I had another dream, I had another life
Archaeologists have excavated a Buddhist shrine in Nepal dating back to about 550 B.C. This discovery would push the birth of the Buddha back over a century earlier than scholars currently accept.
National Geographic has the details.
This morning’s regularly scheduled Times And Seasons post is up. In this post, I talk about the benefits of an atheological religion, and the danger of replacing the missing religious authority with a secular one: academia. (I also make some comments about the importance of failure, hence the image of Peter sinking into the stormy waves.)
Inspired by the work of DR’s own Walker Wright and his co-author Allen Hansen, my post for Times And Seasons this morning delves into the fruitful nexus of business and theology, especially in light of Peter Drucker’s body of work. Allen suggested the post title, and I liked it. Why stop at chasing the bankers out of the temple when you can carry the offensive forward and bring the temple into the bank?
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.
KINGDOM 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.
Ender’s Game is, more than any thing else, a book about empathy. From the very first line of the book (“I’ve watched through his eyes, I’ve listened through his ears…”) and on to the end the theme of empathy dominates everything the characters do and think about. It is the key to all of young Ender’s victories and the source of his greatest strength. It is the source of his deepest pain.
Why, then, is the author of Ender’s Game an unrepentant homophobe and conspiracy theorist best described alternatively as either “intolerant” or “kooky”? That is the question Rany Jazayerli asks in his moving and thoughtful piece for Grantland. Jazayerli is clearly a sympathetic reader (sympathetic of Card, I mean). As a devout Muslim he shares Card’s Mormon view that homosexual sex is a sin. He is not only a fan of science fiction in general and Card’s works in particular, he writes movingly of how Card’s sympathetic depiction of a Muslim character in Ender’s Game (written in the 1980s) profoundly touched Jazayerli. He says:
Others may hate him, but I’m still struggling to understand him. That’s the least I owe him for gifting me with an ethical compass when I needed one.
I’d like to help Jazayerli understand Card.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (that’s my church) recently announced an official position on environmental stewardship. I like it, and it short enough to quote in its entirety.
God created the earth to provide a place for the human family to learn, progress and improve. God first created the earth and all living things spiritually, and all living things have great worth in His eyes.
The earth and all things on it should be used responsibly to sustain the human family. However, all are stewards — not owners — over this earth and its bounty and will be accountable before God for what they do with His creations.
Approaches to the environment must be prudent, realistic, balanced and consistent with the needs of the earth and of current and future generations, rather than pursuing the immediate vindication of personal desires or avowed rights. The earth and all life upon it are much more than items to be consumed or conserved. God intends His creations to be aesthetically pleasing to enliven the mind and spirit, and some portions are to be preserved. Making the earth ugly offends Him.
The state of the human soul and the environment are interconnected, with each affecting and influencing the other. The earth, all living things and the expanse of the universe all eloquently witness of God.
This morning’s post for Times And Seasons tackles the question Mark Oppenheimer recently raised in a piece for the New York Times: why has there been no Mormon literary renaissance? My post is divided roughly half-and-half between critiquing Oppenheimer’s unthinking dismissal of the artistic merit of so-called “genre fiction” that much of his analysis depends upon and a further exploration of the role of tragedy in art as it conflicts with Mormonism’s ruthless optimism.
Salon is running an excerpt from Francis Spufford’s book: Unapologetic: Why, Despite Everything, Christianity Still Makes Surprising Emotional Sense, and it’s nothing short of a revelation to read. (Especially coming from Salon.) I’m quite sure I wouldn’t agree with Spufford on everything, but his ranting and raving against the shallow vanity of the New Atheists warms me to my deepest core. This is someone with whom I’m sure I would argue a very great many points, but who at some fundamental level gets it. For example (warning: some strong language):
This morning I wrote about what we can learn from the mini-controversy around the results of a Pew research packet that appeared to show the different attitudes towards the scientific theory of evolution by religious denomination. Only, as I argue, that’s not what the results show us at all.
Intellectual historian Eran Shalev has an interesting 2010 Church History article entitled “‘Written in the Style of Antiquity’: Pseudo-Biblicism and the Early American Republic, 1770-1830.”[ref]Full citation is Eran Shalev, “‘Written in the Style of Antiquity’: Pseudo-Biblicism and the Early American Republic, 1770-1830,” Church History 79:4 (Dec. 2010): 800-826.[/ref] In it, he reviews the roots of the pseudo-biblical writing style in early American letters, tracts, and books, particularly the role of the language found in the King James Version. Authors would mimick the KJV language “and its accompanying structures and forms to discuss their difficulties and represent their achievements, past and present…American authors and commentators used this ontologically privileged language as a means to establish their claims for truth, as well as their authority and legitimacy in public discourse” (pg. 801). This biblical style was particularly useful in political debates:
Through pseudo-biblicism the Bible became a living text, an ongoing scriptural venture which complemented and foritified notions of national chosenness and mission. This transformation occurred within a poisoned political culture which created “two parallel imagined communities,” namely the two political parties—the Federalists and the Republicans—that denied each other’s legitimacy. This disposition…created a political culture governed by a grammar of combat, which entailed a “politics of anxious extremes.” It fostered the intense employment and further construction of biblical politics, each side depicting the other as wrong-doing “Adamites” or “Jeffersonites.” …The pseudo-biblical language thus wove the Bible into American life and sanctified the young nation. American politics were transformed, in texts largely devoid of references to God, into the new religion of the republic (pg. 812).
The “use of distinctive Elizabethan English for political ends” was rampant because it “manipulated readers into conjuring up biblical visions only to contrast them with their American past and present” (pg. 817). For example, early Jeffersonian Republicans and remnants of the Anti-Federalists “accused the members of the constitutional convention and “[John] Adams their Servant” for conspiring with “the Britannites” to the effect that “all the country round about, even from Dan unto Beersheba, should be subject unto one king, and unto one council.”” Republicans often depicted themselves as “Israel,” while declaring Federalists to be anything from Pharisees to Amalekites. On the flipside, Federalists attacked Republicans for not being “a goodly people—fearing the lord and submitting to the Rulers placed over them” (pgs. 816-817).
This style of writing began to decline in the mid-1800s, but it seems to me that the fusion of religious meaning with political debate is alive and well in 21st-century America. Perhaps it is because “American politics were transformed…into the new religion of the republic” that we see partisan hacks (even the atheistic ones) ranting and raving like religious fanatics.
