Comments (0) Parker and Stone’s satirical Broadway musical, The Book of Mormon, receives an advance review from the Mormon Church. Short version, The Book is Better.
In other Mormon news,The Washington Post takes a look at the prospects for a Mormon in high office and says Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman Jr. have a better chance in Hell.
Elder Dallin H. Oaks recently gave a speech on religious freedom at Chapman University School of Law. He also gave an interview on the subject. Both are worthy–very worthy–of our attention.
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A little background on Elder Oaks, currently an Apostle in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Elder Oaks graduated from the University of Chicago School of Law; clerked for Earl Warren, then Chief Justice of the Supreme Court; taught at Chicago; and served as interim dean of that law school, as president of BYU (where he also oversaw the establishment of the J.Reuben Clark Law School), and finally a justice on the Utah Supreme Court. He was considered for the U.S. Supreme Court by both President Ford and Reagan.
In his speech, Oaks gives a number of troubling examples of what he is concerned about and why he is calling for religions to join together in protecting religion’s place in the public square:
In New Mexico, the state’s Human Rights Commission held that a photographer who had declined on religious grounds to photograph a same-sex commitment ceremony had engaged in impermissible conduct and must pay over $6,000 attorney’s fees to the same-sex couple. A state judge upheld the order to pay. In New Jersey, the United Methodist Church was investigated and penalized under state anti-discrimination law for denying same-sex couples access to a church-owned pavilion for their civil-union ceremonies. A federal court refused to give relief from the state penalties. Professors at state universities in Illinois and Wisconsin were fired or disciplined for expressing personal convictions that homosexual behavior is sinful. Candidates for masters’ degrees in counseling in Georgia and Michigan universities were penalized or dismissed from programs for their religious views about the wrongfulness of homosexual relations. A Los Angeles policeman claimed he was demoted after he spoke against the wrongfulness of homosexual conduct in the church where he is a lay pastor. The Catholic Church’s difficulties with adoption services and the Boy Scouts’ challenges in various locations are too well known to require further comment. (see sources in transcript)
As Elder Oaks made his case that we–religious believers–need to stand up and speak out, I was particularly impressed by his quotation of his fellow Apostle, the late Neal A. Maxwell:
My esteemed fellow Apostle, Elder Neal A. Maxwell, asked:
“[H]ow can a society set priorities if there are no basic standards? Are we to make our calculations using only the arithmetic of appetite?”
He made this practical observation:
“Decrease the belief in God, and you increase the numbers of those who wish to play at being God by being ‘society’s supervisors.’ Such ‘supervisors’ deny the existence of divine standards, but are very serious about imposing their own standards on society.”
Elder Maxwell also observed that we increase the power of governments when people do not believe in absolute truths and in a God who will hold them and their government leaders accountable.
Among other things, Roger Rosenblatt teaches writing at Stony Brook University. He talks about teaching in a recent interview with The Christian Science Monitor.
Two key paragraphs hit home, the first, because it has already caused me to raise the bar for myself:
Who taught you to write?
I went to the the Friends Seminary in New York, which was a dreadful school largely, except for one fellow named Jon Beck Shank. He was a Mormon who had come out of the army, went to Yale, and was very interested in theater. He gave us Canada Mints to taste and said, “Taste this and write down what it tastes like,” so we would learn to write metaphor and simile. He had us read poetry, a great deal of poetry so as to appreciate original language. When we studied Shakespeare he had us build a model of the Globe Theater. He just did things that no other teacher would have thought of doing to get into our minds so that we would begin to understand that writing was something that was important to our lives. I was very very lucky to have had him. He meant the world to me.
The second, because it reminds me that I matter as a writing teacher:
What have your students taught you?
That they need me. They need me and my ilk. They need teachers who value them and their lives. Because writing is a validation of their lives and they know it. Whether they’re writing poetry, essays, or stories, it doesn’t matter. Every writing teacher gives the subliminal message, every time they teach: “Your life counts for something.” In no other subject that I know of is that message given.
I learned nothing new in either of these paragraphs, but I needed reminding.
By the way, I have never heard of Jon Beck Shank until today. A Mormon myself, I’m interested in knowing more.
If you want to understand Mormonism, you would do well to pay attention to probably the two most important Mormon publications of the last 15 1/2 years. On September 23, 1995, Gordon B. Hinckley, president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, announced The Family: A Proclamation to the World.
Among other things, the Proclamation declares–in the first paragraph–that:
[M]arriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God and that the family is central to the Creator’s plan for the eternal destiny of His children.
In November 2010, in a Worldwide Leadership Training, church leaders introduced the new Handbook 2: Administering the Church, a manual of policies and procedures for church leaders throughout the world to follow.
Section 1 is titled “Families and the Church in God’s Plan.” Subsection 1.1 is titled “God the Father’s Plan for His Eternal Family.” Section 1.1.1–the very first paragraph of the manual–reads in its entirety:
The Premortal Family of God
The family is ordained of God. It is the most important unit in time and in eternity. Even before we were born on the earth, we were part of a family. Each of us “is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents” with “a divine nature and destiny” (“The Family: A Proclamation to the World,” Ensign, Nov. 1995, 102). God is our Heavenly Father, and we lived in His presence as part of His family in the premortal life. There we learned our first lessons and were prepared for mortality (see D&C 138:56).
Yes, marriage is an embattled institution. Yes, the divorce rate is too high. Yes, those failed marriages have almost exclusively been between a man and a woman (there having been very few same-sex marriages to date). But no, don’t expect the Mormon Church to surrender on this doctrine: Marriage is ordained of God, is between a man and a woman, and will–if worked at by the parties involved–continue into the Eternities. That is something worth fighting for.
The Wall Street Journal thinks so.
Tomorrow is the big game. Go BYU.
And I’ll bet she never knew even a single Mormon. Based on Sally Quinn’s question to Mormon historian and Columbia history professor emeritus Richard Bushman, it’s a safe bet Sally hasn’t. Regardless, she’s a rather credulous journalist practicing a supposedly cynical and skeptical profession if her questions and musings on Mormonism are any indication.
In a Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life almost four years ago titled Mormonism and Politics: Are They Compatible? she first asks Bushman–a rather famous Mormon historian–if he’s a Mormon. When he responds yes, she responds, “I’m sure you have heard of Martha Beck.” Again, the answer is yes. After reviewing briefly who Beck is, for the benefit of people in attendance who may not have heard of her, and after mentioning Beck’s then-recent book Leaving the Saints,”** Quinn says,
[Beck] went back [to Brigham Young University] and had an absolutely horrendous experience. She wrote another book called Leaving the Saints. She finally did leave the church. In her book, she revealed that her father had sexually abused her when she was a child. She talked about how she went back, and she had this Ph.D. from Harvard, and she was trying to fit in and bring her child into it, but she went to work as a teacher at Brigham Young University and found that the church was very unaccepting, very dogmatic, and that she couldn’t teach what she wanted to teach. Because she spoke out against some of the beliefs, she was in effect banned or banished from the church, she and her husband. Finally, they actually had to move away to Arizona because it became so untenable a situation.
And I think that reading a book like that – I have no knowledge of Mormons at all, really, but reading Martha’s books, I was absolutely appalled at some of the things that I read about the Mormon Church and the closed-mindedness and demands on people that they adhere to the beliefs or they will get banished.
So I think that kind of story is where a lot of these perceptions come from. I don’t know whether every word she wrote was true or not. It sounded pretty true. I think that sets the stage for my next question, which is, How Mormon is Mitt Romney? I mean, is he someone who would adhere to all of the beliefs of the church? In Martha Beck’s case, when she went against church policy, she was banned or banished. Would that happen if Romney disagreed with the church, and particularly their positions on women? (all bolded emphasis supplied)
These statements from a journalist and co-founder of the Washington Post’s On Faith “feature,” are revealing, especially in the context the of On Faith’s mission statement, a statement written by Quinn and co-founder Jon Meacham:
Religion is the most pervasive yet least understood topic in global life.
Maybe even at The Washington Post.
From the caves of the Afghan-Pakistan border to the cul-de-sacs of the American Sunbelt, faith shapes and suffuses the way billions of people-Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, and nonbelievers-think and act, vote and fight, love and, tragically, hate. It is the most ancient of forces. As Homer said, “All men need the gods.” Even the most ferocious atheists find themselves doing intellectual battle on a field defined by forces of the faithful.
Seems as though Quinn and Meacham have pretty much staked out the religious terrain, which, according to them, runs from caves to cul-de-sacs. That pretty much leaves out L.A., New York City, D.C., Paris, London, and any other place where sophisticates gather to help the rest of us “understand” the “least understood topic in global life,” especially, it appears, if that topic is Mormonism.
And so, in a time of extremism — for extremism is to the 21st century what totalitarianism was to the 20th — how can people engage in a conversation about faith and its implications in a way that sheds light rather than generates heat?
And Quinn’s very uninformed opinion of Beck’s book? What kind of light does it shed?
At The Washington Post and Newsweek, we believe the first step is conversation-intelligent, informed, eclectic, respectful conversation-among specialists and generalists who devote a good part of their lives to understanding and delineating religion’s influence on the life of the world. The point of our new online religion feature is to provide a forum for such sane and spirited talk, drawing on a remarkable panel of distinguished figures from the academy, the faith traditions, and journalism. Members of the group will weigh in on a question posed at least once a week, perhaps sometimes more often, depending on the flow of the news. We encourage readers to join the conversation by commenting on what our panelists have to say, offering their own opinions and suggesting topics for future discussions.
From the nature of evil to religious reformation, from the morality of fetal stem-cell research to the history of scripture, from how to raise kids in multi-faith households to the place of gays in traditional churches — of the asking of questions, to paraphrase Ecclesiastes, there shall be no end. We think that the online world, with its limitless space, offers us a unique opportunity to carry on a fruitful, intriguing, and above all constructive conversation about the things that matter most.
Blah, blah, blah, blah. If Quinn’s knowledge of Mormonism says anything about her knowledge of religion in general, this “feature” is in trouble. If Quinn’s lack of research before she participated in that Pew Forum on Mormonism is any indication of her work ethic and research skills, I have to wonder about The Washington Post, given her station and tenure there. If her credulity with regards to Beck’s book is any indication, she’s not skeptical enough to be a good journalist.
*Quoted by Israel Shenker, “Critics Here Focus on Films As Language Conference Opens,” The New York Times (1972-12-28).
**By the way, if you’re interested in how horrible Beck’s book is, go here. It’s really, really, really bad.
Hadley Arkes spoke this evening in the Harold B. Lee Library Auditorium at Brigham Young University. Until I saw a poster on campus advertising his up-coming speech on Constitutionalism and Its Presupositions, I had never heard of him, even though he is apparently at the front in the battle to save traditional marriage and to abort abortion.
Afterwards, I did the obligatory Internet search on his name and also visited a new webzine he and others just launched. The Catholic Thing is now bookmarked on my computer.
His most recent contribution is titled Ave Maria University: A Challenge Among Friends, a piece in which he recounts a conversation he had recently with a friend, a Harvard grad, who now has two daughters at Ave Maria and promises never to send his children to Harvard because, according to Akres,
The new sexual ethic, whether on pornography, promiscuity, abortion, homoeroticism, is so pervasive, touching every aspect of life, that there is little room for those who will not pay homage to that reigning ethic.
I understand the man’s concern. I sent a daughter to Berkeley. However, I find myself more in agreement with Akres:
He may indeed be right. But I think of Fr. Benedict Ashley, a central figure in teaching on the theology of the body. Ben Ashley, in the 1930s at the University of Chicago, was a flaming atheist and perhaps a Communist – until he met Mortimer Adler, who confronted him with Aquinas and natural law, and flipped him. That flipping produced a writer who has educated several generations of Catholics.
Substitute Mormon for Catholic–or don’t–and I must thank the many intelligent and eloquent believers who labor in Babylon to shepherd God’s stray and sometimes confused lambs back into the fold, turning some of them into intelligent and eloquent defenders of the faith in the process.
By the way, as Adler did to Ben Ashley, Akres did to me. No, I’m still Mormon, but I am a Mormon who will be reading much more about natural law, beginning with Arkes’s book Natural Law & the Right to Choose.
This is troublesome. More troubling, however, is the possibility that these two fires could be the second and third steps in a trend of violence against the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints–the Mormons.
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