Religious ritual is strange, but there is a method to its madness. The many forms it takes, from meditation to ecstatic dance, from the solemnity of the LDS endowment to ceremonies involving psychotropic drugs, all point toward a coherent vision of who we are and how this secret is so easily obscured by our day-to-day …
Speaker: Dan Wotherspoon
DIVINE DISENCHANTMENT: TRANSITIONS AND ASSISTING THOSE IN RELIGIOUS MIGRATION
Reliable social science statistical data indicates that thousands of Latter-day Saints leave the LDS Church each year. Over time, these individuals adopt a variety of irreligious and religious pathways as a result of their prior Mormon experience. Although the social scientific literature includes material that sheds light on religious affiliation, disaffiliation, and reaffiliation, this material …
Success In The Borderlands
All of us in the Borderlands of the Church must eventually face the issues of: when, to whom, and how to disclose our situation. Past studies suggest that almost all Borderlanders are in the closet to some extent and that a large share have not told their spouses the whole story. A panel of D. …
Do They Still Teach That?
The song “I Believe” from the Tony award-winning musical The Book of Mormon mentions familiar, obscure, and even contested Mormon doctrines. This panel is a riff of sorts on ideas enumerated in the song, from the foundational belief that God created the universe and sent his son to die for our sins to the idea …
From The Absolute To The Individual: Person And Pre-Mortal Existence In Nineteenth-Century Mormonism And Romanticism
In When Souls Had Wings: Premortal Existence in Western Thought, Terryl Givens covers the heterodox doctrine of a pre-mortal existence from Plato to today. This idea in Platonic philosophy and its emphasis in Christian Platonism always accompanies a story of a fall from perfect unity in the ideal and a return to the same unity …
SL10131: Rediscovering Eugene England in the 21st Century
The Eugene England Foundation has launched EugeneEngland.org, a comprehensive website that makes the life and writings of one of the most influential Mormon thinkers and activists easily accessible to another generation. Panelists will discuss the new website, photos, the Eugene England papers at the University of Utah’s Marriott Library, and draw on journals and correspondence …
SL10171: Panel: “Those Members of the Body, Which Seem to be More Feeble … Are Necessary”: Placing Disability at the Heart of Zion
The Apostle Paul compares members of Christ’s church to a body and suggests that God set each member “as it hath pleased him.” He adds that members of the body who are less comely or honourable are those upon whom “we bestow more abundant honour” (I Cor. 12:18, 23). How do we as Mormons include …
SL10315: Toward a Mormon Theological Justification for Environmental Activism
The creation of the earth was not a static event but is very much a dynamic process. According to LDS doctrine at least through the 1960s, we are not only stewards of the earth but co-creators with God. Brigham Young taught that the roles God gives human beings are designed to test them, enabling them …
SL09231 Panel: Why We Stay
This perennially well-received session features the stories of those who have chosen to remain active, dedicated Latter-day Saints even in the face of many difficult challenges to traditional faith. How have these members wrestled with their faith and yet emerged more determined than ever to be a part of the Latter-day Saint community? J. Frederick …
SL09363 The Treachery of the Heretic
Conflict within religions is often far more potentially damaging than disagreements between them. At the heart of intra-religious conflict is the feeling of betrayal. The heretic is a member of the family who has chosen to destroy the family from within. This treachery is personal. But it feels different for the heretic, who feels she …