Philosophy

A Kingdom of Priests: A Support for Female Ordination

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Note: Many thanks to my wife Anne Stewart, whose wide research on this subject bolstered my own efforts. Her assistance with this article was essential and invaluable. It is her beautiful, informed and spiritual example that has been an inspiration to me in seeking Wisdom.

Yeshua Image copyKINGDOM OF PRIESTS

“The [Relief] Society should move according to the ancient Priesthood, hence there should be a select Society separate from all the evils of the world, choice, virtuous and holy— Said he was going to make of this Society a kingdom of priests as in Enoch’s day— as in Paul’s day.”[1]

 The context of this remarkable statement was Joseph Smith speaking at the third meeting of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ female organization Relief Society on March 30, 1842 (although in those days the Relief Society was an autonomous organization that was yet still connected to the Church in its purpose). Joseph Smith was a guest speaker nine times to the Relief Society before it was disbanded right before his death (and reinstated a decade later when Eliza R. Snow urged Brigham Young to give the organization a second chance). The Minutes were recorded in the official Relief Society Minutes Book in Secretary Eliza R. Snow’s own hand,[2] which are now available online from the LDS Church’s official Joseph Smith papers.

The above statement by Joseph Smith is one of the many pieces of evidence that have made me side with faithful Mormon feminists in the recent brouhaha over the issue of women’s ordination in the LDS Church. To me, this shows that Joseph Smith was considering an expanded priesthood role for women, specifically through the mechanism of an autonomous Relief Society. Unfortunately, conflicts with Joseph’s wife Emma and other women over polygamy, his martyrdom in Carthage Jail, and Brigham Young’s retrenchment tendencies when he felt his authority was being challenged, derailed this possibility of female priesthood being enforced in its fullness (although the Mormon temple endowment, especially the Second Anointing, was indeed a partial fulfillment, which I will briefly and respectfully discuss later).

Women’s roles in the Church are not an issue of “doubt” for me, although there have been times in my life where doubts have certainly raised their unsettling concerns, as they have for most honest inquirers. In the end, however, investigating an expanded role for women in the Church has rather had the opposite effect. I am filled with faith and the Spirit when I’ve prayerfully studied the issue and realize that statements from Joseph Smith (like the one above) and LDS scriptures show that gender issues are not so cut and dry as many Mormons would have us believe, and that revelation still has to come line upon line, precept upon precept to the Latter-day Saints. We are not an “unchanging” Church, but rather an eternally progressing Church that is still striving to live up to its potential of building Zion upon the Earth.   

Rather, doubts have come when I’ve considered the confusing “separate but equal” rhetoric issued to defend the lack of priesthood authority given to women. I feel nothing but alienation, confusion, and darkness when I prayerfully consider such justifications of gender inequalities. Trying to adopt such attitudes in the past have NEVER brought me peace, but rather a repressed unease. I feel farther from our Heavenly Parents when I consider such a constricted view of my mother, my sisters, my friends, my nieces, my in-laws, my aunts, my wife, my daughter, my Heavenly Mother. I not only feel farther from my Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother, but nearly as tragically, I also feel more distant from those beautiful women in my life. Whether I throw women on a pedestal or in a pit, we are not, at that point, on equal footing. That distance is created.

And I don’t want distance—I long for closeness, friendship, kinship, and fellowship with the women in my life. I have had a long, personal history with women. I have seven sisters. The majority of my friends in Jr. High and High School were female. My mother was a vitally important influence in my life. Many of my historical and literary heroes are women, from Joan of Arc, to Emma Smith, to Charlotte Bronte, to Lorraine Hansberry. My wife is my best friend, and I long for a beautiful, empowering future for my 3 year old daughter. As a general rule, I tend to feel closer and more connection to women than I do with men. Some may not think that I have much “skin in the game,” because I am a privileged, white male in an equal rights struggle. Yet this issue is quite personal to me, and it is spiritually urgent.

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Ronald Coase, 1910-2013

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Nobel Prize-winning economist Ronald Coase died recently at the age of 102. Many fine tributes have been written over the past week, but a common theme in many of them is that Coase was an economist interested in what actually happens in the economy. Or, as he explains below, “the approach [to economics] should be empirical.”

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The Slow Hunch: The Secular and the Sacred

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Today’s post from The Slow Hunch was written on the 10th anniversary of 9/11. I’m a little late (it is after 11pm in Texas), but I still technically made it. Just a few thoughts on hope and redemption on a day that can sometimes convince us there is none.

What is “unscientific”?

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I recently had a discussion with an individual about the supposed incompatibility of religion and science. This individual was convinced that most of the central claims of any religion can be labeled as unscientific. I disagreed, but not simply because of my own convictions about the nature of God, but also because of my intuition about the limitations of science and why any questions or claims that lay beyond those limitations are not automatically “unscientific.”

Zachełmie_quarry,_stromatolites

I’d like to start by making reference to a related argument. In the very public, recent intelligent design vs science court case Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, celebrated intelligent design proponent Dr. Michael Behe was forced to admit that his argument–that can be effectively summarized as follows:

the input of an intelligent designer is the only currently-known method for producing the strong appearance of design (theoretical arguments of evolutionists notwithstanding) that we find in complex biological organisms, and therefore the inference of a designer is rationally justified

is an inductive argument that can never be ruled out (is unfalsifiable). This “marginalization by unfalsifiability” was how Behe’s arguments were painted as “unscientific” and therefore unworthy of serious consideration. Falsifiability is how Karl Popper famously gave science an escape from Hume’s problem of induction. Falsifiability allows us to say that since it’s so difficult, if not impossible, to prove a claim absolutely true, we instead seek to prove it false, which is a far easier task. If your predictions cannot be shown to be false, they are generally considered to be unscientific. This is, of course, a rough and somewhat naive explanation of how science is done as scientists are more concerned with supporting or contradicting evidence surrounding a claim, but falsifiability is nonetheless a fairly reliable gauge of whether or not a specific claim can ever be considered “scientific.”

If these are the grounds on which we may rule out certain inductive arguments in terms of their “scientificity,” then I would like to suggest that, from a philosophical standpoint, we can similarly dismiss many more supposedly scientific arguments. As an illustration, let’s consider the varying and even competing hypotheses of abiogenesis–the natural process by which life arises from simple organic compounds, implicitly without the need of any intelligent input. That this process occurred at some point in earth’s history is, of course, the default position of most scientists. Any claims to the contrary simply remove the origins of life elsewhere in the universe without actually answering the central question. Scientists believe that either life can create itself from naturally occurring materials, or we lose all explanatory power about the origins of life since the input of an intelligent creator would necessitate an explanation of how that creator itself came to be.

Let’s examine both possibilities a bit more closely. How could we test that life arises from naturally occurring, simple compounds? We could formulate an experiment or series of experiments in which we mix such compounds under simulated pre-life earth conditions and see if such a process can produce a self-replicating molecule. If our experiments produce such a molecule, we have indeed confirmed that life can arise spontaneously from naturally occurring, simple organic compounds. Does this prove that life arose on earth in a like manner?

Well, no. It can, at best, only strengthen the claim that life arose on its own on earth. And in fact, since we can’t know the exact conditions under which life arose on earth, our test itself required the input of an intelligence to both create the test and then fine-tune its parameters. This forces us to explain the success of our experiment, which strengthens the claim we’ve made about the natural origin of life on earth, in terms of the actions of that life. What then to make of the explanatory power of abiogenesis?

What about our other theory–that life arose on earth with help? Attributing the origin of life on earth to a creator intelligence could require the exact same test–and in fact the same experiment we used to verify our predictions about the capabilities of natural abiogenesis could be used equally well to strengthen the claim of intelligent biogenesis. Where does that leave us?

Are any of the specific claims that follow from or precede our experiments falsifiable? Probably not, at least not without a time machine. Are they then unscientific? No. One of the biggest problems I have with reductionism is the ironically religious-like a priori rejection of claims without considering their merit and without serious introspection and a healthy sense of skepticism toward one’s own convictions.

The universe is a strange place, and I believe we will find it to be far stranger the more we learn about it. If a claim must fit our personal worldview, let’s at least allow others, especially those with whom we disagree, the same consideration. We might learn something.

Monday Morning Mormon Madness: The Abyss of Everything and Nothing

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2013-09-02 Sisyphus Happy

My latest piece at Times And Seasons is an rebuttal to the argument-as-explanation that religion is fundamentally an exercise in death-denial, and also a more personal piece of writing than my usual. I hope you find it interesting.

Orson Scott Card and His Imitation of Fox News: Paranoia? Hyperbole? Satire?

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After reading novelist and political commentator Orson Scott Card’s bizarre “thought experiment,” titled “Unlikely Events,” I really am quite mystified. In the article he plays a “game” in which he imagines President Obama becoming a fascist overlord ruling with an iron fist over America and being a figure akin to Hitler. Although he tries to reassure his readers that, of course, he doesn’t believe this stuff, and that he’s just wearing his hat as a “fiction” writer, yet he still also insists that “it sure sounds plausible, doesn’t it? Because, like a good fiction writer, I made sure this scenario fit the facts we already have — the way Obama already acts, the way his supporters act, and the way dictators have come to power in republics in the past.” He says that “the writer’s made-up characters and events must seem truthful. We must pass the plausibility test.”

But then Card shovels in comparisons to Hitler and every other dictator he can think of. When people start comparing their ideological rivals to Hitler, they have shown their refusal to speak with nuance and distinction. They have immediately lost the argument, in my mind. He then throws in a huge number of broad generalizations and hyperbolic statements such as this:

Obama is, by character and preference, a dictator. He hates the very idea of compromise; he demonizes his critics and despises even his own toadies in the liberal press. He circumvented Congress as soon as he got into office by appointing “czars” who didn’t need Senate approval. His own party hasn’t passed a budget ever in the Senate.

In other words, Obama already acts as if the Constitution were just for show. Like Augustus, he pretends to govern within its framework, but in fact he treats it with contempt.

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The Dismal Science

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The picture to the left was the cover of Ruskin on Himself and Things in General, a late 1800s collection of essay extracts by John Ruskin. The white, bearded, thin-faced Ruskin tramples his dark, broad-faced and flat-nosed enemy. In the slain man’s hand is a bag that reads “Wealth of Nations” and “L.S.D.” (not the drug, but the abbreviation for “pounds, shillings, and pence”). Next to him is a book titled “The Dismal Science.” How does the “dismal science” connect with this obvious racism? Most know that economics got its unfortunate nickname from Thomas Carlyle, who coined the phrase based on Malthus’ population doomsdaying. However, this well-known story is simply not true. As economists David Levy and Sandra Peart explain,

[Thomas] Carlyle’s target was not Malthus, but economists such as John Stuart Mill, who argued that it was institutions, not race, that explained why some nations were rich and others poor. Carlyle attacked Mill, not for supporting Malthus’s predictions about the dire consequences of population growth, but for supporting the emancipation of slaves. It was this fact—that economics assumed that people were basically all the same, and thus all entitled to liberty—that led Carlyle to label economics “the dismal science.”

Carlyle was not alone in denouncing economics for making its radical claims about the equality of all men. Others who joined him included Charles Dickens and John Ruskin. The connection was so well known throughout the 19th century, that even cartoonists could refer to it, knowing that their audience would get the reference.[ref]Levy and Peart’s series on “The Secret History of the Dismal Science” can be found at the Library of Economics and Liberty:

David M. Levy, Sandra J. Peart, “The Secret History of the Dismal Science, Part 1: Economics, Religion and Race in the 19th Century” (Jan. 22, 2001): http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/LevyPeartdismal.html

Levy, Peart, “The Secret History of the Dismal Science, Part 2: Brotherhood, Trade and the Negro Question” (March 26, 2001): http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/LevyPeartdismal2.html

Levy, Peart, “The Secret History of the Dismal Science, Part 3: The Governor Eyre Controversy” (June 4, 2001): http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/LevyPeartdismal3.html

Levy, Peart, “The Secret History of the Dismal Science, Part 4: Paternalism, Hierarchy and Markets” (Aug. 27, 2001): http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/LevyPeartdismal4.html

Levy, Peart, “The Secret History of the Dismal Science, Part 5: Parasite Economics and Market Exchange” (Dec. 17, 2001): http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/LevyPeartdismal5.html

Levy, Peart, “The Secret History of the Dismal Science, Part 6: Eugenics and the Amoralization of Economics” (May 13, 2002): http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/LevyPeartdismal6.html[/ref]

 

Perhaps capitalism has more to do with emancipation than exploitation.

 

The Slow Hunch: Moshidora and the Progress Principle

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Moshidora

My latest at The Slow Hunch looks at a little-known anime series that teaches a profound lesson about progress, which can be applied to work, home, and abroad. Doesn’t hurt that the lesson is based on the work of management expert Peter Drucker. Check it out.

The Virtuous Atheist or Atheist Maligned: Atheism Comforted and Confronted in my Religious Plays, Part One

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ASU's Binary Theatre Company's production of A Roof Overhead, October 2012
ASU’s Binary Theatre Company’s production of A Roof Overhead, October 2012

WARNING: Spoilers ahoy! If you want the context of the play referenced, A Roof Overhead, the majority of the production by ASU’s Binary Theatre Company was recorded and is up on You Tube. It’s not the highest quality recording, and it was a matinee (thus, historically, less audience engagement and laughing), but you get a good sense of that particular production. The Utah production, unfortunately, was not recorded due to technical difficulties (so not even I got to see it!).  Of course, I think the issues the essay raises go beyond the actual play, so feel free to read it if you haven’t the time to watch an entire play at the moment.

James Goldberg’s award winning one act play “Prodigal Son” is a stirring play that flips Jesus’ proverb of the same name, showing the relationship between a former Mormon turned atheist and his son Daniel, who joins the faith his father had long since rejected. The tension and conflict caused by the reversal of the parental disapproval is both ironic and effective. Set in this gem of a play is a haunting monologue addressed to the audience by Daniel’s father:

We’re far too casual, I think, in the way we talk about losing. “I’ve lost my keys,” for example, really means you’ve mislaid them. We say we’re “lost” when we’re just disoriented. And we lose our tempers all the time, only to find them again a few minutes later—

I wish we wouldn’t dilute the best word we have for when things are truly and permanently gone. “Lost cause” is a good phrase. It’s a cold, hard dose of reality. No one goes out to find a lost cause. It’s just lost. That phrase understands the power of the word’s finality…

So when I tell you that a long time ago I lost my faith, I don’t want you imagine that I’ve misplaced or that I could be capable of finding it again. Lost faith is like a lost limb…if it’s broken and bleeding, if you try to patch it up and ends up being inflamed and infected…at some point you have to cut it off. And after you’ve lost it the only thing left is the occasional flash of phantom pain.

I lost my faith. Twenty years later I lost my wife. And now maybe I’m losing my son.

Don’t take away from me the only word I have to cope with that.[1]

Coming from a practicing Mormon like Goldberg, the monologue is unusually and beautifully sensitive towards this fictional father’s disbelief in God and religion. It shows a well of compassion and charity on Goldberg’s part towards what really amounts to a religious minority (at least in the United States and other predominately religious countries, although that trend is fast reversing in many places in the world). It’s an unexpectedly poignant moment in a beautiful play.

In this way, Goldberg has shown that he is particularly ready to clarify the way of the atheist to believers, and pleas for understanding on the his atheist friends behalf—perhaps even to the point of being a warm ambassador or a defensive patron when discussing atheism among believers. Thus it makes sense that, in his review of my play A Roof Overhead, he was quick to come to the defense of the doubter, even though such a vigorous and heated defense was hardly needed considering the context of the play’s intended message of tolerance and pleas for mutual understanding.

As Goldberg is not the only critic to misrepresent my representation of atheism, including a handful of antagonistic reviews written against my plays Swallow the Sun and Prometheus Unbound, I feel compelled to address the issue directly. I normally like my plays to stand on their own artistically, so that people may interact with them based on their own experiences and what they personally bring to the play, without constant and intrusive commentary from me.

However, some have tried to tie me to a pattern of intolerance towards atheists, even resorting to rather personal slights and warnings to others against my work. Thus, in the name of my reputation, I feel it best to clear up what my intent is, and what my intent decidedly isn’t, towards atheism and atheists. After all, if I’m to be lambasted on the matter, I would prefer to be lambasted for something I actually believe.

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Jonathan Langford on the God Who Weeps

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Godweeps5083070_detailJonathan Langford over at A Motley Vision gave an insightful review of Terryl and Fiona Givens’ The God Who Weeps, perhaps the best book I read this past year (and which quickly leapt up to my all-time favorites list). Check it out by clicking here.

Also, if you’re interested in my own approach to, and appreciation for, the Givenses and their work in the past, here are my thoughts on Terryl Givens in Terryl Givens: The Mormon C.S. Lewis and my interview with Fiona Givens, Nothing Can Separate Us From the Love of God.

And, yes, Difficult Run’s Nathaniel Givens is the son of these two stellar people, which makes me wonder how a single family can deal with so much awesomeness!