Jared Anderson

Welcome and Introduction to the Project

[00:00:00] Mormon Story Sunday School is a production of Mormon Stories Podcast in the Open Stories Foundation. If you have found this podcast to be helpful or meaningful, Please go to mormonsundayschool.org to participate or to make a donation. And thanks for listening.

[00:00:19] Welcome to class everyone. I am very excited to begin the inaugural episode of Mormon Stories Sunday School. My name is Jared Anderson and I will be the host and teacher of this podcast. More on what that entails later. I was going to jump right into the Gospel doctrine lessons and let the website content speak for the organization, but some of my friends convinced me that having an introductory episode that lays everything out in an audio format would also be beneficial. So here we are. What we are going to do in this brief introduction is I am going to introduce myself, give a brief overview of the podcast, and tell the story of how it came to be.

[00:01:03] It's kind of a funny story. I will talk about the goals and vision of this project. Then we will talk about the two components of this podcast, Engaging Gospel Doctrine and Excavating Scripture. I want to be very clear about the goal and the tone of this project and then I will say a little bit about each of the components. So, as I said, my name is Jared Anderson. I have been quite involved in the Mormon Stories community this past year. I am finishing up my PhD in religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Bart Ehrman is my advisor. He's about as known as it gets when it comes to being a New Testament scholar.

The Host's Background and Teaching Philosophy

[00:01:48] My research interests are the history of the Bible, how it was formed, collected transmitted interpretation, and I'm also very interested in larger issues of religion and especially the future of religion. So how this podcast came to be, it didn't begin in August of 2011, and that is when the wonderful John Dehlin sent me a Facebook message and he said, hey, I have an idea. It's a weekly podcast. It's going to be named Uncorrelated Mormon Sunday School. You're going to host it and it's going to be a weekly Sunday school lesson, discussion of Scriptures. Work through all the scriptures, bring people in. We're going to produce it.

[00:02:32] It's going to be fantastic. And I said no. In fact, I did a little play with the Sower parable in the New Testament. I wrote once a sower went to sow. His name was John. The Sower had many ideas. Ideas he scattered like seeds upon the Internets. Some ideas fell upon stony ground where there was no one to pick them up. Some ideas fell among thorns where too busy lives prevented the ideas from flourishing. Some ideas were mixed with ideas from too many other people in the wheat mixed with the tares. Some ideas fell upon good ground and bore fruit some 30 fold, some 60 fold, some a hundredfold.

[00:03:08] So I basically said, that's a great idea. My wife thinks it's a great idea, but I'm gonna wait until my dissertation is finished, which my wife would probably say was a good idea. But what happened was a few months ago, a group of us were getting together up at the Ogden Planetarium, and we were talking about the vision for Mormon Stories and what we're trying to do. And John was talking about how important he feels it is to get all the information out there to expose Mormon Stories listeners to the historical issues and social issues relating to Mormonism. Now, I think that's fantastic, and I have absolutely loved my relationship with Mormon Stories and learned so much from the podcast content.

[00:03:54] But at the same time, there was an itch in my religious studies brain and the concern that I had as good as Mormon Stories is, the concern was, could it be better? What if we are introducing all this information to listeners without a framework to understand that content in a constructive way? Now, again, Mormon Stories has done tons of good, but I felt motivated to launch this Sunday School podcast as a way to produce framing and content that would help reach this goal of preparing people to better appreciate and assimilate Mormon Stories content. Another one of my goals with Mormon Stories Sunday School is that I want to model effective teaching.

[00:04:49] This is, in a way, the Sunday School that you wished you had had. And I think this is one area where there's a tremendous amount of common ground. Because no matter where you are on the Mormon spectrum, you can probably agree that Sunday School could be added to that. It would be really great if there were some more content, some more substance, more life application, just more.

[00:05:14] Another issue that I take very seriously as a teacher and just as a person is the question of how do we meet different and sometimes competing needs of people in a Sunday School class. So, for example, some people have questions about the details of scripture and Mormon history, and they really want to dig into the nitty gritty. They want to take it apart. They have critical questions and others just want to be nourished. They want to know how the scriptures apply to their lives. They want to gain strength and spiritual content to help them through the next week. And I want to be very, very clear that both of these approaches are good and needed.

[00:06:02] An analogy that I've thought of is there are benefits to dismantling your car, and there are benefits to driving your car. But you never want to be put in a situation where dismantling your car makes it so you can't drive it anymore. And this tension becomes particularly powerful in the class setting because how do you answer questions that only some people have? How do you address concerns that will satisfy some but trouble others? And here is an approach that I have thought would be beneficial. So first, I think that in lessons we should plant breadcrumbs or plant seeds. We should bring up potentially problematic aspects, but not necessarily dwell on them.

[00:06:47] Just acknowledge their existence and then focus on the key points of the lesson. And then part two is that we can provide a framework for. For people to understand the complexities of history, of scripture, of religion, of life, and so forth. I compare this to a toolbox. I want everyone to have a toolbox in their worldview. Whether or not you ever open it, I want you to have it. Another analogy that I think of is very few of us would ever want to know every single mistake our parents ever made. But we have to know they're human. We have to understand that they are human beings, that they're fallible, that often they're trying their best.

[00:07:31] Because if we don't know that basic idea, it will cause problems later. So similarly is, I feel like a proper understanding, careful with that word proper. But for example, a specialized understanding of religion can really give a lot of useful tools to understand the complexities of religion. In part, I'm trying to mimic or replicate on a small scale the experience I had in a PhD program in religion, because all through the years that I was doing coursework, I never really had a crisis of faith as far as an intellectual crisis of faith. I definitely had questions. I took things apart, I re examined them. I really engaged deeply with Mormonism, but I felt like before I had the questions, I had the answers in a way.

[00:08:21] So, for example, when I was reading the Joseph Smith translation, it made perfect sense that there would be similar parallels between the changes Joseph Smith made to the Bible and the changes that early Christian scribes made to the New Testament manuscripts. So more on that later. Picking up where I left off about this framework. So, number one, we need to bring up complex, potentially problematic issues. And that way, when people have questions, they can ask. This is kind of a responsive rather than proactive approach. So part two is the toolbox providing a framework to help people understand religion in as detailed a way as they wish.

[00:09:02] And then part three is, I think it's Very important to have sympathetic insider resources that go all the way down the rabbit hole, that dismantle the entire car. And we have to give the church credit. I think that it is making very productive moves in this direction with the Joseph Smith Papers project. You can look on lds.org and find out about the multiple versions of the first vision at the Dear Whitmer Farm, part of the reconstruction as representing the hat that Joseph Smith used to translate the Book of Mormon. But one place that these improvements have not quite gotten to yet is in Sunday school.

Format, Goals, and Faith-Friendly Approach

[00:09:42] And so I want to present this podcast as a way of modeling a teaching approach that could be applied in a church setting. And again, I want to be very clear that I am not intending Mormon Stories Sunday School to replace Sunday School. I am intending it to be complementary and supplementary. And if you don't attend Sunday school and you want to listen to it, that's fantastic as well, of course. But it's very important to me that this project be one that would be at home in a church environment. I want it to be faith friendly. But once again, in a church environment, at its best, this is virtual Sunday school.

[00:10:23] You know, Sunday school at its very best. Imagine the coolest Sunday school that you can imagine. I know that there are some great wards and really good things going on, and that is the kind of Sunday school that I want to model and that's the tone that I'm going for. So there isn't going to be a Mormon Story Sunday School podcast per se. By subscribing to the Mormon Stories Sunday School podcast, you are going to get two sister podcasts. And this idea was the other click that motivated me to move more quickly in producing this podcast. At first I was thinking, yes, I will do a sort of Sunday school podcast.

[00:11:02] But I had questions about where do I start? What do I do? How do I approach the Scriptures? Do I start with the Old Testament? Do I try to engage with the lesson manual? Do I try to stay on schedule? What do I do? And the epiphany I had was that this needs to be two podcasts, not one. So the first podcast is called Engaging Gospel Doctrine. And of course, either of these podcasts and projects, you'll be able to subscribe to them on their own. But again, Mormon Stories Sunday School will encompass both. So Engaging Gospel Doctrine is the name of our gospel doctrine class.

[00:11:37] This class will be engaged with the readings and the manual that are used in LDS chapels all over the world. We will be publishing it roughly two weeks ahead of the church schedule. And I'm doing this so that you have the opportunity to listen to it, to incorporate any insights or helps that you wish into your lesson preparation, to incorporate the content into your comments in Sunday school. Something to listen to as you wander the halls. You know, it's, it's up to you how you want to use this. So there are going to be a couple parts. First, there are going to be the lessons.

[00:12:17] Each engaging Gospel doctrine podcast will have two parts. The first part will be a Lesson that's around 30 minutes. And I really want to produce these so that they can fit into a class gospel doctrine schedule. So for example, they're going to be about an hour or less each to approximate the time that you have in a Sunday school class. So first we're going to have the lesson and that's going to be about 30 minutes each. And then I'm going to record a 20, 30 minute class discussion. Another goal with this podcast is I want all of you to have an opportunity to really engage in the content.

[00:13:01] I want any of you to have the opportunity to be on a podcast if you wish. And I want to get that Sunday school class feel at its best. So I'm going to be drawing from the community, three to four participants for every lesson. And again we're going to take 20 to 30 minutes and discuss the lesson content. And that way we can get both the lesson experience and that class discussion experience in a podcast format. The other thing we're going to do, and this will be streamlined with mormonsundayschool.org or you can contribute in Facebook is radio show style. You are all invited to submit your questions and comments online and we will bring them up during discussion.

[00:13:48] So we'll say, you know, David had a question that we will address and here it is, let's discuss it. If you do not want us to use your name, please let us know one word about the participants of this engaging Gospel doctrine class. There's not going to be much biography. We're going to have three to four people every lesson, but we're not going to introduce them. We're not going to give their background. We're probably not even going to going to give their last names. This is so that the conversation, the comments can speak for themselves and also to really create a streamlined, tight product every week.

[00:14:26] One thing about the participants is though the tone will remain faith friendly and it's vital to me that this podcast remains something that could be at home and fit in a ward setting. The participants are going to come from a variety of backgrounds on the belief spectrum. If you want to participate, I'm not going to grill you about your beliefs. I'm not going to require you to be a literal believing member. You can be in the church, you can be out, you can be active, you can be non active. And here is the kicker. In the Sunday schools, all over in your chapels, there is already a spectrum of belief and approaches.

[00:15:06] But we just don't talk about it. We don't have a place where we can be open about. This is where I'm coming from. These are my thoughts and I want to model that in a faith permitting, constructive, respectful way. I want to model the Sunday School discussion that could be. And again, any of you are welcome. There will be information on the blog about how to sign up and we will get that very streamlined in the near future. The other thing that I am going to contribute is I will be putting up a template and I will be using this template for my lessons and it is going to have several components and I will also be posting this on the blog so you'll have access to it.

[00:15:54] I call this the Engaging Gospel Doctrine Lesson preparation template. You don't need to follow this, but it's what I'm going to be posting. I will also be posting my notes on the blog. You know, do what you will with them. I just want to give you that resource. So I'm going to start out with the goal and then there's going to be a hook and the main points. Let me start with that. Class Time passes so quickly that it's easy for the class to be over before we've talked about what's most important. And it's also easy for the class to be over before we have the chance to talk about what questions we have, how the scriptural material really engages with our daily life.

[00:16:34] So I think it's important to be upfront and clear about what we want to accomplish in this lesson. And as you all know, the Sunday school manual already has this, you know, goal students should blah blah, blah. And a hook is a way of drawing in the class. We want, you know, again, attention getting activity and the main points as you prepare your lesson, as you read through the scriptural material and your other preparatory materials, ask yourself what is the take home lesson? What do you want your class to have in their heads as they go home? If they forget anything else, what do you want them to remember?

[00:17:12] So those are your main points. And then you have other comments, discussion starters and concluding points. So other comments, discussion starters. These can be interesting things. If you do this well, you have already accomplished the purpose of your lesson in say 15, 20 minutes and you have enough time to open it up to questions and other comments, discussion starters, and have everyone do that. But this is just a way of organizing the content so no matter where the class goes, you have a maximal chance of achieving the goal that you want and having your class come away with the points that you want them to appreciate.

[00:17:48] I will also have notes about research. So what I usually do is first, before I even look at the manual or anything else, I read through the scriptural section very carefully and closely on my own and I make notes and then I look at other sources I will be using and we'll talk about this. I'll be using Grant Hardy's Reader's Edition for my Book of Mormon text and I'll also be looking at other sources. So that is the lesson preparation template. And again, there are also tabs on the mormonsundayschool.org blog and there are resources. There's a Feast upon the Word blog. There's a wiki. Along with that, there are several resources online that help you prepare Gospel doctrine content.

[00:18:35] There's Rational Faiths, so there will be a growing list of cool places you can go to prepare your lessons and I will be incorporating those along with the online resources. There are a few key books that we will be using over the course of this podcast. Now you may have guessed that Engaging Gospel Doctrine is going to be a four year project because you know, we're going to work through the entire Sunday School curriculum and then at that point we will probably repost the lessons but also add and tweak and it'll stay interesting. Don't worry, we won't have the normal quadranual rotation of no new content.

[00:19:12] And wait, there's more. There are more projects that will get into place as soon as the rotation has been gone through. So I jokingly call this the Super Quad. But I'll briefly go over different resources that I'm going to be using as key key texts for the Sunday School class. So you can be thinking of it as like the textbook. So Grant Hardy's Reader's Edition of the Book of Mormon will be central. He also has an understanding the Book of Mormon, which is excellent. We'll be using Stephen Harper Making Sense of the Doctrine and Covenants, H. Donnel Peterson's the Pearl of Great A History and Commentary.

[00:19:45] And for the Bible I will recommend that everyone get a study bible, for example put out by HarperCollins or Oxford these Bibles are incredible. They will answer questions that you didn't even know you had. They have introductory essays, they have maps. They're great resources. And again, these resources are intended to supplement and in addition to whatever you're already using, the King James version, the quad, your lesson manual. So these are just to show you what's out there, and you can incorporate it as you wish. I am going to break away from, from the overview of what this podcast will be to talk about reading strategies, because we're talking about how to prepare your lesson, how to engage with content, and it's really important that we learn to read in an engaged way.

Reading Strategies and Close Reading the Scriptures

[00:20:34] And so I figured this is a good time to talk about it. So in Mormonism, in the church, we have a really rich tradition and a good rhetoric of digging deeply into the Scriptures. We have terms such as feast upon the word, and we're supposed. Supposed to read our scriptures every single day. We hear a lot about really digging into the scriptures, reading them carefully, engaging fully. So there's that. However, I feel like often we don't live up to that. We don't live up to that ideal. And part of that is because there's a sort of magical understanding of the Scriptures in Mormonism, which is not completely bad, but I think we should identify it for what it is.

[00:21:17] It's this idea that it almost doesn't matter if you understand the Scriptures, you know, with glazed eyes, just skim through the Isaiah chapters in two Nephi once again, or, you know, try to read through the letters of Paul and have no idea what the historical context or rhetorical devices that he's using. There's this idea that we read the Scriptures in order to get the influence of the Holy Spirit with us, and then we're good. Now, that is one part of it. I do think that a primary reason to read the Scriptures is. Is to be edified, is to be spiritually nourished. And if we're feeling good, if we're getting greater ability to live the gospel, if we're having a transformative experience reading the scriptures, fantastic.

[00:21:59] And that is what's most important. But do you know what? You can have it both ways. You can both read Scriptures in this nourishing, great way, but also be a bit more aware of the literary methods and rhetorical devices and historical contexts. So I'm going to very briefly talk about some reading strategies. So first, a bit of a surprise. Understanding what you're reading starts with understanding yourself. Some postmodernists would argue that we can never transcend our own views to comprehend an outside meaning or the original or authentic meaning of the text. And that's debatable. But it is clear that the meaning we draw from something we're reading, whether it be a novel or the newspaper or scripture, is created by the intersection of you and the text.

[00:22:53] So there is no pure meaning of the text. There is no let the text speak for itself. However you try to get around it, you are still the one reading whatever you're reading. So you are unavoidable. Get used to it. What you can do is be more self aware. So the first thing you can do is ask yourself, what are your views of the text you're reading? What are your presuppositions? Do you think it is? Why do you read it? So in our case, as we're reading the scriptures, I think it's important to understand what do you think the Scriptures are? What are the human elements?

[00:23:26] What are the divine elements? How did the Scriptures came to be? What is revelation? It's not so much what it really is, but what understandings do you bring to the scriptures. And as you become aware of them, you can start engaging and create something more powerful. Now I want to make a very important aside. I actually think meaning has inherent value, which means if you have an insight while reading the scriptures that benefits your life, it doesn't really matter whether that insight comes just from you or from God, or from the quote, unquote, actual meaning of a text. If you are reading the scriptures and you have some insight, some flash of revelation and it does good things, that's fantastic.

[00:24:05] And it doesn't really matter at the end of the day whether that meaning was inherently in the Scriptures. That said, there are advantages to understanding the relationships between the insights and conclusions that you have and the text you're reading. So just because you find meaning does not mean that is what the text means. Did you follow that? It's one thing to find meaning in your reading of the Scriptures and it's another thing to make some sort of definitive statement of oh, because I have this experience, this is what this text means in an objective way. So step two is to realize that you and the text are different.

[00:24:41] So once you're aware of yourself and what presuppositions, expectations and views of scripture that you are bringing to the text, you can become aware of, oh, the text is not exactly like me. The author of this text has his or too rarely her own perspectives and motivations that you have.

[00:25:03] So now it gets into the fun and exciting quest of how can we tell what the text means, how can we approach understanding what the author of text meant? And then we can both enjoy ourselves, both enjoy the text and have a great relationship. So number three, close reading means that you're not just skimming along, but you're really engaging with the content. You're kind of holding aside what comes from you and you're asking the text what it can bring. And again, being open to the idea that scriptures or other texts can present things that are foreign to us or challenging to us is unfamiliar to many of us in a Mormon context.

[00:25:46] Sometimes we get the idea that the purpose of Scripture study is to conform our pre existing beliefs rather than engaging in a dialogic and dynamic relationship where what we are reading can influence us. So just as one aside that we can pick up sometime, I personally think it's very powerful and organic and vibrant to allow the very best theology to be produced rather than limiting our approach to science or scripture with a certain understanding of theology. Let me expand that just a bit. Sometimes people are tempted to say, oh this, this is what I think this scripture means, or this is what I was always taught.

[00:26:29] Therefore, this new information that I'm getting in college or hearing from a friend or reading online, well, that can't be true because it contradicts what I learned in primary. I think that there are advantages to being open to learning from science, from literature, from experts gaining the very best information we have access to. Take that information and turn it around and say, what does this teach us about God? What does this teach us about the Scriptures? So I hope that's clear. It's something we can discuss more in depth later.

[00:27:03] I am going to draw on a link that I found online and talk about just a few things that we can do with close reading. So I'm going to be drawing from a few sources. The first one is Dr. Sophia McLennan at Penn State.

[00:27:21] And yes, I just brought a University and PhD into Sunday school. Get used to it. Sophia McLennan she's adapting it from another source as well, and I'll put a link up on the blog, she says. How to do Close Reading the skill called close reading is fundamental for interpreting literature. Reading closely means developing a deep understanding and precise interpretation of a literary passage that is based first and foremost on the words themselves. Remember how we talked about being aware of what you bring to the text? And that is a preparatory step to engaging with what the words are really saying. As much as we can access that, she continues.

[00:28:00] But a close reading does not stop there. Rather, it embraces larger themes and ideas evoked and or implied by the passage itself. So here are a couple steps she suggests. Read passages a couple times. Look at the details in a passage. Look at word choice. Determine what the passage is about, try to paraphrase it, and figure out general meaning. In our case, with the scriptural section that we're looking at. So word meaning. Look at what words are used. Remember that whenever there's a word sitting in front of you, that means that the author had choices of other words to use.

[00:28:36] Note interesting connotations. Look up words that you don't know. This is something that we can do a lot better with. When we get to the Bible, we'll talk about it. If words are used in unfamiliar ways, we have some challenges here with using older literature. Consider what is the source of this language? You know, lots of parallels and references with the Bible. In our case, are there new words? What comes to mind when you are reading this section of Scripture? Are there any interesting etymologies? I love etymologies. So, structure. What is the structure of the passage? How does it develop themes, ideas? How is the passage organized?

[00:29:13] Are there turning points? Is there parallelism? Sound and rhythm? Punctuation, alliteration, rhyme, consonance, euphony, cacophony, onomatopoeia? Lots of English terms there. Syntax, which means not money, you pay to do things that you shouldn't, but syntax, grammatical syntax. How are the words arranged? Where is the author placing the emphasis? Are the sentences simple or complex? What is the rhythm? Where are subordinate clauses? Again, are there parallels, oppositions, repetitions? Is there ambiguity? Are there double meanings? Textual context. Context is extremely important.

[00:29:53] How does the passage we're looking at relate to the passages surrounding it? So, for example, how does Alma 17:22, the first lesson that we're going to be starting with, how does that fit into the larger structure of Alma? How does Alma fit into the larger structure of the Book of Mormon? How does a given verse fit into the argument of a given chapter? Okay, let me step back. I should have said this earlier. Don't get overwhelmed. Just soak it in and you can go look and refer to it. I just want to give you a taste of what can be done. I am warning you, there are commentaries thousands of pages long on itty bitty biblical books, but you don't need to write them.

[00:30:34] So take comfort. This is just to give you a glimpse of the level to which you can engage a text that you're reading. Tone and narrative voice. Who's Speaking, who is the narrator? Who is speaking? When there's lots of real richness that we can draw from the Scriptures, when we realize who is saying what, we won't get to this for years. So one cool example is that if you read Lehi's dream in First Nephi 8 very carefully, you realize that Lehi starts addressing Laman and Lemuel. He's speaking to them first person. But if you read carefully, you notice that Laman and Lemuel leave in the middle of the story.

[00:31:16] So in verse 14, it says, I beheld your mother, Sariah, and Sam and Nephi. Lehi's talking two Laman and Lemuel about Sariah, Sam and Nephi. And then in 17, it says, 16 and it came to pass that they did come to me partake of the fruit. 17 it says, and it came to pass that I was desirous that Laman and Lemuel should come and partake the fruit. Also I cast my eyes, but they would not come unto me. So suddenly the perspective shifts, the audience shifts, and Lehi is talking to everyone but Laman and Lemuel. Isn't that interesting? There are so many examples of how this works.

[00:31:56] There are also really fun insights that come from finding patterns across chapters and books. For example, who gets the plates? And you can come to conclusions like, Nephihah was Alma's brother. But we'll get to that later. Imagery. What kind of imagery is present in the text that you're reading? What are the descriptions in the text? Rhetorical devices? What metaphors and similes and symbols and so forth are present in the text? How do they work? What job are they doing? Are there other rhetorical devices? Are there any biblical, scriptural, historical allusions? What are they doing? Themes? What are the themes? What are the points made? What is the author trying to emphasize?

[00:32:41] What is the author's agenda? What are gender issues that come up? How does the passage present history? How does the passage relate to history? Once again, don't get overwhelmed. Just an example to show you that there are lots of ways to engage in the text once we get into the Bible, and to a degree, we can do this with the Book of Mormon and other scriptures. When we're dealing with an ancient document, there's another step, because what we have is not the original text. So the New Testament, we're reading it in English, but it was originally written in Greek, and that original Greek was translating Jesus Aramaic words.

[00:33:18] So it's really complex. And then the Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew, except for a couple parts in Aramaic. And so we need to be aware of what is the relationship between the text we are reading and any sort of original text that was present. So, for example, in the Book of Mormon, we need to determine what is the relationship between what we're reading in the Book of Mormon and the gold plates. So lots to dig into there. So these are from a book by Gordon Fee called New Testament Exegesis. Exegesis is a fancy, schmancy Greek word that means how do you figure out what a text means?

[00:33:56] So number one, structural analysis, figuring out how is the passage organized? You know, how do you find smaller units to even start figuring out meaning, you need to establish the text. So with the Book of Mormon, there's the printer's manuscript, then there's the original manuscript. Royal Skousen has done work on this. Then you can analyze grammar and the words, what's the historical background? So that gives you a little bit of an idea for reading strategies. And if you have questions, comments, let me know on the blog. And again, I'll be posting resources throughout these projects. So that's Engaging Gospel Doctrine. Once again, Engage in Gospel Doctrine, the weekly podcast that will be published two weeks ahead of the official Word schedule, so you have time to listen to it and incorporate it, if you wish, into your lessons and comments.

Lesson Structure and What to Expect Each Week

[00:34:50] I laid out how that will work. It will have a lesson portion and then a discussion portion. And these will come every week, again, a little bit faster than every week at first, so that we can get well on schedule. The other podcast is called Excavating Scripture.

[00:35:08] Think of Excavating Scripture like the Ward Library. This is going to be a growing library of content that will contribute to the Sunday school experience. So it won't be weekly. Different projects will come out as there's opportunity to talk about it. So the very first project is going to be like a miniseries. So the first project with Excavating Scripture is going to be a Type of Religion 101 podcasts. The name is tentative. Not sure exactly what the name is going to be, but here is what it is. This idea of these Religion 101 podcasts is actually what motivated me to start earlier rather than later.

[00:35:52] These are going to be 12 audio, visual, short presentations on key topics, and we'll get to the different topics. These multimedia presentations are going to give you an understanding of the approach, tools and key insights of given disciplines. We'll talk about tools and methods, the framework, questions, asks, answers and contributions explain how the discipline pertains to religion and then Explore the ramifications of these elements for Mormonism. So we are going to cover history, philosophy, psychology, sociology, science, anthropology and theology.

[00:36:36] And then once we have those ologies and ostophies, we are going to go back and present for more on prophecy and revelation, scripture, agency and accountability, and gender and sexuality. So here's what we're doing with these. Remember, after planting the breadcrumbs or bringing up issues that I said, the number two stage is giving people a framework or a toolbox in order to understand religious concepts in healthy, mature ways that allow you to adapt and adjust and enrich and strengthen faith, rather than it being brittle. Where at the first contradicting idea you're like, oh, the nothing must be true because the book of Abraham is not exactly what I thought it was.

[00:37:24] So again, I want these Religion 101 type podcasts to be in a sense a prerequisite for Mormon stories material. Now, again, you can listen to them on their own, you can listen to it however you want. But my goal is that in these projects I want to give you all a framework. And I have put together some amazing teams. These are all specialists. So every episode has content produced by people who are specialists in these different fields. So again, what I want to do is I want to have a really short, 30, 45 minute professional looking presentation that says, here's what history is, here's what sociology is, here are the tools and approaches, here are the limitations, and here is how it applies to Mormonism.

[00:38:09] Here's what scripture is, this is what a prophet means. I want these to trigger aha moments. And again, it seems ambitious, but this is what I'm going for. I want there to be paradigm shifts that will help listeners and viewers to understand these topics in a new way. So to use a silly example, I have wanted to do rock climbing for years, and I finally went rock climbing with my friend Greg Jackson, who's a PhD student in history. And so I assumed that rock climbing meant to get from the bottom to the top, right? That you climb the rocks, you go up. And so this is an understandable assumption, but it was wrong, or at the least it was incomplete.

[00:38:54] And I feel like we have a lot of those experiences with Mormon culture and scripture and lessons and we have all these assumptions. So my friend Greg showed me. He says, no, it's not about just climbing to the top. Climbing is like vertical chess dancing, where you need to plan out your moves in advance, where you get from the bottom to the top, yes, but you use as little energy as possible. So you don't exhaust yourself. You're not muscling your way up the rocks or the climbing wall. It's kind of a dancing strategic thing where you're using your legs, you're hanging on your arms. And this was super simple, but it totally shifted my view of rock climbing and I was less exhausted the second time I went rock climbing.

[00:39:38] And the same goes with all of these things, all of these disciplines like theology and sociology and psychology and philosophy and I want to give you that framework so you have that kind of aha moment. So that is something to look forward to. So again, what I'm talking about there is this type of Religion 101 project. So that's one little miniseries. There will be 12 of those, no more. They'll be finite, produced and done. The other thing that will be in our library is long Mormon story styles, interviews and overviews of the standard works. So the first immediately I am going to cross list my New Testament Mormon stories interview.

[00:40:23] I'm going to cross list Grant Hardy's Book of Mormon interview, I'm going to cross list Brant Gardner's Book of Mormon interview. And then as I have opportunity, I am going to interview someone to cover the Old Testament. I'm going to interview someone to cover the Doctrine and Covenants, cover the Pearl of Great Price, cover the Joe Smith translation. I'm going to do one in the history of the Bible and then we'll see where we go from there. Oh, I missed one. So the very first one I'm going to do even before the Old Testament is a really big fun framing, long interview on the value and history of religion.

[00:41:01] And John Dehlind is going to interview and discuss that with me. And so that is something to look forward to. So once again they're going to be these big multi hour Mormon stories type interviews that you're so familiar with value and history of religion, going to cross list New Testament, Book of Mormon and then add Old Testament dnc, Pearl of Christ, jst, History of the Bible and go from there. So here is the final project, the final part of excavating scripture. And this will, this will be years in advance when the engaging gospel doctrine content is done. When we've been through the four year cycle, I will be starting a podcast commentary on the standard works.

[00:41:40] And the approach to this is I want there to be something for, for everyone. No matter what you think about the scriptures, no matter what you believe, I want you to be able to take away some value. So I will be examining and discussing the scriptures From a literary, historical, theological, ethical, and critical perspective. And I want to spend just a few minutes, even though this is way on the horizon, I want to spend a few minutes talking about what I mean, because you can apply it in your scripture reading right now. So number one, literary. That's that huge list that I talked about 10 or so minutes ago where you know all of the literary devices.

[00:42:23] How does this scripture function as literature? Surface reading. How does it work that way? Historical reading. How does the scripture relate to history? Theological. How does the scriptural passage relate to theology? What insights do we gain about God? What insights do we gain about the gospel? What does it say about Jesus? What does it say about human nature? Lots of fun theological questions, then, ethical. And this may seem a little bit strange or unfamiliar to some. Scripture is extremely complex. And one troubling aspect to an overly simplistic view of scripture, which is understandable because people come by honestly, is that if God is good and scripture comes from God, therefore everything in scripture is good.

[00:43:16] And that leads to some pretty horrendous conclusions. For example, the story of Abraham sacrificing Isaac is amazing on many, many levels. But don't try this at home. And this idea that you should sacrifice your child, if God asks, let's just say it's really, really problematic. And yes, there may be some sort of something to it, but we should engage with it with fear and trembling. We shouldn't just be like, oh, yeah, you know, if God asks me to kill someone, I'll totally do it. No, we need to wrestle. We need to work. So what I mean by an ethical approach to the scriptures is to read a given passage and to say, what are the ethical consequences of this passage?

[00:43:57] Who does it benefit? Who does it harm? What does it imply about God? Again, what does it imply about human nature? What are the consequences of applying these lessons? For example, the book of Joshua and genocide. What does it mean? This passage is advocating genocide. What about polygamy? You know what? Benefit and harm. And who is this benefiting? And who is this harming? A bit of an overly simplistic explanation, but that's an ethical critique of the scriptures. And I think that we need to be empowered to engage with the scriptures ethically, because I think that's part of the spirit and part of revelation and part of inspiration and our intuition and just our good common sense is the ability to say, no, I'm going to stand for what I feel is right.

[00:44:40] I'm going to allow this to be a learning opportunity. Then critical perspective. What are the potential questions and criticisms and anachronisms and all the other isms. And if we dismantle this scripture, what does it look like? So once again, way out in the future. But ultimately that is what I would like excavating scripture to become long term.

[00:45:04] So that is what Mormon Story Sunday School is going to be. It's going to be the sister podcasts of engaging Gospel Doctrine, Excavating scripture. There's going to be one little coherent project, you know this Type of Religion 101, give a framework to understand the scriptures and Mormon stories and all sorts of good stuff. It will be something to enrich your Sunday School experience. It will be a podcast that you can listen to. It will be a guide to the scriptures. And the way that I want to conclude is I want to appeal to all of you to engage. I think that Mormon Story Sunday School has the potential to reach many, many people, to reach people who are on the entire spectrum of church activity, people who just are looking for something to enrich their gospel doctrine lessons to people who are out, people who believe, people who don't believe.

[00:45:58] I really want this to appeal to a broad spectrum, you know, something for everyone. And the other thing that I'm excited about with this project is I think it has a very high degree of ability to let you be part of the podcast. So please sign up and comment and come be on the podcast and come discuss the scriptures, come make comments, ask questions, post on the blog, download it, share it. I really think it can be a lot of fun, do a lot of good, and I look forward to seeing where it's going to go with your help.

[00:46:31] So that is the introduction and the first lesson is going to be 25 in the gospel doctrine manual in the Book of Mormon. We're going to cover Alma 17 to 22, so look forward to that and I will see you then.

[00:46:46] Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Story Sunday School to discuss this episode or to participate in future episodes, Please go to mormonsundayschool.org for more information. Mormon Story Sunday School is a production of Mormon Stories podcast and the Open Stories Foundation. Sam. Sa.

Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.