My grandmother loves Sir Francis Bacon–“Some of his philosophies . . . rang such a bell.” My mother tells this fact about her mother with pride and reverence, and this bit of information has shaped how I view my grandmother and myself as her granddaughter.

Long before she joined the church, my grandmother swore to herself that she would never smoke. She went to college when she was just sixteen and became a teacher. When she was a young mother living in Midland, Texas, during the fifties, her neighbors warned her not to let the Mormon missionaries in her house. Two young men came by on a hot summer day, and she invited them inside.

My grandmother took the discussions and believed. But she did not feel she could be baptized. She learned that not all men could hold the priesthood, and she found that unconscionable. One night while she was praying she had an experience that has become part of my family’s sacred history. She believed and was baptized.

My grandmother, who reads the words of the father of empiricism, has faith that has sustained generations. For her, faith and reason coexist. And now she pushes me to the boundaries of reason into faithful territory, a place where God beckons beyond death.

Many of the students involved in Mormon Studies primarily or peripherally are receiving graduate degrees in religion at divinity schools and universities throughout the U.S. and in Europe. Some of these students are BYU graduates; some of them are not. Many of them have been through the mill of CES, but not all of them are planning to pursue teaching through Church-education channels. These young men and women are at non-Mormon educational institutions where they receive non-Mormon academic training in religion.[1]

Religious education outside of CES baffles some Latter-day Saints. Students who seek such education draw raised eyebrows and confront well-meaning questions or concerns about their ability to remain faithful to Mormonism while receiving their academic religious training. The Church strives against the fear of secularism and false doctrine infiltrating the fold. Since coming to divinity school, I have discovered two warring worldviews within myself—the secular worldview that sees the world without a lens of divine influence and inspiration and the Mormon worldview that sees with it.[2] Outside of Mormonism, religious education in the academy (a secular institution) is also contested, as revealed by a Newsweek article titled “Harvard’s Crisis of Faith,” written by Lisa Miller.[3]

Knowing only my own divinity school experience, I wanted to hear what some of the Mormon scholars described above had to say about the question of secularism and religious education in the academy. What have their experiences been? Is secularism necessarily a bad thing? And what role, if any, should religious education play in the academy?  The first respondent in the miniseries is Harvard divinity student Taylor P., who specifically addresses the Newsweek article. Taylor will be followed by JI’s own Ben, Ryan, and Matt, who will post at intervals for the next couple of weeks.

[1] This is not without precedent, certainly. Divinity-school-trained church educators grew from Church education’s call to certain Mormon scholars during the 1930s to pursue graduate degrees in religious education at the University of Chicago Divinity School (see Russel B. Swensen, “Mormons at the University of Chicago Divinity School: A Personal Reminiscence” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 7, no. 2 [Summer 1972], 37).

[2] Divinity school did not solely impart this secular worldview to me, although I have encountered a fair amount of secularism, which has challenged my faith. However, I attribute my secularism to elements of my American enculturation. Divinity school has actually planted the religious worldview even more deeply within me.

[3] February 10, 2010. http://www.newsweek.com/id/233413.

From the tour blog:

What place do “Mormon” women writers have in the 21st century? Join poets, novelists, memoirists and non-fiction authors from California to Canada to explore the question in Our Visions, Our Voices: The Mormon Women’s Literary Tour to university campuses throughout the Southwest, the week of March 22 – 27, 2010.

Project founders Dr. Joanna Brooks of San Diego State University and Dr. Holly Welker of Salt Lake City have tapped into a range of denominations that share historic roots with the greater Mormon and Latter Day Saint traditions.

“This is about creating common ground,” says Brooks, a professor of English. “We want to create a space for women to share their writing and reflect on what it might mean to be a Mormon woman in the 21st century.”

The ground-breaking project brings women writers face-to-face with audiences that recognize the need for a vibrant writing culture beyond the bounds of orthodoxy. The Utah Valley University Department of English is sponsoring the tour, with additional support from the Claremont University Mormon Studies program. Audio will be podcast at mormonmatters.org. Women writers who want to contribute to the tour’s archive at the University of Utah Marriot Special Collections Library can bring their own writings to the readings.

Here is an abbreviated tour schedule.

Monday, March 22, 7 p.m.

Claremont Graduate University
Albrecht Auditorium, Stauffer Hall
Featuring: Susan Scott, Lisa Van Orman Hadley, Joanna Brooks, Holly Welker, Elisa Pulido

Tuesday, March 23, 7 p.m.

Arizona State University
Coor Building 170
Featuring: Judith Curtis, Whitney Mower, Whitney Nelson, Danielle Dubrasky, Joanna Brooks, Susan Scott, Lisa Van Orman Hadley, Holly Welker

Thursday, March 25, 5 p.m.

Southern Utah University
Sharwan Smith Student Center Theater
Featuring: Zoe Murdock, Judith Curtis, Whitney Mower, Whitney Nelson, Danielle Dubrasky, Joanna Brooks, Susan Scott, Lisa Van Orman Hadley, Holly Welker

Friday, March 26, 12 noon

Utah Valley University
LI 120 (Library Auditorium)
Featuring: Julie Nichols, Lee Mortenson, Terisa Humiston, Whitney Nelson, Whitney Mower, Judith Curtis, Elizabeth Pinborough, Kathryn Lynard Soper, Cassandra Eddington, Joanna Brooks, Zoe Murdock, Lisa Van Orman Hadley, Susan Scott, Danielle Dubrasky, Laura Nielson Baxter

Saturday, March 27, 7 p.m.

University of Utah
Fort Douglas Honors Center
Featuring: Holly Welker, Elizabeth Pinborough, Lisa Van Hadley, Victoria Burgess, Kathryn Lynard Soper, Joanna Brooks, Zoe Murdock, Cassie Eddington, Susan Scott, Judith Curtis, Whitney Nelson, Whitney Mower, Terisa Humiston, Danielle Dubrasky, Laura Nielson Baxter

For specific directions to the readings and biographies of the tour participants, visit the Mormon Women Writers blog. For an engaging interview with one of the tour organizers Joanna Brooks, conducted by Kathryn Lynard Soper, check out By Common Consent. And come!

Look for the upcoming interview with Rachel Cope, who holds a PhD in American history from Syracuse University and currently works at BYU Studies.

I have resisted the temple for a while for a number of reasons. Among other things, I was ambivalent about the distinct linguistic possibility that women are inferior to men in God’s eyes. Language notwithstanding, I fundamentally don’t think God loves women any less than God loves men.

But, I feared that going through the temple to receive my endowment would throw me into even greater turmoil of belief than I had already experienced in the last year and a half. It didn’t. Even though it did not answer all my questions and certainly provided me with a few more, it was a beautiful experience.

My religious and literary education began to fall into place in very personal ways. As I was climbing the stairs before beginning the endowment, I imagined myself as Dante climbing toward Paradise, the celestial room, and God’s presence. The endowment, however, put me squarely back on earth, back on mount Purgatory, where we are to work out our salvation before God with fear and trembling.

During the endowment I thought of a paper I wrote as an undergraduate on unity and procreation in Paradise Lost. According to Milton, in the Garden, Adam and Eve perceived themselves to be separate, self-sufficient. The fall, however, taught them the need for each other and for God, a unified relationship they could only achieve through procreation outside the Garden. Procreation allowed unity, not just of human flesh, but of the human and the divine. Adam and Eve learn independently that Christ will come through their lineage (see Paradise Lost, 12.378-82, 623), and Christ reconciles humanity to God.

The temple teaches the same kind of narrative Milton did, that of humans seeking unity with God and their ultimate dependence on Christ’s power to effect that reconciliation and unification. It is precisely the inseparability of the human element (earthbound beings in time), and the divine element (God’s salvific action in time and for all time) that I loved about the temple. The endowment is an exploration of humility. The endowment represents a sacrifice of ego, accompanied by the desire to fulfill the will of the Lord, and contains God’s promise to ratify that sacrifice with power. It serves as an inescapable reminder of our divinely human mixture of spirit and clay, incapable of returning to God on our own. It is surrender.

Finally, the temple taught me about the beauty of the earth and the beauty of human life in God’s sight. Christ died for the beauty of the earth. In the temple, I dedicated myself to uphold that beauty to the best of my imperfect ability.

The temple is God’s creation. The temple is God’s love for humanity. The temple is God’s garden on earth. The temple is heaven now. For God so loved the world.

The day before my endowment a couple of friends and I went to Cambridge and spent the afternoon. We went through the Harvard Natural History Museum, which contains some of the earth’s beauties. Enjoy.

Dante

If you imagine

others are there,

you are there yourself.

From Wendell Berry, Given (Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2005), 8.

In addition to her full-time work with the Church (where she has been employed for five years), she is pursuing a master’s degree in historic preservation through Goucher College, in Baltimore, Maryland. She has chaired sessions at MHA. She is also a renowned collector of Mormon kitsch, of which a plastic Liahona is one of her favorites. Several JI contributors–Stan, Ben, and Jared T.–and one former contributor, Heidi, have worked with Emily in historic site internships. Please join me in giving her a rousing welcome!

“A Dream Girl”

Once upon a time, not so very long ago, a girl did approach a boy named Wally. And she did ask of this boy a very personal question in-so-much that he was very embarrassed. How could he describe his “dream girl” when she was only a dreamy mist? Only by giving shape to his ideals and expectations will he be able to make the dreamy mist a living reality. This boy Wally did just that–His ideals were given shape to satisfy a certain innate curiosity within. Here she is–I hope you like her!

1. Try as I will I can not picture myself marrying a redhead. I might possibly be able to fall for a very charming blonde, but for the most part I think the girl that I shall marry will decidedly be a brunette. 2. She must be younger than I am. 3. She should not be any taller than my eyes. 4. Her eyes preferably will be of some clear color such as brown, blue, hazel, etc. 5. I would like them best if they were “laughing eyes.” 6. Her mouth will be appreciated most if it is of the small type. 7. Embodying all facial features must be the clear, healthy skin a person loves to re-touch. 8. She must have the power of charm. 9. To talk interestingly and be sincere in what she does say will create some of that charm. 10. She should have a lively interest in some sport preferably one which we could participate in together. 11. She must be trained to some of the higher things of life such as an interest in music, art, and literature. By this I do not mean that be a high-minded person who has a too good opinion of herself – but rather just a person of more than average good-breeding. This probably could be summed up in the request that she have class. 12. She should not be a flirt. 13. She, by all means, will not be a smoker or a hooch chaser. 14. She should not be a worry-belly–you know the kind I mean. 15. She should know the value of money and be able to appreciate the work necessary to obtain it. 15. [sic] This ideal girl will have “poise” and a presence of mind that will meet almost any situation with tact and precision. 16. She will be able to show sympathy when there is cause for it. 17. She must be natural.

What I have been trying to say are my ideas of a perfect girl – perfection personified. This ideal girl should be an inspiration that would serve as a guide in all that I undertake to do. She will be a person I will want to pal around with. She will be the best friend I could ever have a desire to want. All in all my “dream girl” will be one whom I shall “want to love” just because of what she is.

Walter Pinborough

Copyright April 15, 1932

All rights reserved

What does it mean when we say that Christ was perfect? I believe it means Christ was perfect in conforming his will to the will of God the Father. I believe it means he was perfect in intention and action. I do not believe that it means Christ was necessarily without flaw in body or mind or emotion or spirit. It seems if Christ was precluded from being flawed (from being imperfect) in any of these areas, he would not be able to render up a perfect (complete, whole, entire) sacrifice for sin. He would not be able to feel pain or suffer. And since pain is a condition of mortality and thus a condition of the atonement, that kind of perfection or flawlessness would not be possible for Christ.

Was Jesus both fully human and fully God, then? Must Christ be flawless in body, mind, emotion, spirit, not just action and intention, to be fully God? And if so, how would he also be fully human, fully capable of experiencing everything humans experience? Is suffering possible without having human flaws? That would seem a superhuman feat to me. But isn’t that the point of Christ? He did what no one else could do. He made the perfect sacrifice. He was the son of God, conceived through the Spirit. Does that mean he has divine DNA? I don’t think Christ’s DNA was more divine than mine.

But I do think Christ was endowed with an overabundance of spiritual gifts and in that way resembled God more than any human on earth. Christ had a perfect understanding of his relationship to God and humankind, an understanding that caused him to act with perfect faith and perfect hope and perfect love (in this way he was sinless). He knew that he was the son of God, sent to do God’s will. He was to offer himself as a perfect sacrifice for sin and to be the servant of humankind to show us the way back to God.

Consider Hebrews 9:11-15:

“But Christ came as High Priest of the good things to come, with the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands, that is, not of this creation.

“Not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood He entered the Most Holy Place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption.

“For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh,

“how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?

“And for this reason He is the Mediator of the new covenant, by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions under the first covenant, that those who are called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance.”

Only Christ was called upon to fulfill the full measure of the law of Moses, which demanded blood for sins committed. So, Christ’s sacrifice was both physical, his death on an altar of pain, and spiritual, pure submission to the will of God in life and in death. We are also called upon to sacrifice our wills to God, but it is not God’s will that we sacrifice our lives to fulfill the law. Christ accomplished that. We are to follow Christ’s example by living in spiritual and moral perfection, sacrificing the natural man to live a higher law.

This is very cursory, but the point I want to make is that Christ felt pain throughout his life, and not just on the cross or the Garden of Gethsemane. He felt emotional and spiritual pain. Satan tempted Christ and told him to deny God. That must have been spiritually painful, especially given the special understanding Christ had of his relationship to divinity. Christ suffered emotional pain from the weaknesses and rejection of his friends. Even if he knew Judas would betray him, I don’t think that softened the emotional blow of the kiss, a sign of affection shared between friends. In the ways that you and I suffer, Christ suffered. Imagine the psychological burden of carrying a mission of peace and salvation to a people who steadfastly would not hear you. No amount of understanding would soften that pain.

I don’t know if I entirely agree with a low Christological approach, which I have just described, but that is a cause for more study. What do you think? Are Mormons more in favor of a low or high Christological approach? What do you favor?

Regardless of the theological construction of Christ’s divinity and humanity I believe Christ lived and lives among us. Christ travailed for and continues to travail with us. He was bruised for our iniquities, wounded for our transgressesions, the chastisement of our peace was and is upon him, and with his stripes we are healed.

Though outward ills await us here,
The time, at longest, is not long
Ere Jesus Christ will reappear,
Surrounded by a glorious throng.

Lift up your hearts in praise to God;
Let your rejoicings never cease.
Though tribulations rage abroad,
Christ says, “In me ye shall have peace.”

What though our rights have been assailed?
What though by foes we’ve been despoiled?
Jehovah’s promise has not failed;
Jehovah’s promise is not foiled.

Eliza R. Snow

Please take a moment to sign the petition, if you have not already been prompted to with the flurry of emails and facebook messages. The goal is 5,000 signatures by Monday evening. Last time I checked the site the number of signatures was only 551. . . . So, sign and spread the word, por favor!

A couple more links: A brief history of the Institute at Square Two and an account of one student’s experience with the Institute.

Finally, if you are in the area, try to make it down to Provo for what will be the Institute’s last Research Colloquium next Thursday, November 19, at 12:00 p.m. in 4188 JFSB. Rachel Cope will be speaking on early nineteenth-century women’s conversion experiences.

*Because I do not have time to rewrite the lyrics of the song to which I refer in my title, just pretend like the rest of the song reflects my initial feminist rallying cry.

However, he did not adequately complete the central theological argument, which I think would be an even better preventive than the one he gave. In describing why we should not look at pornographic materials, Elder Scott only hinted at the true reason behind this injunction. The reason involves the influence of the Spirit, certainly, and also the devil’s perfidy in convincing us that private indulgence is not harmful to anyone else.

More accurately, however, the reason involves types of looking and the ideologies behind them.  Two of Elder Scott’s phrases serve as the hint: “it is one of the most damning influences on earth” and “manifestation of unbridled selfishness.” Pornographic looking requires objectification of the person being viewed and self-gratification of the viewer. Christianity conversely promotes subjectification of people viewed and selflessness on the part of the viewer. These forms of looking are not simply matters of sight; they are matters of orientation and action. Christianity requires believers to turn to Christ at all times, looking to his sacrifice to answer their deepest loneliness and need for love. Christianity is about a change of heart that directly influences the self (Elder Uchtdorf’s talk was a little more satisfying on this point, although I did not feel that his discussion of love included enough about Christ). Until we frame this particular argument in a Christo-centric way, any reason for not looking at pornography is not going to be good enough. It does not convince or convict, as true conversion does. Where do we look, if not at pornography? We look at and turn toward Christ. We must do this always or we haven’t got a fighting chance in anything we do.

Perhaps all of this goes without saying, but I do think Elder Scott’s argument could have been better in the sense of being more convincing and even more true.

My second point. Elder Scott noted the sad emotional effects of pornography on men and women. But for women, these sad emotional effects came at the hands of their husbands: “How can a man, particularly a priesthood bearer, not think of the emotional and spiritual damage caused to women, especially his wife, by such abhorrent activity,” he said. I am sure his argument was not meant to be exclusive. A few minutes later he cautioned parents and leaders to guard youths against early addiction.

But his address was still lopsided in favor of men and exclusionary of the sexual struggles of women. This suggests to me that the sexual dichotomy in official Mormon discourse is still slightly oversimplified, with the conclusion that men lust after women and thereby destroy the lives of those around them and that women have no sexual desires unless they are seducing men. Pornography is not limited to male consumption or to being used as a tool to satisfy male sexual desires. Women are no less susceptible to this phenomenon than men are, even if it is less prevalent among women. Women are not yet perceived as sexual agents in Mormon discourse, and neither men nor women are fully humanized in terms of the complex set of sexual issues each deal with. I would appreciate a good discourse, updated to fit our times, treating this topic at some point. A few thoughts.