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Sunstone in SLC is today through Saturday (July 27-29). I will be there all day Friday, and most of Saturday. I’d love to meet up with any of you if you’re going. Anyone there? Rick B
I wish I was in that area, Rick. How was it? Anything particularly strike you from the conference? Yes, any highlights? There was a really good session on the Gospel Topics Essays. Newell Bringhurst, Gary Bergera, Matt Harris, and Margaret Toscano critiqued 3 of the essays. I was able to go to dinner with Matt and Newell after their lectures! Matt told me some amazing stuff after his talk about Pres Kimball, but he made me promise to keep some of it under wraps. He has had access to SWK’s papers, and there’s some amazing stuff in there. In his talk, he mentioned a little bit of the complexity of Kimball, and noted that the essay makes it sound a little bit like Brigham Young instituted the ban, and then everything was fine after that. However, there were multiple instances of Indians especially, but blacks as well, being told that they would turn white in Heaven. SWK was a big purveyor of that thought especially. It is a bit of a racist theology, and he said the essay downplays that aspect quite a bit.
Gary said the polygamy essays didn’t always take things in context. He gave an example where the essay footnotes refer to Mosiah/Levi Hancock as performing the ceremony for Fanny Alger, but the footnote references something from the 1900s, long after the fact. The essay seems to argue that there were no sexual relations with Joseph and the teen/polyandrous brides. He didn’t think these were reliable sources, and these footnotes should not be taken at face value.
Margaret argued that the essay on women & priesthood left out important events that seemed to imply women actually did hold the priesthood, especially following the endowment ceremony. She said it was like women skipped all the Aaronic/Melch offices and went straight to priesthood with the endowment ceremony. It was a fascinating discussion. I had heard Michael Quinn argue that, but not anyone else. It was very interesting presentation.
Newell gave an overall presentation discussing how the GT Essays came about. He said that the essays were driven by Pres Monson who was alarmed at disaffection. Mormon scholars were recruited to write long essays (40-80 pages), then these essays were shortened and refined by a committee in SLC. Rollout began in 2013, and was very low key. Leaders wanted to combat the disaffection happening, but didn’t want members who weren’t concerned to become concerned. They felt it was a double-edged sword.
The low key release caused significant challenges on ward level. Few knew about them. Some members rejected them and considered them unofficial. A Sunday School teacher in Hawaii taught the essay to youth class, and was released by bishop for teaching unauthorized sources! In 2015, leaders recognized problems, and Elder Ballard gave a few addresses to BYU and CES leaders to get them wider circulation.
I attended a train wreck of a session. It’s the kind of session that gives Sunstone a bad name. Lindsay Hansen Park told how she met this stripper at a strip club in Arizona and had a spiritual experience. (Lindsay even cried at the microphone!) The stripper is a Gospel Principles teacher, and fully “out” in her ward. Her basic attitude was “Don’t judge me because I am a stripper, you hypo-christian.”
I mean yeah, she’s lived a tough life, former meth user, 2 miscarriages, been to jail, knows she makes bad decisions, started stripping to pay the rent, has been abused by boyfriends, broken noses and limbs, yada, yada. She obviously isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. I loved it when people asked philosophical questions about body image, and she clearly didn’t understand the question. “Could you rephrase?”
She did quote AoF, D&C, is a descendant of Lyman Wight. Yes we are judging her, but I think Jesus would say, “go and sin no more.” It floored me when she is not at all repentant about her job (compared it to people who work at casinos) but then said she was trying to get a temple recommend. She knows church is a place for sinners, but unrepentant sinners? Good question. She thinks God wants her to be stripper and go to church. Hmmm. She’s trying, and I applaud her for that, but jeez. No sign of cog dis.
It was weird, but no other good sessions for that time slot.
Thanks for the updates. From the photos it looked like it brought in a good crowd. I also attended a very cool session with John Hamer. He discussed Strangism. I’m not sure how much you know about James Strang, but he was a rival of Brigham Young, and started a church. They have nearly the identical name of our church and refer to themselves as Mormons too. The only difference in names: LDS church is “Latter-day Saints”. Strang church is “Latter Day Saints.” They are still in existence, and based in Voree, Wisconsin where Joseph sent James Strang on a mission. Strang claimed an angelic vision on the night Joseph was killed, as well as a letter claiming Joseph made Strang the new leader. (Obviously Brigham thought it was a forgery.) Strang said he had a vision of some metal plates, told a group of men to dig them up under an oak tree on a hill in Voree, Wisconsin. These 6 plates were written in a strange language and are known as the Voree plates. Strang translated them and said they were a record of an extinct people who died nearby. The plates were shown to newspaper reporters and many people. Supposedly some of Brigham’s followers stole them and they are not found now, but facsimiles of the plates are still around, and Hamer examined the language closely and discovered that indeed they could be translated and matched Strang’s translation.
Hamer doesn’t believe in a literal BoM, and believes the Caracters document (what Martin Harris took to Charles Anthon) was just jibberish. However, Hamer said that while the Voree plates don’t match any known language, there is consistency to them and he figured out how to translate them. While most writing is left to right, right to left, or in columns, this “Voree” language alternate lines of text known as “boustrophedon.” Basically line 1 is left to right, line 2 is right to left, line 3 left to write, etc. Anyway, he felt the Voree plates were more impressive than anything produced by Joseph Smith.
Fascinating stuff, GT. Very cool. Thanks for sharing. Were there any sessions that talked about translation and what it is? I can see the Strang plates touching on that topic, and know Bushman and others are working on some things surrounding what translation may or may not be, and even if it changed from time to time.
I was a bit limited on my time. I didn’t attend any sessions dealing with what translation is (if there were any, I’m not sure.) Hamer had some cool slides on explaining language patterns.
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