It is difficult to respond to transgender identities from within a Mormon framework since Mormonism imbues gender with eternal significance and often conflates emerging transgender identities with sexual deviance. This presentation will illuminate the lived religion of transgender Restoration members against the backdrop of typical institutional and cultural responses. How do transgender persons generate and …
Event: Salt Lake Symposium 2015
This Is Your Brain On Polygamy
My husband and I didn’t just wake up one sunny morning and say, “Let’s join a polygamist cult.” Over time, a convergence of psychological and social factors ripened us for the picking. Insecurities played a part. So did classic, cultish appeals. So did mainstream Mormonism, not just by laying a doctrinal foundation, but by training …
Saving Faith The Relationship Of Faith To Knowledge Belief And Works
Atheist Richard Dawkins sees faith in God as belief without evidence, while Christian theologians defend faith as both reasonable and empirically justified. Although they grant that the evidence for faith is incomplete, they also hold that knowledge of God is not attainable simply through empirical methods. Faith also plays a role in the Christian doctrine …
Mormon Genome Project And Critique Of Sexual Polyandry Apologetics
The Mormon Genome Project was founded to test for Joseph Smith’s progeny through DNA analysis. Specifically, MGP is testing descendants of Josephine Rosetta Lyon to prove whether she was Joseph Smith’s biological daughter. This presentation includes an analysis and critique of apologetics relating to Smith’s relationship with the Lyon family. Scott Rowley
The Plural Marriage Revelations Of Joseph Smith
The recent Gospel Topics essay “Plural Marriage in Kirtland and Nauvoo” asserts that Joseph Smith received the revelation authorizing polygamy around 1831 and that “the revelation on plural marriage was not written down until 1843.” However, the 1843 version of the revelation responds to contemporary events, raising such questions as: How much of the revelation …
Mormons And Marijuana
In 1970, the US Congress placed marijuana in Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act because they considered it to have “no accepted medical use.” Since then, 23 of 50 US states and DC have legalized the medical use of marijuana, fueling a heated public debate. This panel will explore how the debate interacts with …
A Bible A Bible Interacting With The Book Of Mormon
How one interacts with the Bible as an artifact says as much about one’s identity as how one interprets the Bible’s concepts. The printed Book of Mormon resembles the Bible, but the story of its production and provenance does not fit the biblical model. This panel will explore the coming forth of the Book of …
Woe To The Land Shadowing With Wings William Bickerton The Book Of Mormon And The American Civil War
Since 1845, William Bickerton had watched for the fulfillment of Joseph Smith’s Civil War prophecy. He believed that devastation, unlike anything Americans had ever experienced, would overtake the nation. It was a principal reason for dissociating himself from Sidney Rigdon and Brigham Young and starting his own church. The paper will explain why Bickerton decided …
Finding The God That Calls To You Faith Transitions And Healing
This workshop will feature a sermon followed by a group discussion session aimed at tackling the contours of the faith journey, its inevitable transitions, and the dynamics of healing. Lisa Butterworth, Fatimah S. Salleh
Living As A Mormon With Autism
This panel will discuss the experience of being Mormon and autistic, as well as autism within Mormonism in general. Panel members are a mixture of those who either have autism themselves or have studied it. Laura Kipp, Jake Zollinger, Ryan Kipp, Daniel Kipp