Year: 2025
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Cutting Edge Latter-day Saint Research, October 2025
I usually don’t provide any additional commentary for these, but the Anderson et al., study below showing that Latter-day Saints didn’t receive the COVID vaccinations any more than average provides some support for my earlier conjecture that the President of the Church actually doesn’t have a lot of influence when it comes to member attitudes…
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Music of the Gods
Western music became much more rich when we moved from simple, monophonic Gregorian chants to multiple lines of melody (polyphony), allowing interplay among the different lines. Nowadays Gregorian chants are still admired by more traditionalist Catholics and Middle Age junkies, and if you listen to a Gregorian Chant channel on Spotify it’s kind of interesting…
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Of Hurdles and Covenants: A Review of Joshua M. Sears’s A Modern Guide to an Old Testament
For many Latter-day Saints, the annual Come, Follow Me journey through the Old Testament can feel like a daunting pilgrimage. It is a vast and often alien landscape, filled with archaic language, bewildering poetry, and troubling cultural norms that can create a significant chasm between the modern reader and the ancient text. While numerous commentaries…
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Chief Wakara in Utah History
A recent interview with historian Max Perry Mueller over at the Latter-day Saint history blog, From the Desk, does the hard work of re-centering a figure many of us know only by name, if at all: the Ute war leader Wakara. Mueller argues compellingly that Wakara was not just a side character in the pioneer…
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Vocabulary lesson
die Dolchstoßlegende. The myth that the German Empire could have won World War I if its army, like Siegfried in the Nibelungenlied, had not been stabbed in the back by traitorous enemies, often claimed to be Jews, rich industrialists, or socialists. The German ß character can be replaced by a double -ss- in English contexts.…
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Nobody Likes Us
I ran across this post from the incomparable Ryan Burge the other day that confirmed something I’ve suspected: neither the left nor the right like us. Occasionally Latter-day Saint liberals love to point out that, despite our political alliance of convenience with the right, we’re not their favorite. They’ll hold their noses and take…
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Your Reactions to Church Yesterday, 10/26
What did you notice in Church yesterday? How did you react? Think differently? This is the latest invitation for reactions to local meetings, continuing the spirit 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…
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CFM 11/3-11/9(D&C 125-128): Poetry for “A Voice of Gladness for the Living and the Dead”
Baptism for the Dead is one of the beliefs that make the LDS Church distinctive among religions today. Frequently discussions with non-Mormons focus on what Paul meant in 1 Cor. 15:29 while ignoring the broader question that our doctrine addresses with proxy ordinances: If baptism is required for everyone, then what about those who passed…
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Three Generations of Kimballs
How do we measure the full legacy of a figure like Heber C. Kimball? We often focus on the man himself—his loyalty to Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, his mission to England, or his role as First Counselor. But a fascinating new interview at From the Desk with biographer Andrew Kimball argues for a much…
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Masculine Fidelity and Sexual Propriety in the Media
Often our cultural paradigms for fidelity and sexual propriety are, frankly, seemingly low-testosterone, low-sociosexuality cases. Of course Mr. Rogers is going to be faithful to his wife (although I don’t claim any knowledge of his T-count). Or all those skinny Mr. Darcy-type, regency period love interests that Mormon women are obsessed with (another post for…
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The Handcart Tragedy
The 1856 handcart tragedy remains a defining, painful moment in Latter-day Saint history, and the question of “who is responsible?” has echoed for generations. We often settle for simple answers or familiar myths. However, a recent interview at the Latter-day Saint history blog, From the Desk, with Don H. Smith and Mark C. Austin, authors…
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The New Apostolic Reformation and you
You should probably pay attention to a religious movement that shares some of our beliefs and uses some similar terminology, wants to control key institutions of society, and includes Donald Trump’s spiritual advisor.
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“Truth and Treason” and Today
[WARNING: the following includes some things that maybe considered spoilers by those who haven’t seen the film.] I’m not sure how well it is known, but the film “Truth and Treason”, currently in theaters, tells the story of a young LDS man in Hamburg, Germany in 1942. Helmuth Hübener’s story has been told before, perhaps…
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What Does Hollywood Think About Latter-day Saints?
How we’re perceived in popular culture is one of those questions that usually devolve into anecdote slinging, with all the biases inherent in what we remember or are in a position to experience. Recently I ran across a “corpus,” or a dataset, of scripts in movies. Specifically, the Baskin Lab at UC Santa Cruz keeps…
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Your Reactions to Church Yesterday, 10/19
This is the latest invitation for reactions to local meetings, continuing the spirit 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. The point here is that no matter how…
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CFM 10/27-11/2(D&C 124): Poetry for “A House unto My Name”
The phrase “A House unto My Name” is easy to connect to the Temple. But section 124 isn’t just about building a temple — in 1841 the Kirtland Temple is far away from the bulk of Church members and the Nauvoo Temple has only recently had its groundbreaking. Instead, we might think of house in…
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The Caretaker Behind the Curtain
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…
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The Ancient Greek Endowment
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…
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Review of Turner’s biography Joseph Smith: The Rise and Fall of an American Prophet
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
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Holiness to the Lord: Latter-day Saint Temple Worship, a Review
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…
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Your Reactions to Church Yesterday, 10/12
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…
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CFM 10/20-10/26 (D&C 121-123): Poetry for “O God, Where Art Thou?”
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…
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The Caretaker Model and Divine Providence
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…
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Mormon Austins: Blue Islands and Swing Precincts Across the Mormon Corridor
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.…
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The Priesthood Ban and Our Leadership Theology
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…
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Bizarre Brain Conditions and What They Mean For the Gospel
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). …
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CFM 10/13-10/19 (D&C 115-120): Poetry for “His Sacrifice Shall Be More Sacred unto Me Than His Increase”
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…
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Cutting Edge Latter-day Saint Research, September 2025
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.
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The Nauvoo Bell That Wasn’t
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…
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Requiem for the Mormon Tribe
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…