Author: Julie M. Smith

People of Paradox is unusual: Givens sets out four major paradoxes in Mormon thought and then shows how various aspects of Mormon culture (the life of the mind, architecture, visual art, dance, film, etc.), at various moments in history, negotiate those dilemmas.

Several women I know and like recently signed on to an anti-President-Beck’s-talk statement.

Go read this. Then return and report.

Ben called my attention to this discussion. David Bokovoy, who is working on a PhD in Hebrew Bible at Brandeis and is the CES director in Boston, sets out this argument:

I’m tired of waiting around for Mormonism to develop the rich extra-biblical tradition of our Christian friends. Let’s get the ball rolling!

Note: this post begins a series of posts on President Beck’s recent conference talk. If you feel the need to vent your dislike of the talk, I imagine that you might possibly be able to find a thread somewhere in the Bloggernacle where you can do just that. But you can’t do it here.

I haven’t been watching this issue very closely, but if I understand correctly,

And, if so, what should we do about it?

Original article here

Some new books:

Go to BYU.tv and set the date to Saturday Oct. 6th. Then click on LDS General Conference 10am. Go to 2:55 (that’s two hours and 55 minutes) into the program and listen to Elder Eyring talk about decision making by the Quorum of the Twelve.

She didn’t say that you should keep your home as clean as the temple.

So let’s just say that one day you find yourself sitting on death row and

I don’t wish to detract from Adam’s lovely post, but after reading the comments, I am surprised at how common the late September Primary Program is.

President Monson told the following joke at the General Relief Society meeting:

From Frank Bednarz, “a programmer with a student film society at the University of Chicago, Doc Films:”

Let’s say that you learned to cook by watching others and that you’ve never picked up a cookbook or seen a cooking show. Could you become an excellent cook?

Millennial Press has a new series of short books on controversial topics.

1. Four loads of laundry.

I have a vague recollection of President Benson telling a story about how (not) to do missionary work: he compared it to trying to convince a young girl to replace the doll she had with the doll you were offering her. He pointed out that ripping the head off of her doll to reveal its…

Stumble–because the world needs more ways to waste time online.

A reader writes:

The writer of the gospel of John worked really, really hard to make it clear that no one suspected Judas:

On Matt’s thread, Jordon F. wrote, “I should add that I think children are particularly quick at grasping and enjoying the opportunity of rendering service as a family. “

There’s something interesting in the current Deseret Book catalog.

When I was in high school, I had a friend whose family always struggled to make ends meet.

When I think about the curricula available to evangelical homeschoolers, I instantly become guilty of several of the deadly sins. Oh, if I were a young earth creationist, the riches that would be mine!

ECS wrote about this article over at FMH [1]; I’d like to take a different perspective on it–I want to tell you what I liked about it. [2]

See here.