Theology, Phil., Ethics

The Surprising Theology of Netflix’s Hellbound

/ Jason M. Brown / Leave a comment

BEWARE: I spoil the ending.

I

I will admit, I almost jumped ship after the opening scene of director Yeon Sang-ho’s violent metaphysical sci-fi Netflix series Hellbound. The scene opens on a man in a coffee shop watching his phone as he shakes with fear. The clock on his phone strikes 1:20 PM and he freezes, sweat dripping down his face. Then, three low booms are heard and hulk-like smoky demons burst through the coffee shop window and begin to pummel the man. Dripping with blood, he manages to escape them and goes tearing down the middle of the street between cars screaming. The demons give chase and dispatch him in a series of gruesome blows that spatter blood on the surrounding cars. I was viscerally disturbed by the man’s horrific screams and the blood. Then, the monsters hold out their hands and essentially microwave the guy until his corpse is nothing but a charred skeletal torso.

Ya. Intense.

Hellbound has now surpassed Squid Game as the most watched Netflix series in history, so I knew there must be something to it. I persisted and I am glad that I did. Squid Game was an obvious, if creatively twisted allegory for capitalism. Hellbound, whose production is not connected to Squid Game, is nonetheless an equally pointed critique of corrupt religious institutions. Yet, for all the gore and social commentary, I found a powerful theology at the heart of Hellbound.

Some demographic background. A majority of South Koreans do not identify with any religion (56%). This can mean anything from identifying as an atheist to an agnostic, to being the occasional patron of the increasingly popular shamanic arts. Some 15% of Koreans practice Buddhism. Nearly 30% of South Koreans identify as Christian. A majority of Christians are protestant, mostly Calvinists. Some 20,000 Presbyterian churches in South Korea can trace their lineages back to just two Calvinist denominations.

A decidedly metaphysical drama, Hellbound tracks how people and religious institutions respond to an unexplainable super natural phenomenon which follows a chilling pattern. A dark demonic face appears out of nowhere and prophesies the day and hour of a person’s death, and exclaims that they are bound for Hell. Then, without fail, the smoky hulks show up and dispatch them in ever more brutal fashion, char them, and trot back into the void.  

Enter Jeong Jin-soo played by Yoo Ah-In. He is the chairman of a new religious movement called The New Truth. TNT seeks to publicize via social media these cosmic executions in order to encourage people to repent and live more righteously. They are a karmic kind of religion, meaning that individuals are assumed to be punished for their own deeds not any kind of original sin. There is no savior, no grace; only the urgency of avoiding sin and creating a new era of societal harmony. The New Truth draws a straight line between the declarations of death, their condemnation to Hell, and the individuals’ deeds. The more the word spreads, the more relevant the TNT becomes and the more people begin to listen to the kind, generous and altruistic leader—footage of Chairman Jeong rescuing a child from a fire, or talking a knife wielding man down from slitting someone’s throat often prelude his public pronouncements and interviews.

Another major player that emerges with the prophesies is a radical and decentralized group that calls itself The Arrowhead. They see TNT as being too passive in their approach. For them the executions are a divine invitation to actively weed out sinners and publically shame, beat or even kill them with or without the prophesies. They form a loose knit terrorist/hooligan network that is connected through social media and are admonished by an anonymous live streaming black lit make up wearing Alex Jones type character.

A detective named Jin Kyeong-hoon played by Yang Ik-Joon is investigating the strange executions, which are increasingly called demonstrations by the TNT, because once the word has gotten out that someone has received the prophesy, supporters of the TNT gather to admonish the sinner to repent. Jin’s wife had been murdered several years before by a man under the influence of drugs, and Jin still struggles to contain his grief from boiling over. He suspects Jeong is up to something.

Meanwhile, his daughter Jin Hee-Jeong played by Re Lee is wracked by guilt for her role in the mix up she believes led to her mother’s death. The murderer is later released for good behavior, and for having been under the influence while committing the murder. Both TNT and The Arrowhead decry this miscarriage of justice. Jeong convinces Jin Hee-Jeong to kill him as retribution for his mother’s murder, thus entangling her further in TNT. The murderer is immobilized by a stun gun and then wheeled into an abandoned crematorium furnace. This reveals a much darker side to Chairman Jeong.

There are many twists, turns and nuances, but I want to focus on the two main twists in the series. First, it becomes clear that the executions are not correlated with any particular behaviors. In fact, we learn that several young children have been burnt to a crisp in front of their parents. We also learn that Chairman Jeong, the charismatic leader of the New Truth, received the prophesy some 20 years before he met Jin Kyeong-hoon. Chairman Jeong has been tortured by the knowledge of his impending death, going over and over again in his mind how he might have sinned. He concludes that there simply is not connection between the executions and sin, but laments that if the public new this they would panic and social harmony would disintegrate. Detective Jin agrees to keep Jeong’s immanent death a secret, to hide his corpse, and go about his life with his daughter.  

There is a clear parody here of the assumption that religious institutions are patronizing Big Brothers who do not trust the people and need to balance complex truths of the real world with the effective truths of church dogma. This paints religion as the infamous Marxist opiate of the masses, or a sociologically constructed device for making sense a senseless world.

I couldn’t help but connect South Korea’s overwhelmingly Calvinist Christianity with the distinctly twisted pre-destinational feel to the Hellbound phenomenon. Condemnation to hell happens at what is assumed to be God’s will. In reality it is random and mysterious. It is almost like a (super) natural disaster that cannot be predicted only prayed against. And though TNT responds by admonishing all to righteousness, they seem to know that it is only God who decides the sinner’s ultimate fate. And yet, TNT and The Arrowhead all too often take this judgement into their own hands, using the label of Sinner for others, and never themselves.

The New Truth seeks to encourage people to live more righteously, but that righteousness is inevitably mediated through their interpretation. The Arrowhead on the other hand feels emboldened to mete out God’s punishment themselves, enforcing righteousness through violence. Both organizations take different forms, but ultimately they are inseparable. For example, the apparatus of The New Truth uses the Arrowhead to carry out their dirty work, interrogate persons of interest.

II

Episode 4 opens five years later in a world where The New Truth has flourished. They have turned many so-called demonstration sites into monuments and their global ministry is headquartered in a massive fortress-like building in the heart of Seoul. They are led by a quorum of uniformed Deacons who council the slick and savvy successor of Chairman Jeong whose disappearance is assumed to by a mystery.

The latter three episodes reveal the second and most interesting twist. The prophesy comes to the newborn child of Bae Young-jae played by Park Jung-Min while his wife, Song So-hyun played by Won Jin-ah, is still in the hospital with the child. She is horrified and scours the New Truth’s app for precedents. She finds none and decides to ask TNT what do to. Meanwhile Bae, who is entangled in some intrigue of his own, stumbles on an organization called Sodo that helps receivers of the prophesy cover up their deaths so that the event is not appropriated and made public by TNT, saving their families harassment from The Arrowhead and the shame of being associated with a Sinner.

Learning of Bae’s situation, Sodo tries to convince him that broadcasting the baby’s death would topple public confidence in The New Truth’s tightly controlled public messaging that executions are a clear sign of God’s punishment of sinners. Meanwhile, Song arrives at TNT headquarters without Bae’s knowledge and shows her video of the prophesy to a Deacon. After counseling with his fellow deacons and the Chairman, it is not immediately clear what to do. Either, they can adopt the doctrine of Original Sin, which up until now had differentiated them from Christians, or they can seek to hide the execution from being witnessed so that the public does not waver in their belief that there is some pattern behind the brutal suffering, a pattern which legitimates TNT’s global ministry. They abduct the baby to the violent protests of Song who gives chase. When Bae realizes what Song is doing, accompanied by several Sodo activists, he rushes to rescue the baby and Song from TNT headquarters. They miraculously succeed and head to a safe house where they plan to broadcast the baby’s execution to the world.  

After some cat and mouse with TNT and The Arrowhead, in the last scene, the mother lays the child out on a small elevated planter that resembled an altar. It has begun to snow. She gets people’s attention in the small plaza so that they can witness what is about to happen. The sooty monsters emerge from the ground and are about to pounce on the child when the mother snatches the baby from the planter-altar at the last second. A chase ensues, the mother is joined by Bae and they evade the lumbering demons for a few moments. Ultimately however, the trembling parents simply crouch over the baby and guard it from the impending blows. The demons huddle and nuke the trio and we assume all is lost. However, when the demons disappear back into the ground, we hear the soft crying of the baby who has somehow survived the intense heat, and the wrath of the demons.

The mood immediately lifts, as we the audience worried that we were about to see a baby barbequed before our eyes. I was immediately struck by the surprising beauty and richness of this theological twist. It is snowing heavily throughout the scene, implying that it is near Christmas. A surviving activist from Sodo limps toward the crying baby and the charred remains of the parents embracing their child resembles a dark and twisted Christmas nativity crèche. As the Deacons arrive, they are blocked by the crowds, implying that public opinion has now shifted and the scene will now work its way through the channels of social media. Season 2 will perhaps pick up the thread of the fate of The New Truth and The Arrowhead, or take a different tact completely.

While the circumstances are indeed strange, Hellbound manages to end on a major chord. It teaches that while there may not be any rhyme or reason to the brutal executions, our response is what matters. The baby was saved from a certain death and apparently an eternity in Hell by self-sacrificing love, pointing to a theology of atonement. But most of all it seems, profligate love is the most powerful response to a world that seems to be overflowing with suffering.

Tinder and the Theology of Desire

/ Jason M. Brown / Leave a comment

As an introvert at first I found online dating to be a relief. We go to an agreed upon forum to seek out romance. No unwanted public advances, no embarrassing moments of chatting up a lovely person at the grocery store when the partner walks up. We upload our most attractive photos and write a pithy caption of ourselves, and what we are looking for. We then scroll and swipe through people who seem more or less compatible with those desires. It’s quick, it’s efficient. Despite the many pay walls and cheap tricks the apps use to upsell users, one can scroll through age and distance screened members. Some accounts may be stale or even fake, but for the most part you get a tour of your local dating scene at the touch of a screen. Matching and then chatting is a low stakes way to get to know someone a little bit before investing the time and energy in an in-person meet up. So far so good.

Some profiles emphasize the user’s adventurousness, others their sex appeal. Some write precious few or even no words, others write a treatise on the qualities they expect in a partner, and their low tolerance for hook ups, games or pen pals. There are dog people, a few religious folks, lots of love for good food, travel, and plenty of spiritually minded folks who want to know your sign.

Once you hit your daily quota of free swipes, the waiting begins. Out of swipes all one can do is hope that one of the people you liked, likes you back. But even then, once I have matched with someone, there is no guarantee that they will respond. Women tend to get surges of interest, their inboxes quickly fill with messages from fishing-rod-toting, or shirtless dudes who initiate conversations with ‘Sup?’, or simply ‘Hi’. I typically go with a sincere compliment or question. But this is no guarantee that I will get a response. Once a message has been reciprocated, there are those who simply let them sit, or ghost. I have been ghosted so many times, I should start an exorcism practice. 

Don’t get me wrong, I have had some lovely encounters through dating apps. Some that ended up being short term flings, others that blossomed into meaningful relationships, and still others that have become intimate friendships. Overall I am grateful for them, despite the strange, insecurity and exhaustion inducing nature of online dating. After a recent breakup, I couldn’t resist. I rebooted my profile and began swiping. But a sinking feeling quickly set in and I hastily deleted my profile. There is a darker side to dating apps that I am just now beginning to understand. It doesn’t mean I won’t be back! But I have some thinking to do first.

On display in every profile are windows and mirrors. Windows into the lives of people of all shapes, sizes and motivations. There are also mirrors reflecting our desires: beauty, success, sex, intelligent conversation, fun, adventure, security, progeny. Scrolling and swiping have become a kind of anti-sacrament. They represent the promise of something we long for at the tips of our fingers. Each profile, match and chat is an allurement into the hope of communion with another person. But these desires are not an end in themselves, each points to some biological or psychological need (or trauma), they are not fulfilling in themselves.

Like all social media which tries to keep our eyes glued to the screen for as long as possible, online dating keeps us hooked on the possibility of that perfect someone who fulfills our deepest longing. And yet the glut of choices available means that even if we do match with someone wonderful, we perhaps wonder if we could do better if we just kept swiping.

At a summer course on the poetry of desire I took several years ago, poet, musician and Anglican Priest Malcolm Guite suggested that our current social media and marketing landscape is as if we were on our way to a sumptuous feast, but we are constantly waylaid by junk food stops along the road, so we never actually get to the feast. We are stuck in a kind of spiritual hamster wheel. We scratch out a bleary-eyed sign of the cross with our thumbs to a false God that will never fully satisfy. In his lectures, Guite masterfully quoted scripture, medieval poetry, and contemporary literature; but he also peppered his talks with amusing pop culture references: The Spice Girls: “I’ll tell you what I want what I really really want.”  Mick Jagger: “I can’t get no satisfaction” and U2: “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.” What is apparent in the theology of desire is that at their best, our desires and longings point not just to biological urges, but to the deep desire behind all our desires, the yearning beyond yearning, the desire for union with the Ground of Being.

Guite lamented that Christianity, the religion of the Incarnation, has been so skeptical of our desires for so long. As a result, marketing and social media were more easily able to convince us that what they offer could fulfil our surficial desires, and that wasn’t so bad after all. The excellent documentary ‘The Century of the Self’ (2002), shows how marketing in North America went from being about communicating information about a product’s usefulness (This is a very effective shovel, you are going to love how this shovel digs), to suggesting that a product would fulfill our desires, or even help us to become a better version of ourselves (This shovel will make you cool, it will make you sexy, it will complete you).

What has evolved is a kind binary between pushing down our desires and superficially fulfilling them, the way of God and the way of the world. The Church has ceded all of desire to the world, and taken on the position that the way to God is to rid ourselves of our desires. This does not create saints, it creates guilt, and a kind of binge/purge pattern of neurosis that traps us in narrative cycle of awful sinner in need of redemption. The church has been seen as being all about saying NO to our desires. But as Guite suggests, Jesus always framed his message in the positive: Love. All of the church’s no’s should clear the way for a greater ‘yes!’ Saying yes to the reality of our fundamental unity with a loving God.

Even within the faithful practice of religion, our desire to walk the way of God can often devolve into the worship of a vending machine God. The so-called Prosperity Gospel is a merger of Protestant Work Ethic, Capitalist consumerism and obedience=blessings theology. I was taught to pray by thanking God first and then moving into a litany of ‘please blesses’ which was inevitably a much longer list.

As Guite suggested, rather than extinguish or suppress our desires, we must learn to redeem them. As Guite said, “Pushing them down darkens them.” Rather we need to desire through our desires, past them, beyond them. We should engage them as signs of a greater desire beyond desire. In sacramental theology, we should recognize that there is a divine purpose in all our desires. Plato explored that purpose beyond the world, and Aristotle saw it within the world. Christianity should have no problem seeing that our desires are a kind of beyond within; a transcendent immanent.

If I scroll through dating apps in the hopes of filling a void in my life, I will probably never stop scrolling and I might be more likely to treat people as means to filling the end of my superficial desires. If I realize (still working on it) that I and the people on the other side of the screen are all Words of God expressing the beauty and diversity of creation, I might just be able to see beyond my desires and put my phone away long enough to experience the One truly worth swiping right for.

Two Takes on the Decline of Christianity

/ Jason M. Brown / Leave a comment

Krista Tippet, the gifted radio journalist who hosts the popular On Being radio show and blog, recently published an article in the Jesuit America Magazine. The article is an optimistic assessment of the future of religion in the hands of an increasingly irreligious generation we all know as “Millennials.”

While many are wringing their hands at the decline of religious identity and church attendance among nearly 1/3 of those under 30, Tippet boldly proclaims: “The new nonreligious may be the greatest hope for the revitalization of religion.” Tippet identifies these ‘spiritual but not religious’ with an emerging ‘21st century reformation,’ wherein the traditional markers of Christian or religious identity are shifting, not disappearing. Her comments resonate with writers like Episcopal Priest Matthew Wright or Camaldolese monk Cyprian Consiglio who are calling this shift the ‘Second Axial Age,’ comparing it to first Axial Age, which was responsible for birthing the world’s major religious traditions between 900-300 BCE.

Tippet doesn’t blame many of the young for feeling repulsed by religion. The political debates of the 1980s and 90s were filled with toxic moralizing, culture warriors that hardly seemed to embody the love we were taught was the essence of the God we were supposed to be worshiping. The new forms of religiosity she sees defy many of modernism’s supposed conflicts: New Monastics like Adam Bucko and Rory McEntee are reinventing community and liturgy; curiosity and wonder are transcending the crusty debates between religious and scientific certainty; and a passion for social justice is melting the supposed divide between secular and sacred. She writes:

“I see seekers in this realm pointing Christianity back to its own untamable, countercultural, service-oriented heart. I have spoken with a young man who started a digital enterprise that joins strangers for conversation and community around life traumas, from the economic to the familial; young Californians with a passion for social justice working to gain a theological grounding and spiritual resilience for their work and others; African-American meditators helping community initiatives cast a wider and more diverse net of neighbors. The line between sacred and secular does not quite make sense to any of them, even though none of them are religious in any traditional form. But they are animated by Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision of creating “the beloved community.” They are giving themselves over to this, with great intention and humility, as a calling that is spiritual and not merely social and political.”

The decline in traditional religious observance is a sign of the shape of religion to come, not the death knells of religion as we know it.

Conservative writer Rod Dreher on the other hand, has a different approach. Convinced by Alasdair MacIntyre’s critique of modernity in After Virtue who writes: “What matters at this stage is the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages which are already upon us” (my emphasis), Dreher sees Christian culture becoming dangerously thin in the wake of modernity. He thus calls on Christians to adopt the ‘Benedict Option’ or, a communitarian vision rooted in the wisdom of the 1,500 year old Rule of Saint Benedict. He defines it this way:

“The “Benedict Option” refers to Christians in the contemporary West who cease to identify the continuation of civility and moral community with the maintenance of American empire, and who therefore are keen to construct local forms of community as loci of Christian resistance against what the empire represents.”

American Christianity has become to individualistic, too patriotic, and too cozy with the norms and assumptions of modernity. The Enlightenment project created a world of science and democracy, but also of “moral chaos and fragmentation.”

Dreher is not a utopian, or an escapist, but his view of contemporary religious scene differs greatly from that of Tippet. While Tippet is optimistic about the energy and possibility in the rising generation, Dreher seeks to circle the wagons so that Christianity can revitalize itself from within. “Voting Republican, and expecting judges to save us, is over. It’s all about culture now.”

Dreher thus looks to Saint Benedict (480-553), the Italian monk who in the 6th century fled the corruption of a defeated Rome for the solitude of the forest. He eventually gathered a community around him, and wrote his famous Rule. For Dreher, Benedictine monasticism can teach the whole of Christianity many lessons about authentic Christianity, without necessarily requiring that we all become celibate monastics.

He writes, “The monasteries were incubators of Christian and classical culture, and outposts of evangelization in the barbarian kingdoms.” For Dreher and many others, Christianity is not a worldview or system of beliefs, but a way of life. Thus community must begin not just with beliefs and morality but praxis. How shall we live? This means creating community boundaries and norm that form Christians in a way of life. It means balancing work and prayer, but also making our work a prayer. It means not just going to church on Sunday, and then returning to 9-5 job during the week. Dreher also admonishes Christianity to learn the monastic virtue of Stability: or, learning how to stay put, and seeing what places and people have to teach us. We need, Dreher suggests, to learn how to live in community again, because community living informs who we are and what we are called to be.

Dreher and Tippet stake out seemingly opposite assessments of the state and future of religion, particularly Christianity. However, I think that both hit on important tasks for religious culture in the coming years.

  • We do need to bust open the polemical opposition between religion and science which has only served to entrench fundamentalisms on both sides.
  • We do need a deeper commitment to place and community that is not rooted in pleasure and ego fulfillment. A community is not a group of people who agree on everything, that is a clique.
  • As with the recent conversations regarding refugees, we need a consistent moral compass that does not obsess over ‘pelvic’ issues, or abortion, but the broad principles of a moral society. For example a consistent ethic of life would care about the number of abortions, and the destruction of ecosystems.
  • We need to integrate our work and our spiritual lives. Many of us do not want to live a compartmentalized life between work and religion. We feel a call to vocation, a mission in the world that is both fulfilling and provides for our needs. This has as much to do with democratizing the workplace as it does with renewing skills and crafts from which we can make a living.

In the end, I agree with both Tippet and Dreher, the future of religion is bright, but we can’t all hold the same candle.

 

 

A Reluctant Critique of Adam Miller’s General Theory of Grace

/ Jason M. Brown / Leave a comment

What initially drew me to Catholicism as my current spiritual home was a realization, after 30 years of practicing Mormonism, that grace was central to the Christian life. When I began participating in the Eucharist, the center of Catholic Christianity, this beautiful ritual not only made present for me the Body and Blood of Jesus, it also pointed me to the fundamental beauty, mystery and givenness of creation. The Eucharist is a way for me to practice the presence of God and to uncover grace in all things. The Eucharist made real for me the God that is love, and the creation that God loved into existence.

Keeping one foot in Mormon Studies conversations, though certainly no expert, I have been deeply impressed with the writings of LDS theologian and philosopher Adam Miller. Writing with a Zen-Christian accent, Miller is breathing much needed oxygen into a spiritually stale theological discourse. Primary among his contributions, Miller has broken with decades of consensus among Mormon leaders about how the central Christian notion of grace works. For much of Mormon history, grace has been framed as a response by God to our sinfulness accessed through Christ’s atonement. This works-focused soteriology is most often backed by the passage in the LDS scripture of the Book of Mormon which states: “for we know that it is by grace that we are saved, after all that we can do” (2 Nephi 25:23).

As a young Mormon I was made to understand time and again that keeping the commandments was not only my key to salvation, but the way to ensure God’s loving presence through the Holy Spirit. If I fell short of perfect obedience, I knew that forgiveness was possible, but deep down I could never shake the feeling that I was letting God down, that I was not good enough or worthy enough for God to love me in the first place. Unfortunately for me, I missed all together the foundational understanding that grace brings—our very existence emerges from a God who is love.

Miller, with the help of Saint Paul and King Benjamin (a Book of Mormon prophet), shows that our attempts to please God, or in other words, fulfill the law through merit or obedience, are ultimately futile. God’s love cannot be earned; God’s grace does not function like a vending machine through which we purchase blessings with the currency of obedience. In Chapter 1 of Future Mormon, Miller expounds the alternative which he calls a General Theory of Grace. Miller takes the familiar triad of Christian salvation history, creation, fall and atonement, as foundational, but suggests that while we often emphasize the ecology of our fall and Christ’s atonement, we forget the primacy, the givenness, the grace, of God’s ongoing creation. Miller states:

“Grace is original. Grace is what comes first, and it is sin that then comes in response. Or, creation is what comes first, and it is the fall that then comes in response. Sin, at root, is a rejection of what God, by way of creation has given by grace.”

In other words, we (Mormons and Catholics alike) have a tendency to get the core of Christian theology precisely backwards. Miller’s approach echoes the heterodox works of theologians Matthew Fox, the former Dominican Priest and Passionist Priest Thomas Berry, who both emphasized creation as God’s primary revelation. Miller’s insistence that Mormons begin to see grace not as a response to sin, but sin as the rejection of God’s original grace, that is creation, mirrors Fox’s insistence that we live in a state of original blessing rather than original sin (See Fox’s Original Blessing, 1983).

Miller astutely observes the consequences of focusing on grace as a response to sin. Mormons, like many other Christians, have logically assumed that avoiding sin through obedience not only increases God’s approval of us, but also binds him to bless us (See LDS Doctrine and Covenants Section 82). This transactional approach, not only cheapens the atonement itself, it negates the primacy of grace. As Miller argues in Ch. 1, this approach actually becomes as way of avoiding God’s grace:

“We should note, in particular, one surprising approach to sin: strict obedience. One strategy for suppressing the truth and avoiding God’s grace is to put God in your debt. Here, the more obedient I become, the less I figure I’ll be indebted to God, the less grace I’ll need, and the more in control I’ll become.”

Avoiding the tired polemic between grace and works, Miller is not suggesting Christians abandon a strong commitment to moral behavior, but only that “the end of the law is love and only love can fulfill the law.” If the law compels obedience it loses love; but because God is love our ability to fulfill the law comes only through the realization that we are loved from the beginning. We were loved into existence. Therefore, because Christ fulfills the law, our commitment to goodness flows out of the realization that we are loved from the beginning in all our imperfection. Love fulfills the law, because realizing we are loved gives us the strength to keep trying. In my own life this has made a revolutionary difference in my self-worth and commitment to the Christian life.

Miller keeps a strong focus on grace throughout Future Mormon, and the book is absolutely wonderful on all counts. I could not agree more with Miller’s assessment of the primacy of grace, its manifestation through the created order, and of love as the center of the Christian life. My reluctant critique comes after reading this passage from Chapter 7:

“Sin is our rejection of this original and ongoing grace….or even better it is a refusal of our own createdness. Sin is our proud and fearful refusal of our dependence on a world that we didn’t ask for, can’t control, and can’t escape.”

It occurred to me after reading this that perhaps Mormons have not developed a robust emphasis on grace precisely because of their theology of creation, this world we did not ask for and can’t control. Joseph Smith, Jr. the founding prophet of the faith, was fascinated with the first chapters of Genesis. Much of his post-Book of Mormon revelatory energy was focused on clarifying and expanding the Mormon theology of creation as distinct from the 19th century Creedal denominations. I would summarize these major shifts in doctrine pertaining to creation as follows:

  • The earth was organized from preexistent, eternal matter, rather than created Ex Nihilo through a pattern of spiritual and then physical creation (See Joseph Smith’s ‘Book of Abraham’ Ch. 4; and Joseph Smith’s Book of Moses Ch. 3).
  • Both the universe and moral law are eternal and predate the current Godhead (The Father, Son and Holy Spirit as three distinct personages; See D&C 130:22).
  • The “Intelligences” that constitute our souls are also eternal, and thus co-eternal with God (See Book of Abraham Ch. 3; and D&C Section 93).
  • God’s plan of salvation is a wise and loving response to conditions that already existed in the universe. Gods work (See Moses 1:39) is to efficiently move his spirit children toward exaltation, a status he himself enjoys.

If I am interpreting these points correctly, I see them as not only obstacles that may have contributed to Mormonism weak theology of grace, but as analytical hurdles Miller does not adequately address in his otherwise stellar writing.

Firstly, because God did not bring the universe into being out of nothing as is traditionally understood, God exists as a being within the universe. Nor did God create the earth. Rather, God organized the world as a platform for the mortal bodies of his spirit children. In Creedal Christianity, creation is radically contingent on a God that is Being itself, not simply a Being among beings. God is the one “in whom we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). There is no radical contingency in Joseph Smith’s revelations, only skillful means. God is a skillful demiurge who fashions the world he is not responsible for bringing into being. What’s more, LDS folk theology asserts that we, in our pre-mortal state, participated in this fashioning, writing our merits deeper into the creation story and lessening our existential contingency.

Secondly, moral law is also said to be eternal, law that God perfectly obeys. Redemption then is a cosmic loophole that allows God to be both just and merciful, but only because we are incapable of perfect obedience in our mortal state. The non-traditional Trinity of Mormonism, which is institutional rather than ontological (a unity of purpose rather than essence), functions as the arbiter and mediator between us and this eternally existent moral law.

Thirdly, God did not create the most fundamental aspect of our soul which Mormons call Intelligence. These Intelligences have always been, eternal like the rest of the cosmos. Thus we are at some fundamental level co-eternal with God (See the King Follet Discourse). Mormons affirm an actual rather than spiritual parent-child relationship between God and our souls, but the soul is composed of this undefined eternal component called Intelligence for which God apparently had no part in bringing into being.

Finally, for Mormons, God’s grace as manifest through the Plan of Salvation is not the ontological overflowing of love that has always already existed, Incarnated into the person of Jesus; it could be better described as a divinizing technology for moving God’s children through the phases of cosmic exaltation (through which God himself once moved). Framed in this way, grace is a response to conditions that already existed within the universe. Grace is the lubricant that gets us through the process, not the ontological ground of our being. The universe is eternal, and God works within a structure of repeating cosmic cycles of creation, mortal probation and exaltation for those who follow the Plan of Salvation (See Book of Mormon, Alma 37). Certainly we owe an unpayable debt to God for putting this structure into place (See Book of Mormon, Mosiah 2), and Christ for making it work, but I am not sure I would describe these gifts as free, since within Mormon soteriology, we must do the work within these saving structures to make them effective for us. And yet, despite these theological obstacles Miller is able to write beautiful passages like this:

“Foremost among the things God is trying to give me is, well, me—this body, this mind, this weakness, this hunger, this passing away. Redemption involves my willingness, first, to just be the hungry, weak, failing thing that I already am. Redemption involves my willingness to accept that gift and treat it as a gift. This grace is free but it’s certainly not cheap” (Ch. 7).

This gets to the heart of a grace-filled theology, a theology I did not experience as a practicing Mormon. This apparent heterodoxy makes Adam Miller’s contribution all the more valuable and powerful for those within the Mormon fold who seek to allow grace to loosen their iron grip on the iron rod of perfect obedience as the only means to God’s love and acceptance. Again Miller knocks it out of the park:

“Grace is this massive, ongoing act of divinely organized creation that involves an uncountable host of agents, human and nonhuman, embedded in irreducible webs of stewardship, consecration, sacrifice, and interdependence. “Glory” is one name for God’s grace as it continually brews out of these massive, creative networks of divinely enabled agents” (Ch. 7).

Taking grace seriously is not about abandoning ethical and moral behavior (grace without works is most certainly dead), but about realizing in our bones that every particle, every breath, every instance of beauty, was brought about and is sustained by God. Putting grace before the fall and the atonement has awakened me to the sacrament of each moment and the sacrament of every person, tree, creature, mountain and river I meet. Miller expresses beautifully a radical approach to grace. Yet I was left uncertain about how this approach fits within the established Mormon cosmology, a cosmology that simply does not employ God to explain the very givenness of the universe which gives graces its theological teeth. Miller wants us to accept that creation speaks of God’s grace without adequately explaining how God is the source of that grace.

Learning to Hear the Music: Toward a Mormon Mystical Tradition

/ Jason M. Brown / 3 Comments

Raised as a devout Mormon, my religious life began taking new direction in about 2011, when I started teaching a World Religions class at Salt Lake Community College. The seeds of that new direction came while attending the Easter Vigil in Salt Lake’s beautiful Cathedral of the Madeleine, one of the few Cathedrals under the patronage of Mary Magdalen, the first person to see the resurrected Jesus. As I entered the dark Cathedral with hundreds of other candle lit faces, I realized that we were at a funeral; that we were not just talking about Christ’s death, we were mourning it in preparation to celebrate his resurrection; a gift freely given. Something clicked, I felt sincere sorrow and then joy. I began to finally understand that word so many other Christians were using: Grace. Since then, I have taken slow and cautious steps toward the Catholic faith, and during this year’s Easter Vigil, I was baptized, confirmed and received first communion.

Liturgy, participating in cycle of Christ life and death, helped me to realize that God’s love was always already there. And it was through this Grace, this freely given gift of the world, I was loved, unconditionally. But not loved as an object of a distant Father’s affection, actually loved into being. Creation is and continues to be an act of grace.

I am not completely checked out of Mormonism. Most of my family still practices, and I am plugged in to the Bloggernacle. So during my Easter retreat this year, I decided to tune into to a bit of General Conference. During Wilford W. Anderson recent General Conference address, he began with a story about a Native American man who asked a doctor if he could dance (dancing being a way of healing for this man). The Doctor said no, and asked if the man could teach him. The Native American said that he could teach him to dance, but that the doctor must first learn to hear the music. Applying this to contemporary Mormonism Anderson stated:

“Sometimes in our homes, we successfully teach the dance steps but are not as successful in helping our family members to hear the music. We learn the dance steps with our minds, but we hear the music with our hearts. The dance steps of the gospel are the things we do; the music of the gospel is the joyful spiritual feeling that comes from the Holy Ghost. It brings a change of heart and is the source of all righteous desires.”

This peeked my attention. My major problem with Mormon spiritual practice was that in my experience, morality and church participation were means of earning God’s love, of earning the presence of the Holy Spirit, who, I was taught, would flee at the slightest offence. In this mode of spirituality, guilt became the primary motivator for avoiding certain behaviors, believing certain doctrines, and even attending church. Christ’s atonement made my sins forgivable, but somehow, caught up in right action, I missed the whole point of Christ in the first place. Thus, learning to hear the music before we learn to dance seemed like a perfect metaphor for understanding Christ’s love: Hearing the music is primary, and learning the dance steps comes with practice, over a lifetime. Mystical encounter, the act of being present to God loving us into being, is at the core of Christian spirituality, and from which flow our desires to do good. But then Elder Anderson continued:

“The challenge for all of us who seek to teach the gospel is to expand the curriculum beyond just the dance steps. Our children’s happiness depends on their ability to hear and love the beautiful music of the gospel. How do we do it? First…”

Elder Anderson then attempts to teach us the steps to hearing the music. In order to hear the music you must learn the steps!? At this my heart sunk and I turned off Conference and began to pace my room. I began to wonder why a religion founded on a profound mystical encounter with the Father and the Son in a grove of trees, could have become so anti-mystical. I looked in the LDS Topical Guide to see what it had to say: “Mysticism: See False Doctrine ; Sorcery ; Superstitions ; Traditions of Men.”

The guide refuses even an attempt at defining the tradition which gave rise to its own religion! So I went to the always reliable (sometimes controversial) Richard Rohr, a Franciscan Friar: “All I mean by mysticism is experience-based religion whereby you come to really know something for yourself. It’s not just believing something; it’s knowing something.” It seemed so curious to me that Mormonism embraces this definition of mysticism as the means to understanding doctrine reject it as a spiritual practice for knowing God’s love. Somehow, instead of seeking personal experience of the truth and reality of God’s unearned, ever-present love, Mormonism uses ‘mystical’ encounter as a tool to confirm propositions of faith, identity and personal morality. Again, there is nothing wrong with morality, identity, or beliefs. But when we start with them as a means of getting to God, we will ALWAYS come up short. The person of Jesus came to reveal to us that this is backwards. We start with God’s love, and then live into beliefs, identity, and morals. As a Mormon I was living this process completely backwards, and as a fledgling Catholic, I still struggle with it.

Then, an article, like a cyber-revelation, came across my Facebook feed. It was Adam Miller’s General Theory of Grace. Miller agrees that Mormons have a “tendency to read the gospel as a kind of secular manual for can-do humanism and self-improvement.” For Miller “righteous works only become righteous when they are motivated by the pure love of Christ, when they are the product of God’s grace as that grace works its way out into the world through our hearts, minds, and hands.” And here’s the clincher: “Grace is this massive, ongoing act of divinely organized creation that involves an uncountable host of agents (human and nonhuman) embedded in irreducible webs of stewardship, consecration, sacrifice, and interdependence.” [i] Beautiful words, felt deeply. Mysticism, in this light, is learning to be quiet and experience the grace of God creating us from moment to moment in what has been called by Jean-Pierre De Caussade the sacrament of the present moment. I encourage my dear Mormon friends and family to pick up Adam Miller’s books. His prophetic writing could help us put the horse back in front of the cart so to speak and as Elder Anderson hopes, to hear the beautiful music of the gospel, to which our lives become a dance.

[i] http://bycommonconsent.com/2015/04/07/a-general-theory-of-grace-ldsconf/

The Beehive and the Steel Mill: Rethinking the Protestant Work Ethic

/ Jason M. Brown / Leave a comment

First published in the Mormon Worker Journal (~2008). Online at: https://themormonworkerdotnet.wordpress.com/past-issues/mw-issue-5/the-beehive-and-the-steel-mill-rethinking-the-protestant-work-ethic/

Mormon Cooperatives were common in the 19th century

In Mormon culture the beehive is a symbol of industriousness that embodies the work ethic as not only a temporal duty, but as proof of divine sanction. In Mormon cosmology, the final dispensation ushered in by Joseph Smith unleashed a spirit upon the earth which has inspired all of the advances of the past two centuries including the industrial revolution. Interestingly, this narrative purports that advances in technology are a sign of blessedness that has facilitated the betterment of human kind and the extraordinary growth of the Mormon Church. Technology is therefore at worst neutral and any negative consequences can be easily ascribed to human selfishness and misused agency.

The danger of this narrative is that in its praise of technology and economic progress as an organic-unraveling of God’s divine will for this last dispensation, it ignores the gross inequalities of the economic system which undergirds it (capitalism), and more importantly for this article, the ecological consequences that have followed. This set of assumptions tends to overshadow the elements of Mormon theology which could form the basis of a transformative social and ecological movement within the Church. Indeed, capitalism’s axiom of infinite material growth seems to fit nicely within the cosmological concept of infinite (individual) progression. When the advance of capitalist institutions and technology guided by its needs are assumed part of a divine plan, there is little room for constructive criticism of the negative consequences which may follow from technological and economic progress. What strikes me as ironic is that the sphere from which our inspiration for hard work is drawn, the natural world, is imperiled by the economic system which has become the dominant expression of the so-called protestant work ethic. Because capitalism and industrialism continue to wreak havoc on the earth and her inhabitants (including of course people) a new industrial paradigm and work ethic must be constructed that will not simply equate righteousness with productivity and technological progress, but with how well these fit into the boundaries set by ecological systems and meet human needs.

In this short article, I would like to lay out in basic terms my interpretation of Mormon assumptions about the work ethic as it relates to our cosmological ideas about technology. The thesis is fairly simple: Mormon theology will never be able to fully challenge structures of social inequality and ecological destruction unless traditional narratives which equate material progress with eternal progress are reevaluated and rearticulated in ways that clarify the role of technology and work in our lives, and more importantly the role of nature in our cosmology. This is then, an initial exploration, which will require additional thought and depth in the future, it is a first attempt to articulate a new work ethic that values hard work in a way that not only re-embeds humans in the natural world, but strives for technological achievement along the lines of harmony and mimicry of nature as opposed to domination, exploitation, and destruction.

The De-secration of Nature and the Spirit of Capitalism The origins of contemporary capitalism and the so-called “Protestant Work Ethic” are too complex and lengthy to relate in such a small article, but I would like to highlight two relevant ideas that were seminal to the flourishing of a capitalist society. The first has to do with the radical shift in humanity’s attitudes toward the natural world and perceived alienation from it. As Christianity took center stage in the struggle for spiritual dominance of the old world, it embarked on a war with all things “Pagan.” Paganism and indigenous traditions represent diverse cosmologies that place humans within the web of spiritual nature, rather than outside of it. Many Pagan practices were viewed by the orthodoxy of the age as idolatrous and diabolical, and countless lives were lost in witch hunts and the burning of sacred groves. The foundation for industrial capitalism’s view of nature as a “resource” instead of sacred community, began with this desecration (literally to make unsacred), of the natural world. God was a transcendent being, apart from the earth which was his creation, made for the benefit of his children. The earth was a fallen and corrupt place that many early Christians hoped to transcend and leave behind after this life. An earth divested of spirit becomes nothing more than a building block for a chosen people to realize its God given dominion over the earth.

Another important idea that contributed to the development of capitalism was the restructuring of society around the production of goods. This required a new work ethic based on the schedule of the factory, and a shift toward the accumulation of wealth. While there are many theories and complex histories about the origin and consequences of Western capitalism, one that emerged from early sociology and anthropology was proposed by Max Weber. In his controversial and important work The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Max Weber fleshes out a theory for the economic and political development of the industrial age. With the emergence of industrial capitalism in Europe, the accumulation of wealth for wealth’s sake became not only a possibility, but a virtue. The shift from mercantilism to full blown capitalism made use of existing technologies, but rearranged the social structure of the old world in favor of a system that stratified society in order to unleash massive amounts of productivity in the form of manufactured goods. This spirit of capitalism is paralleled by reformation Puritanism whose emphasis on the calling abandons Catholic monastic transcendence for a moral obligation to fulfill ones worldly duties (Weber, 1976). Predestination as preached by Calvin made the doing of one’s religious duties an imperative ‘sign’ of God’s favor. The emergence of Protestantism saw a dramatic shift in spiritual attitudes toward merit, works, and sacred duty, as wealth became a sign of God’s favor as well.

The Desert Blossoms as a Rose: Colonial Utah and the Value of Work After Mormon converts had been driven from several frontier settlements, they left the United States for the relative isolation of the Great Basin, then a part of Mexico. To the prophet Brigham Young, the rugged and desiccated land was a blank canvass upon which a righteous people could begin to weave the tapestry of a Zion society, one of perfect equity and cooperation, preparing the earth for the coming of Christ. The original name given to the territory was Deseret, a word taken from the Book of Mormon which means beehive, which is today the state emblem of Utah. To Brigham Young, the honey bee represented industry, and in his vision for the fledgling colony, he saw self-sufficient farm communities that would produce goods in great abundance.

We are all familiar with the adage in the Old Testament that a righteous people will make the desert “blossom as a rose,” (Isaiah 35:1) and we have all heard the stories, visited the monuments, and seen the plaques dedicated to the pioneers who, upon arrival in the valley immediately set about rearranging the landscape to fit their European agricultural way of life, despite the stark difference in climate and topography. Settlers began digging irrigation ditches and planting grain within hours of arrival in Utah Valley. The saints were to prepare the earth for the coming of Christ, and in early colonial Utah, there was no meaningless labor. Within a few years, after many hardships, Mormon settlements were bustling with commerce, industry and agriculture.

Early on in Utah history, there were many difficulties, Indian raids, late frosts, and pestilences. The story of the miracle of the sea gulls is one of many that hold great meaning for the Mormon people. On June 9th 1848, as the saints clung to life, a swarm of crickets (Anabrus simplex) began devouring their crops. The farmers fought back with everything they could, brooms, fire, shovels. They prayed for relief from the threat of starvation should they lose the years harvest. Soon they saw a flock of sea gulls in the distance, which began to gorge themselves on the ravenous crickets, vomiting and then coming back for more. To settlers, the sea gulls were proof of divine protection by God of his chosen people and their way of life. To a subsistence agricultural colony, the crickets took on a demonic character in their challenge to God’s people. Interestingly, if you had asked the Native Americans at the time what they thought of the little black insects, they may have seen them as a boon, a reliable source of protein which required little or no work to harvest and equal proof of God’s blessings.


Industriousness and Technology in Mormon Doctrine

With regard to the building of Zion, Brigham Young stated “if we are to build the kingdom of God, or establish Zion upon the earth, we have to labor with our hands, plan with our minds, and devise ways and means to accomplish that object” (JD 3:51). Another interesting statement made by Brigham Young was that “…The angels that now walk in their golden streets, and they have the tree of life within their paradise, had to obtain that gold and put it there. When we have streets paved with gold, we will have placed them there ourselves. When we enjoy a Zion in its beauty and glory, it will be when we have built it” (JD 8:354-355). Brigham Young here expresses a unique Mormon millennial tradition, one that posits that we are not passive receptacles of Gods grace, but active participants in our own salvation, and even in the second coming of Christ and the millennium.

In contemporary Mormon discourse, hard work continues to be praised as a virtue (missionary program, the success of the BYU business school), and technology a boon. Mormon theologian Robert Millet has written, “In short, the Spirit of God—meaning the Light of Christ—has been behind the rapid intellectual, scientific, and technological developments from the time of the Industrial Revolution to our own Information Age. Joseph Smith presides over our age of enlightenment and expansion” (Millet, 1994). What this idea ignores is that the economic system which brings about these technologies is based on hierarchy and exploitation and it has had massively negative consequences on the earth. In contrast I am suggesting that we judge our society and economic system by a broader and more holistic moral standard that includes social and ecological values.

The Beehive and the Steel Mill For over 30 years, the Geneva Steel plant was a prominent site in the Utah Valley sky line. Built during the Second World War to supply steel for the American military, Utah was chosen to avoid possible coastal attacks by the Japanese. It officially opened its doors in 1944 as a US government owned plant, and began producing products for the war, namely structural parts for ships and plate steel. The steel mill was a defining symbol of an industrial economy in the 20th century, and it was hailed as a welcome and glorious achievement by the local working class. To be a steel worker in those days was a wonderful opportunity which would provide a good living for a family.

But the relative prosperity it brought came at a price. The greatest flaw of the industrial project is that it is one big externalizing machine, meaning, it is very good at creating products and profits, but not so good at accounting for the costs associated with such productivity such as air and water pollution, community, spiritual values, deforestation, and biodiversity loss. As one economist put it: “the polluter is able to internalize most of the benefits of the pollution while only bearing a portion of the costs” (Hatch, 1989). Within a few generations, the environmental effects of Geneva Steel were being felt by local residents of Utah Valley. Wetlands that used to border the entire lake were cleared and filled to make way for the developments that the industrial boom had brought with it and Utah Lake, which borders the plant, tested for unhealthy levels of PCBs and other pollutants. Fish and birds were routinely found dead near the plant, and air quality and visibility was significantly impaired.

In the 1980s small particulates called PM 10 (smaller that 10 micro meters) were beginning to receive more and more attention for their negative health effects. Small particulates come from sulfur, nitrogen produced by refineries, steel mills, and power plants. Unlike larger particulates, the body has a hard time ejecting small particulates as they move past the body’s natural defenses and lodge in the lungs alveoli. In 1978 Utah County was identified by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as a non-compliance zone, and was required to create a plan for particulate reduction. But, because of thermal inversion and the Wasatch mountain range, during winter months, air pollution was essentially being trapped in the valley, causing serious respiratory problems to local residents and an increase in health costs (Hatch, 1989). The main producer of particulates in the area was Geneva Steel which in 1988 accounted for more that 53% of particulates in the county (Hatch, 1989).

The steel mill stands as but one example of what I would call bad stewardship: namely any technology designed to manipulate the natural world that creates enormous amounts of waste while consuming vast quantities of energy. The steel mill stands at the center of a modern industrial economy, and is therefore included as part of the blessedness of which my previous examples have spoken. What is not incorporated into the theological discussion is the very real ecological and health consequences of steel mills and a myriad other industrial technologies. I would hope that an enlightened view of technology would not simply value the productivity and sophistication of a given technology, but its affect on society, human health, and creation. That stewardship, not industriousness would be the superior value.

In stark contrast to the steel mill, stands the honey bee (Apis mellifera), which like many insects and birds has co-evolved with a number of plants and trees to form a mutualistic relationship—meaning both organisms benefit from each other. Many plants have have bright colors, ultraviolet patterns and rewards of nectar to attract pollinating insects. The honey bee converts this pollen and nectar into honey which sustains the young bee broods and the colony through winter. These types of mutualistic relationships are abundantly found in the natural world, which is a perfect metaphor for what a truly stewardship-oriented work ethic might strive to emulate. One which forms mutualistic or symbiotic and regenerative relationships with the industrial activities around it, as opposed to the parasitic ones that seem to be all too common in the current industrial sector. It is a work ethic that I hope humanity will take seriously and emulate in designing future technology and industry.

Toward a New Work Ethic and Standard for Technology

The Christian concept of Stewardship holds if we are humble about our interaction with the planet we inhabit. A steward is not someone who takes the care of the earth into his or her own hands, but one who is constantly learning the language of nature, and attempting to make human activity as benign and symbiotic in her processes as possible. A truly sacred economy would be restrained and imagined within the limits of nature and value not simply the parts but the whole. Indeed the Permaculture ethics of care for the earth, care for people, and reinvesting all surplus (profit) back into these ethics seems an ideal way to think about progress and productivity. Not measuring it solely in dollars, but in quality of life, biodiversity, health of entire systems, and dare I say it, happiness.

An exciting and emerging field that is taking these ideas seriously is that of Industrial Ecology, which attempts to account for industrial processes and flows of energy and materials by creating symbiotic relationships within several types of production. Thus, the industrial process does not have to be abandoned, but the wastes created must either be eliminated or uses must be found for them by other industrial activities. The Kalundborg industrial park, located in Denmark, is the most famous example of industrial ecology in action; here an oil refinery, a power plant and a pharmaceutical manufacturer, harvest and conserve waste heat and use the byproducts of production to make plasterboard. Along similar lines, Biomimicry looks at natural technologies such as spiders’ webbing, which is even stronger than steel yet is produced at room temperature with no toxic inputs or byproducts. Urban ecologists are also beginning to look at cities as ecosystems, and managing them as such. Recently, the city of Los Angeles under the leadership of Tree People (www.treepeople.org) began planting thousands of trees on city streets and schools and working with city officials to saturate rain water into the ground instead of letting it drain into storm drains and from there the ocean, saving the city millions of dollars.

As Latter-day Saints, we cannot continue to attach industrial production to our work ethic and our cosmology. It is in stark contrast to our obligation as Earth Stewards. Instead, we must look to natural systems not simply as symbolic metaphors of a harmonious industrial society, but as models for production, parameters for our economic activity and the bedrock of our values.

References:

Arrington, Leonard J.; Feramorz Y. Fox; Dean L May Building the City of God: Community and Cooperation among the Mormons Deseret Book Company, Salt Lake City, Utah, 1976. Hatch, Nile W. Hospital inpatient Respiratory Health Costs Due to Air Pollution in Utah County, Department of Economics BYU, 1989.

Millet, Robert L. ‘Joseph Among Prophets’ Ensign, Jun 1994, 19.

Pope, C. Arden ‘Respiratory Disease Associated with Community Air Pollution and a Steel Mill, Utah Valley’ American Journal of Public Health, Vol. 79, No. 5 May 1989.

Uchtdorf, Dieter F. ‘A Matter of a Few Degrees’ Ensign, May 2008 57-60.

Weber, Max The Protestant work ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism George Allen & Unwin, London 1976.

Widstoe, John A. (ed.) Discourses of Brigham Young: Second President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Bookcraft, Salt Lake City, Utah 1998.