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Mormon Matters - (Dan Wotherspoon ARCHIVE)

Mormon Matters was a weekly podcast that explored Mormon current events, pop culture, politics and spirituality. Dan retired from Mormon Matters Podcast in 2019 and now hosts a podcast called "Latter-day Faith" that can be found here: http://podcast.latterdayfaith.org/
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Mormon Matters - (Dan Wotherspoon ARCHIVE)
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Now displaying: May, 2016
May 24, 2016
Mercy is a fundamental tenet of the Christian gospel and its descriptions of the attributes of God, and it certainly is a topic familiar to Latter-day Saints. But how often do we actually reflect upon it? Do we imagine it as simply a quality and an characteristic of God that we, too, should strive to attain and embody? Do we mostly think of it only in relationship to the Atonement and God’s grace? In a wonderful book, Mercy Matters: Opening Yourself to the Life-Changing Gift, Mathew N. Schmalz, a Catholic theologian and teacher, as well as a frequent conversation partner with Mormons (including here on Mormon Matters), speaks of these things but also explores mercy in many other deep and compelling ways. What is mercy’s relationship to reconciliation with others, with "letting go" of ego and our desires to be right, with compassion? How might mercy interact in revealing ways with freedom, dignity, kindness, and truth? In the realm of our relationship with God, how does mercy mesh with forgiveness, suffering, death, and life? Mercy Matters explores all of these topics, but for a theological book, it does it in a very unusual way: it is not at all abstract! Instead, it is completely immersed in Schmalz’s own life, featuring reflections on incidents (many very difficult and not the sort of things one typically expects an author to reveal about himself) as well as on various moments of mercy he has experienced. It is personal, and vulnerable, and all the more powerful for it. I highly recommend this book--as do Fiona Givens and Alonzo Gaskill, my conversation partners, along with Mathew Schmalz, in this episode.
May 10, 2016
Excerpts from two talks by prominent General Authorities (one by Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, and the other by Elder Richard J. Maynes) have in the past two weeks generated a lot of buzz in certain online forums that many listeners to this program would be familiar with, most of it negative or sarcastic. The reactions came mostly to a few sentences from the talks, presented online largely without wider framing, and sometimes placed as part of online memes designed to heighten the impact of the quotations being read in a particular way. The memes and presentations themselves suggest how a viewer or reader should react to the words being quoted. But is this a fair--"virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy"--way of presenting ideas, especially those with which we have an issue? Is it fair to the speaker? To the readers? Is it deliberate dissembling? Those who write or pass these along generally know that what they are doing is presenting to some degree a caricature of a speaker and her or his presentation, something deliberately distorting, and they also know that many who encounter the meme or quotations will most likely react the way the intend and very seldom will themselves chase down the fuller context. In this episode, Kristine Haglund and Jon Grimes join Mormon Matters host Dan Wotherspoon to talk about the two talks in question and what unfolded online. They each certainly take exception to things said in each talk, the way they were said, or in some other way wish various ideas had been presented differently, but they also attempt to give much fuller context to the speeches, their settings, and other factors that mitigate against much of the full-on negative or exasperated reactions that occurred. The conversation also takes important turns in other directions, for instance on the way Latter-day Saints (and others) read or use scripture, as well as about the nature of religious experience and how humans tell of them. After closing the conversation with the two panelists, Dan Wotherspoon then speaks for a few minutes about another recent talk, the BYU commencement address by Elder L. Whitney Clayton, that he felt also suffers from distortions in certain online conversation about parts of it.
May 4, 2016
John G. Turner’s recent book, The Mormon Jesus: A Biography (Harvard University Press, 2016) presents a wonderful overview of the various ways Mormon scripture, leaders, and lay members understand Jesus Christ--and how these views developed over time, and why. As a non-Mormon historian and scholar of religions, Turner approaches this subject in a way not easily imitated by LDS scholars, seeing things about the teachings about Christ in the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith's Translation of the Bible, and other texts through lenses and thought frameworks that are unencumbered by decades of Mormon interpretation or assumptions that they will all be consistent with each other. Tackling not only LDS scripture, but also messages about personal religious experiences, the role of prophets as mouthpieces for Christ, changing views about the Second Coming, understandings of Jesus as our "elder brother" and the "son of God," as Jehovah of the Hebrew Bible, whether or not Jesus was married and the place of Second Anointings in LDS theology, and also Mormon depictions of Jesus Christ through various artistic media, Turner presents a rich and interesting array of ideas, controversies, and official (as well as folk) beliefs and their development. Mormonism, for Turner, is thoroughly Christian, with many of its ideas about Christ congruent with (or with roots in) at least some lines of thought in wider Christianity, but with others quite striking or unique. In this episode, John Turner joins a podcast favorite, historian of LDS doctrine Charles Harrell, and Mormon Matters host Dan Wotherspoon in an engaging discussion of several of the books’ subjects and arguments. As always, we discover that Mormon doctrine is not straightforward, nor did it evolve to its current positions via a clear revelatory path--which is just one reason it is always so fascinating!
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