The big issue is why is the Deseret News addressing the issue of Catholics and immigration and not Mormons and immigration.
The answer is hard to put succinctly.
A higher percentage of Catholics, 27%, are immigrants. What the percentage of Mormons who are immigrants is a question that needs to be better addressed.
However some of the issues have to do not so much with reality but with perception.
The idea that the Catholic leadership is white has place no matter what the reality is.
Mormon leadership is white, but how this compares to Mormon membership is complex. There are 4 general authorities who are clearly not white, at least not non-Hispanic white, who are also at some level American. Garrit W. Gong of the Presidency of the 70 is the highest ranking, a native of California whose ancestors came to the US from China over 100 years ago. He is totally non-white, although not in any sense an immigrant. Larry EchoHawk is a Native American, specifically a Pawnee. We have yet to have an African-American (as opposed to Afro-Brazilian, Kenyan or Zimbabwean) general authority, but there is an African American area seventy. At least 1 maybe 2 area seventies are Hispanic. Elder Ochoa is a US born, but Mexico raised general authority, who spent most of his adult life in Mexico but was living in the US when called as a general authority. Elder Hugo Montoya was born in the US as well, but since he moved to Mexico as a very young child and spent his entire adult life there until his call as a general autority, he does not figure in my calculations. Elder Juan Uceda on the other hand, a native of Peru who had been an area seventy there, had been living in New Jersey for a few years at the time of his call.
Friday, March 17, 2017
Catholics, Mormons and immigration 2
A bigger problem with the Deseret News article is that it too much posits immigrants verses native born Catholics as white verses non-white.
This comes from too narrow an understanding of Catholic history in the US. The percentage of Native Americans in the US who are Catholics is fairly high. It is telling that in my 20th-century Native American history class at Eastern Michigan University the two biographies of Native American women, one on a Lakota Woman, and the other on Molly Spotted Elk called "Penobscot in Paris", were both on women who were Catholics.
With Charles Chaput, the Archbishop of Philadelphia, being a registered member of the Prarie Band of Potawatomie, while also being one of the strongest voices of politically conservative Catholicism, the dichotomies in the Deseret News article do not hold up.
There are also more African-American Catholics than some realize. In Louisiana and MAryland especially there are long established African-American Catholic communities. In the case of Louisiana the Catholic Church ran a segregated school system. True, in both white and black schools there were probably non-Catholics, but there also were Catholics.
This comes from too narrow an understanding of Catholic history in the US. The percentage of Native Americans in the US who are Catholics is fairly high. It is telling that in my 20th-century Native American history class at Eastern Michigan University the two biographies of Native American women, one on a Lakota Woman, and the other on Molly Spotted Elk called "Penobscot in Paris", were both on women who were Catholics.
With Charles Chaput, the Archbishop of Philadelphia, being a registered member of the Prarie Band of Potawatomie, while also being one of the strongest voices of politically conservative Catholicism, the dichotomies in the Deseret News article do not hold up.
There are also more African-American Catholics than some realize. In Louisiana and MAryland especially there are long established African-American Catholic communities. In the case of Louisiana the Catholic Church ran a segregated school system. True, in both white and black schools there were probably non-Catholics, but there also were Catholics.
BYU's Maxwell Institute has gone to far in trying to reach acceptability in secular scholarly circles
BYU's Maxwell Institute has gone too far in trying to reach acceptability in secular scholarly circles. That is my take away from this http://www.patheos.com/blogs/soulandcity/2014/12/intellect-and-affection-how-to-be-a-faithful-mormon-intellectual/ article by Ralph C. Hancock.
I have to agree with this assessment. I also will agree that some level of breadth is good, but the current turn has made for a situation where most believing Latter-day Saints would not feel this scholarship is at all addressed to them.
In the over two years since Hardy wrote the article in question things have not improved. Hardy has become a caustic voice attacking the LDS Church on its position that entering into same sex marriage is an act of apostasy. Hardy's criticism of these people for making peace with the sexual revolution is becoming even more true.
Park on the other hand has taken to attacking the LDS Church for not standing against President Trumps travel bans. Besides the fact that Park showed a rash rush to attack when the Church did make a statement on the issue, he misunderstands religious freedom, most likely intentionally to mock its true believers.
The travel ban is based on assesments connected with government dysfunction and violence in the listed countries. I would actually question either Iran or Sudan being on the list, however since the vast majority of Muslim countries are not on the list, saying it is religiously motivated would require more analysis than its attackers have given it.
Beyond this, an order that prioritices the protection of persecuted religious minorities is exactly the type of order those who favor religious freedom would want. At least viewed on that specific issue. The order has enough other flaws that I doubt anyone can defend it.
Beyond this, the comparison to the issue of attempts to stop Mormon immigration to the US in 1879 show a major lack of historic understanding, specifically a failure to grasp what was at stake for emigrating British, Danish, Swiss and other Mormons in 1879. If the US controlled Mecca nad Medina and then sought to ban Muslim immigration there would be an analoguy. In 1879 Mormon theology called on Mormons to gather to a literal, physical Zion found in Utah. The purpose of this was to build the temples, and once that was accomplished there was a shift to building Zion everywhere. The shift took 70 years to fully implement, and in some ways LDS Church still seeks to counteract the gathering mentality.
Back to the issue at hand, I think Handcock is right that we need to stop assuming that bracketing all truth claims is a broad approach to issues, and need to start focusing on how to develop dialogue with believers who are academics. This probably means focusing more on shared dialogue with Catholic universities. On the other hand considering how many American Catholic universities have abandoned any distinctions from general secular culture this may be a hard endevor.
I however think that BYU needs to make sure that we do not in seeking to be liked and popular to other people sell our basic doctrines. As President Kimball counseled we should not seek to have a king like all other people.
I think there was a need for a broader, more scholarly, less apologetic approach to the isues. However the Maxwell Institute has gone too far the other way.
I have to agree with this assessment. I also will agree that some level of breadth is good, but the current turn has made for a situation where most believing Latter-day Saints would not feel this scholarship is at all addressed to them.
In the over two years since Hardy wrote the article in question things have not improved. Hardy has become a caustic voice attacking the LDS Church on its position that entering into same sex marriage is an act of apostasy. Hardy's criticism of these people for making peace with the sexual revolution is becoming even more true.
Park on the other hand has taken to attacking the LDS Church for not standing against President Trumps travel bans. Besides the fact that Park showed a rash rush to attack when the Church did make a statement on the issue, he misunderstands religious freedom, most likely intentionally to mock its true believers.
The travel ban is based on assesments connected with government dysfunction and violence in the listed countries. I would actually question either Iran or Sudan being on the list, however since the vast majority of Muslim countries are not on the list, saying it is religiously motivated would require more analysis than its attackers have given it.
Beyond this, an order that prioritices the protection of persecuted religious minorities is exactly the type of order those who favor religious freedom would want. At least viewed on that specific issue. The order has enough other flaws that I doubt anyone can defend it.
Beyond this, the comparison to the issue of attempts to stop Mormon immigration to the US in 1879 show a major lack of historic understanding, specifically a failure to grasp what was at stake for emigrating British, Danish, Swiss and other Mormons in 1879. If the US controlled Mecca nad Medina and then sought to ban Muslim immigration there would be an analoguy. In 1879 Mormon theology called on Mormons to gather to a literal, physical Zion found in Utah. The purpose of this was to build the temples, and once that was accomplished there was a shift to building Zion everywhere. The shift took 70 years to fully implement, and in some ways LDS Church still seeks to counteract the gathering mentality.
Back to the issue at hand, I think Handcock is right that we need to stop assuming that bracketing all truth claims is a broad approach to issues, and need to start focusing on how to develop dialogue with believers who are academics. This probably means focusing more on shared dialogue with Catholic universities. On the other hand considering how many American Catholic universities have abandoned any distinctions from general secular culture this may be a hard endevor.
I however think that BYU needs to make sure that we do not in seeking to be liked and popular to other people sell our basic doctrines. As President Kimball counseled we should not seek to have a king like all other people.
I think there was a need for a broader, more scholarly, less apologetic approach to the isues. However the Maxwell Institute has gone too far the other way.
Catholics, Mormons and immigration
The Deseret News just published http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865675659/How-a-church-transforms-immigrants-and-immigrants-transform-a-church.html which is a fairly good article on Catholics and immigration. Here I will address a few shortcomings, and discuss why the issue of Mormons and immigration is not approached.
The Flaws
To being with the article relies too much on leftists who want to ignore religious freedom and right to life issues.
The article fails to contectualize right to life as the ultimate social justice fight in the minds of many. There is no more vulnerable, more voiceless group than the unborn. Right to life also focuses on the elderly and mentally disabled, other groups the death industry attacks and targets. Even issues like lowering maternal mortality suffer from the false rhetoric of the pro-abortion lobby overly personalizing policies by one person that impact another.
The religious freedom discussion misses the issues involved. To begin with, the break between Catholic institutions and government funding mandates is almost entirely an Obama administration problem. Before Obamacare we did not see atempts to force religious schools etc. to fund programs they objected to on moral grounds. Since this is not an old fight, it can not be one that people just started not resonating with.
The older issue is the use of the KKK's "seperation of Church and state" to discriminate against Catholics. The history of this needs to be understood in the context of the public schools acting as de facto agents of Protestantism well into the 20th-century. By about 1950 there was a move away from this, and a move to letting government aid to education benefit transportation budgets of Catholic Schools. Then former Alabama KKK grand dragon Hugo White introduced "seperation of Church and stae", the thing he had sworn hundreds of KKK inductees to uphold eternally, into the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court.
For the next 50 years the establishment clause was increasingly used to disadvantage religious groups ability to run private schools, to justify huge taxes on religious parents that made it hard for poor religious people to send their children to religious schools of their choice.
On the other hand the Catholic Church only proclaimed religious freedom as a positive good in Vatican 2 in the 1960s.
Lastly, a big part of the religious freedom fight at present focuses on the right of religious people to conduct their business in accordance with their religion. This means Catholic nurses cannot be forced to perform abortions and Catholic pharmacists cannot be forced to perscribe abortion inducing drugs. Considering that half the foriegn trained nurses in the US are Filipinos, and a majority of Filipinos are Catholics, these religious freedom fights impact immigrants more than leftists will admit.
The Flaws
To being with the article relies too much on leftists who want to ignore religious freedom and right to life issues.
The article fails to contectualize right to life as the ultimate social justice fight in the minds of many. There is no more vulnerable, more voiceless group than the unborn. Right to life also focuses on the elderly and mentally disabled, other groups the death industry attacks and targets. Even issues like lowering maternal mortality suffer from the false rhetoric of the pro-abortion lobby overly personalizing policies by one person that impact another.
The religious freedom discussion misses the issues involved. To begin with, the break between Catholic institutions and government funding mandates is almost entirely an Obama administration problem. Before Obamacare we did not see atempts to force religious schools etc. to fund programs they objected to on moral grounds. Since this is not an old fight, it can not be one that people just started not resonating with.
The older issue is the use of the KKK's "seperation of Church and state" to discriminate against Catholics. The history of this needs to be understood in the context of the public schools acting as de facto agents of Protestantism well into the 20th-century. By about 1950 there was a move away from this, and a move to letting government aid to education benefit transportation budgets of Catholic Schools. Then former Alabama KKK grand dragon Hugo White introduced "seperation of Church and stae", the thing he had sworn hundreds of KKK inductees to uphold eternally, into the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court.
For the next 50 years the establishment clause was increasingly used to disadvantage religious groups ability to run private schools, to justify huge taxes on religious parents that made it hard for poor religious people to send their children to religious schools of their choice.
On the other hand the Catholic Church only proclaimed religious freedom as a positive good in Vatican 2 in the 1960s.
Lastly, a big part of the religious freedom fight at present focuses on the right of religious people to conduct their business in accordance with their religion. This means Catholic nurses cannot be forced to perform abortions and Catholic pharmacists cannot be forced to perscribe abortion inducing drugs. Considering that half the foriegn trained nurses in the US are Filipinos, and a majority of Filipinos are Catholics, these religious freedom fights impact immigrants more than leftists will admit.
The Book of Mormon as an exceptional document
David Holland has written a book that puts the Book of Mormon in the broader context of early American history. Benjamin Park has praised this as a move away from Mormon exceptionalism. Until I have the privalege of reading Holland's book, I am unsure this is exactly what he does.
However the general argument that the Book of Mormon is not exceptional ignores the level of attack it received. It has been seen as a unique move beyond acceptable boundaries from its publication. While early on some may have seen Joseph Smith as just another person claiming to receive revelation, the publication of the Book of Mormon (and later the Doctine and Covenants) moved him beyond the level of most.
However the general argument that the Book of Mormon is not exceptional ignores the level of attack it received. It has been seen as a unique move beyond acceptable boundaries from its publication. While early on some may have seen Joseph Smith as just another person claiming to receive revelation, the publication of the Book of Mormon (and later the Doctine and Covenants) moved him beyond the level of most.
I just wrote a post on this article http://www.patheos.com/blogs/soulandcity/2014/12/intellect-and-affection-how-to-be-a-faithful-mormon-intellectual/ by Ralph C. Hancock. Somehow I mesed up posting it.
I think the main takeaway still stands. Academics needs to be willing to stand for truth, especially against the sexual revolution. I think the Maxwell Institute also needs to revisit its aims and make space for those defending the truth claims of the Book of Mormon.
I think the main takeaway still stands. Academics needs to be willing to stand for truth, especially against the sexual revolution. I think the Maxwell Institute also needs to revisit its aims and make space for those defending the truth claims of the Book of Mormon.
Thursday, March 9, 2017
The Church (through Linda K. Burton's facebook account) has just announced changes to the Relief Society purpose. http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865675252/LDS-Church-releases-new-update-to-Relief-Society-Purposes.html
This article would be better if they had interviewed Sister Burton to get more insight on the changes. Also, it would be nice if we could get side by side publication of the purpose before and after. Can someone provide us with the old and new purpose to see how exactly it has changed.
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