Mormonism at a Crossroads—Where We’ve Been and Where We’re Going

Explore with Robin Jensen the faith and fortitude of the early Saints as discovered through the Joseph Smith papers.
(Not what you learned in Sunday School.)

Emily Jensen will take us through the evolution of contemporary Saints traveling through troubled waters and arriving at a more generous and modern Zion.

 

Time: 

Friday, January 8, 2016, 7:30-9:30 pm

Location: 

Home of Elizabeth and Mark England
1194 S. 500 E., SLC, UT

Please come in the back door if you arrive late. 

Robin

 About Emily and Robin Jensen:

Emily W. Jensen writes, edits, and mothers five children, often simultaneously. For five years Emily covered the online world of Mormonism for the Deseret News and currently webedits Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought. She loves to ski the Utah powder, ride horseback through Utah sagebrush, sail Utah lakes, and indulge in dark chocolate on less adventurous days. Find her work at the http://deseretnews.com, http:// dialoguejournal.com, and http://bycommonconsent.com.

Robin Jensen is a scholar on the Joseph Smith papers and is co-editor of three volumes of the Revelations and Translations series of that project, the third of which was just released in early August. He loves to study old documents. Find his work at the josephsmithpapers.org.

Description:

Mormonism is at a crossroads, having been under the microscopic lens of the media for the past five years, even as Mormons young and old grapple with the openness and accessibility of the information age. Both the institutional church and its lay members are working to better define their faith for outsiders as well as within. So what does the idea of Zion mean to modern-day Latter-day Saints? Emily will describe how the work of pulling together many diverse people into one collective book during a time of media scrutiny and upheavals in contemporary Mormonism modeled a community of people dedicated to a kind, open-hearted, open-minded Zion.  Robin will discuss approaches to early Mormon history, and what it’s documents can tell us about a people we think we’ve learned about in Sunday School but whose faith and fortitude were much more nuanced, and in many ways more powerful, than we give them credit.

Read, listen, watch:

abookofmormons.com

Dialogue Facebook page for the type of conversations that have been happening the past few months for Emily

http://mi.byu.edu/mip-32-jensen/  Interview with Robin at the Maxwell Institute

Invite:

Feel free to invite others who might benefit from this evening.