Broader Dialogue

Patrick Mason on Faith and Doubt

Planted-Book-Cover-Patrick-Mason Over at the Maxwell Institute, Board President Patrick Mason discusses his definitions of faith and doubt. Here’s a snippet:

“How do I understand faith?

I think about it as being much more than mere intellectual assent or “belief.” Faith is the substance of things hoped for but not seen (see Hebrews 11:1). So in that sense, faith is partly a product of doubt in the way I defined it above as a lack of certainty; it is a livelyhope for something that has not been seen. Acting in faith—and real faith always compels real action—means acting with hope and trust, yet without absolute assurance. So my notion of faith is more about trust and faithfulness—fidelity in a relationship, like being “faithful” to your spouse—rather than getting an answer right on a multiple choice test.

According to this view, doubt can become destructive when it compromises fidelity. But it can also be constructive when it deepens our yearnings and bolsters our efforts toward creating authentic relationships with God and others. Depending on what we do with doubt, which itself usually comes unbidden, we can strengthen or weaken our faith.”

Click here for the full post.

Editor Notes: Of Haircuts and Honor

Cross-posted at BoydPetersen.com

Screenshot 2016-04-26 at 10.54.02 AM The BYU Honor Code has come under fire recently, and I don’t want to detract from that discussion, but it has caused me to reflect back on my own run-in with the Honor Code back in March 1984.

I’m pretty sure it was my friend Kent’s idea that we should run for ASBYU president and vice president during our junior year of college. We knew we didn’t stand much of a chance. We create signs or bribe students to vote for us by giving out free hotdogs. I don’t think we ever campaigned.

All candidates for ASBYU office had the opportunity to place their photos in the student newspaper, the Daily Universe. Unlike most candidates who had professional headshots in which they sported a tie, their faded white shirts, and indestructible polyester missionary suits, Kent and I took a self-portrait in more casual attire. A couple of days after our photos appeared, we both got a call from the Honor Code office and were required to meet with an administrator about some unstated infraction.

The 2016 Mormon Studies Conference convened on April 12-13th at the Utah Valley University campus. You can watch such speakers as Michael Otterson, Jana Riess, Ross Douhat and Neylan McBaine discuss “Mormonism and the Art of Boundary Maintenance” here.

Among the most important features of religious communities is the way in which they establish and maintain boundaries. Religious beliefs, practices, and identities are shaped by a complex variety of internal and external forces. From its beginnings, Mormonism has challenged the boundaries of Christianity orthodoxy and its status as a legitimate form of Christianity continues to be debated.

Conversely, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has increasingly faced boundary questions within the community. From divisions over polygamy and spiritualism in the nineteenth century to more recent debates over same-sex marriage, women’s ordination, and prophetic authority, the Church continues to wrestle with questions of diversity within its ranks. This conference will explore how Mormonism at once both challenges Christian boundaries and is challenged to enforce its own borders in the effort to maintain unity and integrity as a tradition.

This year’s conference is hosted in partnership & collaboration with the Center for Constitutional Studies’ annual Religious Freedom Symposium. For a complete schedule of their 2016 symposium, click here.

Dialogue Podcast #29 w/Editor Boyd Petersen

10002306 Editor Boyd J. Petersen spoke at a recent Miller Eccles group on “Landing Instructions How to Navigate (or Help Someone Navigating) a Faith Crisis.” Petersen is the Program Coordinator for Mormon Studies at Utah Valley University and the newly appointed editor of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought. He is also a prolific essayist who will draw from his book of essays titled Dead Wood and Rushing Water: Essays on Mormon Faith, Family and Culture.

Dialogue Podcast #29 w/Editor Boyd Petersen [ 1:14:56 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (414)

Book Review: A Not-So-Innocent Abroad. Way Below the Angels, by Craig Harline

Craig Harline. Way Below the Angels: The Pretty Clearly Troubled but Not Even Close to Tragic Confessions of a Real Live Mormon Missionary. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2014.

Reviewed by Rosalynde Frandsen Welch

Craig Harline’s mission memoir, Way Below the Angels: The Pretty Clearly Troubled but Not Even Close to Tragic Confessions of a Real Live Mormon Missionary, is a hilarious, heart-of-gold account of the highs and lows of the author’s experiences in the Belgium Antwerp Mission in the early 1970s. The story proceeds chronologically through the events of Harline’s mission call and training period in the old LTM, his arrival in Belgium and subsequent travails with uninterested Belgians, and his eventual return home as a slightly-older and probably-a-bit-wiser young man. Throughout, young Elder Harline wrestles with his own unrealistic expectations of grandeur and occasionally encounters a moment of shimmering grace. The events and settings are, on the surface, highly entertaining but hardly exceptional. Non-Mormon readers, who are the primary audience for the book’s publisher, Eerdmans, will come away with a lightly-seasoned glimpse of a Mormon mission experience in Europe; Mormon readers familiar with mission culture will respond with recognition and identification.

Book Review: Peck’s Peak. Wandering Realities and Evolving Faith, by Steven L. Peck

25961385-3 Steven L. Peck. Wandering Realities: The Mormonish Short Fiction of Steven L. Peck. Provo: Zarahemla Books, 2015. 220 pp. Paperback: $14.95. ISBN: 978-0988323346.

Steven L. Peck. Evolving Faith: Wanderings of a Mormon Biologist. Provo: Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, 2015. 211 pp. Paperback: $19.95. ISBN: 978-0842529440.

Reviewed by Michael Austin

If someone ever asks me what kinds of things Steven Peck writes, the best answer I can give goes like this: the BYU biology professor and raconteur writes primarily in the fields of evolutionary biology, speculative theology, literary fiction, computer modeling, poetry, existential horror, satire, personal essay, tsetse fly reproduction, young-adult literature, human ecology, science fiction, religious allegory, environmentalism, and devotional narrative. You know, that kind of thing.

Book Review: A Book of Contradictions: Ink and Ashes by Valynne E. Maetani

Book Review: A Book of Contradictions: Ink and Ashes by Valynne E. Maetani.
Reviewed by Melissa McShane Valyenne E. Maetani.
Ink and Ashes. Tu Books, 2015.

Valynne E. Maetani’s debut young adult novel is a tightly-plotted thriller, with plenty of misdirection and tension. It’s also a story about identity, family, and love. This ought to make it weak, neither one thing nor the other. What gives this novel strength is the interconnection between the two stories. Claire, in tracking down the mystery of who her yakuza father was, grows to better understand who she is—sister, friend, daughter, and woman.

Claire is a strong, compelling character, intelligent, athletic, and dogged in pursuing a mystery. When, on the anniversary of her father’s death, she discovers a mysterious message that points to contradictions in the story she was always told about him, she sets out to uncover the truth about her father, her stepfather, and a mystery over a decade old. Claire is believable as someone who might go to any lengths to solve a puzzle, and her skills (including martial arts and lock picking), while unusual, are sufficiently justified to keep from being over the top.

Dialogue Podcast #28 w/Jared Hickman

The newest Dialogue podcast features Dr. Jared Hickman, Assistant Professor in the English Department of Johns Hopkins University. Professor Hickman speaks on his essay “The Book of Mormon as Amerindian Apocalypse,” which was published in American Literature, a literary journal published by Duke University Press. Hickman-Jared

From the Miller Eccles website: Recent official statements have left some doubt about the traditional understanding of the Book of Mormon as a history of “the Indians.” This presents us with two especially important tasks: 1) to understand why the “Indian question” seemed important enough, both politically and theologically, in Joseph Smith’s time and place, to claim such attention in a new scripture; and 2) to pay closer attention to the Book of Mormon text, which itself, in emphasizing the “Indian question,” offers a new narrative for understanding what it means. If we read with such questions in mind, we can recognize in the Book of Mormon a vision (or program) for Native American resurgence radically opposed to the European and American colonialism of Joseph Smith’s time.

Dialogue Podcast #28 w/Jared Hickman [ 1:18:27 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (760)

Dialogue Podcast #27 w/Cory Crawford

Cory_alt-446x450 The newest Dialogue podcast features Dr. Cory Crawford, Assistant Professor in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Ohio. He discusses his new article, “The Struggle for Female Authority in Biblical and Mormon Traditions,” published in the 2015 Summer issue of Dialogue — A Journal of Mormon Thought. From the Miller Eccles website:

“The Old Testament refers to righteous women exercising authority, such as Deborah, the Prophetess and a Judge of Israel (Judges 4). Likewise, in the New Testament, the Apostle Paul mentions righteous women as fellow servants, such as Phebe, Junia and others. Yet many statements attributed to Paul concerning the role of women in the primitive church are contradictory.

Dialogue Podcast #27 w/Cory Crawford [ 59:12 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (674)

Review: Heaven, Hell, and Other People: A Wandering Review of Samuel Brown’s First Principles and Ordinances

Cross-posted at By Common Consent
By Board member Michael Austin

There is a wonderful scene in C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce that has stayed with me for 30 years. In this scene, the unnamed narrator dies and finds himself in hell, which is just a huge, sprawling subdivision where everybody lives alone. Whenever people try to live near each other, they start to argue and fight, so they move further and further away. There is no fire, no brimstone, and no demons with pitchforks: just a bunch of miserable people being themselves.

Something like this is also what Jean-Paul Sartre meant by the famous line, “hell is other people.” This does not mean (as it is so often quoted as meaning) that other people are inherently hellish, or that human beings cannot face the irreducible otherness of people not themselves. Sartre puts this line in his play No Exit, in which three people are sent to hell, which turns out to be a well-decorated Victorian parlor.

Dialogue Podcast #26 w/Patrick Mason

The 26th Dialogue podcast features Dialogue Board Chair Patrick Mason discussing his new book Planted: Belief and Belonging in an Age of Doubt and how Mormons can better live with questions while holding onto their faith. From the Miller Eccles website:

Professor Patrick Q. Mason, Howard W. Hunter Chair of Mormon Studies at Claremont Graduate University. Dr. Mason is the author of a much-anticipated book scheduled for release in December — Planted: Belief and Belonging in an Age of Doubt. This important work will explore the challenges many LDS members face when Church doctrines are opposed by worldly influences, or seem opposed to current scientific knowledge, possibly causing doubt, disbelief, inactivity, or formal opposition.

Dialogue Podcast #26 w/Patrick Mason [ 1:31:51 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1672)

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