Making our history one step at a time
How did we get from there to here? Honestly, when the Church started putting out its new Church history, I was most excited about volume 3 because it addresses this question. We are all familiar with the events of the Restoration, but the Church today is so different. This fills part of the gap, covering the events of 1893 to 1955.
My wife and I read Mormonism and White Supremacy: American Religion and the Problem of Racial Innocence by Joanna Brooks together as a part of our observance of Black History Month. Our Church has its own complicated history of racial issues, and Brooks has assembled a compelling narrative of what happened, how we got here,... Continue Reading →
I adapted my talk on worthiness from church a few weeks ago. As a personal expert in making myself feel guilt about anything and everything, this is a topic I have thought a lot about.
It is an absolute pleasure to read Midnight Sun just to cringe at it. But I am here to make it even cringier! I'm sure they have been WAY too many Twilight metaphors, but I'm adding one more to the pile: behold, Twilight through the lens of my gay Mormon religious trauma.
I chose to read *Saving Faith* by John Gee because I knew I would strongly disagree with it. I don't usually do that with the books I read in my free time, but this one touched a chord as a gay Latter-Day Saint and a survivor of sexual abuse.
When it comes to Enos, Jarom, and Omni less is more. Sharon Harris has done more with these little books than I thought possible. Harris makes theological space in these pages for those on the edge of the inside of Mormonism, and in an Ozymandian take reminds us that spirituality isn't measured by your real estate on the gold plates.
My patient parents put up with me reading The Great Divorce to them this week while they were visiting. Re-reading Lewis always brings fresh insights. Lewis's "The Great Divorce" was one of the books that helped me overcome my religiously inspired self-loathing and realize I wasn't doomed to go to the Mormon version of hell.
Hugh Nibley simultaneously affirms faith and challenges the status quo within the Church, and that duality is what I admire so much about him.
I needed some comfort food this week, so I read Truman G. Madsen's "The Prophet Joseph Smith." Growing up, my dad could quote these lectures like scripture. I think this book perhaps most closely captures why the saints loved him so much. But the saying is definitely true: "Catholics say the pope is infallible, but don't really believe it; Mormons say the prophet is fallible, but don't really believe it."
"Tabernacles of Clay" hits so hard, because for me it is personal. For LGBT Latter-Day Saints on the ground, living our faith is a practical matter, not a theoretical one. Yet ecclesiastical guidance and even doctrines change with political winds.
History Engineers 