Blog Archives

Yesterday I dedicated the grave of my grandfather, Verl Bagley, who by one measure spent his life at the end of the earth. 1 person likes this post. Like Unlike Read more »

So I wrote a book. Not a Mormon book, but one in my academic field. I’ve been working on the book since just before my youngest daughter was born. She started first grade in September, and the book was published last week. The idea for the book came to me in 2005, 1 person likes this post. Like Unlike Read more »

Not all targets of our reflexive contempt are well chosen. Expressions of mere gratitude in our monthly testimony meetings are dismissed as ‘thanktimonies’ because they don’t quite cover any of the things a public expression of religious conviction is supposed to be about. But I think this disdain is misplaced, like scoffing at children for riding bicycles when they could instead careen around the neighborhood in outsized cars in which they cannot work the pedals and see over the dashboard at the same time. 2 people like this post. Like Unlike Read more »

The Chronicle of Higher Education has given us a new statistical toy to play with. 1 person likes this post. Like Unlike Read more »

David Paulsen and Martin Pulido’s survey of statements concerning Heavenly Mother in Mormon thought, recently published in BYU Studies, has earned a good amount of attention. It’s a thorough survey, and I only have two relatively minor criticisms. In addition, the article restricts itself to surveying statements rather than analyzing them, and I see a few possibilities for future analysis. Mostly I want to make a couple observations about the article, primarily that it doesn’t say quite as much as one might think. Be the first to like. Like Unlike Read more »

The program for the annual convention of the Modern Language Association regularly includes the following request: The Committee on Disability Issues in the Profession reminds attendees that refraining from using perfume, cologne, and other scented products will help ensure the comfort of everyone at the convention. Be the first to like. Like Unlike Read more »

Even though most Americans are thousands of miles from the nearest palace, fortress, or castle ruin, the European Middle Ages continue to play an outsized role in our imaginations (see: Disneyland, Hogwarts, Helm’s Deep). 2 people like this post. Like Unlike Read more »

Now that I’ve moved to BYU-Idaho, I occasionally (read: yesterday) get asked interesting questions when I’m at professional conferences, like: “How are you adjusting to life without caffeine?” 2 people like this post. Like Unlike Read more »

Over at FPR, BiV asks, Are Mormons cessationists? The short answer is no. 2 people like this post. Like Unlike Read more »

Actually, that’s exactly what just happened. Sixty-three House seats changed hands in November, governors got voted in and out of office, statewide propositions got passed and defeated—without a single post, let alone an old-fashioned righteous flamewar, on the Mormon blogs I read regularly. 1 person likes this post. Like Unlike Read more »

I have a Christmas list, for a not-quite-teenager, with a gap that needs to be filled. Be the first to like. Like Unlike Read more »

A few years ago, I walked half the circuit of a massive town wall. After hauling three kids and pushing a fourth in a stroller for a few hours through the forest, we recognized the wall by the close-packed rubble that stuck out from the crest of the long dirt mound. 3 people like this post. Like Unlike Read more »

I once almost joined the ward choir. What’s surprising about this is that I don’t actually sing. 7 people like this post. Like Unlike Read more »

Mormon Studies could be headed for a rough patch, because the career paths that make professional study of Mormon topics at least occasionally possible are disappearing. 3 people like this post. Like Unlike Read more »

The call for papers for the Third Biannual Faith and Knowledge Conference for LDS Graduate Students in Religion contains a sentence that is, I think, wrong in three different ways. Be the first to like. Like Unlike Read more »

The result of writing Book of Mormon history from back to front, I think, resembles a cross between The Mission and Last of the Mohicans. Be the first to like. Like Unlike Read more »

If you think that the textual history of the Book of Mormon includes historical records, then you can’t avoid the possibility that a lot of Book of Mormon scholarship has been looking for the wrong people in the wrong place at the wrong time, and reading the wrong verses. The problem is that Book of Mormon chronology is anchored in time only by the fall of Jerusalem and Christ’s appearance to the Nephites. But these events belong to sacral history, and their translation into historical chronology is not necessarily transparent. In the same way, the identification of the Nephites... Read more »

Despite a unique cosmology that has at times inspired artistic creation for a wider American audience, there is no Mormon astrology. Someone who knew Mormonism only through its scriptural texts might be forgiven for finding this omission curious. 3 people like this post. Like Unlike Read more »

I fell in love almost simultaneously, as a junior in high school, with historical linguistics and Hugh Nibley. 11 people like this post. Like Unlike Read more »

Glenn Beck, the soapbox orator of cable television, has done more, save Sheri Dew only, for the greatness of Mormon literature, than any other person that ever lived. 3 people like this post. Like Unlike Read more »

While the occurrence of a general apostasy is a matter of belief and not observable by historical inquiry, dispensations are born with a burst of documentary evidence. 4 people like this post. Like Unlike Read more »

Each anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall is a bit embarrassing for me. Be the first to like. Like Unlike Read more »

My basic problem with Blake Ostler’s expansion theory is that it approaches via intellectual history what is at heart a problem in textual history Be the first to like. Like Unlike Read more »

In How to Kill a Dragon, the Indo-Europeanist Calvert Watkins defines formulas as “set phrases which are the vehicles of themes.” Be the first to like. Like Unlike Read more »

A brotherly reader writes: I recently had a chance to watch the new French film Banlieue 13: Ultimatum, which as far as these things go is a pretty good action flick Be the first to like. Like Unlike Read more »

With Brandon Sanderson’s Warbreaker, we have another Mormon writer of speculative fiction with something to say about marriage. Warbreaker manages to capture some ironies that won’t be lost on readers who have noted the discrepancy between the ideal of eternal marriage, and the reality of the dating scene at BYU. Be the first to like. Like Unlike Read more »

From the air, the German neighborhood where we lived until last year seems decidedly un-American Be the first to like. Like Unlike Read more »