Exponent II's Blog, page 70

Come Follow Me: 2 Nephi 31-33 “This is the Way”

Let’s be honest here, by the time you reach these last three chapters of 2 Nephi you are probably just rushing to get it over with. The exciting action of 1 Nephi is long gone. There aren’t any plates to obtain or boats to build. 2 Nephi is a bunch of sermons and a whole lot of passages from Isaiah. It’s easy to just power through these chapters to get to the finish line. 

Can I ask you to slow down? This isn’t a race. And these chapters aren’t a barren wasteland. I want to point out some interesting landmarks that you can stop and admire as you finish reading 2 Nephi. 

As always I like to start my lesson plans out with some quick questions to get us oriented.

Who wrote this? Nephi is the author of Chapters 31-33 of 2 Nephi. Which you might think is pretty obvious, it’s in 2 Nephi after all. But 2 Nephi has multiple authors and quotations. Nephi spends the first part of the book quoting his father Lehi’s final address to the family. Many of the chapters are the teachings of Nephi’s brother Jacob. And of course 2 Nephi is famous for all those long chapters from Isaiah. Nephi’s own words and narration are only found in half of chapter 4, all of chapters 5, 25, 26, 28, 29, 30, and 31-33 which we are studying in this lesson plan.

When was this written? The notes in the Book of Mormon say that this time period was probably between 559 and 545 BC. More importantly this was towards the end of Nephi’s life. Chapters 31-33 are separated from chapter 30 by an unknown period of time. Chapter 30 ended with Nephi saying, “I make an end of my sayings.” So that designated the end of that particular speech or teachings. He is now teaching us something new after pausing for a while. 

Where was Nephi when he wrote it? Nephi is writing this from the Land of Nephi (also referred to as Lehi-Nephi in other parts of the Book of Mormon.) Nephi has traveled a great deal since he was a young man. He started his life in Jerusalem and then crossed a wilderness and an ocean. Even after his family arrived in the promised land he did not stay put. He was forced to flee from his brothers after the death of his father. He is writing this in the land that he and his followers fled to.  

Who is mentioned in the text? There is not a lot of story in this part of the Book of Mormon. There are a lot of teachings here, but not a lot of action or characters. Theologically you can look for each member of the Godhead in the text. God the Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost are each mentioned multiple times. 

Why did Nephi write this? These are the last words that we will read from Nephi. He wants to teach some plain truths of the Gospel. He says that has a “few words which [he] must speak concerning the doctrine of Christ.” These are important enough that he wants to make sure we know about them before he finishes his records. 

* * *

If you are just glancing over these chapters you might think, “Oh these are the chapters where Nephi talks about baptism.” or “This is where Nephi says that angels speak by the power of the Holy Ghost.” You are right. And there is so much more. I want to point out 5 new things that I noticed while going over these chapters multiple times. Some of these were things I noticed on my own, but I was also helped out a lot by the Annotated Book of Mormon. I’ll try to give credit to things that I would not have noticed without the helpful notes in that book.

Here are 5 Things to notice in 2 Nephi Chapters 31-33

1. Plain descriptions of Jesus

Sometimes I wish there was a sound effect that played every time there was unique doctrine in the Book of Mormon. As members of the church we are so used to the teachings of the Book of Mormon that we don’t realize how unique some of the things in the book really are. 

If there was such a sound effect it would be going off constantly over these three chapters. The biggest reason is that it is very unique to have such a clear description of Christ some 500+ years before Christ’s birth. Yes, the Bible does have prophecies and revelation about Christ in the Old Testament. But they are not nearly as clear as it is in the Book of Mormon. 

Here at the end of 2nd Nephi we get 3 chapters full of clear talk about Jesus. Maybe this is what Nephi was saying when he said his soul delighted in plainness (2 Nephi 31:2) 

Here are a few of those plain things:

We read of His baptism in 2 Nephi 31:4-8.We hear His words directly to Nephi in 31:12 and 14. We learn how to follow Him by following His example to be baptized, receive the Holy Ghost, and endure to the end. Even the fact that Nephi uses the name Jesus is very unique. 

How is your testimony and understanding of Jesus strengthened by these clear teachings about Jesus?

2. God the Father speaks directly to Nephi

In Chapter 31 verses 11, 15, and 20 there are direct words from God the Father. This is unique in scripture. Usually direct quotes come from “The LORD” or “The Lord God”  both of which LDS teachings generally attribute to Jesus Christ. 

It is very rare to see phrases like what we see in 2 Nephi 11 where we read, “And the Father said, “Repent ye, repent ye, and be baptized in the name of my Beloved Son.” In the Book of Mormon, God the Father only speaks in this chapter of 2 Nephi and again in 3 Nephi 11:7. 

Take a moment to read over verses 11, 15, and 20 and think about how the impact of these verses changes when you realize this is God the Father speaking directly. 

3. Role of the Holy Ghost

Here’s a pop quiz for you. What are the roles of the Holy Ghost?

In church you will often hear stories about how the Holy Ghost warned someone of danger. Or helped them find something that was lost. Or guided them through a difficult decision. 

These are all roles of the Holy Ghost and I’m not disputing the validity of these things. But we often forget that the Holy Ghost isn’t some glorified compass. He is a member of the Godhead. His primary role is to testify of Christ.

In 2 Nephi 31 verse 13 Nephi explains that the Holy Ghost comes after you have repented and witnessed through baptism that you are willing to take on the name of Christ. Receiving the Holy Ghost is linked with a baptism of fire in verses 13 and 17. 

In verse 17 we read “then cometh a remission of your sins by fire and by the Holy Ghost.”

This verse in the Annotated Book of Mormon has this note written by Grant Hardy, “In the Book of Mormon baptism does not wash away sins (except at Alma 7:14) rather, it functions as a witness of covenant making . . . The actual remission of sins comes by fire and by the Holy Ghost.”

How can this expanded view of the role of the Holy Ghost help you in your relationship with the Holy Ghost and other members of the Godhead?

4. More about the Holy Ghost

Nephi teaches about another role in Chapter 32 verse 5. Here it says that the Holy Ghost will “show unto you all things what ye should do.”  Oftentimes we look at this phrase in a vacuum and assume that it means the Holy Ghost will help us solve every question we have. But let’s look at this verse a little closer. 

Chapter 32 starts with Nephi saying, “I suppose that you ponder in your hearts concerning that which ye should do after ye have entered in by the way.”

Then he admonishes the people to remember that they have the Holy Ghost and that the Holy Ghost will help them speak with the tongues of angels. And then he reminds them to feast upon the words of Christ because “the words of Christ will tell you all things that ye should do.”

Then he talks about being brought into the light and then says, “if you will enter in by the way, and receive the Holy Ghost, it will show unto you all things what ye should do.”

Nephi isn’t telling us that the Holy Ghost will help us know how to solve every question about every aspect of our lives. He is telling us that the Holy Ghost and the words of Christ will help illuminate our lives as we follow “the way.” The way means living a Christian life by following Jesus. So the Holy Ghost will help us know what to do as we follow Jesus.

How does the Holy Ghost help you as you follow Jesus?

(And if you are still wondering what exactly you should do, you are not alone. Nephi suspected we still wouldn’t know what to do in 30:8 where he says, “I perceive that ye ponder still in your hearts.” His advice is to pray. So that’s a good place to start.)

5. Nephi says he is redeemed. 

In the Annotated Book of Mormon, Grant Hardy has written beautiful and informative introductions to each book within the book. That edition is worth owning just for those introductions. The intro to 2 Nephi was very helpful to me as I prepared this lesson plan. I want to highlight one of the things he pointed out in that introduction. 

In Chapter 33 verse 6 Nephi says, “I glory in my Jesus, for he hath redeemed my soul from hell.”

If you are like me you read that and think, “of course Nephi believes that. Nephi has been so full of faith his whole life. He got the plates, he built a boat, he’s been leading his people for decades. He likes to read Isaiah. This is just more of the same.”

But is it? Is this really more of the same?

I was surprised when I read Grant Hardy’s notes and discovered that this is the first place that Nephi says that he is redeemed. 

Lehi says that he was redeemed in 2 Nephi 1:15. Lehi tells Jacob that he is redeemed in 2 Nephi 2:3. But it takes Nephi until near the end of his own life to write the words about himself. Maybe he believed it earlier and just didn’t write it, but maybe it took his whole life to actually believe that he had been redeemed. 

I like the idea of this version of Nephi who isn’t quite so self assured as we always make him out to be. It makes him a little more relatable. 

Can you say that you are redeemed? How does it help you to know that even Nephi might have struggled to feel that he was redeemed?

* * *

These are just a few of the things that you can learn from 2 Nephi 31-33. I hope that I’ve helped point out enough interesting landmarks in the text that you will want to visit it yourself. There are many more interesting things to discover. I suggest taking along a good guide like The Annotated Book of Mormon or The Book of Mormon for the Least of These series. (The Book of Mormon for the Least of These was also helpful as I read this chapter, but I didn’t feel drawn to talk about any of the things from that book in this lesson plan. I hope to cite that resource in a future lesson plan.)

What has stood out to you as you’ve read 2 Nephi 31-33?

Photo by Vlad Bagacian on Unsplash

From Starving to Feasting – 5 Scripture Study Tips to Help Feed Your Soul

I’m working on the Exponent lesson plan for 2 Nephi 30-33. When I plan these lessons I use the Come Follow Me manual to make sure I’m not missing anything. The manual has a section about how we should feast on the words of Christ. (2 Nephi 32:3) It asks us to consider how to do that. There’s a side blurb with a few quick examples of how to study the scriptures better. These examples include praying for inspiration before studying or looking up words. I find these examples to be rather incomplete. 

I guess we are either supposed to just inherently know how to feast or maybe the curriculum writers assume we were already taught and we’ve just slacked off lately.

What if we don’t know how to feast? Or we don’t even know where to find the food? Or we can’t tell if something is healthy or not?

I know those feelings. Back in 2021 I was starving spiritually. Covid restrictions combined with the Doctrine and Covenants curriculum for the year added up to a baren spiritual pantry to draw from.

Thankfully, I found a Bible Study group that fed my soul. The group also gave me skills to feed my soul myself. (You can read more about that journey in this post from a few months ago.)

I want to share some of the things I’ve learned that have helped me know how to feast on the words of Christ. 

Many of these practices are from the book Women of the Word by Jen Wilken. My Bible Study leader introduced me to that book a few years ago. It’s full of practical ideas for how to read and understand scripture. I highly recommend the book, and its accompanying podcast. 

Here are five practices that have helped me learn how to study my scriptures in an effective and meaningful way.

1. Give yourself permission to study what you want – If the Come Follow Me schedule isn’t working for you, then feel free to abandon it for something that will work. If you want to spend the rest of the year studying 2 Nephi then go ahead and do that. If you want to skip ahead to Helaman you can do that. If you want to give up on the Book of Mormon for the year and go back to the New Testament – you can do that too. 

To me, the pacing of the Come Follow Me curriculum makes it hard to feast on scripture. It feels more like a food tour where you stop and get little samples, but you never get to sit down to experience a full meal. You just keep moving to the next little nibble. If that isn’t working for you it’s okay to get off the quick tour and prepare a 7 course meal for yourself. 

I’m following the Come Follow Me schedule with my family, but personally I’m doing a deep dive into Mosiah this year. I’m studying one chapter a week with a few breaks built into the schedule. I’ve loved studying all of the theology in King Benjamin’s speech and I’m looking forward to discovering treasures throughout the rest of the book. 

2. Read the passage several times over several days – I’m really good at zoning out while reading scriptures. I think it’s because my parents insisted on family scripture study every morning at 6 am. Back then my brain often kicked into, “just get through this and it will be over soon” mode. 

As an adult that’s what my brain still wants to do as soon as I start reading the scriptures. I’ll read whole passages and then be like “wait, what did I just read?” So it’s helpful to go over the passage several times. The goal here isn’t speed. It’s understanding. I want to read the passage often so I can become familiar with it. Patterns start emerging. I’ll notice repeated words or phrases. I’ll realize how the passage ties into other parts of scripture. It becomes familiar instead of just a block of boring text.

As I’ve prepared the lesson plan for 2 Nephi 31-33 I’ve read over those chapters at least seven times over the course of three weeks. On the seventh time through I was suddenly like, “Oh my goodness, God the Father is speaking directing to Nephi right here.” I hadn’t noticed that any of the other times I’d ever read 2 Nephi 30. 

3. Read from a different translation – I’ve found it very helpful to read from different translations of the Bible. Reading the Old Testament without all those thees, thous, and thines helped me understand what was being said so much better.

Unfortunately, we don’t have a translation of the Book of Mormon into more modern language, but there are a number of different study editions being published. I recently splurged and bought the Annotated Book of Mormon from Oxford University Press. This book is amazing for many reasons. One of the things I like is that quotes and poetry are laid out differently from the narration. Just seeing the text in a different layout has helped me focus on the words better.

4. Read commentaries – Thanks to all those early morning scripture reading sessions with my parents when I was a kid I’m well versed in what happens in the Book of Mormon. But sometimes the deeper level of what it all means escapes me. That’s why I’m glad that we have so many commentaries available these days. 

Here are a few resources that have been helpful to me. This is not an exhaustive list so feel free to leave more suggestions in the comments. 

Brief Theological Introduction Series by the Maxwell Institute. Each book of The Book of Mormon has a small book dedicated to exploring the theology. I purchased the one on Mosiah to help with my study and it has been a valuable resource.Book of Mormon for the Least of These Series by Fatimah Sallah and Margaret Olsen Hemming. These boos look at the Book of Mormon through a social justice lens. These books have been helpful to get me to think about common phrases and passages from different angles. Annotated Book of Mormon – In addition to the helpful text layout, this book has many notes that help explain parts of the text. I also like the introductions to each book.

5. Applying the scriptures to your life as a last step – In our church we are so good at running to “what does this scripture mean to me” as soon as we are done reading. Half of the suggestions in the Come Follow Me manual encourage you to think about what you can do in your life to follow the scriptures that you read in that week’s lesson.

However, my Bible Study leader introduced me to a different concept this year when we started studying Philippians. She explained that as we read the text we should go through four steps. 

A. Read the text and examine what it says. (Sounds simple, but how many Sunday School lessons have you sat through that have only paraphrased the scriptures?)B. Examine what this would have meant to the original audience. What was the context? It’s helpful to ask simple questions like, Who wrote this? Who were they speaking to? Why did they write it? When did they write it? C. Examine how the atonement impacts the message. Is this something you are expected to do on your own? How can the atonement help you with what the text is saying?D. And then finally you can examine how this applies to your life today.

I’ve found it helpful to really take the time to examine scriptures through this framework. Examining the context the scripture was given in and then looking at it with the atonement in mind will often completely change how I think the scripture should be applied to my life.

* * *

I hope these suggestions help you as you are learning to feast on the words of Christ. There really is a whole banquet available to us. It takes time and work to access it, but I promise it is there.

I’m always looking for more ideas for how improve my scripture study. So please leave a comment with things that have been helpful to you as you have learned how to feast on the scriptures.

Photo by Nina Luong on Unsplash

Life in the UK

This piece was commissioned as part of the In Our Own Words series, which seeks to share the voices and experiences of marginalized individuals. You can find all of the pieces in this series here.

By E Y McMurray

Dear friend,

I hope this missive finds you well. Having recently passed the “Life in the UK” test to achieve Indefinite Leave to Remain here in the United Kingdom, I hereby offer a brief primer on said life based on my personal experience, which will then devolve into some editorialising.

I moved from Cambridge (Massachusetts, 02139, United States) to Cambridge (Cambridgeshire, CB3 9JH, England, United Kingdom) a bit over five years ago. My husband had assumed a lectureship at the University of Cambridge, where the recompense was primarily in prestige and assumed tenure.

In matters of language and nomenclature, having already immigrated and assimilated to the US from Korea, I had assumed that without a new language to learn, the linguistic adjustment would be minimal, but I was mistaken. I regretfully forego an exhaustive list here, but there are many TikToks and reddit threads on the subject if you desire a more comprehensive guide. The absolute basics are as follows:

– Do not greet a non-familiar person by saying, “Hi, how are you?” This is derived from a distinctly American tendency toward extraversion and is too familiar and direct. If you absolutely need a substitution, try the slightly middle-brow “Hiya” which doesn’t require a direct answer.

– If a person, no matter the level of your acquaintance, does not acknowledge you in close proximity, it’s best to allow them to ignore you rather than trying to greet them in increasingly high decibels on the off chance they didn’t hear or notice you. This is called “blanking.”

– If you need the facilities, ask for the “toilet” or the “loo,” not the “bathroom” (unless you need to take an actual bath) or “restroom” (just not a thing here).

– It’s courgette, aubergine, rocket, and coriander (not zucchini, eggplant, arugula, and cilantro). And jumper, trousers, waistcoat, and nappy (not sweater, pants, vest, and diaper).

– When writing, it’s tyre, kerb, aluminium (not tire, curb, aluminum), and generally substitute s’s for z’s and add u’s when in doubt; i.e., baptise instead of baptize, mould and armour rather than mold and armor. Periods (.) are referred to as “full stops” and generally left out of shortened titles and names except for very specific exceptions; i.e., “Mr” and “Dr” and “UK” but also “Prof.”

– There’s no such thing as a blanket British accent. Our first visit back to the US was greeted by a flurry of enquiries about whether anyone in our family had acquired one. After a few months here, anyone with a nominally good ear will be able to hear that a plethora of British accents abound, and are often a social marker about hometown, class, generation, and education. It feels more than a bit absurd to adopt a regional and class identity, so other than a bit of code-switching for intelligibility, we mostly maintain our original New England accents.

Shifting a bit to history and culture, the aforementioned Life in the UK test requires the learning of a history so vast and narratively purposeful that it will make the British Empire and its sequelae feel inevitable and also, frankly, God-ordained. As previously mentioned, I naturalised as a US citizen and don’t remember feeling so thoroughly indoctrinated at that juncture, though I do remember being instructed at my ceremony to wave a small American flag at Faneuil Hall while a fully uniformed member of Massachusetts law enforcement sang patriotic songs in an operatic style that was burned into my aural memory. The LIUK test details a perfect progression of the UK from the Stone Age to present day, a development that never required a revolution or even a written constitution, powered through by will (be it human or God’s), precedent, and tradition.

It then follows that it should be no wonder that this little island (here I write primarily about England and largely excuse Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland as mostly being enveloped brought along for the ride) has had such an outsized influence on the world. (You can only imagine my shock at discovering the word I used to describe my jacket when I was five years old in Korea (잠바) was derived from the British English word “jumper” by way of Japan.) I won’t regale you with the minutiae here, but suffice it to say that—however enthusiastically one ascribes to this particular narrative world view, as well as its morality or goodness—it grew in me a particular sense of connection to humanity, history, and our collective connection to each other. I suppose a bit of jingoism made its way into my heart as well, primed by my tribal attachments to first Korea, and then the US. There seems to be room in my soul to love all my homelands.

With such a storied and undeniable history, one can excuse the rather strong sense of entitled adherence to conservatism (small c) found here. Whilst our affiliation with the esteemed Oxbridge institutions (Cambridge founded 1209, Oxbridge in 1096) requires a knowledge of port, Latin, gong-ringing, gown-wearing, and dress codes such as “lounge suit equivalent,” there is also a class-blind code of social conduct that we’ve learnt quite by trial and error. Once when my then 8-year-old daughter and I were headed home from an outdoor summer festival full of inebriated half-naked revellers and still likely perfumed with pot smoke, we popped into a local shop to buy a bottle of water to top up before cycling home. The man in dirt-mottled workwear in front of us in queue for the tills dropped some paper onto the ground, and though I suspected he might have done it on purpose, I informed him that he had dropped something. He forcefully told me that in this country, there are people hired to pick that up, and then, turning to my daughter, said that I was a peasant who wore hats indoors (I was still wearing my sunhat) and that I should go back to where I came from if I didn’t understand how things work here.

At my work as a biocurator in a group investigating genetic diseases, a professor told me that both the consanguinous populations of Birmingham and mixed race children of too-different ethnicities (such as my daughter) were rather unnatural and have more inborn problems than native white children. A stranger approached me at a Christmas fair where children were colouring festive drawings and asked if my daughter’s pencil grip was so disastrous because in my Chinese culture (I’m Korean), we only use paintbrushes. A neighbour’s teen and her friend followed me down the street and chanted in a sing-song voice, “Ching chong, ching chong, don’t eat my dog.”

These experiences were painful and shocking to be sure. I had been fortunate not to have encountered such blatant and negative reactions to my visible foreignness as an adult in New England, the Southwest, and the Midwest of the US. Here in Olde England, however, I found myself facing it head on with, well, my Asian face. I have wondered whether the era of Brexit (and indeed, world-wide movements toward right wing nationalism) was a factor, and conversely, whether very local factors figured in; wealthy Chinese investors and students have clashed culturally with the locals here in Cambridge, and I suppose I don’t look so different from oblivious tourists with money or students who don’t properly assimilate. Indeed, I’ve found myself questioning my own tribalism within my many identities, and try to couch my discomfort within broader contexts.

My religious identity not to be overlooked, when collecting my daughter from a playdate at a primary school classmate’s home, I saw that the mum had a copy of Educated by Tara Westover sitting on her counter. My interest piqued, I asked if she was reading it. I quickly disclosed that I was Mormon(-ish), and just as quickly she straightforwardly pronounced, “Oh, you know they don’t like Mormons here.” I was taken aback and can’t recall my immediate reply, but it was probably some sort of qualifying distancing of myself from that kind of extreme fringe Mormonism (though I don’t think aspects of the book were particularly outside of the mainstream). Later I wondered how I would or should have reacted had the mum said the same thing about any other group of which I’m part or not, such as Koreans, Black people, Muslims, etc. Perhaps this reaction is understandable given that the UK is at least nominally a Christian church led by the monarch who is also head of the Church of England. Our daughter was in fact rejected from a public school for not adhering to the appropriate Christian creeds as a member of the local LDS congregation. No concerns about separation of church and state here! National identity being tied to this specific line of Protestantism, it is no wonder that I’ve heard the simple buckle-hatted Pilgrims of my youth Thanksgivings be described (somewhat vehemently I might add) as “terrorists” by British friends.

Thus despite the popularity of American media here, it probably comes as no surprise that there is also more than a bit of condescension toward American culture. It probably helps that a surprising majority of actors in mainstream films are actually posh privately educated British actors (Tom Hiddleston, Benedict Cumberbatch, Eddie Redmayne, etc). And I’m no royalist (indeed, I suppose I am what is referred to as a republican here), but the unrelenting takedown of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry by the British tabloids (including my unfortunate favourite sensational rag, the Daily Mail) is a fascinating case study in comparison to Kate Middleton and Prince William. The upper lip is still firmly set stiff, and “never complain, never explain” is a virtue yet. When writing to his son who was then fighting in World War II, JRR Tolkien bemoaned a future in which the world would be infiltrated by “American sanitation, morale-pep, feminism.” Considering the opposites of these to be quintessential cores of British culture is a rather delightful exercise.

Lastly, just a quick mention about the cuisine. That aphorism that begins “Heaven is where the police are British” sums it up nicely. You can look it up. On the plus side, there is a near-obsession about fitness, and I wonder whether survival of the fittest has allowed the general population to whittle itself to a lean, wiry average that boasts incredible longevity, all while subsisting on a liquid diet seemingly comprised entirely of the forbidden liquids of the Word of Wisdom. Or perhaps we have been steered wrong by our puritanism after all!

I’m afraid I’ve carried on for much too long. As is likely obvious, I have mixed feelings and thoughts about approaching UK citizenship and swearing my allegiance to the King of England (what would our revolutionary forefathers think?). All the same, wading through the adjustments and lessons required by this new (Old) world, I find that it no longer feels like I’m a visitor here. I have grown quite fond of our damp little end-of-terrace across the high street from the village green, and indeed, it actually feels like I’m home, as I hope you too feel, wherever this day finds you.

Kind regards

Mrs E Y McMurray xx

Mrs McMurray is a Korean-born naturalised American citizen who currently resides in a village of Cambridge in the county of Cambridgeshire in East Anglia, East of England, in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. 

Religious Fervor and the Quest for Heritage or What I’ve Been Studying in the Book of Mormon This Year

My Book of Mormon study this year is centered on Fatimah Salleh and Margaret Olsen Hemming’s The Book of Mormon for the Least of These series and Americanist Approaches to The Book of Mormon edited by Elizabeth Fenton and Jered Hickman.   

I like to set aside a little time each Sunday to dip into an essay or a bite sized thought for reflection. Whether I go to church or not (we have chosen a messy middle with an intentional 50% attendance rate), the Sunday reading strategy is my way of striving with and reflecting on scripture, because Sunday School is very often improved with a book in hand.

January and February were swallowed up in one particular essay from Americanist Approaches to the Book of Mormon and so, since my neurodivergent brain hyper focused anyway, I offer some half-baked thoughts and welcome your insights.

Like most Mormons raised in the faith, I was taught the quintessential story of religious fervor sweeping the country and inspiring Joseph Smith to ask a world shifting question. It’s the one connective point in history where we freely admit or even emphasize that larger world influences had a hand in the shaping of our early church.

Can I tell you then how my brain expanded and exploded when I read Jillian Sayre’s “Books Buried in the Earth: The Book of Mormon, Revelation, and the Humic Foundations of the Nation?” As it turns out, in addition to that well known religious fervor, Americans of the time were also hungry for national origin stories, driven to “identify themselves as more than simply displaced Europeans, but the recorded history of their colonial experience stood in the way of this project” (Sayre 29).

The Book of Mormon, as another story of a family leaving their homeland and finding their heritage in a new land, takes on new meaning with this knowledge. It’s easy to see why the story would have appealed to immigrants living in an atmosphere not only of religious fervor, but a hunger for heritage and connection to the land.

But, of course, a hunger for an ancient heritage in America led those early “displaced Europeans” to look around and decide to appropriate a historical origin point on the American continent. Sayre gives as an example the mounds of Ohio, where white excavators and explorers constructed a narrative ascribing the mound building to an ancient white civilization destroyed by Native Americans (conveniently also setting up a reason to persecute the truly indigenous population and position them as the actual usurpers of the land).  

Sayre continues, “Like the burial mound narratives, The Book of Mormon presents its reader with familiar bodies but pushes this identification even further by making these bodies not only not Indian but white and not only advanced but Christian” (35).  

While I’m not interested in historicity of the Book of Mormon debates, I do want to sit with this act of appropriation, of stealing and subverting a heritage, of white people looking for a heritage and constructing a false narrative to get it. Given the complicated, often tragic, history of the church and indigenous peoples, teasing out the thread of historical national trends having some influence on the Book of Mormon’s inception seems like a small drop in a large bucket, but still I want to uplift this, yet another, moment where racial prejudice has wormed its way in. To say, yes, it’s here too.    

Sayre concludes her piece (read it – there’s so much more to chew on than I’m sharing here!) with a powerful statement:

“The perdurance of the voice of the dead, manifest in the material of the text, imagines the space of the reader for her, and her responsibility to that voice requires her to fulfill that promise laid out for her in the advance by the text, the land, her body” (39).

In this, the year of our Lord 2024, I am studying a religious text that has appropriation narratives baked into it, a narrative that, perhaps influenced by a larger national trend of historical appropriation, would have strongly appealed to early readers who felt drawn to Smith’s burgeoning movement, including my own ancestors. What is my responsibility to this text as a reader and a member of this sprawling, multi-branch faith tradition today? How should I let this text shape my identity as a white American of 2024, descendant of European immigrants, grappling with the impacts of racial prejudice?

I’m grateful for a wider understanding of the national trends that shaped Joseph Smith’s world view. While I don’t have any real answers, only questions, it feels right to complicate the simplistic religious fervor story with an understanding that a desire for ancient inheritances and attendant racial prejudices were also playing a role. It’s only then that we can do the hard work of deconstructing and reconstructing and laying some “voices of the dead” that have spoken too loudly for too long to rest for good.

Sayre, Jillian. “Books Buried in the Earth: The Book of Mormon, Revelation, and the Humic Foundations of the Nation.” Americanist Approaches to the Book of Mormon, edited by Elizabeth Fenton and Jared Hickman, Oxford University Press, 2019, pp. 21-44

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Guest Post: Honoring Music Contributed by Relief Society Sisters for the RS Anniversary

by M M

The Relief Society of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is celebrating its 182nd anniversary this year. As ward music leader, I am selecting hymns to honor the important contributions of members of the Relief Society to the church. I have cultivated a program that features text and/or music created by Latter-Day Saint women. I am also including brief biographical information about these incredible women to be printed with our program for that Sunday. It is important to know their names and acknowledge their stories.

The list of hymns is not comprehensive of all hymns composed by Latter-Day Saint women. Fortunately, our current hymn book features many songs by women. The hymns selected for this program span multiple generations, to amplify the connection between women of Relief Society throughout time. I acknowledge that there are a limited number of hymns featuring women of color in our hymn book, and I hope that future iterations of our hymns of worship will feature more diverse perspectives.

The following program will be part of the worship for my ward on March 17, 2024:

Opening Hymn: #33 “Our Mountain Home So Dear” features poetry by Emmeline B. Wells. She was the 5th president of the Relief Society. She also worked as an editor for the Women’s Exponent, which was a periodical created for Latter-Day Saint women to publish their important thoughts. She was friends with Susan B. Anthony and advocated for women’s right to vote. She also headed a church-run grain-saving program, which proved to be incredibly helpful during WWI.

Sacrament Hymn: #195 “How Great the Wisdom and the Love” uses text by Eliza R. Snow. Snow was the second president of the Relief Society, and she was also known as “Zion’s Poetess” for her powerful poetry. She re-established the Relief Society after the Saints moved to Utah, and she also helped organize the Young Ladies Mutual Improvement Association (predecessor to the modern Young Women program).

Intermediate Hymn #310 “A Key Was Turned in Latter-Days”(1) features both text and music by members of the Relief Society. Jan U. Pinborough wrote the music. She also contributed to the text of the hymn “This is the Christ.” Charlene A. Newell composed the music. She also composed songs in the children’s songbook like “The Commandments” and “He Died That We Might Live Again.” This hymn honors the power of the creation of the Relief Society. Of the Relief Society founding, Joseph Smith said, “I now turn the key to you in the name of God and this Society shall rejoice and knowledge and intelligence shall flow down from this time.”(2)

Closing Hymn #220 “Lord, I Would Follow Thee” utilizes text by Susan Evans McCloud. She acted as a docent at the Beehive House in Salt Lake City for multiple decades. In 2004, she was honored to receive the Reed Smoot Citizenship Awards Business Woman of the Year Award. She is a celebrated writer who has published novels and poetry and written scripts for television and film.

Should you like to celebrate Relief Society and women of faith in your ward or family, feel free to use the program I have created. If you feel inspired, I would love to know of other hymns that you would include.

(1) This hymn is generally only sung by women in the church. However, there is nothing musically in it that prevents men from singing it in their own octave. Furthermore, for the verse where the singers refer to one another as “sisters,” the men are given an opportunity to experience what women feel when they read “mankind” and “men” but are told that it refers to them as well.
(2) Joseph Smith, in Daughters in My Kingdom: The History and Work of Relief Society (2017), 14–15.

M M is a professionally-trained opera singer and voice teacher. She is passionate about poetry and cooking, and she lives in the Pacific Northwest with her wonderful husband and pet turtle.

 

Guest Post: Putting Down the Armor of God

by Julie

There is a bag in my closet. A burgundy bag with a hanging clip and cross body straps. Inside is a neatly folded white outfit that fit me a lifetime of faith ago. The knee high stockings neatly tucked in the shoes that have only ever been used on sacred floors. The lacy white top with long sleeves and a solid back layer. The white skirt that is long enough for me to trip over. Ceremonial clothing that made conversations from my various classes at BYU suddenly make more sense.

I don’t remember when I folded them. It might have been in Manti, when they did live sessions. It might have been Mount Timpanogos after going through a session when one of my sisters went through the temple before her mission. I don’t think I went to the temple much longer after that session. I didn’t have a chance to go to my next sister’s endowment session. My recommend had expired at that point, and I no longer felt comfortable answering the questions to retain it in the expected manner.

Since then I’ve added to the bag a collection of garments, underwear I used to hold sacred and now don’t quite know what to do with. I can’t quite bring myself to get rid of the bag. It’s been with me move after move, from the house I lived in with my roommate who came with me when I first went through the temple to now with my roommate and her friend with benefits. It takes up space but giving up this bag of clothes feels like giving up on everything I hold dear: my faith in a loving higher being, my values of loving and helping those around me, my love of rules and rituals.

I am the same woman who wore these pieces, this armor protecting me from the world. But I don’t fit them anymore. My shoulders are free and no longer sagging from the guilt. My knees are showing their scrapes and bruises. And somehow my struggles are less struggly now that I’ve given myself permission to keep only the things I want. I get to keep the heavenly parents and I get to make my own rules and rituals. But it’s still hard. Inside this bag are all the family weddings I can’t attend. The siblings going on missions I can’t attend a part of that ritual with. The nieces and nephews I’ll never get to do baptisms with. All the family dreams I’ve broken by being me. And so it stays there, in the back of the closet. Where I sometimes wonder if life would be easier if I just went back in with it.

Julie lives in Utah where she spends her spare time doing hand crafts while listening to audiobooks.

What’s new at Exponent II? We’re turning 50!

As the longest-running Mormon feminist publication — started in 1974 — we’re celebrating our 50th anniversary milestone all year long. Whether you’ve followed along for years or are newly connecting with Exponent II, we want to make sure you know about the new ways to get involved, as well as how we continue to grow our community and advance our mission. The best way to stay up to date as the year progresses is to subscribe to our monthly newsletter (sign-up here!). Our magazine is 100% reader-supported, so your subscription sustains this important work long-term.

Ways To Get InvolvedThe Winter 2024 issue of Exponent IIAs we continually adapt and improve the visitor experience, we encourage you to spend time with our website , which hosts our digital magazine experience, retreat info, and the blog — including the thousands of posts and comments since its founding in 2006. Every print subscription to Exponent II comes with a digital subscription, making it easy to share links to articles or to search our database for past articles. We’ve partnered with Brigham Young University to launch a free Exponent II archival database, where you can explore issues of Exponent II dating back to 1974.Drop by our free, bimonthly writing workshops . These are for experienced and new writers alike. Past topics have included writing op-eds, erasure poetry and conducting good interviews. Support our community funds , designed to support BIPOC content creators, artistic collaborations and needs-based scholarships. Attend our quarterly launch parties for each issue of Exponent II magazine. It’s like attending a poetry reading or a gallery debut, on Zoom. Hear from our many contributors in our place. Look for our annual retreat registration to open in June and the announcement of our keynote speaker in April.New Organizational Highlights

We’re also proud of the way we’ve continued to advance our mission to provides feminist forums for women and gender minorities across the Mormon spectrum to share their diverse life experiences in an atmosphere of trust and acceptance. This includes:

Launching our In Our Own Words series, which seeks to share the voices and experiences of marginalized individuals. You can find all of the pieces in this series here.Hiring a marketing director to expand our reach.Starting Exponent II: The Podcast, available wherever you listen.Funding honorariums to contributing magazine writers and artists for the first time since the magazine’s inception.Establishing an endowment fund, in addition to our Patreon account, to sustain long-term investments in our organizations.

Guest Post: Call for Confidential Oral History Interviewees for The Next Mormons Sequel

by Stephanie V. Griswold

Drs. Jana Riess and Benjamin Knoll are looking for people to interview for a sequel to The Next Mormons which was published in 2019 from Oxford University Press. This second book will also draw upon data from the Next Mormons Survey (NMS 2016, 2022, and 2023) but will focus attention primarily on a) people of all ages who have left the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, AND b) people who have experienced a faith transition but still consider themselves members of the Church.

We are seeking members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who are willing to share their personal stories of their faith journey and who continue to consider themselves members of the church despite any church doctrine or policies that may conflict with their moral compass. We are interested in how the decision to stay has affected their lives and families.

To qualify to be interviewed, individuals must:

Be residents of the United States who are at least 18 years of ageStill identify as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day SaintsHave experienced a faith transition that may have resulted in reduced activity in, and/or conflicted feelings about, the ChurchBe willing to have their stories be part of the book (even if they are not identifiable by name)

If this describes you and you are interested in being part of the qualitative interviews, please fill out this brief questionnaire by March 4, 2024:

Stephanie V. Griswold is a Ph.D. candidate at Claremont Graduate University and is a research assistant for the sequel to The Next Mormons.

Mixed Faith Marriage: Who’s In Charge?

This is part of a series of guest posts on the topic of mixed faith marriages (MFM) from a variety of mental health professionals, coaches, podcasters, counselors and regular readers offering advice from their own experiences. 

Guest post by Amy. Human Being. Mother of Two. Deep Thinker. Granddaughter of a Philosopher. (Main image by Smart on Unsplash)

Traditions, structures and gender assignments go out the window during a faith transition.

The “I’m in Charge” Paradigm 

What matters from my story is that I lost my faith in the existence of God, and so faith in God-related topics (anything one bears testimony of at church) was also lost as collateral fallout. At best, I hope for many things (including the existence of God and an afterlife) and try to make informed decisions based on (and limited by) that hope.

With God maybe/maybe not around to be in charge and have the final say in a lot of details, I was left in charge of myself as the judge & jury of decisions on trial and the change agent in how I lived my life.  To paraphrase Dennis E. Taylor, I was left to be the project manager, project janitor, and project go-for of my life (a serious “The Bob” fan here, not gonna lie). 

I’m the one with the greatest amount of skin in the decisions I make, not God. Funny enough, according to our theology (and my heritage), I had always been in charge of myself. So this should have felt like another Tuesday rather than a massive paradigm shift.

The first rule I came up with was, “God May Fail, but Charity Never Faileth”.  I chose over and over again to make charity the center of the conversation – I was charitable towards myself in not judging myself or making decisions prematurely.  I was as charitable to others as I could be, deliberately reaching for common ground and understanding that my apparent betrayal was a threat to their existence on some levels. I looked for opportunities to be a good human and serve others as a potential way to get to know God better (rather than the reverse situation of my commitment to others being the fruit of a commitment to God).  

We are cautioned to judge righteous judgment, but I no longer think we know what that means.  The older I get, the more righteous judgment looks like taking others at their word, that they are sharing a truth with me that has important information I should take literally.  Righteous judgment looks more like informed consent and there are larger areas of people’s lives where I am not called to make value judgements or get involved. Righteous judgment does not innately equal an across-the-board boundary enforcer.

“She’s In Charge” Paradigm Shift

For my spouse, “Who’s in Charge?” was the valid question.

The nature of my faith transition made it clear that in my perception, “God wasn’t in Charge” was the framework for a feature of my narrative, not a temporary bug. 

My husband had a previously unchallenged, unstated cultural assumption that as the presider he was in charge of me, as the head of our household [with the caveats that “Amy is bossy” and that Amy wouldn’t actually obey him just because, explicitly stated and re-stated as needed] . There was an unchallenged assumption that holding the Priesthood endowed him with increased decision-making accuracy that made him right in standoffs between him and me (except in the areas where of course because he was a “dumb male” to be pampered and tolerated for hardheadedness and stupidity [that aren’t clearly defined in real time]). 

In a sense, my husband married me because I was bossy and confident (and a nice-looking redhead).  He married me because I could be in charge of myself and take care of him (while also being presided over properly). NOTE: He is still around and I am still bossy and confident (mostly) after the post-faith transition.  I am now closer to a brunette than the redhead of past hair-dying days. I am also flirting with going all gray/silver, like an ageless wise one (the gray is coming in already so…).

We are further into the differentiation phase, where his narrative doesn’t need to read my faith transition as “Amy is rebelling and won’t do the religious things, when will she be back to herself?” and can accept the narrative that “Amy can’t do religious things because of rational reasons”.

It took an intertwined faith transition and a mid-life transition (formerly labeled crisis) to assert to me the weight of choice & accountability and how much I needed to to identify, codify, and re-frame the most important values and themes for my personal narrative.

“We’re In Charge” Paradigm Shift:

About Us

My husband accidentally added insult to injury after one of our more brutal fights in the early days of my faith transition.  As part of the relationship repair process he shared with me that God had told him to stay with me.  He meant well.  

He was trying to say, “I was so stubborn that it took what I perceive as an act of God to create a catalyst to change my thinking, change my ways and repent”.  But what I originally heard was, “It took an act of God” (aka a leap of faith that Amy the heretical doubter/skeptic cannot make anymore) to bring my husband back to the conversational table (with an implied question, “what about next time?”). 

In all honesty, I still fear the “what if God doesn’t deliver next time?” question. I console myself that my husband and I are in charge of creating a relationship where God doesn’t need to intervene BECAUSE I am uncertain about the nature of God being an entity existing to intervene. We can do the work ourselves with human tools just in case God doesn’t/won’t/can’t be relied on to intervene.  We can empower ourselves rather than waiting around for God to pour down power, revelation, and inspiration to us.

I think the shift in the balance of relational power that a faith transition like mine imposes is hard on a lot of marriages.  It is scary letting go of the known power dynamic and knowing who is in charge, and shifting to we’re the ones left in charge – how are we going to better our fates ethically in the here and now?

The Parents

For us, my faith transition is nestled about 18 months after the birth of our youngest (she’s 7 now), about 5 months after we started getting information from the child development experts about our oldest (now 14) with an atypical developmental calendar, and at the same time as my husband’s biggest bout of depression to date. 

Sometimes back then it felt like we were patching the airplane we were flying with parts that were already on fire.  And there have been many “you have got to be kidding me” points when we compared the dumpster fire in front of us with the pristine instructions on that theoretical instruction page that is the church handbook or the “what worked for me” chats (that weren’t built for our model of airplane for sure). 

For the most part, things have cooled down so that the parts we are playing with aren’t on fire anymore (thank you worldly counseling!). The set of instructions we follow now was mostly written by ourselves, and marginalized individuals like us who wrote a few tips and tricks about brain wiring, trauma, and neurodiversity.

I wish I could point you to a master reference of most useful things – but I can’t.  We learned that behavior is communication from my child’s social worker.  We got a referral to a good counselor from a case manager.  We collected a series of acronyms (like Pokemon – only cooler) that offered useful tips. We found multiple models of different frameworks for making decisions that myself and others in my family used to cope with circumstances. Robert Fulghum’s and Brene Brown’s writings.  I got my business administration degree in healthcare management – and the classes on “Ethics” were actually super helpful to me defining a lot of values for me personally.  I have worked at creating an environment of “Informed Consent” that equalized the power dynamics in how I approached conversations with my children.

The Kids

We are teaching our children that they are in charge (with us) of our family in a weave of intentions, actions, thoughts, imagination, meaning, individuality and community. Another blogger at this site put it best in a blog post entitled, “Kids These Days”:

“… we taught our children to respect themselves, to draw boundaries, [and] recognize abuse…”

“They believed us when we told them they were valuable–too valuable to let abuse masquerade as fidelity.”

“They see the mess and, instead of fighting each other to get to the top of the heap, they opt out of the scramble.”

“Why don’t we… work on consent, community, and care in our real lives?”

I can say that I am explicitly teaching our children to respect themselves, to draw effective & meaningful boundaries, and to call out abuse.

I can say that I am shouting to our 14 year old from the rooftops about their personal priceless value and that I want them to move past abuse and traumatic situations, not pick up habits of abusing others, and learn to react to abuse appropriately. The cardinal sin I am committing here is listening instead of telling. I bait with brother-of-Jared-like “How..” questions instead of God-like towering etched stone commandments.

My child impresses me with the number of times they engage in the situations calmly with words of “I think this is what happened”… in elevated, frustration-saturated situations. My child is co-cleaning the mess instead of getting into the fight (or holding onto the fight. Fights contain information identifying “high stakes” in progress). My child is opting out of the scramble for who’s right in those situations.

My children and I are new to the explicit work of consent, creating community, and taking care in our authentic, intertwined lives. It’s messy here – but it’s the mess of creation, not the mess of destruction. To be fair, the line between creation and destruction is a moving target recalculated as the value of what the creation costs are is defined and subtracted from the value of what is created.

As for my husband, he is embracing his inner nerd, and entering into his roles as genius wizard co-creator and sensitive master of ceremonies who is married to a bossy, smart, topic-oriented walking database/subject matter expert, and familial architect. 

___________________

This post is part of a series about navigating Mixed Faith Marriages. Find more from this series here.

Visiting the Emmett Till Interpretive Center in Sumner, MS

A couple of weekends ago, an Exponent II friend was in Mississippi and we met up a the Emmett Till Interpretive Center in Sumner, MS. On the drive there, we also went by the grocery store where the whole story began. Emmett Till was a 14-year-old boy from Chicago in Mississippi for the summer visiting family who was killed because he whistled at Carolyn Bryant, the 21-year-old wife of the store owner. It is a horrific story of violence against a black child by white men. What our tour guide pointed out, however, was that if it weren’t for the courageous decision by his mother’s to have an open casket funeral, the world would never have known about Emmett or what happened to him.

In the United States, especially in the southern states, lynching was not an uncommon practice. Lynching is the public killing of an individual who has not received any due process (Source: NAACP). The Tuskegee institute records 4,743 lynchings between 1882 and 1968. Seventy-three percent were in southern states. Lynchings were one of the primary tools employed by white people to control black people. Attempts to hold the individuals who perpetrated these atrocities accountable were rarely successful as the threat of further violence usually kept any witnesses from providing evidence of who was guilty,

It was in this context that Mamie Till-Mobley made her choice to claim Emmett’s body from Mississippi and open his casket for viewing in Chicago. Emmett was one of at least three racially motivated murders in Mississippi in the summer of 1955, but Mamie was the only family member to make public the details of the murder. Our tour guide in Sumner, Mississippi pointed this out to us, praising her courage and emphasizing how dangerous this action was. Being in Chicago offered her a small measure of safety from the southern men who would come after her for exposing their crime and perhaps that distance was part of what empowered her to take a stand. However, her life was never the same.

In a speech in Chicago, Mamie said, “Two months ago I had a nice six-room apartment in Chicago. I had a good job and I had a son. When something happened to Negros in the South, I said, ‘That’s their business, not mine.’ Now I know how wrong I was. The death of my son has show me that what happen[s] to any of us, anywhere in the world, had better be the business of all of us. I am not bitter against anybody. But I will fight until the day I die to see that justice comes to all of the people who have been visited with a tragedy like mine.” (p. 84, Emmett Till, The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement, by Devery Anderson)

Mamie became an educator and activist for civil rights, but threats of harm by the men who killed her son and those who thought like them followed her. During the trial itself, she and other black people attending (including press) had to stay 35 miles away in an all-black town for safety reasons.

The courage Mamie displayed and the shock of those who saw Emmett’s mangled body was a spark that galvanized the civil rights movement. Rosa Parks was thinking of Emmett Till when she refused to give up her bus seat. The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr mentioned Emmett in his sermons and said that “… the ultimate responsibility for this and other tragic events must rest with the American people themselves. It rests with all of us, black and white, who call ourselves civilized men. For democracy demands responsibility, courage, and the will-to-freedom from all men.” (A Proclamation on Establishment of the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument)

Visiting both the Emmett Till Interpretive Center and the Courthouse where the trial of his killers was held, as well as the store where the original incident occurred was important. If, as a white woman, I am going to help bring about equality, I must know the history of how we got to where we are.

Interestingly, this week I also had the opportunity to read the memoirs of a woman in my ward. She shared with me a book her grandson put together of her emails to him as a missionary where she recounted the details of her life. She has lived her whole life in the south – in several of the same places as where I have lived – and was born the same year as my father. In 1955 she was in high school and in her recollection, white people and Black people all got along just fine and they were friends on equal footing. I could not help but contrast the two histories that I had enveloped myself in this month – one of the white south and one of the black south in 1955.

It is easy to think that everyone around you has the same life experience. I grew up in Arkansas and was shocked when – well into adulthood – I read the book Warriors Don’t Cry – A Searing Memorial of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock’s Central High School by Melba Pattillo Beals of the Little Rock Nine. I had lived just an hour south of Little Rock and was well acquainted with Central High and the events of its integration in 1957. My father, a political science professor, even invited me to his classroom when Orval Faubus came to speak. Faubus was the governor of Arkansas in 1957 who ordered the National Guard to Central High to prevent its integration. I thought I knew the history. Then I read Beals’ book. I had no idea of the threats of violence and intimidation that she endured. Feeling as scared as she had been in my home state, just an hour from where I had lived, was nothing I had ever felt or imagined. Learning about it helped me understand history on a fuller level.

In the process of learning, I have and will continue to commit myself to seeing the experiences of life through a lens other than my own. As we say in our Exponent II mission statement, “Through these exchanges, we strive to create a community to better understand and support each other.”