Sweet! It looks like the new issue of the Journal for the Renewal of Religion and Theology was just posted, with my paper "In Defense of a Christian Pluralism" included! This is the first of three papers I have slated for publication within the next year. I'm very psyched to see my name in print in some professional academic venues.
Fair warning: this is pretty much a philosophy paper, and it could probably be difficult for someone not up-to-speed on the literature to wade through. I'll give you the layman's version here (or at least some background that might whet your appetite enough to make you want to read the paper).
"Pluralism" in the sense I'm using it in the essay is basically the view that all religions lead to God. That there is no "one true church"-- no single supreme religion that stands out above all others. A Christian pluralist is someone who identifies as Christian but who sees Christianity as simply one way among many, and not the best for everyone.
There are a lot of Christians-- and even some non-Christians-- who think that Christian pluralism is an oxymoron. Their argument is that pluralism is just a feel-good, New Age, pop-culture philosophy that's trying to disguise itself as Christianity but that really stands in contradiction to everything Christianity stands for. As one of my professors at Wheaton College put it when he found out what I believed, "your calling yourself a Christian is dishonest and does violence to my belief system."
That professor's comment-- along with some similar sentiments I had encountered in the writings of Christian apologists-- was a major motive for my writing this paper. See, pluralism isn't just something I got from pop-culture. It's something that gradually arose from my evangelical Christian theology and from my belief in the Bible. It's a view I felt compelled to by my conscience and by what I believed to be the leading of the Holy Spirit. I could not have become the pluralist I am today if I hadn't been an evangelical Christian first.
And that's the idea that my JRRT paper explores in more philosophical terms. It argues that pluralism isn't something that invades Christianity from the outside, but something that legitimately arises from the inside. So if I'm right, then it's not dishonest for me or other Christian pluralists (like John Hick or Paul Knitter) to call ourselves Christians.
There are basically two major arguments in the paper.
The first is that, to the extent that pluralism does borrow from modern culture and philosophy, it's not doing anything un-Christian. Christians have been engaging in such borrowing since the very beginning: not only in their creeds and post-biblical theologies, but even within the pages of the Bible. In fact, some have argued that this sort of borrowing is integral to the gospel itself.
The second is that although it's true that pluralism "deconstructs" some beliefs that many Christians view as core, defining characteristics of the faith, this happens from within. It is one Christian tenet challenging another, not an alien worldview attacking Christianity from the outside. And ultimately this process of deconstruction is actually constructive, because it helps Christianity fulfill its deepest longings and find its truest self. In the paper I explore several examples of how the tradition works against itself to lead to a pluralist view.
There are also some personal anecdotes in the paper, like for example times when I felt a pluralist view was revealed to me through divine inspiration.
I have to say I'm not a huge fan of the JRRT's format. More paragraph breaks might be nice, and the page background makes reading it a little hard on the eyes. Cutting and pasting it into Microsoft Word before reading might work better than reading in the browser. Just a thought.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Did Joseph Smith Identify Moses and Aaron's Signatures on the Papyrus?
When Boston statesman Josiah Quincy visited Nauvoo in 1844, he reported having been shown the Book of Abraham papyri as follows:
It is often taken for granted that this aspect of Quincy's report is inaccurate, and not without reason. One reason to doubt it is that one account has Mother Lucy saying it was Joseph of Egypt who buried the papyri on the queen's breast. That of course would exclude the possibility of Moses having ever seen them. A second, perhaps more important cause for skepticism is simply that no other source confirms Quincy's report. One would think that if the prophet were making such an extraordinary claim, other witnesses would have mentioned it.
So, it may be that Quincy was misremembering or misreporting what he had heard. (Perhaps, for example, Smith pointed to the signature of Abraham as he had in the presence of another visitor, and Quincy mixed up the names.) Such misremembering and misreporting on the part of eyewitnesses is unfortunately frustratingly commonplace in the historical record, and I have found it to be a particular problem in assessing the evidence concerning the Book of Abraham (where we often are trying to achieve a degree of precision that was not in the witnesses' purview). But my general rule of thumb is along the lines of the old "two or three witnesses" rule. If two or more people independently report the same thing, or if the plausibility of a report can be established based on information gleaned from other sources, then we're relatively safe in accepting it. That does not at first glance seem to be the case here.
On the other hand, Quincy goes on to report that the papyri contained an account of creation that Moses used in his composition of Genesis-- a perfectly plausible claim given the similarity of the Abraham creation account to the Book of Moses/Genesis. And another witness reported that Mother Lucy identified one of the mummies as Moses' adoptive mother, the woman who rescued him from the Nile. These reports suggest that Moses might have had access to the papyri after all. Certainly James R. Clark seems to have believed Quincy's report in this regard when he wrote his book The Story of the Pearl of Great Price. Clark compared the handing down of Abraham's record through the family line to the similar handing down of the Books of Mormon and the Generations of Adam-- a plausible-sounding connection, to my mind. In this context, Quincy's claim doesn't sound so outrageous, after all.
So while I don't think we can definitely say whether Quincy accurately reported the words of the prophet here or not, we also probably shouldn't too rashly rule it out.
Some parchments inscribed with hieroglyphics were then offered us. They were preserved under glass and handled with great respect. "That is the handwriting of Abraham, the Father of the Faithful," said the prophet. "This is the autograph of Moses, and these lines were written by his brother Aaron. Here we have the earliest account of the creation, from which Moses composed the first book of Genesis."Recently I was asked what I think about Quincy's report that the prophet identified Moses and Aaron's autographs on the document. Was Quincy exaggerating? Or did the prophet really make this claim?
It is often taken for granted that this aspect of Quincy's report is inaccurate, and not without reason. One reason to doubt it is that one account has Mother Lucy saying it was Joseph of Egypt who buried the papyri on the queen's breast. That of course would exclude the possibility of Moses having ever seen them. A second, perhaps more important cause for skepticism is simply that no other source confirms Quincy's report. One would think that if the prophet were making such an extraordinary claim, other witnesses would have mentioned it.
So, it may be that Quincy was misremembering or misreporting what he had heard. (Perhaps, for example, Smith pointed to the signature of Abraham as he had in the presence of another visitor, and Quincy mixed up the names.) Such misremembering and misreporting on the part of eyewitnesses is unfortunately frustratingly commonplace in the historical record, and I have found it to be a particular problem in assessing the evidence concerning the Book of Abraham (where we often are trying to achieve a degree of precision that was not in the witnesses' purview). But my general rule of thumb is along the lines of the old "two or three witnesses" rule. If two or more people independently report the same thing, or if the plausibility of a report can be established based on information gleaned from other sources, then we're relatively safe in accepting it. That does not at first glance seem to be the case here.
On the other hand, Quincy goes on to report that the papyri contained an account of creation that Moses used in his composition of Genesis-- a perfectly plausible claim given the similarity of the Abraham creation account to the Book of Moses/Genesis. And another witness reported that Mother Lucy identified one of the mummies as Moses' adoptive mother, the woman who rescued him from the Nile. These reports suggest that Moses might have had access to the papyri after all. Certainly James R. Clark seems to have believed Quincy's report in this regard when he wrote his book The Story of the Pearl of Great Price. Clark compared the handing down of Abraham's record through the family line to the similar handing down of the Books of Mormon and the Generations of Adam-- a plausible-sounding connection, to my mind. In this context, Quincy's claim doesn't sound so outrageous, after all.
So while I don't think we can definitely say whether Quincy accurately reported the words of the prophet here or not, we also probably shouldn't too rashly rule it out.
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Pit Tomb 33 and the Book of Abraham Papyri
I recently received the following inquiry from a commenter at Mormon Expression named Ray:
Tomb 33, however, is not where the JS mummies really came from. As H. Donl Peterson wrote in The Story of the Book of Abraham (pp. 54-63), Tomb 33 had already been excavated in the early 18th century and so did not need to be excavated by Lebolo. Peterson points to Tomb 32 as a more likely source, though it's really not possible to know for sure. We simply don't have enough information to make the determination.
Although Egyptology's not really my area of expertise, I did go ahead and have Ray send me the image he mentioned.
About all I can say about the meaning of the image, based on my very limited knowledge of the subject, is that the falcon carrying the cross with a loop on top is probably the deity Horus bringing eternal life, and the person in the middle with the blue head and goatee is the deceased person who has been resurrected and transformed into the deity Osiris. The figure on the left in the blue dress may be the goddess Sekhmet.
As for the apron, Robin Fowler says this:
Some elderly members of my family went on an LDS tour of the holy lands, and one of the stops was in Egypt to visit the pyramids and, of course, the tomb where (they indicated) the BoA papyri was found. They took a picture of a wall painting that shows what looks like a person (woman?) wearing what appears to be robes and possibly an apron. They were quick to suggest on the tour that these were temple robes, and that the temple ceremony was being depicted. I wonder if I can ... send you the pic, to see what you think of it?Presumably Ray is referring to Pit Tomb 33, which is part of the "Egypt and the Holy Land" package at Anderson Tours and LDS Travel Study. Ross T. Christensen was the first to identify this as the tomb from which the Joseph Smith mummies came. He made the identification based on some details in Oliver Cowdery's account of Michael Chandler's account of Antonio Lebolo's account of the tomb. A convoluted chain of evidence, to say the least.
Tomb 33, however, is not where the JS mummies really came from. As H. Donl Peterson wrote in The Story of the Book of Abraham (pp. 54-63), Tomb 33 had already been excavated in the early 18th century and so did not need to be excavated by Lebolo. Peterson points to Tomb 32 as a more likely source, though it's really not possible to know for sure. We simply don't have enough information to make the determination.
Although Egyptology's not really my area of expertise, I did go ahead and have Ray send me the image he mentioned.
About all I can say about the meaning of the image, based on my very limited knowledge of the subject, is that the falcon carrying the cross with a loop on top is probably the deity Horus bringing eternal life, and the person in the middle with the blue head and goatee is the deceased person who has been resurrected and transformed into the deity Osiris. The figure on the left in the blue dress may be the goddess Sekhmet.
As for the apron, Robin Fowler says this:
All Egyptian men, regardless of social class, wore an apron-like garment that tied in front. Through the years, the length of the apron (also compared to a kilt) ranged from above the knee to below it. Wealthy Egyptian men wore a transparent ankle-length robe over this apron. Less wealthy men also wore this robe, but it was not as transparent. In fact, the level of transparency was symbolic of an Egyptian man’s wealth and importance, with the Pharaoh’s robe being the most transparent of all garments. The Pharaoh's clothing would have also been very stylized, often adorned with colored feathers.So the apron-and-robe combination in the picture is not a temple garment, but simply a typical (albeit expensive) piece of Egyptian clothing.
"Written by His Own Hand upon Papyrus"
The header to the Book of Abraham in the current Pearl of Great Price reads,
In his book Abraham in Egypt, Hugh Nibley argues quite successfully that ancient documents' claims to have been written by someone's own hand are not necessarily to be taken literally. If such a claim is made in an original document, for example, scribes had no qualms about copying it over into second, third, or twentieth-generation copies. There is a great example of this in Galatians 6:11, the original of which of course is not available to us.
To this point, Nibley's reasoning is sound. Where he errs is in applying this argument to the Book of Abraham. Nibley's argument hinges on the claim that when the header says the book was "called the Book of Abraham, written by his own hand, upon papyrus," it is saying that the phrase "written by his own hand" was part of Abraham's original title. If that's the case, then Smith was a mere translator of the title, and it does not reflect his own editorial opinion.
But contra Nibley, Joseph Smith does not seem to have intended the phrase as part of Abraham's original title.
The earliest manuscript that includes the phrase reads, "Translation of the Book of Abraham written by his own hand upon papyrus and found in the Catacombs of Egypt". Obviously this header is not a literal rendering of a title from the papyrus. The references to the translation and discovery of the papyri make that an impossibility. And the capitalization of "Book of Abraham" over against the lowercase rendering of "written by his own hand" is another indication that the latter is not strictly part of the document title.
The capitalization distinction is even stronger in the header of the 1842 publication, for which Joseph Smith served personally as editor:
The curious thing about all these apologetic attempts to show that Smith didn't believe his papyrus to have been an Abraham holograph is that they are unnecessary. Smith never claimed, so far as I am aware, to have received this knowledge by revelation. And apologists have been more than willing to allow that Smith was human and capable of error. So, what's the big deal? Why can't he simply have been mistaken about this? It's a less satisfying answer, I'm sure, but it's also far sounder. As long as the apologists stick to this approach and don't venture off into misguided discussions of jots and tittles, there's not much else for critics to say about this.
A Translation of some ancient Records, that have fallen into our hands from the catacombs of Egypt.—The writings of Abraham while he was in Egypt, called the Book of Abraham, written by his own hand, upon papyrus.Critics of the Book have occasionally appealed to this header as evidence that Joseph Smith believed the papyrus in his possession contained the actual handwriting of Abraham-- that it was what text-critics would call an Abraham "holograph" (or "autograph"). I have dealt with one common counterargument to this inference before. In this post I'd like to discuss another.
In his book Abraham in Egypt, Hugh Nibley argues quite successfully that ancient documents' claims to have been written by someone's own hand are not necessarily to be taken literally. If such a claim is made in an original document, for example, scribes had no qualms about copying it over into second, third, or twentieth-generation copies. There is a great example of this in Galatians 6:11, the original of which of course is not available to us.
To this point, Nibley's reasoning is sound. Where he errs is in applying this argument to the Book of Abraham. Nibley's argument hinges on the claim that when the header says the book was "called the Book of Abraham, written by his own hand, upon papyrus," it is saying that the phrase "written by his own hand" was part of Abraham's original title. If that's the case, then Smith was a mere translator of the title, and it does not reflect his own editorial opinion.
But contra Nibley, Joseph Smith does not seem to have intended the phrase as part of Abraham's original title.
The earliest manuscript that includes the phrase reads, "Translation of the Book of Abraham written by his own hand upon papyrus and found in the Catacombs of Egypt". Obviously this header is not a literal rendering of a title from the papyrus. The references to the translation and discovery of the papyri make that an impossibility. And the capitalization of "Book of Abraham" over against the lowercase rendering of "written by his own hand" is another indication that the latter is not strictly part of the document title.
The capitalization distinction is even stronger in the header of the 1842 publication, for which Joseph Smith served personally as editor:
A TRANSLATIONCan there be any doubt here that "Book of Abraham" is the document title, as distinguished from the editorial commentary that appears in all lowercase?
Of some ancient Records that have fallen into our hands, from the Catecombs of Egypt, purporting to be the writings of Abraham, while he was in Egypt, called the BOOK OF ABRAHAM, written by his own hand, upon papyrus.
The Book of Abraham.
The curious thing about all these apologetic attempts to show that Smith didn't believe his papyrus to have been an Abraham holograph is that they are unnecessary. Smith never claimed, so far as I am aware, to have received this knowledge by revelation. And apologists have been more than willing to allow that Smith was human and capable of error. So, what's the big deal? Why can't he simply have been mistaken about this? It's a less satisfying answer, I'm sure, but it's also far sounder. As long as the apologists stick to this approach and don't venture off into misguided discussions of jots and tittles, there's not much else for critics to say about this.
Monday, August 17, 2009
On the Benefits of "Bashing" Johnny Lingo
The news coverage of Sunstone this year has been pretty good, so I won't bother posting summaries of a lot of the talks. But I thought it might be worthwhile to weigh in on the controversy over Holly Welker's presentation on the LDS film 'Johnny Lingo'. Peggy Fletcher Stack's well-intentioned summary of this presentation in the Salt Lake Tribune, titled "Writer blasts beloved LDS film 'Lingo'," has generated an enormous number of negative comments. Many of them are too awful to repeat here, but basically people are incredulous that a so-called scholar would spend such effort attacking an old and relatively harmless fairy tale. In the words of one commenter, "This is what egghead crowd worries about?"
I think that this incredulous feeling results from a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of scholarship like Welker's-- a misunderstanding that is aggravated by the somewhat narrow emphasis of the Tribune summary. The point of Welker's presentation was not to justify her haughty, elitist disdain for a popular film, as some seem to assume. The point was not really about the film at all. The film was a teaching tool in making a larger point: that there are implicit messages in our words and actions and artistic expressions that may alter the way we see the world.
For example, the movie isn't called "Mahanna". It's called "Johnny Lingo". By glazing over Mahanna's reactions and the details of her transformation, and focusing instead on the strictly male transactions that make this transformation possible, the story becomes a tale of the noble masculine hero Johnny Lingo acting in the role of savior rather than a tale of Mahanna discovering her value as a human being. This minimizes female agency and treats her as an object to be acted upon rather than as a subject to act for herself.
Similarly, when at the end of the movie Mr. Harris evaluates Mahanna's transformation, what he fixates on is her physical appearance. His comment is something like, "I don't understand. Mahanna is so beautiful!" Johnny Lingo also says, "everyone who looks at her can see her gift to me." It is thus implied that it's her physical appearance that makes her an eight-cow woman. Holly makes a good point that the climax of the movie largely reinforces the idea that a woman's value is as an object to be looked at and visually appreciated rather than to be valued on the merits of her wit, intelligence, agency, or humanity.
The respondent, Ellen Decoo, made some excellent points as well. She pointed out that the viewer can see that Mahanna is beautiful even early in the movie, despite the make-up artists' efforts to give her facial blemishes and to make her look sullen and ugly. She wondered how the message of the movie would be changed if Mahanna had been ugly all along and had continued to be ugly even after she discovered her self-worth. I think Ellen has a good point. What does this movie have to offer the girls who are ugly beyond make-overability?
My take-away from the session was not that Johnny Lingo is a terrible movie (though it's not one I plan to own, in any case). Rather, it's that we need to pay attention to the subtexts of our words, actions, and the stories we tell. We need to be more careful with the implicit messages we send and the ways we treat and value people. In other words, Holly's point was a moral one. Johnny Lingo was held up as a negative example: an illustration of which mistakes not to make when creating Mormon art.
Lest we think that we in the twenty-first century are above valuing people in financial terms and treating them as objects to be bought and sold, Ellen pointed out that we still do this to a degree when we buy a woman a huge diamond or feel her value must be reflected in the size of the wedding's price tag. In short, the lessons Holly has to teach about our implicit messages are still quite relevant. It would behoove the morally serious among us to give Holly's complaints about the film-- and the lessons they have to teach us-- real consideration.
I think that this incredulous feeling results from a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of scholarship like Welker's-- a misunderstanding that is aggravated by the somewhat narrow emphasis of the Tribune summary. The point of Welker's presentation was not to justify her haughty, elitist disdain for a popular film, as some seem to assume. The point was not really about the film at all. The film was a teaching tool in making a larger point: that there are implicit messages in our words and actions and artistic expressions that may alter the way we see the world.
For example, the movie isn't called "Mahanna". It's called "Johnny Lingo". By glazing over Mahanna's reactions and the details of her transformation, and focusing instead on the strictly male transactions that make this transformation possible, the story becomes a tale of the noble masculine hero Johnny Lingo acting in the role of savior rather than a tale of Mahanna discovering her value as a human being. This minimizes female agency and treats her as an object to be acted upon rather than as a subject to act for herself.
Similarly, when at the end of the movie Mr. Harris evaluates Mahanna's transformation, what he fixates on is her physical appearance. His comment is something like, "I don't understand. Mahanna is so beautiful!" Johnny Lingo also says, "everyone who looks at her can see her gift to me." It is thus implied that it's her physical appearance that makes her an eight-cow woman. Holly makes a good point that the climax of the movie largely reinforces the idea that a woman's value is as an object to be looked at and visually appreciated rather than to be valued on the merits of her wit, intelligence, agency, or humanity.
The respondent, Ellen Decoo, made some excellent points as well. She pointed out that the viewer can see that Mahanna is beautiful even early in the movie, despite the make-up artists' efforts to give her facial blemishes and to make her look sullen and ugly. She wondered how the message of the movie would be changed if Mahanna had been ugly all along and had continued to be ugly even after she discovered her self-worth. I think Ellen has a good point. What does this movie have to offer the girls who are ugly beyond make-overability?
My take-away from the session was not that Johnny Lingo is a terrible movie (though it's not one I plan to own, in any case). Rather, it's that we need to pay attention to the subtexts of our words, actions, and the stories we tell. We need to be more careful with the implicit messages we send and the ways we treat and value people. In other words, Holly's point was a moral one. Johnny Lingo was held up as a negative example: an illustration of which mistakes not to make when creating Mormon art.
Lest we think that we in the twenty-first century are above valuing people in financial terms and treating them as objects to be bought and sold, Ellen pointed out that we still do this to a degree when we buy a woman a huge diamond or feel her value must be reflected in the size of the wedding's price tag. In short, the lessons Holly has to teach about our implicit messages are still quite relevant. It would behoove the morally serious among us to give Holly's complaints about the film-- and the lessons they have to teach us-- real consideration.
Saturday, August 15, 2009
SuNsToNe piczzzz!
Unfortunately I didn't take a lot of pictures at the apostate conference because I don't like dragging a camera around and I like shoving it in people's faces even less. And most of the ones I took didn't turn out all that well. But here are some good ones.
Seth Bryant and Mike Reed grinning cheesily.
Ellen Decoo, Matt Bowman, and some poser with a pukashell necklace.
Seth Bryant and Mike Reed grinning cheesily.
Ellen Decoo, Matt Bowman, and some poser with a pukashell necklace.Another Eventful Year at Sunstone
Well, I'm sitting in the airport waiting to head back to Sacramento after another fun and eventful Salt Lake Sunstone Symposium.
On Friday I presented my paper, "Sacred Sci-Fi: The Fiction of Orson Scott Card as Mormon Mythmaking." Those who are interested in a short summary of it might want to check out Michael DeGroote's summary over at MormonTimes. Thanks to Michael for his very fair and favorable rendering. My only complaints are that he implied I think Card "hid" Mormonism in his writings (which I do not), and he didn't clearly state my "mischievous thesis": namely, that Orson Scott Card is a truer successor to Joseph Smith than Thomas Monson. I am quite happy with how my paper turned out, and the reactions to it seemed to all be pretty positive. I'd like to do a little more reading and revision, and then try to get it published.
The best part of Sunstone is always meeting and chatting with people. I spent a lot of my time with Mike Reed and Seth Bryant. Wednesday night we went for a drink. Only at Sunstone do you spend all day talking about Mormon stuff and then go drinking afterward. Thursday night we went for dinner, and on the way back we heard Michael Jackson's "Beat It" playing loudly in the distance. We followed the noise and found a grunge rock concert with hundreds of underage high school kids milling around drinking, smoking marijuana, and moshing in front of a stage on which some guys in ugly rubber alien suits were dancing around like morons, possibly making obscene gestures (though I didn't have a good view so I might be wrong about that). Mike took pictures, so if I can get them I'll post them. Suffice to say, it was not what I expected to find in downtown Salt Lake City!
I also got to meet and chat with plenty of (relatively) famous folks I hadn't met before: Mike Ash, Robin and Emily Jensen, D. Michael Quinn, three Community of Christ apostles, C. H. Hanson, Bored in Vernal, structurecop, John Hamer, and plenty of others I'm not remembering right now. And then there were the old favorites, like Don Bradley, Dan Vogel, Sandra Tanner, Ron Huggins, Maxine Hanks, Kevin Barney, Ellen Decoo, Matt Bowman. By the way, if you've never seen Matt get excited about something, you need to have him tell you about Mormon Bigfoot legends. It starts as a rising crescendo of vigorous hand-waving, so stand far enough back not to get hit. In the next stage he gets up and crouches on his chair like a frog, and then it peaks when he just can't stay seated any more and he has to stand up so he can hop and dance a little. It's hilariously wonderful. This is why Matt is on track to be a first-rate scholar, and I'm on track to be a second-rate one. The only time I get that excited about anything is... well, ok, never. But certainly not about my research.
There were lots of really interesting presentations, a few of which I may undertake to summarize at some point in the next couple days. Unfortunately I have a bad habit of setting things down and forgetting where I laid them, and my notebook and pencil were among the things that went AWOL this week. So if I do any summarizing it will have to be from memory. I'll also try to post a few pictures once I get them transferred from my camera to my hard drive.
On Friday I presented my paper, "Sacred Sci-Fi: The Fiction of Orson Scott Card as Mormon Mythmaking." Those who are interested in a short summary of it might want to check out Michael DeGroote's summary over at MormonTimes. Thanks to Michael for his very fair and favorable rendering. My only complaints are that he implied I think Card "hid" Mormonism in his writings (which I do not), and he didn't clearly state my "mischievous thesis": namely, that Orson Scott Card is a truer successor to Joseph Smith than Thomas Monson. I am quite happy with how my paper turned out, and the reactions to it seemed to all be pretty positive. I'd like to do a little more reading and revision, and then try to get it published.
The best part of Sunstone is always meeting and chatting with people. I spent a lot of my time with Mike Reed and Seth Bryant. Wednesday night we went for a drink. Only at Sunstone do you spend all day talking about Mormon stuff and then go drinking afterward. Thursday night we went for dinner, and on the way back we heard Michael Jackson's "Beat It" playing loudly in the distance. We followed the noise and found a grunge rock concert with hundreds of underage high school kids milling around drinking, smoking marijuana, and moshing in front of a stage on which some guys in ugly rubber alien suits were dancing around like morons, possibly making obscene gestures (though I didn't have a good view so I might be wrong about that). Mike took pictures, so if I can get them I'll post them. Suffice to say, it was not what I expected to find in downtown Salt Lake City!
I also got to meet and chat with plenty of (relatively) famous folks I hadn't met before: Mike Ash, Robin and Emily Jensen, D. Michael Quinn, three Community of Christ apostles, C. H. Hanson, Bored in Vernal, structurecop, John Hamer, and plenty of others I'm not remembering right now. And then there were the old favorites, like Don Bradley, Dan Vogel, Sandra Tanner, Ron Huggins, Maxine Hanks, Kevin Barney, Ellen Decoo, Matt Bowman. By the way, if you've never seen Matt get excited about something, you need to have him tell you about Mormon Bigfoot legends. It starts as a rising crescendo of vigorous hand-waving, so stand far enough back not to get hit. In the next stage he gets up and crouches on his chair like a frog, and then it peaks when he just can't stay seated any more and he has to stand up so he can hop and dance a little. It's hilariously wonderful. This is why Matt is on track to be a first-rate scholar, and I'm on track to be a second-rate one. The only time I get that excited about anything is... well, ok, never. But certainly not about my research.
There were lots of really interesting presentations, a few of which I may undertake to summarize at some point in the next couple days. Unfortunately I have a bad habit of setting things down and forgetting where I laid them, and my notebook and pencil were among the things that went AWOL this week. So if I do any summarizing it will have to be from memory. I'll also try to post a few pictures once I get them transferred from my camera to my hard drive.
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