The state of Utah is looking into creating a new flag. I was interested, so looked into best practices for flag making (vexillology) and found a handy guide from the North American Vexillological Association that suggested five basic principles of…
At the Mormon History Association conference this weekend, Anthony Sweat shared a funny story during his presentation on “A White Jesus and a Global Church.” Apparently there were some individuals who were visiting BYU from Saudi Arabia to observe teaching…
What does Jesus look like? It’s a question that we can only guess the answer to or speculate about, but one that does come up in a religion that embraces using artistic depictions of members of the Godhead. In general,…
I lived a significant portion of my life in Logan, Utah and frequently attended the temple during the time that I lived there. I had a lot of beautiful and sacred experiences while doing so, but I also rarely attended…
Some years ago, an institute teacher in a Church history class I attended said with some levity that: “I bear my testimony that Church media is not true.” He said this hyperbolic statement in the context of a class where…
Yesterday, the Church released new guidelines about the appearance church meetinghouse. The latest in the series of Christocentric reforms during President Nelson’s tenure, the intent of the guidelines is to help “create a feeling of reverence and dignity” in the…
As I started preparing family lessons using the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’s new Come, Follow Me manual, I was struck by the quantity of art. In addition to photos and screenshots from Church-produced videos, the manual includes…
My loved ones are embarrassed by public breastfeeding, so I retire to the mothers’ room to fulfill the measure of my creation. ~ Bethany West If you have a photograph you would like to submit for consideration in our A Mormon…
On a cold day in January, Eldon Umphrey helps his son, Izyek, into Mission Creek in western Montana. The creek runs through the family property, and it has become a family tradition to perform baptisms there, even when there’s snow…
There have been LDS art contests in the past, either sponsored by LDS church institutions or by private organizations, but none have yet focused on Heavenly Mother as their theme. That changed this month with the newly announced A Mother…
There is, I’ve been told, a Facebook meme going around, juxtaposing a decaying house and the San Diego temple to support the argument that churches should not be exempt from taxation.
And, like Facebook memes everywhere, this one is dumb. Dumb primarily because it is a tautology that doesn’t say anything. Because of course a tax-exempt organization does not pay taxes that a non-exempt individual pays. That’s pretty much the definition of tax exemption.
Of course, saying that a Facebook meme is dumb and tautological makes for a pretty short and boring post. Far more interesting, imho, is to take seriously the point that the people spreading the picture are trying to make, and complicating that rhetorical picture a little bit.
After retirement, my father turned to family history and temple work to fill his time. Most of this work has focused on researching ancestors from Virginia and North Carolina. I took this photo at a cemetery in Carrol County, VA,…
We’ve been teaching our oldest son Peter that he’s a big brother to our younger son Jeremy. When Peter learned that Joseph Smith also had a big brother, he fell in love with the concept. Now whenever we go somewhere…
Walking hand in hand with my family on Temple Square in April 2009. Taking our one year old daughter for the first time was very special, and as we walked I looked around to ask someone to take our picture.…
About 800 Members of the Sacramento California Stake and their friends donated more than 2,000 man-hours at the City of Sacramento’s William Land Park, which has seen its finding cut by 60 percent in recent years and its maintenance staff…
Since instituting the “A Mormon Image” series last fall, our submissions have slowed from a glut to a trickle. As a result, we thought we would issue a new call for photographs to be considered for inclusion in the series.…
The Nauvoo Temple at about 4:15 in the morning. I was up watching the equipment for the pageant and saw the Temple at the first early light.
Several weeks ago the NPR program This American Life aired a stunning segment on Gordon Gee, the Latter-day Saint President of Ohio State University, and his daughter Rebecca. The segment revolved around a series of letters Gordon’s late wife Elizabeth…
