- T Benjamin on Book Review: The Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ and Evolution: “Thanks for reading and the review!” Aug 30, 14:03
- on Cutting-Edge Latter-day Saint Research, August 2025: “I don’t, but the Table of Contents looks interesting: https://books.google.com/books?id=Wah1EQAAQBAJ&pg=PT4&source=gbs_selected_pages&cad=1#v=onepage&q&f=false” Aug 29, 12:07
- on Cutting-Edge Latter-day Saint Research, August 2025: “Not much going on this month, but the ethics book looks awesome. You wouldn’t happen to have access to abstracts of the essays?” Aug 29, 09:50
- on The Institute and Religion: “Thanks, Ivan. “On Writing” is a great book about, well, writing. I’ve forgotten about King’s Mormon bit characters, but that sounds about right. Is Avery the most significant LDS character King has ever included in a book? I’m too far past my period of being a King completist to be able to answer that, but it seems possible.” Aug 27, 17:47
- on The Institute and Religion: “In his book “On Writing” King states he believes in a God (of some sort, but still capital “G”) but can’t see any reason for organized religion. In his other books, Mormons appear occasionally (often briefly); it seems he uses “Mormon” as a shorthand for “fanatical (but not too fanatical) and weird (but not too weird) religious person”” Aug 27, 14:15
- on The Institute and Religion: “It’s been a while since I’ve looked at King’s bio, but I’d also guess he’s seen some Protestant Sunday School classes in his time, and I think he currently describes himself as some kind of theist. I hadn’t thought of that, but you’re probably right – the TV series most likely changes Orem to SLC so that viewers will be sure to know Avery is LDS without having to state it directly. Which, as you mention, is kind of ironic.” Aug 27, 12:46
- on Was Joseph Smith an Ephebophile? No.: “Regardless of the terminology one uses or declarations of “it was normal for its’ time” – I find it incredulous that anyone (especially one of Stephen C’s caliber) would continue to defend Joseph Smith. As a father of daughters and one who has been committed to one woman all of my life – I find these attempts kinda/sorta disgusting and disingenuous.” Aug 27, 06:39
- on The Institute and Religion: “King knows how to speak the language of religion and he’s very literate about not just the facts but feelings involved in sincere, deep religious belief, so much so that I strongly suspect that at one point he was a true believer even if he isn’t now (although he might be, I don’t know anything about his current personal religious beliefs). But yeah, you can sometimes tell when it’s an East Coaster who doesn’t know many if any Latter-day Saints (King’s home state of Maine has one of the lowest proportion of LDS of any state, although as you mention this is probably mostly the TV folks). Another tell is when people invoke “Salt Lake City” as a catch-all for Mormon conservativism while seemingly oblivious to the the fact that SLC is quite liberal by any standard (IIRC former mayor Rocky Anderson burned his democratic party membership card because he thought they were complicit in the fascist plot to take over America, or something).” Aug 27, 03:55
- on A Differing View of Church Leadership: A “Caretaker” Model: “Just finished Second-Class Saints by Harris. This solidified my long held belief that the leaders are care takers. Inspired no more than you and I (generally speaking) but for the church. Great read and I highly recommend the book for a healthy/correct view of church leadership. I have no problem with the “caretaker” view as I have thought that way pretty much all my life, even before I jumped into church history. I also, for the most part, think they do a good job running the church and managing the policy side of things. I think they can do better on the spiritual side, money side, and culture side of things. No new revelations since JS IMO.” Aug 26, 22:22
- on Was Joseph Smith an Ephebophile? No.: “I could name quite a few people in this day and age that married 13-15 year olds. That doesn’t say it was or was not frowned upon and reason for gossip and the expression of “unseemly.” But the fact that you can find people who did it even back then changes nothing about it being something that makes the old women clutch their pearls. If you read the fiction or diaries from back then, it was seen as quite the disgrace and not something a decent man would allow his daughter to do unless she was already pregnant. No, it wasn’t illegal, but in some states it still isn’t. And maybe it was more common back then because more men were widows due to childbirth deaths of their wives. So what? I could argue that it being less common now is because it is now illegal in a lot more states, so that is going to really lower how often it happens. More or less common back then still did not give it social approval or was good for the teen age bride. It was considered disgusting back then because it is. And you just can’t remove that fact no matter how you argue. That is my point. You are trying to excuse Joseph Smith’s disgusting behavior by normalizing something in the past that people found disgusting even then. Would you allow your almost 15 year old to marry anybody? Even if she wanted to, which Hellen Kimball did not want. What’s more you are assuming the marriage was sexless and Hellen never said that. She said it was lonely because she could not go out socially because her marriage was secret and so she had no husband to go out socially with. Doesn’t the fact that she was obviously unhappy in that marriage bother you?” Aug 26, 16:27
