ClobberBlog | Mormonism, Evangelical Christianity

Day 6 – Wednesday

In the morning we had breakfast at the CenterPoint Church office and got to hear the testimonies of some of the staff who work there and how they felt called to come to Utah.

Then we headed to Brigham Young University for lunch at the Wilkinson Center with Sarah Taylor. You know that part in the second season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer where Kendra arrives and from that point in the series there’s always at least two Slayers in the Buffyverse instead of one? That’s how I feel about Sarah. Except she’s more like Buffy and I’m more like Faith (who arrives in Season 3 after Kendra’s death).  I wish we had attended BYU at the same time together. I could have used a friend like her while I was there.

Next we hiked on over to the Spencer W. Kimball Tower (aka “SWKT” or “Swicket”) and went up to the tenth floor where the Psychology Department is located. Every Wednesday from 2-4 PM, Professor Brent Slife (the chair of the doctoral program in Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology) hosts a discussion group amongst a group of students who are mostly graduate students in psychology and philosophy. Brent is an evangelical Christian and a member of CenterPoint Church in Orem. Every year, when the Trinity International University students come out, the two groups get together for a dialogue.

I didn’t know Brent in my time at BYU, but I wish I had. He was a pleasure to meet and I’m sure that having both lived so deeply embedded in Mormon culture, we would have a lot in common.

I thought that the discussion went well. It was the first time the group had hosted a student who was a product of both universities (me). The topics of discussion were:

Discussing those things took up the entire two-hour block of time. Some of the BYU students were pretty well-versed in FARMS/FAIR-style apologetics, and I don’t think the TEDS students were ready for that. I was, but I waited a while before jumping in on that because I wanted it to be a learning experience for the other TEDS students. I remember getting blind-sided by LDS apologetics with my neophyte criticisms of lack of evidence for the Book of Mormon when I first started out. Heh.

After that meeting, I called up Erin Fairlight Olsen (רִבְקָה), my freshman modern Hebrew teacher, and arranged to have dinner at her house. You’ll recall that her husband, James Olsen(מָרְדֳּכַי), is a perma-blogger for Times & Seasons. You’ll also recall that James was a fellow student with me in Erin’s Hebrew 101 class when he began dating and became engaged to her. They have four children now and they’re both Mormon feminists, still open and friendly about discussing other religions, so we had some engaging conversations. Erin is about to return to school to start her PhD later this year.

Years ago, we had jokingly decided that their oldest son, Gaebriel, was my godson. He’s 7 years old now and so charming. (I have an adorable picture of me and him, which I’ll post if I get permission.) At one point I was talking about my mother’s passing, and I started to tear up, and Gaebriel was like, “You guys! Stop making my godmother sad!” It was so adorable.