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There’s a new series of short commentaries on excerpts of the BoM in town. But this new series of books on the Book are, from the very beginning, said to be guided by interpretive strategies found within the BoM itself. Recall at the outset of this review I mentioned that the BoM contains scattered pieces of its own interpretive instruction manual. The editors and contributors to this collaborative new series excavate some of these instructions from Alma 32 (An Experiment on the Word: Reading Alma 32, ed. Adam S. Miller) and from 2 Nephi (Reading Nephi Reading Isaiah: Reading 2 Nephi 26-27, ed. Joseph M. Spencer and Jenny Webb).³

According to the series introduction, the books are produced by “The Mormon Theology Seminar,” an “unofficial and independent” scholarly collaboration. “Theology” is somewhat of a foreign word to many Mormons. (We have doctrine, we don’t have professional theologians, some might say.) But the series proposes and enacts a theological reading of the BoM. What does it mean to “read Mormon scripture theologically”? For this review I decided describe what Miller & co. mean by “Theology” in order to give you an idea if their approach is something you’d find worthwhile…

[…] Diego State University. She’s been featured in an impressive number of media outlets over the past year— CNN, The Washington Post, The New York Times, the Huffington Post, the Daily Beast, and a variety […]

Title: Dimensions of Faith: A Mormon Studies Reader
Author: Stephen C. Taysom
Publisher: Signature Books
Genre: Religious Studies
Year: 2011
Pages: 500
Binding: Softcover
ISBN13: 978-1-56085-212-4
Price: $28.95
Back when he was a doctoral student in religious studies, Stephen C. Taysom wished he had a collection of “fine scholarship” he could use to show professors and others “who expressed skepticism about the fitness of Mormonism as an object of serious academic study” what they were missing (vii). Now Taysom is a professor of religious studies at Cleveland State University. His reworked dissertation, Shakers, Mormons, and Religious Worlds: Conflicting Visions, Contested Boundaries, was published in 2011 by Indiana University Press. Enough has changed within the academy (and within Taysom’s own circles) over the past few years to turn his professors’ skepticism into inquiry: “I have received requests from colleagues for a selection of readings that might be used profitably in courses dealing with Mormonism,” Taysom reports in Dimensions of Faith: A Mormon Studies Reader (xi). The reader is a collection of fifteen essays analyzing Mormonism through literary, ritual, film, gender, folklore, and other studies. Taysom argues that the collection’s very existence bears witness that “Mormonism is a rich field of inquiry into which theories and methods of a vast array of disciplines are being widely and skillfully integrated” (viii). Rather than describing a few of the papers Taysom selected and giving them a thumbs up or down, I’d like to use the book as a way to examine a few key issues being debated—or not—in discussions of Mormon studies today.

Another review of Common Ground/Different Opinions: Latter-day Saints and Contemporary Issues, eds. Justin F. White and James E. Faulconer by Michael Austin, Dialogue Board member, and Provost of Newman University in Wichita, KS.

Cross-posted at By Common Consent

As citizens, we must argue with each other about important things. Participating in an inherently adversarial political system means proposing arguments and defending positions. Both our nation and the Constitution that governs it are built on a process designed to turn vigorous discussion and debate into manageable lumps of compromise that permit us to move ahead.
As Latter-day Saints, however, we must be of one heart and one mind. Becoming a Zion people means that we covenant to bear one another’s burdens that they may be light, to mourn with those that mourn, to comfort those who stand in need of comfort, and to stand as witnesses of God in all times and in all things (Mosiah 18:8-9).
These are not mutually exclusive responsibilities, of course, but they can be difficult to reconcile in the real world. To be good citizens and good saints, we must either learn how to agree with each other about everything, which is impossible, or we must find ways to disagree as loving brothers and sisters, which is really hard.