Staying with friends in Cleveland this weekend, I attended a performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. In preparation, I looked up the lyrics to Schiller's original "Ode to Joy," which Beethoven excerpted and adapted for the symphony. I'm reproducing some selections below, based on translations I found here and here, though I've done quite a bit of my own reworking of the material.
The ode is an expression of Classical-Romantic era liberalism. Which is to say that I'm torn between finding it naive and warming to its ideals.
************
Joy, beautiful spark of divinity,
Daughter of the Blessed Isles—
intoxicated by fire, we enter
your sanctuary, Heavenly One.
Your magic binds together again
what the sword of custom divided:
Beggars become brothers to princes
under the shadow of your gentle wing.
Accept this embrace, you millions!
To the whole world goes this kiss!
Brothers and sisters—above the starry canopy
A loving Father must dwell.
Joy, joy drives the wheels
of the great clock that is the universe.
It draws forth flowers from the buds,
and suns from the firmament.
It rolls spheres through the depths of space,
far beyond the telescope’s reach.
From Truth’s fiery mirror,
Joy smiles upon the scientist.
Up the steep hill of Virtue,
it guide the steps of the persevering.
Endure with courage, you millions!
Endure in expectation of a better world!
Sorrow and Poverty, come forward
and join in the rejoicing.
Let bitterness and revenge be forgotten.
Let even our mortal enemy be forgiven.
No tears should burden him,
no remorse should pain him.
Let the ledger of our debts be destroyed!
Let the whole world be reconciled!
Draw closer in the sacred circle.
Swear, by this golden wine,
to be true to this oath—
swear it by the Judge beyond the stars:
Deliverance from the chains of tyrants,
liberality even for the evil-doer,
hope even on one's deathbed,
grace at the final judgment bar!
All sinners will be forgiven,
and hell will be no more.
Sunday, March 11, 2012
Friday, March 9, 2012
Snow
I'm at my laptop, working, watching big snowflakes falling thick outside the window. It's soothing . . . I've been needing something like this for a while. Feeling my emotions settle down as I watch the snow fall is making me realize how much this wretched wet cold snowless winter has been keeping me in a really pissy, and stressed, mood.
Have you been inside the treasuries
where God stores the snow?
(Job 38:22)
Faithful messengers
are like the cold of snow
in the time of harvest:
they refresh the souls
of those for whom they come and go.
(Proverbs 25:13)
Have you been inside the treasuries
where God stores the snow?
(Job 38:22)
Faithful messengers
are like the cold of snow
in the time of harvest:
they refresh the souls
of those for whom they come and go.
(Proverbs 25:13)
Monday, March 5, 2012
Imagine if this were Relief Society
Just happened onto this at a blog of Church Women United. They had reblogged the text from another organization, the Children's Defense Fund. Learn more about Church Women United here.
Imagine that the Relief Society were committed to this kind of social advocacy.
Imagine that the Relief Society maintained a lobbying presence in Washington DC to pursue such advocacy.
Imagine that the Relief Society were de-centralized in such a way that Relief Society units at the state and national level had the autonomy to engage in these kind of initiatives.
Or imagine that the Relief Society had the kind of interfaith-oriented mentality that would prompt it to become one of the denominational women's organizations that belong to Church Women United.
Now ask yourself why these things aren't in fact happening.
Keeping a Close Watch on the BudgetSeveral possibilities to imagine here.
Overall, in these tight economic times, the President’s FY 2013 budget proposes critical investments to support healthy child development and fight poverty while taking steps towards addressing inequities in the U.S. tax code. Priorities for increased funding in the President’s budget include education, early childhood development, health and vulnerable youth. Despite this overall good news for children, there is cause for concern. A number of important programs that serve vulnerable children and families face deep budget cuts at a time when the economy has greatly increased the need for safety net services. We must remain vigilant in the weeks, months and years ahead and speak and stand up for the voiceless, voteless children so they do not bear the brunt of budget assaults. Read a full analysis of the President's budget and what it means for children.
We must continue our call for Congress and state governments to choose babies over billionaires and children over corporations. Continue the drumbeat by contacting your Members of Congress and demand the rich and powerful interests pay their fair share rather than continue to receive huge and unfair government subsidies and tax cuts they neither deserve, earned, nor need.
Imagine that the Relief Society were committed to this kind of social advocacy.
Imagine that the Relief Society maintained a lobbying presence in Washington DC to pursue such advocacy.
Imagine that the Relief Society were de-centralized in such a way that Relief Society units at the state and national level had the autonomy to engage in these kind of initiatives.
Or imagine that the Relief Society had the kind of interfaith-oriented mentality that would prompt it to become one of the denominational women's organizations that belong to Church Women United.
Now ask yourself why these things aren't in fact happening.
Sunday, March 4, 2012
More on the Brother Bott controversy
The Church Statement Regarding 'Washington Post' Article on Race and the Church is the closest the Church has come to repudiating the teachings that were used to legitimate the black priesthood/temple ban. This is an important, if absurdly tardy, development.
But let's be clear about what happened here.
Church leaders didn't issue this statement because they were shocked and dismayed to discover that a BYU religion professor was teaching these things to his students.
Nor did they issue the statement because they had been moved by the pleas of church members, African Americans among them, that these teachings needed to be officially repudiated. I know of two instances within the past 15 years or so when members have organized in an attempt to communicate such pleas to church leadership.
Church leaders didn't care what Bott was teaching in his classes--until he communicated those same ideas to a journalist at the Washington Post. Church leaders didn't care when members objected to these teachings; they only moved to repudiate the teachings (sort of) when publicity got them worried about what non-members would think.
Why is that? Fundamentally, because church leaders are invested in the idea that members are supposed to obey them. Consequently, leaders are inclined to discount petitions or complaints from church members. Members who presume to tell church leaders what they should do--i.e., repudiate these teachings--are bad members. They don't trust that the leaders are divinely inspired. If God wanted the leaders to repudiate past teachings, he would tell them. So members should just wait for God to tell the leaders what to do instead of trying to steady the ark themselves.
But church leaders wouldn't repudiate their predecessors' teachings anyway: note that the latest statement doesn't actually say that what Bott was teaching was wrong, just that it should be regarded as "speculation and opinion, not doctrine"--i.e., not the church's official position, which at present is, "We don't know why God didn't want blacks to have the priesthood. We just know he did." Church leaders can't admit that the ban was wrong because that admission would undermine the prophetic authority of church leadership--ergo, the authority of the current leadership. If church leaders could be wrong in believing that the black priesthood/temple ban was God's will, then members would have grounds for suggesting that the current leaders are wrong when they say that certain doctrines, policies, and programs are God's will.
And that church leaders cannot abide. They want to be obeyed; they want to be beyond criticism. That's why you have Ballard repeating the Woodruff line that the Lord will never allow the General Authorities to lead the church astray. That's why you have Oaks insisting that members should never criticize church leaders even if the criticism is true.
And this is why I think gay-friendly members who hope to "change the church from within" are doomed to frustration. Maybe they can change minds and hearts in the pews, and that would certainly be a good thing. But they will never get church leaders to listen to them. Because church leaders don't listen to members whose petitions are implicitly critical, however diplomatically couched. Such listening is not part of the role to which church leaders understand themselves to be called.
What makes that seeming inconsistency consistent is the fact that the same impulse underlies both the leaders' unwillingness to respond to members' complaints and their swift response to bad press from outside. What's consistent is that church leaders don't want to be criticized. In dealing with members, that means maintaining a working fiction of prophetic infallibility--ergo, you can't admit the priesthood/temple ban was wrong. In dealing with the press, avoiding criticism requires getting your spin doctors to write carefully crafted statements that seem to offer the repudiation you would never offer your own members.
But let's be clear about what happened here.
Church leaders didn't issue this statement because they were shocked and dismayed to discover that a BYU religion professor was teaching these things to his students.
Nor did they issue the statement because they had been moved by the pleas of church members, African Americans among them, that these teachings needed to be officially repudiated. I know of two instances within the past 15 years or so when members have organized in an attempt to communicate such pleas to church leadership.
Church leaders didn't care what Bott was teaching in his classes--until he communicated those same ideas to a journalist at the Washington Post. Church leaders didn't care when members objected to these teachings; they only moved to repudiate the teachings (sort of) when publicity got them worried about what non-members would think.
Why is that? Fundamentally, because church leaders are invested in the idea that members are supposed to obey them. Consequently, leaders are inclined to discount petitions or complaints from church members. Members who presume to tell church leaders what they should do--i.e., repudiate these teachings--are bad members. They don't trust that the leaders are divinely inspired. If God wanted the leaders to repudiate past teachings, he would tell them. So members should just wait for God to tell the leaders what to do instead of trying to steady the ark themselves.
But church leaders wouldn't repudiate their predecessors' teachings anyway: note that the latest statement doesn't actually say that what Bott was teaching was wrong, just that it should be regarded as "speculation and opinion, not doctrine"--i.e., not the church's official position, which at present is, "We don't know why God didn't want blacks to have the priesthood. We just know he did." Church leaders can't admit that the ban was wrong because that admission would undermine the prophetic authority of church leadership--ergo, the authority of the current leadership. If church leaders could be wrong in believing that the black priesthood/temple ban was God's will, then members would have grounds for suggesting that the current leaders are wrong when they say that certain doctrines, policies, and programs are God's will.
And that church leaders cannot abide. They want to be obeyed; they want to be beyond criticism. That's why you have Ballard repeating the Woodruff line that the Lord will never allow the General Authorities to lead the church astray. That's why you have Oaks insisting that members should never criticize church leaders even if the criticism is true.
And this is why I think gay-friendly members who hope to "change the church from within" are doomed to frustration. Maybe they can change minds and hearts in the pews, and that would certainly be a good thing. But they will never get church leaders to listen to them. Because church leaders don't listen to members whose petitions are implicitly critical, however diplomatically couched. Such listening is not part of the role to which church leaders understand themselves to be called.
Go and tell this people: Hear--But--and this is the really infuriating thing--while church leaders don't care when members criticize them, they care very much when outsiders launch certain criticisms against them. When members complain that these teachings are racist and should be repudiated, they get Gordon B. Hinckley shrugging affably and saying, "What's the problem? The 1978 revelation speaks for itself." But when a major newspaper suggests that these teachings are racist, in the middle of an election year when Church officials are on high-alert regarding their public image, then the leaders see the teachings as a problem that needs to be addressed.
but they heard not.
And see--
but they perceived not. (2 Nephi 16:9)
What makes that seeming inconsistency consistent is the fact that the same impulse underlies both the leaders' unwillingness to respond to members' complaints and their swift response to bad press from outside. What's consistent is that church leaders don't want to be criticized. In dealing with members, that means maintaining a working fiction of prophetic infallibility--ergo, you can't admit the priesthood/temple ban was wrong. In dealing with the press, avoiding criticism requires getting your spin doctors to write carefully crafted statements that seem to offer the repudiation you would never offer your own members.
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Reaping racism
Racist Remarks by Popular BYU Religion Professor Spark Controversy
Church Statement Regarding 'Washington Post' Article on Race and the Church
The Lord has said:
I will not succor my people in the day of their transgression,
but . . . their doings shall be as a stumbling block before them.
And again he says:
If my people sow filthiness,
they shall reap the chaff thereof in the whirlwind;
and the effect thereof is poison. . . .
And now, behold,
the promise of the Lord is fulfilled.
(Mosiah 7:29-32)
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Baptism for the dead
I don’t have as much time to dedicate to this as I would ideally like, but I want to say at least a few things about the recent controversy in the national media over baptism for the dead, sparked by yet another complaint about baptisms performed for people killed in the Holocaust.
First, I am appalled that the baptisms continue after church officials promised to stop them. Clearly there is either a lack of will to enforce the ban on baptisms for Holocaust victims—or the system is set up in a way that officials really don’t have the means to enforce the ban. Either way—whether church officials lacked the will to stop the baptisms or the ability to stop the baptisms—it would seem the promises made to Jewish organizations were empty from the start, ergo a disingenuous attempt at placating critics.
I am angry at the fact that some church members evidently don’t take the ban seriously. And I’m angry at the various ways that church leaders have, from the beginning of Mormon history, nurtured a culture of doubletalk (esoteric teachings and rituals, obfuscating public statements, “lying for the Lord,” secret polygamous marriages, secret committees) that allows members to assume that church leaders don’t really mean it when they tell the world they’re going to stop doing baptisms for Holocaust victims.
I feel ashamed and attacked when Stephen Colbert or Bill Maher ridicule the practice of baptism for the dead. And I feel misunderstood when Elie Wiesel expresses his outrage at Mormons having “converted” Holocaust victims, or when people characterize baptism for the dead as the LDS Church claiming to have “turned dead Jews into Mormons.” During the year before I was endowed, going to the Provo Temple weekly to perform baptisms for the dead was my primary source of spiritual nurture and rejuvenation. I’m deeply ambivalent now about the practice—more on this farther down—but the point is I’m ambivalent because while I now associate negative meanings with the practice, I still see positive meanings to be derived from it as well. This is to say that while I can make the empathetic leap to understand why outsiders find the practice offensive, and while I wish more Mormons would make that leap, I also wish outsiders would likewise make the leap to try to understand empathetically what the practice means to Mormons—and what it doesn’t actually mean to them.
I feel that’s not something I can say to Elie Wiesel. You can’t say to someone who lost his family in the death camps, “You should be more empathetic for the Mormons who performed vicarious baptisms for your family members.” I’d like to at least be able to clear up what I think is a fundamental misunderstanding about what Mormons intend by the practice—but even that is hard to talk about under the circumstances. If you’re going to talk back to a Holocaust survivor, you’ve got to have a moral imperative on your side a lot stronger than “You’re not quite grasping how Mormons understand the situation.”
Let me shift the conversation away from the Holocaust—where I have no right to speak—to an area where I can speak. Let me talk about my own dead to illustrate why I’m ambivalent about the practice of vicarious baptism.
I’ve written elsewhere about how much my convert mother hated her non-LDS father. I have a memory from my growing up years—probably my early teens—of my mother telling me that she had no intention of having vicarious ordinances done for her father because she didn’t want to be part of his family for eternity. Then, several years later, after I’d left LDS Church life, I learned that my mother had submitted her father’s name, and that one of my brothers had been the proxy. I thought of this as a good thing. She was arriving a point where she was beginning to forgive her father for the terrible way he’d treated her.
Fast forward a few more years: I travel from Utah to California to visit my mother’s mother, who’s dying of cancer. When I arrive, I learn there’s been some tension over a scrapbook my mother prepared for my grandmother that contained some allusions to Mormon beliefs which my grandmother interpreted as an attempt to proselytize her on her deathbed (a not unreasonable interpretation).
Near the end of my visit, my grandmother, who’d been attending a nearby Bible church since becoming ill, asked me if Mormons were Christian. I started into a nuanced exposition, but then I realized that what she was really asking was whether I’d accepted Jesus. She wanted to know if she, and her daughter, and her grandchildren, were going to be in heaven together. With some qualms, since I knew she and I weren’t really on the same page, theologically, I told her yes. “Good,” she said. “My pastor told me that Mormons weren’t Christians. But I told him I knew my daughter had raised her children to love Jesus.”
I’m crying as I write this. The day after I had this conversation with my grandmother, she became comatose, and a few days after that, she died. And I got to thinking: Someday my mother is going to submit my grandmother’s name to have her work done. (Which she did, as soon as the requisite time had passed.) And I felt, for the first time as far as I can recall, why people find that offensive. My grandmother made her peace with God before she died. She left this world very clear about her relationship with her Savior. Performing a vicarious baptism on her behalf says, in effect: the peace you made with God wasn’t good enough. And that’s just really, really rude, however well-meaning it is.
It also offers a deeply unsatisfying picture of God—as if God is a customs agent, who won’t let you in unless you can show that all your paperwork is in order. Baptismal record from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints? Check. The Spirit tells me that’s not a true picture. A truer picture is the one Jesus gives us in the parable of the prodigal son—the picture of a father who goes running out to meet his child. The God I worship didn’t make my grandmother stand in line to see if her papers had been properly stamped. He received her with open arms. The same way he received my mother.
Having said that: If my mother never had herself vicariously sealed to her parents, I'd like to see that done.
First, I am appalled that the baptisms continue after church officials promised to stop them. Clearly there is either a lack of will to enforce the ban on baptisms for Holocaust victims—or the system is set up in a way that officials really don’t have the means to enforce the ban. Either way—whether church officials lacked the will to stop the baptisms or the ability to stop the baptisms—it would seem the promises made to Jewish organizations were empty from the start, ergo a disingenuous attempt at placating critics.
I am angry at the fact that some church members evidently don’t take the ban seriously. And I’m angry at the various ways that church leaders have, from the beginning of Mormon history, nurtured a culture of doubletalk (esoteric teachings and rituals, obfuscating public statements, “lying for the Lord,” secret polygamous marriages, secret committees) that allows members to assume that church leaders don’t really mean it when they tell the world they’re going to stop doing baptisms for Holocaust victims.
I feel ashamed and attacked when Stephen Colbert or Bill Maher ridicule the practice of baptism for the dead. And I feel misunderstood when Elie Wiesel expresses his outrage at Mormons having “converted” Holocaust victims, or when people characterize baptism for the dead as the LDS Church claiming to have “turned dead Jews into Mormons.” During the year before I was endowed, going to the Provo Temple weekly to perform baptisms for the dead was my primary source of spiritual nurture and rejuvenation. I’m deeply ambivalent now about the practice—more on this farther down—but the point is I’m ambivalent because while I now associate negative meanings with the practice, I still see positive meanings to be derived from it as well. This is to say that while I can make the empathetic leap to understand why outsiders find the practice offensive, and while I wish more Mormons would make that leap, I also wish outsiders would likewise make the leap to try to understand empathetically what the practice means to Mormons—and what it doesn’t actually mean to them.
I feel that’s not something I can say to Elie Wiesel. You can’t say to someone who lost his family in the death camps, “You should be more empathetic for the Mormons who performed vicarious baptisms for your family members.” I’d like to at least be able to clear up what I think is a fundamental misunderstanding about what Mormons intend by the practice—but even that is hard to talk about under the circumstances. If you’re going to talk back to a Holocaust survivor, you’ve got to have a moral imperative on your side a lot stronger than “You’re not quite grasping how Mormons understand the situation.”
Let me shift the conversation away from the Holocaust—where I have no right to speak—to an area where I can speak. Let me talk about my own dead to illustrate why I’m ambivalent about the practice of vicarious baptism.
I’ve written elsewhere about how much my convert mother hated her non-LDS father. I have a memory from my growing up years—probably my early teens—of my mother telling me that she had no intention of having vicarious ordinances done for her father because she didn’t want to be part of his family for eternity. Then, several years later, after I’d left LDS Church life, I learned that my mother had submitted her father’s name, and that one of my brothers had been the proxy. I thought of this as a good thing. She was arriving a point where she was beginning to forgive her father for the terrible way he’d treated her.
Fast forward a few more years: I travel from Utah to California to visit my mother’s mother, who’s dying of cancer. When I arrive, I learn there’s been some tension over a scrapbook my mother prepared for my grandmother that contained some allusions to Mormon beliefs which my grandmother interpreted as an attempt to proselytize her on her deathbed (a not unreasonable interpretation).
Near the end of my visit, my grandmother, who’d been attending a nearby Bible church since becoming ill, asked me if Mormons were Christian. I started into a nuanced exposition, but then I realized that what she was really asking was whether I’d accepted Jesus. She wanted to know if she, and her daughter, and her grandchildren, were going to be in heaven together. With some qualms, since I knew she and I weren’t really on the same page, theologically, I told her yes. “Good,” she said. “My pastor told me that Mormons weren’t Christians. But I told him I knew my daughter had raised her children to love Jesus.”
I’m crying as I write this. The day after I had this conversation with my grandmother, she became comatose, and a few days after that, she died. And I got to thinking: Someday my mother is going to submit my grandmother’s name to have her work done. (Which she did, as soon as the requisite time had passed.) And I felt, for the first time as far as I can recall, why people find that offensive. My grandmother made her peace with God before she died. She left this world very clear about her relationship with her Savior. Performing a vicarious baptism on her behalf says, in effect: the peace you made with God wasn’t good enough. And that’s just really, really rude, however well-meaning it is.
It also offers a deeply unsatisfying picture of God—as if God is a customs agent, who won’t let you in unless you can show that all your paperwork is in order. Baptismal record from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints? Check. The Spirit tells me that’s not a true picture. A truer picture is the one Jesus gives us in the parable of the prodigal son—the picture of a father who goes running out to meet his child. The God I worship didn’t make my grandmother stand in line to see if her papers had been properly stamped. He received her with open arms. The same way he received my mother.
Having said that: If my mother never had herself vicariously sealed to her parents, I'd like to see that done.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Sunstone Kirtland
The preliminary program is available for the upcoming regional Sunstone symposium, to be held in the Kirtland Temple. The theme is sacred space. I'll be moderating a session, "Does the Historicity of the First Vision Matter?," with panelists Dan Vogel, Stephen Taysom, and Lachlan Mackay.
I'm particularly looking forward to the devotional, which will include some readings from the Kirtland Temple dedicatory prayer and a period of Quaker-style silence in which people can share their thoughts. (Like a testimony meeting, but somewhat more open-ended in terms of what people might feel they have to say.)
I'm particularly looking forward to the devotional, which will include some readings from the Kirtland Temple dedicatory prayer and a period of Quaker-style silence in which people can share their thoughts. (Like a testimony meeting, but somewhat more open-ended in terms of what people might feel they have to say.)
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