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Testimonies I'd Like to Hear at Church
Mormon Scholars Testify is an online collection of essays by LDS scholars of various types that explain why they believe in the Restored Gospel. It's not all high-fructose correlated corn syrup, either. For example, take this passage from Grant Hardy:
I am still bothered by a number of things—the lack of direct archaeological evidence for the Book of Mormon, its anachronistic quotations from Second Isaiah, polygamy, the Mountain Meadows massacre, our exclusive reliance on the King James Bible, our tendency to mythologize our history, our preference for sentimentality over substance, our quickness to label honest disagreements as anti-Mormonism, our devotion to the Boy Scouts, and my own impatience when the church doesn’t speak out more forcefully on moral issues such as torture or access to healthcare.Or this from Ron Hellings:
I have heard people say that science and religion are two paths to truth. I do not believe that. There is only one path to truth, and to me it seems closer to science than it is to what passes for religion in most people.Or Armand Mauss:
Much of what I can’t claim to know is routinely included in the testimonies of other Latter-day Saints, whose conventional lists of what seems true and certain to them leaves me baffled at their apparent spiritual attainments.Yet if you read the full essays, you will find that each is ultimately faith affirming. Perhaps it would not be appropriate--particularly because they would be misunderstood by some, but I wish I could hear more of these kinds of testimonies in our Sacrament meetings.
7 comments:
Amen!
Stan stole my comment.
Thanks for pointing this out. I skimmed that website and didn't make it past the corn syrup, but now I'll take a second look.
A lot of Mormon scholars are attorneys. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Excellent. Thanks for sharing this.
I could do without Armand Mauss's sarcastic remark about "apparent spiritual attainments," but otherwise I can say Amen.
Thanks for the interesting post. Even though I disagree, it is an interesting subject.
I hope to not hear these things in testimony meeting because they are counter to the purpose of a testimony meeting which is to foster the presence of the spirit of the Lord.
Re Grant: I agree with much of what Grant has problems with. I too have issues with polygamy, a reliance on King James, and a devotion to Boy Scouts that makes it seem more like an arm of the church rather than a separate and distinct organization. I especially don't like having to give/collect money for their annual drive through the church organization, but let’s be clear, none of these concerns belong in a testimony meeting. Testimony meeting is the wrong venue for voicing one’s gripes.
Re Ron: The assertion that there is one path to truth is consistent with Joseph Smith’s claim that all truth will be circumscribed into one whole. However, to say that the way to truth is closer to what science offers smacks of scientism. Science and religion have their own places in the quest for truth. To say that one is epistemologically superior to the other suggests that science can be used to uncover revelatory truth and religion can be used to uncover truth about the natural world. They are, in the words of Thomas Kuhn, incommensurable epistemologies; thus comparisons in the usual way are not warranted.
Re Armand: If people testify that they know that the church is true and that God lives, such testimonies are often based on real and certain spiritual experiences that the people had. Many saints know when they’ve felt the Spirit of the Lord testify to them. It is a very real experience. I think that their spiritual experiences are being referred to when they testify that they know God lives etc. Their knowledge that God lives is not perfect, but they know perfectly that they had a spiritual experience that increased their faith in God.
Testimony meeting is not a gripe session and it is not a travelogue. It is a time for bearing testimony of God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Dave,
The quotes were teasers. It's the full testimonies that I like. (Based on your reaction to Ron Hellings, I suspect you didn't read the full versions.)
Thanks for stopping by.
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