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Come, Follow Me Week 24 – Doctrine and Covenants 63

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Adultery, Agency, and Innocence

by Jennifer Roach

“The two carried on an affair that spanned 3 years.”  I was as shocked as anyone to see it in print, and to hear it put that way. An affair? I felt like I was reading about someone else – some couple who knew the boundaries, and willingly broke them. These were people to be punished and kicked out of the church. And then I realized it was talking about me. 

But it couldn’t be – I was 14 years old. 

The document I was reading had been unearthed as part of a court case. I was suing my childhood church (I was raised outside of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) for the sexual abuse I experienced there. If you care to know the details a quick Google search of my name will lead you to a series of articles printed on the front page of my hometown newspaper.  Taking my church to court had never been part of my plan. And I was well aware that the statute of limitations had long ran out on this crime. But over the years I had tried to get the church to take some kind of responsibility for what happened. They never would. I found a way to take them to court despite the statute of limitations being over. Everything in my experience told me that was abuse, it was not my fault. I was a victim – many people who have been through sexual abuse avoid that term, but I’m okay with it. It’s accurate. A terrible thing happened to me. I’ve done the work to heal from it. But it will always be a terrible thing that I did not ask for.  [Read more…] about Come, Follow Me Week 24 – Doctrine and Covenants 63

FAIR Voice Podcast #28: Valerie Hudson on Women and the Priesthood

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Valerie M. Hudson is a University Distinguished Professor and holds the George H.W. Bush Chair at The Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University, where she directs the Program on Women, Peace, and Security. She has previously taught at Brigham Young, Northwestern, and Rutgers universities. Her research foci include foreign policy analysis, security studies, gender and international relations, and methodology. Hudson’s articles have appeared in such journals as International Security, Journal of Peace Research, American Political Science Review, and Foreign Policy Analysis. She is the author or editor of several books, including (with Andrea Den Boer) Bare Branches: The Security Implications of Asia’s Surplus Male Population (MIT Press, 2004), which won the American Association of Publishers Award for the Best Book in Political Science, and the Otis Dudley Duncan Award for Best Book in Social Demography, resulting in feature stories in the New York Times, The Economist, 60 Minutes, and other news publications. Hudson was named to the list of Foreign Policy magazine’s Top 100 Global Thinkers for 2009. Winner of numerous teaching awards and recipient of a National Science Foundation research grant and a Minerva Initiative grant from the US Department of Defense, she served as the director of graduate studies for the David M. Kennedy Center for International and Area Studies at BYU for eight years, and served as Vice President of the International Studies Association for 2011-2012. Hudson is one of the Principal Investigators of the WomanStats Project, which includes the largest compilation of data on the status of women in the world today. She is also a founding editor of SquareTwo, a founding editorial board member of Foreign Policy Analysis, and serves on the editorial boards of several other journals. She has testified before Congress on three occasions, is president of the Utah Valley Institute of Cystic Fibrosis, and co-founded the LDS National Security Society. Her recent books include Sex and World Peace, co-authored with Bonnie Ballif-Spanvill, Mary Caprioli and Chad Emmett, The Hillary Doctrine, co-authored with Patricia Leidl, and The First Political Order: How Sex Shapes Governance and National Security Worldwide,co-authored with Donna Lee Bowen and Perpetua Lynne Nielsen, all three published by Columbia University Press. She and her husband David, an artist and landscape architect, are the parents of eight children.

Hanna Seariac is a MA student in Greek and Latin at Brigham Young University. She has interests in the interaction that the Greek New Testament has with the Septuagint as well as sacrifice in ancient Egypt, Israel, Greece, and Rome. She works as a research assistant on a biblical commentary and as a research assistant on early Latter-day Saint history. She values Jesus Christ, family, friends, hiking, baking, and good ice cream.

FairMormon Questions: How should we respond when we feel men and women are unequal at church?

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FairMormon has a service where questions can be submitted and they are answered by volunteers. If you have a question, you can submit it at http://www.fairmormon.org/contact. We will occasionally publish answers here for questions that are commonly asked, or are on topics that are receiving a lot of attention. (The names used in the answer have been changed.)

QUESTION:

We were recently asked to address “Male Privilege” in the church to help a teenage girl looking for answers to questions such as:  How should we respond when we feel men and women are unequal at church? What should we do if we have a nagging feeling that perhaps our culture doesn’t live up to our doctrine? What do we do when we perceive sexism or implicit biases at church? [Read more…] about FairMormon Questions: How should we respond when we feel men and women are unequal at church?

FAIR Voice Podcast #11: Sunday Special with Robert Boylan

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Robert Boylan, a LDS theologian, comes on the show to discuss Mariology. Robert discusses the history of Mariology throughout the Christian tradition and transitions into a discussion about how LDS theology portrays Mary. He offers great suggestions about how to have respect for Mary, as she is the holy mother of God, without engaging in a worship of her as many traditions are want to doing. His blog “Scriptural Mormonism” can be found here. He wrote a book on Mariology that is available on his blog.

After hearing from Robert Boylan, Hanna quotes Dan Ellsworth at length for the devotional while briefly discussing that in conjunction with John 6 (full text below):

There is a lot of controversy these days about a set of interviews that recently took place between egyptologist Robert Ritner and some of the church’s most prominent detractors, concerning the Book of Abraham. For some people, Ritner’s arguments are troubling and have shaken their faith pretty deeply. For others of us, who have weathered numerous of these DEVASTATING FINAL-NAIL-IN-THE-COFFIN TAKEDOWNS OF THE RESTORED GOSPEL over the years, we greet it with a yawn. We know from experience that answers will emerge over time, and they will not be satisfactory to everybody, and we are at peace with that fact. [Read more…] about FAIR Voice Podcast #11: Sunday Special with Robert Boylan

FAIR Voice Podcast #10: Polygamy and 1 Corinthians 13

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Polygamy is a difficult concept for many to grasp, but Hanna dives into the Hebrew Bible and the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint’s to understand polygamy in a way that shows how it was not just acceptable– it was ordained and good for the time. She unapologetically explains how God consecrates everything for our good and how polygamy made sense for the time. She, then, dives into 1 Corinthians 13 and expresses love for the idea of love.

Hanna SeariacHanna Seariac is a MA student in Greek and Latin at Brigham Young University. She is writing a book on the history of the priesthood and another one that responds systematically to anti-LDS literature. She works as a research assistant on a biblical commentary and as a producer on a news show. She values Jesus Christ, family, friends, hiking, baking, and really good ice cream.

Book Review – 1st Nephi: A Brief Theological Introduction

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Available from the FairMormon Bookstore

This is the first in a series of books from the Neal A. Maxwell Institute meant to seek “Christ in scripture by combining intellectual rigor and the disciple’s yearning for holiness,” (page vii) and focusing on theological aspects of the Book of Mormon. “In this case, theology, as opposed to authoritative doctrine, relates to the original sense of the term as, literally, reasoned ‘God talk’”  (page viii). This volume is by Joseph Spencer, an assistant professor of ancient scripture at BYU and the editor of the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies.

At 146 pages, the book is indeed brief. It is a small paperback, but it has a lot of nice features. The front cover is embossed and both the front and back covers have flaps that can (almost) be used as bookmarks. There are woodcut illuminations matching those in the recent “Study Edition” of the Book of Mormon, also published by the Maxwell Institute. And the text has orange highlights and notes throughout.

The book has two parts. The first part, “The Theological Project of 1 Nephi,” was the most interesting to me. It talks about the original chapter breaks, and how they made it easier to see that Nephi intentionally structured the book to have two parts. The first part is an abridgment of the record kept by Lehi, and the second part, beginning with the original chapter three (now chapter ten) is about Nephi’s life. “The first half of the book prepares for the second by explaining how Nephi’s family came to possess the two key prophetic resources [the brass plates and the vision of the tree of life] essential to Nephi’s own subsequent ministerial efforts. The second half of the book then recounts Nephi’s ministry to his brothers, built on parallel expositions of the two key prophetic resources from the first half of the book” (pages 19-20). This is all shown in two diagrams, which explain that each of the original chapters had a theme and how they relate to each other. [Read more…] about Book Review – 1st Nephi: A Brief Theological Introduction

FairMormon Conference Podcast #52 – Elizabeth Kuehn, “The Lives and Letters of the Twelve Apostles and their Wives during the Second British Mission, 1839-1841”

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This podcast series features past FairMormon Conference presentations. This presentation is from our 2019 conference. If you would like to watch the presentations from our 2019 conference, you can still purchase the video streaming.

Elizabeth Kuehn, The Lives and Letters of the Twelve Apostles and their Wives during the Second British Mission, 1839-1841

Transcript available here.

Elizabeth Kuehn received her Bachelor of Arts in History from Arizona State University and her Masters of Arts from Purdue University in History, with a focus on religious history and women and gender studies in early modern European history. She entered a doctoral program in History at the University of California, Irvine, and became a PhD candidate there in 2011.

Since 2013, she has worked as a documentary editor and historian on the Joseph Smith Papers Project based at the Church History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah. She is a co-editor of several documentary editions of the Joseph Smith Papers, including Documents Volume 5: October 1835-January 1838 and Documents Volume 6: February 1838 – August 1839, both of which were published in 2017. She is currently the lead editor on Documents Volume 10: May to August 1842, forthcoming in spring 2020.

For the last six years her research has specialized in the Latter-day Saint community in Kirtland, Ohio and the financial records of Joseph Smith. More recently she has worked on controversies in Nauvoo in 1842, including Joseph Smith’s bankruptcy proceedings and plural marriage. She has worked to bring greater inclusion of women and representation of their experiences to the Joseph Smith Papers Project.

Audio Copyright © 2019 The Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research, Inc. Any reproduction or transcription of this material without prior express written permission is prohibited.

Book Review: The Rise of the Latter-day Saints: The Journals and Histories of Newel Knight

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Available from the FairMormon Bookstore

Newel Knight lived from September 13, 1800 to January 11, 1847. He met Joseph Smith in 1826 and remained close friends with him until Joseph’s death. He was directly involved in some of the early events in church history, so his autobiography and journals are valuable to historians. However, these have only been available in manuscript form, in several different versions, which have made them difficult to use. This book amalgamates them in a coherent form and provides a transcription that can be better understood and cited.

The book splits Knight’s writing into five parts, covering different chronological periods of his life. Each section has an introduction with a biographical summary. Editorial remarks are given in footnotes, and spelling and punctuation are generally retained, except in cases where the editors felt clarification was necessary (which to me seemed inconsistent, and in at least one case, possibly incorrect[1]).

There are many things included that are important, such as a letter from Joseph Smith that has not been published in the Joseph Smith Papers Project, Christ’s appearance in the Kirtland Temple[2], many accounts of healings, the aftermath of the martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum Smith, and the exodus from Nauvoo. Despite his human imperfections, Knight comes to life as a role model worth emulating with his tremendous faith, even during discouragement, and always remembering to be grateful for the blessings that followed.

I found this particular episode of 1839 in Nauvoo to be very interesting, involving his wife Lydia: [Read more…] about Book Review: The Rise of the Latter-day Saints: The Journals and Histories of Newel Knight

FairMormon Conference Presentations to go with the “Introductory Pages of the Book of Mormon” Come Follow Me Lesson

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This is a little late, but it came to me while sitting in Gospel Doctrine today that we have had several good FairMormon Conference presentations over the years that go along with today’s lesson. Perhaps they can still be of benefit to someone in their personal study. Here are the ones that came to mind:

FairMormon Conference Podcast #49 – Angela Hallstrom, “Women’s Voices in Saints Volume 2”

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This podcast series features past FairMormon Conference presentations. This presentation is from our 2019 conference held in August. If you would like to watch the presentations from our 2019 conference, you can still purchase the video streaming.

Angela Hallstrom, Women’s Voices in Saints Volume 2

Transcript available here.

Angela Hallstrom works for the Church History Department as a writer and literary editor for the four-volume history of the Church, Saints: The Story of the Church of Jesus Christ in the Latter Days. Prior to her work for the Church History Department, she taught writing at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls. She received an MFA in creative writing from Hamline University and is the author of the novel Bound on Earth, editor of the short fiction collection Dispensation: Latter-day Fiction, and has served on the editorial boards of BYU Studies, Irreantum, and Segullah. She and her husband are the parents of four children, and recently moved back to Utah after spending sixteen years in Minnesota.

Audio Copyright © 2019 The Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research, Inc. Any reproduction or transcription of this material without prior express written permission is prohibited.