Dave Banack : December 2008 Archives

At the Salt Lake Tribune, "Focus pulls interview over Beck's Mormon faith." What a fine exhibition of the Christmas spirit of togetherness, tolerance, and good will. What was pulled was an interview with Beck about his recent book, The Christmas Sweater. It seems Focus on the Family readers were not adequately warned that Beck is a Mormon. Imagine, without a warning some of those folks might have actually touched a copy of Beck's book and picked up Mormon germs! Please, someone explain to me why Evangelicals, as a collective body, so often display all the maturity of an 8-year-old when it comes to dealing with other people and other religions.

I dropped a new book into slot one of my Now Reading list (on the sidebar), Nauvoo Polygamy: "... but we called it celestial marriage", by George D. Smith. The title is certainly an orthographic challenge. I'll save my own substantive comments for a later post (after I've read more of the book), but here are several posts from other blogs that have already discussed the book.

Earlier I posted a link to the "year in review" post at the LDS Newsroom. Here's a similar post at the Salt Lake Tribune, "A year of scrutiny for the LDS Church." The article features extensive commentary by Philip Barlow, the Arrington Chair of Mormon History and Culture at Utah State, who called it "a wild, eventful year for the church." The most interesting section of the article reviews the ups and downs of official Mormon-Catholic relations during the year.

This is the first of several posts on Blomberg and Robinson's How Wide the Divide: A Mormon & an Evangelical in Conversation. The format of the book is its biggest strength -- each chapter contains a joint conclusion in which the authors summarize the exchange, with an emphasis on restating the many points of belief that both share (despite the often confusing use of different terminology by Mormons and Evangelicals). That seems like a nice way to approach an interfaith exchange and accounts, I believe, for the success and continuing relevance of the book.

At the LDS Newroom, "2008: A Historic Year for the Church," highlighting and discussing major LDS stories from 2008. The biggies: The passing of President Gordon B. Hinckley, with Thomas S. Monson becoming the 16th President of the Church shortly thereafter; the first volume of the Joseph Smith Papers project finally getting published; and Elder Ballard (an LDS apostle) publicly encouraging Mormons to discuss their faith online via blogs and other forums. Oh, and there was that Prop 8 thing, too.