Once philosophy was not even taught at BYU for fear of corrupting the youth and Mormonism has had a famously rocky relationship with theology. But as with Mormon Studies in general, we are in the…
Dead. The rose bushes, the dogwood, the spirea, and the green spreading yews, all dead: the entire hillside, a dusty memorial to her beautiful yard. The dry leaves crumbled between Mary’s fingers and fell into…
Rabbi Harold Kushner is the author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People, along with numerous other books addressing the relationship between religion and lived adversity. He served as the congregational rabbi at the Temple Israel of Natick for over twenty-five years. Gregory A. Prince cofounded Virion Systems, Inc., a biotech company dedicated to the prevention and treatment of pediatric diseases. He is the author of David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism as well as several other books on the history of the priesthood.
The gods of asphalt and pure dirt
Do not disdain each other’s tread.
The jungle’s feet
Stalk through the city like lost deer
See why soul consists of tiny stuff so small
we see no trace when gone but body drowned
in God gives breath of splendid fire flaming ash
up the sleek flue our eyes see, to be shining sun in
Two poems that I read during my sophomore year of college ended up changing my life. The first of these, John Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” changed it quickly by helping me decide to change my major from accounting to English. It wasn’t so much that I was impressed with Keats for being such a good writer as much as I was impressed with myself for being such a good reader and for sort of understanding “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” It made me feel smart, perhaps for the first time in my life, and I decided that I liked feeling smart and wanted to spend the rest of my time in college understanding poems and feeling like a genius. So I majored in English. In fact, I majored in English three times. As a graduate student, a teaching assistant, and, eventually, as a professor of English literature I continued to teach “Ode on a Grecian Urn” in a variety of courses more or less the same way that I originally understood it the first time I read it.
The personal exit from any organization, especially those which are socially controversial, tends to produce a very specific type of narrative or story which gives an account of the individual’s experience within, and eventual withdrawal from, the organization. This is especially true in the case of modern Mormonism. Vocal ex-Mormons are often motivated to produce and disseminate exit narratives, often written in the context of pop-psychological terminology such as recovery (e.g. “Recovery from Mormonism”), which describe in various ways their victimization at the hands of Mormonism generally and their subsequent movement from being victims to victors.
Joseph Smith’s revelation texts carved out a complex system of ranks, offices, jurisdictions, and judicial bodies that implicitly rejected the feminization of Protestantism, while forwarding a selective blend of biblical terminology, Book of Mormon-defined praxis, and antebellum legalisms in organizing an exclusively male “priesthood” structure.
I’ve been asked to speak on the topic of women who have inspired me, how they’ve helped me, and how I honor them in my life.
I want to start with a remarkable experience I had in this ward, when a group of Primary girls inspired me in a life-changing way. I was teaching the senior Primary about the stories of Jesus, and they were very squirmy so I decided to harness this energy into a spontaneous form of kinesthetic learning. I said: “Let’s act out things people do to show they are following the Savior’s example!”