What Makes New Yorkers Love New York?

An off-topic post.

My wife and I are visiting New York in the next little while, and contemplating a potential move there in a year. I’ve only been to NY once, and it was quite short.

Since visiting as a tourist is quite different from living there, my question is this: What do locals do in New York that makes them love New York?

Convince me.

A Review of Terryl Givens, People of Paradox: A History of Mormon Culture

Terryl Givens’ new book is an important and welcome addition to Mormon studies and will be required reading for understanding the evolution of Mormonism as a distinct culture, especially where Givens moves out of the much-explored territory of the nineteenth century and ventures into the less-explored twentieth century.
However, the book is not without flaws.

A Disappointment

I posted recently about a little Iraqi boy who had been doused in gasoline and lit by fellow Iraqis. I did so to call attention to his plight, to mourn the evil in the world, and try to counteract it with good by bringing it to light.

Two Evangelical bloggers decided that it was an appropriate time not to sympathize, not to speak of action or support, not to mourn, but to take swings at LDS theology.

One of them, perhaps, was simply in jest or bad taste. He later suggested I remove his comment, which I did. The other who commented, well, let’s just say I’m not surprised, given what I know of him. He fits the Evangelical stereotype many LDS hold.

I grew up with two good EV friends, one who went on to get a PhD in Christian Ethics. I think she would be disappointed in those comments, and make sure I, as a Mormon, knew that not all EV’s would have responded the same way. I’m glad to have had her example in the past. I wish I had more of them.

Hell is Too Good for People like This

Words fail me.

Follow-up, and some goodness left in the world.

Edit: It looks like less than 1/4 of those who have read this post today actually follow the links, so I’ll summarize. A happy intelligent 5-year old boy in Iraq is playing in the park, then is randomly seized by fellow Iraqis, doused in gasoline, and set ablaze while his attackers flee. He survives, but what kind of life can he lead? What kind of twisted evil people do this to a child?

Learning to Love Apostate Christianity

One sign of our institutional and historiographical maturity is the increasing attention that the “Great Apostasy” has been receiving (see for example Noel Reynolds, ed., Early Christians in Disarray, 2005). Since the oppositional pairing of apostasy and restoration is so fundamental to our view of ourselves and proximate others, understanding its potential and realized meanings and implications will remain, I think, one of the more significant tasks of those who think and write on our tradition. This task is all the more urgent, and complicated, because it is heavily tied to the contingencies
of historical scholarship and the particular politics of location in which they are grounded.

The Divine Council and its Doctrinal Implications: an EV-Mormon Discussion

Several months ago, I mentioned Mike Heiser’s paper, “ You’ve Seen One Elohim, You’ve Seen Them All? A Critique of Mormonism’s Use of Psalm 82 .” Heiser wrote his dissertation on the topic of the Divine Council, and runs a website entitled The Divine Council which is aimed somewhat at Evangelicals, who tend to misunderstand the Old Testament text on this topic. He also works for Logos, which provides excellent Bible resources and study tools.
Heiser, an Evangelical, “feel[s] more strongly than ever that there is not a single doctrine that is untouched by the subject.”

He presented 8 ideas that Mormons would probably agree with, but Evangelicals would not, such as “The term monotheism is inadequate to describe what it is
Israel believed about God and the members of his council.”

He then presented 8 ideas that Evangelicals would probably agree with, but Mormons would not, such as “Corporeal appearances of deity are not evidence that God the Father has a corporeal nature.” I don’t disagree with a few of his eight listed here, but it’s a thoughtful list.

Heiser agreed to allow FARMS to distribute his paper, with a follow-up by LDS student/author/good guy David Bokovoy (Hebrew Bible, Brandeis), and a final word by Heiser.

The whole thing is well worth reading, and a model of LDS-Evangelical scholarly interaction.

Special bonus: On his website, my blogname  Nitsav is the second Hebrew word from the right.

Ten Tantalizing Tidbits about the Book of Mormon

These aren’t quite as tantalizing as TT’s NT tidbits, but we don’t have similar extra-scriptural data to work with here. I’m trying to be as provocative as I can (which probably just reveals my hard-core McConkie-style orthodoxy <g>)

The Responsibility of the Scholar

What is the responsibility of the academically trained scholar in Mormonism? As more LDSs go to graduate schools (or even various undergraduate institutions) and study religion, this becomes an interesting question. I’m defining “scholar” here as someone who has graduated from a institution of higher education focusing specifically on religion (broadly conceived). This isn’t meant to position one type of scholar above another, but to ask a specific question about what our expectations are from this group of people.

Do we expect them to “reaffirm faith”? If so, concretely what does this mean? Should they, for instance, only teach things that encourage people to come to church (for the “right” reasons of course)? Or can they opperate free from the results of their teachings in pursuit of certain questions (Was Jesus divine for the NT authors, for instance)?

Do we expect them to “challenge faith”? If so, how? Can they only challenge the faith in such a way that the challenge must be completely resolved (leaving the questioner with a “stronger testimony”, usually measured by higher activity in the church)? Or can they complicate things in such a way that the world appears more complex, more ambiguous, and less cut and dry?

Spiritual Practices

What is the goal of our spiritual practices? Is it different from other contemporary or past Christianity communities? What type of human subjects do they produce? How do we navigate the competing ideals that our spiritual practices imitate?

We have a number of spiritual practices in LDS tradition. There are many that argue that these spiritual practices are in fact the most important aspects of Mormonism and that “doctrine” is merely secondary. I take the view that, like ancient philosophy, Mormonism is a “way of life,” wherein the beliefs and practices work together to allow the individual to engage in a series of techniques to embody a certain kind of ethical subject. However, I am not quite sure how to articulate what that subject looks like. Is there a guiding logic to our spiritual practices? Or, are they simply eclectic inheritances? Or, are these practices fundamentally paradoxical, as Givens has noted about Mormon thought. Consider the following set of spiritual practices. Each of these activities are imbued with a sense of spirituality. In each case they are the voluntary taking on of a certain personal discipline:

Guest Blogger: Vine-Ripe Tomato

We are very pleased to welcome Vine-Ripe Tomato as a guest blogger for the next few weeks at FPR. Vine-Ripe Tomato is an organic farmer and sometime horse trainer in the South. S/he is also a very nice person who will undoubtedly have something interesting to say. Stay tuned!