I mentioned in my last post that I found FMH in the spring of 2005. I periodically looked at the bloggernacle that year, but much of my time online was spent on another, mental-health related message board, and I didn’t have time to be involved in many more online activities. Also, while I was intrigued [...]
As I mentioned in my last post, I wasn’t planning to study theology when I went off to grad school. But once I started, I fell in love with it. I’ve blogged before about how it affected my faith more generally. But here I want to mention some of the issues that came up which [...]
I didn’t plan to go to BYU. In fact, I planned to go anywhere but BYU. As a teenager, I was determined to get out of the state of Utah. But when my senior year rolled around, and BYU offered me money, and I looked at the financial realities of my situation—it made sense. So [...]
I first saw the Star Wars movies when I was eleven, shortly after my parents purchased our first VCR. I was an immediate and enthusiastic convert. My siblings and I watched the movies over and over—in the days before we owned them, we used to check them out from the library every week (my mother [...]
When people talk about the reasons for uncivil behavior on the internet, anonymity is often mentioned as a culprit. If no one knows who you are, the theory goes, you’re less likely to censor yourself. And it certainly is ridiculously easy to find people posting under pseudonyms and tearing each other apart. (Just check out [...]
Some recent Facebook bloggernacle conversation has gotten me thinking once again about an issue that I’ve been meaning to blog about for a long time. (I probably started this post during the Prop 8 Blog Wars, but in classic ZD fashion, never got around to finishing it.) My original title was something like “Should We [...]
If you follow the bloggernacle, by this time, you are likely familiar with Ralph Hancock’s recent two-part article at Meridian Magazine (parts one and two) about Joanna Brooks’ memoir, The Book of Mormon Girl. (See discussions here, here, and here.) I know I’m a bit late to the party, but I found this essay seriously [...]
When I was a teenager, I didn’t really like poetry. It seemed like a language I didn’t speak, a secret code that I couldn’t figure out. I dutifully read it for my English classes the way the way that one duly eats your vegetables, because they are Good For You–and, of course, because I was [...]
Now that I have made some general comments about the overall theological approach of An Experiment on the Word: Reading Alma 32, I would like to engage some of the specific content. As I said in my last post, there is a lot of great material. But two subjects in particular caught my interest: faith, [...]
An Experiment on the Word (ed. Adam S. Miller, Salt Press 2011) is a product of the Mormon Theology Seminar, a short-term collaborative project in which a small group of people engage in a close read of specific texts. This particular book focuses on Alma 32. It includes a jointly-authored summary report of the conclusions [...]
One of the endlessly entertaining topics in Mormonism is the conundrum of figuring out what exactly constitutes “official doctrine,” and how we make that determination. I found myself seriously grappling with this dilemma early on in my theological studies, when I first attempted to write an academic paper on Mormonism for a non-LDS audience. I [...]
So what happens when the Washington Post writes, “The LDS Stance on Women,” and contacts a BYU religion professor who explains that women are too spiritual to need the priesthood; women are highly valued in LDS theology because men can’t be exalted without them; women are actually blessed by not having to deal with the [...]
We in the LDS church are fond of pointing out that we don’t believe in prophetic infallibility. At least in theory, we see prophets as human beings who sometimes make mistakes, and don’t expect them to be perfect. However, I’m not entirely clear as to what exactly what this means on a practical level. And [...]
At a conference earlier this year, I presented a brief (and admittedly self-serving) paper suggesting some of the reasons why Mormons need theology. I listed several areas where I saw a need for theological work, and I noted that one of the most pressing of these was our lack of queer theology. After my presentation, [...]
I would indeed be ungrateful if I didn’t acknowledge the contributions of my co-bloggers; Petra read an earlier draft and made a lot of great observations, many of which are included in the footnotes, and Kiskilili and Melyngoch kindly allowed me to quote them. Many of you are probably familiar with Valerie Hudson’s talk, “The [...]
One of my all-time favorite movies is Ordinary People. In it, there’s a scene in which Conrad, a teenager who was hospitalized for several months after attempting suicide and is now trying to re-adjust to life, gets together with one of his friends from the hospital. He asks her, do you ever miss it? When [...]
Think about the following statements: 1) I have serious doubts about Book of Mormon historicity. 2) We need to return to the Constitution, and resist the ungodly socialist plot threatening America. 3) I have extensively researched the topic, and have concluded that the Lost Ten Tribes are on the moon.
I’ve had various encounters throughout my life with anti-Mormons who were out to save me from this terrible cult in which I am a member. Needless to say, this is an attitude I find extremely off-putting—in fact, as an unorthodox Mormon who engages in plenty of my own critiques of the Church, there are fewer [...]
I think Facebook is fun. Let me emphasize that I am not saying this to start a debate about Facebook per se–why people should or should not be on Facebook, issues of privacy, what you think of the new layout, etc. I realize it’s not for everyone, for a variety of reasons, and I don’t [...]
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