DiaBLOGue

“Behold, Other Scriptures I Would that Ye Should Write”: Malachi in the Book of Mormon

October 26, 2018

The years following the return of the Jewish captives from Babylon were filled with tension. While literal walls were being built around Jerusalem to keep the city safe, pious Jewish leaders were constructing religious walls around the Jewish faith to ensure that YHWH would never again become angry enough to allow his holy city to be destroyed. It was during this period that an unknown author, known later as “Malachi,” produced the final book of the Nevi’im or “Prophets.”

“A Portion of God’s Light”: Mormonism and Religious Pluralism

October 26, 2018

In 2015, the Catholic Church celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of its landmark proclamation Nostra aetate. As one of the key documents of the Second Vatican Council, Nostra aetate laid the foundation for contemporary Catholic interreligious engagement. Promulgated by Pope Paul VI, the document opened up multiple pathways to dialogue and identified the theological parameters within which these dialogues and collaborative projects could be undertaken.

Community of Christ: An American Progressive Christianity, with Mormonism as an Option

October 26, 2018

Dialogue 50.3 (Fall 2017): 89–115
I thus argue that Mormonism exists wherever there is belief in the Book of Mormon, even though many adherents reject the term “Mormonism” to distance themselves from the LDS Church headquartered in Salt Lake City.

Decolonizing the Blossoming: Indigenous People’s Faith in a Colonizing Church

October 26, 2018

My grandfather was a medicine man, a practitioner of a ceremony called the Blessingway—Hozhoojii. The Blessingway is described as the foundation of Navajo spirituality, the “scriptures” if you will. This ceremony informs and organizes the spiritual life and community of the Navajo people. Singers, or medicine men, perform this ceremony in times of both joy and sadness. It re-affirms one’s status as a child of “eternal goodness and beauty” and the capacity for one to become “eternal goodness and beauty” themselves. It is the organizing force of Navajo.

Remember Me: Discursive Needlework and the Sewing Sampler of Patty Bartlett Sessions

October 26, 2018

In her diary entry for March 20, 1848, Patty Bartlett Sessions (1795–1892) recorded an unusual note: she had begun to work on her sewing sampler, an item she had not touched for thirty-eight years. She writes simply, “commenced to finish my sampler that I began when I was a girl and went to school.”

Mormon-Catholic Relations in Utah History: A Sketch

October 26, 2018

One of the happy surprises that makes history so interesting is the fact that Utah ever became Mormon Country, for during the roughly one hundred years before 1847 it had been, if anything, Catholic Country. Catholic explorers, soldiers, fur trappers, and traders had repeatedly plied their trades back and forth through the territory. Brigham Young University historian Ted J. Warner offers an intriguing speculation as to what might have happened if the Franciscan friars Dominguez and Escalante had been able to fulfill their promise to the Indians at Utah Lake that they would return and establish a mission among them.

A Capacious Priesthood and a Life of Holiness

October 26, 2018

As an offering in speculative theology, this paper reconsiders the current normative understanding of a male-only priesthood as presented in the Book of Mormon, specifically in Alma 13:1–20, and proposes that Alma presents a more capacious model. While this text is generally accepted as supporting the establishment and practice of a male-only priesthood (and a model of the Melchizedek Priesthood), I argue that Alma’s message was meant to expand the role of priesthood in society and to provide a way for an entire community to enter into a life of holiness.The exegesis that this paper presents is not simply an attempt to bring women into the conversation but to expand the conversation for the entire community—the community of all believers: men, women, and the rest of us.

There’s No Such Thing as a Gospel Culture

October 26, 2018

The Pauline image of the body of Christ provides us with a gorgeous image that every part of the Church as it is expressed through the diverse cultures abroad are vital for its proper functioning. Bonhoeffer enlivens this image by suggesting that “Christ exists as community,”and to my mind there is no one cultural community that is the vital organ for the whole body. Rather, the conditions for a living church are that all of its diverse parts are working, honored, and respected.

Thomas Aquinas Meets Joseph Smith: Toward a Mormon Ethics of Natural Law

October 26, 2018

In opposition to Christian traditions that teach human guilt as a result of original sin, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints teaches that humans “will be punished for their own sins, and not for Adam’s transgression.”Unlike the Lutheran simul justus et peccator, wherein human beings are thoroughly sinful and saved only by God’s mercy, Mormons believe that human agency is responsible for human sinfulness and that the same agency is required to do good works for which we are ultimately judged.

The Word of Wisdom in Contemporary American Mormonism: Perceptions and Practice

October 26, 2018

Brigham Young University made headlines in 2012 for a series of controversies that would be, to say the least, unusual on most college campuses: a student-led push for the university to sell caffeinated beverages at student vending locations. Although a staple throughout the United States, caffeinated sodas had long been restricted from sale at BYU due to “lack of demand,” according to university officials.Five years later, however, caffeinated soda was, at last, approved for sale on BYU’s campus.