Posts Tagged ‘ theology ’

Reverend Dr. Laurence C. Keene, Disciples of Christ, “When people ask questions about homosexuality, almost always they follow with, ‘and what does the Bible really say about it?’ The preceding quote comes from an interesting documentary on Netflix called For the Bible Tells Me So.  The documentary discusses traditional and liberal Christian beliefs about homosexuality in the scriptures. [...]

I’ve enjoyed reading about a recently discovered document scholars have dubbed “The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife.”  It’s just a scrap of papyrus that dates to around 150-200 AD, but it is causing a bit of a stir.  Dr. Karen King of Harvard University has recently translated the document and it contains the line, “Jesus said [...]

How do we deal with scriptures that offend our modern sensibilities? Even if we can be wrong, why defer to the past?

The following comments were recorded at the 1993 Sunstone Symposium.  Bill Russell spoke on the recurring theme as Sunstone called “The Pillars of my Faith”. He is a past president of the Mormon History Association.  I don’t know who introduced him, but this is what the person said when he introduced Bill Russell. Introduction, “William [...]

Correlation often gets a bad name on the bloggernacle.  That’s part of the reason why I brought up a quote from Michael Quinn (who is hardly “correlated”) discussing the benefits of Correlation.  Yet Correlation can make church extremely boring.  A few weeks ago, I discussed with my bishop that I am really bored at church, [...]

When it comes to religion, there are 2 main camps:  fundamentalists and modernists.  Perhaps you would prefer the term “conservative” and “liberal”; to some degree, these terms make sense.  Casey Paul Griffiths came out with an article in BYU studies back in January called “The Chicago Experiment” and said “the Church had inserted itself directly into the [...]

Back in 2008, Jeff Spector introduced me to the concept of proof-texting.  I think we’re all familiar with the idea of taking a scripture out of context to support a certain religious belief.  However, I didn’t realize that this practice goes back thousands of years.  Charles Harrell and Greg Kofford Books has recently published a [...]

I was surprised when Hawkgrrrl’s post about Patriarchy and Political Oppression turned to a discussion on the gender of the Holy Ghost.  I don’t have anything definitive to add to the gender issue, but I would like to open a discussion. A few years ago, I listened to some classes from the Covenant Theological Seminary, [...]

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 [...]

I sometimes wonder where the 32nd chapter of Alma would rank in a list of most iconic scriptures in the entire Book of Mormon. It comes up frequently in discussions, so I have plenty of times to revisit it. I think the reason for this is that it introduces a powerful image that — in every [...]