For the second year in a row, Ziff has posted some fascinating charts and graphs demonstrating how the Niblets voting broke down:

2009 Niblets Results

I managed to bag the Niblets for Best Comment and Best Contribution to Interfaith Dialogue. Best commenter was close, but alas, I am only the runner-up. Grats to MikeInWeHo!

Kaimi Wenger of Times & Seasons also took a Niblet for Best Post Title for “How Wide the Divide . . . and can we ever Bridget?” Which is sort of like winning another Niblet.

Thanks everyone who voted for me this year; I was truly surprised at the outpouring of support. Throughout most of 2009, I was a full-time SAHP with a lot of boredom and time on my hands. Now I’m a workaholic who’s balancing full-time graduate work with a part-time job, and it isn’t like my parenting commitments have gone anywhere. Point being, you may not see me around the Bloggernacle as much this year.

But 2009 sure was fun. Thanks for everything.

Okay, it is high past time that I updated and re-organized my links. I’ve been putting it off as I need to reduce the font size of my link headings in my theme, and I’ve been dreading breaking open my Cascading Style Sheets and figuring out how to do that. But it’s probably time.

These are the changes and additions I envision. I’d like some feedback on how people feel about these:

New Heading – Egalitarianism

Moving Complegalitarian to this heading (it hasn’t published since November, but it’s such a useful dialogue blog, I hope it continues again soon).

Adding The CBE Scroll, Equality Central Forum, Women in Ministry, and Suzanne’s Bookshelf. Also adding a specific link to Glenn Miller’s “Women in the Heart of God” series at the Christian Think Tank. Christians For Biblical Equality itself already has linkage under “Affiliations.”

New Heading – Evangelical Thought

Moving Christian Think Tank, Tekton Apologetics, TheologyWeb, Morehead’s Musings, and Parchment and Pen to this heading.

Adding Re-vis.e Re-form, New Leaven, Gentle Wisdom, and Better Bibles Blog.

JB, I’d like to add you to my links, but I’m not totally sure where since I’m not gonna create a whole new heading for outreach to Jehovah’s Witnesses. You okay with being added to Evangelical Thought?

New Heading – Other Christians

Adding Energetic Procession, 42, Mild-Mannered Musings. KatyJane and Whitney, you guys have the option of being added to this heading, or I can put you under “Friends & Family.” It’s your call.

KatyJane, you could technically go under “Ex-Mormon / Post-Mormon / New Order Mormon” as well, but your blog doesn’t often touch base on Mormonism, so I figure you’ll like one of the other categories better.

Changing LDS to LDS Thought

Keeping all of the links currently listed under “LDS.”

Adding Faith Promoting Rumor, Mormon Inquiry, Zelophehad’s Daughters, I Love Gellies, and Mormon Matters, the Pierian Spring.

New Heading – Post-Mormon / N.O.M.

Adding Irresistible (Dis)Grace, Letters From A Broad, The Faithful Dissident, and Main Street Plaza to this category. Kullervo, I can either (1) add you to this category, (2) create a “Pagan” category just for you, or (3) add you to “Family & Friends.” Take your pick.

Katie L., same to you. I can add you here or I can put you in LDS Thought or Other Christian. It’s your call.

New Heading – Evangelical Outreach to Mormons

Moving Heart Issues For LDS and I Love Mormons here.

Adding Standing Together Ministries and Western Institute for Intercultural Studies to Interfaith.

Renaming Comics & Humor => Comics, Fun & Humor, moving TheoFantastique here, adding Back On Earth.

I am not trying to put people in religious boxes; I’m just trying to give readers a heads-up as to what they’re clicking on. Some people are sort of borderline though. I don’t know whether to classify The Faithful Dissident as NOM or LDS; I don’t know whether to classify Dave Warnock as evangelical or more mainline Protestant (and hence other Christian). So help me out here. If you feel like you’d fit better in another category, let me know. If your blog has been linking to me and I’ve forgotten to link to you, please say something.

Otherwise I’ll update these links as listed in a day or two.

Last week was kind of a bad week for me for reading. I didn’t work in all of the readings that I wanted to and now I’m behind.

Still, here’s what I’m working on this week:

New feature: I’m going to be writing for The CBE Scroll, the official blog of Christians For Biblical Equality. I suspect that the frequency of my contributions there will be in the range of “monthly.”

I will notify my readers here of my posts there via the same method I have been doing, i. e. doing a short post here containing the link with comments turned off. For the record, I don’t suspect that my posts there will very often have anything to do with Mormonism, other than perhaps a passing mention here or there. This is an outlet for my interest in Christian egalitarianism.

My first post there: “Thank you, but what else?”

I’m going to leave comments on here for this post in case you want to comment on this new blogging commitment announcement, but if you want to comment on the actual “Thank you, but what else?” post, please comment over at the CBE Scroll.

Guest post at LDS & Evangelical Conversations.

(This post is an expansion of an idea that I have articulated in comments at Main Street Plaza and Exponent II.)

A couple of weeks ago, my J-term class was on break and I got to talking about my marriage to a Mormon with the other students in the room. People knew enough about Mormonism to be surprised that an active Latter-day Saint would marry outside the church. “Doesn’t that mean he won’t get to go to heaven?” one of them asked me.

I tried to think of how I could explain it in simple terminology to people who probably did not know a lot about Mormonism. I decided on this: “He can still go to the highest heaven. But he won’t be able to achieve godhood.”¹

There was some surprised murmuring from the other students. “Wow,” said the student I was talking to. “He must really love you.” He went on to talk about how giving up godhood to be with the woman he loved must have been a tremendous sacrifice. It may sound silly that I’d never reflected on this before, but I was a bit taken aback by the realization that my husband’s decision to marry outside the church was itself a gesture of his love for me, and his willingness to sacrifice for me.

The thought occurred to me that I had heard another story like this before. As I understand it, the LDS account of the Fall (as presented in the temple) is a bit different from the traditional one. We evangelicals like to argue a bit about what exactly the text means when it says, “[Eve] took of [the] fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate” (Genesis 3:6 NRSV). Some believe the phrase “who was with her” indicates that Adam was present at the temptation the entire time and did nothing to stop it.

You’ll have to bear with me here. Having never been through the temple, I’m at the mercy of the summaries of others. But my understanding of the temple account of the Fall is that there is no debate on this issue; Adam was not present at the temptation of Eve. Not only that, but after she ate of the fruit, Adam had a choice: eat the fruit himself and be cast out of the Garden with Eve, or stay and be separated from the woman he loved. Adam chose to eat.

In that way, from the LDS perspective, I think my husband is like the LDS Adam. He decided that a lifetime spent with the woman he loved was preferable to eternity without her.

Another commentator at Exponent II pointed out that this isn’t really the case with the LDS version of the Fall, that Adam was acting more out of duty to his prior marriage covenant with Eve and his desire to keep the commandment to have children. I think this is still a useful analogy for Mormons in interfaith marriages and single Mormons who are considering it though, because most Mormons who enter into interfaith marriages feel that they have few prospects for marriage within the church. You are forbidden from having children as a single and will perhaps even be disciplined for it if you try. So which commandment do you keep: the commandment to marry in the temple, or the commandment to have children, which requires some form of marriage?²

I’m sharing this because I hope it will be meaningful to Latter-day Saints in interfaith marriages, who I feel so often have it stressed to them that marrying outside the church was the wrong choice. It gives you a way of looking at your marriages so that they may not have been the wrong choice, depending on your circumstances. It may have just been the preferable wrong choice out of two wrong choices. My husband really liked the analogy.

Continue reading Why my husband is like the LDS Adam

CH 8455 ~ Working through Jesus in Beijing: How Christianity is Transforming China and Changing the Global Balance of Power by David Aikman (2006).

CH 9000 ~ Reading The Fire Spreads: Holiness and Pentecostalism in the
American South by Randall J. Stephens (2008). Still finishing Righteous Discontent by Higgenbotham from last week (it wasn’t required of me for the class so I’m taking my time with it). The text that we read for the class last week, After Redemption by John M. Giggie, was a delight. Highly recommended to anyone who is interested in African American religious history.

ST 5102 ~ I enjoyed the readings from Millard Erickson’s theology textbook last week. I finally got a good overview of the differences in the theories of protology out there, so eventually I may use that as a starting point for exploring the different systems and deciding what I believe. I was disappointed with Erickson’s argument for life beginning at conception; he completely ignored the “life begins at blood” possibility. I may just do my theology research paper on that topic.

This week I’m reading the first half of Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be: A Breviary on Sin by Cornelius Platinga, Jr. (1995).

Other ~ Still reading The Shack — didn’t touch it much this last week. Also picked up The Sacred Echo by Margaret Feinberg (2008).

Most people who know me (in the online sense, not the biblical one) know that I enjoy frequenting the interfaith blogging circuit, including:

• LDS & Evangelical Conversations
• I Love Mormons
• Heart Issue for LDS
• Irresistible (Dis)Grace

Less often, I also check in on:

• Mormon-Evangelical Conversations
• Mark Cares
• Summa Theologica
• I Love Gellies
• Main Street Plaza
• Mild Mannered Musings

And there’s a common theme I’m noticing.

Mormon women. Where are you?

Continue reading Where are the Mormon women?

It’s time for Voting at the Niblets again. I have been nominated in three categories:

• Best Commenter
• Most Memorable Comment
• Best Contribution to Interfaith Dialogue

In an act of shameless self-promotion, I also nominated Kaimi for best post title for his “How Wide the Divide . . . and can we ever Bridget?” Hey, it really was a clever title.

Please note that a number of our friends in the LDS-Evangelical & Ex-Mormon interfaith blogging community have also been nominated in the “Best Contribution to Interfaith Dialogue” category: Todd Wood at Heart Issues for LDS, Jessica at the soon-to-be-renamed I Love Mormons, Andrew S. at Irresistible (Dis)Grace, John Morehead at Morehead’s Musings, CleanCut, Tim at LDS & Evangelical Conversations, Aquinas at Summa Theologica, and chanson at Letters From A Broad and Mainstreet Plaza.

So if you would like to stroke my ego acknowledge my hard work interacting with Mormons around the Bloggernacle last year, go ahead and vote for me. But whatever you do, be sure to check out the other great nominees.

Click here to vote!

This may become  a permanent [lame] feature on my blog so long as I’m in school. It screams “I’m desperate for content but too lazy to write anything original, so I’ll just blog about the boring stuff that I’m doing day in and day out.” Then again, someone out there may actually be interested to hear about some of these books, so here goes.

CH 8455 ~ For my class on the history of Christianity in China, I just finished China’s Christian Millions by Tony Lambert (2006). I felt like Lambert relied a little too heavily on anecdotal evidence and not enough on outside sources, and his image of the church in China was a little pristine for my taste. I guess it’s the cynic in me, but I felt like he only gave potential problems a passing mention and then moved on. Nevertheless, it was an intriguing and exciting overview of the growth of Christianity in China and I learned a lot of things about Chinese Christianity in addition to Chinese culture and government that I never knew. Plus Lambert mentioned a few female pastors in China, which is always +1 awesome with me.

Continue reading Book Notes, 1/20/10 – 1/26/10