DiaBLOGue

An Interview with Rabbi Harold Kushner

March 14, 2018

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.

Jungle Walks

March 14, 2018

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 

Soul as Seen by Joseph Smith

March 14, 2018

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

What Kind of Truth Is Beauty?: A Meditation on Keats, Job, and Scriptural Poetry

March 14, 2018

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. 

Ex-Mormon Narratives and Pastoral Apologetics

March 14, 2018

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. 

Early Mormon Priesthood Revelation: Text, Impact, and Evolution

March 14, 2018

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. 

Woman: Joint Heiress With Christ

March 14, 2018

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!”

Theology as Poetry | Adam S. Miller, Rube Goldberg Machines: Essays in Mormon Theology

March 14, 2018

While in Dallas giving a couple of lectures last June, I met Adam Miller. In response to one of my presentations he asked interesting questions and made statements that made me think. When he learned that I teach at Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, he asked if I would be interested in reading his book, Rube Goldberg Machines: Essays in Mormon Theology. Who could resist a book with such a title!

Prophetic Glimpses of Mormon Culture: Recent Publications on Patriarchal Blessings | Irene M. Bates and E. Gary Smith, Lost Legacy: The Mormon Office of the Presiding Patriarch; H. Michael Marquardt, ed., Early Patriarchal Blessings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; H. Michael Marquardt, ed., Later Patriarchal Blessings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; Gary Shepherd and Gordon Shepherd, Binding Heaven and Earth: Patriarchal Blessings in the Prophetic Development of Early Mormonism

March 14, 2018

With these publications, Gary and Gordon Shepherd and H. Michael Marquardt have contributed immeasurably to the scholarly conversation about Mormon patriarchal blessings. This has been a continuing conversation that intensified in 1996 when Irene M. Bates and E. Gary Smith published their book on the office of Church patriarch. Scholars now have a critical mass of primary and secondary material with which to understand this often overlooked but powerful practice in the LDS Church. Each of these books adds something to the conversation, complicating it in messy, fruitful ways. They illuminate the intersection of the institutional and lived religious levels of Mormonism, an intersection that has been largely unexplored but is receiving increasing scholarly attention. Marquardt’s collection of patriarchal blessings, in particular, enables scholars to examine how, every day, leaders and members created the Mormon faith as a viable and vigorous religious group.