A Mormon Image, November 20, 2009

“…make the world a better place by smiling all the while.” (Primary Song #267)

From the author of salt lake architecture and green mormon architect blogs.

Category: Images, Mormon Arts, Mormon Images | 3 Comments »

Kaimi Wenger, November 20, 2009

It’s been a stressful time for us. My father in law had been battling leukemia for over a year, when he suddenly took a turn for the worse. FIL’s illness lasted a few more weeks, and he finally passed away. This has affected the family in a number of ways; most importantly for this post, it resulted in a complicated set of travel plans. (more…)

Category: Cornucopia, Mormon Life, Parenting | 16 Comments »

Dave Banack, November 18, 2009

[See Part 1: Founding and Part 2: Flourishing] Any history of Nauvoo needs to give an account of the secret practice of polygamy between 1841 and 1846. In Nauvoo: A Place of Peace, a People of Promise, Glen Leonard does this in about twenty pages as part of Chapter 13, “Foes Within: The Church of the Seceders.”

(more…)

Category: Church History | 18 Comments »

Rosalynde Welch, November 16, 2009

Over at my other blog, a reader posted the following question:

On a related LDS family matter, many of us have been confronted by Mormon missionaries with a message, or even a free DVD, of “Families are Forever.” A sincere, respectful question: isn’t this motto a solution in search of a problem? That is, what Christian believes there is separation or division among the blessed in heaven? Of course, Jesus himself teaches in extremely plain and simple terms, and Christian history has always held, that there is no marriage in heaven as we know marriage. But, shared Christian belief realizes that the communion among believers in heaven results in a bond significantly greater in love than what we perceive in our knowledge of marriage. That bond is a consequence of the everlasting worship and praising of God. Why wouldn’t God be the focus of any discussion involving the word “forever”?

Here’s what I answered: (more…)

Category: Cornucopia | 37 Comments »

Kaimi Wenger, November 16, 2009

Thanks to reader Clair for pointing this out in comments:

The first issue of the Times and Seasons was published at Nauvoo. — 170 years ago today [err, yesterday] – Nov 15, 1839 .

Happy birthday to us!

Category: Cornucopia | 2 Comments »

Matt Evans, November 14, 2009

It’s interesting to note that the church is exempted from the SLC gay rights ordinance the church supported this week. (more…)

Category: Cornucopia | 167 Comments »

Dave Banack, November 13, 2009

Faith and charity get plenty of attention, but hope not so much. Pessimism, it seems, has become one of the guiding principles of modernity, reflected in the media, popular culture, and even academia. So I was surprised to find a philospher making the suggestion that children anchor our hope for progress and our conviction that life will be better for the next generation.

(more…)

Category: General Doctrine | 6 Comments »

Rory Swensen, November 12, 2009

In February, 2008, noted religious author Karen Armstrong was awarded the TED Prize, and her wish for the world was to gather a council of Christian, Muslim, Jewish, and other spiritual leaders to draw up a “Charter for Compassion.” (more…)

Category: Cornucopia | 12 Comments »

A Mormon Image, November 11, 2009

from Bill of Wasilla, who writes:

Dad is the man who lies in this flag-draped coffin. I will not say too much about him for now, except that he was a good father and that, thanks to him, and many more like him, most of them gone now, the evil dream of a man named Hitler died in flames and blood.

We buried Dad on June 2, 2007. He died on Memorial Day.

One more photo follows the jump here; there is further discussion and photos at Bill’s blog today. (more…)

Category: Images, Mormon Images | 7 Comments »

Frank McIntyre, November 11, 2009

Utah is not part of the Midwest.    Idaho is also out.  That is all.

Category: News and Politics | 60 Comments »

Mormon Review, November 10, 2009

A new issue of The Mormon Review is available, with Russell Arben Fox’s review of Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work by Matthew Crawford. The article is available at:

Russell Arben Fox, “Getting Your Hands Dirty: Notes on How Mormons (and Everyone) Should Work,” The Mormon Review, vol.1 no. 8 [HTML] [PDF]

For more information about MR, please take a look at the prospectus by our editor-in-chief Richard Bushman (”Out of the Best Books: Introducing The Mormon Review,” The Mormon Review, vol.1 no.1 [HTML][PDF]). In addition to our website, you can have The Mormon Review delivered to your inbox. Finally, please consider submitting an article to MR.

Category: Cornucopia, Mormon Review | 8 Comments »

Jonathan Green, November 9, 2009

Each anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall is a bit embarrassing for me. (more…)

Category: Cornucopia | 20 Comments »

Rory Swensen, November 9, 2009

In two weeks, The Road will open in US theaters. Based on the book by Cormac McCarthy, this is a film that I have been looking forward to with a mix of hope and trepidation. Hope that it will be true to the book, trepidation that it might actually put the images in my mind onto the big screen in all of their horrific glory. (more…)

Category: Cornucopia | 75 Comments »

Frank McIntyre, November 9, 2009

Kaimi put up a sidebar link to a NYT piece on parenting. It had an interesting quote:

“Fathers tend to do things differently, Dr. Kyle Pruett said, but not in ways that are worse for the children. Fathers do not mother, they father.” (more…)

Category: Parenting | 60 Comments »

James Olsen, November 7, 2009

Let me begin by saying that I not only believe in the historicity of The Book of Mormon, I feel a deep and passionate commitment to our narrative. But this is a point on which I think Mormon historicitists, believers in a divine or human fiction, or any other type of good Mormon ought to be able to agree: The Book of Mormon is rich far beyond our nascent attempts to uncover. (more…)

Category: Cornucopia | 30 Comments »

Matt Evans, November 5, 2009

For over a year I’ve wanted to write a substantive post about the contradiction between two of the best-known biblical injunctions, “let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth” and “let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works.” (more…)

Category: Cornucopia | 20 Comments »

Kaimi Wenger, November 5, 2009

The trial court in Reynolds v. United States gave the following jury charge, which the Supreme Court later found was proper and not inflammatory.

I think it not improper, in the discharge of your duties in this case, that you should consider what are to be the consequences to the innocent victims of this delusion. (more…)

Category: Cornucopia | 5 Comments »

A Mormon Image, November 4, 2009

This is a statue of an angel in the cemetery where my first baby is buried. I like that she’s smiling. Death is heartbreaking but it’s not only sad. I am also filled with hope when I think about my son. He is alive and happy and we can be an eternal family. It has always been such a comfort to know that.

by Kirsten Obert (more…)

Category: Images, Mormon Images | 4 Comments »

Dave Banack, November 4, 2009

[See Part 1: Founding] This second installment discussing Glen Leonard’s Nauvoo: A Place of Peace, a People of Promise looks at the middle years in Nauvoo through about 1842, covered in the second section of the book (pages 123 to 269).

(more…)

Category: Church History | 3 Comments »

Patricia Karamesines, November 3, 2009

For the next several weeks, I attended church when I could. Participation often included lowering my eyes when the bishop or his first counselor walked by and gave me stern “We’re watching you” stares. In some ways the whole business interested me so I wasn’t suffering as much as some might suppose. But given the treatment of these two ward leaders, I did feel somewhat cordoned off. Perhaps that’s why when a prettily decorated invitation to a special R.S. council arrived in my mailbox, in a fit of high irritation, I nearly tossed it. (more…)

Category: Cornucopia, Mormon Life, Women in the Church | 82 Comments »

Patricia Karamesines, November 2, 2009

Preface. At the risk of running afoul of Nate’s post on turning the other cheek—that is, of appearing obnoxiously immodest and of proving myself once again impossibly dense—I’m telling a story about how I received one of the best lessons I’m still learning. It’s a long story and hopelessly self-referential. Over the last two decades, I’ve slowly awakened to my unfortunate condition: I don’t have access to the details of anybody else’s mistakes or near-mistakes as fully as I do to my own, so those stories where I made matters worse (or nearly did) and those which, surprisingly, erupted into fireworks at the end are the ones I have the greatest right to tell. Of course, no adventure unfolds in a social vacuum. It’s unavoidable that others should be mentioned, and—darn it—their actions described from my point of view. I apologize in advance for this story’s unlikelihood. I don’t expect anybody to believe it. If you’ve already lost patience over other unlikely stories I’ve told, turn back now. Also, some sensitive readers might find this story frightening. Its characters and events include a severely disabled child (my daughter), the zombie virus that destroyed part of her tender mind, a very unhappy bishop and his deputy first counselor, and people tendering advice that some readers might find bothersome. If you’re having a bad day, you’d be better off reading something else.

On July 24, 1992, one or more arsonists attempted to burn down Parish Chemical Company in Vineyard, Utah, where my husband worked as plant manager. The incident received a lot of live TV coverage from news crews on the ground and in the air as Chopper 5 circled above the building ‘til that airspace was closed. Just a couple days before the fire, we’d made an appointment to offer on what would have been our first house. I’d felt so excited, but in the TV flames I saw the future I’d imagined turn to smoke. (more…)

Category: Cornucopia | 11 Comments »

A Mormon Image, November 2, 2009

My sister studies outside the John Taylor building on the campus of Brigham Young University- Idaho.

“..seek learning, even by study and also by faith.” D&C 88:118

by Blake (more…)

Category: Images, Mormon Images | 6 Comments »

Rosalynde Welch, November 2, 2009

Leftover Halloween candy languishes in its plastic pumpkin on top of the refrigerator; for the moment, the kids are satiated and I’m being good. All the sugar brings to mind a favorite hymn, “Jesus, the very thought of thee,” a few stanzas of which are here:

Jesus, the very thought of Thee
With sweetness fills the breast;
But sweeter far Thy face to see,
And in Thy presence rest. (more…)

Category: Cornucopia | 6 Comments »

A Mormon Image, October 31, 2009

(more…)

Category: Mormon Images | 6 Comments »

Rosalynde Welch, October 30, 2009

cross posted at Civil Religion

“Death be not proud,” taunted John Donne. “One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally, / And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.” Death interrupts our view of eternity, a fearsome jalousie obscuring a future we must approach. Like Donne, we console and distract ourselves by turns with bravado, with pleasure, with laughter and—finally, always—with God. (more…)

Category: Cornucopia | 3 Comments »

Rosalynde Welch, October 29, 2009

Trivia fact for the day: the Mormon church operated a newspaper, the St. Louis Luminary, from November 1854 to December 1855. The periodical served the large community of transient Latter-day Saints, many of whom stopped in St Louis to replenish their strength (and funds) after the first leg of their journey to the Salt Lake Valley. In 1855, the paper commented, “There is probably no city in the world where Latter-day Saints are more respected, and where they may sooner obtain an outfit for Utah. … The hand of the Lord is in these things.”

If you’re intrigued, and you live in the St Louis area, you can learn more about the early history of Mormons in St Louis at the first meeting of the St Louis Mormon Historical Society. The event will take place tomorrow night, Friday, October 30, at 7:00 pm at The Lodge Des Peres. It promises to be an interesting evening, and I’m hoping to attend myself.

Category: Cornucopia | 3 Comments »

Julie M. Smith, October 29, 2009

There’s an interesting new study from Pew about converts. (more…)

Category: Cornucopia | 22 Comments »

Kaimi Wenger, October 27, 2009

Will same-sex marriage change the institution of marriage? Melissa Harris-Lacewell writes in The Nation that maybe, hopefully, it will. (more…)

Category: News and Politics | 96 Comments »

Julie M. Smith, October 26, 2009

So the upcoming RS/MP lesson got me thinking: What exactly does the phrase “the dispensation of the fulness of times” actually mean? (more…)

Category: Cornucopia | 20 Comments »

Nate Oman, October 26, 2009

The language of turning the other cheek and Christian ethics in general can really get quite nasty. (more…)

Category: Cornucopia, Mormon Publications, News and Politics | 31 Comments »