Monthly Archives: October 2010

A new issue of The Mormon Review is available, with Davey Morrison Dillard’s review of Pan’s Labyrinth, directed by Guillermo del Toro. The article is available at: Davey Morrison Dillard, “Pan’s Labyrinth and the Sanctity of Disobedience,” The Mormon Review, vol.2 no. 4 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 ). In addition to our website, you can have The Mormon Review delivered to your inbox. Finally, please consider submitting an article to... Read more »

Can truth be created? In the church, we tend to privilege truth that is discovered, and we dismiss creative doctrine-making attempts as the “philosophies of men”. Our common discourse places the identification of truth as solely within the purview of God’s authority, to be dispensed only through His designated prophet. In this paradigm, discovered truth is the only solid truth, and the only reliable mechanism for discovering truth is authorized revelation through priesthood channels. This worldview that privileges discovered truth is what anti-Mormons attack when they point out how Joseph Smith’s environment influenced his revelations, translations, and doctrinal innovations.... Read more »

I thought I would ape this post. 9 people like this post. Like Unlike Read more »

I don’t have any statistics for you, just a hunch that we now usually say “the world” where twenty or more years ago we would have said “Satan” or “the devil.” 2 people like this post. Like Unlike Read more »

Your latest editorial shows a disturbing lack of integrity. 30 people like this post. Like Unlike Read more »

Most of the commentary that I have read on Elder Packer’s talk (and I have not read widely) treats the decamped rhetorical question as an emotional and political flashpoint.  But I think it’s more productively understood as a confounding question of theology, even theodicy.  The removal of those nine words from the published version does nothing to resolve the underlying doctrinal problem. First let me say that I understood Elder Packer’s talk to take up implicitly but very clearly the question of the origins of homosexual desire. Others interpret it differently, but that was how I heard it at... Read more »

The friends and former students of Professor Richard Lyman Bushman invite submissions for a conference, on the occasion of his 80th birthday, to be held June 18, 2011, at the Springville Art Museum in Springville, Utah. The summer seminars led by Professor Bushman beginning in 1997 pursued the theme of “Joseph Smith and His Times.” Participants were asked to connect the Mormon prophet to the religions, philosophies, and cultural formations of his period. More recently the seminars have posed the same question for Mormonism as a whole. How is Mormon thought to be situated in its broad cultural environment?... Read more »

I used to worry that my kids weren’t listening to a word of General Conference. Now I worry that my kids are listening to every single word of General Conference. 1 person likes this post. Like Unlike Read more »

I got that familiar little thrill we all feel when one of our favorite hymns is sung in General Conference, as our first session this morning opened with “Let Zion in Her Beauty Rise.” (I was especially happy to have caught it since we experienced significant technical difficulties getting the conference to stream, causing us to miss both the intro and Pres. Monson’s subsequent talk – in eight years of internet streaming conference, I’ve never not had technical troubles, except one time, in the middle of the night, in a smoke filled internet cafe in Alexandria, Egypt). This is... Read more »