Author: Nate Oman

The LDS Council for Mormon Studies, which has been involved with the creation of a chair in Mormon Studies at Claremont Graduate University, has issued the following press release:

We’ve all heard the stories about intrepid missionaries who faced rejection door after door only to be let in at the final house that they contacted.

“If you don’t pay your tithing and serve in the Church, you give up your right to bitch,”

I like referring to non-Mormons as “Gentiles.”

While reading Wilford Woodruff’s diaries recently, I discovered that I have been living in a cursed part of the country. What am I to make of this, and the more general phenomena of Mormon cursing?

I’ve heard lots of people discuss how their missions caused a spiritual crisis for them. So did mine.

Among Mormon History nerds, “Camelot” refers to the period of time in the 1970s and early 1980s when Leonard Arrington served as Church Historian. It is traditional to look back on it as a Golden Age that was tragically lost.

Mormons have an ingrained habit of interpreting their history in the rosiest of all possible terms, even when — as a historical matter — a less rosy interpretation makes more sense.

In the past, I have suggested that the Mormon constitution is English, but of late I have wondered whether it might be Roman.

Peggy Fletcher Stack’s recent Salt Lake Tribune article on the Church in Chile is definitely worth a read.

Elijah Abel is one of the more important figures in the history of Mormonism.

In light of the recent publicity surrouding the Buckley Jeppson case, I thought that some readers might be interested in this post from a couple of years ago. It goes, I think, to the question of the significance of the Canadian-sanctioned marriage of Jeppson and his partner. I am not offering this post as a…

When we are not in our “Mormons are not weird”-PR mode,

Mermaids illustrate the problems faced by non-Mormon readers of Mormon histories

I have a confession. I am an Elders’ Quorum instructor and I like the Teachings of the Presidents of the Church manuals. Really.

“Ama-ar-gi,” a Sumerian word, has the distinction of being the oldest written instance of the concept of freedom or liberty, appearing on a clay tablet from about 2300 B.C. The word itself has something to say about the vexed question of the relationship between Mormonism and liberty or freedom.

There is a classic Saturday Night Live skit (from back when it was funny) that perfectly captures one of my nagging anxieties about being Mormon.

I have been doing a bit of research on the drafting of the Utah State Constitution, reading the proceedings of the constitutional convention held in 1894. The delegates seem to have spent most of their time discussing furniture, stationary, and who got to be appointed official stenographer for the convention. Every so often, however, they…

BYU is often ridiculed for its dress and grooming code. The basic argument is that it is silly.

One of the fun things about education is that you get all sorts of fun new toys, ideas that magically seem to cut through all sorts of Gordian knots and whose mere invocation has occult intellectual powers that liberate one from previous difficulties.

Polygamy created a bastardy problem for nineteenth-century Mormons.

Non-Utah Mormons like to complain about the supposed failing of Utah Mormons. Forgotten in this inevitable and highly stylized discussion, however, are the odd tics of Utah non-Mormons. I recently had a deja vu experience that reminded me of this strange breed.

I think that it is fairly well established that Mormonism has deep roots in the religious history of Puritan New England. Of course, how one parses out the relationship between Mormonism and Puritanism is complicated, but I don’t think that there is much argument as to the fact of a relationship.

The doctrine of apostasy has come on hard times.

Christmastime is upon us, and before too long hoards of folks who darken a church door only once or twice a year will be flooding into the churches. I have to say I can hardly blame them.