Zion 2.0: Building the Kingdom in an Online, LinkedIn, Open Source world The young people of today are a web-savvy, plugged-in, multitasking generation. Immersed in media, they employ social networks on a scale never before seen. They are more connected and technically sophisticated than any previous generation-a fact that is changing social dynamics and the …
Event: Salt Lake Symposium 2008
Are We Still Gods in Embryo? The Mormon Doctrine of Human Deification
Are We Still Gods in Embryo? The Mormon Doctrine of Human Deification Expounded by Joseph Smith and famously summarized by Lorenzo Snow, the LDS doctrine of human deification has, since the 1840s, presented several soteriological and cosmological difficulties. Openly celebrated, elaborated, and contested by generations of Mormon thinkers, the doctrine has today become nearly invisible …
A Warning to the Rising Generation: Allowing Religiosity to Reign over Spirituality
A Warning to the Rising Generation: Allowing Religiosity to Reign over Spirituality Even though the theme of this conference addresses spirituality, there may be some value in exploring the tendency to confuse it with religiosity. What is the difference between the two? Can a person be religious and not spiritual; or spiritual and not religious? …
Mapping Book of Mormon Historicity Debates: Historical and Social Perspectives
Mapping Book of Mormon Historicity Debates: Historical and Social Perspectives This presentation is designed to orient attendees in the debates over whether the Book of Mormon is an ancient document. This presentation identifies historical developments that affect how and when this debate has unfolded and applies theoretical frameworks from the sociology of knowledge to explain …
I Love You No Matter What
I Love You No Matter What At age nine, I found out that my father is gay. This began a long struggle to understand his decision to leave our family and my faith in the LDS church. As a young mother and graduate student, I have finally found a way to reconcile my faith and …
Community of Christ: Identity, Message, and Mission
Community of Christ: Identity, Message, and Mission In the 1850’s and 1860’s, some dissenters from the Latter Day Saint movement banded together in the midwest to form the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. More than a hundred and fifty years of growth, change, and re-examination has occurred since then, leading to …
Autobiography, Trauma, Testimony, and Confession
Autobiography, Trauma, Testimony, and Confession Although the Christian gospel is supposed to be a message of redemption, compassion, hope, and love, Western spiritual autobiography is rife with trauma. Christian conversion requires, many claim, destruction of the ego so the soul is open to grace, arguably a traumatic experience, however redemptive its ultimate effects. Narratives recounting …
A Paradox of Moral Courage: The Tragic Story of Helmuth Huebener
A Paradox of Moral Courage: The Tragic Story of Helmuth Huebener This session explores the moral courage that caused the young German Latter-day Saint Helmuth Huebener to put copies of BBC broadcasts in Hamburg telephone booths and city lamp posts-acts for which the Nazis eventually executed him. Huebener’s story is full of paradoxes-many of them …
Is the Mormon Church Still Racist?: Methodological Approaches to the Problem of Race and Mormonism
Is the Mormon Church Still Racist?: Methodological Approaches to the Problem of Race and Mormonism Despite its having been thirty years since the Mormon Church rescinded the priesthood ban on members of African ancestry, the controversy remains whether Mormonism is still racist. That is, just because a particular practice has ended, it does not mean …
The Search for the Divine
The Search for the Divine Engaged in the process of writing a collection of essays on her travels to visit shamans in Peru and Ecuador, Tibetan Buddhist monks in Sikkim, North India, Baptist preachers in Arkansas and South Carolina, Goddess worshippers in the Yucatan, among others, Phyllis Barber will discuss her search for the Spirit, …