Blog Archives

The Real World of the Book of Mormon

February 2, 2012 | 5 comments
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The Real World of the Book of Mormon

This is the fourth in a series of posts taking a broad look at the Book of Mormon. This post continues the discussion of the prior post, The Book of Mormon as Narrative, by considering verisimilitude. This term refers to how faithfully a text represents the real world or, to various degrees, depicts events that do not conform to the readers’ view of the real world. First, a tighter definition of verisimilitude : The semblance of truth or reality in literary works; or the literary principle that requires a consistent illusion of truth to life. The term covers... Read more »

The Book of Mormon as Narrative

January 27, 2012 | 12 comments
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The Book of Mormon as Narrative

This is the third post in a series taking a broad view of the Book of Mormon (first, second). In this post I will discuss aspects of narrative encountered in the text. Not all scripture is narrative: consider the lengthy legal codes in the Torah and the moral exhortation found in James. Not all historical accounts are in the form of a narrative, although most history books written for the popular market are narrative histories. Most novels are in the form of a narrative, including historical fiction, which adds authorial speculation to large chunks of authentic history, often mixing... Read more »

The Book of Mormon: What has it done for you lately?

January 12, 2012 | 29 comments
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Julie is posting detailed commentary and Kent is providing literary reflection; I’m afraid all I have to offer on the Book of Mormon is general observations. This week let’s talk about situating the book as a whole, not so much in terms of content and form (which I’ll address in later posts) but in terms of function and use. How does the Church use the Book of Mormon? How do you use the Book of Mormon? What the Book of Mormon Says About Itself One place to start is the Title Page to the Book of Mormon itself, which... Read more »

Which Book of Mormon?

January 5, 2012 | 17 comments
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The flurry of posts at T&S and elsewhere around the Bloggernacle is a reminder that 2012 is Book of Mormon year in Gospel Doctrine class. Which Book of Mormon are you going to read? Be the first to like. Like Unlike Read more »

Under the tree: LDS Beliefs

December 22, 2011 | 11 comments
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Under the tree: LDS Beliefs

The latest book to digest Mormon doctrine for the popular LDS audience is LDS Beliefs: A Doctrinal Reference (Deseret, 2011), by four BYU religion professors: Robert L. Millet, Camille Fronk Olson, Andrew C. Skinner, and Brent L. Top. Entries are alphabetical, with authorship and cited sources listed following each and every entry. It’s out just in time for Christmas and will no doubt find its way under the tree in many LDS homes, as well it should. The best way to summarize the strengths of this one-volume reference work is to compare and contrast it with other modern attempts... Read more »

Religious Anti-Intellectualism

December 4, 2011 | 65 comments
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A few weeks ago two Evangelical scholars authored “The Evangelical Rejection of Reason,” an op-ed at the New York Times lamenting the fact that the Republican primary race “has become a showcase of evangelical anti-intellectualism.” While the Mormons in the race, Romney and Huntsman, were described as “the two candidates who espouse the greatest support for science,” the discussion still invites the LDS reader to reflect a bit on whether there is a similar strain of LDS anti-intellectualism evident in LDS culture if not in LDS presidential candidates. 1 person likes this post. Like Unlike Read more »

Ben S. Joins the Team

November 17, 2011 | 24 comments
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Times and Seasons is pleased to announce that — after a very long stint as a guest blogger — Ben S. has agreed to come onboard as a permanent contributor. I certainly look forward to many interesting posts. Welcome Ben! 1 person likes this post. Like Unlike Read more »

John Wesley on the Pride Cycle

November 9, 2011 | 11 comments
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Re-reading the second half of Paul Johnson’s A History of Christianity last week, I ran across this interesting commentary penned by John Wesley. Here’s what he wrote sometime in the late 18th century (quoted at page 368; emphasis added): Be the first to like. Like Unlike Read more »

Do Mormons Get a Seat at the Table?

October 20, 2011 | 29 comments
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Do Mormons Get a Seat at the Table?

I just started reading the recently published Tri-Faith America: How Catholics and Jews Held Postwar America to Its Protestant Promise, by Kevin M. Schultz (OUP, 2011). With Mitt Romney’s Mormon-ness continuing to be an oddly fascinating topic for the mainstream media, a point of criticism and ridicule for journalist comedians (they think they are journalists, I think they are comedians), and a strategic weakness to be exploited by Rick Perry and possibly other candidates, Tri-Faith America seems like a very timely book. 1 person likes this post. Like Unlike Read more »

LDS Men Aren’t Incredible

September 22, 2011 | 110 comments
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Wheat & Tares ran a fun post earlier this week titled LDS Men Are Incredible … although the URL string shows that the original draft title of the post was “Why Men Suck.” That kind of marks off the two ends of the spectrum, doesn’t it? That’s a nice lead-in for the question: What remarks are going to be directed at LDS men in next week’s General Conference? Be the first to like. Like Unlike Read more »

Creationism and LDS Seminary

September 15, 2011 | 66 comments
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Creationism and LDS Seminary

It’s late September and LDS high school students really should be back at school … and back at seminary. This year’s course of study is the Old Testament, which covers (or has already covered) Genesis 1 and the Creation. I hope LDS seminary teachers can teach Creation without teaching Creationism. But I fear some LDS teachers won’t or can’t make that distinction, so it is likely some LDS seminary students are going to go home this week thinking Creationism is the LDS view about Creation. That is very sad and sets up LDS kids to have a bad experience... Read more »

Hurricane open thread

August 27, 2011 | 26 comments
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Hurricane open thread

It’s going to be a long day for some East Coast readers, but at least you’ve still got Internet. This thread is to share your first-person accounts and post helpful information. My contribution: Weather Underground, the best online source for hurricane tracking information. As of 11 AM EDT Saturday, their tracking map forecasts a storm path for Irene passing directly over New York City at about 8 AM Sunday morning. Be the first to like. Like Unlike Read more »

Times & Seasons Welcomes Ben Spackman

August 26, 2011 | 14 comments
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Times and Seasons is pleased to welcome Ben Spackman as our latest guest blogger. Ben received his BA in Near Eastern Studies from BYU and an MA in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago, focusing on philology and Semitic languages such as Arabic, Hebrew, and Aramaic. During his graduate summers, he taught New Testament, Book of Mormon, and Biblical Hebrew at BYU. He has taught various courses in a volunteer capacity for the LDS Church Education System since 2003. Most recently, Ben was the managing editor of the Mormon Portal at Patheos.com. Ben has lived... Read more »

Bible, Church, and Mystic

August 24, 2011 | 19 comments
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On a recent trip, I took along as reading material Christianity: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2004) by Linda Woodhead. Like all of the books in the wildly successful VSI series, the book is short but informative. I want to focus on the author’s analysis of how views about divine power and earthly authority can be used to classify Christian churches and denominations, then try to place Mormonism and the LDS Church within that classification scheme. 1 person likes this post. Like Unlike Read more »

An Unsettling Book: Grant Hardy’s Understanding the Book of Mormon

August 18, 2011 | 11 comments
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An Unsettling Book: Grant Hardy’s Understanding the Book of Mormon

This is the fourth in a series of reviews of Grant Hardy’s Understanding the Book of Mormon: A Reader’s Guide (OUP, 2010) that we are posting this week at Times and Seasons. It says something about the book that there is still a lot to talk about. 3 people like this post. Like Unlike Read more »

Mormon Myths

August 11, 2011 | 77 comments
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If you haven’t read “Five Myths About Mormonism,” a piece at the Washington Post by Joanna Brooks, you should. There are plenty of Mormon myths out there, but few people are going to visit the LDS Newsroom or the Mormon Defense League to upgrade their ideas about Mormons and what we believe. We need more articles like this in the mainstream media to get the message out. Be the first to like. Like Unlike Read more »

Who Wrote the Gospels?

August 5, 2011 | 41 comments
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It always helps to know who wrote what you are reading, and Bible books are no exception. The four gospels, in particular, present interesting questions of how the narratives were composed and who did the composing. 2 people like this post. Like Unlike Read more »

Handbook 2, Chapter 2: Priesthood Principles

July 12, 2011 | 21 comments
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Handbook 2, Chapter 2: Priesthood Principles

Our series continues by looking at Priesthood Principles, the second of three foundational chapters found in the recently published Handbook 2 (“H2″). I’ll first touch on the status of H2, then discuss some of the topics covered in the three pages of Chapter Two. Be the first to like. Like Unlike Read more »

Doctrine and Practice

June 23, 2011 | 33 comments
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I enjoyed Alison’s post from a couple of weeks ago, Does Gender Matter?, but I’m a little confused how the pieces fit together. The post appears to accept the nonscriptural, uncanonized Proclamation at face value, stating: “Gender is part of who we are and who we have always been. It is important. It matters.” That makes it difficult to argue for reform of what is identified as a problem: “The church uses gender to delineate authority, callings, and roles.” However, there is a different way to see the issue. Be the first to like. Like Unlike Read more »

Women and Meetings

June 16, 2011 | 50 comments
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Once a year I attend a professional conference on juvenile law and practice. The keynote speaker at this year’s conference is Bruce D. Perry, a scholar and psychologist who studies the effect of trauma on brain development and who runs a clinical practice treating children and juveniles who are forced to deal with those difficult issues. Be the first to like. Like Unlike Read more »

Cafeteria Correlation

June 9, 2011 | 80 comments
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Karl Giberson’s Saving Darwin: How to Be a Christian and Believe in Evolution (HarperOne, 2008) relates Giberson’s journey from fundamentalist Christian student to still-believing but no longer fundamentalist physicist. Chapter 5 of the book critiques the sources of Young Earth Creationism (YEC), primarily George McCready Price’s The New Geology, published in 1923, and Whitcomb and Morris’s The Genesis Flood, published in 1961. As Price’s book is also a source for LDS YEC beliefs — which for some bizarre reason still seem to guide Correlation in approving statements made in LDS publications — the chapter seems particularly helpful for Latter-day... Read more »

Evangelical Incivility

June 2, 2011 | 19 comments
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I am guessing many readers have already stumbled across a controversial opinion piece posted at Patheos last week, Warren Cole Smith’s “A Vote for Romney Is a Vote for the LDS Church.” Smith is the author of the book A Lover’s Quarrel With the Evangelical Church, so it is clear where he is coming from. In fairness to Patheos, it should be noted that the article was part of an online symposium on faith and social conservatism offering a variety of viewpoints, including “Yes, Christians Can Vote for Mormons,” “In Defense of Mormons,” and Nate Oman’s “The LDS Church... Read more »

The Language of God

May 26, 2011 | 33 comments
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I recently breezed through a short book by Herman Wouk (author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Caine Mutiny) titled The Language God Talks: On Science and Religion (Little, Brown and Co., 2010). The book has the virtues of being short, entertaining, and informative as it recounts the author’s quest to relate his deep religious and cultural attachment to Judaism to his equally firm attachment to a scientific worldview. That’s the sort of quest many people in the 21st century are engaged in at one time or another. Be the first to like. Like Unlike Read more »

Rethinking the Proclamation

May 19, 2011 | 41 comments
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What exactly is the Proclamation, or, to use its full title, The Family: A Proclamation to the World? It is not scripture. It is not a revelation. It is not even a Conference talk. What is it? What status does the Proclamation have at present in the LDS Church? 2 people like this post. Like Unlike Read more »

Church Discipline in the Internet Age

May 12, 2011 | 69 comments
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Sometimes technology changes everything. First came writing, then television, now the Internet: Instant global publishing by just about anyone on the planet. You. Me. The guy who just got called in for a chat with his stake president. 6 people like this post. Like Unlike Read more »

Making Mormons in the 21st Century

May 5, 2011 | 24 comments
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Jan Shipps always has something interesting to say about Mormonism. An essay you might not have run across is “Making Saints: In the Early Days and the Latter Days,” in Contemporary Mormonism: Social Science Perspectives (Univ. of Illinois Press, 1994). It turns out that becoming a Latter-day Saint (or acquiring the characteristics of Mormon ethnicity) involves more than just conversion or joining the Church. 1 person likes this post. Like Unlike Read more »

More on the Mormon Gender Gap

May 1, 2011 | 33 comments
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Once upon a time, I wrote a post titled “The Puzzling Mormon Gender Gap.” It is still puzzling, primarily because it seems so inconsistent with the popular picture of the Church as a patriarchal institution run by old white males. When the topic came up recently in a ZD thread, the ZD discussants (generally a fairly rational bunch) simply denied the data. Well, I think the question is too important and too interesting to dismiss simply because LDS feminists (and I use that as a descriptive term, not a dismissive one) don’t want to talk about it. Be the... Read more »

Debating Mormonism

April 21, 2011 | 36 comments
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A few weeks ago I judged several rounds of a debating tournament held at the local high school. Teams from all over the state participated. Imagine walking by a high school cafeteria and seeing a couple of hundred students dressed in suits and skirts, chattering like all kids do but also pouring over notes and outlines for the upcoming matches. It was an impressive sight. 2 people like this post. Like Unlike Read more »

Reading Scripture in the 21st Century

April 16, 2011 | 18 comments
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Reading Scripture in the 21st Century

I recently read Thinking Through Our Faith: Theology for Twenty-first-Century Christians (Abingdon Press, 1998) by C. David Grant, a professor of religion at TCU. The book might be described as a short prologue to a 21st-century approach to theology, one that takes full account of science, historical criticism, and pluralism — in short, the sort of book you probably would not encounter in a BYU undergraduate religion class. 1 person likes this post. Like Unlike Read more »

Blogging on the Road to Damascus

April 8, 2011 | 7 comments
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Blogging on the Road to Damascus

Transcripts of the recent General Conference have been posted at LDS.org, including President Uchtdorf’s talk “Waiting on the Road to Damascus.” The talk was mostly a word of encouragement to those members of the Church who, for various reasons including self-doubt, are not full participants in their local wards. The focus of the talk was on the invitation to get past or around whatever the issue is, not on the details of the difficulties or doubts some people face. Of course, his comments on blogging and social media were the most interesting part of the talk. He made these... Read more »

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Times and Seasons is a place to gather and discuss ideas of interest to faithful Latter-day Saints.

Notes from All Over

  • (Gasp!) Mitt Romney baptizes dead people!(Kaimi)
  • The Mormon Lit Blitz (Dave)
  • “You can start by listening, absorbing, and deciding that you will no longer dismiss someone else’s experience just because you have not had that same experience yourself.” (Kaimi)
  • GOP candidates & (Christian) common good(James)
  • Romney Thumps Gingrich in Florida(Alison)
  • At the SL Trib: “Mormons tackling tough questions in their history” (Dave)
  • NYT debate on Mormonism (Laurie Maffly Kipp, Jana Riess, others)(James)
  • Mormonism, the religion of the American West. Or not. (Dave)
  • Ron Paul appealing to Mormons?(James)
  • “What is this, a fabric store?”(Ben S.)
  • Doubt and the Creed(James)
  • Uh oh — four out of five ESPN pannelists see Jimmer as the most disappointing rookie of the year so far.(Kaimi)
  • Jay Leno sued over Mitt Romney joke (Dave)
  • Funeral potatoes in the New York Times. (Kaimi)
  • Everybody must get Stone. (Kaimi)
  • Jana Riess on Mormon midrash (Dave)
  • Reflections on the “Homefront” ads.(Julie)
  • “the evangelical log flume of fear”(Ben S.)
  • “modesty is not defined by, or even primarily about, how much of one’s body is covered. It is about comportment and behavior”(James)
  • “Caring for people comes first and foremost in Mormon culture, and it is this principle in the Mormon curriculum that instructs the values of Mormon men.”(Kathryn)

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