Keven Barney's new Dialogue article is provocative enough

[Archaea]

Originally Posted by RedHeadGal

I don't subscribe to Dialogue, and the website tells me I can buy the article for $10. yeah, right.

When I have time, I'll summarize it better then, not trying to be snippy or snarky, so accept my apologies.

[Tex]

Originally Posted by Archaea

How to worship our mother in heaven without getting excoummunicated.

I can answer that question and I don't need to write a thesis on it: just don't teach it.

You want to go home at night and pray to Mother in Heaven on your own? Knock yourself out.

[Archaea]

Originally Posted by Tex

I can answer that question and I don't need to write a thesis on it: just don't teach it.

You want to go home at night and pray to Mother in Heaven on your own? Knock yourself out.

You might wish to read the thoughtful article before you mullah it out of recognition. I haven't given the issue of a Mother in Heaven much thought, but the fact that we have such a harsh reaction to thinking about the concept is strange. Members who stray from orthodoxy are branded as heretics, when it's mostly just speculated reason, our entire theology.

We have very few theophanies in our culture where we claim direction revelation from Deity, yet we speak so dogmatically. Now heretics claiming to know the attributes of Our Mother in Heaven should not speak dogmatically either.

Despite what we claim, we have very little pure revelation. Most of what we have involves speculative reason based on existing canon. After JS, there is mostly silence.

[Archaea]

Here is his very modest approach:

If most of us agree that aMother in Heaven exists, then why has discussion
of Her been so controversial, even resulting in disciplinary actions
in a few cases? My perception is that people tend to see this matter in one
of two very different ways. Those who are more liberal-minded and open
to feminist thought see the concept of Mother in Heaven as a wonderful,
revealed doctrine of the Prophet Joseph and are very frustrated that we do
not actually do anything with that knowledge. Those who are more traditional
and conservative (certainly the majority) may sympathize with that
frustration, but they are also of the view that we simply do not know anything
about Her beyond the mere fact of Her existence. People in this
camp therefore tend to see those who strive to make the doctrine mean-
ingful in Church life as engaging inNew Age syncretism in a misguided effort
to fill the lacuna. As a moderate, I can see and empathize with both
perspectives.

[Archaea]

He notes:

My basic insight is this:We think that we have no knowledge about
our Mother in Heaven because we assume that such knowledge must
come from modern sources, our premise being that of course there is no
knowledge about Her in the Bible itself. It would be nice if there were a
clear and direct modern revelation, say a Doctrine and Covenants 139, articulating
with clarity Her nature and attributes and how we are to worship
Her. Needless to say, no such text exists. But what I am going to suggest
is that knowledge of Her is available in our canonized scripture, particularly
in the Old Testament. Although information about Her is preserved
in the Old Testament and associated literature, it is hidden in such
a way that it requires scholarship to excavate it. And Mormonism is one of
the few traditions, if not the only one, that has the resources within itself
to take advantage of this knowledge for contemporary religious purposes.

[Archaea]

And this intro is interesting:

One place to begin our story is with the work of Boyd Kirkland on
the development of the Mormon understanding of God.4 Kirkland argued
that the current Mormon convention of equating God the Father
with Elohim and God the Son with Jehovah (Yahweh), derived from the
122 DIALOGUE: A JOURNAL OF MORMON THOUGHT, VOL. 41, NO. 4
1916 First Presidency Statement drafted by James E. Talmage, matches
neither biblical nor nineteenth-century Mormon sources. This conclusion
is in general true canonically (i.e., for the biblical text as redacted in
its final form), and for a long time I assumed the same thing across the
board. I began to rethink this issue only when I was introduced to the
work of the independent Methodist scholar, Margaret Barker,5 which in
turn led me to a more recent trend in the scholarship of ancient Israel of
seeing the monotheism we associate with Israelite theology as coming
only at the end of a long line of development. Kirkland acknowledges
such a development to a certain extent, but he sees it as a simple movement from an earlier stage of monolatry to extreme monotheism. The
more recent trend in scholarship is to see the development as more profound, beginningbeginning with a polytheistic pantheon much like that of the Canaanites.
6
According to this view, at first the Hebrews worshipped a small pantheon
consisting of the high god El, his consort (scholar-speak for “wife”)
Asherah, their sons Yahweh and Baal, and the other (less important and
often unnamed) sons of the Gods. Just as the Mormon understanding of
God developed over time (as Kirkland documents), this early pluralistic
understanding of God also developed over time in the movement toward
monotheism. Baal was a very similar deity to Yahweh and therefore was excluded
from the pantheon very early to make way for Yahweh’s claims. El
was more complementary to Yahweh in his characteristics, so he and
Yahweh were simply merged into each other (resulting in the compound
name Yahweh Elohim, rendered “the LORD God” in the King James Version).
The other sons of the Gods became angels—still divine beings, but a
lower class of being than the dominant Yahweh.7
The understanding of Asherah changed over time in response to
these developments. At first She was the wife of El, the mother and procreator
of the Gods. As El was merged into Yahweh (around the tenth century
B.C.E.), Asherah came to be viewed as the consort, not of El, but of
Yahweh. For instance, an inscription at Kuntillet ’Ajrud in the northern
Sinai, fifty-five miles nothwest of Eilat, dating to roughly the ninth to
eighth centuries B.C.E., states: “I have blessed you by Yahweh of Samaria
and his Asherah” [brkt ’tkm lyhwh shmrn wl’shrth].8 Eventually, the functions
of Asherah were also absorbed into Yahweh’s; then, in an effort to
put a stop to any independent worship of Her, reformers linked Her polemically
to (the now thoroughly discredited) Baal, despite the fact that
Barney: How to Worship Our Mother in Heaven
such a linkage does not seem to have had any historical basis. This reform
movement against the worship of Asherah took place from the eighth to
the sixth centuries B.C.E.; and by the time of the conclusion of the Babylonian
Exile, the worship of Asherah as such had been stamped out.

[Levin]

Yesterday a young boy was ordained a Deacon by his father in priesthood opening exercises. He repeatedly referred to the boy being with "Heavenly Parents" and being formed into being out a sea of intelligence by "Heavenly Parents," and so forth. The father never mentioned Heavenly Father; only Heavenly Parents.

This is the same person who came up to me and said we shouldn't schedule a ward temple session on Saturday morning b/c that is when couples are most likely to get it on.

This man clearly has an agenda.

[Archaea]

Originally Posted by Levin

Yesterday a young boy was ordained a Deacon by his father in priesthood opening exercises. He repeatedly referred to the boy being with "Heavenly Parents" and being formed into being out a sea of intelligence by "Heavenly Parents," and so forth. The father never mentioned Heavenly Father; only Heavenly Parents.

This is the same person who came up to me and said we shouldn't schedule a ward temple session on Saturday morning b/c that is when couples are most likely to get it on.

This man clearly has an agenda.

Interesting. Personally, if people wish to do something apart from mainstream, they may wish to confine it to their homes, but we shouldn't also be afraid to discuss the matter.

And you believe temple visits should interrupt conjugal visits?

[Levin]

Originally Posted by Archaea

Interesting. Personally, if people wish to do something apart from mainstream, they may wish to confine it to their homes, but we shouldn't also be afraid to discuss the matter.

And you believe temple visits should interrupt conjugal visits?

It was the very personal nature of the priesthood exercise -- the ordination of son by father -- that I'm sure did not make anyone think twice; it was a father emphasizing a part of his faith to his son at a seminal moment of the son's development. If the father had given a talk where he replaced every possible reference to "Heavenly Father" with "Heavenly Parents," the reaction may have been different. In my ward, it wouldn't have been different, but the point remains.


If I were ever put to the choice between temple attendance with my wife and conjugal relations with my wife, I'd choose the the temple of which Paul speaks in 1 Cor. 6:19-20. You know, the one to which only I hold the recommend?

[Tex]

Originally Posted by Archaea

You might wish to read the thoughtful article before you mullah it out of recognition. I haven't given the issue of a Mother in Heaven much thought, but the fact that we have such a harsh reaction to thinking about the concept is strange. Members who stray from orthodoxy are branded as heretics, when it's mostly just speculated reason, our entire theology.

We have very few theophanies in our culture where we claim direction revelation from Deity, yet we speak so dogmatically. Now heretics claiming to know the attributes of Our Mother in Heaven should not speak dogmatically either.

Despite what we claim, we have very little pure revelation. Most of what we have involves speculative reason based on existing canon. After JS, there is mostly silence.

Tossing out the term "mullah" to describe my response is just lazy.

I'd be happy to read the article, but I'm not going to pay for it. And my post wasn't really about a Mother in Heaven anyway.