The Latter-day Saint Talk as an I-Thou Relational Event

Stringham, Kristine F.

The Latter-day Saint Talk as an I-Thou Relational Event

dc.contributor.advisor	Ruparell, Tinu
dc.contributor.author	Stringham, Kristine F.
dc.contributor.committeemember	Wright, David Curtis
dc.contributor.committeemember	Palacios, Joy Kathleen
dc.contributor.committeemember	Rohlman, Elizabeth
dc.date	2023-11
dc.date.accessioned	2023-08-10T19:25:49Z
dc.date.available	2023-08-10T19:25:49Z
dc.date.issued	2023-08
dc.description.abstract	Suspicion of religion is prevalent in modern culture, but many people seem to find meaning and purpose through active participation in a religious community. Is creative growth possible for individuals who adhere to faith traditions? How does the tension between personal autonomy and institutional authority, particularly in a hierarchical church, play out in a way that facilitates opportunity for genuine dialogue? To explore these questions, I focus on a specific practice of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, i.e., the talk. This understudied phenomenon, which involves lay members instructing one another, warrants more attention. I leverage the philosophical hermeneutics of Hans Georg Gadamer, particularly his concept of play [Spiel] to study how the rules of giving talks are set and practiced within the hierarchical structure of the church. I argue that there is space for genuine creativity for participants within these boundaries. To address the experiential possibilities for transcendent religious experience in this space, I rely on Martin Buber’s writings on community to provide a framework for the 'suprasensual' knowledge that can be gained (Buber 2016, 8). Buber argues that transformational relationships are facilitated through community as people move from I-It encounters into I-Thou relations through dialogue. I conceptually analyze talks from the highest-ranking leaders of the church, in addition to four representative talks given by local church members. My study develops a hermeneutic for how to recover a more nuanced understanding of the role of religious organizations as a place where the purported experience of transcendence is mediated through community and in doing so fills a gap in the scholarship of the Latter-day Saints.
dc.identifier.citation	Stringham, K. F. (2023). The Latter-day Saint talk as an I-Thou relational event (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.
dc.identifier.uri	https://hdl.handle.net/1880/116851
dc.identifier.uri	https://dx.doi.org/10.11575/PRISM/41693
dc.language.iso	en
dc.publisher.faculty	Graduate Studies
dc.publisher.institution	University of Calgary
dc.rights	University of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission.
dc.subject	Philosophical Hermeneutics
dc.subject	The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
dc.subject	Dialogue
dc.subject	Hans Georg Gadamer
dc.subject	Martin Buber
dc.subject.classification	Education--Religious
dc.title	The Latter-day Saint Talk as an I-Thou Relational Event
dc.type	master thesis
thesis.degree.discipline	Religious Studies
thesis.degree.grantor	University of Calgary
thesis.degree.name	Master of Arts (MA)
ucalgary.thesis.accesssetbystudent	I do not require a thesis withhold – my thesis will have open access and can be viewed and downloaded publicly as soon as possible.