Greg Prince – What My Generation of Mormon Thinkers Has Accomplished

The following is a transcript I typed of a speech Greg Prince made at a Mormon Stories conference in Washington D.C. in October 2011. This is the fourth segment, in which Prince explains his feelings on how his generation’s most significant contribution to Mormonism is their efforts in the area of internal struggle “to make the Church work for members of all stripes.”

Activist Judges

Whenever a court or a judge strikes down a popular piece of legislation, it’s pretty common to hear political pundits (or the people who parrot their talking points) complain about “activist judges”, a.k.a. “elites who overturn the will of the people”. However, these same people will often turn around the next week and praise similar activities by the judicial branch because they have “upheld the Constitution”. Wise observers of this phenomenon quip that the best definition of “activist judge” is “a judge that deems my legislation of choice to be unconstitutional.”

Appreciation for Uchtdorf

In the LDS Worldwide Leadership Training Meeting held earlier this month, a statement made by President Uchtdorf of the First Presidency drew a lot of attention in my religious circles. Thank God for men like him who remind us that our whole faith tradition is based on questioning, and that the scriptures and history are replete with examples of people who only got answers and growth because they refused to be content with what was already known.

Women’s Roles and the New Testament

The following is taken verbatim from Misquoting Jesus by Bart Ehrman. Dr. Ehrman is a renowned New Testament scholar who has written multiple New York Times bestselling books on the topic. In this particular segment, Ehrman is discussing how the social context (in this case, the role of women in early Christian cultures) influenced the scribes who were copying the New Testament manuscripts.