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FAIR Conference Podcast #67 – Brittany Chapman Nash, “Let’s Talk About Polygamy”

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This podcast series features past FAIR Conference presentations. This presentation is from our 2021 conference held in August. If you would like to watch all the presentations from the conference, you can still purchase the video streaming.

Brittany Chapman Nash, Let’s Talk About Polygamy

The video of this presentation can be watched on our YouTube channel.

Brittany’s books are available in the FAIR bookstore.

Brittany Chapman Nash is a specialist in Latter-day Saint women’s history and coedited the award-winning four-volume Women of Faith in the Latter Days series and Fearless in the Cause: Remarkable Stories of Women in Church History. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Humanities from Brigham Young University and a master’s degree in Victorian Studies from the University of Leicester in England. Brittany worked as a historian for ten years in the Church History Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and has served on committees in the Mormon History Association, Better Days 2020, and Young Women general board. She is a member of the Mormon Women’s History Initiative Team, a group dedicated to popularizing the history of Latter-day Saint women. Brittany lives with her husband, Peter, and two young children in Salt Lake City, Utah, where she enjoys working at home with her little ones. She loves learning people’s stories, helping plants to grow, and watching cooking shows with her husband.

Come, Follow Me Week 46 – Doctrine and Covenants 129-132 (additional post)

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What Do We Do with Section 132?

By Brian C. Hales

Doctrine and Covenants section 132 is undoubtedly the most controversial of all of Joseph Smith’s revelations because it mentions the practice of plural marriage. Ironically, it is also one of the least discussed of all of Joseph’s official teachings for the same reason.

The 2014 Gospel Topics Essay discussing plural marriage encourages a new transparency on this subject and the historical and doctrinal references within the revelation. Yet, talking about polygamy more frequently does not necessarily make it any easier to understand or accept. Why? Because it favors men and is impossible to defend it as being fair.

Not only is polygamy here in mortality very difficult to practice, an associated fear involves the possibility of eternal plural marriage, which from our current view might be considered eternal unfairness. I have a daughter who has harbored the anxiety that if she dies before her husband (to whom she is sealed) passes away, he might remarry in the temple and she would become an eternal polygamist without her choosing. Here’s a few thoughts on the subject: [Read more…] about Come, Follow Me Week 46 – Doctrine and Covenants 129-132 (additional post)

Come, Follow Me Week 46 – Doctrine and Covenants 129-132

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Reading D&C 132 with Elder Quentin L. Cook’s Comments in Mind

by V.H. Cassler

If you were not reading carefully, you may have missed an extraordinary bit of commentary by Elder Quentin L. Cook in the July 2020 Ensign. Speaking about how Church history can be a source of strength and inspiration, Elder Cook stated [I’ve added some highlights]: [Read more…] about Come, Follow Me Week 46 – Doctrine and Covenants 129-132

Come, Follow Me Week 39 – Doctrine and Covenants 106–108

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Reading D&C 107 as a Daughter of Eve

by V.H. Cassler

D&C 107 contains many interesting elements. We learn Noah was ordained to the Melchizedek priesthood when he was but age 10, for example. We learn quite a lot about various levels of hierarchy in the Church, differences between the lesser and greater priesthoods, and the mandates of various offices in the priesthood. We also learn about the privileges of those ordained to these priesthoods, such as communing with the Church of the Firstborn or even Heavenly Father and Jesus.

However, on the surface, 107 appears to be a profoundly “womanless” section of the D&C.  Whereas many sections of the D&C seem equally applicable in their exhortations to both women and men, even if women are not explicitly mentioned, it is much harder to say that about section 107. There just seems no place for them at all.

Of course, women are used to being completely overlooked in scripture, and may find this unremarkable. After all, scripture is mostly heavenly men speaking to men on earth about men’s ecclesiastical responsibilities. Perhaps men need more explicit guidance in these things; after all, negotiating hierarchies, which are meant to defuse competition, is tricky business among men. Questions of authority, power, keys, and so forth might need to be settled among men in very clear fashion by God in order for the work of men in the kingdom of God on earth to proceed unhindered.

However, the older I’ve become, the more I see beneath the surface to things implied by womanless scripture that have relevance not only to women, but also to the subject of male-female relations in the family of Adam and Eve. I would like to offer two examples of reading women into D&C 107. After all, if we can read women into this most womanless of sections, that offers hope that we can cease seeing the scriptures as primarily messages from men to men. This would be spiritually helpful for both men and women, as many interpret this not only as suggesting a hierarchy between men and women, but also a separation between church and family. We know from the doctrine of the Church that there is no hierarchy between men and women. We also know that in the hereafter, the family is the form of divine governance, not the church. This suggests that we are likely to suffer from misconceptions if we take seemingly womanless sections such as 107 on a purely superficial level. Let’s look a little deeper, then. [Read more…] about Come, Follow Me Week 39 – Doctrine and Covenants 106–108

Book Review: The Joseph Smith Papers Documents, Volume 12: March-July 1843

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Available in the FAIR bookstore

This volume of the Joseph Smith Papers contains 96 representative documents from the period of March – July 1841. During this time period, Joseph continued having legal problems with Missouri, the Kinderhook Plates were found, he led the Nauvoo Legion, construction continued on the Nauvoo House and temple, and he taught about the temple, eternal marriage, and plural marriage. Meanwhile Nauvoo continued to grow, and the church grew outside of Nauvoo and outside of the United States.

One document that I thought showed an interesting side of Joseph Smith’s personality was a response to a letter he had received from Abraham Jonas of Columbus, Illinois, asking to borrow a cannon. He wanted it for use in celebrating the failure of the establishment of a new county. Joseph’s response was to grant permission, along with a note at the end saying “Five hund[r]ed cannons you should have if I had them” (page 112). [Read more…] about Book Review: The Joseph Smith Papers Documents, Volume 12: March-July 1843

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 #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