Author: Julie M. Smith

BYU Studies Quarterly will soon publish a special issue “on the thoughtful integration of evolution and faith.”

When I was in college, in the early 90s, a friend commented that she wished that gays were better treated in church. Another friend asked what that might look like. She responded that she hoped we’d come to a point where someone could say to a ward member, “Please stop trying to set me up…

Last week at General Conference, President Burton delivered a talk titled “Certain Women.”

I’ll be speaking at the Rocky Mountain Retreat this June. Here’s the description of my presentation:

This is the immigration record of my great-grandmother, entering Ellis Island from Italy in 1935.

Kirsten M. Christensen is Associate Professor of German at Pacific Lutheran University, where she directs the Holocaust and Genocide Studies Program. 

Our Heavenly Family, Our Earthly Families by McArthur Krishna and Bethany Brady Spalding with artwork by Caitlin Connolly (link)

4th Annual BYU New Testament Commentary Conference: New Mormon Ideas about Mark and Hebrews

This is not a book review. This is my personal reaction to the book. And, in short, it depressed me. (This doesn’t mean I didn’t love the book and wasn’t fascinated by it; I did and I was. You should definitely read it.)

Despite the fact that the term rape culture–and the increasing attention devoted to it–are recent developments, that does not mean that the stories of the life of Jesus have nothing to say about the topic. In fact, there is quite a bit of material in the gospels which is relevant to the current discussion.

As you are probably well aware, BYU is reviewing its policies related to sexual assault victims and Honor Code violations. One proposal which seems to have a good bit of currency–especially since it appears to be the norm at other schools, including SVU, which have similar Honor Codes–is an “amnesty” for offenses which might have…

I stumbled upon this manual, a new teacher development guide released by the church. It is quite similar to previous iterations of the church’s teacher materials, with two significant differences:

This guest post was written by Lauren Baldwin, based on the paper she presented at the recent Association for Mormon Letters conference. Lauren is a professional writing student at BYU-I. After the 2012 mission age change, she was part of the first group of nineteen-year-old sister missionaries to serve in the Kentucky Louisville Mission. She works…

I’ve been studying the Gospel of Mark on and off for my entire adult life.

Elder Ballard recently spoke to seminary and institute teachers in what I expect will be regarded as a landmark address.

D & C 1:38 is frequently proof-texted in common Mormon usage.

Ezekiel delivered the longest single prophecy, the longest single allegory, in the Bible in what is now Ezekiel 16. His theme is that Jerusalem has acted like a prostitute. He presses his case for 63 verses!

I remember watching the Olympics when I was in high school and concluding that the swimmers had the best-looking bodies of all of the athletes. Not scarily gaunt like the runners, not comically and grotesquely bulging like the weight lifters, not the stunted look of the gymnasts.

UPDATE: this post was written before the First Presidency clarified the new policies. Please see this post, which repeats everything in this post but updates it and provides some concluding thoughts. — I’m thinking about the implications–doctrinal and practical and cultural–of the recent policy changes.