Further Light and Knowledge

Very good, Todd.

I find this week's discussion to be much closer to what I was envisioning for your class.

_________________
"To those seaching for truth - not the truth of dogma and darkness but the truth brought by reason, search, examination, and inquiry, discipline is required. For faith, as well intentioned as it may be, must be built on facts, not fiction - faith in fiction is a damnable false hope." - Thomas Edison

Well, considering that they know nothing about mormonism, they had to start somewhere, which from my perspective as teacher, meant giving them a broad overview of Mormon history. Last week's discussion (despite the weak blogs) was actually very successful and built a good foundation for critical history & religious studies.

Today's conversation was fantastic. It was fun to talk about the "plan of salvation" to a non-mormon, secular audience. They were fascinated, amused, appalled, and stunned by it. It was also on a personal level very good for me, because I was able to see both the kookiness but also why it appealed to me so strongly and deeply for so long.

This will make for an interesting semester.
good timing, coming on the commercialized heals of the holy mormon trinity, by that I mean, Perry, Romney and Hunstman. Any other time you may have had zero enrollment, cancelled due to complete and utter lack of interest.

Do they know you were a once-upon-a-time believing mormon?

I'm interested to see how they relate truth-telling to propaganda and apologia.

_________________
Said in a hushed whisper: My temple name was (pause for effect) Joan.

I admit I don't lurk around much since the old Foyer collapsed, but.... I don't recall reading why it appealed so strongly and deeply for you.

(if you don't mind me asking.)

_________________
Said in a hushed whisper: My temple name was (pause for effect) Joan.

There were a couple fantastic student blog posts from students about this week's assigned reading (one chapter from Brooke's Refiner's Fire and one chapter from Buerger's Mysteries of Godliness). The one about the temple ritual and the one about Joseph Smith trying to establish his authority are especially great. Please don't comment on the blog as it's a reserved space for the students, but if you read and enjoy, feel free to comment here for discussion. The students were really into it this week.

Also, since this is a religious studies course, and it coincidentally covers a GE requirement about cultural diversity, I don't think that it's really only a matter of timing that the course has students. It's a small seminar, but it's mostly majors in the department.

Just the core value of the inherent divinity and godliness of humans and potentially a very position/optimistic view of human nature.

It's probably why a lot of ethical philosophy written by jewish folks appeals to me (e.g., Elie Wiesel, Emmanuel Levinas, Hannah Arendt, etc.) because of the jewish notion of b'tzelem elohim ("in the image of god").

Just an idea that has a deep resonance with me.

Thank you for sharing. Do you think there is a demand at your university to teach this course again in the future? --Mike

_________________
http://culturalmormoncafeteria.blogspot.com/

I totally get this. And as I am currently reading a study Bible and finally figuring out and confronting many things about religion and religious narratives that I put off because of *cough* mormonism *cough* I almost think I could convert to Judaism. You know, a modern reform version.

I don't think it's going to happen, but that it even appears in my brain as a fantasy is pretty amazing.

(your course is very good, but you know that already from my comments here and elsewhere)

We'll see how it goes. I only have 20 students, which is a fair showing for a Religious Studies course on my campus. The course I'm teaching is in a shell "religion and politics" number, which can have any kind of contents a professor wants to give it. My students are fascinated by the topic and asking all sorts of questions and really engaged, and it's only week three, so I'm hopeful that at least this semester will go well.

But there is little will for curricular innovation or forward thinking at all at my university. I'm working a two-year plan to get a job elsewhere at the moment (although with the economy such as it is, my chances are slim). Earliest I could be out would be fall 2013; but most likely (if it happens) would be fall of 2014.

Random tangent:

The Jewish approach to truth and text is so completely different from Christianity's as to require a world-view transplant. It's so different that when you hear atheist criticisms of religion generally from, say, Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, you come to understand how deeply Christian they are in their a priori definitions of truth, God, and religion. It makes their criticisms seem deeply parochial, even though I agree with them in their atheism. In other words, it may be scientifically true that there is no supernatural being, the Unmade Maker, behind all that exists; but you cannot then go from there to a critique of all religion, because religion and religious practice is too diverse and divergent and particular to be undercut by such a scientific claim. Indeed, using Judaism as an example, the very notion that religion depends on what you *believe* to be true is a peculiarly Christian idea to begin with (and maybe also Muslim); but it is an idea that is and has been for thousands of years foreign to Judaism, which sees itself as a struggle with the divine in a way that is creating divinity through the struggle, so that what's in your head doesn't matter. So when western science insists on "believing the truth," the impact of that insistance is rather narrowly contained to religions that rely on "belief" as a central piece of their religiosity and practice.

As for textuality, Judaism sees the Torah as the basis for an ongoing 3000 year old argument. Although a fundamentalist hasid might argue that Torah is literally true, you find quickly that he (female hasidim don't read torah) means something radically different from what an evangelical christian might, as the text is seen as inherently divine, but its truth is an emergent characteristic from the text in ongoing argument within a community of arguers. Then talk about the nature of God, and you get the same kind of thing, where god is real, but what god is or the nature of god's relationship to humans is at best metaphor; in more liberal forms of judaism it becomes explicitly panentheist; but even in traditional forms, a Chabad rabbe would say that whether or not god is real is not the correct question, and what matters is the human striving after divinity. And even the most fundamentalist of Jews is comfortable with disagreement and right out contradiction among Jews, as the Talmud itself is built on every single page as the presentation of oppositional and mutually exclusive points of view on any given issue; and there is almost never a need to reconcile or synthesize. Compare that to Christianity's need to subsume everything into a singular vision of TRUTH (which they inherited from Greek philosophy), with Thomas Aquinas as the prototypical synthesizer and reducer.

Anyway, if you're interested in Jewish views of text, the Torah commentaries of the Reform and Conservative and Reconstructionist movements are amazing. But Judaism is so rationalist and argumentative at its core, that even Orthodox and even Chabadnik commentaries make Christian textuality seem like childish efforts to make pieces from 100 different puzzles make a coherent picture.

I don't mean to be a booster for Judaism here. Just to point out how pervasive Christian assumptions about truth are in our culture. Judaism has other problems all its own.

I just finished reading the chapters on Mormonism from Harold Bloom's The American Religion (Ch. 4-6). I hadn't read them since I was an undergrad at BYU in the early 1990s, and when I read them at that time, I had very different eyes and life experience. Bloom's notion of "religious criticism" is fascinating, and resonates with my view that religion broadly speaking is best seen as one of the "humanities," along with literature, poetry, painting, and music. Religion is, as Bloom argues, an act of the imagination.

Many things stood out upon this reading, but I wanted to throw a couple specific things out there:

1) The notion of "American Religion" as being the sort of imaginative core of American religiosity generally, that there is a cultural trend here in North America where the unmaking and shedding of old traditions and the embracing of the new and accepting the constant recreation of the self as a part of life has created a "religious spirit" that is unique to itself. And Bloom saw Joseph Smith as being the prophet in the deepest sense of that "geist," as he created a religion centered around the divine, uncreated nature of human beings and their direct relationship to godhood, and the constant movement toward ultimate power (exaltation). I'm still mulling this over, as I find myself automatically suspicious of claims to any kind of cultural thread that runs through American life generally (this is a result of when I was educated, more than anything).

2) The fact that the current iteration (?) of Mormonism is "merely a compromise with the gentiles," that Mormonism has by and large abandoned Smith's vision for a sacred community and the perfection of humans (the law of consecration), and although they secretly still believe in polygamy, the church has largely deleted or ignores Smith's radical vision of the sacredness of sexuality. Since Bloom wrote this, we could even argue that, with Gordon B. Hinkly, contemporary Mormonism has abandoned the "plan of salvation" altogether by no longer teaching that humans are "gods in embryo" and are en route to godhood. Bloom argues that those visions still lie dormant within Mormonism, but that they are not explicit, public, acknowledged. Knowing my younger cousins as I do, I would say that much what constituted Mormonism between 1830 and 1890 isn't even known by younger Mormons today.

In his mode as "Religious Critic," Bloom sees this as a great loss, in the way that losing a Shakespeare play or the Mona Lisa would be a devastating loss: It is the loss of religious imagination, genius, and meaning. For many reasons (ranging from homophobia and racism, to patriarchy, to hierarchal abuse of power), I would never want to be a Mormon again. But I have to admit that the notions that Bloom sees as the genius of Mormonism are the precise things that I find still resonate (I talked about some of this above) for me.

Thoughts?

In tomorrow's class, we will be discussion Mormonism as American Religion. I think Bloom's view of what that means is only one of three possibilities:

American Religion One, historical and sociological: Mormonism as a product of its historical context, that is, Mormonism only existed and exists as it did/does is because of the interactions, institutions, and power struggles of the social context of its creation. No matter how genius Smith's vision, it cannot be extricated from its context.

American Religion Two, cultural and "spiritual": (Bloom's view) Mormonism as the supreme manifestation of a peculiarly American approach to religious practice and content, religious imagination, "spirituality" (as opposed to aesthetic).

American Religion Three, doctrinal: Mormonism's world view as intricately caught up in its relationship to the United States (and the Americas more broadly), in its core notions of theocracy and social power and hierarchy, and it's notion of both creation (garden of eden) and eschatology (return of the City of Enoch, New Jerusalem in Missouri, etc.). This is where the White Horse prophecy, the Council of Fifty, etc., fit in.

One last thing: Does anyone have a PDF copy of Orson Pratt's 1857 (I think) sermon on 'celestial marriage'? I've been trying to locate a copy of it online, and all I can seem to find are quotes from it. I'd like to have my students read the whole thing. Thanks.

Have you seen this link?

It looks like somebody's putting the Journal of Discourses online (says it's beta). I don't know if that's the whole thing, but I think it is.

ETA: This is dated 1852. It may be something different. But maybe there's another one in there from 1857. I'll keep looking.

_________________
The apple cannot be stuck back on the Tree of Knowledge; once we begin to see, we are doomed and challenged to seek the strength to see more, not less. ~ Arthur Miller

Here's another one by Pratt from 1874.

One titled simply "Polygamy" from 1859.

Another from 1869.

From 1873

Hmm. Can't find anything from 1857, though I do think there is one.

_________________
The apple cannot be stuck back on the Tree of Knowledge; once we begin to see, we are doomed and challenged to seek the strength to see more, not less. ~ Arthur Miller