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Mormon/Catholic Dialogue: Thinking About Ways Forward

October 24, 2018

I would like to begin with an image. There is a tree in the middle of a barren field. A rod of iron extends from it. People jeer from a large building bounded by a river nearby. Those holding on to the rod ignore the jeering from the building and partake of the tree’s sweet fruit, but there are some who heed the jeering and become ashamed even after eating the fruit, and are lost. This image is intimately familiar to so many Latter-day Saints as Lehi’s dream from 1 Nephi 8 in the Book of Mormon. It is, however, a relatively new image for me. I did not grow up with the image.

Leveling the Earth, Expanding the Circle

October 24, 2018

Hi, my name is Eunice McMurray. I’m married to Peter, who is an ethnomusicologist, and I’m a mom to four-year-old Penny, who is currently my job. We’ve been in the ward about ten years. I was originally asked to speak last week, but I was in Korea visiting my grandfather who is sick. He and my grandmother raised me on a chicken farm until I was five and I moved to the US with my parents. I joined the Church when I was twelve and, not having had the public speaking training from going to Primary, I am perpetually terrified of giving sacrament meeting talks. I even asked Penny to give this talk for me, but she said no because this pulpit is too big for her. 

Walking the Narrow Path | Patrick Q. Mason, Planted: Belief and Belonging in an Age of Doubt

October 24, 2018

While reading Planted one evening, I turned to my wife, Sara, and said, “I think that we are in the book.” I was reading an anecdote that Patrick shares near the end about some non-LDS Christian friends who attend a ward Christmas party. As they observe people talking and children running around, the friends comment on how much they admire the community because it feels like a real family (170). I remember making those comments.

Planted: An Earthy Approach to Faith and Doubt | Patrick Q. Mason, Planted: Belief and Belonging in an Age of Doubt

October 24, 2018

Planted: Belief and Belonging in an Age of Doubt by Patrick Mason is part of the Living Faith series by the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship at Brigham Young University. Announcing the series, the Maxwell Institute wrote: “Each [book] will contain the voice of a scholar who has cultivated a believing heart while engaging in the disciplines of the Academy.”

The Physical Process of Creation

October 24, 2018

I grew up in the Cambridge Ward. Wonderful student wives were my Mutual teachers. Unmarried graduate students sat around our family dinner table every Sunday. I was raised in Cambridge Mormondom. Latter-day Saint culture, scripture,…

Discovering the Woman’s Exponent

October 24, 2018

As a sixth-generation Latter-day Saint, I’ve grown up with Church history—it was a frequent topic of conversation whenever our extended family gathered. My second-great-grandfather, George Whitaker, wrote of working as a teamster for Parley P. Pratt when Nauvoo was abandoned in February 1846. Essentially, he’d crossed the ice with a load of Brother Pratt’s wives. The story of George Whitaker is well known. Carol Madsen used his story as an introductory chapter in her book Journey to Zion: Voices from the Mormon Trail.Other family histories whetted my appetite for more information about Church history.

Key Turning Points in Exponent II’s History

October 24, 2018

In her editorial in the very first issue, Claudia Bushman wrote “Exponent II, posed on the dual platforms of Mormonism and Feminism, has two aims: to strengthen The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and to encourage and develop the talents of Mormon women.” Years later, in an attempt to be welcoming to women wherever they were on the spectrum of belief and activity in Mormonism, we, as a board, vehemently discussed and re-wrote our mission statement, changing the phrase “Our common bond is our commitment to the Church and the women of the Church” to “Our common bond is our connection to the Church and our commit ment to women.” So, even though we questioned and diluted somewhat that first platform, we have always firmly adhered to the second, that of feminism. But Claudia was unknowingly throwing down a gauntlet by declaring our “modest little paper,” as she called it, to be feminist.