Category: Cornucopia

Times & Seasons is excited to welcome Eric Huntsman as a guest blogger.

Blog spam is depressingly common (though our filter is top notch); one common spam tactic is a comment which says “hi” or “great post” but then links to some sketchy porn site or gambling or the like. We just got a series of comments which were a variant of those, from some spammer in Italy.…

Dear Deseret Book,

Are we as church members downplaying Jesus? I don’t mean this in a theological sense; rather, it seems to me that church members (and leaders) tend to de-emphasize the use of the single-name description Jesus. We regularly use the name Jesus when it is associated with the title Christ. However, when we use a single-word…

“[University of Utah Quarterback Alex] Smith is a native of San Diego and knew little of the Utah-BYU rivalry. He knows now. “I’m much more into it this year,” Smith says. “I really hate them. Playing in the game helped me understand. They are the most arrogant people. It’s the whole church and state thing.…

You know how you can’t swing a dead cat in Church without smacking into someone talking about how wicked our day is?

That ye contend no more against the Holy Ghost, but that ye receive it, and take upon you the name of Christ; that ye humble yourselves even to the dust, and worship God, in whatsoever place ye may be in, in spirit and in truth; and that ye live in thanksgiving daily, for the many…

A new issue of The Mormon Review is available, with Rosalynde Welch’s review of The Book of Dave by Will Self. The article is available at: Rosalynde Welch, “Of Prophets and Jugglers: Will Self’s The Book of Dave,” The Mormon Review, vol.1 no. 9 [HTML] [PDF] For more information about MR, please take a look…

Over at my other blog, a reader posted the following question: On a related LDS family matter, many of us have been confronted by Mormon missionaries with a message, or even a free DVD, of “Families are Forever.” A sincere, respectful question: isn’t this motto a solution in search of a problem? That is, what…

Thanks to reader Clair for pointing this out in comments: The first issue of the Times and Seasons was published at Nauvoo. — 170 years ago today [err, yesterday] – Nov 15, 1839 . Happy birthday to us!

Each anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall is a bit embarrassing for me.

Let me begin by saying that I not only believe in the historicity of The Book of Mormon, I feel a deep and passionate commitment to our narrative. But this is a point on which I think Mormon historicitists, believers in a divine or human fiction, or any other type of good Mormon ought to…

For over a year I’ve wanted to write a substantive post about the contradiction between two of the best-known biblical injunctions, “let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth” and “let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works.”

The trial court in Reynolds v. United States gave the following jury charge, which the Supreme Court later found was proper and not inflammatory. I think it not improper, in the discharge of your duties in this case, that you should consider what are to be the consequences to the innocent victims of this delusion.

Preface. At the risk of running afoul of Nate’s post on turning the other cheek—that is, of appearing obnoxiously immodest and of proving myself once again impossibly dense—I’m telling a story about how I received one of the best lessons I’m still learning. It’s a long story and hopelessly self-referential. Over the last two decades,…

Leftover Halloween candy languishes in its plastic pumpkin on top of the refrigerator; for the moment, the kids are satiated and I’m being good. All the sugar brings to mind a favorite hymn, “Jesus, the very thought of thee,” a few stanzas of which are here: Jesus, the very thought of Thee With sweetness fills…

cross posted at Civil Religion “Death be not proud,” taunted John Donne. “One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally, / And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.” Death interrupts our view of eternity, a fearsome jalousie obscuring a future we must approach. Like Donne, we console and distract ourselves by turns with…

Trivia fact for the day: the Mormon church operated a newspaper, the St. Louis Luminary, from November 1854 to December 1855. The periodical served the large community of transient Latter-day Saints, many of whom stopped in St Louis to replenish their strength (and funds) after the first leg of their journey to the Salt Lake…