Today at lunch I read a fascinating article by C. Jess Groesbeck. Here's what Groesbeck is up to:
"The Book of Mormon came forth first and foremost as a claimed religious history of the Americas and their native peoples. It appeared in the context of an uneasy interface between two cultures--the primarily white, Anglo-European immigrants to the North American continent and the Native Americans who were already at home in the land. Interactions between these cultures required a tremendous amount of assimilation for both.
In this setting of peoples in tension and uncertainty, a young man, Joseph Smith Jr., published a book that without question--even if every other issue were to remain forever unsettled--provided a remarkable cultural and symbolic bridge between these two groups. As such, might it not then be important to consider the Book of Mormon as a symbolic and mythic history religiously oriented, instead of spending so much energy on questions about its ancient or modern origins? What might we learn by bringing the book and its claims into dialogue with enthnographers, symbologists, and historians of religion who have developed powerful tools and insights for understanding religious texts?
In connection with the work of these theorists, I contend in this article that Joseph Smith operated in much the same way as a shaman does in many world cultures. That is, through his many gifts and spiritual sensibilities, Smith was able to access at a deep subconscious level all the fragmented traditions, problems, expectations, dreams, and needs of his time and place, and, through the Book of Mormon, to weave them together in an immensely satisfying way."
Here's the pdf of the March 2004 issue of Sunstone. The article starts on p. 35:
"The Book of Mormon came forth first and foremost as a claimed religious history of the Americas and their native peoples. It appeared in the context of an uneasy interface between two cultures--the primarily white, Anglo-European immigrants to the North American continent and the Native Americans who were already at home in the land. Interactions between these cultures required a tremendous amount of assimilation for both.
In this setting of peoples in tension and uncertainty, a young man, Joseph Smith Jr., published a book that without question--even if every other issue were to remain forever unsettled--provided a remarkable cultural and symbolic bridge between these two groups. As such, might it not then be important to consider the Book of Mormon as a symbolic and mythic history religiously oriented, instead of spending so much energy on questions about its ancient or modern origins? What might we learn by bringing the book and its claims into dialogue with enthnographers, symbologists, and historians of religion who have developed powerful tools and insights for understanding religious texts?
In connection with the work of these theorists, I contend in this article that Joseph Smith operated in much the same way as a shaman does in many world cultures. That is, through his many gifts and spiritual sensibilities, Smith was able to access at a deep subconscious level all the fragmented traditions, problems, expectations, dreams, and needs of his time and place, and, through the Book of Mormon, to weave them together in an immensely satisfying way."
Here's the pdf of the March 2004 issue of Sunstone. The article starts on p. 35:
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