The Mormon Stories podcast has long been one of the most popular features of the Mormon blog universe or “Bloggernacle.” John Dehlin is an impassioned interviewer, who has elicited a number of fascinating stories from a wide variety of Mormons. Some past highlights include a five-part interview with Richard Bushman, author of Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling, and a two-part interview with Anne Wilde, a spokesperson for fundamentalist Mormonism.

After a long hiatus, Mormon Stories is back. John recently asked me to talk about the 1844 Succession Crisis and the history of the Community of Christ for an LDS audience. You can hear part 1 of the interview here.

In the second hour, John asked me about the transformation of the RLDS Church into Community of Christ. You can hear part 2 of the interview here.

Community of Christ President Steve Veazey presented his “Counsel to the Church” today in advance of the church’s World Conference in April. It deals with such hot topics as church membership, communion and human sexuality. Read the document here.

He also presented a “Letter of Counsel about the Presiding Quorums” regarding changes in the Council of Twelve.

Post your reactions in the comments below.

In response to the terrible earthquake in Haiti, both Outreach International (click here for their appeal) and the church (click here for their appeal) are calling on church members to give generously to those in need.

In times like this there is often a rush of people wanting to jet to the disaster zone and volunteer, or collect clothing, medicines and food to send to the people suffering. This altruistic impulse is praiseworthy and displays the great generosity and charity human beings show in times of trouble. However, not every well-meaning response to a disaster is a good one. In this briefing paper I wrote in light of the Asian Tsunami and Hurricane Katrina, I explain how, when responding to a humanitarian disaster, potential donors should keep in mind the following key principles to guide their gift:

1. When making a donation, cash is best (see this helpful information sheet from InterAction). Cash can be moved around the world far more quickly and cheaply than medicines, clothing, food or other commodities, and enables agencies to respond flexibly to the situation.

2. If you want to volunteer, do so in your area of expertise (Those considering volunteering, might want also to read this article I wrote about the response to the Tsunami, the same principles apply).

3. Coordinate your response with other agencies and donors — don’t “go it alone.”

4. Make a long-term commitment to the region

Click here to read about these principles in more detail.

Click here to make a donation to Outreach International’s Haiti response.

-Matthew Bolton

Much of Port-au-Prince has been destroyed, including even the Presidential Palace (above) and the United Nations mission.

Outreach International has issued the following concerning the catastrophe in Haiti:

Thousands of people, possibly 100,000, have been killed by the earthquake that hit Haiti at 5pm Tuesday evening.

Outreach International has been working in Haiti since the 1980s and currently supports a network of 90 schools serving over 9,000 children. Some of these schools have been severely damaged or destroyed. Worse yet, schools were in session at the time of the quake. Students and faculty undoubtedly suffered serious injury or death.

Let’s work together to help Haitians in their time of tremendous suffering! Please do what you can to help! Donate HERE at the Outreach International website.

Outreach International helps people overcome the effects of poverty and develop the capacity to create a new future for themselves and their community. We do not believe in short-term fixes, but in long-term solutions. We call this Sustainable Good.

UPDATE 11 January 2010: Kenny and Jake Ballentine, two brothers who make films together, have just announced the upcoming release of a new movie ‘Trouble in Zion’, a documentary on the Missouri Mormon War. Several years ago, Kenny Ballentine read the essay attached to the below posting and talked with me about it while making the film. Click here to find out more about their movie.

The 1838 Missouri Mormon War (see LeSueur’s great book) resulted in at least 22 fatalities, millions of dollars worth of property destruction and the displacement of 15,000 people. Fought in a context of fierce rhetoric, sectarian and paramilitary violence, weak governmental authority and a privatization of military force, it actually bears significant resemblance to what some security scholars (e.g. my former PhD supervisor Mary Kaldor) have called the “New Wars.” These contemporary conflicts in places like the Former Yugoslavia, Chechnya, Columbia, Rwanda, Somalia and Sudan are characterized by the targeting of civilians; powerful non-state actors; prolonged, seemingly intractable, hostilities; connections to organized crime; and exclusivistic ethnic, religious and sectarian ideologies.

In a previous posting, I have compared Joseph Smith to the religio-military commanders who sometimes arise in such conflicts, but I thought it would be worth thinking more broadly about the political and economic context. I have attached here an essay I wrote in graduate school comparing the Missouri Mormon War and the “New Wars.” In it, I explored the similarities between them, but also looked at how globalization — “intensification of global interconnectedness” — has transformed organized violence. On one hand, if the Mormons and Missourians had had access to global illicit finance, profligate arms traffickers, sophisticated weaponry and/or high-tech communications systems, the war could have been much worse. On the other hand, if the war had been covered by a global media, attracted the intervention of peace negotiators or led to sanctions against Missourian or Mormon leaders, maybe the situation could have been contained.

To read the essay, click here. I would be interested in people’s comments.

-Matthew Bolton

Awesome is the only word I can think of in describing a Christmas celebration I attended yesterday.  It was indeed a worship service (although some there might not have realized it) involving loud rock, long hair, and shooting jets of fire.  The enlightened readers will immediately perceive that I speak of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra or “TSO.”

In the midst of the lasers and fireballs and dueling electric violins, I was struck by a verse from Ecclesiastes.  While The Preacher might not have intended it to be used this way, it was nonetheless compelling:

What has been is what will be,
and what has been done is what will be done;
there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there a thing of which it is said,
“See, this is new”?
It has already been,
in the ages before us.
Eccl. 1:9-11 (NRSV, emphasis mine)

While there is nothing new under the sun, many try to disguise the ways in which their creations are indebted to another.  Genealogies abound, and ex nihilo is almost always nowhere to be found (at least among humans).  I’m a big fan of hybridity, being a product of and participant in it’s chorus and at times cacophony.  With these loyalties, I am always questioning authenticity, especially when one people claim that their X is pure, essential, original, and best when compared with the less authentic X of an other.

These are the sorts of odd thoughts I have during the liminal periods between semesters.

TSO truly has something unique–an incredible creation in an age when heavy metal and classical music aren’t usually among the popular choices.  They were once described as “Phantom of the Opera meets The Who with Pink Floyd’s light show [and] a little bit of classical [music] thrown in.”  In a word, they are fusion, and unabashedly so.

What on earth does this have to do with Community of Christ?, I imagine my few readers who have continued this far groaning.  Let me tell you (but don’t expect the answer right away): TSO, while not necessarily Christian Rock, might be called Christmasian Rock.  During what was the best concert I’ve ever attended, I was overwhelmed by all of the moving parts that fused together–musically, religiously, and pyrotechnically–to produce their renunciation against war and proclamation of the Prince of Peace.  The show’s message was that the spirit of peace ought to prevail, not just at Christmas, but everyday.

Further, I was struck that, while I was engaged in a sort of worshipful experience during a rock concert, many more traditional persons of the Restoration might cry “foul,” that such worship was inauthentic.  But I was happy to report otherwise, that all of these elements had come together in an amazing way, and had moved me closer to Christ.

Many forget that the Restoration is a fusion, a mash-up, although its creativity is often labeled as inauthentic Christianity by those outside of it.  Yet nothing is new under the sun.  Christianity itself involves the radical (re)creation of other religious, cultural, and ideological elements, until those with the most power determine that the recipe is complete.  In so doing, they deem other ingredients as inauthentic, and those who cook with them as heretical, as having distorted the essential and missing the boat of salvation.

I’ll admit that Christ is the essential, and that it’s very possible to distort Christ, but submit that encountering Christ takes on many forms, for God is interested in reaching many different persons.

Please correct me if I’m wrong (and the comments box is a great place to do it) but I think that we ought to recognize the human creativity involved in the earthly (and thus limited, flawed, and developing) manifestations that are the churches.  Sure, there’s a kingdom of God that’s perfect and eternal, but I have still to meet any human who lives in or represents it.

Any and all of us insist too much if we say that only our way of approaching Christ, thinking about Christ, or organizing Christ’s church is the authentic way, the right way.  I’m not saying that churches shouldn’t guard their message, but that they ought to be careful of drawing lines in the sand over things that are opinions, arbitrary, and flawed; they ought to be careful in claiming too much as the only correct and authentic way, when dealing with those both inside and out of their particular brand of Christianity.

Genuine human encounters with the Divine are creations in time, and as such are always flawed.  We can confirm the Divine reality and truth in Christ, but often fail when needing words to go further–and should we use words, (which we must do or else remain silent), those words are but our flawed efforts.  One need only consider the multiple and seemingly contradictory accounts of the First Vision to realize this, yet each was a true representation, at different points in time, for Joseph Smith.  They were all true, yet all subjective for the Eternal had entered the human realm, and humans are never quite sure what to do with God no matter how confident they might act.  This is one gig that should be up!

Most often the points of contention experienced in the church have very little if anything to do with the concerns that Jesus shared during His mortal ministry.  Something much deeper ought to unite us even when we disagree over particulars—and I submit that that something is Christ, even if we can’t always agree on the particulars of carrying forth his message of peace.

This realization ought to result in celebration of God working in and through some many different persons and ways.  Christians of all types, and certainly those within a particular denomination, ought to have reason to come together even and especially when they disagree–unless, of course, they can’t see the human fusion and creativity involved when humans of all kinds are touched by and respond to God.

I’ll conclude where I started: Paul O’Neill, TSO’s founder, has said:

There’s only one God and he made everybody. When we die, I think he’s really going to care about how we treated our neighbor. There are always people out there who need help. I’ve been asked if I think Christmas is hypocritical in that people treat others so badly for the other 364 days of the year. But the problem is not Christmas. The problem lies in how we treat people the remainder of the year. There’s just something inspiring about Christmas. For one day a year, people just seem to “get it.”

While perhaps not everyone needs to go to a rock concert to catch this vision of treating each other as Jesus would have us treat them, the time has come to “get it” for the rest of the year. In the church, we ought to be most patient with each other, and willing to surrender our assumptions for the good of the body and to the will of God who values all and reaches out to all in different ways and times. This vision of God’s kingdom and Christ’s message of peace we of all people ought to get.

For those of you who want to both get it and rock on, I salute you with the following:

Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year!

December 23 is the 204^th birthday of the great prophet of the restoration movement, Joseph Smith, Jr. Perhaps it is unfortunate that his birthday is so close to Christmas. One almost feels a bit sacrilegious thinking about Joseph at a time when we remember the birth of Jesus. Nonetheless, if we affirm that God is present and at work with many different peoples (and indeed, I would say, at work with many different religions), we also need to do the hard work of thinking about how God has been at work with us. Appreciating the truths that others have should lead us back into a conversation about why we are true. And that leads us back to Joseph Smith.

What really got me to thinking about this was reading an edited volume Joseph Smith, Jr.: Reappraisals after Two Centuries. I highly recommend this volume. Some of the essays are brilliant, while others, well, leave much to be desired. Nonetheless, several essayists offered reappraisals of Joseph Smith that I thought could be useful for Community of Christ members. And Joseph needs some serious reclamation by members of our tradition. We need to move beyond the stage of adolescent critique that we’ve been stuck in for the last few decades (that stage where we find out that our spiritual parents were not perfect and we act a lot like judgmental teenagers after this revelation) to a more mature appreciation for our ancestors. And Joseph has shaped us in too many ways for us to ignore him.

So, how has Joseph shaped us positively? First, we can acknowledge Joseph as an agent who gave us sacraments whereby we have experienced God’s grace and healing for generations. In the Community of Christ, we have eight sacraments—communion, baptism, confirmation, the blessing of children, marriage, ordination, administration (or the laying on of hands for the sick), marriage, and our one unique sacrament, the evangelist’s blessing. To say that Joseph gave us the sacraments is kind of like saying that Franklin Roosevelt gave us social security. FDR certainly signed it into law and supported it, but it took countless people to pass the program and implement it. And there were other programs in other places of the world that were like social security. FDR did not invent the idea out of thin air. We can think of the sacraments in our church with a similar analogy. They developed long before Joseph’s time, were incorporated into our denomination sometimes directly by him, or sometimes out of previous habit by members. This is the case, for instance, with confirmation, a practice that members did before there was any official rationale for it. But it was Joseph Smith who signed the sacraments into law, if you will, by giving us sections in the Doctrine and Covenants talking about them—words that have helped guide generations of people as to how we express God’s grace through ritual means.

Second, Joseph provided a corrective to some more extreme Protestant assertions that all that mattered was the spirit, not the body or the world. Joseph really got something right when he talked about the gospel of the kingdom being about this world. We call that concept Zion, and at its best, it gives us present resources to talk about this world as sacred. We can’t call Joseph Smith an environmentalist, since that term is anachronistic when applied to someone in the early nineteenth century. But we can appreciate him as one who sees place, space, and bodies as sacred. Listen to Joseph’s rendition of Enoch’s vision in Genesis. At one point, Genesis 7:55-56 in the Inspired Version, the text reads as follows: “And it came to pass, that Enoch looked upon the earth, and he heard a voice from the bowels thereof, saying, Woe! woe! is me, the mother of men! I am pained, I am weary, because of the wickedness of my children! When shall I rest, and be cleansed from the filthiness which has gone forth out of me? When will my Creator sanctify me, that I may rest, and righteousness for a season abide upon my face? And when Enoch heard the earth mourn, he wept, and cried unto the Lord, saying, O Lord, wilt thou not have compassion upon the earth? wilt thou not bless the children of Noah?”

The earth in these verses is groaning—in need of redemption. Thoughtfully (perhaps creatively) interpreted, we have some resources in our own older tradition to talk about creation care, right here. I can’t fully address this last point here—it is for another post and another person who has a background in environmental theology. Nonetheless, I just wanted to lift up the possibility that we have sacred texts from Joseph Smith that can help us express our love and care for God’s creation. There are other points that I could list here (such as Joseph’s role in creating our Community of Christ concept of temple space), but all posts must have an end.

So, how do you celebrate Joseph Smith as a spiritual parent? For you personally, why is he worth remembering?

Thought a Christmas themed post might be appropriate this time of year.  Many people, it seems, wonder how the story of Christ’s birth would be different if it happened today.  Some write their thoughts.  I’ve heard a few different versions of how things might go, posted below is one person’s take.  (I didn’t write this, merely reprinting it)

INFANT DISCOVERED IN BARN, CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES LAUNCH PROBE
Nazareth Carpenter Being Held On Charges Involving Underage Mother

Bethlehem, Judea – Authorities were today alerted by a concerned citizen who noticed a family living in a barn. Upon arrival, Family Protective Service personnel, accompanied by police, took into protective care an infant child named Jesus, who had been wrapped in strips of cloth and placed in a feeding trough by his 14-year old mother, Mary of Nazareth.

During the confrontation, a man identified as Joseph, also of Nazareth, attempted to stop the social workers. Joseph, aided by several local shepherds and some unidentified foreigners, tried to forestall efforts to take the child, but were restrained by the police.

Also being held for questioning are three foreigners who allege to be wise men from an eastern country. The INS and Homeland Security officials are seeking information about these who may be in the country illegally. A source with the INS states that they had no passports, but were in possession of gold and other possibly illegal substances. They resisted arrest saying that they had been warned by God to avoid officials in Jerusalem and to return quickly to their own country. The chemical substances in their possession will be tested.

The owner of the barn is also being held for questioning. The manager of Bethlehem Inn faces possible revocation of his license for violating health and safety regulations by allowing people to stay in the stable. Civil authorities are also investigating the zoning violations involved in maintaining livestock in a commercially-zoned district.

The location of the minor child will not be released, and the prospect for a quick resolution to this case is doubtful. Asked about when Jesus would be returned to his mother, a Child Protective Service spokesperson said, “The father is middle-aged and the mother definitely underage. We are checking with officials in Nazareth to determine what their legal relationship is.

Joseph has admitted taking Mary from her home in Nazareth because of a census requirement. However, because she was obviously pregnant when they left, investigators are looking into other reasons for their departure. Joseph is being held without bond on charges of molestation, kidnapping, child endangerment, and statutory rape.

Mary was taken to the Bethlehem General Hospital where she is being examined by doctors. Charges may also be filed against her for endangerment. She will also undergo psychiatric evaluation because of her claim that she is a virgin and that the child is from God.

The director of the psychiatric wing said, “I don’t profess to have the right to tell people what to believe, but when their beliefs adversely affect the safety and well-being of others – in this case her child – we must consider her a danger to others. The unidentified drugs at the scene didn’t help her case, but I’m confidant that with the proper therapy regiment we can get her back on her feet.”

A spokesperson for the governor’s office said, “Who knows what was going through their heads? But regardless, their treatment of the child was inexcusable, and the involvement of these others frightening. There is much we don’t know about this case, but for the sake of the child and the public, you can be assured that we will pursue this matter to the end.”

Some aspects of the above story you probably don’t agree with, whether historically or in the retelling, but regardless I thought it an entertaining read.  Enjoy this holiday season however you may be celebrating.

Merry Christmas!

I’ve been working around the clock the past two weeks with Barb Walden and David Howlett to create a new, brief, illustrated history of the church. We want to have the book published in time for the sesquicentennial of the Reorganization next year, so time is tight.

Our goal has been to tell the church’s history vividly, using the graphic-intensive format we created for last year’s illustrated history of the Kirtland Temple. The new book will be 74 pages long. Writing a 74-page book doesn’t initially seem like that big a deal, but some times it can be harder to write a short book than a long book.

For one thing, when writing an introduction designed for both church members and a general audience, you can’t just jump right into church jargon — you have to introduce and explain every word as you go. Take the statement, “the Temple was ultimately built on part of the original 63 acres that Bishop Edward Partridge purchased for the planned city of Zion.” There’s a lot of things that have to be introduced to make that statement. Not only who was Partridge, what’s a temple, what’s meant by Zion, but also, what’s a bishop?

The next big challenge was constructing a new historical narrative. Our historians community has done a great job deconstructing church history, but as we’ve challenged folklore, we haven’t always done a great job replacing it with an informed story that is inspiring. For me, that’s a shame, because I think the informed story has the potential to be infinitely more inspiring than the old folk tales.

So a lot of thought has gone into it, and I’m pretty proud of the results so far. I’m including here a sneak-peek at some of the 2-page spreads:

The book will be available next year from John Whitmer Books (and on Amazon), debuting at the Restoration Studies Symposium. I can’t wait!

Lately, Emma Smith has become quite the popular figure in Mormon history circles. I’m offering some of my thoughts about Emma, her legacy, and our modern-day treatment of her story.

During my time working at the Joseph Smith Historic Site in Nauvoo, Illinois, I’ve seen many people pick up a certain postcard depicting Emma Smith. They gaze at her photograph, the one with the embroidered shawl around her shoulders and her simple gold-plated necklace around her neck, and they say, “She just looks so tired. She had such a hard life, I can’t even imagine.” Her right eye droops and her mouth is turned down. She may look sad to modern eyes.

But Emma was in her 60s when that photograph was taken, and besides, people didn’t smile for photos back then. Back then, most women lost half of the children they bore; back then, settlers of all types, of all nationalities, all across the fledgling United States, eked out a living from the rough, stony ground and disease-ridden swamps.

Emma was no different from any of these. She might have simply been one more of those thousands of individuals whose names and stories blur together to form our collective understanding of  “the settlers.” No different, other than she was married to Joseph Smith. A decision made against the wishes of her father, back in the eastern United States, in the years of her youth, became a decision that forever solidified Emma’s name as a permanent fixture in the history books. Emma Hale became Emma, the wife of Joseph, the “Elect Lady,” and later, even after she remarried Lewis Bidamon, Emma was known as the Widow Smith.

That decision catapulted Emma into a life of criticisms and judgments, intrusions into her life, pointed questions about polygamy, and endless comparisons to her first husband’s beliefs and church teachings. It also ensured that stories about her benevolent spirit, wit, tireless work ethic, and independence would be preserved, and for this we are truly lucky.

Today, I’m not offering a historical analysis of Emma’s life—I’ll leave that to the academics and historians.  Biographical details, quotes, and facts about Emma’s life are already extensively documented in a variety of sources. I’ve read these sources and have done some thinking about Emma, but, I have to confess, I’m hesitant to write an essay on Emma Smith.

Recently, there has been a lot of attention given to Emma. There have been scholarly articles and papers at history conferences, film interpretations of her life, conversations on blogs and virtual threads, and of course, this panel. People talk about her faults and merits, some sympathize with her and others judge her.

As a guide walking visitors of many religious backgrounds through Joseph and Emma’s Nauvoo homes, I have been exposed to many of these perspectives on Emma. Some visitors speak about Emma with respect and sympathy underlined with a sense of pity for a woman who somehow made the wrong decision to stay in Nauvoo and remarry. Some see Emma as the ultimate model of justice, faithfulness, and compassion. Some wonder how in the world Emma put up with Joseph and his antics.

It’s tempting to idealize Emma Smith, however we may understand her character. But I don’t think it’s as simple as that.

How can we pretend to know a person, to make a judgment on his or her personality, by reading scraps of business transactions or one side of a conversation, by considering insults and criticisms hurled from a thousand miles away by former acquaintances, or by descriptions of how the cow is doing or how the garden grows? We see parts of Emma’s personality emerge through stories like the time when Lewis repeatedly forgot to fix the old stairs to the cellar so that Emma could safely carry the milk down and Emma “gently” reminded him by throwing that milk down there, or when Joseph brought some political candidates home for dinner without warning Emma. She scrambled a meal together and served some fried bread for dessert. The guests complimented Emma on her dessert and asked what she called it. “Candidates,” she replied. “Why?” they asked. Emma explained: “Because they are puffed up and full of hot air!”

What do we know from these glimpses into Emma’s life?

We know that she constantly took in boarders, friends, and children of all ages, providing room and board and love and care. In 1844, Emma took the time to sit down and thoughtfully compose what she called “these desires of my heart.” “I particularly desire wisdom to bring up all the children that are, or may be committed to my charge, in such a manner that they will be useful ornaments in the Kingdom of God, and in a coming day rise up and call me blessed.” She always left room for one more in her house. In their biography, Mormon Enigma, authors Linda Newell and Valeen Avery tell the story of how a neighborhood boy fell into the river near Emma’s house. She invited him in, dried him off, and offered cookies to him and his friends. After that, it seemed that quite a few boys “accidentally” fell into the river.

We know that Emma was intelligent. She routinely managed financial decisions and business matters. After Joseph’s death, Emma was left with a crushing debt and was forced to navigate the complicated world of legal claims to lands and properties and competing interests from all sides. She ensured that her children received an education. People described her as well-spoken.

We know that she loved her family. She offered them shelter when they had none. She cared for her mother-in-law, Lucy Mack Smith, and her son, Frederick as their health was failing.

She loved lilacs and damson plums. She sang. She made a “most excellent salve” with elder bark, camphor, and mutton tallow.

She struggled with polygamy.

But what do we really know from these glimpses into Emma’s life? A woman emerges who was loyal, yet also rebellious. She was kind sometimes, and stern sometimes. She changed her mind. She was a trusted confidante to Joseph but also an outsider. She was a questioner and an obedient, model woman of the church. She was faithful yet wasn’t afraid to speak her mind. Her life was full of opposites.

She was human.

So that’s why I’m hesitant to write about Emma Smith. I don’t want to idealize her as the perfect church wife, always supportive to her husband; I don’t want to label Emma as a behind-the-scenes resistance fighter. I don’t want to try to explain her decisions or rationalize her actions. I believe that her life, like any life, was complex and full of hypocrisies, full of weaknesses and strengths.

Let’s offer Emma the peace that she did not have during her life; let’s spare her from visitors knocking on her door with pre-conceived notions of how she should behave and speak. Let’s shield her from curious passersby just wanting to get a look at the woman who was once married to the prophet Joe Smith. Let’s refrain from interviews about polygamy and her personal relationships.

Let’s allow Emma to simply settle down in Nauvoo, to write about mundane things like the grape crop or the neighbor getting married, to raise and support her family the best she knew how and to live out an honest, Christian life on the banks of the Mississippi River.