Before anything else… I will not have weekly posts on Doctrine&Covenants because a) it’s not my area, and b) I think it’s our hardest book to teach in the four-year cycle. I really struggle with D&C, to be honest. There will be some posts here and there, but I’m trying to write some books and articles.

First, for those in the area, I am not teaching Institute this semester. Rather, I am doing a short lecture series every other Wednesday. Starting January 22, I will offer 8×25 minute lectures (with slides!) on “Understanding Genesis like an Ancient Israelite: Science, History, and the Ancient Near East.” I recently did a 45-minute devotional there on “Science and Religion: Friends, Enemies, or other?” which expanded on my FAIR talk last summer.  Because of time constraints, these lectures will touch on Genesis 1-9— the cycle of Creation, Un-Creation, Re-Creation—  but the scope will be largely limited to Genesis chapter 1 in terms of text, and some ancient Near Eastern context, history of interpretation, and interpretive assumptions, like Accommodation and Concordism.

Second, after interviewing Yale professor Sam Wilkinson about his book on evolution, purpose, and meaning, Daniel Peterson interviewed me about the various reasons Church leaders have given for opposing evolution. (Of course, not all leaders have, and the Church’s official position is neutrality.)

Third, I participated in a roundtable about the nature of prophets, prophetic knowledge, and fallibility for the Me, Myshelf, and I series, along with Don Bradley, J. Max Wilson, and hosts Sarah Allen and Zachary Wright.

Fourth, I spoke at FAIR’s online history conference in October on how and why some doctrinal emphases and interpretations have changed in the past, with an eye towards preparing people for further change. In particular, the degree of humanity Church leaders have recognized in revelation, prophethood, scripture, and interpretation has varied, and those variations have affected downstream attitudes towards science, scripture, and history-writing. We’re now in a period wherein we recognize a significant amount of humanity in those four things, and are reevaluating our inherited traditions and winnowing out those things that lack a strong basis. (This is kind of what I started talking about in my series on Elder Ballard’s radical reformation.)

Fifth, before I gave that talk at FAIR, I appeared on Keystone (a spin-off from Saints Unscripted) to have a conversation about the very same topic. This went somewhat viral. Commentary and lessons learned underneath.

The title created an expectation that I would reveal insider knowledge about major changes Church was about to do. The comments speculated wildly that since (as they imagine) I am a left-wing Marxist DEI academic, I was advocating or predicting gay sealings. Others claimed me for the new amateur polygamy-denial camp, i.e. the “Joseph Smith never practiced polygamy, it’s a later conspiracy by Brigham Young and others.”  Yet others, in an anti-intellectual vein, decided I was dictating to Church leaders that expertise takes precedence over revelation, or supposed I was arguing that the “philosophies of men” are infallible, or expressed opposition to expertise in general because they are anti-vax.  Yet others dismissed me for (as they suppose) not wearing garments.

This would all amuse me, were it not revealing of real problems and negative intellectual/spiritual trends among Latter-day Saints. For the record, I am not a Marxist left-wing DEI academic, and was neither advocating anything, whether gay sealings or historical conspiracies about polygamy. (Joseph Smith instituted polygamy, however messy. Deal with it. And yes, amateurs— as are every single one of the polygamy-deniers— can do good work, but their work has to pass the gauntlet that professional work does and it rarely passes. And NB: “expertise” doesn’t necessarily mean degrees, but it does entail rigorous peer review, participation in academic meetings, publishing in academic, vetted venues.)

We filmed two episodes back to back, so I was in the same chair for three hours. Between the particular pair of garments I wore, fidgeting in a chair for three hours, and being unaware of camera angles, yeah, you get a lot of leg in that video. Mea culpa.

My purpose in both FAIR and Keystone was quite simple; as a historian, I’m an observer of the past and present, more aware of patterns and shifts and trends than most. Understanding past trends does allow to you gauge current directions, but I wasn’t making any predictions other than change happened, is happening, here are some likely reasons why, and more change is likely to happen. Understanding how and why particular changes happened in the past prepares you for changes in the future. FAIR is the Historian Professor slides+ footnotes version; Keystone is the casual Q&A spontaneous version. It’s telling that the casual version has 100x the views of the other one. I recommend both.

Sixth, a speaking announcement. On March 28-29, I will give two related lectures on consecutive nights in the Rochester NY area.

Friday night title— Genesis in the Nineteenth Century: Joseph Smith and the Double-Creation Problem

The first chapters of Genesis confront the reader with not one but two consecutive creation stories which are inconsistent with each other. Combining intellectual work with revelation, Joseph Smith provided successively better solutions to this problem, first in the Book of Moses, then the Book of Abraham, finally solving it in the Temple liturgy. Understanding this history illustrates both how divine inspiration works with human intellect in a composite process of progress, and how questions and problems may serve as catalysts to revelation.

(As that is temple related, Saturday morning, some will attend the Temple.)  A good precursor talk is here.

Saturday night title— Genesis in the Twentieth Century: The Church, Creation, and Evolution

During the twentieth century, scientific discoveries, synthesis, and mutual reinforcement between scientific fields led to biological evolution’s widespread acceptance among scientists, including LDS scientists. Similarly, due to new discoveries and maturing analysis, biblical scholars across differing religious commitments— including some inerrantist evangelicals— came to understand Genesis in such a way that it offered no opposition to biological evolution. During this same time period, as Latter-day Saints gained highly competent scholars in both science and scripture, the Church moved from a position of wary openness to evolution to a semi-official rejection of it and embrace of creationism.

Details of time and place forthcoming here.

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