Nearly two thousand years ago, Christ’s followers asked, “How can we know the way?” Christ’s reply was simple and profound: “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). What happens if we take this literally, rather than merely as a metaphor? How do our questions — and our faith — change when we think of truth as a living, breathing person instead of as a set of abstract ideas? The answer to this question is explored in a new book published by Verdand Press called Who Is Truth? Reframing our Questions for a Richer Faith.

Written by Jeffrey Thayne and Ed Gantt, the book is written for Latter-day Saints who wish to re-examine their faith in a way that strengthens their faith in the Restoration of the Gospel. The book explores how Western philosophical assumptions subtly bias the questions we ask about our faith, and how this sometimes fuels the “faith crises” that some members experience. Many of our questions may not have answers because they start with the wrong premises, like looking for the corner of a round room.

In contrast, Hebrew thought offers a glimpse into a worldview that raises altogether different questions, questions which are less biased towards doubt and which lean more towards fidelity to our covenants and to Christ. The books shares insights related to how we understand prophets, the Atonement, sin and repentance, the temple, and our relationship with Christ.

James Faulconer, a professor of philosophy at Brigham Young University and currently a fellow at the Wheatley Institution, wrote a Foreword for the book, in which he said, “Thayne and Gantt give us an overview of how thinking in a more ancient way changes … our understanding. In turn, that new understanding brightens and freshens the Gospel.”

Who Is Truth? can be purchased as a paperback or as an ebook on Amazon.

 Yesterday, Greg Trimble posted a response to critiques of his earlier article on the coming “revolution” in the Church. Although I had nothing to do with those critiques, I wanted to respond to Greg’s post yesterday.

Greg misread the responses to his article.

Greg misinterpreted the criticism he received. The authors of the posts responding to him (as I understand them) were not asking to not be judged for judging. They, too, believe that self-righteous judgmentalism is a sin. Nor are they advocating for unkindness, gossip, or mean-spiritedness, or self-righteousness.

What they are asking is that judgmentalism not be treated as the only sin (or the worst of all possible sins), or as a sin that is exempt from itself. When condemning self-righteous judgmentalism, it is easy to commit it — and it’s also easy to trivialize other sins in the process. In fact, that’s what so much of the “non-judgment” rhetoric going around right now does: it treats all other sins as trivial compared to the sin of judgment.

That’s the main point of the articles that were responding to Greg. And he seems to have missed that point and straw-manned those articles instead. He responded defensively, rather than charitably, rather than striving to understand the views of those who were responding to him. Instead, he further rallies his readers against the awful judgers.

Greg is wrong that all judgment is bad.

Not all judgment is self-righteous judgment. There is such a thing as plain-old righteous judgment. So Greg is simply wrong when he implies that the Savior said that judging is never good, or always wrong. Joseph Smith did not believe that all judgment was bad. Continue reading →

Recently, in an impromptu interview, Gary Johnson expressed some deep reservations about the idea of “religious freedom.” He essentially argued that it could lead to a slippery slope, in which religious individuals justify all sorts of crimes using their religious conscience. He said:

I mean under the guise of religious freedom, anybody can do anything. Back to Mormonism. Why shouldn’t somebody be able to shoot somebody else because their freedom of religion says that God has spoken to them and that they can shoot somebody dead.”

Now, this comment was admittedly incomplete. We’re not getting the full picture, since he’s referring to something previously addressed in the conversation, but wasn’t included in the interview transcript. So some people reached out and asked for clarification. Johnson responded:

My point, made with an unfortunate example, is that religion has been used too many times to justify discrimination, persecution and, yes, violence. Acts of violence and aggression can not be excused by religion and all people must be held accountable for their own actions.

Here’s my issue. No one (credible) is advocating for an unfettered ability to justify any crime under the auspices of relgious conscience. In short, nobody who is concerned about the rights of wedding vendors, doctors, and religious schools is asking for the ability to murder people with impunity.

His example may have been unfortunate, but he has only doubled down on his strawman: he believes that if you enact accommodations for those of religious conscience, you risk a slippery slope where you must accommodate ANY crime undertaken in the name of religion. And this simply is not true. It is wholly, unequivacably false.

Johnson’s perspective ignores hundreds of years of actual jurisprudence surrounding religious freedom. Since the founding of our nation, it has been recognized by courts that religious freedom is bounded by laws that protect public health and safety, or any other “compelling state interest.” Never has the Supreme Court — even under the strongest and broadest readings of the First Amendment — permitted people to engage in criminal behavior with impunity merely because their motives were religious.

There is no slippery slope here. No law passed by a legislature in the modern U.S. to protect limited religious freedoms of wedding vendors, pharmacists, pro-life doctors, or church universities is going to give ANYONE legal pretext to murder, plunder, or steal in the name of religion, or anything like it. Nobody (credible) in the debate even wants such a pretext. To imply otherwise is not merely a straw man of the religious freedom movement, but a overtly hostile reading of their intentions and proposals. Continue reading →

Introduction

Latter-day Saints have been long-time defenders of religious liberty, and have faced the brunt of some of the most egregious religious liberty violations in U.S. history (the Missouri extermination order, the imprisoning of Church leaders over polygamy, etc.). Our scripture and our rich history of sermons and teachings supply us with ample reason to support a strong tradition of property rights, religious liberty, and constitutional restraint.

It is no wonder, I think, that some members of the Church, particularly those with libertarian leanings, have reacted incredulously to the Church’s “Fairness for All” campaign, which they interpret to be a capitulation on some of these core principles. After all, non-discrimination laws — of any variety — are argued to be a fundamental violation of basic property rights. Preventing large housing units from making conscience-based decisions, while allowing small landlords the same rights, seems like more than a compromise; it feels like giving up something important. Continue reading →