There is a story about President David O. McKay where a youth who wasn’t active in the Church flippantly asked him, “When was the last time you talked to God, President McKay?” President McKay answered in all seriousness that: “It…
The Future of the Church is Orthodox
I recently helped conduct a much-overdue national survey of Catholic priests that, among other things, confirmed what most informed Catholic observers already knew: younger priests are much, much more conservative than their older counterparts. While a significant proportion of older priests…
Are Latter-day Saint Marriages Happier?
A few weeks ago I posted some numbers that suggested that Latter-day Saints have significantly lower divorce rates than non-Latter-day Saints. Fair enough, but are these marriages actually happier, or is this just because the stigma against divorce in Latter-day…
Making Sense of Prophecies (4): The Origin of “Lutius Gratiano”
With early efforts to locate the text in mind, we can now reconstruct the origin of the prophecy of “Lutius Gratiano.”
“There is never but one on the earth at a time”
Polygamy was one of the most divisive and explosive policies that Joseph Smith ever embraced. In many ways, it was what led to Joseph Smith’s death. He knew that it would be a cause of contention, both within the Church…
Making Sense of Prophecies (3): Reconsidering “Lutius Gratiano”
In the prophecy of “Lutius Gratiano,” we have the unusual opportunity to observe the formation and development of a prophecy in some detail.
“That they may bear the souls of men”
My wife is 37 weeks pregnant, and she is ready to be done. She’s started writing down a list of reasons she doesn’t enjoy pregnancy for me to use in reminding her next time we start thinking about having another…
*Search, Ponder, and Pray* by Julie Smith: your essential guide to revisiting the gospels
“Tell me the stories of Jesus,” begins the primary song. You’ve read the stories of Jesus in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. You’ve heard them in church lessons and talks. You know the stories; you probably love the stories. But…
Making Sense of Prophecies (2): How to Read a Prophecy
Earlier scholarship has often understood the function of prophetic texts as providing information about the future.
Brittany Chapman Nash on Polygamy
We’re coming up on one of the most dreaded lessons of the Sunday School cycle—no, not reviewing the law of chastity with teenagers, the lesson that includes D&C 132 (the revelation on plural marriage). Polygamy is a topic in the…
Making Sense of Prophecies (1): Preliminaries
For several years, my academic research has focused on late medieval and early modern prophecies.
Is the COVID Slump in Church Growth “Real”?
In a previous post I discussed how, according to reported baptisms, 2020 was a particularly low Church growth year, presumably due to COVID. Thankfully, the 2021 General Social Survey data recently dropped, so we can look at whether the COVID…
“This ordinance belongeth to my house”
Throughout this year, I’ve talked about the development of temple doctrine as a braiding of strands from Joseph Smith’s theology and cosmology. That continues to be true of the 1840s, when the Latter-day Saints were working on the Nauvoo temple. …
“Instituted for travelling Elders”
If you’ve ever asked yourself what exactly is a Seventy, you’re not alone. In fact, I’d dare to say that the question is one of the more persistent ones throughout Church history. Based on two brief mentions in the Bible,…
Hugh Nibley Will Never Happen Again
During my time as an undergraduate at BYU I noticed there were certain Latter-day Saint scholars that were looked up and aspired to by different groups. These were the days of Rough Stone Rolling when the “New Mormon History” seemed…
From the Mouth of Two or Three Surveys
My post a few days ago looked at whether members of the Church in the US reported a lower likelihood of identifying as “divorced” than non-members in Pew data. However, afterwards some friends raised valid concerns about the fact that remarried…
“All these things shall give thee experience and shall be for thy good”
For a long time, I underestimated the depth of the trauma experienced by the Latter-day Saints in Missouri and the impact that it had on their psyche. I think I started to grasp it more when I was researching for…
Are Latter-day Saint Marriages More Stable?
Various researchers have addressed this question with older (pre-2010 data), and have shown that in general Latter-day Saints have lower divorce rates, but what about more recent years? The largest (relatively) recent survey of Latter-day Saints is the 2014 Pew…
“Adam shall come to visit”
Charles Darwin’s niece once told her son (the famed British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams) that: “The Bible says that God made the world in six days, Great Uncle Charles thinks it took longer: but we need not worry about it,…
A Summary of the Arrington Mormon History Lecture: “A Marvelous Work: Reading Mormonism in West Africa”
What does Mormonism look like when reconstructed from texts in a non-American cultural context? The self-styled Mormon Churches that developed in West Africa during the 1960s and 1970s (prior to the lifting of the priesthood and temple ban on individuals…
Is Church Growth Declining?
I’m a Church growth amateur; occasionally I enjoy dropping by Matt Martinich’s blog to look at the latest temple predictions, and I’ll often skim through headlines about the latest data point on Church growth and what it means. However, for…
“They saw the Lord”
What does Jesus look like? It’s a question that we can only guess the answer to or speculate about, but one that does come up in a religion that embraces using artistic depictions of members of the Godhead. In general,…
“To ordain and set in order all the other officers of the church”
Section 107 has one of the more complicated histories out of the documents presented in the Doctrine and Covenants. It is not a single revelation, but rather a few that were compiled together and expanded in significant ways, with the…
“I the Lord have suffered the affliction to come upon them”
During an episode of the popular British Sci-Fi show, Doctor Who, the titular character confronts a woman who has engaged in a series of witch hunts in seventeenth century Britain. The witch hunter explains her view that she is required…
Are We Going to Be Able to Buy the Kirtland Temple?
I’ve always been fascinated with sacred real estate disputes, and we certainly have our own. The most salient–the American “Temple Mount”–is probably the Temple Lot in Independence, the story of which makes for fascinating reading: a geographically precise, small plot…
Waiting For Saints 3
Three years ago this month, Saints, Volume 1: The Standard of Truth, 1815-1846 was published. Saints, Volume 2: No Unhallowed Hand, 1846-1893 followed about a year-and-a-half later in February 2020. If later volumes had followed the same cadence for releases,…
Terryl Givens on Eugene England
In general, the people who are in a position to be most influential in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have been official Church leaders. That’s not always the case, however, since there are a number of members…
A plea for opacity
It’s the ecclesiology, stupid.
“The constitution of this Land”
The attitude of Latter-day Saints towards the United States government has historically been paradoxical. As Dale Morgan wrote: “The Mormons had a profound respect for government and governmental forms, but disrespect for and outright distrust of ‘the damned rascals who…
“Concerning the building of mine house”
The temples of the early Latter Day Saint movement were a place where several strands of Joseph Smith’s theology and doctrine were braided together. In the summer of 1833 (in the revelations we are studying this week for “Come, Follow…