a time of rapid progress in knowledge; Or view the last creation, where Gods and matter end? • A fundamental change in our nature and that of Me thinks the Spirit whispers, “No man has found ‘pure space,’ our world is imminent; Nor seen the outside curtains, where nothing has a place.” • Both we as humans and our world can and will dramatically transcend our current limitations. The works of God continue, and worlds and lives abound; More specific parallels can be seen in the following areas: Improvement and progression have one eternal round. • The LDS notion of the “dispensation of the fulness There is no end to matter; there is no end to space; of times” parallels the Transhumanist view of our There is no end to spirit; there is no end to race. having entered the “Fourth Epoch”; There is no end to virtue; there is no end to might; • LDS teachings about transfiguration, the There is no end to wisdom; there is no end to light. Millennium, and immortality parallel Transhumanist There is no end to union; there is no end to youth; notions of the Singularity and transhumans; There is no end to priesthood; there is no end to truth. • LDS teachings about worlds and heavens without end and the human potential for godhood parallel There is no end to glory; there is no end to love; Transhumanist understandings of simulations and There is no end to being; there is no death above. posthumans. There is no end to glory; there is no end to love; There is no end to being; there is no death above.
The Dispensation of the Fulness of Times If you could hie to Kolob and the Fourth Epoch FIGURE 3
MORMON teachings about the dispensation of the fulness of times parallel Transhumanist ideas regarding the Fourth 3. Future progress depends on knowledge and power acquired Epoch in at least the following ways: today. In the dispensation of the fulness of times, we are estab- lishing the foundation for yet greater dispensations to come. 1. Present knowledge is the culmination of multiple past periods. Analogously, in the Fourth Epoch, we are introducing tech- In the dispensation of the fulness of times, we benefit from the nologies that will enable future epochs to combine biological restoration of the knowledge and power of previous dispensa- and information technologies. tions. Likewise, in the Fourth Epoch, the technologies of pre- vious epochs enable present human technologies. Transfiguration, the Millennium, Immortality, 2. Acquisition of knowledge and power is accelerating. In the and the Singularity and Transhumans Dispensation of the Fulness of Times, God is shortening the days and increasing the rapidity of the work. Similarly, in the MORMON teachings about transfiguration, the Millennium, Fourth Epoch, technological advances are recursively lever- and immortality parallel Transhumanist ideas regarding the aging previous advances to progress exponentially. Singularity and transhumans in at least the following ways:
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1. A period of dramatic and unexpected change is imminent. creating worlds without end, exalting others to immortality Mormon theology teaches that though some ridicule and few and eternal life, and expanding throughout eternity. have recognized its signs, the Millennium approaches, and we Comparatively, Transhumanists posit that neohumans may ad- should prepare ourselves for the day of transfiguration and its vance forever, sending their intelligence through time and attending changes. Likewise, although critics scoff and despite space. the intuitive linear view of change, Transhumanists believe the Singularity is nearer than we anticipate, and that we should re- TRANSHUMANIST COMPLEMENTS TO THE MORMON VIEW view and mitigate the associated risks. 2. Minds and bodies may be changed in diverse ways. Mormon THE Transhumanist view may complement Mormon faith in doctrine speaks of how in the twinkling of an eye, we may be three areas: transfigured or resurrected to bodies of varying types and de- • It provides a rational basis for certain LDS beliefs; grees of glory. Similarly, Transhumanists recognize that con- • It promotes Latter-day Saints’ exercising a more active tinued advancement in information technologies may enable faith in Mormon notions of the future; genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics to enhance our minds • It encourages Latter-day Saints to have more optimistic and bodies. expectations for the near future. 3. Anatomical changes may extend lives indefinitely. Mormons teach that from one transfiguration to another, exchanging blood Superstitious versus Reasonable Hope for spirit, we may attain immortality. Analogously, as transhu- mans, we may extend or exchange our biological substrate with ONE of the criticisms of religion in today’s postmodern world a different substrate to ensure the persistence of our identity. is that religious belief is superstitious. Critics often claim that 4. Our work may contribute to these changes. Mormons teach faith in ideas such as immortality and theosis (human potential that transfiguration and resurrection may be ordinances for us for godhood) have no basis in reality. Transhumanist ideology to perform for each other. Comparatively, Transhumanists be- has the potential to answer these criticisms by providing be- lieve our science may provide technology that enables us to lieving Mormons with a relatively reasoned and detailed vision enhance ourselves and attain indefinite longevity. of possible future events. For Mormons willing to engage Transhumanism, the future events toward which they look are Worlds without End and Worlds within Worlds based not only in esoteric teachings and prophecies but also in the predictions of rational and scientifically committed per- MORMON teachings related to worlds and heavens without sons looking at the future. The Transhumanist view comple- end and the human potential for Godhood parallel ments the Mormon view by providing a basis of belief, not Transhumanist ideas related to simulations and posthumans only in mystical teachings, but also in rational predictions. who act as Gods in at least the following ways: Idle versus Working Faith 1. Our world may be among infinite and diverse worlds. According to LDS teaching, there may be telestial, terrestrial, AS discussed in the introduction, Mormonism contains many and celestial worlds without end, and heavens of yet higher or- teachings about the future that are so vague that they are diffi- ders, each reflecting the work and desire of its inhabitants. cult to exercise faith in, except in very abstract ways. Critics Likewise, there exists a Transhumanist notion that in addition rightly ask about the value of believing in something we to the worlds of our space and time, there may be an infinite cannot begin to understand. And given Mormonism’s prag- regression of simulations, each with inhabitants adapted to matic view of the world and emphasis on the manifestation of varying physical laws. faith through works, this criticism is especially challenging for 2. We may one day utterly transcend our current knowledge and Latter-day Saints. power. According to Joseph Smith and other prophets, as the Mormons who take Transhumanist notions seriously can children of God, we may learn to become like God as we emu- appeal to more than unexplainable or incomprehensible mys- late and join in the plurality of gods. Similarly, Transhumanists teries. They may appeal to rationality and science. Their argu- believe we may one day be able to merge with our technology ments then become more understandable, meaningful, and to become neohuman, with minds and bodies enhanced in practically applicable. Transhumanism provides Mormons ways far beyond what is currently imaginable. with something tangible toward which to work. In addition to 3. Others may have produced us, and we may yet produce others. wondering about the means by which God will bring about Mormon theology understands that God created our world and the resurrection, Mormons can work faithfully toward the pro- its inhabitants and that we may one day join in the creation of motion of related scientific research. In addition to speculating yet other worlds. Analogously, in Transhumanist speculation, about scriptural mysteries, Mormons can apply the scriptures neohumans in another world may very well be simulating our to their lives in more pragmatic ways by investing some of world, and we may eventually simulate yet other worlds. their time and resources in the ethical advancement of tech- 4. There may be no end to progress. The Mormon doctrine of nology. In addition to wondering how God will provide a way eternal progression declares that God may progress forever, for us to overcome physical ailments and limitations,
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MIRACLES
ORMON THEOLOGY HAS PLACED SPECIAL EMPHASIS ON GOD’S adherence to logic and natural law, and the need to provide a rational M explanation for divine operations. Departing from the Calvinist doctrine of God’s absolute supremacy as the creator of all matter, Joseph Smith taught instead that God was a discoverer who subsequently worked to shape the world according to his will: God himself, finding he was in the midst of spirits and glory, because he was more intelligent, saw proper to institute laws whereby the rest could have a privilege to advance like himself. The relationship we have with God places us in a situation to advance in knowledge. He has power to institute laws to in- struct the weaker intelligences, that they may be exalted with himself.1
Now, the word create . . . does not mean to create out of nothing; it means to orga- nize; the same as a man would organize materials and build a ship. Hence, we infer that God had materials to organize the world out of chaos—chaotic matter, which is element…. Element had an existence from the time [God] had. The pure principles of element are princi- ples which can never be destroyed; they may be organized and reorganized, but not destroyed. They had no beginning and can have no end.2 Not only is matter eternal, but all spiritual phenomena have materialistic explanations, despite our present lack of under- standing. “There is no such thing as immaterial matter. All spirit is matter, but it is more fine or pure, and can only be discerned by purer eyes” (D&C 131:7). Miracles are understood as presently irreproducible events that defy explanation but necessarily adhere to law, and over which we will someday have control: Miracles cannot be in contravention of natural law, but are wrought through the operation of laws not universally or commonly rec- ognized. Gravitation is everywhere operative, but the local and special application of other agencies may appear to nullify it—as by muscular effort or mechanical impulse a stone is lifted from the ground, poised aloft, or sent hurtling through space. At every stage of the process, however, gravity is in full play, though its effect is modified by that of other and locally superior energy. The human sense of the miraculous wanes as comprehension of the operative process increases.3
A miracle is an occurrence which, first, cannot be repeated at will by man, or, second, is not understood in its cause and effect rela- tionship. History is filled with such miracles. What is more, the whole story of man’s progress is the conversion of “miracles” into con- trolled and understood events. The airplane and radio would have been miracles, yesterday.4 Mormons tend to embrace scientific discovery and advancement, believing that “the glory of God is intelligence” (D&C 93:36) and that “a man is saved no faster than he gets knowledge.”5 This emphasis on emulating God as we strive to understand and control the natural world has strong parallels with the Transhumanist view of continually progressing humans who seek increasing understanding of and control over their anatomy and environment.
Miracles (The notes for this sidebar appear on page 39)
Mormons can promote the rights of individuals to cure and MORMON COMPLEMENTS TO THE TRANSHUMANIST VIEW enhance themselves as the technology becomes available. MORMONISM may complement Transhumanism in several A More Optimistic View of the Immediate Future important areas: • Mormon teachings about the human potential for godhood SOME Latter-day Saints believe that additional war and disaster provide resources for adding love and a moral coloring to must occur before the return of Christ and the advent of the Transhumanist views of what it means to be neohuman; Millennium. Critics argue that faith in such interpretations of • Mormonism, along with other religious traditions, can biblical prophecy could be self-fulfilling and result in needless encourage Transhumanists to adopt a more respectful and suffering and death. Influenced by a Transhumanist perspec- accurate view of certain traditional values and the impor- tive, Mormons may open themselves to more optimistic views tant role they play in human lives; of the near future. Given cause to believe that the prophetic • Mormon emphases on universal salvation can provide an promises of the Millennium could be realized without further important reminder in the work and thinking done in war and destruction, Mormons are more likely to seek to bring Transhumanist circles that technologies and opportunities about such prophecies through constructive efforts and are must be available to all. more likely to choose to view prophecies of destruction as warnings rather than inevitabilities. Hence the Transhumanist Brazen versus Sanctified Desire view complements the Mormon view by encouraging an opti- mistic expectation for the near future of humanity. SOME religious critics charge that Transhumanists are “playing
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God” and that the desire to change the human condition is understanding of salvation and human flourishing emerges in blasphemous. These critics claim that while technology im- the future. proves efficiencies, it does not make us holier. Instead, it feeds our desire for power. According to these critics, this desire is CONCLUSION evil, and it is immoral to aspire to the kinds of power attrib- uted to neohumans. They ask: to what end do we pursue these E RECOGNIZE THAT the Transhumanist ideas improvements over past states of being? Mormonism answers: sketched briefly in this article may sound far- godhood. The desire to work together toward godhood is the W fetched to persons who do not closely monitor highest and most righteous desire and the fullest manifestation what is occurring in technological and scientific circles. Still, of love. Hence, the Mormon view complements the we believe that many recognize that we as a species have Transhumanist view by providing a spiritual justification for reached a critical moment in human history. Through techno- the desire to better the human condition. logical advancement in recent centuries, humans now navigate depths of the sea that sunlight does not reach and rocket Disdainful versus Respectful Attitude through the sky at speeds greater than that of sound. For more than a half century now, humans have had the technological THERE are detrimental consequences to acting with a negative power to destroy themselves and a significant portion of the or dismissive attitude towards established cultures, religions, planet. Within just the past quarter century, we’ve seen the and values. When the advocates of social or philosophical emergence of the personal computer, which now provides movements do not respect the traditions of persons they are more power in a handheld device than what once filled entire trying to persuade, those advocates decrease their success. rooms. Humans have visited the moon, space tourists are cur- In common with advocates of other nascent movements, rently orbiting the Earth, and robots are scouting Mars. The some Transhumanists are negative or dismissive toward tradi- human genome has been entirely sequenced. Worldwide data, tion. This was demonstrated early in the Transhumanist move- text, audio, and video communications via the Internet are in- ment when FM-2030 advocated Transhumanist rejection of re- expensive and commonplace. We regularly read in the news of ligious belief and traditional family values.39 advances toward cures for cancer. This is today! More recently, the World Transhumanist Association has ac- Whether tomorrow is wonderful or horrible may depend on knowledged that it would like to find better ways to commu- the extent to which persons with good minds and loving hearts nicate with and understand religious persons.40 To that end, become actively involved in shaping the future. We cannot Transhumanists should not ignore the religious lives of others prove that God will prevent us from misusing the power with and should take a closer look at core values at the heart of the which we have been endowed, nor can we prove that God will various world religions. Many of these religious values can ensure human immortality despite our efforts or lack thereof. It benefit Transhumanists as they work on the cutting edges of may be that we can avoid the prophesied horrors of the last technological innovation, just as Transhumanists might be able days just as Nineveh avoided its prophesied destruction (Jonah to teach others how to complement their religious lives in ful- 3). It may be that the transfiguration and resurrection to im- filling and practically beneficial ways. mortality will happen no faster than we do the work, as with Mormonism, with its Judeo-Christian roots, has much in the preaching of the gospel to all persons. More generally, it common with established cultures, despite differences in var- may be that charitable and working faith, leveraging all the in- ious beliefs. Mormonism emphasizes the traditional values of spiration and endowments we have received, is essential to the charity and unity, avoidance of unnecessary contention, and realization of prophetic visions of the future. With such risks the building up of all persons, regardless of their beliefs. These and opportunities at hand, what shall we do? Where do and many other gospel teachings belong at the Transhumanist wisdom and inspiration guide us? As Captain Moroni asked in discussion table to impact the way future technological ad- the Book of Mormon: “Do ye suppose that the Lord will still de- vancement unfolds. liver us, while we sit upon our thrones and do not make use of the means which the Lord has provided for us?” (Alma 60:21). Elitist versus Universal Access In response to these questions, we repeat the words of Brigham Young: CRITICS of Transhumanism argue that emerging technologies You are in just as good a kingdom as you will ever at- will be disproportionately available to those with greater finan- tain to, from now to all eternity, unless you make it cial resources.41 An elite class of neohumans may arise to the yourselves by the grace of God, by the will of God, exclusion of poorer individuals. Central to Mormon ideology which is a code of laws perfectly calculated to govern is the assertion that all persons are invited to partake in salva- and control eternal matter.42 tion. Mormonism even goes so far as to advocate faith that all The Mormon Transhumanist Association was formed on persons will find happiness in immortality and in heavens that 3 March 2006 and became the first religious special-interest af- vary according to their individual desires. Hence, the Mormon filiate of the World Transhumanist Association on 6 July 2006. view complements the Transhumanist view by positing a We invite you to explore our website at WWW.TRANSFIG- moral imperative to advocate for universal access to whatever URISM.ORG or contact us at [email protected].
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NOTES 41. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumanism#Gattaca_argu- ment_.28biotech_divide.29 (accessed 15 January 2007). 42. Young, Journal of Discourses, 3:336. 1. Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, http://www.mythosandlogos. com/Rilke.html (accessed 2 February 2007) . NOTES FOR “IS A SIMULATED WORLD ‘REAL’?’” SIDEBAR 2. Joseph Smith, Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, ed. Joseph Fielding Smith (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1938), 231–32. 1. William James, The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy 3. George Q. Cannon, Journal of Discourses, 26 vols. (London and (New York: Dover Publications, 1956), 13–14. Liverpool: Latter-day Saints Book Depot, 1855–86), 24:56. 2. See the “Frequently Asked Questions” section of Nick Bostrom, “Are You 4. Of his name change, Esfandiary wrote: “2030 reflects my conviction that Living in a Computer Simulation?” at http://www.simulation-argument.com/ the years around 2030 will be a magical time. In 2030 we will be ageless and faq.html (accessed 15 January 2007). everyone will have an excellent chance to live forever. 2030 is a dream and a goal.” See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FM-2030 (accessed 15 January 2007). NOTES FOR “MIRACLES” SIDEBAR 5. These principles can be viewed at http://www.extropy.org/principles.htm (accessed 2 February 2007). 1. Joseph Smith, Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, ed. Joseph Fielding 6. See http://transhumanism.org (accessed 2 February 2007). Smith (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1938), 354. 7. See http://www.extropy.org (accessed 2 February 2007). 2. B. H. Roberts, ed., History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 6 8. See http://www.foresight.org (accessed 2 February 2007). vols. (Salt Lake City: Deseret News, 1902–1912), 6:308–09. 9. See http://www.imminst.org (accessed 2 February 2007). 3. James E. Talmage, Jesus the Christ: A Study of the Messiah and His Mission 10. See http://www.ieet.org (accessed 2 February 2007). According to Holy Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 11. See http://www.singinst.org (accessed 2 February 2007). 1983), 143. 12. See http://transfigurism.org (accessed 2 February 2007). 4. John A. Widtsoe, Evidences and Reconciliations (Salt Lake City: Improve- 13. Nick Bostrom, “Transhumanist Values,” at http://www.nickbostrom.com/ ment Era, 1960), 129. ethics/values.html (accessed 15 January 2007). 5. Smith, Teachings, 217. 14. Ray Kurzweil, Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology (New York: Viking, 2005), 16. 15. See “Accelerating Change” at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerating_ change (accessed 15 January 2007). 16. The many variations of this story may have originated in Hindu mythology. For more information, see “Ambalappuzha Sri Krishna Temple” at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambalappuzha_Sri_Krishna_Temple (accessed 2 February 2007). 17. Kurzweil, Singularity is Near, 7. 18. See “Vernor Vinge on the Singularity” at http://mindstalk.net/vinge/vinge- sing.html (accessed 15 January 2007). 19. See “Law of Accelerating Returns” at http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/ art0134.html (accessed 15 January 2007). For a good overview, see Technological Singularity” at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity (accessed 15 January 2007). 20. See “Law of Accelerating Returns,” at http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/ art0134.html (accessed 2 Februray 2007). 21. Eric Drexler, Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology (New York: Bantam/Doubleday, 1986). 22. Kurzweil, Singularity is Near, 239. 23. See Nick Bostrom, “Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?” at ESCHATOLOGY http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html (accessed 15 January 2007). They said Jesus said he’d come back, 24. See “What Is a Posthuman?” at http://www.transhumanism.org/ index.php/WTA/faq21/56/ (accessed 2 Februray 2007). which means that, till then, now is never, 25. See “Posthuman God” at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posthuman_God will never be, can never be (accessed 2 Februray 2007). 26. Frank Tipler, Physics of Immortality (New York: Doubleday, 1994). enough: the merest between, 27. Bostrom, “Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?” time sliced sliver-thin, 28. Smith, Teachings, 232. an empty car speeding 29. Cannon, Journal of Discourses, 24:56. 30. Smith, Teachings, 29. from vague nostalgia toward final fire. 31. Brigham Young, Brigham Young Addresses, 6 vols, comp. Elden J. Watson, Or the secular version: incessant Progress (n.p., 1979–1984), 2:127. 32. Smith, Teachings, 170. hurrying past the contorted faces 33. Wilford Woodruff, Journal of Discourses, 6:120. outside the window, talking the Kingdom 34. Young, Brigham Young Addresses, 2:100. 35. Young, Journal of Discourses, 3:336. of genetic engineering and artificial intelligence 36. Smith, Teachings, 346–47. over muffled wails. 37. Brigham Young, unpublished general conference discourse, 8 October 1854, available at http://www.xmission.com/~country/by/ 100854_2.htm (ac- cessed 28 February 2007). Or maybe Jesus spoke like the sun 38. Lorenzo Snow, Improvement Era, June 1919, 658–59. 39. See “Transhuman” at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhuman (accessed like river, thunder and leaf 15 January 2007). saying now now forever now. 40. See http://www.transhumanism.org/index.php/WTA/communities/reli- gious/ (accessed 15 January 2007). —JAY UDALL
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2004 Brookie & D. K. Brown Fiction Contest Moonstone Winner
ROSEVIEW THE FOURTH
By Carol B. Quist
ONNIE GOLDBERG SILVERMAN WAITED UNTIL S Lonnie’s shoulder warmed in the sun, laughter fil- everyone else, including Aunt Edie in her casket, had tered through the doors behind the chapel. Ron must L filed into the giant recreation hall Edith Goldberg had A have finished reading Aunt Edie’s playful, pointed called “Roseview’s Folly” to enjoy the catered dinner and stage foreword to the printed program and gotten the repose Edie show. Then she slipped into the chapel where many people, had intended. Lonnie hoped the stiffly disapproving Memorial not realizing Edie’s would not be the standard funeral, had Mortuary men and bishopric counselor would ultimately relax turned the lights on and almost filled the place before being and enjoy the food and fun. redirected. For after the viewing Lonnie’s husband Ron had As she heard the band begin to play in the rec hall, she re- conducted in a jam-packed Relief Society room—nothing was ally noticed the walls behind the choir rows. She stared. Felt to be the usual bishop-guided service—Ron had explained the sick. Clamped her mouth shut. When had the two large fres- program to come and, nodding as Lonnie turned aside, led the coes been scraped off or plastered over? She strained to recall way. their details. The one on her left had shown Christ being bap- For a moment, she stood just inside the double doors. The tized, light glazing both the water and descending dove. The newly lowered ceiling made it look squat, not hallowed like right-hand panel had shown Christ on Galilee’s shores, hand the vaulted heavens of her childhood church. She sat nine toward a fisherman but always seeming to beckon, to wel- rows back on the west where, despite heavy, hooded purple come, Lonnie, too. Squinting, trying to discern through drapes, the sun glazed some pews. shadows where at least a white wing might have been, she tip- “Where God’s sun anoints us, we need no mortal hand,” toed down the aisle, up the steps, and around the organ. Aunt Edie had always said. And Edie had complied with the Sitting on the back of the curved choir bench that had sur- block schedule she disliked by going variably to Relief Society vived the latest remodeling, she fingered the possible wing in Roseview First Ward, Sunday School in Roseview Second, area—bigger, more like a seagull’s. Of course gulls had flown and sacrament meeting in Roseview Third, as schedules for the over Galilee, too. Then she touched what she knew were a use of the building rotated and outside light changed with the plasterer’s strokes. Frantically fingering, she stroked a wide season and time of day—and sometimes, of course, to hear a area before breaking into sobs. certain speaker. Lonnie had to follow and, as a result, attracted As a child, when she’d been able to get in alone, the art and different teams of tormenters. Never friends. chapel had sheltered her from meanness, from kids taunting, Aunt Edie told secretaries and clerks, “God will mark my chasing, hitting, tearing her clothes, yelling, “Lonnie Goldberg roll,” and from then on never accepted callings. She advised doesn’t have a dad. She doesn’t have a mother either—how each bishop, “The scriptures say men should do many things too bad!” of their own free will. You now claim the word ‘men’ includes women. That includes me. So call me only if I fail to make the UMPING up, she bolted out the door beside the bishop’s meal, tend the children, or drive someone to the doctor.” They office. Trumpets, trombones, and cymbals blared as she never called. Aunt Edie always seemed to know first where the J squeezed through bushes to the old coal chute door in needs were. Lonnie never knew how. the foundation. The chute had been a construction goof— furnaces had always been oil or gas. But until welded shut, CAROL B. QUIST is a three-time Brown fiction contest that chute had let Lonnie’s father and her aunt—young or- winner and a member of the Utah State Poetry Society and phaned Lemuel and Edith Goldberg—into the refuge of their League of Utah Writers. She has won prizes for poetry, foster parents’ church. light verse, fiction, and non-fiction. Her work has been “Make no mistake,” Aunt Edie had often said, showing published regionally and even in Good Housekeeping. That latter Lonnie the certificates. “You were born to my brother Lemuel coup does not make her a good housekeeper. and his wife Sarah a year after they had married. Then when
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you were two months old, a drunk driver hit their car—” want to move on soon—throw my funeral festival in it!” Aunt Oddly, despite her free, feisty talk about almost everything Edie’s wink should probably have alerted Lonnie that if anyone else, Aunt Edie had never been able to add more about the could choose her time to die, Edith Goldberg could. deaths than “guardianship,” “insurance,” and “inheriting the Exploring the rest of that new wing, Lonnie found the house.” nursery door open. Good—not only blonde, blue-eyed chil- But Lonnie’s repeatedly shouting those facts hadn’t silenced dren surrounded Christ. And pictures of prophets and tem- neighborhood kids. They all had real, not adopted, parents. ples, Lehi’s family on the ocean, handcart pioneers, and even And no one else’s mother earned a living by running a hair some women from the Bible ringed the room. salon in the basement. Widowed Nancy Silverman had taught In the restroom, she washed and dried her face and de- school, which had somehow been more respectable. Athletic, burred and combed her long, thick black hair. She reached dark-haired Ron Silverman, her son, had been a good-sized into a stall for tissue to blot her lipstick. Then, seeing lint on JACK FROST
teen when the two had moved in, so nobody picked on him. Lonnie laid her cheek against the door she’d often wished had accepted her, too. She looked for the form she’d etched in Aunt Edie always seemed to the adjacent stucco. Aunt Edie had said, “Christ lived and died for every soul. What people do, regardless of rank—Well, we can only learn from our own lives. We can’t travel anyone else’s know first where the needs were. path to faith.” Lonnie never knew how. ltimately easing out and brushing off her clothes, Lonnie heard the crowd cheering inside—cheering, U she knew, for the performers, but also for Edith the seat, she yanked a square to brush it off. Apparently pres- Goldberg’s strength, compassion, outspokenness, endurance, sure-sensitive, the toilet flushed. And flushed again and again. and undaunted spirit. Often since the remodeling Edie had Lonnie panicked, studied the piping, fingered a square projec- said was a mistake and a waste, she’d stressed, “Remember, tion stamped Zurn. Zurn? ‘new’ doesn’t always mean ‘improved.’ But even though only From down the hall, laughter soared again—great timing— two wards meet here now, leaders insisted on adding that and despite the rushing water, Lonnie laughed, too. Easily she barn, so when my time comes—and I am getting tired, I may imagined Aunt Edie saying, “I try to be diszurning and always
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conzurned for others.” Giggling, Lonnie finally pushed some- firm like Aunt Edie’s lips. Aunt Edie’s eyes had been open thing like a navel at the end of the zurn; the flushing stopped. wider, and she had arched brown eyebrows and short, slightly Seriously, though, Aunt Edie had often said, “Can’t let the curling reddish brown hair. Church do everything for you.” And Edie would have somehow used the Zurn incident in a talk about agency. S she crossed the foyer, Lonnie saw the bare wall In the mirror, Lonnie saw in herself Aunt Edie’s definite above the mantel. Was art being banished from the F C chin and upturned nose But her mouth was questioning, not A church? Had she been away too long to know some edict? For gone was the painting of Christ telling the fishermen to cast their nets on the other side. Yes, try casting on the other THE 2007 BROOKIE & D.K. BROWN side, the painted Christ had suggested. Well, she and Ron had done just that—moved to the East Coast for several years, en- FICTION CONTEST joying work, church friends, before recently, amazingly, being transferred back where they could be nearer her aunt and O I Ron’s mother. Years earlier, under that painting, at the recep- THE SUNSTONE EDUCATION FOUNDATION invites writers to enter its tion following their temple wedding, they’d shaken people’s annual fiction contest, which is made possible by a grant from the hands for five hours. She’d wondered at the time if members
Brookie and D. K. Brown family. AllC entries must relate to adult were relieved to be rid of her, genuinely glad for Ron and her, Latter-day Saint experience, theology, or worldview. All varieties of or were honoring her Aunt Edie. form are welcome. Stories, sans author identification, will be judged Looking into the arena, she caught Ron’s eye. He winked, by noted Mormon authors and professors of literature. Winners will indicating the boxes piled at a table beyond the buffet lines. be announced in SUNSTONE and on the Foundation’s website, “No Relief Society lunch makers!” Aunt Edie had insisted. N WWW.SUNSTONEONLINE.COM; winners only will be notified by mail. “Sisters are to enjoy the show, too. And no leftovers go to the After the announcement, all other entrants will be free to submit caterers! They’re paid to serve food, not squirrel it away. their stories elsewhere. Winning storiesT will be published in Friends and neighbors can take,” she had giggled, “a care SUNSTONE magazine. package in remembrance of me. You, too!” she’d ordered Ron. “Take every remaining bite immediately to your freezer or PRIZES will be awarded in two categories: short-short story— fridge. I can wait at the cemetery a bit longer.” fewer than 1,500 words; short story—fewer than 6,000 words. Aunt Edie had also decreed, “And no head table at lunch. Prize money varies (up to $400 each) depending on the number Souls should sit with soul mates—on laps, even.”
T of winners announced. I Lonnie blew Ron a kiss—a promise to come eat with him. She closed the door as cloggers moved onto the floor. Judging RULES: 1. Up to three entries may be submitted by any one from the rehearsal she’d watched, twenty minutes remained. author. Five copies of each entry must be delivered (or postmarked) The custodian had moved inside; the Memorial men and bish- to SUNSTONE by 30 JUNE 2007. EntriesO will not be returned. A $5 opric had finally settled in, too. fee must accompany each entry. No email submissions will be accepted.
E LONE again in the chapel that had nurtured her, 2. Each story must be typed, double-spaced, on one side of Lonnie cried as she knew Aunt Edie had cried—late, white paper and be stapled in the upper left corner. The author’s A many nights, maybe seeking light to sustain her name must not appear on any page of the manuscript. through the dark days. Maybe she longed for friends besides 3. Each entry must be accompanied by a cover letter that states her patrons, for a different career, for a husband-companion the story’s title and the author’s name, address, telephone number, and children of her own, for relief from the burden of
and email (if available). This coverN letter must be signed by the guardianship. Whatever, Edith Goldberg had somehow found author and attest that the entry is her or his own work, that it has solace and strength—and faith—in light. S not been previously published, that it is not being considered for Moving forward to a sunlit row, Lonnie knew that whatever publication elsewhere, and that it will not be submitted to other the builders had intended, this place had become a tomb. publishers until after the contest. If the entry wins, SUNSTONE Whether the frescoes that had once given her hope had been magazine has one-time, first-publication rights. Cover letters irreversibly damaged during renovation and the foyer art was must also grant permission for the manuscript to be filed in the all being cleaned or replaced, the Christ of her youthful under- SUNSTONE Collection at the Marriott Library of the University of standing had gone with them. She sighed. At the Garden
T Utah in Salt Lake City. The author retains all literary rights. Tomb, Mary Magdalene had said, “Tell me where thou hast SUNSTONE discourages the use of pseudonyms; if used, the author laid him.” Christ himself had answered Mary. And despite must identify the real and pen names and the reasons for writing Aunt Edie’s unconventional speech and behavior, she had under the pseudonym. done as Mary had. So what if the adult Lonnie tried again to search. And ask? Failure to comply with rules will result in disqualification. Finally, standing, she heard applause and, resolving to think later, hurried out to join Ron.
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“I know exactly how far I can go and exactly when I need to stop, and this time we were nowhere close.” PECULIARITIES NCMO
By Eric Samuelsen
PECULIARITIES ALL IMAGES ARE FROM THE FILM
CHARACTERS KIM . . . BYU co-ed, early-twenties, single TRENT . . . BYU student, returned missionary, early twenties, single CAST Peculiarities was first presented at the Villa Theatre, Springville, Utah, mid-October 2002. It was directed by Tony Gunn. The orginal cast for the “NCMO” portion was: KIM . . . Susanna Florence TRENT . . . Jesse Harward
EDITOR’S NOTE: “NCMO” is the fourth segment from Eric Francisco on 21 April. The film is also currently being sub- Samuelsen’s play, Peculiarities, which SUNSTONE has been run- mitted to film festivals. Watch for announcements about the ning serially. The other installments, “Tahoe,” “Temps,” and film at WWW.SUN-STONEONLINE.COM and in magazine issues. “Pizza and TV,” were published in the December 2005, April NOTE ON SCRIPT 2006, and November 2006 SUNSTONE issues. Samuelsen wrote A mention about notation. In this play, a dash (—) indicates Peculiarities as an exploration of LDS attitudes toward sexuality, an interrupted line. An ellipsis (. . .) should suggest a pause, in particular situations in which moral rigidity and sexuality a line trailing off. collide in Mormon culture. An early cut of the film version of Peculiarities was screened NOTE ON LOCATION at the 2006 Salt Lake Sunstone Symposium and is scheduled to The play takes place inside a BYU-approved be shown at the 2007 Sunstone West Symposium in San housing apartment in Provo, Utah.
ERIC SAMUELSEN is head of playwriting and screenwriting at BYU, where he has been on the faculty since 1992. This is his fourth play published in SUNSTONE (Accommodations, June 1994; Gadianton, July 2001; Family, March 2005). Sixteen of his plays have been pro- duced professionally.
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I get these . . . feelings, and I want you to come over, and I want you. And then I don’t. For weeks.
SCENE ONE nothing less than the exact truth. You know me well (Lights up on KIM and TRENT, who are on a sofa making out. enough, Trent. TRENT moves away.) TRENT: So what? KIM: I really don’t kid around. Leave, and you’re history. TRENT: Okay. Okay. (KIM tries to nuzzle his neck.) TRENT: Fine. (But he doesn’t leave.) I think we’d better—. (KIM kisses him again, hand on his KIM: Trent? (He does not answer, still stands by the door, torn.) thigh.) Kim, I mean it. Honey. (He fidgets by the door.) Come back. KIM: Don’t quit on me. TRENT: No. TRENT: Not a good idea. KIM: Look, I’m sorry. Come back. KIM: Come on. (She kisses him again.) TRENT: No. TRENT: I’m serious. (He stands. She’s clinging to him, hits the KIM: I don’t want to end it. Not like this. floor.) TRENT: Yeah. KIM: (On the floor. Furious, but controlled.) All right. KIM: Look, I’m sorry. TRENT: I’m sorry. TRENT: Whatever. KIM: Fine. KIM: Really. I am. TRENT: It was starting to get too—. TRENT: I’m not sure it’s . . . enough for you to—. KIM: I was fine. KIM: You have to understand. I just . . . I had plans for TRENT: Dangerous. It was getting dangerous. tonight, and I was looking forward to . . . you know. KIM: Not for me. TRENT: Yeah. TRENT: Well, it was for me. KIM: You cut me off. Too soon, sooner than I . . . . Anyway. KIM: (A pause. Venomously.) Coward. You see? TRENT: There’s no need for—. TRENT: All right. KIM: Wuss. Pansy. KIM: Come back here. Okay? Come here. We’ll play Truth or TRENT: Just a second here—. Dare. KIM: Fag. TRENT: (A long pause.) Truth or Dare? I don’t think so. TRENT: I think I proved that I’m not a—. KIM: Don’t get all pissy. Hormones talking, that’s all. KIM: I know exactly how far I can go and exactly when I need TRENT: Call me a—. to stop, and this time we were nowhere close. KIM: I know, I didn’t mean it. TRENT: Yeah, well, I guess I don’t have your fine-tuned sense TRENT: Okay. . . . of—. KIM: Chalk it up to, you know, frustration. Please? Come KIM: I draw the boundaries in this relationship. here? (He crosses back to the sofa, sits, not looking at her.) TRENT: Do you? TRENT: I was gonna start pushing things, see? I mean, that’s KIM: Yes. I do. why I . . . I was really gonna start pushing things. TRENT: Well, maybe it’s time to redraw some boundaries. KIM: I understand. See, but maybe that’s what I wanted. (Heads for the door.) TRENT: What do you mean? KIM: You go out that door, and you will never see me again. KIM: Maybe I wanted you to start pushing things. TRENT: Break my heart. (But he doesn’t exit, stands by the door.) TRENT: I didn’t know if I could stop. KIM: You know me well enough to know that I am stating KIM: Of course you could stop.
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Do you really want to try one of my dares?
TRENT: I don’t know. TRENT: No, we need to do this. Talk about things. KIM: I mean, I know you. I trust you. KIM: Totally. (A pause.) You know, until you stopped it, that TRENT: I was getting pretty—. was one good session. KIM: You could stop. TRENT: It was. TRENT: Whatever. KIM: Oh yeah. (They look at each other. Lights down on them.) KIM: You could have. TRENT: Okay. But see—. SCENE TWO KIM: No, see, that’s not the issue. Whether you could stop. I (KIM and TRENT on the sofa. TRENT finishes off the soda.) trust you, but you kinda need to trust me too. One of us has to say no, and I kinda think that’s my job. TRENT: That hit the spot. TRENT: Both of us. KIM: Okay, Truth or Dare. KIM: Well, sure. TRENT: Do we have to do this? TRENT: Both of us need to, you know, have that responsibility. KIM: Yes. KIM: Okay, sure. Okay. But—. TRENT: It’s a party game, right? For like ten people. TRENT: That’s so bogus, “It’s the girl’s responsibility to say—.” KIM: You can play it with two. KIM: No, I’m not disagreeing—. TRENT: I don’t know. TRENT: I mean, I stopped it tonight. Right? Earlier than you KIM: Truth or Dare? wanted, okay, but seriously, I was not up to pushing things TRENT: Truth. I guess. any further. KIM: Okay, are you and Lisa engaged? KIM: Look, can I get you a Coke? Cool us both down. (Gets up TRENT: Okay, I thought Lisa and Brad were off-limits. and moves toward kitchen) KIM: Well, as in, “Do we tell ’em?”—of course we don’t. But TRENT: Sure. I’m curious. KIM: Ice? TRENT: What if I don’t want to say? TRENT: Yeah. KIM: Truth or Dare—you gotta. KIM: (Pouring them both a Coke from a two-liter bottle.) I hope TRENT: I don’t want to. it’s not too flat. Katie always buys these two-liter things and KIM: Trent, honey, you really wanna try one of my dares? then leaves the cap off. TRENT: (Pause.) Lisa and I are talking about getting married. TRENT: Gary does the same at my place. KIM: Okay. KIM: It’s undrinkable, flat pop. TRENT: We are. We’re not, you know, engaged. TRENT: Totally. KIM: I understan—. KIM: Oh, it’s got a nice head though. TRENT: But close. We’re talking. TRENT: Good. KIM: Sure. KIM: (Reaches over the back of the sofa to hand Trent a glass. Spills TRENT: If she knew I was over here—. a little.) Oops. I’m still a little shaky, you know. KIM: She’s not going to find out that you were over here. Not TRENT: Yeah. from me. KIM: You get going on the back of my neck like that. TRENT: I’m gonna have to tell her. TRENT: You like that? KIM: Your call. KIM: You couldn’t tell? (Sits.) I’m still shaky. TRENT: I just don’t think I can go into . . . you know, a—.
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I will marry in the temple and be a virgin on my wedding night.
KIM: Okay, sure, fine—. TRENT: I . . . I—. TRENT: A committed . . . an engageme—. KIM: What’s my major? KIM: Brad and I too. TRENT: Your major? TRENT: What? KIM: Yeah. What am I majoring in? KIM: I anticipated. Truth or Dare—I anticipated you’d ask me TRENT: Is this more Truth or Dare? about Brad. KIM: It seems like the kind of basic thing you should know TRENT: Yeah, okay. about someon—. KIM: We’re talking. Brad and I. TRENT: Okay. Communications. TRENT: About . . . about getting m—. KIM: No. KIM: Yes. We are. TRENT: Well, I thought it was. TRENT: Okay. . . KIM: No, you don’t know, because I’ve never told you. KIM: Or . . . maybe we’re not. TRENT: So what are you major—? TRENT: Truth or Dare—you can’t do that, change your mind. KIM: I’m not going to tell you. KIM: Maybe we are, maybe we’re not. Maybe Brad and I are TRENT: You’re . . . why n—? like you and Lisa. That’s possible. Or maybe I just lied to KIM: Because I don’t want you to know. Where am I from? you. TRENT: Okay. TRENT: What are you—? KIM: I’m not going to tell you. What does my dad do for a KIM: Point is, you and Lisa, me and Brad. . . . What does any living? of that have to do with anything at all? TRENT: I get your poi—. TRENT: It . . . it seems—. KIM: I’m not going to tell you. KIM: We may never do this again. We may never see each TRENT: So we could do that. Share those sorts of—. other again. Or we might be back here tomorrow night, on KIM: I don’t want to. That’s the point. That’s where we are. I this sofa, doing just what we were doing. We . . . it . . . we get these . . . feelings, and I want you to come over, and I don’t have a “relationship.” want you . . . and then I don’t. For weeks. TRENT: Okay, there’s a sense in which—. TRENT: Okay, I get it, I get your—. KIM: NCMO. That’s all this is about. KIM: Do you? TRENT: You can’t . . . just—. TRENT: Yeah. (Pause.) Me, too. KIM: Non-committal. Non-com—. KIM: Right. TRENT: I think we’ve got more going than—. TRENT: No one makes me come over here. I could just . . . KIM: I don’t. not. TRENT: You can’t just . . . play games about this kinda stuff, KIM: Exactly. Kim. (Gets up and heads for the door again.) TRENT: But I do. Every time. KIM: Can’t I? We have. For nearly a year now. KIM: But Brad. . . . Brad is a sociology major from San Diego; TRENT: I like you. I’ve thought of . . . even, like, dumping his father is a dentist. Lisa? Lisa—. TRENT: And Lisa’s majoring in Elementary Ed; she’s from KIM: Why would you do that? Lethbridge, Alberta, and her father died five years ago of TRENT: Because, you and me, we—. cancer. He was a junior high school principal. KIM: You don’t know anything about me. KIM: See?
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I am just . . . not worth someone like that. No way.
TRENT: It just seems so—. all I can say. KIM: Seems. Sure. KIM: Have you? Lied to him. TRENT: Empty. And—. TRENT: Yes. KIM: No, see that’s just . . . KIM: Okay. TRENT: Wrong. TRENT: It was just after he’d interviewed Lisa—about some KIM: So? So what? stuff she and I had done, and I just thought I’d sound like TRENT: And I just feel like I need to—. a real jerk if I told him about you, too. KIM: Go on. Go ahead. KIM: Are you ever going to tell him the truth? TRENT: I might just—. TRENT: No, you don’t get two questions, no way. My turn, KIM: Tell the bishop, tell Lisa, I don’t care. If you do, I’ll find Truth or Dare? someone to replace you. If I decide that’s what I need. KIM: Truth. Either way, I will marry in the temple and be a virgin on TRENT: Have you—? my wedding night. This isn’t about—. KIM: No. TRENT: What is it about? TRENT: I didn’t even ask the question. KIM: It’s about. . . . (Pause.) It’s . . . about. . . you know what KIM: I have never lied to the bishop. Not once. it’s about, Trent, don’t pretend you don’t. (Pause.) TRENT: So he, like, knows about me? TRENT: I think I’d better just leave. KIM: If I didn’t get a follow-up question, then neither do you. KIM: If you do, that’s it. The end. Truth or Dare. TRENT: Maybe that would be best. TRENT: Truth. KIM: Or maybe not. Your call. (He stares at her. Blackout.) KIM: Do you check out porn on the internet? TRENT: Not anymore. SCENE THREE KIM: That’s not an answer. (KIM and TRENT on the sofa.) TRENT: It’s all you’re getting. Truth or Dare. KIM: Truth. TRENT: I just get so sick of these games. TRENT: Have you ever kissed a girl? KIM: It’s all games, Trent-o. KIM: For real? Yes, but I didn’t like it. Truth or Dare? TRENT: I also hate it when you call me that. TRENT: Truth. KIM: No kidding. KIM: You were a lousy missionary, right? TRENT: I’m serious. The whole thing. TRENT: (Long pause.) I was a district leader. KIM: Okay, Truth or Dare. KIM: But you were bad. You didn’t get the job done. You did TRENT: I don’t want to play anymore. stuff, and it got in the way. You sucked as a missionary. Am KIM: Truth or Dare. I right? (He stares at her. Cannot answer. She nods.) I knew it. TRENT: Okay, Truth. (Blackout.) KIM: Have you lied to the bishop? TRENT: What an absolutely . . . that’s just the crappiest thing SCENE FOUR to ask someone. (KIM and TRENT sitting on the sofa, slightly apart from each other.) KIM: Have you? TRENT: You better not choose truth when it’s your turn, that’s KIM: (Softly.) Come here.
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It’s such a fine line. Between tickling and heaven.
TRENT: No. KIM: I’ve never met her. What’s she like? KIM: Come here. TRENT: Geez, I dunno. She’s . . . I’m lousy at this. TRENT: I don’t want to. KIM: Guys, I swear. KIM: Yes, you do. (She kisses him. He resists. She kisses him TRENT: She’s cute. She . . . drives a Jetta. She likes dogs. again. Blackout.) KIM: Is she tall? TRENT: Medium height, maybe five six. She’s an El Ed major; I SCENE FIVE said that. . . . (TRENT lies back on the sofa. KIM’S buttoning her shirt.) KIM: Come on, you haven’t said anything. . . . TRENT: What can I say? (Pause.) She’s always changing her KIM: You want another Coke? hair. TRENT: Sure. KIM: What do you mean? KIM: Ice? TRENT: When I met her, she was blonde, had that sort of TRENT: I think I need it. Mariah Carey big hair thing goin’ on. KIM: (She gets him another glass of pop. Brings it to him. Leans KIM: Right, I know the look. over the sofa. Kisses him.) That was more like it. TRENT: Anyway, since I’ve known her, she’s had three other hairstyles. Red. Real black once. Now she wears it short SCENE SIX and straight, dark blonde. (He’s rubbing her feet.) KIM: Like Tea Leoni? TRENT: I don’t know even know who that is. KIM: Sometimes, your hands. . . . KIM: Actor? She was in that end-of-the-world one . . . TRENT: Quiet. meteorite. Never mind. KIM: Oh, that feels great. TRENT: Anyway, Lisa. Always messing with her hair. TRENT: Just relax. KIM: Okay. KIM: But I want to say this. Sometimes your hands. . . . TRENT: And she’s always losing weight. She’s always on a diet. TRENT: We don’t need to talk about it. Right now she’s doing the whole Atkins thing. KIM: But if there are things you do that I like—. KIM: So two years ago. TRENT: I already know. TRENT: Well, she’s trying it. She’ll go to McDonalds and order KIM: Okay. (Relaxes a bit.) You found the spot. a quarter pounder and throw away the bread and just eat TRENT: Good. the meat. And somehow, all that fat, she loses weight. KIM: It’s such a fine line. Between tickling and heaven. KIM: I’ve heard it works; it’s counterintuitive, but for some TRENT: Be sure and tell me if I cross it. people. . . . Is she heavy? KIM: Don’t worry. (Blackout.) TRENT: Of course not. But she thinks she is. She’s always “I’m so fat.” SCENE SEVEN KIM: What else? (On the sofa. He’s holding her.) TRENT: And she’s really into backpacking, hiking. She does the Timp hike every year, and she wants to hike the KIM: Tell me about her. Appalachian trail for our honeymoon. TRENT: Lisa? KIM: Are you into that? KIM: Yeah. TRENT: Getting there. Anyway, what else? She’s . . . she’ll ex- TRENT: What’s to tell? press an opinion, and then she’ll, like, back down. “That’s
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We don’t need to talk about it.
what I think, anyway. For what it’s worth.” Like that. Or KIM: Yeah. . . . Trent? (He waits. She gets up, puts her arms she’ll say something, just joking around, friendly insult around his neck.) Not yet. (She kisses him again. With in- kind of thing, and then she has to say “just kidding,” even creasing desperation. He responds. They fall together on the though you know she’s just kidding. couch. She breaks the kiss. As he kisses her neck, breathlessly.) KIM: I’m starting to get her. Why do we have to . . . ? TRENT: And, like, roommates. She’s always reading things into TRENT: Hush. roommate relations. “I think she’s mad at me ’cause I ate KIM: (She’s crying.) Why do we . . . why do we have to . . . ? her broccoli by accident.” Stuff like that. She’s always so TRENT: I don’t know. concerned that people are mad at her. KIM: Why do we have to. . . ? (They continue kissing. Slow KIM: Absolutely. Blackout.) TRENT: And they’re having to have these apartment meetings to straighten things out. KIM: Sure. TRENT: Anyway. She loves really terrible puns. She’s really close to her family; she calls her sister maybe three or four times a week. And she cries in testimony meeting and hardly any other time at all. And . . . that’s Lisa. KIM: I know her. At least getting a sense. TRENT: And I am just . . . not worth someone like that. No WEEDING way. KIM: Trent. Take it from me. Self-pity is not attractive. This is how my father did it when I was young, TRENT: So tell me about Brad. fighting the weeds one by one, hours on his knees. KIM: No. I press my fingers in the soil beneath each weed TRENT: I told. KIM: What, you want equity? Not—. and yank it from the dirt. In the house across the lawn TRENT: Fair’s fair. I hear my three-year-old yelling at his mother KIM: No. (Pause.) Suffice it to say that I don’t deserve Brad any “Don’t you tell me” and “I’m the boss” from his room more than you deserve Lisa. where she’s sent him for time-out. Between his shouts TRENT: Yeah. I hear my teenage daughter slamming cupboard doors, KIM: Who we really deserve is each other. banging pans, and wailing how unfair we are TRENT: We’d last a week. KIM: If that. We’d carve each other to pieces. to make her work so hard. I pound weed roots TRENT: And both of us deserve it. (Gets up.) I’m going. against my knee, make them drop the soil they hold, KIM: Sure. and fling them away from me. I smile to see the ground TRENT: Kim. Look. Don’t call me anymore. Okay? I don’t I gain, the weedless dirt expanding inch by inch. want to do this anymore. I understand why my father stayed outside so long, KIM: Liar. sweat glistening on his smooth brown back, TRENT: I’m serious. Don’t. KIM: No. No, you’re right. how sometimes distance is release. TRENT: Okay. (He leans over, kisses her.) Goodbye, Kim. —CECIL MORRIS
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FROM THE PULPIT Church is or how God interacts with us. Just as many Pythagoreans lived and died content in their belief that all was integers, so we may live lives where our false expectations of the RUE AND IVING HURCH Church are never challenged. But this is not A T L C likely. When error is exposed, it is testimony- shattering for many—because we have the By Brian Chapman habit, as Elder John Widtsoe warned, to re- ject the whole when only a part is found to be false.2 Elder B. H. Roberts wrote of the need for the Saints to be a people who expected adult answers to adult questions.3 Becoming Saints who are comfortable with hearing adult questions is very challenging. Becoming Saints who can answer adult questions is even more challenging. I won’t pretend that I have arrived at such adult sainthood. But I believe that I have been journeying toward it for a while and along my journey have found some principles that have been invaluable. My objective today is to share with you some of these principles in the hope that they might make your journey smoother than it might otherwise be. In Doctrine and Covenants Section 1, we read the Lord’s declaration that this church is “the only true and living church upon the face of the whole earth.” I will address three important topics related to this declaration: 1. We are not God’s sole agents. 2. We are not always inspiring or inspired. 3. We are collectively responsible for making the Church true and living. The first two topics address conclusions that are not supported by the declaration. The third addresses our responsibility in regards to the declaration.
We Are Not God’s Sole Agents
ECENTLY, while I was driving a sister whom I home-teach to church, HE ANCIENT GREEKS were fasci- sailor during a voyage. His fellow sailors R we passed the East Liberty nated with mathematics, and the were so disturbed by the philosophical im- Presbyterian Church. She commented that Pythagoreans in particular were en- plications that they killed him by throwing there was a very nice food bank and daily T 1 thralled with number. The mystical him overboard to suppress his knowledge. free lunch service run through that church. Pythagoras said, “All is number.” By number, While this story hardly seems credible, “With such great need here in Pittsburgh, it’s he meant the positive integers and the ra- we are all at risk of constructing personal great that there are so many good people tional numbers that could be formed from philosophies that are not quite built upon willing to be helpful,” I replied. She con- them. A legend exists regarding the discovery truth. When the errors of our foundations are curred. of irrational numbers—numbers such as Π exposed, we may respond with frightful vio- When I related this story to my bishop, or the square root of two, which cannot be lence, as the Greek sailors did. We can easily the man theoretically responsible for the wel- expressed as the ratio of two integers. It is build up a personal “testimony” based on fare of everyone living within the Pittsburgh said that this discovery was made by a young false premises about what the restored First Ward boundaries, his response was something like, “You can’t believe how BRIAN CHAPMAN is a faculty member in biomedical informatics at the University of grateful I am that there are lots of helpful Pittsburgh. When he isn't doing something he has to do, he enjoys photography, bicycling, people in Pittsburgh.” and reading to his kids. A version of this talk was delivered in the Pittsburgh First Ward According to statistics published in the sacrament meeting 27 January 2007. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Western Pennsylvania
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has the lowest proportion of Mormons Bangerter tells of President Hinckley’s re- Church for such purposes, neither among its population of any place in the sponse to that question when it was raised by in time nor place. We hold that all United States. Coupled with the level of a group of ministers as they toured the great teachers are servants of God, poverty here—Fayette County, which com- Jordan River Temple prior to its dedication. inspired men appointed to instruct prises the Uniontown Branch of our stake, is President Hinckley asserted that the Lord did the children of God according to one of the poorest counties in the country— not say that. But it is a common belief. the condition in which they are living in Pittsburgh is certainly an opportu- Early in my mission, I challenged a zone found.7 nity to recognize what a small part the conference talk given by a Church leader that More recently, President Howard W. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints implied ministers were primarily motivated Hunter taught: can do in addressing the world’s problems. by money. The foundation for my disagree- All human beings share an inheri- This fact reminds me of a favorite quote ment came from that talk by Elder Bangerter, tance of divine light. God operates from Elder Orson F. Whitney, a former which had been published in the Ensign. among his children in all nations, member of the Quorum of the Twelve: Elder Bangerter began with the story of and those who seek God are enti- [God] is using not only his cov- President Hinckley and the ministers at the tled to further light and knowledge, enant people, but other peoples as temple and went on to make the following regardless of their race, nationality, well, to consummate a work, stu- claims: or cultural traditions. . . . pendous, magnificent, and alto- It is clearly apparent that there have As members of the Lord’s gether too arduous for this little been and now are many honorable church, we need to lift our vision handful of Saints to accomplish by and devoted men and women in beyond personal prejudices. We and of themselves.4 other churches who are moving in need to discover the supreme truth Who are these other people contributing the direction of their eternal salva- that indeed our Father is no re- to God’s work? What are some of the great tion and who give righteous and specter of persons. Sometimes we works Elder Whitney had in mind? Elder conscientious service to their con- unduly offend brothers and sisters Whitney was born in 1855. If we limit our- gregations. . . . of other nations by assigning exclu- selves to events that have occurred since his Are ministers of other churches siveness to one nationality of birth, my (idiosyncratic) list might include: inspired of God? Of course they people over another.8 • Abolition of slavery are, if they are righteous and sin- • Women in the U. S. receiving the vote cere. Do they accomplish good? We Are Not Always Inspired; • Development of the germ theory of Certainly. . . . We are Not Always Inspiring disease Can ministers of other churches • Discovery of penicillin call forth blessings from God upon OD uses us as instruments despite • Quantum mechanics their people? Most assuredly they our imperfections. Some church • Picasso’s The Old Guitarist can and do.6 G leaders are arrogant; others lack tact. • The philosophy of William James Elder Bangerter’s comments are based on Some members are thin-skinned; others, rep- • The civil rights movement a deeply rooted universalist strain within rehensible. It has always been this way and • The information age Mormonism. In the Book of Mormon, we will always be this way. Joseph Smith had • Invention of the electric guitar read: deep character flaws that were difficult even Mormons have been able to play only a Know ye not that there are more for his contemporaries to accept.9 small part in these artistic, scientific, and cul- nations than one? Know ye not that David O. McKay commented that when tural works because we have been a small I, the Lord your God, have created God makes the prophet, he doesn’t unmake population who for much of our existence all men, and that I remember those the man. So it is also with stake presidents, had been trying to survive in an inhospitable who are upon the isles of the sea; bishops, Relief Society presidents, Young environment. But are these works the work and that I rule in the heavens above Women presidents, Sunday School teachers, of God? For the most part, yes. Hugh B. and in the earth beneath; and I and high councilors. In every one of us are Brown, former member of the Quorum of bring forth my word unto the chil- human elements that are unlikeable. For the Twelve Apostles and counselor in the dren of men, yea, even upon all the some, finding these flaws in high church First Presidency to David O. McKay, said: nations of the earth? . . . leaders can be fatal to their testimony. Joseph Revelation does not come only For I command all men, both in Smith is a minutely documented historical through the prophet of God nor the east and in the west, and in the figure, his flaws and failures well known. In only directly from heaven in vi- north, and in the south, and in the contrast, what do we know about Peter, sions or dreams. Revelation may islands of the sea, that they shall James, or John? Isaiah, Abraham, Mary come in the laboratory, out of the write the words which I speak unto Magdalene, Adam, or Eve? For the most part, test tube, out of the thinking mind them. . . . I shall also speak unto all their flaws are long since lost to history. and the inquiring soul, out of nations of the earth and they shall George Bernard Shaw’s warning, “Beware search and research and prayer and write it. (2 Nephi 29:7, 11–12) of the pursuit of the Superhuman. It leads to inspiration.5 Early in the twentieth century, Elder B. H. an indiscriminate contempt for the human,” In all this good God is achieving with Roberts taught: could be rephrased for us as, “Beware of the other people, is he using other churches? Of Now, while the Church is one of pursuit of the Super Latter-day Saint. It leads course. But didn’t the Lord say in the First God’s instrumentalities for making to an indiscriminate contempt for the Latter- Vision that all the professors of other reli- known the truth, we do not main- day Saint.”10 Ours is the opportunity and gions were corrupt? Elder William Grant tain that he is limited to this responsibility to have a more realistic under-
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God uses us as instruments despite our imperfections. Some church leaders are arrogant; others lack tact. Some members are thin skinned; others, reprehensible. It has always been this way and will always be this way.
There is nothing in the doctrines of to God; and by the second, they are the Church which makes it neces- apt to altogether eliminate the in- sary to believe that [men are con- fluence of God from human affairs; stantly under the inspiration of the I pause in doubt as to which con- Holy Spirit], even . . . men who are clusion would be the worse.11 high officials of the Church. When These mistakes Elder Roberts refers to we consider the imperfections of range from the trivial to the painful. As a men, their passions and prejudices, simple example, consider the building pro- standing of how God interacts with men and that mar the Spirit of God in them, gram. In the 1960s, we spent excessive women. happy is the man who can occa- amounts of money constructing large build- Last year as part of my high council as- sionally ascend to the spiritual ings for very small congregations throughout signment, I attended ward conferences heights of inspiration and com- the world. This drove us nearly to bank- throughout our stake and talked about intel- mune with God! . . . ruptcy. In a perhaps overcorrection, in the ligent discipleship and classroom instruction. We should recognize the fact 1990s, we built buildings that were too After one of the conferences, a young man that we do many things by our own small, such as our meetinghouse, a problem came up to me to discuss a conceptual diffi- uninspired intelligence for the is- to which I’m sure many of you here would be culty he was struggling with. He had been sues of which we are ourselves re- glad to attest. reading about J. Reuben Clark. When David sponsible. . . . He will help men at More serious mistakes exist, and there is O. McKay became Church president, he se- need, but I think it improper to as- no way to hide from them, nor should we. lected Stephen L. Richards as his first coun- sign every word and every act of a An upcoming PBS documentary will outline selor and President Clark to be his second man to an inspiration from the many of them in unflattering and perhaps bi- counselor. Presidents McKay and Richards Lord. . . . Hence, I think it a reason- ased detail. It is imperative that our under- were personally close and philosophically able conclusion to say that con- standing of Church leadership be mature and similar. President Clark was the odd man stant, never-varying inspiration is sound. out. He would arrive at every First not a factor in the administration of Often mistakes are rooted in the cultural Presidency meeting virtually assured that he the affairs of the Church; not even baggage our leaders inherit. As an example, would be outvoted 2–1 on all the major good men, no, not even though consider the topic of waltzes. Brigham Young topics of the day. they be prophets or other high offi- banned waltzing; however, John Taylor and This young man asked me, “How could cials of the Church, are at all times Wilford Woodruff allowed it on a limited the Spirit be inspiring these men in two op- and in all things inspired of God. It scale. The general question of whether to posite directions?” is only occasionally, and at need, waltz or not to waltz, the preferred form of “Why must we assume that the Spirit was that God comes to their aid. dancing at the time being square dancing, directing these debates?” I asked back. That there have been unwise continued to bubble around in meetings of The very structure of the Church assumes things done in the Church by good the Quorum of the Twelve and the First that we are imperfect, not always inspired. If men, men susceptible at time to the Presidency until well into the twentieth cen- not so, we wouldn’t have councils, presiden- inspiration of the Spirit of God, we tury. By 1912, waltzing had been accepted as cies, bishoprics—we would have only presi- may not question. Many instances the social norm, and Church leaders were dents and bishops. in the history of the Church, now debating the propriety of jazz and Latin The Reed Smoot hearings were a time through three quarters of a century, dancing. Eventually they realized that sexual when the questions of Church theocracy and prove it, and it would be a solecism chastity of youth was the gospel principle claims of infallibility were being debated in to say that God was the author of they were concerned with, not the manner of the U.S. Senate and in public opinion at those unwise, not to say positively their dancing.12 large—perhaps the time in Church history foolish, things that have been done. Was God directing these discussions re- when we were under the closest public For these things men must stand garding dancing? Or were the leaders strug- scrutiny. During the hearings, the responsible, not God. gling to differentiate their merely cultural Improvement Era, the Church’s official organ, It is well nigh as dangerous to preferences from gospel principles? A scrip- edited by President Joseph F. Smith, pub- claim too much for the inspiration tural illustration of this struggle is found in lished a sermon by B. H. Roberts, the of God, in the affairs of men, as it is the New Testament character of Peter. Peter Church’s acknowledged “defender of the to claim too little. By the first, men had to overcome his cultural sense of what faith,” that laid out what can reasonably be are led into superstition, and into was unclean in order to learn “what God considered the Church’s position on the rela- blasphemously accrediting their hath cleansed, that call not thou common” tionship of inspiration and revelation in own imperfect actions, their blun- (Acts 10:15). Despite Christ’s charge at his Church government: ders, and possibly even their sins, Ascension to preach the gospel to every crea-
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I need humility to recognize that I might be wrong. I need tolerance to allow others to make different mistakes than those I make; I need tolerance to allow others to make a different choice among equally plausible options than I would have made.
ture, Peter required a later vision to realize which, in some part, the world that “God is no respecter of persons: but in lacks. But there is an incomprehen- every nation he that feareth him, and wor- sibility greater part of truth which keth righteousness, is accepted with him” we must yet discover. Our revealed (Acts 10:34–35). But even with this realiza- truth should leave us stricken with tion, Peter struggled to let go of the tradi- the knowledge of how little we re- tional Jewish separation from Gentiles, ally know. It should never lead leading Paul to rebuke him at a conference in to an emotional arrogance based Making the Church True and Living Jerusalem. (See Galatians 1–2.) upon a false assumption that we If we look at how the Church came to ex- somehow have all the answers— Y final point is that we are respon- tend priesthood to all worthy men, we can that we in fact have a corner on sible for making the Church true see a complex mix of cultural tradition and truth. For we do not.15 M and living. This can be a painful social interactions, of confronting chal- I need humility to recognize that I might responsibility. My favorite example of an in- lenging problems and receiving or waiting be wrong. I need tolerance to allow others to dividual striving to make the church true and for inspiration. As the Church started to ex- make different mistakes than those I make; I living is that of Chieko Okazaki. As her life il- pand out in the world, it encountered on a need tolerance to allow others to make a dif- lustrates, we help to make the church true large scale the implications of the priesthood ferent choice among equally plausible op- and living by being positively different than ban: thousands of people joining the Church tions than I would have made. I need to the mean, creating a gradient force pulling in Nigeria without any means of weekly ad- have the patience to remember that dra- others towards progression. Unfortunately, ministration of the sacrament or the forma- matic changes are rarely effective; I need pa- being different can be dangerous, as Sister tion of basic Church government; multitudes tience to remember that fostering Okazaki describes: of would-be converts in South America who defensiveness in leaders usually slows Ed and I and our boys have spent couldn’t prove that they did not have any change; I need patience to remember that a big chunk of our lives being dif- Negro ancestors; governments refusing to of- even great ideas are often only accepted over ferent. There have been many, ficially recognize the Church. This exposure centuries. many occasions when Ed and I prompted President McKay to make a vig- These virtues are necessary, but they are could have taken offense. . . . orous internal examination of the practice, not sufficient. We must also have a mean- But she knew she had an important con- leading to administrative decisions that re- ingful relationship with our Heavenly Father. tribution to make to the Church, that the duced the scope of the priesthood ban. In the fall of 1993, I found myself very upset Church would be something less true and Apostolic committees concluded that there with the Church. While reading a Eugene living if she were not participating in it. She was no scriptural basis for the ban, and fur- England essay, I came across a Hugh Nibley learned to respond strategically to her prob- ther policy changes were proposed and de- quotation suggesting what to do when one is lems. From her life experiences, she makes bated but not accepted. President McKay upset with the Church: this plea to all of us: earnestly sought a revelation but did not re- Be the importunate widow and If you experience the pain of exclu- ceive one. Finally, in 1978, a definitive reve- complain. Itemize your griefs, your sion at church from someone who lation eliminated the priesthood ban. The doctrinal objections, your personal is frightened at your difference, time frame for all of this? Decades.13 tastes. Lay them out in full detail please don’t leave. Don’t become Being a church that is entitled to revela- and get it out of your system. . . . inactive. You may think you are tion to a prophetic leadership but yet where With this understanding—you will voting with your feet, that you are the leaders are often left on their own can do all this before the only Person making a statement by leaving. You create challenges that may be unique to our qualified to judge either you or are, but your absence may be wel- church. The challenges may be different for your tormentors.16 comed and encouraged by those leaders and members, but the primary I followed Nibley’s advice and went into who don’t understand or value virtues for coping with these challenges are our living room, knelt down, and in prayer you. They see your diversity as a the same: humility, tolerance, and patience. laid out all my complaints about the Church. problem to be fixed, as a flaw to be In the preface to his play, Saint Joan, I received a very distinct answer to my corrected or erased. If you are George Bernard Shaw wrote, “The Churches prayer. I wandered back to our bedroom gone, they don’t have to deal with must learn humility as well as teach it.” with an uneasy peace in my soul. The unease you any more. I want you to know President Brown warned Church leaders to came from the fact that I didn’t receive an an- that your diversity is a more valu- remember that they are fallible14 and offered swer that I was wrong and that everything in able statement.17 this broader call to humility for all of us: my church was how it should be. The answer B. H. Roberts drew great significance from We have been blessed with much was simply yet directly, “This is not your the name of our church. It is not “The knowledge by revelation from God battle.” Church of Jesus Christ,” nor is it “The
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The burden of making the Church true and living does not just fall on President Hinckley. It falls on all of us.
available in libraries and on the Internet. We NOTES need to develop a Church curriculum that 1. This story is told in Keith Devlin, Mathematics creates robust testimonies in the presence of and the Science of Patterns (New York: Scientific this information. Another challenge is to American Library, 1994), 17. better incorporate the knowledge and in- 2. John A. Widtsoe, “Is It Wrong to Doubt?” in sights of women into Church government. Evidences and Reconciliations (Salt Lake City: Along these lines, Elder Ballard has coun- Bookcraft, 1960), 31–33. seled that we should replace one of the 3. “B. H. Roberts on the Intellectual and Spiritual Quest,” sermon reprinted in Dialogue: A Journal of monthly ward PEC meetings with an addi- Mormon Thought 13, no. 2 (Summer 1980): 123–28. tional ward council meeting where the 4. Quoted in Howard W. Hunter, That We Might women leaders attend and contribute. This Have Joy (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1994), 60. Church of Jesus Christ in the Latter Days.” It counsel is not yet canonized, yet it illus- 5. Edwin B. Firmage, ed., An Abundant Life: The is “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day trates the realization that we are underutil- Memoirs of Hugh B. Brown (Salt Lake City: Signature Saints.” The parallelism “of Jesus Christ of izing an important resource in the Church Books, 1988), 138. See also Hugh B. Brown, The Abundant Life (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1965), 88. Latter-day Saints” invoked in Elder Roberts’s and that a discussion is underway about 18 6. Elder William Grant Bangerter, “It’s a Two- mind a sense of joint ownership. We are re- how to do better. Way Street,” Ensign, July 1986. sponsible for the Church being true and 7. B. H. Roberts, “Relation of Inspiration and living. The Church remains true and living as Conclusion Revelation to Church Government,” Improvement Era, we individually personify the great gospel March 1905, 362. ideals, as we examine our lives and recognize BEGAN this talk with a mathematical 8. Hunter, That We Might Have Joy, 60, 74. the patterns of divine influence and from that legend related to a false premise. I will 9. For discussion of Joseph Smith’s character, see Bushman’s biography Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling recognition form a more powerful testimony I end by quoting from Shakespeare’s (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), 249–50, of God and Jesus Christ. The Church re- Sonnet 130: 294–304. See also B. H. Roberts, “The Prophet’s Self- mains true and living as we constantly ex- Revealment to the Intelligent Disciple,” A amine the fundamental principles of the My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun . . . Comprehensive History of the Church of Jesus Christ of gospel of Jesus Christ and examine how well Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City: Deseret News, we are realizing them, seeking changes indi- I love the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter- 1930), 2:355–61. 10. George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman, vidually and collectively as needed. The day Saints. I know that this institution is the Act III. burden of making the Church true and living seed of the kingdom of God on earth. I am 11. Roberts, “Relation of Inspiration,” 365–66. In does not just fall on President Hinckley. It grateful for the restoration of the priesthood an interview published with Joseph Smith in the falls on all of us. and the blessings I have received through it. I Pittsburgh Gazette on 15 September 1843, the reporter There have been and will be great debates am grateful for the opportunities I have had writes, “Speaking of revelations, he [Joseph Smith] within Mormonism about important topics: to attend the temple and receive personal stated that when he was in a ‘quandary,’ he asked the Lord for a revelation, and when he could not get it, he the nature of God; the breadth of the Fall; the revelation for my life. I am grateful for the ‘followed the dictates of his own judgment.’” See blessings of the priesthood; who are sheep privilege I have to work within this institu- Dean C. Jessee, ed., The Papers of Joseph Smith (Salt and who are goats. Sometimes, as with tion to bring about the salvation of mankind. Lake City: Deseret Book, 1989), 1:443. blacks and the priesthood, these debates are I am grateful that there are millions of good 12. See Thomas G. Alexander, Mormonism in resolved through revelation; sometimes we men and women outside of the Church who Transition: A History of the Latter-day Saints, 1890–1930 seem to progress linearly, continually refining are working with us, knowingly or unknow- (Urbana: University of Illinois, 1986), 150–51. our understanding and practice; other times ingly, to achieve this salvation. I am grateful 13. I drew this synopsis from Gregory A. Prince and Wm. Robert Wright, David O. McKay and the Rise our changes seem more cyclic, with ideas that I am part of a living church that seeks of Modern Mormonism (Salt Lake City: University of and practices coming in and out of favor. change, seeks greater insight. I am grateful Utah Press, 2005), 60–105. See also, Armand L. One thing is certain: we need to keep an God has invited each one of us to be his Mauss, “The Fading of Pharaoh’s Curse,” Dialogue: A open mind, to seek and accept the changes partner in accomplishing these changes. I am Journal of Mormon Thought 14, no. 3 (Fall 1981); needed to more fully realize the Gospel of grateful that I have come to accept and love Leonard J. Arrington, Adventures of a Church Historian Jesus Christ. The promise of continuing reve- the Church despite its imperfections. (Urbana: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 175–83. 14. Firmage, An Abundant Life, 123. lation means that in the future, we will do Though Shakespeare recognized his 15. Hugh B. Brown, address to BYU student body some things differently than we do now; we lover’s eyes were less bright than the sun, her 13 May 1969, reprinted as “An Eternal Quest: will think differently about some things in lips less red than coral, and that her beauty Freedom of the Mind,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon the future than we think now. fails in several other ways, he concludes: Thought 17, no. 1 (Spring 1984): 77–83. There are many challenges facing us 16. Cited in Eugene England, “On Spectral today that we need to contribute to solving. And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare Evidence,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 26, no. 1 (Spring 1993): 151. For example, compared to twenty years ago, As any she belied with false compare. 17. Chieko Okazaki, Cat’s Cradle (Salt Lake City: when I graduated from seminary, a flood of Bookcraft, 1993), 60–61. information about the Church has become In the name of Jesus Christ, amen. 18. Roberts, “Relation of Inspiration,” 362.
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BRAVING THE BORDERLANDS . . . THE KNOWLEDGE CLASH. CAN touch on only one or two aspects of this broad (and maybe overworked) EMPTATION AND I subject. I’ll start by summarizing a recent T review by Trent D. Stephens of Duwayne R. Anderson’s new book, Farewell to Eden: THE KNOWLEDGE CLASH Coming to Terms with Mormonism and Science.4 By D. Jeff Burton Stephens begins his review by observing that at some time in their lives “almost all thinking persons”5 experience a “clash” be- tween their religious faith and beliefs and FIGURE 1. GROUPS IN THE LDS ORBIT what they perceive as “the facts.” Most 1—CORE MEMBERS: true believers, unwaveringly Borderlanders will recognize this “clash” ex- supportive, the acceptable. perience. To an unsuspecting, young, naive, 2—BORDERLANDS MEMBERS: those who consider themselves faithful to and part of the Church but don’t fit or inexperienced intellectual, it can be devas- comfortably in Group 1. tating. 3—MEMBERS-OF-RECORD ONLY: non-participa- During his early twenties, Anderson’s tors, non-believers, non-supporters. clash was precipitated by his reading of the DOTS—previous members, prior investigators, and Old Testament and his discovery there of non-LDS family members. what he calls the “most unimaginable inhu- manity and violent crime.” Anderson found N THIS COLUMN, I touch on the im- perhaps, to recognize the more subtle kinds his subsequent experiences with his family, pact on Borderlanders of two issues: of temptations described in the Wormwood bishop, and stake president very troubling. I temptation and what some call the columns that relate to Jesus’ teachings about Stephens describes how shortly thereafter, “knowledge clash.” I have garnered many of moral living. Anderson, unable to resolve his concerns, the ideas and thoughts I share here from sev- Borderlanders also recognize the typical drifted away from the Church, explored anti- eral sources.1 Mormon temptations, and most of us have Mormon websites and anti-Mormon litera- no special advantage over core members— ture, and so forth. Stephens avers that TEMPTATION e.g., immunity from temptation or unique Anderson is one who now believes that the insights into temptation. Indeed, we may only people who remain active in the Church SEVERAL puzzled people have asked me sometimes excuse ourselves and our behav- are either “liars or idiots.” about the two “Wormwood” columns iors as having “moved beyond organized reli- Like most of us when we hear of these sad (SUNSTONE, November 2006 and December gion and its silly rituals and rules.” Some of tales, Stephens had his heart broken as he 2005). Apparently some Borderlanders have us rationalize our way into behaviors, atti- read Anderson’s story—a young intellectual not had the delicious experience of reading tudes, and thinking that may actually put us trying to know the truth and then futilely C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters. The book on the “road to below.” Recognizing these at- trying to get help as the clash escalated into is based on the very clever premise of an “ad- titudes in ourselves is another theme I was an explosion. Stephens closes his review with vanced” devil of Satan’s underworld attempting to wrestle with in the Wormwood the lament that “there goes another fine (Screwtape) instructing his novice devil columns. Even Borderlanders who have pro- young intellectual from the Church.” nephew (Wormwood) how to tempt mortals gressed into more deeply felt and peaceful Stephens notes that the Church Handbook into sinful behavior. My two “Wormwood” spiritual stages need to be ever vigilant to of Instruction provides information on how to columns are an attempt to show how Satan’s avoid the subtle but advanced temptations of handle marriage, abuse, and financial and minions might tailor traditional Christian modern life.2 legal problems but is mighty skimpy on how temptations to Mormons, enticing us into Now my challenge: Think deeply and to handle intellectual “clashes.” He suggests less-than-wholesome thinking, attitudes and critically about Jesus’ basic teachings, and that something be done—namely, that behaviors. then make a serious commitment to identify bishops and stake presidents be given a list of Coincidentally, President Faust wrote a times and places when you feel tempted to scientists who are strong, active members. piece about Satan and temptation in the diverge from one of his principles. (Be sure to That way, when these leaders encounter a sci- January 2007 Ensign. Among other things, he start with just one principle.) For example, ence student who is experiencing a “clash,” suggests that Mormons do not always recog- try adhering faithfully to the most basic of all, they can direct the student to someone who nize temptation. Certainly Latter-day Saints the principle of honesty. In every discussion, could acknowledge and honor their journey recognize oft-mentioned and uniquely transaction, communication, and issue that while also assuring them that they are not Mormon temptations such as skipping faces you in the next month, try to make alone, that others have had similar experi- church, having a latte, skimping on their yourself become aware of when you are ences, and that reconciliation with Mormon tithing, not doing their home or visiting being tempted to be less than totally honest. theology is possible. In short, these scientists teaching, or ignoring the counsel of Church It will be an exhilarating (and very often might be able to model for or point out to the leaders. But some Saints are less inclined, troubling) experience with temptation.3 struggling person alternatives to jumping ship.6 D. JEFF BURTON is an author and a member of the Sunstone Board of Directors.
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THE FACTS” are rarely rock-solid. There is no final point when we “understand everything,” especially pertaining to nature, religion, and God.
(3) Reason and logic—e.g., deductive and cially when we are young. Our teachers, our inductive reasoning used to discover facts in- parents, or books we read may have told us dependently of direct observation of all in- that God would answer our prayers. The au- stances: things that fly have wings; birds fly; thority of those sources was strong enough therefore, birds have wings. for us to believe that it would happen. Our (4) Innate ideas—e.g., truths that seem to Primary teachers told us that the Book of be inborn, simply in our genetic makeup or, Mormon is an authentic history of early in LDS parlance, from “the pre-existence.” America. And so forth. (5) Inspiration or indirect revelation—e.g., Socrates made great contributions to our insights that occur as we read scripture or understanding of how we acquire beliefs and that arise in conversation with friends or knowledge through logical reasoning (source some other chance interaction or coinci- 3). Logic is either deductive (starting with a dence. general principle and applying it to particu- (6) Direct revelation—e.g., a stronger form lars) or inductive (starting with facts and of inspiration; knowledge or insights that generalizing). Socrates’s major contribution come through direct answers to prayer or was his suggestion that sense perception is through visions or dreams. not an infallible approach to obtaining gen- I think if we were to discuss this matter uine, true knowledge. Our experiences can on the Sunstone blog, we’d find that most of deceive us. But if we’re not careful, logic can us believe, in varying degrees, that all six also fail us. (Rockets don’t have wings.) sources have in some way contributed to our Other Greek philosophers suggested that personal beliefs and knowledge. Certainly although beliefs and knowledge originate in sources 1–3 are common and well-recog- sense perceptions and are refined and put to nized, 4 (genetics) is probable for most, and use through reason, that knowledge also de- 5 and 6 (inspiration or indirect and direct pends upon the individual knower. revelation) are possible. We also would rec- Somehow, seemingly identical sense percep- ognize, however, that none of the first five are tions and subsequent reasoning can lead to fully reliable or accurate—i.e., was that com- different individual beliefs and “knowledge.” “VIRGIL AND DANTE” BY GUSTAVE DORÉ ment on Oprah a message from God sent in For example, when a Church leader speaks answer to prayer or just good common about the need for unquestioning obedience, HIS review brought to mind the sense? Even source 6 (direct revelation) it sounds very reasonable to some, suspect to question of how young people come might be questionable (when received by a a few, and quite curious or even downright T to understand or know the Mormon schizophrenic, for example). baffling to others. world around them—e.g., what the Book of To a great extent, we are all scientists em- Plato may have been the first to suggest Mormon is, the role of the Church in their ploying knowledge source 1. We constantly that the soul came to the world already lives, their relationships to God and Jesus, make inferences from our experiences and equipped with certain knowledge, a sugges- where they fit into the Mormon picture, and draw conclusions which govern our actions. tion many Latter-day Saints find harmonious so forth. More basically, we might ask: What When the alarm clock rings, I “know” with the gospel’s teachings about a premortal is knowledge? How do we come to know morning has arrived. (Yet, as a natural existence and eternal progression. The role of what we know? How do we come to believe skeptic, I confess to still looking closely at the genetic factors and inherited knowledge is something? And then how do we suddenly alarm clock, then at my watch.) Inserting my not clear, but they also seem likely to be become confronted with pesky, seemingly key into the front door, I believe the door will sources of some types of knowledge. contrary “facts”? open. In fact, my experience with the house During the early Christian era, Augustine Scholars on both sides of the science/reli- keys is so successful that I “know” the door taught that humans received knowledge gion paradigm have suggested the following will open. I know that stepping on the brake through revelation. Revealed knowledge was six sources of belief and knowledge: will stop the car. I put a lot of trust in my be- necessary for “higher forms of living,” (1) Natural, sensory, empirical experiences liefs about those brakes. The point is, we run granted as a gift through faith. This led him —e.g., information that comes through the our lives by the beliefs and knowledge devel- to delineate two levels of truth: that which “scientific method”: observing, hypothe- oped through our sensory experiences and originates in and is upheld by experience and sizing, experimenting, drawing conclusions. the subsequent faith that experience and objective reasoning, and that which is gained (2) Voices of authority—e.g., parents, knowledge engender in us. by inspiration and revelation (and substanti- teachers, Church leaders, and others whom Another common knowledge source we ated by faith and the authority of the we trust. all rely on is the “voice of authority,” espe- church).
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IVEN this brief background on how sonal—how to act, how to behave, how to Among these were the principles of honesty and gen- we acquire our beliefs and knowl- think, what kinds of attitudes to cultivate, erosity. Needless to say, I was shocked when I realized edge, what might have happened in etc. As part of our religious lives, we are de- the difficulty in consistently applying these “simple” G principles and recognized the temptations that so the development of Duwayne Anderson’s veloping personal understandings of life, often occur to break down the most basic principles Mormon religious beliefs and knowledge? personal relationships with our Father in of living. I’m still struggling. Rather than speculate on Anderson’s exact Heaven, and personal religions based on 4. Trent D. Stephens, review of Duwayne R. path, I propose the following as a fairly typ- Jesus’ (and the Church’s) teachings. When I Anderson’s, Farewell to Eden: Coming to Terms with ical sequence for this type of struggle: die and stand at the judgment bar, I’ll be an- Mormonism and Science, by Duwayne R. Anderson, A person learns about Mormonism from swering for myself. I will be there (ideally Journal of Mormon History 32, no. 3 (Fall 2006): source 2 (voices of authority). These authori- with my spouse and family) telling the whats 209–13. 5. I think most readers will understand who ties tell him or her that the Church is the and whys of my actions and about my mo- Stephens is referring to with the term “thinking per- “only true church”; that the God of the tives. Church officials won’t be there to make sons,” but everyone believes they are “thinkers.” So Israelites was a benevolent, loving God; that excuses for me. we might want to substitute the words “intellectuals,” Joseph was a prophet; that the Book of So another good early step is to help our “skeptics,” “scholars,” “those who follow the scientific Mormon was compiled by an ancient friends define, develop, and cultivate satis- approach,” “the science-educated” and other similar American prophet in the fifth century A.D.; fying personal religions, based on the teach- terms. 6. Trent Stephens, in an exchange of emails with and so forth. ings of Jesus and other worthy spiritual, me, wrote that he has an idea to start a grassroots As they grow into and through their moral, and ethical precepts. Joseph Smith, group of people experienced in “science/religion” teens, they pick up additional beliefs and for example, gave us some pretty good con- clashes who would provide support for people such knowledge about the gospel and Church his- cepts for living a good life. The Church sug- as Anderson. If you would like to volunteer or have tory through other sources—e.g., experience gests excellent principles of living. Since ideas on how to proceed with this idea, you can con- of the “Spirit’ at a youth trek testimony most of us have magnetic and sticky ties to tact Stephens at his email address: STEPTREN @ISU.EDU. The big problem, of course, is reaching meeting; reasoning that of course the “red the Church, we ought to try to make our per- those struggling with these issues before their clashes skin” of Indians came upon them as a curse sonal religion compatible with the LDS become catastrophes. as described in the Book of Mormon; the tes- model of a personal religion. We can be good 7. Versions of Chapter 1 have appeared in the timony that our warm feelings when praying followers of Jesus as Latter-day Saints. Association of Mormon Counselors and Psychotherapists are God communicating with us; and so (AMCAP) Journal; in the book Counseling—A Guide to forth. HIS column has been mostly “talk.” Helping Others, vol. 2, eds. R. Lanier Britsch and Then comes college and adulthood. Intellectualizing. Preaching to the Terrance D. Olson (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book; 1990); Exponent II; and in This People magazine. A Source 1 (experience) becomes primary, and T choir, perhaps. But let’s bring this to a copy of the latest edition of For Those Who Wonder (as different authorities (source 2) also appear. close at the personal level: If you are at this well as past Borderland columns) is available free Reason and logic (source 3) are re-explored time experiencing a “clash,” I suggest that from WWW.FORTHOSEWHOWONDER.COM. and re-examined. New knowledge is accu- you slow down, consider all the ramifica- mulated that conflicts with existing under- tions, and stay with us in the Borderlands at Please send me any of your experiences standings. The clash occurs. least until you can sort out the issues and or tales from life in the Borderlands. We who want to assist young members in make decisions which will be most beneficial dealing with such knowledge clashes can in- for you and for those around you. D. Jeff Burton tervene at any stage of development. I will [email protected] explore this in future columns, but in a re- NOTES cent column (“Coping with a Deadly Pandemic,” SUNSTONE, September 2006), I 1. Whether acknowledged directly in the text or described an “inoculation” approach that not, among the sources I’ve drawn insights from here might work for some, especially if it occurs are: C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (San Francisco: Harper/Vondervan, 1942); Marcus J. Borg, Jesus: early on. Many write me to say that they have Uncovering the Life, Teachings, and Relevance of a found the first chapter of my book For Those Religious Revolutionary (New York: Who Wonder, titled, “Helping Those with HarperSanFrancisco: 2006); and James W. Fowler, Religious Questions and Doubts,” helpful.7 Stages of Faith: The Psychology of Human Development FALLING It is important to point out to our trou- and the Quest for Meaning (New York: bled friends that “the facts” are rarely rock- HarperSanFrancisco, 1995). David was innocent 2. James W. Fowler describes a calm “Stage Five” solid. We approach knowledge or faith as “alive to [accepting] the paradox and truth of when he hurled the first stone. understanding asymptotically, i.e., we never contradictions,” as unifying “opposites in mind and Strange the forms that Eden takes, reach a perfect knowledge or understanding experience,” as having a “commitment to justice [and how knowledge comes, of anything. Science and statistics have de- being] freed from the confines of class, nation, reli- how sorrow rises from us veloped elaborate methods for testing, veri- gion, and community.” He describes “Stage Six” as and we from it fying, and strengthening the evidence on characterized by serenity: “[having] perfect love, lack until the circle rolls, which beliefs and knowledge are based, but of division, universalizing faith, being heedless of threats to self,” and other idealizations. His Stages of the snake with its tail in its mouth, no test produces perfect knowledge. There is Faith is one of the most insightful books ever written the hula-hoop of time no final point when we “understand every- about personal religious development. laying down legends thing,” especially pertaining to nature, reli- 3. About four-and-a-half years ago, I decided to as it loops by. gion, and God. try to concentrate on a few basic Jesus-taught princi- Jesus’ teachings were primarily per- ples and become more aware of my behaviors. —MIKAL LOFGREN
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BOUNDS AND CONDITIONS compute the orbit of a body acted upon by two or more other astronomical objects. They could only approximately calculate even the simple motions of the sun, the earth, and the OLOB IN UR OLAR YSTEM moon. Since gravity is unbounded by range, A K O S S ? a host of heavenly bodies interact in concert, By David Allred tugging at each other as they pass through their orbits. It turned out that the heavens were not a perfect clockwork after all. Certainly not over millions of years. In 2003, Dialogue ran adjacent essays by two scientists, David Tolman and David Allred. The Over the last two hundred and fifty years, two Davids had been students together at Princeton, attending the same student ward. Decades scientists got better at understanding how, after Princeton, Tolman had left Mormonism and Allred had stayed. Their essays are a fasci- over many orbits of the planets, the effects nating juxtaposition. nearly cancel each other out, as well as the In the course of his piece, David Allred ventured for a few paragraphs into a discussion of the bounds and limits to the effects that don’t planet Jupiter and its role as a governor and protector in our solar system—a type of Kolob. cancel each other out. But until recently, it Although the other author dismissed the topic as “fanciful physics,” my own interest was piqued. wasn’t possible to think about “running the I asked Dr. Allred, who is now a professor of physics and astronomy at BYU, how he’d feel about heavens forward or backwards” to see what fleshing out those paragraphs into a full column. He accepted the invitation and produced the the solar system would look like at a given following essay. It’s a fascinating piece that demonstrates how the gospel can illuminate the time millions of years in the future or the heavens and the heavens can illuminate back. past. With the current speed and power of computers, this is now possible. We’ve been Please send me your reflections on Mormonism and issues of science or health at able to probe the dynamics of our solar [email protected]. —RICK JEPSON system not just by running the clock forward and backward, but even by simulating how the solar system might have taken its current ISTORY DEMONSTRATES THAT physics than astrophysics. But however the form or how changes in its organization any attempts to synthesize scripture text is meant to be read, I believe that we can would affect our planet. One set of such sim- H and science will soon be outdated. enrich its interpretation by examining the ulations examines the influence of our sys- Nonetheless, the attempt can be enlight- role of Jupiter in our solar system. If nothing tem’s largest planet, Jupiter. ening. Our expanding scientific knowledge else, Jupiter shows us that one sphere can in- brings new vistas on the organization of the deed govern and protect another. UPITER is colossal.1 It carries more universe, and I find echoes of that universe in There is evidence that Jupiter’s motion than twice the mass of the other seven the scriptures—leaving me with many ques- through the heavens has interacted with the J planets in our solar system combined. tions and some speculations. earth in at least three positive ways: Jupiter It has 320 times the mass of the earth and In this essay, I share one such excursion in stabilizes the earth’s orbit, protects it from as- three times that of the next biggest planet, natural theology. My text: “Kolob is set nigh teroids and comets, and may have delivered Saturn. If we were to imagine our solar unto the throne of God, to govern all those water and other crucial elements for life to an system as viewed from one of our neigh- planets which belong to the same order as infant Earth early in its formation. boring stars—even with the best telescope that upon which thou standest” (Abraham we have imagined—we’d likely see just two 3:9). In the last decade and a half, a number BRIEF history of astronomy may be smudges: the sun and Jupiter. Maybe a third of published astronomical observations and helpful. Modern science emerged in Saturn. The earth might not show up at numerical simulations have made me A three centuries ago as observers all.2 wonder if the planet Jupiter might be a gov- came to recognize the physics behind the Jupiter’s gravitational effects are massive. ernor, a type of Kolob, set at the creation of clockwork regularity of the heavens. With Although the sun is more than a thousand the solar system to govern and protect the this realization came the ability to predict times the size of Jupiter, the planet’s motion earth and to sustain life on it over geological where planets, comets, and moons would be carries an angular momentum larger than the time. in the future. This sense of an ordered uni- sun’s. This means that it has enough force to I do not think that Jupiter is the Kolob verse, along with the realization that its laws perturb the orbits of the planets of the inner mentioned in the Book of Abraham. Where were discoverable and comprehendible by solar system—Mercury, Venus, Earth, and that Kolob is, I do not know. Nor am I certain people, helped fuel that eighteenth-century Mars. In essence, Jupiter is able to push these that the Book of Abraham is meant to be a confidence we call the Enlightenment. But planets around.3 Of course force is recip- textbook of science; it may have more meta- scientists at the time of Newton couldn’t rocal, so the inner planets do some pushing back. But it’s like four children jumping on a trampoline with an adult: Jupiter is so mas- DAVID ALLRED received his Ph.D. in physics and physical chemistry from Princeton sive that it alters the orbits of its neighbors University in 1977. He has worked in industry, U.S. National labs, and several universities, much more than they alter its orbit in return. including Brigham Young University where he is a professor of physics and astronomy. He Calculations show that all this pushing and his wife Janice are the parents of nine children. This essay is adapted from “What the around has kept the earth’s orbit nearly cir- Universe Means to People like Me,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 36, no. 1 (Spring cular, neither expanding nor contracting over 2003): 109–25. the eons.
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I SEE THE
EARTH AND
ITS COSMIC
ENVIRONMENT
AS AN
EXPRESSION
OF GOD’S
CONSTANT
LOVE FOR US.
AS WE LEARN
MORE ABOUT
THE HEAVENS
AND THE
EARTH, I
EXPECT WE
WILL SEE MORE
EVIDENCES OF
THAT LOVE AND
FIND MORE
RESONANCES
WITH THE
SCRIPTURES. WWW.NASA.GOV
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Reflecting on this influence, one can see their systems inhospitable for a planet like they destabilize the orbits of smaller ob- massive Jupiter acting as a “ruler” or a “gov- our earth. jects—making their orbits more elliptical. ernor” of the inner planets—which are often Hot Jupiters lie at very small orbital dis- They might also absorb smaller planets, termed the “terrestrial planets” because of tances from their parent stars—so close that smash them into the star or other planets, or their similarity to Earth. This brings to my their “years” may be as short as three Earth even throw them out of the system into the mind Abraham’s description of a sphere set days long. Because their motion necessarily deep freeze of interstellar space. Instead of “to govern all those planets which belong to affects the motion of the stars they orbit, hot being governors for terrestrial planets, most the same order as that upon which thou Jupiters are relatively easy to detect, so they Jovians in the universe seem like destroyers. standest.” Jupiter governs the orbits of the may seem more common to us than they ac- four terrestrial planets, the order of planets to tually are. But even with that in mind, they UPITER is also a protector. It shields us which our own belongs. are surprisingly common. Our current hy- from collisions with killer comets. This Jupiter’s role in our solar system may be pothesis is that these giants form at a great shielding became apparent when 4 J exceptional in the universe. Although we’d distance from their parent stars and then astronomers began computing where expect most long-lived planetary systems to slowly draw closer. In the process, a hot comets end up after completing thousands of function much like our own, in fact there is Jupiter would destroy any terrestrial planets orbits, influenced all the while by the gravity evidence that our system is uncommon in inside of its tightening orbit by pushing them of the objects they pass by. They found that the galaxy. Just over two decades ago, we into the star. these long orbits often cut across the paths of knew of no extrasolar planets or planetary Almost all known Jovian planets that are several planets in our solar system, a fact systems. We reasoned about how our system not hot Jupiters are instead eccentric which destabilizes the comet’s direction. A had come into existence to produce what we Jupiters. These planets, even when set dis- planet’s gravitational field can absorb a comet saw and then extrapolated that other plane- tantly from their parent stars, have astonish- or sling it either into the Sun or into deep tary systems ought to resemble our own. ingly elliptical orbits. In our own solar space. Then, just about a decade ago, the first planet system, the earth can tolerate the eccentricity With computer simulation, we can ex- revolving around another star was con- of smaller planets like Mars and Mercury be- amine Jupiter’s role in clearing our solar firmed. Now we know of more than 210 cause their gravitational effects are small. But system of comets. By replacing Jupiter with a such planets and nearly as many systems if Jupiter had an elliptical orbit, life might not Jovian the size of Saturn and running around other stars.5 Only a few of these be possible on our planet.7 through millions of years, we see that the rate closely resemble our own solar system. Having a nearly circular orbit has helped of KT class, or “dinosaur killer,” comets bom- Because they make solar systems easier stabilize the earth’s climate, allowing com- barding the earth increases between ten- and for us to find, all the systems discovered so plex life to develop and diversify. We’ve one hundredfold. If there were no planet at far have a Jovian planet. These planets are gas known for some time that Jupiter moves in a all in Jupiter’s place, the rate would increase giants similar to four of the planets in our rather circular orbit around the sun every another hundredfold. The frequency of a 10- solar system: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and twelve Earth years and that, via gravitational kilometer body hitting the earth would in- Neptune. But none of these systems matches interaction, it keeps the earth and other ter- crease from once every hundred million our own, with a Jovian planet moving in a restrial planets in nearly circular orbits as years to once every hundred thousand years. nearly circular orbit sufficiently distant from well. Until data from other systems came in, This kind of event would be devastating for its star.6 Instead, their gas giants fall mostly we assumed this arrangement was the norm. complex life on Earth. into two unexpected classes: “hot Jupiters” Eccentric Jupiters tend to clear out large We live in a dangerous neighborhood, but and “eccentric Jupiters.” Both types make chunks of space. Over the course of eons, we have powerful, helpful neighbors. Jupiter soaks up most comets or hurls them into the sun or out of the solar system before they can reach the earth. This point was brought home in 1994 when Jupiter disrupted the recently discovered comet, Shoemaker-Levi-9. Pulled from its course, the comet broke apart and slammed into Jupiter. Many won- dered if we’d be able to see the im- pact. Jupiter is huge and has no solid surface. Its atmosphere is tens of thousands of miles thick. So many thought Jupiter would just swallow up the fragments without any trace. But it didn’t, and the ef- fect was sobering. The collisions occurred on the
, MARKETING PRECEDES THE MIRACLE side of the planet turned slightly away from the earth, but the flash and expelled gases could be seen by telescopes. Several hours later, CALVIN GRONDAHL
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COMET SHOEMAKER-LEVI 9 COLLIDING WITH JUPITER On 16–22 July 1994, more than twenty fragments of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 collided with the planet Jupiter.
when the plant’s rotation brought the impact The Lord’s words teach me that this state The book is written to be accessible to educated area into view, there was a dark spot almost of affairs is not accidental. Perhaps Jupiter amateurs and makes a case for the “Rare Earth” hy- pothesis, an alternative to what is sometimes termed 8,000 miles in diameter where the largest can be seen as a type of Kolob. It is a gov- the “Copernican” hypothesis. The Copernican hy- fragment hit. If the comet had hit the earth ernor of the earth and its neighboring terres- pothesis is the idea that just as the earth is not the instead, our entire planet would have been trial planets. In this light, I see the earth and center of the universe, so too the earth is nothing spe- devastated pole to pole within a few days. its cosmic environment as an expression of cial in the universe and that complex life will there- God’s constant love for us. As we learn more fore be common in the universe. Both hypotheses UPITER may also have been instru- about the heavens and the earth, I expect we have stimulated active thought and investigation. It mental in the initial organization of the will see more evidences of that love and find may take considerable time and investigation to pro- 8 vide definitive evidence for one model over the other. J earth. Jupiter’s gravity blocked the for- more resonances with the scriptures. 5. An up-to-date, extensive, and easy-to-search mation of a planet between itself and Advances in science help us to understand catalogue is at http://exoplanets.org/planets.shtml. Mars, instead leaving the small chunks of and appreciate the scriptures in new and in- 6. The Jovian planets orbiting the star 47 Ursae leftover matter that form the asteroid belt. teresting ways. maj. have nearly circular orbits, but these planets are Some theorize that Jupiter also brought water more massive and closer to 47 UMa than Jupiter and to the earth more than four billion years ago NOTES Saturn are to our sun. 7. Jonathon I. Lonnie, “The Occurrence of by flinging chunks of cold, ice-bearing rocks 1. Jupiter facts can be found at Wikipedia, Jovian Planets and the Habitability of Planetary and hydrated minerals from the outer which offers the interesting note that the planet’s Systems,” Proceedings of the National Academy of reaches of the asteroid belt towards the inner name in English is a reduction of “Deus Pater,” Sciences 98, no 3 (2001): 809–14. planets. This conjecture is based on the ratio meaning “God father.” (“Father God” would be a 8. Sean N. Raymond, Thomas R. Quinn, of the common isotope of hydrogen in water looser but more illuminating translation.) Also NASA Jonathan I. Lunine, “Making Other Earths: Dynamical to that of the heavy isotope, which on Earth has a fact sheet available at: http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa. Simulations of Terrestrial Planet Formation and Water gov/planetary/factsheet/. Delivery,”http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/astroph/pdf/0308/ is about 7000 to 1. That ratio is not found in 0308159.pdf. comets but is in meteorites thought to come 2. NASA’s Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF) mis- sion may get postponed. But a “starshade” has been from the regions of the asteroid belt furthest proposed as a relatively cheap mission which could from the sun, nearest the orbit of Jupiter. An give the James Webb Telescope the capacity to see eccentric Jupiter, by contrast, would be ex- small objects near a bright star. In addition, Darwin pected to deliver less water to terrestrial may fly. Sooner or later someone will try a project planets. which may make it easier to see planets. See for ex- ample: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/colum- nist/vergano/2007-02-04-starshade_x.htm. E live in an interesting time. The 3. Saturn lies about ten times farther from the more we learn about the uni- sun than does the earth, so its average effect on the W verse, the more appreciation I inner planets would be more than a factor of ten have for the earth we have been given to live smaller than Jupiter’s. Therefore, Saturn’s effect on the on and for the factors that went into creating earth’s orbit can be disregarded for this discussion. LUNAR ECLIPSE it, that protect and stabilize it, and that help 4. The best book on this theme that I know is the one that first made the case: Peter Ward and Donald The night sky nibbles to keep it the beautiful and nurturing garden Brownlee, Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon it is. One of those factors is Jupiter. It was in the Universe (New York: Copernicus, 2000). Both the biscuit of moon. probably instrumental in the creation of the Ward and Brownlee are professors at the University of Bite by bite, earth by providing our planet with the right Washington. The first is a geologist and paleontolo- the moon melts in the mouth amount of water. It protects us from most de- gist; the second, an astronomer and astrobiologist. structive comets, and it does not perturb Pages 235–42 contain an excellent analysis of the po- of the night. tential role of Jupiter in keeping the earth habitable for Earth’s orbit out of near circularity. RISTIN ERKEY BBOTT animal life. —K B -A
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BOOK REVIEW LDS History; Robert Millet of BYU Religious Education (who conceived the idea of the conference); Richard Turley of the Family and Church History Department; and John AITHFUL CHOLARSHIP OES Welch, founder of FARMS and editor of BYU F S G Studies. The conference was organized as a showcase of faithful LDS scholars in dialogue TO WASHINGTON with friendly non-LDS colleagues. Sixteen hand-picked presenters—eight Mormon, eight non-Mormon—spoke on four panels, The Worlds of Joseph Smith: A Bicentennial each of which was “presided” over by an in- Conference at the Library of Congress dividual representing an institution com- Edited by John W. Welch mitted to faithful scholarship: the Family and Church History Department, FARMS, BYU Brigham Young University Press, 2006 Religious Education, and the Smith Institute. 325 pages, $24.95 A fifth session of the conference featured a devotional address by Dallin H. Oaks. Non-Mormon presenters included fa- Reviewed by John-Charles Duffy miliar Mormon-watchers Jan Shipps and Douglas Davies, in addition to Robert Remini, author of a recent Penguin biog- raphy of Joseph Smith; Richard Mouw, presi- The Worlds of Joseph Smith is dent of Fuller Theological Seminary, who a less important as a contribution to few months earlier had publicly apologized Mormon studies than as a window into for the poor treatment of Latter-day Saints by evangelical countercultists (see SUNSTONE, the agendas and aspirations that leading December 2004, p. 73); and Margaret Barker, institutions of LDS scholarship bring a biblical scholar whose idiosyncratic inter- to Mormon studies. pretations of ancient Israelite religion had at- tracted the interest of FARMS. Of the eight LDS panelists, only two were not from BYU: N MAY 2005, the Library of Congress studies than as a window into the agendas Richard Bushman and Terryl Givens. No one hosted a two-day conference to celebrate and aspirations that leading institutions of from the Community of Christ was invited to I the Joseph Smith bicentennial (see LDS scholarship bring to Mormon studies. At speak, a slight that Douglas Davies noted SUNSTONE, May 2005, p. 74). The Worlds of a time when Mormon studies is being wel- during his remarks. The presence of two Joseph Smith, produced by BYU Press, con- comed into the broader academy, The Worlds British participants (Davies and Barker) al- tains the published proceedings of that event, of Joseph Smith should inspire caution among lowed organizers to bill the conference as “in- with photos of Smith-related paintings, doc- non-LDS academics about working with ternational.” Considering, however, that a uments, and artifacts that the Library placed Latter-day Saints committed to “faithful session of the conference was titled “The on display for the occasion. Because the scholarship.”1 Making of a Global Religion,” it is striking book’s organization reproduces that of the The conference was conceived, organized, that participants were mostly American, all conference, and because the papers have re- and largely funded by Latter-day Saints. Anglophone, and all white. They were also ceived only light editing, an assessment of Although not credited as a cosponsor (that overwhelmingly male: only two of the six- the book cannot help but become an assess- title went to BYU), LDS Public Affairs pro- teen panelists were women (Shipps and ment of the conference itself. In the book’s vided half of the thirty to forty thousand dol- Barker), both non-LDS.3 introduction, John Welch and other confer- lars required to fund the conference, in Because faithful scholars dominated the ence organizers suggest that the conference addition to controlling media access to the organizing committee, issues important to was a landmark in the scholarly study of event.2 Four LDS scholars, all connected to these scholars dominated the conference. As Joseph Smith; the book’s classic-looking Church institutions, joined James Hutson, one non-Mormon scholar in attendance binding and dust jacket reinforce the impres- director of the Library’s Manuscripts pointed out to me, the conference’s focus slid sion that this is a volume of special signifi- Division, to form the planning committee: quickly from Joseph Smith to LDS religious cance. However, The Worlds of Joseph Smith is Richard Bushman, formerly affiliated with claims more generally. During the first ses- less important as a contribution to Mormon BYU’s Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for sion, panelists responded to a paper by Richard Bushman (pages 3–20 in the pub- JOHN-CHARLES DUFFY is a William N. Reynolds Fellow at the University of North lished proceedings), who argued that Joseph Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he is working toward a doctorate in religious studies. He Smith is diminished by histories which con- wrote his thesis on the emergence and influence of faithful scholarship in recent Mormon fine him to a nineteenth-century American studies. He is the author of several articles including, “The New Missionary Discussions context and that he ought instead to be com- and the Future of Correlation” (SUNSTONE, December 2005) and “Defending the pared to figures such as Augustine and Kingdom, Rethinking the Faith: How Apologetics Is Reshaping Mormon Orthodoxy” (SUNSTONE, Luther. The second session focused on May 2004). Smith’s claims to have reproduced ancient
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texts, with two presenters offering evidence Public Affairs in funding and coordinating to corroborate the antiquity of the Book of the event at the very least risked the impres- Mormon. The third daytime session ad- sion that the conference aimed more at vanced the Mormon-evangelical dialogue OULD LDS raising Mormonism’s cultural status than at that has emerged in recent years to clarify C ORGANIZERS advancing free academic inquiry. The fact Mormonism’s continuities with and differ- NOT SEE A that conference organizers showed no con- ences from Protestant orthodoxy, while the difference between an cern for that risk is itself cause for concern. fourth session was dedicated to Mormonism’s Certainly it is exciting to see scholarship international growth. Although non-Mormon academic conference and a on Mormonism move out of our homegrown panelists were happy to address these topics, public symposium, between journals and conferences—Sunstone, their comments showed that they knew they academic discourse and a Dialogue, BYU Studies, the Mormon History were speaking to a Mormon audience. Latter- Association, and so on—into non-Mormon day Saints who are interested in the chal- devotional talk by a Church venues such as the Library of Congress, the lenges of writing “faithful history,” in leader, or between a Yale Divinity School, the Society of Biblical evidence for Book of Mormon antiquity, or in scholarly forum and Literature, or Claremont Graduate University. dialogue with evangelicals may regard The Church public relations? But The Worlds of Joseph Smith raises questions Worlds of Joseph Smith as making important about what faithful scholars hope to accom- contributions. But those conversations offer plish by this movement. Because individuals little of use to scholars whose interest in and institutions committed to faithful schol- Mormonism is connected to broader discipli- arship have greater access to resources than nary questions, such as religious historians. world.”4 Rejecting Davies’s analysis, Keller as- does the independent Mormon sector, The most interesting session of the con- serted that Mormonism would grow to “be- faithful scholars are advantageously posi- ference (and therefore of the book) was the come a world religion . . . like none before it” tioned to influence the development of panel on Mormonism as a world religion. because of its divine authority and revealed Mormon studies outside Mormonism. BYU This was the one session that opened with a directives. Keller’s remarks prompted a faculty and officials from LDS Public Affairs paper by a non-Mormon, making it the only protest from Davies (again, not included in have played leading roles in assisting session in which someone other than a the published proceedings) that Keller had Claremont, for instance, in raising funds for “faithful” scholar steered the conversation. pushed the conversation down the road of that school’s Mormon studies chair. If The The speaker was Douglas Davies, who ar- apologetics. What kind of conference was Worlds of Joseph Smith demonstrates LDS gued that Mormonism is not a world reli- this, Davies asked—academic or evangelistic? scholars’ understandings of what is appro- gion—at least not yet—and that Church Earlier in the conference, BYU anthropologist priate discourse for an academic forum, then leaders’ efforts to maintain uniformity across John Clark had also taken an apologetic tack, administrators at Claremont and elsewhere cultures and curb dissent work against its be- citing mounting archaeological evidence to would be wise not to assume that faithful coming one. As Davies colorfully clarified conclude that the Book of Mormon can only scholars and their supporters “know how to during Q&A, Mormonism will not be a be accounted for as “an ancient text” con- operate in the professional world,” to repeat world religion until it has the equivalent of veyed to Joseph Smith “through supernatural Jan Shipps’s words. Sunnis and Shiites trying to kill each other. means.” No one challenged Clark publicly, The Worlds of Joseph Smith shows that (The Q&A is not included in the published but I am told that even some faithful scholars some faithful scholars are more subtle than proceedings but can be viewed as part of the felt he had crossed a line. others about infusing an orthodox perspec- online broadcast of the conference, archived tive into their work. Still, whether subtle or at lds.org.) Two of Davies’s respondents— OW should Davies’s question be reckless, scholars who pursue faithful schol- again, non-Mormons—had additional rea- answered? Was this an academic arship are pointedly resisting secular ground sons for skepticism about Mormon claims to H conference or an evangelistic one? rules for the academic study of religion. world-religion status. Jan Shipps took pains Conference organizers clearly thought it was Their project is to rewrite the rules, a project to clarify that her famous description of academic: they conspicuously labeled the they share with conservative religious Mormonism as a “new religious tradition” is event as such in publicity materials. But for scholars from other traditions—evangelicals, not the same as Rodney Stark’s thesis that faithful scholars, the distinction between the Catholics, Muslims. Some organizations may Mormonism is the first new “world religion” academic and the evangelistic is bound to be be willing to provide a space where faithful since Islam. Stark’s thesis was dissected by unclear because faithful scholarship by its scholars can pursue that agenda, especially if Gerald McDermott, who observed that very nature pushes against the boundaries Mormons are willing to pay. The Library of Mormons are neither the world’s fastest- that have come to separate academic and re- Congress was willing, and The Worlds of growing new religion (the Jehovah’s ligious discourses in many scholarly settings. Joseph Smith was the result: a showcase of Witnesses surpass them) nor the first new Even if some faithful scholars felt that Clark’s LDS scholarship funded and orchestrated by major faith since Islam (McDermott’s coun- and Keller’s remarks had pushed too far, the Church public relations; a carefully staged terexamples included Baha’i and Sufism). conference as a whole still leaves the impres- display of conversation between Mormon The LDS respondent to Davies’s paper, sion that its LDS organizers did not see a dif- and non-Mormon scholars that does little to BYU religion professor Roger Keller, gave one ference between an academic conference and address broader disciplinary questions; an of two presentations that would later lead Jan a public symposium, between academic dis- occasion for Latter-day Saints to reassure Shipps to remark that the conference had left course and a devotional talk by a Church themselves that they are winning the esteem questions about whether or not LDS scholars leader, or between a scholarly forum and of outsiders in academia and government. “know how to operate in the professional Church public relations. The role of LDS Do faithful scholars harbor hopes that the es-
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tablishment of a Mormon studies chair at Claremont will afford similar opportunities? How about the Latter-day Saints section at BOOK NOTE the Society of Biblical Literature recently cre- ated under the leadership of John Welch, conference organizer and publisher for The Worlds of Joseph Smith? The questions may The Mormon Tabernacle Enquirer sound suspicious, but The Worlds of Joseph Smith makes suspicion reasonable. Edited by Christopher Kimball Bigelow The book’s introduction offers a quotation Pince-Nez Press , 2007 from an anonymous scholar to the effect that the conference was “something very impor- 165 pages, $14.95 tant. . . . We will arrive at some point in the future when we will look back and say, ‘This development began at the Library of Reviewed by Ann M. Johnson Congress’” (x). If we’re going to traffic in anonymous judgments, I can toss in some that I encountered of a different nature: the HIS COLLECTION OF BEST non-Mormon scholar who came to see what pieces from The Sugar Beet is the was happening and decided it wasn’t worth- T kind of book I like to leave on my while to sit through even one session; the coffee table to sort out my guests by their journalist who predicted that the Library of reactions. Do visitors find it hilarious to Congress would never let itself be used like read about the wife of a persistent adulterer this again. Like all of us, the faithful scholars being counseled by her bishop to hold who organized The Worlds of Joseph Smith family home evening and get a boob job to prefer to hear praise. But the future credi- save her marriage? Or are they the kind bility of Mormon studies requires taking who are offended by a spoof on a financial more seriously the concerns that found voice clerk paying tithing on the money he em- in Douglas Davies’s question: What kind of bezzles from the ward? Or worst of all, do conference is this? they just not get it when they read that Deseret Book is selling a life-sized “Pedestal NOTES Wife” to glorify womanhood but which is not designed to “talk, cook, or form rela- 1. “Faithful scholarship” is a preferred self-iden- tionships”? tifier for what I have elsewhere called “orthodox scholarship.” See John-Charles Duffy, “Defending the Kingdom, Rethinking the Faith: How Apologetics Is Reshaping Mormon Orthodoxy,” SUNSTONE, May 2004, 22–55. Faithful scholarship seeks to bring dis- tinctively LDS perspectives (which in practice means orthodox LDS perspectives) to the study of dedicated tracting is rewarded with a sexy Mormonism. Institutions that incorporate a commit- ment to faithful scholarship into their missions are future wife; the wealthy sister explaining FARMS, BYU Studies, and (before its demise) the how her $80,000 platinum/diamond CTR Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Latter-day Saint ring increases her spirituality, the confused History. BYU Religious Education is dedicated to PAGE103 sister obediently fashioning a quilt from “gospel scholarship,” while the Family and Church aluminum cans when the ward Relief History Department pursues faithful scholarship by Society announces a “cans to quilts” slogan; default. I define faithful scholarship at greater length and the Riverton stakes that developed a in “‘Faithful Scholarship’ and the Mainstreaming of Mormon Studies,” Sunstone Symposium, Salt Lake one-to six numbering system to streamline City, Utah, 11 August 2006 (tape/CD/download standard answers in Sunday School classes #SL06223). (prayer, fasting, reading the scriptures, 2. My information about the funding of the con- paying tithing, obeying the Word of THE MORMON TABERNACLE ENQUIRER, ference comes from a conversation with Helen Wisdom, personal experience). Dalrymple, senior public affairs specialist at the The humor in these selections is never This is definitely “in-humor.” A person Library of Congress, 9 May 2005, while I was re- porting on the conference for SUNSTONE; and from a mean-spirited. Although some of the offer- who has never attended Primary Sharing panel discussion with the conference organizers held ings are a bit risqué, most could be shared Time and watched wide-eyed, three-year- at Brigham Young University, 23 March 2006. in church meetings with members who olds being taught the steps of repentance 3. Jill Derr, then head of the Smith Institute, have a sense of humor. They poke fun at just wouldn’t get the humor about a re- presided over the final session, making her the only our LDS difficulty of trying to live “in the gional meeting for nursery-age children LDS woman whose name appeared in the conference world” without being “of the world.” counseling them to wear more modest program. 4. Carrie A. Moore, “Scholars Moving to S.L.,” There’s the missionary hoping it’s true that clothing. Deseret Morning News, 21 June 2005.
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REVIEW ESSAY reading on her. She wore her most pensive expression and wrinkled forehead, then shrugged her shoulders and allowed that this was, indeed, something to think about. Over E AS OLITARY EBELLIOUS subsequent weeks, while I spent most of my “H W S , R , time with the third-year students who met with me at the same hour, she continued her AND HARD TO BE GOVERNED” mostly independent labor of reading and translating a selection of different voices from WHAT JESUS MEANT that volume. Eventually she moved on to other texts: a pair of revolutionary writings by Garry Wills by Subcommander Marcos, a leader of Viking, 2006 Mexico’s new Zapatista rebels—from vol- umes I had also picked up at that 143 pages, $24.95 Cuernavacan bookstore a decade earlier.
Reviewed by Brett Alan Sanders “Faith out on quest to know”
AS DAVID BARBER makes plain in his essay Wills’s book is a believer’s unpretentious yet “Mormonism and America’s Jesus Obsession” (SUNSTONE, December 2005), in which he intellectually rigorous attempt to ferret out the reviews books on Jesus by Harold Bloom, real essence of Jesus’s teachings from the Stephen Prothero, Richard Wightman Fox, and Robert L. Millet, the name of Jesus has sanitized, simplified versions of others’ agendas. been used in various and contradictory ways The Jesus Wills emerges with is of the to promote causes as diverse as the justifica- uncomfortable, indomitable, “rebellious” sort. tion of America’s corporate ethic and the abo- lition or justification of slavery. The same point is developed magisterially, in a more UNE 1996 FOUND me with a small Spanish-language Jesus and my sole fourth- universalist context, in Jaroslav Pelikan’s Jesus group consisting of five of my high year Spanish student at the time, a faithful through the Centuries: His Place in the History of J school students, my wife Anita, and my and earnest Mormon girl. The passage reads Culture (Yale University Press, 1985). A parents in Cuernavaca, Mexico, where my roughly: “And the child grew in body and survey of Pelikan’s contents by chapter is suf- students were experiencing a combination of spirit and was different from His compan- ficient to illustrate the point: “The Rabbi”; homestay, language training, and excursions. ions; he was solitary, rebellious, and hard to “The Turning Point of History”; “The Light of On a free afternoon in town, Anita and I be governed. I never managed to tame His the Gentiles”; “The King of Kings”; “The wandered into a bookstore where I bought a impulses.” Gibran puts these words into the Cosmic Christ”; “The Son of Man”; “The True Spanish-language edition of Lebanese poet mouth of Anna, Mary’s mother, as she de- Image”; “Christ Crucified”; “The Monk Who Kahlil Gibran’s Jesus, the Son of Man. scribes the childhood of Jesus. Rules the World”; “The Bridegroom of the This event is significant to me for several I was hardly surprised at my student’s re- Soul”; “The Divine and Human Model”; “The reasons. First, while I had read Gibran’s most action to the phrase, “solitary, rebellious, and Universal Man”; “The Mirror of the Eternal”; famous work, The Prophet, in English, it had hard to be governed,” a description more apt, “The Prince of Peace”; “The Teacher of been a gift from an MTC companion before in correlated Mormon teaching, for Laman or Common Sense”; “The Poet of the Spirit”; our departure in December 1978 for Lemuel. Her pursed lips and raised brow “The Liberator”; “The Man Who Belongs to Argentina; so it seemed fitting, somehow, suggested confusion and objection. I ac- the World.” that my next encounter with Gibran should knowledged the oddness of the image from a Renowned historian and American be in the language of my mission. Mormon perspective and wondered aloud Catholic intellectual Garry Wills, author of Another coincidence occurred in June whether the poet—who had naturally Papal Sin (Doubleday, 2000) and its “unin- 2005 in Buenos Aires, where I would pick up chosen his words carefully—might intend to tended sequel” Why I Am a Catholic Gibran’s little volume of poems and parables provoke some insight that might redeem the (Houghton Miffln, 2002), makes a valuable called in Spanish El loco, when only a week words to our understanding? Given the contribution to this conversation with his earlier, in Concordia, a city on the border Savior’s peculiar mission, could there be new book What Jesus Meant, in which he with Uruguay, I had been discussing Gibran some sense in which to be rebellious and even makes so bold as to discern from among with my kind and philosophical hostess. hard to govern might be a virtue? so many variants the authentic, historical I detail all this here because of a classroom For her, of course, this idea was new and Jesus. Even so, Wills’s book is not so much encounter in spring 2006 between Gibran’s unsettling; I did not try to impose my own an exercise in intellectual hubris as it is a be- liever’s unpretentious yet intellectually rig- BRETT ALAN SANDERS is a contributing editor at www.tertuliamagazine.com, where he orous attempt to ferret out the real essence of also writes on the rhetorical arts for “Tertullian’s” blog. His memoir in the present Jesus’s teachings from the sanitized, simpli- (December 2006) issue of Tertulia, “Dancing with Coyote,” recounts an episode in his on- fied versions of others’ agendas. In Why I Am going spiritual journey. He lives with his wife, Anita, in Tell City, Indiana. a Catholic, responding to those who question
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how he can remain committed to the faith deeds reveals, rather, a deep chasm between plar, or a summary, of all mankind” will not
while openly critical of papal duplicity, Wills what Jesus said and did and what any of us stand up in Wills’s analysis (3). The meaning answers in a way that resonates with the re- could ordinarily justify saying or doing. that Wills attaches to this period lies in the cent experience of Mormon intellectuals and Could we countenance a precocious twelve- wilderness testing of Jesus’s adult years, from “dissenters” who have been disciplined by year-old’s going off on his own, unan- which he emerges at “about thirty”—which, their church leaders: “Troubled belief is not nounced, in a big city? Or driving demons Wills suggests, was “just the conventional disbelief, though ‘true believers’ take it for from a lunatic into the pigs of a neighboring way of saying that he was fully adult” (5).
that.” And a bit later: “An unexamined faith farmer? The redemptive nature of Jesus’s role, “Though we are not explicitly told anything is not a faith. It is a superstition” (6). Wills elaborates, places an unbridgeable about ‘the hidden years’ beyond Luke’s de- In What Jesus Means, Wills purports to be chasm between him and us because what he scription of his running away from his par- writing “not a scholarly book but a devo- experiences to atone for our sins is so far be- ents when he was twelve,” Wills writes, “the tional one . . . a profession of faith—a rea- yond what any one of us could ever endure stance of the rebel who would not be con- soning faith, I hope, and reasonable; what in the flesh. Jesus, in fact, was ever “a man of tained in the expectations of his hometown the margins, never quite fitting in, always comes out again and again when family ties ‘out of context’” (xxi). In Mormon terms, he are mentioned” (7). Wills contends, in fact, is that “poor, wayfaring man of grief” that we that this rebellious stance led him to a period WILLS’S JESUS DOES NOT CARE WHETHER WE VOTE OR OTHERWISE FULFILL OUR DUTY TO CAESAR, ONLY WHETHER WE PASS THE SUPREME TEST, WHICH IS THAT OF LOVE.
Saint Anselm called ‘faith out on quest to might shelter but whom we can never our- of wilderness training and scriptural study know’” (xxx). And the Jesus Wills emerges selves completely fathom. He is the perfec- within some “radical ascetic movement” such with is of the uncomfortable, indomitable, tion after which Don Quixote aspires in his as the Essenes and the dissidents of Qumran “rebellious” sort described by Gibran’s Anna. mad tilting at windmills, whose assault on an (9), and that it was among them that he First of all, in his intriguing note on trans- innocent flock of sheep might be compared probably learned Hebrew. As evidence, Wills lation, Wills establishes that, far from the ele- to Jesus’s disorderly—even subversive—as- cites the Four Gospels’ agreement that Jesus’s gance of Latter-day Saints’ preferred King sault on those pigs. ministry began “in the context of John the James Version, the “marketplace Greek” of Yet Latter-day Saints will still object that Baptist’s radical reform movement.” Thus he the New Testament—which both Jesus and we are elsewhere commanded, “Be ye there- suggests that Jesus’s going off into the desert his disciples would have spoken—was a fore perfect, even as your father which is in constituted a break from family patterns “to rough pidgin dialect whose “sentences some- heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). I don’t become a spiritual ‘extremist.’” Jesus’s family times fumble at meaning.” Wills adds that know how Wills would respond to that “would have felt what families feel today lack of clarity in the text has more often to do verse, but perhaps he might consider it hy- when their sons or daughters join a ‘cult’” with “mere linguistic clumsiness” than with perbolic as far as our actual mortal state is (11)—a thought that might give us pause as any sublimity of ideas; and he paraphrases concerned. Perhaps he would say that we contemplate the specter of latter-day Nietzsche’s barb that “if God wrote the New greater perfection is intended as the more Islamic fundamentalism (not to excuse the Testament, he knew surprisingly little Greek” distant result of eternal progression. seemingly mindless violence of the latter, but (xii). Challenging, thus, the reasons that at least to grant those suicide bombers their Mormon leaders often cite for preferring the Social barriers and taboos like humanity, misguided though it may be). King James Bible over more modern ver- so many cobwebs To Wills, then, this whole ascetic experi- sions, Wills acknowledges that such versions ence, which might well have lasted for years, are always thought undignified when they THE BODY OF Wills’s answer to the ques- is symbolized by the typological story of a first come out but that, in fact, “new transla- tion of what Jesus actually “meant by his figurative “forty days’” fasting in the wilder- tions have to be undignified if they are to re- strange deeds and words” (xviii)—in con- ness followed by three temptations. “By un- produce the effect of the original”—which trast to what he merely did or said—is taken dergoing his personal trial,” Wills writes, effect he calls “a rough-hewn majesty, an al- up in eight concise and cogently argued Jesus most brutal linguistic earthiness” (xiii). chapters. In the first of these, “The Hidden bears things he would protect Beyond that, Wills might as well be ad- Years,” Wills reveals a figure whose life began others from—as he does in his later dressing my sweetly naive Mormon Spanish as “a mysterious rumor, one child hidden testing in the garden of student when, in his foreword, he demol- among the many, who are put at risk by his Gethsemane. He is already in that ishes the Sunday School orthodoxy of “gentle radical presence among them”—and who sense rescuing them as he faces his Jesus meek and mild” that lies behind the yet, as the first-century Jewish historian solitary ordeal. The testing in the presently ubiquitous letters WWJD embla- Josephus relates it, is given one of his day’s desert is not only a symbol of his zoned on bracelets and T-shirts (signifying most common names: “It is as if,” Wills adds, own growth into a knowledge of “What Would Jesus Do?”). “But can we really “he were called Everyman—or simply the his calling. It is a symbolic presen- aspire to do what Jesus did?” Wills asks (xv). Son of Man.” tation, here at the beginning of his A consideration of his actual words and But this impression of Jesus as “the exem- public life, of his whole salvific
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function, taking up the burden of teach lessons about the heavenly the Samaritans—of our day? “Some all mankind. The three tests in the reign he brings with him, and one Christians tell us who,” he answers. desert present in synecdoche (part of the main lessons is that people At the funeral of a well-known gay for whole) the drama behind the should not be separated into man who died of AIDS, a outer events of his ministry. (12) classes of the clean and unclean, ‘Christian’ group showed up with Thus, according to Wills’s analysis, in the the worthy and the unworthy, the placards saying ‘God hates fags.’ In trial of the stone for a loaf of bread, Jesus respectable and the unrespectable. the San Diego diocese, a Catholic symbolically rejects the Christian socialism He has told his followers that they bishop forbade Christian burial to or liberation theology that would limit his are privileged, since they enter into an openly gay man. Is there any radicalism to that of a mere socio-political a new intimacy with the Father doubt where Jesus would have movement; while in the temptation of through his own identification with stood in these episodes—where, in worldly power, he rejects “what will become the Father. But if they try to make his mystical members, he was the medieval papacy, with its all-encom- that a privilege to be used against standing then? He was with the gay passing authority over the ‘two swords’ of others or each other, they are be- man, not with his haters. This is temporal rule and spiritual rule”—the most traying the point of their union made all the clearer by the fact that insidious of which, Wills asserts, was and is with the Father, whose love is gays are called unclean for the same the latter (15). Finally, in resisting the temp- undiscriminating and inclusive, reason as were other outcasts of tation to hurl himself from the temple not gradated and exclusive. (29) Jesus’s time—because they violate heights and summon angels to rescue and In this sense, my previous allusion to Don the Holiness Code of the Book of minister to him, he refuses to glory in himself Quixote, “the knight of the woeful counte- Leviticus. The anthropologist Mary above the Father: Satan’s desire being, in this nance,” and to Joseph Smith’s “wayfaring Douglas has demonstrated that this case, to defeat God by “making Jesus repeat man of grief,” seem especially pertinent. concept of the unclean comes from the presumption of Eve when she thought Wills, for his part, concludes that Jesus was the ‘unnatural’ mixing of different she could become godlike in her own likely such a figure himself. “Hurt people,” kinds of things—of milk and meat, right”—in other words, “to top the fall of he writes, for instance. Examples are planting man with the fall of Man” (16). are not drawn to the aggressively two different kinds of seed in the To Wills’s debased view of Eve, Latter-day healthy” but to the “holy person same field, or mingling two kinds Saint readers will likely prefer Joseph Smith’s who is often slight and frail, with of yarn in the same garment theology of Eve’s dilemma between con- spiritual powers fretting their phys- (Leviticus 19:19), or ploughing flicting moral choices—a conception that I ical envelope. . . . People instinc- with a donkey and an ox still find extremely profound, even more so tively feel the companionship of (Deuteronomy 22:10), or eating in the light of Mormon rhetorician Wayne such men with the afflicted. The meat with the blood in it (Leviticus Booth’s “rhetorics of assent” that allows energy radiating from them has 19:26). people of differing belief systems to come to partly consumed them. (22–23) “In the case of homosexuality, the passive pragmatic and civil agreement on matters of In the present LDS context of anguished partner mixes with his male body the female conflicting moral principles. Still I believe wrestlings over the problematic existence of role,” Wills continues: Wills’s thesis has much to recommend itself. same-sex attraction among the marginalized In the Holiness Code, women are “Jesus is now spiritually tempered and faithful, Wills’s treatment of Jesus’s challenge unclean anyway, because of their toughened for his great work,” Wills summa- to the very “holiness codes” that his religion menstrual function. But this fic- rizes. “The testing and formative time is over, and ours still uphold is itself of great impor- tional “woman” who cannot men- the desert ordeal ended. This is the meaning tance. “No outcasts were cast out far enough struate is even more unclean. of the hidden years” (18). in Jesus’s world to make him shut them out,” Those who have been anxious to And, on the whole, Wills is by no means Wills writes, but not so for the Christianity keep this taboo alive in our times deaf to the subjective nature of all our ab- that arose in his name to cast out the Jews: “If are selective in what parts of the solute pronouncements on moral law. In this sin of ‘racial purity’”—which Wills calls Holiness Code they continue to ob- chapter two, for instance, the reformist one of Christianity’s greatest sins—”did not serve from the Book of Leviticus. prophet shocks even his teachers, the as- cause the Holocaust, it certainly facilitated That is the point of a letter I was cetics, by sitting down to dine with the it.” Who then, Wills asks, are the Jews—or shown that came from the Internet unclean of all stripes. “He walks through social barriers and taboos as if they were cobwebs,” Wills writes (27). And this because of what Jesus has brought: God’s—or heaven’s—”reign,” a phrase Wills prefers to “kingdom” be- cause of the latter’s suggestion of the di- visions represented in the “holiness codes” of all hierarchical religions, which Jesus has set himself to oppose. “Jesus does not do miracles for their own sake,” Wills writes: His miracles are targeted to JOEL KAUFFMANN
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. . . addressed to a Protestant evan- day, might sympathize to some extent with gospel (Matthew’s). It is used for a mob at gelical who believes in literal Wills’s take on Jesus’s rejection of formalized Acts 19:32, 40. The gatherings that Paul ad- reading of the Bible. (32–33) religion. Ironically, though, this forces a con- dresses are those nonhierarchical bodies al- Among the sarcastic queries that follow in frontation—disorienting for many faithful— ready described” (78). Even those readers this “letter” is one regarding the possession of with our own Church’s corporate structure at who do not accept that evidence, however, slaves (“A friend of mine claims that this ap- over a century-and-a-half’s remove from the might find refreshing Wills’s suggestion of a plies to Mexicans but not Canadians. Can Prophet Joseph’s ragged frontier church. In Catholicism that is potentially non-exclusive, you clarify? Why can’t I own Canadians?”) the first of the “official declarations” that implicitly embracing even the faithful be- and the problem of avoiding contact with close out the Doctrine and Covenants, liever among Mormons. The purportedly un- women who are menstruating (“The problem Wilford Woodruff promises that neither he broken apostolic succession of the Roman is: how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most nor any prophet-president of the Church will church “is what excludes saintly Christians of women take offense”) (34). be permitted by God to lead His people non-Catholic gatherings,” Wills writes, “as As for the “natural law” theology that astray—a puzzling promise in the light of so not ‘valid,’ not connected with the mythical arose later in Christian history, whereby ho- many well-established prophetic misstate- chair of Peter as bishop of Rome” (82). This, mosexual activity is wrong because the part- ments. One solution to that dilemma is to too, is a direct challenge to Mormon protes- ners cannot produce children, Wills takes the differentiate between when the prophet in tations of exclusivity. moral philosopher’s position that “the pri- question was speaking “as a man” versus as mary function of human acts is not normally the prophet, but how does that idea help to God suffers with us said to be the only non-sinful use. Eating, for clarify anything? What exactly constitutes instance, is primarily an act of self-preserva- being led astray? Does God tolerate His THE FINAL THREE chapters of Wills’s in- tion,” but it is also a social act—and Jesus’s prophets’ errors on science or politics, just so triguing and provocative book deal with the “image of heaven’s reign is that of a feast, long as they don’t fail to teach faith, repen- related matters of Jesus’s raising of Lazarus where no need for subsistence will be at tance, and the importance of sacred ordi- from the dead (which Wills views as a prefig- stake.” Why then, Wills asks, “is sex as nances? And if so, is that idea of any comfort uring of his own resurrection, a declaration human communion different from feasting to the gay Mormon who has committed sui- of “his authority over life and death”); his and drinking as human communion? In one cide because he can’t bear his enforced sepa- death and descent to hell; and his resurrec- way only,” he answers—”because sex is con- ration from those ordinances? Regardless, tion (93). Of particular interest to Mormons sidered unclean” (36). Mormon readers are bound to feel chal- might be Wills’s treatment of the figure of lenged by Wills’s assertion that all churches Judas, which differs starkly from the familiar Radical Messiah, reactionary churches “resist radicalism—which means that they position of James E. Talmage in Jesus the reject Jesus” (44). Christ that he was a son of perdition and a IN THE NEXT two chapters, Wills addresses Equally challenging is Wills’s contention denier of the Holy Ghost. All of the inter- Jesus’s opposition to the interests of wealth; that the early Christians had no priests preters of Judas’s actions agree, Wills asserts, to power, especially that of the spiritual among them, no notable hierarchy of any that Judas “did not believe that [Jesus] would leaders of every faith; to the barriers put up kind, that women broke and passed the be sentenced to death” (102). Whatever his between men and women; to violence for bread and wine as well as (in at least one in- motivations, Wills writes, “[t]hey imagine any reason and the menace of theocracy stance) led their husbands on proselyting that Judas followed with increasing horror which “involves religion in state violence” missions. If the Jesus Christ who spoke to the process of Jesus’s trial and torture” (103). (54). For that matter, Wills’s Jesus does not Joseph Smith organized this Church, how This view is what makes Elder Talmage’s pro- care whether we vote or otherwise fulfill our can the faithful Latter-day Saint accept Wills’s nouncement seem so harsh; in this respect, duty to Caesar, only whether we pass the assertion of a heavenly reign quite separate Wills’s view seems at once fairer to Judas and supreme test, which is that of love: “Did you from any organized ecclesiastical body—in- more consoling to the rest of us. “Judas could treat everyone, high and low, as if dealing cluding our own? Undoubtedly, then, this not bear the knowledge of what he had with Jesus himself, with his own inclusive will be a sticking point for Mormon readers. done,” Wills writes. “He killed himself for and gratuitous love. . . ?” which, for Wills “is Still, there are those equally challenging having killed God. It was an act of contrition not a dreamy, sentimental, gushy thing” but stances of Mormonism’s great apologist- that redeems him, makes him a kind of com- “radical love, exigent, searing, terrifying” scholar Hugh Nibley, who famously declared rade for all of us who have betrayed Jesus. He (56–57). Similarly, Wills addresses Jesus’s that he would rather be a doorkeeper at the is our patron. Saint Judas” (203–04). preference for Albert Schweitzer’s inward Lord’s Temple than an officer in the Church’s And this redeeming notion concords well reign of heaven, or “kingdom of God in the hierarchy. And might there not be some ele- with Wills’s take on the suffering at heart,” to the “whited sepulchers” of the es- ment of truth in Wills’s barb that Jesus Gethsemane and at Calvary. “Jesus did not tablished religious orders. (As I recall from “would have the same reaction he had to the wear merely the outer shell or facial mask of my reading of so many years past, the gentle profanation of the Temple if he walked into a man (as the ancient Docetists taught),” agnosticism of Schweitzer’s view of Jesus as a Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome—or, for that Wills writes. desert-trained ascetic who firmly believed he matter, into the Mormon Tabernacle or He had to enter the full tragedy of was living out the end times accords rather Robert Schuller’s Crystal Cathedral” humanity, its bewildered helpless- well—except for that agnosticism—with (75–76)? ness, its shame, its sense of inade- Wills’s interpretation of the wilderness trial.) In arguing that Christ did not organize a quacy and despair. That is the Mormons readers, familiar with Joseph church, Wills writes that “the Greek word meaning of the dark cry from the Smith’s history of radical departure from the usually translated as ‘church’ is ekklesia, a cross saying that even the Father accepted creeds of the Christendom of his ‘gathering’—a word that occurs in only one had abandoned him. To experience
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all the aspects of human contin- with all of us: with Judas, the outcasts of all that of the faithful Mormon child reciting her gency, to plumb those depths, is a ages, all who would submit, finally, to his of- Articles of Faith or later maintaining that way of descending into hell. fering of divine grace. And then, having dis- faith—steadfastly—in the face of the The repetition of his prayer pensed with grief and sorrow, Wills addresses slightest heterodoxy. three times is a scriptural device for “three interlocking things [which] can give In the final analysis, though, as an ag- showing a prolonged experience, us confidence that Jesus is risen—the empty nostic Mormon whose struggle to reestablish just as Luke did in the desert tomb, the multiple apparitions, and the a fruitful union with the communal body of struggle with Satan. The triple seismic change in the followers of Jesus” Latter-day Saints is severely compromised prayer at Gethsemane, at the end of (124). Wills’s earlier description of this book since his youngest child’s coming out two his public ministry, is a companion as not scholarly but devotional is most evi- years ago in an openly gay and still vibrant piece to the triple trial in the desert. dent in this conclusion, and reading it put relationship, I am less interested in Wills’s . . . Both episodes are emblematic me much in mind of Wills’s poignant confes- proofs of the resurrection and the specific of the stakes being played for in the sion of faith (in the final brief segment of matter of his creed than in the conclusion ex- whole public ministry. . . . [But] in Why I Am a Catholic) in the Roman Catholic pressed in his brief afterword to the full argu- the last showdown . . . he has no Creed. He elaborates on the particular ment of What Jesus Meant. “The meaning is one to speak with, not even the meaning he attaches to each point in that clear,” he writes: Father. He must conquer himself, creed in a succession of succinct little chap- All earthly societies have currently all alone, with no human or divine ters headed with the phrases themselves: unidentifiable elements of heaven’s help. All that is non-divine in him • “I believe in God . . .” (Ch. 23) reign in them, but none of them . . . must leap into oblivion . . . . Only • “the Father almighty, creator of can be equated with heaven’s reign. by being completely crushed as a heaven and earth . . . (Ch. 24) Claims to a “faith-based politics” or human can he accomplish the ut- • “and in Jesus Christ our Lord, to a perfect church substitute a most in human heroism. (106–07) the only son of God . . .” (Ch. 25) false religion for heaven’s reign— Finally, Wills explores the possible rea- • “conceived by the Holy Spirit, which is a form of idolatry. sons for Jesus’s Incarnation and his ultimate born of the Virgin Mary . . .” (Ch. Strong words, indeed, and a great deal to sacrifice. “Perhaps,” he writes, “the 26) think about for any faithful Mormon reader Incarnation is just God’s way of saying that, • “shall come to judge the living in this day of “Proclamations on the Family” no matter what horrors we face or hells we and the dead . . .” (Ch. 27). and much-denied efforts to insert matters of descend to, he is coming with us” (118). In the voice of one who truly believes, this theological law into the United States Implicit in these words is that he is coming confession is surely no less touching than Constitution. Cowboys and Prophets.
The Backslider Statements of the LDS First ANNIVERSARY EDITION Presidency: A Topical Compendium By Levi S. Peterson Compiled by Gary James Bergera Illustrations by Micah Clegg Foreword by Dale C. LeCheminant
eep in the recesses of or members of the LDS Church, D the Mormon heart, Jesus F the authority to speak for God is an experienced but unpre- rests with the First Presidency, who tentious cowboy who, like our hold the exclusive prerogative to in- own rugged fathers, watches terpret scripture and doctrine for the over us with kind and sparing church at large. advice. Enter Frank Windham, a This volume should therefore be hard-working Mormon, trying to of interest to church members and be good but convinced he’s on the scholars looking for official views on road to hell. The Backslider is an ex- doctrinal questions and contemporary pression of the human struggle with issues. For readers’ convenience, the imperfection and hope of redemp- excerpts are arranged alphabetically by tion. It is a landmark in Mormon fic- topic and in reverse chronological tion, now issued in an illustrated edi- order to present the most recent state- tion on its twentieth anniversary. ments first.
hardback. 440 Pages. $31.95 paperback. 544 pages. $34.95
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TURNING THE TIME OVER TO . . . no mourning, pain, or death]. Blessed are the meek [humble, gentle, long-suffering, not easily of- Grant H. Palmer fended, exhibiting strength under control]: for they shall inherit the [new] earth [the kingdom of THE “BORN AGAIN” SAINT heaven]. Blessed are they which do hunger The Church exists for nothing else but to draw Imagine yourself as a living house. and thirst after righteousness: for they men into Christ, to make them little Christ’s. God comes in to rebuild that house. shall be filled [with the Spirit, the —C. S. Lewis At first, perhaps, you can under- love of God, and wisdom and stand what He is doing. He is get- knowledge in the kingdom of VANGELICAL CHRISTIANS OFTEN ting the drains right and stopping heaven]. employ the term and converse about the leaks in the roof and so on; you Blessed are the merciful [who are E the significance and process of being knew that those jobs needed doing more forgiving than justice re- “born again,” whereas members of the Church and so you are not surprised. But quires]: for they shall obtain mercy of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints seldom do. presently he starts knocking the [in the kingdom of heaven]. Despite many Book of Mormon references to house about in a way that hurts Blessed are the pure [honest] in being born again,1 the LDS Church neglects abominably and does not seem to heart: for they shall see God [daily in the topic. Recall that Jesus himself used this make sense. What on earth is He up the kingdom of heaven]. term and emphasized its importance during to? The explanation is that He is Blessed are the peacemakers: for his discussion with the Jewish leader building quite a different house they shall be called the children [sons Nicodemus. He informed Nicodemus that to from the one you thought of— and daughters] of God [and inherit “enter into the kingdom” a person “must be throwing out a new wing here, all things in the kingdom of born again” (John 3:5, 7, emphasis mine). putting on an extra floor there, run- heaven]. The New Testament is replete with many ning up towers, making courtyards. Blessed are they which are perse- other exhortations to Christians about “being You thought you were going to be cuted for righteousness’ sake [return born again,” about “putting on Christ,” made into a decent little cottage: good for evil when reviled, perse- “Christ being in you,” and “hav[ing] the but He is building a palace. He in- cuted, or spoken against falsely]: mind of Christ” (John 3:7; Romans 8:10; tends to come and live in it Himself. for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 13:14; 1 Corinthians 2:16). In fact, this is the The command Be ye perfect is Blessed are ye, when men shall re- central message of the New Testament. Let us not idealistic gas. Nor is it a com- vile you, and persecute you, and shall examine what Jesus, Peter, Paul, and John mand to do the impossible. He is say all manner of evil against you have to say specifically about this funda- going to make us into creatures falsely, for my sake . . . for great is mental theme. that can obey that command. . . . If your reward in heaven. (Matthew we let Him. . . . The process will be 5:1–12; for an elaboration of these HILE obeying the Mosaic Law long and in parts very painful; but promises, see Revelation chapters “could not make . . . [one] per- that is what we are in for. Nothing 2, 3, 21–22) W fect,” Jesus said that a person be- less. He meant what he said.2 Jesus is the Sermon on the Mount—the comes whole or “perfect” when exemplifying To each generation, Jesus Christ answers first morally perfect Christian. Each of these the Sermon on the Mount in his or her life the ancient query of the rich young ruler, Christian attitude-ideals is exemplified many (Matthew 5:48). Jesus is saying: If you will let “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?” with times throughout his ministry. In short, Jesus me, I will make you perfect. The job will not the timeless response: “Come, follow me’’ is asking us to: be accomplished in this life; but he intends (Luke 18:18, 22). The Sermon on the Mount • Be diligent in the ministry. to get us as far as possible before our death. reveals the essential character of Jesus. He de- • Exercise self-discipline. Jesus urges us to “count the cost” before fines the Christian as one who, like himself, • Do what is right. becoming a Christian. He informs his lis- practices the beatitudes. Such are promised • Forgive others beyond what teners: “Whosoever doth not bear his cross, eternal life in the kingdom of heaven. justice requires. and come after me, cannot be my disciple . . . Blessed are the poor in spirit [“disci- • Be pure in heart and honest. [and he] that forsaketh not all that he hath, ples” who continue serving dili- • Be a peacemaker. he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:27, 33). gently, even when discouraged, in • Return good for evil. Jesus is putting us on notice that when we bringing others to Christ]: for theirs In his old age, the Apostle Peter reempha- turn to Him, we should not be surprised if is the kingdom of heaven. sized these Christian ideals. He had carefully we are in for a rough time. Too many disci- Blessed are they that mourn: for observed Jesus and knew him well. In one of ples underestimate what he means to make they shall be comforted [in the his two surviving epistles, Peter lists nine per- of us. C. S. Lewis illustrates this point: kingdom of heaven where there is sonal characteristics for which the Saints ought to strive. He repeatedly referred to these GRANT H. PALMER is the author of The Incomparable Jesus (Kofford Books, 2005) and collectively as “the way of truth,” “the right An Insider's View of Mormon Origins (Signature Books, 2002). He retired in 2001, after way,” and “the way of righteousness,” and he thirty-four years of teaching and counseling for the Church Education System. He currently undoubtedly observed them in Jesus during lives in Sandy, Utah, with his wife, Connie, and is a real estate developer. the Master’s three-year ministry (2 Peter 2:2;
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15, 21). Jesus displayed “diligence” in re- are different from ours; stronger, unto me,’’ “follow me,’’ “hear me,’’ “confess vealing his Father’s “divine nature,” mani- quieter, happier, more radiant. me,” “gather with me,’’ “remember me,’’ “seek fested strong “faith” in God, was “virtuous,” They begin where most of us leave me,’’ “believe on me,’’ “find me,” “live by me,’’ and demonstrated “knowledge” of the scrip- off. They are, I say, recognizable; “know me,’’ “serve me,” “see me,’’ “receive tures. He exhibited “temperance” (meaning but you must know what to look me,’’ “love me,’’ “dwell in me,” “honour me,” self control, moderation, and balance) and for. They will not be very like the “abide in me,’’ “ask me,” “testify of me,” and “patience” with others. He also demonstrated idea of “religious people” which “be witnesses of me.”7 Jesus uses the phrase “godliness” (goodness), “brotherly kindness” you have formed from your general “follow me’’ more than fifteen times when (gentleness), and enormous “charity” (love reading. They do not draw atten- speaking to different individuals and groups and compassion) for his fellow beings. Peter tion to themselves. You tend to in the Four Gospels. explained that when these nine qualities “be think that you are being kind to A church fulfilling its stewardship encour- in [us], and abound,’’ then we have “knowl- them when they are really being ages and facilitates the process of one’s be- edge of our Lord Jesus Christ’’ and “shall kind to you. They love you more coming “born again.” But ultimately that never fall” (2 Peter 1:4–10). Nine small words, than other men do, but need you process is more about our own personal rela- but in this list of Christlike traits reside eternal less. . . . They will usually seem to tionship with Christ than with an institution. life! have a lot of time: you will wonder Jesus has assured disciples who seriously The Apostle Paul also taught the Saints to where it comes from. When you covenant to take his “divine nature” upon strive for these characteristics “until Christ be have recognized one of them, you them: “I am with you alway[s].” “My peace I formed in you.” His list of the fruits of the will recognize the next one much give unto you.” “[My Spirit] shall teach you all spirit by which a Christian is known is al- more easily. . . . [They are found] things . . . whatsoever I have said.” And “I will most identical to Peter’s. He also lists nine across every barrier of color, sex, love [you], and will manifest myself to [you]” qualities: “love, joy, peace, long-suffering, class, age, and even of creeds.5 (Matthew 28:20; John 14:26–27; John gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, tem- 14:21). In short, Jesus is affirming that true perance’’ (Galatians 4:19; 5:22–23). Taking HAT is the role of churches in followers will be “born again.” It is our dili- upon us the name of Christ and his character bringing about the “born-again” gence but especially God’s “gift” of enabling is to “know thee the only true God, and Jesus W saint? The high aspiration of grace that empowers us to fully employ the Christ, whom thou hast sent” and thus re- “Christ being formed in us,” of becoming “a characteristics of Christ—that increases de- ceive “life eternal” (John 17:3; cf. 10:27–28). son of God,” a “real son,” is not just one sire beyond our natural abilities—that makes Being like Jesus is far more ambitious than among many jobs a Christian has to do, but it possible for us to “overcome the world” saying that we know he lives.3 as C. S. Lewis declares: (Ephesians 2:8; John 16:33). The Apostle John explained what being It is the whole [purpose] of born again means. He taught that those who Christianity. Christianity offers HROUGH the centuries, many are born again “walk, even as he [Jesus] nothing else at all. . . . It is so easy Christian church founders have come walked,” then explicitly described them as: to get muddled about that. It is T and gone. They have enticed us to Every one that doeth righteousness easy to think that the Church has a embrace the beauty of their theological sys- is born of him. . . . Whosoever is lot of different objects—education, tems. But for Jesus, the gospel was not about born of God doth not [continue to] building, missions, holding ser- theology or philosophy but about emulating commit sin. . . . Every one that vices. . . . The Church exists for the divine nature, about being born again, loveth [others] is born of God, and nothing else but to draw men into about doing and becoming like him. It was knoweth God. . . . Whosoever be- Christ, to make them little Christ’s. more about right actions than “right beliefs” lieveth [i.e., has a trusting relation- If they are not doing that, all the (Matthew 7:21, 24; John 7:17). “The way” ship in his heart] that Jesus is the cathedrals, clergy, missions, ser- and the power of “overcoming the world” are Christ is born of God. . . . mons, even the Bible itself, are clearly taught in Jesus’ life, example, min- Whatsoever is born of God over- simply a waste of time. God be- istry, promises, spiritual grace, and atone- cometh the world. . . . He that hath came Man for no other purpose.6 ment—and that is enough. the Son [in him] hath life. . . . In other words, a church may receive high Whosoever is born of God . . . that marks in a dozen different areas of its concern, NOTES wicked one toucheth him not but if its leaders are not notably talking about 1. See, for example, Mosiah 27:25, 28; Alma [meaning temptation has lost its Christ—his life, example, and ministry—and 5:14, 49; 22:15; 36:5, 23. power over him].4 accentuating on a regular basis the importance 2. C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Perhaps the most observable of these and process of “putting on Christ,” they have Macmillan Publishing, 1960), 174–75. 3. The above four paragraphs on Jesus, Peter, characteristics is that a “born again” person largely failed in their stewardship. and Paul are also found in Grant H. Palmer, The has “life.” The Apostles Peter and Paul refer Jesus invites us to make him the central Incomparable Jesus (Salt Lake City: Kofford Books, to such disciples as “lively stones,” and say focal point in our meetings and lessons. 2005), 2–4, 9–10, 27–28. that “Christ liveth in [them]” (1 Peter 2:5; Teaching principles to others is much more 4. 1 John 2:6, 29; 3:9; 4:7; 5:1, 4, 12, 18. Galatians 2:20). But who are these saints who meaningful when viewed in the context of a 5. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 187–88. exhibit life, joy, enthusiasm, happiness, and life, and Jesus has asked repeatedly that we 6. Ibid., 166, 169–70. optimism? They are around us, but we have focus our attention directly on him: “Come 7. See Matthew 11:28–29; 15:8, 32; 16:24; 26:38; Mark 7:14; Luke 7:20, 22; 10:16; 11:23; 12:8; to look for them. C. S. Lewis observes: unto me,’’ “learn of me,’’ “continue with me,’’ 22:19; John 6:26, 47, 56–57; 7:34; 8:19, 54; 12:26, Every now and then one meets “draw nigh unto me,” “come after me,” 45; 13:20; 14:23; 15:4, 26; 16:5; Acts 1:8 (some verb them. Their very voices and faces “watch with me,’’ “hearken unto me,’’ “look forms adapted).
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INTERVIEW many more gay men than lesbian women into my life, and in terms of suicide and ill- fated marriages (which I emphasize in the book), there is a lot more pressure on men than on women in the Church, so naturally PIONEERS ON THIS FRONTIER many of the most dramatic stories come from men. But I am glad I was able to find a A Conversation with Carol Lynn Pearson number of good stories from women.
In a recent interview posted by LDS Public Affairs, Apostle Dallin H. Oaks and Seventy CAROL LYNN PEARSON is an author, poet, and Lance B. Wickman refer to the “trap” parents playwright whose works include Goodbye, I Love You, fall into when they “become defensive” of gay Consider the Butterfly, Mother Wove the Morning, children who “engage in sinful behavior.” and My Turn on Earth. Pearson’s discovery of the How would you respond to that statement? struggles of gay Mormons is a very personal one: she married a gay Mormon man. In a compelling autobiog- I feel sad when I see wedges developing be- raphy, Goodbye, I Love You (Random House, 1986), tween family members. I am choosing not to she describes her experiences meeting Gerald at BYU, address “sinful behavior.” That is not my per- starting a family with him, and caring for him when he sonal business to judge. But there are sins became sick with HIV/AIDS. Now Pearson revisits the that I feel called upon to address. I feel that struggles of Mormon families with gay and lesbian for families to turn their backs on their chil- members through a new book, No More Goodbyes: dren is a sin. I feel that for voices of authority Circling the Wagons around Our Gay Loved Ones, to encourage marriages that are clearly des- and a new play, Facing East. tined to fail is a sin. I feel that for a religious In No More Goodbyes, Pearson lists suicide, di- community to make gay people feel that they vorce, and family rejection as three gay-related are the “other,” and to drive so many young tragedies which, although preventable, continue to devastate the Mormon community. The book men to suicide because they see no way out, includes the voices of many Mormon families and individuals who “circled the wagons” by is a sin. showing support and acceptance for their gay loved ones. In her play, Facing East, Pearson ex- plores how the suicide of a gay man affects his Mormon family. Gay and lesbian Mormons who have seen The following interview was conducted via email by SUNSTONE news director Hugo Olaiz in family bonds severed are often suspicious January 2007, shortly after the announcement that Facing East will go on tour to both the west when their parents make a phone call or offer and east coasts. To purchase Pearson’s new books, visit www.nomoregoodbyes.com. A calendar other friendly gestures—they tend to think for upcoming performances of Facing East in New York and San Francisco is available at it’s a ruse to get them back into the Church. www.planbtheatrecompany.org. An excerpt from No More Goodbyes was published in Do you think gays and lesbians can play a SUNSTONE, September 2006, 66-67. more positive role when parents and other relatives make friendly gestures? PHOTO BY MICHAEL SCHOENFELD In the foreword to your book, No More where we need to be in dealing with this, Absolutely! This takes some self-confidence, Goodbyes: Circling the Wagons around Our Gay there will be some general movement for- of course. But to be big enough to “turn the Loved Ones, Robert Rees, a former bishop of a ward. other cheek,” to accept an extended olive singles ward who often counseled with gay leaf is a sign of strong character. The gay Mormons, calls the book a “clarion call to ac- There is a perception that in gay Mormon fo- person certainly has the right to make clear tion”? Do you think the Mormon community rums women’s voices are often absent; yet No what their expectations are for a possible is ready to accept the book’s message? More Goodbyes include several stories by or mending of relationships and the life about lesbian Mormons. Was this a con- changes they are or are not able to make. But I think that many individuals within the scious decision? to be available to participate in healing is Church are. This is so, clearly, for so many something we all must do, despite any real individuals and families, a hugely important Of course. My entire history of writing has or perceived hurt. and painful part of their experience that it is been informed by my personal need to bring up on the table for examination, and it is not femaleness into the discussion. Many of my A gay friend once told me, “It’s not that I going to go away. Any significant change works demonstrate that. Luckily, several of haven’t forgiven my parents for rejecting my within an organization is always preceded by the stories I included in the book just fell into partner—it’s just that I no longer have any this person, that person, this other one my lap, such as the great story titled “Is She interest in associating with them. Call me making a shift in their own consciousness. Still My Daughter?” which came to me stubborn, but I am not going to create a ficti- Concepts of the “tipping point” or “critical through my brother in Sandy, Utah, whose tious life for their benefit. I will not prepare mass” give me hope that on this subject, as home teaching companion is the father of a for them, every year, an alternative version of well as others, when enough members of the lesbian daughter. I had to put some effort our Christmas card with my partner cropped Church are willing to talk about their gay into finding some of the others. And I still out of the picture!” How would you respond loved ones and insist that we are not yet wish I had more. My experience has brought to that?
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Well, send them every year the same Do you know if the relatives or partner of Christmas card with the same picture you any gay Mormon who committed suicide send everyone else. Make sure you’re both saw the play? smiling and make sure the message to them personally is one of sincere affection and I was approached by a couple of relatives of good will. If it’s sent with confidence, some of Stuart Matis who attended the play. They that spirit will affect them, I think. asked if it was based on his story. I told them no, that I certainly was aware of Stuart’s story Your new play Facing East shows how the and that it proves again how huge the problem suicide of a gay young man affects his LDS is. The events in Facing East are compiled from family. Why did you decide to write about many experiences that have come to me. such a “hot button” issue? The play is now going on tour. When and The theatre is the perfect place to explore where is it going to be staged? “hot button” issues. I didn’t go out looking for a “hot button” issue. I’ve lived with this In Salt Lake again, the last two weeks of issue for decades now. I’ve been outraged by April. New York for an off-Broadway run at the knowledge of the pain that being gay the end of May through June. San Francisco and religious brings. I’ve been haunted by the month of August. (For specific dates and the suicide attempt of my friend Brad for tickets check WWW.PLANBTHEATRECOM- Adams, whose story I tell in No More PANY.ORG.) Goodbyes. When I found myself drawn to playwriting again, this issue emerged as an In Facing East, Alex, the father, says, unavoidable one. “Everyone deserves a shot at being in love.” Do you think that includes gay and lesbian How was Facing East received in Salt Lake people? City? Of course. As my friend Bruce Bastian once There is no way the production and recep- said to me, “Heterosexuals need to realize tion of Facing East in Salt Lake City could that they don’t have the patent on falling in have gone any better. We had huge and pos- love.” This is one of life’s most remarkable ex- itive publicity before the play opened, in the periences and needs to be honored. press, on radio and television, and we had excellent reviews. The Deseret Morning News One of the things that I liked the most about theatre critic, Ivan Lincoln, made the play Facing East was the theme of being a pioneer. his number one pick in the category of What does it mean for you to be a pioneer? drama for all the plays he saw in 2006 (tied How can a gay or lesbian Mormon be one? with Hamlet at the Utah Shakespearean Festival). But the most thrilling thing was to Like it or not, we are pioneers on this fron- watch the sold-out theatre fill up every night tier. Our choices are to sit down and refuse to with people for whom I knew this was not move or to gratefully step out and make the just a night out for entertainment. There journey. Where we are now is not an accept- were young kids in leather and with spiked able place; there is too much misunder- hair and nose rings. There were middle- standing and unnecessary anguish. I think a aged couples in their sacrament meeting gay or lesbian Mormon can be a powerful pi- clothing. There were a few elderly people in oneer in terms of mapping your own journey wheelchairs. I knew that every person who and following your personal wisdom, while bought a ticket to Facing East was someone learning from the experiences of others. who had a story of their own, that somehow Don’t do the “gay thing” just because this subject had touched them, either intel- someone else says this is how gay people are. lectually or at a very, very deep level of expe- Develop a spiritual vision that is indepen- rience and emotion. I’ve never been at a dent. Be brave enough even to carry in your play—mine or anyone else’s—at which handcart all of the good things you received there was more riveted attention. And the from the Mormon community and teachings. responses that I received personally after Take only from religion and from society every performance —the tearful gratitude (even gay society) those things that resonate from so many people for whom this was a with the highest of who you really are. Make red-letter event, an evening they would sure your pioneering directs you to places never forget and that for some was life- that are higher and clearer and kinder and changing—made this one of the most re- more loving—of self and of all—than the warding experiences of my life. places you are leaving behind. JEANETTE ATWOOD
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UPDATE
MEDIA SCRUTINY OF ROMNEY AND MORMONISM INTENSIFIES
Jerusalem is here in the United States, in Missouri, and that’s where Jesus is going to come.” Because of doctrinal peculiarities such as this, evangelicals are divided on Romney. Many evangelicals are impressed by Romney’s pro-life, anti-gay marriage stance; supporters have even created a blog, EVANGELICALSFORROMNEY.ORG. Others dismiss Romney because they believe, with Pat Robertson and the Southern Baptist Convention, that Mormonism is a cult. “You, sir, you’re a pretender. You do not know the Lord. You’re a Mormon,” an unidentified man hollered at Romney during a recent Florida rally. When the audience began to boo the heckler, Romney replied, “Let me—let me offer just a thought, and that is, one of the great things about this great land is we have people of different faiths and different persuasions. And I’m convinced that the nation . . . does need to have people of different faiths, but we need to have a person of faith lead the country.” Not surprisingly, Romney is counting on a Mormon base to support his campaign. Powerful industrialist Jon Huntsman, MITTROMNEY.COM Sr., currently serving as a member of the Fifth Quorum of the HUNDREDS OF STORIES HAVE APPEARED IN NEWS- Seventy, is one of nine heavy-hitters nationwide who will raise papers, TV shows, and blogs since LDS governor Mitt Romney funds for Romney. In the solicitation letters he sends, announced his intention to run for president of the United Huntsman includes a disclaimer that he is not acting because States. But as media attention intensifies, it continues to focus of his church affiliation. “I don’t want to get involved in situa- more on the peculiarities of LDS history and belief than on tions that would bring the LDS Church into play,” Huntsman Romney’s political views. told the Deseret Morning News. A recent Associated Press story gives a historical overview of However, Mormon support for Romney is not universal. Mormon polygamy, clarifying that the church abandoned the Jason Roberts, a returned missionary from Lake Mills, practice, but at the same time, the story spotlights Romney’s Wisconsin, doesn’t think Romney would make a good presi- great-grandfather Miles Park Romney, who married his fifth dent. Roberts created a website, MORMONSAGAINSTROMNEY. wife six years after the 1890 Manifesto. According to the story, ORG, which has received some 4,800 hits since January. “There Romney’s wife Ann recently took a jab at Republican competi- are two reasons why we started this blog,” Roberts told tors John McCain and Rudy Giuliani as she introduced her SUNSTONE. “One is that we husband at a Missouri GOP dinner. She said that the biggest wanted to inform our LDS difference between her husband and other candidates is that friends who might vote for “he’s only had one wife.” McCain has been married twice and Romney without looking at Giuliani three times. his background, to educate Another potentially embarrassing LDS subject was explored them and get them thinking a by ABC reporter George Stephanopoulos, who asked Romney little differently. The other how Muslims might “perceive the Mormon belief that Jesus reason and audience we’re will return to the United States and reign personally here for a aiming for are non-LDS thousand years.” In a misleading response, Romney said: “Our people who might be oper- belief is just like it says in the Bible: that the Messiah will come ating under the assumption to Jerusalem, stand on the Mount of Olives, and that the that all LDS people vote and Mount of Olives will be a place where there is the great gath- think the same way.” JASON ROBERTS ering, and so forth. It’s the same as the other Christian tradi- Not all Mormons In the midst of the media tions.” After the interview, Stephanopoulos appeared on ABC’s think the same way about a attention, the LDS Church has Good Morning America to set the record straight: “Actually, we potential Romney presidency. moved to dispel the notion checked in with a Mormon spokesman who said that’s not ex- that it officially backs Romney. actly true,” Stephanopoulos reported. “They believe the New In the Church’s online newsroom, officials posted a 380-word
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statement affirming that the Church does not (1) endorse, pro- GAY-RIGHTS GROUP PROTESTS AT BYU mote, or oppose political parties, candidates, or platforms, (2) allow its church buildings, membership lists, or other re- sources to be used for partisan political purposes, (3) attempt to direct its members as to which candidate or party they should give their votes to, or (4) attempt to direct or dictate to a government leader. According to the document, the policy of
not directing members to vote for certain candidates “applies DESERET MORNING NEWS whether or not a candidate for office is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”
ROMNEY’S MORMONISM HAS become a favorite theme for STUART JOHNSON, late-night comedians and cartoonists—especially in reference A BUS LOADED WITH TWENTY-FIVE ACTIVISTS STOPPED to polygamy. Comedian Conan O’Brien joked, “Apparently in Utah on 20–22 March to protest Brigham Young University’s Romney is planning on winning the soccer mom vote by mar- policies and its treatment of gay, lesbian, and transgendered rying all of them.” David Letterman showed a clip of Romney students. Events included presentations along the Wasatch giving a speech with the word “MORMON” in big letters su- Front, a “Walls of Jericho” walk around the BYU campus, and perimposed on the image. The shot then faded to a clip of a rally in Provo’s Kiwanis Park. President George W. Bush giving a speech while the second The event was organized by Soulforce, a group that fights “M” disappeared and the remaining letters closed in to spell, gay discrimination through acts of civil disobedience and non- “MORON.” violent resistance. With stops scheduled at thirty-two Cartoonist Dave Granlund of the Metro West Daily News Christian colleges and universities across the U.S., Soulforce’s published an illustration of a “Mormons for Romney” Equality Ride includes four young men who come from an fundraiser in which an Amish-looking man, sitting at the LDS background. phones with his seven wives, explains to a potential donor that On 22 March, the protesters, together with relatives and “spouses can donate $2100. For example, in my case, it’s supporters, walked for six consecutive hours around BYU’s $14,700.” perimeter in a “Walls of Jericho” demonstration. In the most dramatic moment of the protest, Kourt Osborn, a transgen- dered young man who has been excommunicated from the Church, walked onto campus with his mother Karel Allen in defiance of police orders. Osborn and his mother were car- rying a 55-page document listing concerns and grievances that current and former gay students have about BYU’s policies. BYU police officers dressed in plainclothes stopped them, es- corted them into a white van, and cited them for trespassing. “After months of attempted dialogue, it is clear that the ad- ministration at BYU does not respect this conversation and wishes to silence the issue and their students,” said Matthew Kulisch, a former BYU student and one of the Equality Riders. “We return because at this very moment, there are many les- bian, gay, bisexual, and transgender students suffering alone on campus, many of whom have reached out to us.” In a panel discussion held at the Provo City Library, the ac- tivists were joined by Melissa Pomeroy and Lauren Jackson, two BYU students who identify as lesbians. “I feel like I’m all alone at BYU,” said Pomeroy. “There is no way for me to meet others like me, even just to talk, because everyone is so afraid of coming out.” “If BYU wants celibate students, it has every right to de- mand that and to limit behavior,” said Jackson. “But the issue with the Honor Code is not about lifestyle, it’s about identity. JEANETTE ATWOOD, BASED ON AN INTERNET JOKE OF UNKNOWN ORIGIN Not being allowed to express an identity is very damaging.” —In this historic 2008 presidential election, This year’s Equality Ride will include for the first time a stop do you plan to vote for the black person, at BYU-Idaho. Last year, a total of twenty-nine people were ar- the woman, or the Mormon? rested by BYU police in similar demonstrations (SUNSTONE, —Gladys Knight is running? April 2006, 76).
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Media watch
DOCUMENTARY ON MORMONS TO AIR AT END OF APRIL
A FOUR-HOUR DOCUMENTARY IN TWO PARTS WILL AIR April 30 and May 1 on PBS. Filmmaker Helen Whitney spent three years making the film The Mormons, which will be the first co-production of two acclaimed PBS series, “American Experience” and “Frontline.” The first night’s segment will provide a histor- September Dawn’s John Voight delivers a demonic performance ical account from the begin- ning of Mormonism to the In a collage of images that combines sanctimonious ser- Manifesto. The second half mons, secret temple ceremonies, ritual nudity, and a high will address the contemporary dose of violence, the preview suggests that the massacre was church—its worldwide ex- concocted and concealed by Brigham Young and other pansion, theology and ritual, Mormon leaders. “Who ordered the massacre and why has it and LDS involvement in polit- been hidden in a cloak of secrecy and conspiracy” the trailer Helen Whitney ical and social issues. dramatically asks, “and the reputation of one of this nation’s “Through this film, I hope to take the viewer inside one mightiest religious figures has been preserved and protected of the most compelling and misunderstood religions of our . . . until now.” time,” says Whitney. She interviewed hundreds of subjects “This is a horrific act—they murdered 140 men, women, from President Gordon B. Hinckley to people who have be- and children and they did it in a vicious, violent way,” film- come disillusioned with Mormonism. She traveled across maker Christopher Cain told The New York Times. “If you’re the country and even sent a film crew to Ghana. “Mormons going to show that, I think you have to show what caused it. are everywhere, and I wanted to make that point,” Whitney It’s not like somebody got excited one day and shot some- told the Deseret Morning News. “There are more Mormons body. They bashed their heads with rocks.” outside of America than in this country. And even within September Dawn will be released 4 May. The trailer can be America, there are many Mormons outside of Utah. So only viewed at WWW.SEPTEMBERDAWN.NET. a small part of it was shot in Utah.” An Emmy and Peabody Award winner, Whitney says the LDS WEBSITE REVAMPED LDS Church has been “absolutely cooperative” with her pro- ject. For more information, visit HTTP://WWW.PBS.ORG/ FEATURING AN IMAGE OF THE CHRISTUS ALMOST PREVIEWS/THEMORMONS. Whitney will be speaking about doubled in size, on 30 January 2007, the LDS Church un- the film and her larger body of work at the 2007 Sunstone veiled a redesigned website at WWW.LDS.ORG. The site’s con- West Symposium in San Francisco, California, on 21 April. tents, which had previously been accessed via an ever- growing list on the left side of the home page, are now MOUNTAIN MEADOWS MOVIE categorized into six channels that display “fly-out” menus. BOUND TO STIR CONTROVERSY The site’s Newsroom has also been completely re- designed. It now offers statistical information about the SEPTEMBER DAWN, A NEW FILM BASED ON EVENTS Church by country and identifies local media contacts. surrounding the Mountain Meadows Massacre, will soon be According to an official statement, “Information is presented released to a theater near you—and the film’s trailer in a more easily digestible format to suit not only journalists promises a treatment as controversial as the massacre itself. but also other researchers and members of the public who “I am the voice of God,” says a stern Brigham Young at the are looking to find factual material on the Church quickly opening of the trailer, “and anyone who doesn’t like it will and easily. Materials are written in non-Church language be hewn down.” If Brigham Young, played by Terence that can be readily understood, and the site addresses topics Stamp, comes across as cruel, Jon Voight’s portrayal of fic- that are commonly raised by these audiences.” tional local Mormon leader Jacob Samuelson is plain de- Additional improvements are in the works. LDS.ORG has monic. “Jehovah created me to be your God on earth!” he just announced that the website will soon be available in proclaims from a pulpit. nine languages: Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese,
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LDS.ORG—then and now
Korean, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. Materials in symbol of the tribe of Ephraim, which Swanson believes was those languages are currently available only via regional or Mary Magdalene’s bloodline. A Deseret Morning News story national sites. Materials will be added to the Gospel Library, about the book hints that some LDS booksellers “have al- containing manuals, magazines, and other official publica- ready found the art in the book controversial” and specifi- tions, in thirty-two additional languages. cally mentions the Moreau nude as an item that has drawn The LDS Church unveiled its first website in December complaints. 1996. By March 1997, that site was receiving nearly 1.5 mil- Swanson revisits statements by nineteenth-century lion “hits” (visits to individual pages) per month. According Mormon leaders to the effect that Jesus was married to Mary to Chief Information Officer Joel Dehlin, the Church’s web- Magdalene and that early LDS leaders are direct descendants sites today “service almost five million users per month with of that couple. Swanson also quotes from Harold D. over forty million unique page views per month.” Ethington’s diary, who as a missionary in 1963 visited with then-apostle Joseph Fielding Smith in an upper room of the NEW BOOK SAYS JOSEPH SMITH Salt Lake Temple. During the visit, another missionary asked DESCENDS FROM JESUS Elder Smith if Jesus was married. According to Ethington’s report: “Yes,” Smith replied, “to Mary Magdalene. But we IN AN JUST-RELEASED ILLUSTRATED BOOK, VERN G. don’t teach it.” Swanson, a museum director in Springville, Utah, asserts Church spokesperson Dale Bills told The Salt Lake Tribune that Jesus was married to Mary that the idea that Jesus was married is not official LDS doc- Magdalene and that Joseph Smith is a trine but declined to comment on the notion that Joseph direct descendant of that couple. Smith is Christ’s direct descendant. Swanson says he wrote Dynasty of the Holy Grail: Mormonism’s Sacred Bloodline partly as a rebuttal to The Da Vinci Code, Does this painting suggest which Swanson claims is riddled with Mary Magdalene’s errors. “My book is the first one that re- connection to the ally examines the Mormon position tribe of Ephraim? thoroughly . . . and is willing to raise Is the nudity it Vern G. Swanson new questions,” Swanson told The Salt depicts too Lake Tribune. In a fashion similar to The Da Vinci Code, the new book “controversial” for includes references to paintings which provide clues to sup- LDS book buyers? port the book’s overarching theory. One of the illustrations Swanson includes is a reproduction of Gustave Moreau’s La Licorne (The Unicorn), which depicts the mythological an- imal and a naked woman. Swanson interprets the woman in Gustave Moreau (1826–1898), the painting as Mary Magdalene and the unicorn as a La Licorne, 1884–85, oil on canvas.
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People Freed. Former BYU student WILL VAN WAGENEN, nine days after being kid- Deceased. DONNA HILL, 85, on 29 napped in Iraq. Van Wagenen was vol- January. Hill is best known for her ac- unteering with Christian Peacemaker claimed 1977 biography Joseph Smith, Teams, a faith-based, violence-reduc- the First Mormon. Born in Salt Lake City, tion group that sends trained peace- Hill received a MLS from Columbia and makers into conflict areas. A Harvard became a librarian at the Hunter Divinity School graduate, Will is the son College Library in New York City. In ad- of The Work and the Glory director dition to her Joseph Smith biography, Sterling Van Wagenen. Hill wrote several fictional works, in- cluding Shipwreck Season, for which she received the Released. From captivity, Elders AKANDE ADEBAYO Christopher Award in 1999. EGUNJOBI, EMEKA HENRY EKUFU, UCHENNA ANTHONY EZE, and HOPE AIBONI ISAIAH, after Deceased. Activist in the ex-Mormon spending four days as hostages near Port Harcourt in movement, KATHY WORTHINGTON, Nigeria. In a press conference, Apostle Russell M. Ballard 56. During the 1999–2000 LDS drive and Elder Quentin L. Cook told the media that local tribal against same-sex marriage in Cal- leaders had been involved in helping secure the mission- ifornia, Worthington wrote articles aries’ release. The sum of $810 was paid not as a ransom, criticizing the fundraising and volun- Ballard said, but “to reimburse the expenses that those who teer recruiting efforts by Church were holding them hostage had incurred.” According to leaders and began a campaign to help Ballard, the missionaries, all Nigerian nationals, had been disillusioned Mormons resign their treated well during their captivity and spent their time memberships. Worthington eventually created the instruc- teaching the missionary discussions to their captors. tional website MORMONNO MORE.COM, which guided hun- dreds through the process of having their names removed Resigned. D. KYLE SAMPSON, BYU from Church rolls. alumnus and chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, in the midst Appointed. PHILIP BARLOW, to the of a scandal involving eight U.S. attor- Leonard J. Arrington Chair of Mormon neys who had been fired by the Bush History and Culture at Utah State administration. Sampson’s emails, University. After obtaining a Ph.D. from which suggest that the attorneys were Harvard in American religion, Barlow hired and fired for political reasons, joined Hanover College in Indiana, have triggered a constitutional show- where he taught courses in American down between the White House and Congress. religion, Christian history, and theology. A frequent contributor to Dialogue, Cleared. For proxy temple work, the SUNSTONE, and LDS conferences, Barlow is the author of name of SIMON WIESENTHAL, re- Mormons and the Bible: The Place of the Latter-day Saints in nowned Nazi hunter and Holocaust sur- American Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, vivor, who died last year in Vienna. This 1991). The appointment makes Barlow the country’s first is the latest in a series of incidents in full-time professor of Mormon studies at a non-Mormon in- which Church members have prepared stitution. Jewish names for posthumous ordi- nances in violation of a 1995 agreement Nominated. BECKY L. SAVAGE, to with several Jewish organizations, in- serve in the First Presidency of the cluding a center named for Wiesenthal himself. “We are as- Community of Christ. If confirmed tounded and dismayed,” said the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s during the church’s 24–31 March dean and founder, Rabbi Marvin Hier. “It is sacrilegious for World Conference, she will be the first the Mormon faith to desecrate [Wiesenthal’s] memory by woman to occupy such a high position. suggesting that Jews on their own are not worthy enough to Formerly known as the Reorganized receive God’s eternal blessing.” Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the Community of Christ began Turned. 100 years old on 9 January 2007, the LDS Church’s to ordain women to the priesthood in 1984. emeritus Presiding Patriarch ELDRED G. SMITH. A direct
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BYU PROFESSORS ENVISIONED descendent of the Prophet’s brother IRAQI WAR FAILURES Hyrum, Smith has been allowed to continue giving patriarchal blessings IN 2003, SIX BYU POLITICAL SCIENCE PROFESSORS over the years despite the fact that published an editorial that warned of the potential pitfalls of the office of Presiding Patriarch was waging war against Iraq. Four years later, their predictions discontinued in 1979. Since the have proven true. 1980s, Smith has also spoken at “Establishing democracy in Iraq is a worthy goal, but is war more than 1,000 firesides in which the best way to achieve it?” Donna Lee Bowen, Byron Daynes, he displays historical artifacts he has Gary Bryner, Darren Hawkins, Eric Hyer, and Wade Jacoby inherited from the Hyrum Smith family. To date, he has asked in a 23 January 2003 Deseret News editorial. “A weak given more than 19,000 patriarchal blessings. government replacing Saddam’s regime might invite civil war and widespread human suffering, while a strong government Featured. In the sports section of the could replicate the current tyranny. In most cases, democracy New York Times, JOE DARGER, 20, a must grow gradually from within. Outsiders can help, but they basketball player for the University of cannot impose democracy.” Nevada, Las Vegas, and son of a fun- Among other predictions, the professors correctly warned damentalist Mormon family. On 3 that American forces could become targets of terrorism and March, Joe’s parents, John and that many nations would deem the U.S. invasion unjustified. Carollee, drove with thirteen other According to a 26 January 2007 story in the Deseret Morning family members from Riverton, Utah, News, the professors remain frustrated because many dis- to Las Vegas, Nevada, for the team’s missed their opinions as unpatriotic or politically motivated. regular-season finale. “We have never pushed our kids to “People just said, ‘Well, professors are liberal. Even BYU has pick our lifestyle,” John told the New York Times. Joe and liberal professors. They’re just contrarians,’” Hyer told the his siblings have remained active in the LDS Church and News. “What strikes us was that Congress was uncritical; even have given no indication that they will practice polygamy. the New York Times was uncritical.” “So was the rest of the media and the populace,” Donna Lee Ticketed. For lewdness, University of Bowen added. “The ‘anti’ voices were silenced.” Southern California hockey goalie MICKEY MEYER, after mooning a SUPPORT FOR IRAQ WAR DROPPING predominantly LDS crowd at the AMONG UTAH’S MORMONS Eccles Ice Center in North Logan. Angered by referee calls, Meyer rode POLLING FROM THE PAST SEVERAL YEARS HAS SHOWN his stick like a horse, dropped his Latter-day Saints to be among President Bush’s strongest sup- pants, mooned the crowd, and porters regarding the war in Iraq. So it was surprising when a slapped his buttock during a game January 2007 Salt Lake Tribune survey revealed a 21 percent against BYU. The Los Angeles-based DAILYNEWS.COM re- drop (from 63 to 44 percent) among Utah’s Mormons in sup- ports that Meyer is now a cult hero on the popular web- port for Bush’s handling of the war in just the past five months. site, WWW.FACEBOOK.COM, where he joined a group The Tribune story on the poll results sought possible an- called “Mickey Meyer’s Mormon Mooning: Priceless.” swers for this abrupt drop, something pollsters claim is “un- common . . . unless ‘spooked’ by something.” The story quotes Debuted. Recently on Comedy Church spokesperson Mark Tuttle to the effect that there has Central, a special featuring ARON been “no additional statement, clarification, changed policy or KADER. Kader, a Mormon of announcement” on the war, and that the Church has no official Palestinian descent, is the son of position on the war. former BYU professor Omar Kader The story suggests several events might have caused the and his wife Nancy. In a special pre- drop, ranging from President Hinckley’s 31 October BYU ad- sentation of a performance of the dress that, without mentioning Iraq, lamented “the terrible “Axis of Evil Comedy Tour,” Kader cost of war” to negative reports on Iraq from prominent joins three other comedians of Mormon politicians such as Utah’s governor Jon Huntsman Middle Eastern or Persian descent. In his act, Kader jokes and Senators Harry Reid (D-Nevada) and Gordon Smith (R- about being approached to serve an LDS mission. His Oregon). It also quotes Guy Murray of the Messenger and reply, “To an Arab, a mission is a whole different deal. Advocate blog, who senses that it “has become less socially Generally we don’t come back from those. Thanks for perilous for Mormons to express ‘alternative’ opinions about asking.” Iraq. Especially . . . as ‘the church has gone out of its way to stress political neutrality.’”
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AN OLIVE LEAF
“ETERNAL, RESTLESS THOUGHT”
By B. H. Roberts
This reflection is excerpted from B. H. and hence the duty of striving for a Roberts’s priesthood lesson, “Divine rational faith in which the intellect Immanence and the Holy Ghost,” in as well as the heart—the feeling— The Seventy’s Course in Theology has a place and is a factor. —Fifth Year, as rendered in The But to resume: This plea in bar Essential B.H. Roberts, Brigham H. of effort to find out the things that Madsen, ed. (Salt Lake City: Signature are, is as convenient for the priest Books, 1999), 260–64. as it is for the people. The people of “simple faith,” who never question, ENTAL LAZINESS IS are so much easier led, and so the vice of men, espe- much more pleasant every way— M cially with reference to they give their teachers so little divine things. Men seem to think trouble. People who question be- that because inspiration and revela- cause they want to know, and who tion are factors in connection with ask adult questions that call for the things of God, therefore the adult answers, disturb the ease of pain and stress of mental effort are the priests. The people who ques- not required; that by some means tion are usually the people who these elements act somewhat as think—barring chronic ques- Elijah’s ravens and feed us without tioners and cranks, of course—and effort on our part. To escape this ef- thinkers are troublesome, unless fort, this mental stress to know the the instructors who lead them are things that are, men raise all too thinkers also; and thought, eternal, readily the ancient bar—“Thus far restless thought, that keeps out shalt thou come, but no farther.” upon the frontiers of discovery, is Man cannot hope to understand the things of God, they plead, as much a weariness to the slothful, as it is a joy to the alert or penetrate those things which he has left shrouded in mys- and active and noble minded. Therefore one must not be sur- tery. “Be thou content with the simple faith that accepts prised if now and again he finds those among religious without question. To believe, and accept the ordinances, and teachers who give encouragement to mental laziness under the then live the moral law will doubtless bring men unto salva- pretense of “reverence,” praise “simple faith” because they tion; why then should man strive and trouble himself to un- themselves, forsooth, would avoid the stress of thought and derstand? Much study is still a weariness of the flesh.” So men investigation that would be necessary in order to hold their reason; and just now it is much in fashion to laud “the simple place as leaders of a thinking people. . . . . faith;” which is content to believe without understanding, or even without much effort to understand. And doubtless many URELY in the presence of [the] array of incentives, in- good people regard this course as indicative of reverence—this structions and commandments to seek for knowledge, plea in bar of effort—“thus far and no farther”. . . . S taken from the revelations and other forms of instruc- tion by the Prophet of the New Dispensation—taking into ac- MAINTAIN that “simple faith”—which is so often igno- count also the scope of the field of knowledge we are both per- rant and simpering acquiescence and not faith at all—but suaded and commanded to enter—whatever position other I simple faith taken at its highest value, which is faith churches and their religious teachers may take, the Church of without understanding of the thing believed, is not equal to in- Jesus Christ in the New Dispensation can do no other than to telligent faith, the faith that is the gift of God, supplemented by stand for mental activity and earnest effort to come to a knowl- earnest endeavor to find through prayerful thought and re- edge of truth up to the very limit of man’s capacity to find it, search a rational ground for faith—for acceptance of truth; and the goodness and wisdom of God to reveal it.
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IRED of the wait between SUNSTONE T issues? Want to connect with friends NEW FROM between symposiums? GREG KOFFORD BOOKS
Modern Polygamy and VISIT THE Mormon Fundamentalism:The Generations after the Manifesto SUNSTONE by Brian C. Hales Survey history of Mormon Fundamentalists since polygamy’s BLOG! official discontinuation in 1904. This book examines the previously unexplored period of the practice New design. New contributors. New energy. of plural marriage between 1904 and 1934, investigating the assertion FROM RECENT DISCUSSIONS: that many plural marriages were Conforming Thoughts and Behaviors solemnized under claims of a new priesthood line of authority asserted by a man named Lorin Woolley. It also focuses on modern- (Authentically) day polygamists many of whom accepted Woolley’s teachings and ELISE EGGETT JOHNSON, 25 February authority creating many of the fundamentalist organizations during those years after the Manifesto. The Allreds, the FLDS Church in I’ve met several people who do a beautiful job of balancing their individuality with their religious community. Sunday School teachers Texas and on the Utah-Arizona border, the Kingstons, the LeBarons, who are able to deliver a heart-felt, personal lesson without propagating the TLC Church in Manti, Utah, and other splinter groups are all ideas that they disagree with. Women who participate in all salvation scrutinized in this study. Regardless of one’s beliefs regarding Joseph ordinances except for those that cause them to feel inferior to men. Smith and plural marriage, this historical and doctrinal volume will Couples who attend an LDS service one Sunday and another service provide interesting reading and enlightenment. the next Sunday so they can participate fully in both of their faith ISBN 1-58958-035-0 Hardback 530 pages $32.95 traditions. I’ve heard such individuals accused of picking-and-choosing from something that was meant to be consumed in its entirety. I A House for the Most High: disagree, and greatly admire their ability to authentically merge their individual beliefs and ideas with their community’s culture, teachings, The Story of the Original and expectations. I want to do a little bit better at that myself. Nauvoo Temple by Matthew McBride Who Needs Truth? Chronologically documents the STEPHEN CARTER, 8 March behind-the-scenes stories of the Many Mormons I know are quite certain that their religion is a logical common people involved in the religion, that it has a preponderance of empirical evidence to prove its sacrifice to erect the second Mormon truth. So when Mormons run across convincing evidence that goes temple. First-hand accounts are contrary to the Church’s claims, they find themselves in a difficult drawn from diaries, journals, and position. The loyalty to truth that Mormonism taught them insists that letters. The prologue of this book they follow the evidence. . . . But here, two people decide that what they discusses briefly the early temple feel is much more important than what they thought was true in an em- building efforts of the fledgling Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day pirical sense. As they put it, “Our decision is bigger than our egos and Saints, the development of temple-related doctrines during the our reasoning. It feels ‘delicious’ and so, so right.” I admire these two decade prior to the Nauvoo era, and the arrival of the Saints in people. They followed something that was delicious to them. How many people in our modern, duty-bound world can claim that? Illinois in 1839. The body of the history covers the years 1840, when the temple was first contemplated, to 1850, when its walls The Limits of Language were toppled by a tornado. An epilogue completes the story by recounting the story of the repurchase of the temple lot by the JANA REMY, 17 March Church in 1937, the lot’s excavation in 1962, and the announce- When I was younger, the phrase “burning in the bosom” always made ment that the temple would be rebuilt. Also included is an me giggle. I mean, it was hard to say the word ‘bosom’ without appendix containing important eyewitness descriptions of the thinking of large-breasted great aunts with names like “Deloris.” temple and a bibliography of major sources. As I got older and realized the difficulty of using language to describe ISBN 1-58958-016-8 Hardback 448 pages $39.95 my own spiritual experiences into words, I could see why Joseph Smith used this somewhat-stilted phrase. . . . Do you ever grapple with this On the Road with Joseph Smith desire to express your spiritual experiences? Do you ever find yourself yearning for a universal language of the Spirit? . . . by Richard Lyman Bushman What accounts of spiritual manifestations have you found where the Bushman’s personal account of the events surrounding the publica- authors are able to translate their experiences effectively into language? tion of his great work, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling. Paperback. May 2007. 00a_cover cmyk.qxp 3/29/2007 4:56 PM Page 1
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