Author: Nate Oman

In 1870, the Utah Territorial Legislature passed an act giving women the right to vote, making Utah the second jurisdiction in the United States to given women the vote. (Wyoming was the first in 1869.) In 1887, Congress revoked the territorial law in the Edmunds-Tucker Act, and women were denied the vote until Utah was…

Ironically, the main problem with Mormon intellectual discussions is that all too frequently we have no intellectual agenda. Or at least so it seems to me.

There are lots of legal stories in the Book of Mormon, but there is not much in the way of legal reasoning. One of the few exceptions is found in Alma 30, which tells the story of Korihor the Anti-Christ.

The problems of following the prophet is a perennial favorite source of Mormon intellectual angst. What if the prophet is wrong? After all, prophets are human and are prone to mistakes? Indeed they are. Which brings me to the topic of Levi Savage.

A favorite topic of speculation (and angst) among many Mormons and Mormon-watchers is whether or not women will get the priesthood. It is an interesting topic, but I think that most of the discussions of it are pretty uninteresting. The reason for this, I think, is that they are in the thrall of a single,…

About two weeks ago I went to the University of Richmond to do some research on Mormon history. Thanks to Terryl Givens, Richmond has acquired a set of the Selected Collections DVDs that were released a while ago by the Church Archives. Hence, I found myself in a library carrel in Virginia reading Orson Hyde’s…

Do you ever have one of those odd moments when you are seeing something unfamiliar and suddenly it becomes extremely familiar? Or perhaps you see something very familiar but it suddenly reminds you of something equally familiar but totally different? I had one of those experiences today.

I have been thinking all weekend about Russell’s post attacking the Mormon legislators who voted in favor of the Military Commissions Act of 2006. The post was a rant. Russell is disgusted and outraged, but there was more to the post than that. Russell didn’t simply think that the Mormon legislators were wrong. He thought…

For those engaged in the perennially fun pastime of Mitt Romney watching, one of the more interesting places to go is the Evangelicals for Mitt blog.

Golden Ages tend to be rather parochial.

I am not a particularly spiritual person, but I am quite religious. I like to think that I am a Pharisee in the good sense of the word.

It turns out that law-and-economics is not only the dominant theory of private law, but it also helps you think about the idea of Zion.

The Social Science Research Network (SSRN) has been described as “Napster for nerds,” and it has some things to say about Mormonism.

Generally speaking, we tend to think that the institutional structure of the church is either administrative or pastoral.

Ernesto has hit the East Coast and is currently plowing its way through the Southern Chesapeake. As it happens I live in the Southern Chesapeake.

Kiskilili poses the following very interesting question: Often appearing to be caught between pronounced sacramentalist tendencies (ordinances effect real change that goes beyond their symbolic import) and an underdeveloped theology regarding the significance of our so-called “non-essentialâ€? ordinances (no transubstantiation for us!), we seem at a loss to explain clearly the difference between a non-priesthood…

I spent most of grade school attending the remedial classes for the learning disabled because I was, well, learning disabled.

What follows is a summary of some of my research notes. I have been reading Puritan legal history of late, looking for ideas and ways of thinking about Mormon legal history.

Driving to work today, I had an odd epiphany. It occurred to me that there is an odd symmetry between the danger that “liberal” and “conservative” Mormons see in story telling.

Condorcet was a French social theorist in the opening decades of the 19th century and is credited with first discovering a paradox of majority voting that bears his name. Here is the paradox: Imagine that you have a group of three people (A,B, and C) who are voting on three different alternatives (X, Y, and…

OK, let’s ask a relatively simple question: Why do non-Mormon accounts of Mormon theology so often seem grotesque? To avoid derailing the discussion immediately, let me concede that there are non-Mormon folks who “get” Mormon theology, etc. etc. etc. On the other hand, if you are a Mormon and have not seen, heard, or read…

Motley Vision has been playing host to an interesting discussion on Mormon aesthetics. The question du jour from the Sunstone Symposium seems to be whether or not one can be a Great Artist (or any kind of Artist) and still be a member of the Church. Two out of three panelists were apparently skeptical. For…

“A faith that has never been doubted is not as valuable or authentic as a faith that has been doubted.”

Are the rules of Mormonism constitutive or regulative?

There are two “religious” magazines that I like to read fairly regularly. Neither is Mormon.

This is a post about Mormonism and Leo Strauss.

I can think of at least three different ways in which one can read the scriptures.

On the whole, I am in favor of the smell of tobacco in church, but it is a tricky question.

Over at BCC Taryn has an interesting post on the Book of Mormon and socialism. Her basic claim is that the Book of Mormon endorses socialism. At one level, I think that she is absolutely correct, on another level I think that the claim is vacuous.

I always find it interesting to hear what people think of as being central and peripheral to Mormon experience. Take sex for example.