The Mormon Monk

In reading Marcus Borg's  Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time , I can't help recalling the last occasion when I met Jesus for the first time--the last time I saw Jesus of Nazareth with new eyes, as a foreigner, someone I didn't already recognize. Six months ago I finished reading  When Jesus Came to Harvard , in which Harvey Cox characterizes the Christ as a political operative. When Jesus teaches his Sermon on the Mount, Cox argues, it is with one eye on heaven and the other eye on Rome. "Blessed are the peacemakers," Jesus teaches, "for they shall be called the kingdom of God" (Matthew 5:9). These words, Cox argues, "were a direct challenge to the ruling Roman ideology. . . . The empire's main claim to fame and legitimacy was that Rome and Rome alone was the peacemaker. It sustained the  pax Romana  under the magnanimous auspices of Caesar Augustus, a divine ruler. One of the imperial titles of the divine Augustus was that of 'peace-b...

Rab-shakeh has long been my favorite Old Testament villain. When he shows up outside Jersualem to  threaten Hezekiah, King of Judah, he delivers a delightfully arrogant speech demanding immediate surrender. And because he speaks for the Assyrian army (which has just taken the kingdom of Israel into captivity), everyone knows that he can walk the walk. In fact, Hezekiah's military leaders are so worried that ordinary Jews within earshot of Rab-shakeh will flee to enemy lines that they plead, "Speak, I pray thee, to thy servants in the Syrian language; for we understand it: and talk not with us in the Jews' language in the ears of the people that are on the wall" (2 Kgs. 18:26). Rab-shakeh is . . . not the sort of man to honor such a request: "Hath my master sent me to thy master, and to thee, to speak these words? hath he not sent me to the men which sit on the wall, that they may eat their own dung, and drink their own piss with you?" (2 Kgs. 18:27). Then,...

As I recently read Eric Andrews's excellent new book,  Native Apostles  (Harvard UP, 2013), I was struck by his report that Native New England peoples who converted to Christianity identified their new religious beliefs as "a rebirth of spiritual knowledge that the ancestors possessed but had long been forgotten by later generations. An oral tradition taken down in the seventeenth century reminded audiences that far from introducing novel concepts and cosmologies, Christian missionaries were simply picking up where the ancients had left off. . . . Christianity was, according to this narrative, an ancestral Indian religion that needed to be revitalized" (36-37). As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who believes in the Book of Mormon as a largely reliable historical source, this was tremendously exciting, so I checked out Andrews's sources. Turns out Andrews was relying on the book  Spirit of the New England Tribes: Indian History and Folklo...

Isaiah and Elder Bednar.

A brother monk shared this with me, and I simply had to share it with you. Enjoy! THE RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE: THOUGHTS ON CHRIST AND DEATH Even the smallest nudge can bring back the dead. Life tips easily either way, like the light around dusk. Neither death nor rapture, birth nor resurrection are as irreversible or permanent as we sometimes romanticize—this business of living and dying is infinitely more fluid. While it’s true that the smallest flick of a knife can lay open a whole throat, it’s also true a single centigrade of warmth deep in some winter dirt can trigger the vivification of a seed. I have sustained such a multiplicity of deaths already. I see a white cup on a table or the hood of a car covered in wet petals, and then I am startled to realize I have been dead for days. Dead to miracles, small impossibilities. Awakenings and resurrections may happen in an instant—in prayer, in traffic, while washing a plate. They may happen on the road to Da...

This is an experimental draft of a creative project; please feel free to offer criticisms, suggestions, or questions in the comments. Week 1 Dear Dad,             You were right. I’ve only been here a day, but I can already tell that the MTC is going to be amazing. My companion, Elder Hypocrite, is from a little suburb just outside the Celestial City limits called Whited Sepulchre, and I just know that we’re going to be a terrific team. Right after our orientation session, the MTC President called us as district leaders over the other four new elders who bunk in our dorm room as well as two sisters, and Elder Hypocrite has already come up with some fantastic rules that will help us to make the most of our time in the MTC. For instance, we’ve decided as a district that all of us are going to wake up at 6:00 AM instead of 6:30 so that we can all get in an extra half hour of personal study time. And, to mak...

Three and a half years ago, when I first began interviewing for academic jobs, every school that interviewed me wanted to know how I had managed to complete a Masters and a PhD degree in just four years. Back on the job market this past January, all thirteen of the schools that interviewed me wanted to know where I found the time to write as much as I do. In these professional settings, it would have been inappropriate to offer the religious and specifically Mormon understanding of time-use that I believe has allowed me to be especially productive. But since a good friend recently asked me the same question, here's the answer I would have liked to give my interviewers. The Book of Mormon teaches that this life is "a probationary state, a time to prepare to meet God" (Alma 12:24). Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints accordingly view time as a sacred commodity to be used according to specific guidelines given us by deity. Even the very name of the...