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5 responses
I often see exMos refer to the line from the Wizard of Oz, “pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!” in reference to a church culture that doesn’t want the membership to focus on seemingly problematic aspects of the church’s claims. Though I’m not in the same place as exMos, I do actually like the metaphor in terms of my proposed caretaker model. Read More
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9 responses
I’ve already written at great length about how the Latter-day Saint temple ceremonies tap into various primal archetypes, and how that might relate to its Masonic connections. Again, the point isn’t to score some kind of point in favor of the Church’s truth claims, but, in a sense more interestingly, to appreciate the universality and Jungian richness of the Latter-day Saint temple tradition, whether you think the temple ceremonies were inspired from a God who spoke to other children and traditions using the same themes and motifs, or whether Joseph Smith was a religious genius that was able to tap… Read More
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3 responses
A Book Review for Times and Seasons of the First Major Biography of Joseph Smith in Twenty Years, Wherein I Demonstrate My Own Longwindedness in Contrast to the Author’s Skillful and Admirable Concision Read More
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4 responses
Holiness to the Lord: Latter-day Saint Temple Worship, by Jonathan A. Stapley, is a rich exploration of the history, symbolism, and function of Latter-day Saint temples. The book traces temple development from the earliest Kirtland and Nauvoo structures to present-day edifices. Each chapter addresses both the physical details—materials, floor plans, artwork—and the spiritual purposes, including covenant-making, ordinances for the living and the dead, and temple dedication practices. The author contextualizes temples within broader Church history. The text draws on official Church statements, historical documents, and personal accounts, blending narrative history with doctrinal commentary in an accessible style. Read More
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10 responses
This is the latest invitation for reactions to local meetings, in the vein of my post on September 25th about how we can take what happens in Church meetings—sermons, lessons and anything else—and enter a conversation with them, magnifying what was said or adding what we think. I’m convinced that even if the speaker or teacher is poorly prepared, we can still find elements in what is said and what happens that inspires and edifies us. Even if church meetings aren’t conducted in a way that reaches us, we can take responsibility and find a way to feel the spirit.… Read More
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Adversity is rooted in the problem of evil—if God is good, then why does he allow evil to exist? Or if “man is that he might have joy,” why is there so much suffering in life? And worse, it often seems like for some the suffering is “but a moment”, while for others the suffering continues lifelong. While our theological explanations of why this happens make logical sense, they often come across as either blaming the victims or minimizing the suffering. Worse still, too often we explain the suffering as a way of giving ourselves license to ignore it. George… Read More
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7 responses
I’ve seen comments (RLD on here especially) note it being fortuitous to have a president who was a doctor during the pandemic. As we all know, our leaders shut down and meeting pretty fast after the pandemic hit the US. No doubt opinions vary, but I think most here view the shutdown of our meetings as a wise and sensible policy. Yet, for me, I see President Nelson’s placement at the time of the pandemic fitting a category that I will call here “divine providence,” which I see as slightly different than the revelatory claims we make in our “leadership… Read More
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8 responses
VoteHub just came out with what is probably the best political data visualization dashboard I’ve seen. It allows you to dive into the precinct level results, and shades it by margins and not just who won, so we can literally see the geographic gradients as we shift from more Democrat areas to more Republican areas. It also allows you to see the volume of vote count in 3D. So while Mormonism is famously red, where are our “Austins,” islands of blue in a sea of red? First of all, the Tree Streets right next to BYU and central Provo. That… Read More
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15 responses
By “Leadership Theology” I mean the common declaration that we make about our leaders, presidents in particular, as the mouthpiece of God, God not allowing them to lead the church astray, etc. For example, over the last few years, our leaders have made a number of structural changes and pointed to the changes as evidence of God’s continuing revelation. The implication is that God makes that decisions and instructs our leaders through revelation and has done so with all our leaders and policies. Read More
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9 responses
When it comes to our sense of self some of the most, I won’t say problematizing, but let’s say nuancing phenomena are brain injuries and lesions that lead to bizarre neurological conditions (at least for us dualists who believe that there is a soul that is greater than the sum of our brain’s biomechanical parts). By connecting aspects of our “self” that we intuit are fundamentally part of who we are to brain regions they raise all sorts of questions about agency, guilt, personhood, and human connection. (There are a number of fine books that go into more fine-grained detail… Read More
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Come Follow Me Currculum, Doctrine and Covenants, Latter-day Saint Thought, Poetry, SS Lesson – Doctrine and Covenants
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Sacrifice is a key gospel concept, and as such is also a key concept for life. Whether the it involves one person giving up something to help others or simply the individual giving up something for his own benefit, sacrifice is always about making decisions that balance one benefit or good against another. So we might give up our time or effort to improve ourselves (say in exercise, or in study), deciding that the time or effort isn’t as important or valuable as the improvement we gain. Or, more importantly, Christ decided to give up his life and endure the… Read More
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6 responses
Gavin, Sherrie, and Jo Coghlan. “Mormon Barbie: A Critical Examination of the Male Gaze, Ideology, and Parallel Representations.” In The Barbie Phenomenon, Volume 1, pp. 131-141. Routledge, 2026. Read More
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2 responses
Several months ago, I put out a post on the disappearance of the bell that has been on Temple Square for decades during the recent renovations. I shared the story of the bell, which has been called the Nauvoo Bell, but which is actually the Hummer Bell from a Presbyterian church in Iowa City. At the time, I wrote, “While it may not be the actual Nauvoo Bell, the Hummer Bell and the Relief Society Memorial Campanile have served the Church and community for far longer than the Nauvoo Bell even existed, taking on a life in its own right.… Read More
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18 responses
Of all the changes introduced during the prophetic ministry of Russell M. Nelson, one of the most consequential may be the determined and consistent rejection of the Mormon ethnonym. That decision was a turning point that enabled some future paths and closed off others, just as ending polygamy opened a path into the American mainstream and foreclosed an alternate path of Amish-like rejection of modernity. So let me just say that I think we would have made a pretty great tribe. Read More
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12 responses
Like many I’ve been constantly refreshing news and Twitter feeds over the past couple of days, going back and forth between the deadening horror of it all. I don’t know if I have a lot to add to the other moving and profound takes that I’ve already seen, but one dimension to this that I haven’t seen discussed: I’ve already written on the Amish community’s moving response to a similar nihilistic massacre in their own community. Now, although the theology on this is clear, I would not personally expect any of the victims’ families to extend the same kind… Read More
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7 responses
A few days ago I posted about how we can take what happens in Church meetings—sermons, lessons and anything else—and enter a conversation with them, magnifying what was said or adding what we think. I’m convinced that even if the speaker or teacher is poorly prepared, we can still find elements in what is said and what happens that inspires and edifies us. Even if church meetings aren’t conducted in a way that reaches us, we can take responsibility and find a way to feel the spirit. My suggestion for putting this into practice is to write down reactions and… Read More
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Come Follow Me Currculum, Doctrine and Covenants, Latter-day Saint Thought, Poetry, SS Lesson – Doctrine and Covenants
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If things have been ordered for our good, do the things look like they have been ordered or arranged? This week’s Come Follow Me lesson title implies that what happens in our lives is meant to help us both now and in the hereafter. The statement “I will order all things for your good” is often interpreted with a couple of different assumptions—first, that when things are for our good they are somehow easier and smoother. The second common assumption is that the word ‘order’ implies that it is the structure that has been or will be changed for our… Read More
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3 responses
For those of us who have long been fascinated by the historical development of Latter-day Saint temple worship, Jonathan Stapley’s recent work, Holiness to the Lord: Latter-day Saint Temple Worship, and his insightful interview on the subject at the Latter-day Saint history site From the Desk offer a significant contribution to the conversation. The interview offers a compelling overview of the book, tracing the evolution of temple rituals from Joseph Smith’s foundational, biblically inspired practices in Kirtland to the more elaborate endowment ceremonies developed in Nauvoo, which aimed to create a “ritualized heaven on earth.” What emerges is a clear picture… Read More
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23 responses
An intrinsic problem in liberal and progressive-dominated professions such as academia and journalism is systematically overlooking or diminishing conservative pain. I’m not asking for sympathy for myself here, as I’m not a conservative. Each day I watch in horror as much of what has made my life pleasant or possible is destroyed and generation-spanning work to build this country is vandalized in the name of conservatism, while people who call themselves conservatives look on with indifference or glee. But Jesus’ command to mourn with those who mourn and bear one another’s burdens explicitly includes those who despitefully use us. Not… Read More
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20 responses
Though Mormonism after Joseph Smith isn’t my expertise, I do think that a story that demonstrates conflict in church leaders’ tendency to appoint the church’s best administrators into the first presidency is the attempted “coup” against Wilford Woodruff in 1887. I put coup in quotes since some may object to that term, but it seems in the ballpark to me (more below). I don’t know how well known the story is, and I’ll get to it in a bit, but first, I want to recap a bit and attempt to define my terms a little better. RLD pointed out that… Read More
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11 responses
When was the last time someone told you how much they liked Church on Sunday? Or what made a Sacrament Meeting really great? Or what in a lesson touched them, made them cry or gave them a new way of thinking? I often hear complaints about Church these days. If it isn’t that the Sacrament Meeting talks were boring, or retreads of general conference talks, or travelogues, it’s that false doctrine was taught, or something ‘inappropriate’ for Church was said. [If so, I apologize, that was probably me.] So, have you ever thought, “If I were in charge of Sacrament… Read More
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2 responses
As some of you know, I occasionally write a column for the Deseret News. My recent one dropped right around the time of the Charlie Kirk shooting, so I doubt hardly anybody read it, but it actually has some interesting insights in regards to immigration and religiosity in the US. Among other things, I point out that in contrast to our earlier demographics, the current Latter-day Saints community has fewer immigrants in its ranks than many other traditions (we basically look like Protestants). Sometimes with articles like this I send them a bajillion graphs and they (reasonably) only select one… Read More
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One response
Elias—An Epic of the Ages: A Critical Edition, edited by Reid L. Neilson and published by Greg Kofford Books, is an important effort to preserve and present a landmark text in the literary history of Latter-day Saints. Orson F. Whitney, a Church leader and gifted writer at the turn of the twentieth century, sought to craft an epic poem for Mormonism in the style of Milton’s Paradise Lost. The result was Elias, a sweeping narrative that blends theology, history, and mythic imagery to recount the Latter-day Saint story. Like the Norton Critical Edition of Paradise Lost, Neilson enriches the volume… Read More
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I like this photo of the Bangkok Thailand Temple. I know many people will see in it an island of good among a sea of chaos and evil. I can’t disagree more with that view—most of humanity doesn’t live in the stereotypical suburban pastoral nowhere favored by the world, and where they do live is not chaotic or evil just because it is urban. Instead, I see in this photo a place where we can turn our thoughts to God from the everyday busyness and concerns of our day. It is not meant to be isolated, as if the rest… Read More
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6 responses
I had so many plans for this post series, so it is heavy heart and not a little irony that I have had to cut it short due to two mental health crises in our family which have left me depleted. I’ve tried to think of what I should say as a final post on this issue, but there are so many things that need to be discussed; there is just no way I can cut it down to one encompassing idea. So, I’ll end with this, even though it’s not enough. Hopefully it can at least be a start.… Read More
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2 responses
Fred E. Woods’s Ports to Posts: Latter-day Saint Gathering in the Nineteenth Century offers a richly detailed and engaging exploration of the emigration process that carried thousands of Latter-day Saint converts from their homelands to the American frontier. Rather than focusing narrowly on one facet of the story, Woods takes a broad and careful approach, examining multiple angles of emigration across the nineteenth century. His work highlights not only the logistical challenges and triumphs of gathering to Zion but also the personal experiences and perceptions of those who undertook the journey. The result is a book that is both informative… Read More
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18 responses
There’s something comfortable and fun about the kind armchair predictions about the future that are either too vague to be falsifiable or too far in the future for anybody to hold you to account. It’s a little nervy to make a concrete, falsifiable prediction in the near future, so I do so with some trepidation, but here it goes. The record-breaking number of missionaries we are currently enjoying is going to peak in the next year or two (or maybe already has), and then start a precipitous decline. You can mark my prediction here. The reason is not because of a… Read More
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2 responses
Twenty years ago, Richard Lyman Bushman’s biography of Joseph Smith the Prophet was published. The book has had a huge impact on English-speaking Latter-day Saints. He recently reflected on Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling in an interview at the Latter-day Saint history blog From the Desk. What follows here is a copost to the full interview. Read More
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15 responses
I kind of like the speculative theology that people who do not have the ability to raise children in this life, whether through death, accident, or lack of opportunity, will be able to in the next. The TLDR: Latter-day Saint women are less likely to be childless than non-Latter-day Saint women. Specifically, we’ve gone from a little under 70% of LDS women 18-45 having young children to a little under 60%, while for non-Latter-day Saints the decline went from about 55% to 45%. The gap between us and non-Latter-day Saints has basically stayed the same over the past 17 years.… Read More
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Like it or not, our lives are built of structures. We organize our days according to everything from natural events, like the rising and setting of the sun and our own biological rhythms, to the hours of the clock that our society has assigned to the day, to the needs we have to coordinate with family, work, friends and society. It is not possible to separate the “day” from these structures. Even when they cause us trouble, these structures make up the recurring experience of our lives. When it comes to church (or really to any organization) our experience is… Read More