ClobberBlog | Mormonism, Evangelical Christianity

It’s a little embarrassing to admit that I have not read a great deal since dropping out of the program at the University of Utah back in 2006. There’s a lot of reasons for that—depression, being busy with my daughter’s needs, Mom’s illness and passing, and lack of a real-life person I could meet with and discuss the academic issues I care about were all contributing factors. My family has never shown much understanding for my interest in Mormonism; I can’t bring anything up at family get-togethers without the same lame jokes being made about gold plates under rocks. My father made it clear to me that he thinks my bachelor’s degree was a complete waste of time. My husband’s parents are the most academically inclined relatives I have, and while I’ve admittedly never tried to discuss controversial issues in Mormonism’s history with them, I really just don’t think it’s the sort of topic they’d welcome, and if there’s one thing I do strive at, it’s to not piss off my in-laws any more than I already did when I seduced their charming LDS son.

Experience has taught me that people don’t buy me books on academic subjects for Christmas either. Even if they get my name in the family name exchange and I give them a list of books which can be easily searched for on Amazon.com with the note “buying used is okay!”, they still don’t buy me them. However, some of them do give me money for Christmas, which happened again this year, so I decided it was time to buy myself some books and well… start reading again.

Here’s what I’ve ordered and why:

Essays on Women in the Earliest Christianity Vol. 1 edited by Carroll D. Osburn ~ I ordered and read this book when I was 17. All you teenage girls who are so enamored with theTwilight series and act like it’s ZOMG the best thing ever written? Yeah, I was a much smarter teenage girl than the lot of you are. This book is a collection of essays by evangelical scholars on controversial passages in the New Testament pertaining to women, including essays on the apostle Junia (my old Internet handle from long ago) and the deacon Phoebe, those verses people use to screech about Paul being sexist, and other goodies pertaining to Jesus’s interactions with women.

I took the book with me to BYU and wound up loaning it to a professor who was teaching classes in Greek on John and Luke, for which the book contained relevant essays. At the time the book was out of print and used copies were going on Amazon for $100-$200, so he was pretty much completely dependent on my copy. I started wanting my beloved book back, and well… let’s just say it never happened. I was pleased that he found the book so useful and I hope he continued to work it into his curriculum for future classes, but I was sad to not have it anymore.

Until today! They finally found the wisdom to re-publish the book as a paperback in 2007, and now used copies are much more obtainable, so it’s on it’s way back to me. I love this book.

Essays on Women in the Earliest Christianity Vol. 2 edited by Carroll D. Osburn ~ Ostensibly this book was originally published in the mid-90s not long after the first volume, but the quantities must have been extremely limited, because I could never find it on Amazon.com. I wanted to read it because I had heard that it contained essays on Deborah and some other Old Testament women. I have never felt like modern-day Bible-based patriarchal systems (I would count both evangelical complementarianism and Mormon patriarchalism in that category) handle Deborah very well; they either try to ignore her or minimize her role. I also heard that the book would contain an essay on the bizarre Old Testament passage wherein a woman’s period of uncleanness after having a child is 60 days if it’s a female child and only 30 days if it’s a male child. Not sure if it does or not, but I’ve honestly never heard a good evangelical response to that passage and the charge that it shows how God is sexist, and I would like to find one.

Gifts of Passage: What the Dying Tell Us with the Gifts They Leave Behind by Amy Hollingsworth ~ Back in August of this year, I mentioned attending a local conference held in Silverton, Oregon for the NewFrontiers family of churches. I never got to share my account of a woman I met there, an elderly woman named Char who made a greater impression on me than anyone has in a long time. It’s really hard to put a finger on what was so striking about her. She was clearly in her 50s or 60s at least, but she was slender, had long, straight grey hair and walked with all the energy of a woman in her 20s. She just seemed to radiate joy.

I was waiting in line for one of the conference speakers so I could ask him to pray for my ailing mother, but they had lines of people forming up, waiting for prayers of healing. Already on the previous night they had stopped taking new people to pray for long before my turn in the line came up, so it seemed hopeless. I did not know that it would make a difference, but I wanted one of these men who spoke so boldly about God miraculously healing people to pray for my mother.

So she came up to me and asked if she could pray for me, and I told her that my mother had pancreatic cancer and had been sick with it for almost a year and was failing fast. Much to my amazement, she did not pray for my mother to be healed. She prayed for my mother to have understanding and peace on why now was her time. She prayed for me to be comforted, and to know that God would put other mothers in my life to fill the void being created by losing my mother. It was strange to me, that she didn’t try to offer me the bleak hope of a late-term miraculous healing. And even stranger to me, for the first time since my mother got sick, I felt comforted.

Char recommended this book to me. I think it’s about time I read it.

Bridging the Divide: The Continuing Conversation Between a Mormon and an Evangelical by Robert L. Millet and Greg Johnson & Claiming Christ: A Mormon-Evangelical Debate by Robert L. Millet & Gerald R. McDermott ~ Seth R. from Nine Moonstold me about these a few months ago. Again, I’m a little embarrassed that I’m not up on any and all joint publications between Mormons and evangelicals, so it’s time to catch up. Greg Johnson was the leader of the evangelical Christian club Bible study during my very first semester at BYU, but left not long afterward to found Standing Together Ministries, which was something of a shame for the Bible study because I think he was a lot more sensitive in his approach than his successors. I admittedly never had the chance to meet Robert Millet while I was at BYU, something I would probably try to change if I could do it all over again.

Gentile Girl: Living with the Latter-day Saints by Carol Avery Forseth ~ This book was originally published in 1989 under the title Faith Under Fire and tells the story of a 17 year-old Baptist girl who attends Brigham Young University for two years. Sound a little like anyone you know? I would like to post a review of this book as well as other books, but this one in particular because I’ve had such a similar experience. While I’ve read the 1989 version, I feel like it’s only fair that I consult the 2002 version to see if any of the things I see as errors and weaknesses in the book have been corrected.

The American Evangelical Story by Douglas A. Sweeney ~ I have thought often this last year about how I know so much about LDS church history, but have spent so little time learning the history of my own faith. This book is a step towards fixing that.