Posts Tagged ‘ scripture ’

Human brains naturally use locations in space and time to make sense of events. Why should we expect eternal spirits to follow that protocol? The question has always bothered me. What follows is speculation about a different way of looking at the relationship between the physical and the spiritual than the Restoration faiths adopted in [...]

Christmas Eve represents an immovable endpoint to the busiest time of my wife’s year. As a piano studio director who also runs a charitable foundation, projects and performances crowd into December. So, it has become “traditional” in our family to stagger exhausted to the Christmas holidays and semi-hibernate until after New Year’s Day in order [...]

The Community of Christ has begun “crossing the Rubicon” on LGBT issues, and there can be no reversing the action taken. CofChrist is committed to the theological precedent that priesthood can be compatible with participation in a legally recognized same-sex sexual relationship. On June 2nd, the Australian National Conference approved the following recommendation to the [...]

A couple of months ago, while gathering up all of the data required to “render unto the IRS” and trying to feel better about all of the work involved in doing so, I ran across an interesting piece of Biblical literary criticism. It became even more interesting to me when I started thinking about the [...]

At the end of April, Community of Christ released to the church at large a “Draft Statement on Sexual Ethics” for public review and invited comments to be made by e-mail to the First Presidency. This Statement will be considered by the International Leaders Council (which has no strict equivalent in the LDS) in May [...]

Science knows that the Norse (Vikings) colonized Greenland a millennium ago, but the colony didn’t stick when colder temperatures returned following the Medieval Warm Period. Average daily temperatures in Greenland warmed about 3 degrees F before the plunge back into a Little Ice Age (which itself only ended well into the 19th Century) that forced [...]

In his 1915 classic entitled Jesus the Christ, Elder James E. Talmage maintained that Jesus Christ was born on April 6 in the year 1 BC.1 Talmage was apparently the first LDS writer to propose this particular date.  Nearly a century has passed since his book appeared, and in that time it has become practically axiomatic [...]

As I was researching a post last summer on some of the organizations that have sprung up in the stead of the RLDS movement as fundamentalist alternatives to the Community of Christ, I discovered that a childhood friend had become one of the leading officials of one such organization, the Remnant Church of Jesus Christ of [...]

Like many people who consider the Book of Mormon as scripture, I am fascinated by questions about where it has a setting in ancient historical events. I know, of course, that many other people hold it as Scripture, but are content to see it as having no origin prior to a set of 19th Century visionary [...]

Because I have had my own trials of faith, and have stood in the figurative shoes of those who see things from a non-believing standpoint, I have become increasingly aware of the language we use and the ways in which it contributes to our cultural peculiarities and often times sets people up for failure. Sometimes [...]

There has been a book of personal testimony making waves in Evangelical Christian circles for the past few months. Indeed, it isn’t just limited to Protestant Evangelicals; the person who recommended it to our family is a devout Catholic liberal. The book, entitled Heaven is for Real, is the real life story of Todd Burpo, [...]

Alma Allred wrote a chapter in the book titled Black and Mormon.  On page 37, he states: I don’t believe that LDS scripture allows for a restriction against blacks’ holding the priesthood.  Nor do I think that LDS theology can reasonably maintain that today’s blacks are descendants of Cain or that ancient intermarriage with Canaanites perpetuated [...]

“Bring a miracle and request a table. Those you heal must accept you into their homes….The deliberate conjunction of magic and meal,  miracle and table, free compassion and open commensality,  was a challenge launched not just at Judaism’s strictest purity regulations,…but at civilization’s eternal inclination to draw lines, invoke boundaries, establish hierarchies, and maintain discriminations…. [...]

There are some nutritious and delicious meals that you would never eat if you knew what was in them before you sat down at the table. I would never have had scrambled eggs, for example, if they’d first been described to me as ground-up unfertilized bird embryos. I had heard bad things about the Jesus [...]

Canadian filmmaker and non-Christian Simcha Jacobovici (aka History Channel’s The Naked Archaeologist) is a magnet for Jesus relics.  In 2007 he claimed to locate Jesus’ tomb in Jerusalem – with Jesus and other family members intact.  His latest find is a pair of nails he posits were the crucifixion nails, found in Caiaphas’s tomb (the high priest of [...]

1 Samuel 16:7 says, “But the LORD said to Samuel, “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The LORD does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.” Why do LDS leaders spend so much time [...]

Ever since the Book of Mormon was published in 1830, critics have tried to show that it came forth as the result of fraud.  One of the earliest theories was the Spaulding Theory.  As the theory goes, Solomon Spaulding wrote an unpublished novel about a group of Romans from the time of Constantine that were [...]

Just 9 days prior to his death, Joseph Smith sent a letter to James Strang.  Strang and his followers refer to this letter as the “Letter of Appointment”, believing that Joseph anointed Strang as a successor.  I have always wanted to read the actual letter, and I received an email from Tim Hansen, a high priest in the [...]

In discussions on the bloggernacle, the subject of how change happens in the church often comes up.  We often talk past either other when it comes to defining “changes” within the church.  There seem to be different views about policy vs. doctrine and why change happens in the church: View 1:  Policy changes are just [...]

Last time we talked about Flatland and 4-dimensional angels.  Now, we move on to 10-dimensions, finer matter, and more.  It might seem a bit daunting, but it will all make sense.  To start with, though, if you haven’t read the last post in this series (or Flatland itself), it will be easier to start there. [...]