Category: Cornucopia
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If Everybody is a Leader No One is a Leader
“Followers of God” Anecdotally it seems that 21st century society is obsessed with “leadership.” Students are encouraged to be leaders, we are raising a generation of leaders, and leadership is considered a virtue up there with honesty and hard work. This sentiment has always struck me as being a little Ponzi-scheme-ish. Quite simply, by definition…
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A Book worth tracking down: “Drat! Mythed Again”
Drat! Mythed Again: Second Thoughts on Utah by: Steve Warren Most people, I find, have never heard of this book, but it’s one I referenced often growing up, as we had a copy in my house. My parents weren’t sure exactly when they picked it up, but it’s 1986 copyright date indicates it had to…
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Judging and Being Judged By Church Leaders
Dalle-3 image. I tried to make a highly watercolor-ish version of Christ washing the Apostle’s feet, but in the end couldn’t get rid of the halos. There is a certain class of very online member and ex-member that seems to have a particular relish for finding the faults of leaders. Of course, relishing in the…
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Pope Francis, Mid-Level Management, and Fruits
Lately the Catholic world has been abuzz about a Vatican-sponsored Synod where, according to the media, Pope Francis is challenging deeply held teachings. Of course, if one actually reads what Pope Francis is saying it’s more complicated, and a lot of the more sensational takes are just click bait. Pope Francis is not a throat…
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Latter-Day Saints Appear in Interesting Places. 1 in a series
At my old blog haunt, I used to post notices of interesting places Latter-day Saints (aka “Mormons”) show up. Here’s an interesting one (even if the LDS content is minimal one of the prosecutors was a practicing member):
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Calls to the Quorum of the Twelve: An Analysis
For something relatively out of the blue, I want to take a moment to consider potential future candidates for the Quorum of the Twelve. The Quorum of the Twelve and the First Presidency are the highest in authority in the Church and are important in policy making and in defining the doctrine of the Church,…
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Martha’s Sacrament Revisited
In these challenging times, an experience I posted fourteen years ago on Times and Seasons comes back to mind. How would I draw a conclusion now? This was the experience: *** Martha was one of the older sisters in our branch. We counted a scant dozen of them, singles and widows, making more than half…
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Is it a Sin to Binge Watch Netflix?
We all know that the defining sin of the Nephites was pride. But what about the defining sin of the Lamanites? From the very beginning of the Book of Mormon, Nephi focuses on one particular vice. “[A]fter they had dwindled in unbelief” the Lamanites became “full of idleness and all manner of abominations.”[1] He later…
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Times and Seasons Welcomes William Barlow
Times and Seasons hopes you will join us in welcoming our latest guest blogger, William Barlow. He is an attorney and graduate of Harvard Law School, where he regularly wrote for the Harvard Law Record, including a guest appearance on Fox News Business. William received his undergraduate degree in history from Duke University. Following law school,…
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Pagans and Christians in the City (1/2)
Steven Smith (who has occasionally favored us with comments here at T&S) is not the first to describe our current cultural moment as a new conflict between pagans and Christians. As Smith describes at length in Pagans and Christians in the City, others, on both sides of the divide, have done so using the same…
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Scouting for Life
I don’t know if a complete break with Scouting was necessary. I would have been content if the church had only eliminated Cub Scouts and the Eagle Scout rank.
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Worst General Conference posts, ranked
General Conference begins in two days. I’m looking forward to it, but not as much to the online responses.
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Voir dire
Voir dire, from Norman French, is pronounced “jury selection” by normal people, but I had always stayed one step ahead of the law and never seen it first hand.
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Your apocalyptic hymnbook
Hymns are useful evidence of religious practice. Hymns are a basic element of personal devotion, but at the same time the compilation of the hymnbook is carefully monitored by church leaders and the performance of hymns is modeled during the sessions of General Conference and other broadcasts, so hymns lie somewhere between high theology and…
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In the world
Is the world a generally wonderful place that is constantly improving and generally better today than it ever has been? Or, to restate the obvious, do we live at peril every hour in a world we must avoid becoming part of, and is this alienation from the world a fundamental part of the message of…
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Loosening the iron grip of the King James Version of the Bible?
A couple of years ago, Elder Richard Maynes (of the Presidency of the Seventy) quoted Matthew 13:44 in his conference talk: “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.” But wait…
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Maxwell Institute 2017 Summer Seminar Announced
The Maxwell Institute just posted a call for applicants for its next summer seminar. The topic is Mormonism Confronts the World: How the LDS Church has Responded to Developments in Science, Culture, and Religion. The seminar runs June 26 through August 3, 2017. Plenty of time to find a topic and clear out six weeks…
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The Expanse: Mormons in Space
The Expanse is an acclaimed novel series by Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck writing under the pen-name James S. A. Corey. The first novel, Leviathan Wakes, was released in 2011 and nominated for both the Hugo Award for Best Novel and the Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. Abraham and Franck have released a book…
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“A woman is a woman no matter what, but manhood can be lost.”
The title of today’s post (“A woman is a woman no matter what, but manhood can be lost,”) is a quote comes from a long and interesting article from the Pacific Standard: Why Men Kill Themselves. There’s a lot that is interesting in the article, especially about some of the gender differences that lead to a much…
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What is Mormon Doctrine?
For decades I’ve been fascinated at the regular conflation of doctrine, policy, and practice among members. We tend to claim the policy of today as not just practical, meaningful, and inspired, but as doctrine. Until it changes and we forget all about it. One example that comes to mind is the “doctrine” from my childhood of…
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Church Sticks with Boys
As Dave Banack wrote yesterday, in spite of some public huffing and puffing, the church has decided to continue the relationship with the Boy Scouts of America. They have also decided to continue to seem unaware that the first word in the organization’s title makes it gender-exclusive. With equal concern for the substantial number of youth who live outside…
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Religion in America: Who Needs a Church?
The Pew Research Center is releasing the results of its “extensive new survey” on religion in America. In “America’s Changing Religious Landscape,” it summarized changes for reported religious identification: Evangelical Christians dropped 0.9% (from 26.3% of the US population in 2007 to 25.4% in 2014), Catholics fell 3.1%, Mainline Protestants fell 3.4%, and “Unaffiliated” rose…
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Women in General Conference: It’s Not a “Primary Voice”
As I watched the first General Women’s Session of conference (at least the first not retroactively declared as such) last night, I was once again taken aback by the vocal styling of the female speakers. As much as I love hearing women speak, almost every time I hear one in a general church meeting it requires extraordinary…
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No Apology
“I will go and return to my place, till they acknowledge their offence, and seek my face: in their affliction they will seek me early.” Hosea 5:15
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Seminary Woes
For a people that values educational choices, I find it surprising that we accept very limited options for seminary programs for our teenagers.
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4 o’clock
A few years ago, my sister handed me a lumpy white envelope for Christmas. I opened it carefully, able to feel the jumble of small parts beneath my fingertips. Inside were perhaps 30 or 40 small, dark seeds. “Um. Cool,” I said, mystified.
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Recommended NT Resources, Part 1: Translations, Text, and the Bible in General
(Cross-posted at Benjamin the Scribe) We’re 80% of the way through our Old Testament, and the time has come to start looking forward. As I did for the Old, so I will do for the New. This time, I’ll break it up into a few posts, probably a few weeks apart. (Part 2, Part 3 are…
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Do Women Count?
Here are the words that President Uchtdorf used in his talk at the General Women’s Meeting: I am honored to have this opportunity to be with you as we open another general conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In the coming week the First Presidency and the Twelve Apostles will…
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A supplementary lesson plan for October 2014 Sharing Time, week 2
I love Primary. It’s my favorite place to serve in the Church, and if I had my way I’d serve there for the rest of my life. This month’s Sharing Time theme is “‘The Family: A Proclamation to the World’ Came from God to Help My Family.” Looking through the October lesson plans in the…