Category: Cornucopia

According to various news outlets the Catholic Church has ordered its dioceses to not allow Mormons access to parish registers any more. For decades, our Church has copied and preserved millions of pages of parish registers around the world, as part of the injunction to seek out ancestors and perform ordinances in their behalf. There…

Jared T. at Juvenile Instructor is posting a formal, detailed, academic review of S. Michael Tracy, Millions Shall Know Brother Joseph Again: The Joseph Smith Photograph (Salt Lake City: Eborn Pub., 2008), Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.

An old friend of mine (a former bishop, for whatever that’s worth) whom I keep in touch with by e-mail has spent much of the past decade working for the U.S. government in different capacities in Russia and Ukraine. In response to some recent news items regarding limits on visas to the former Soviet Union,…

1848 was a year of turmoil in Europe, with revolutions in France and Italy and Sicily and Germany and Poland and Romania and Moldavia and … and … and … the list seems nearly endless.

Some bloggernacle women were troubled by the order of the solemn assembly: First, the Priesthood voted (all the way down to the 12-year-olds); they were followed by the women’s organizations. In a comment at FMH, Exponent blog’s Maria notes, “By having women vote after the Aaronic priesthood, it seemed as if the implication was made…

Well, probably not. But it’s certainly the biggest web I’ve ever seen, and it happens to be in my front yard so I’m especially…interested. 

Like many people dependent upon care from others, M can be a tyrant. For instance, sensing my anxiousness during her feedings, when it’s crucial to get enough into her to sustain her plus stimulate her slow growth curve, she’s begun extorting favors. Sometimes she’ll demand to watch her favorite video over and over or else…

2 August 1888: Elder Alma P. Richards, ten months into his missionary service and working without a companion, stopped at a hotel in Meridian, Mississippi and made arrangements with a porter to keep some books and clothing until the elder’s return, expected to be a few days later. Richards, on foot, left Meridian to visit…

The Book of Mormon poses a thorny problem for assumptions about the history of scriptural texts, especially if it isn’t true

Noah Millman concedes that the science of evolution is not incompatible with the truth of Christianity. But, he argues, the myth of evolution is incompatible with the myth of Christianity. I think science does have implications for the persuasiveness of specific religious doctrines, simply as a psychological matter. And I think evolution through natural selection…

So there I was, staring the lavishness of my ignorance. I saw the presence it had in the world, how it could impoverish and destroy as efficiently as the most inspired scientific breakthrough could improve somebody’s standard of living. Before M was diagnosed, I saw my ignorance in a slanted light as I came to…

I didn’t blog about it at the time, although I thought about it. But now it’s up on You Tube, so here goes.

Many parents with severely disabled children live life underground. Apart from society’s burbling mainstreams, they labor beneath the weight of exigent circumstances, dealing with mortal crises day by day. They monitor their child’s breathing, their sleeping, their every bodily function, often for years, developing a sense for delicate balances in their particular domestic environments. Grief…

I have been listening to the papers that were presented at the recent conference of the Society for Mormon Philosophy and Theology. At the conference there was a presentation on that perennial favorite, finisitist Mormon theodicies, in this case a nicely nuanced comparison of Mormon thinking with the process theology of David Griffin. I was…

The Third Commandment tells us not to take the Lord’s name in vain. And for some reason, this practice has become strongly ingrained in Mormon social norms — I can easily name a dozen Mormons who cuss like sailors and drop “F-bombs” regularly, but who would never dream of injecting a “God” or “Lord” into…

Within the next few hours, T&S’s spam filter is going to announce that it has spared us from 100,000 offers of recreational pharmaceuticals, links to images of anatomically correct models in morally incorrect situations, promises of guaranteed wealth, solemn pleas from 12,394 persons of good moral character who need your help kindly Christian sir to…

Thanks to Raymond Takashi Swenson for his slate of intriguing and challenging posts over the past couple of weeks.

If you’re not a subscriber to BYU Studies (why not?), make haste to the bookstore and pick up a copy of the latest edition. It’s a nearly 200-page chronology of Joseph Smith’s life (transcribing the chronology available online at josephsmith.byu.edu ). In the print version, events are color-coded by category as well as being listed…

Most people with even a general sense of the Mormon pioneers are familiar with their “roadometer,” a set of cog wheels fastened to a wagon wheel, which measured and recorded distance traveled without the need for a human observer to count the revolutions of the wheel.

Perusing our sidebar this morning, I discovered the same article linked twice, along with each linker’s distinct spin on it. Well if T&S bloggers get to rampantly editorialize in the sidebar, so should you! Feel free to sound off in the comments about the article. Personally, I am opposed to mocking French people. Oh wait,…

I have no idea. You tell me.

A new book written by two Evangelical Christians supports many of the views of Latter-day Saints about the apostacy from First Century Christianity. Frank Viola and George Barna have collaborated on an updated and expanded version of one of Viola’s earlier books, and titled it Pagan Christianity.

Two questions, actually.

A sister in Relief Society told us this morning of having toured Salt Lake’s then-newly renovated Cathedral of the Madeleine

When Christ was sending out his disciples to work as missionaries, he told them “Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.” (Matthew 10:16) Latter-day Saints need to be wiser when dealing with the wolves among us.

There was an interesting post in September 2007 about a Dialogue article discussing the usual interpretation of the flood of Noah as being scientifically implausible. A couple of comments touched upon, but did not fully explicate, the way that the scriptures of the Restored Gospel and other insights from Joseph Smith can suggest a more…

I know we’ve had this conversation before, but . . .

About 15 years ago I wrote a short piece for a Sunstone Symposium panel on the topic of Mormons in the Military. It was focused on my personal experiences as a Latter-day Saint dealing with the armed forces rules on religion and the chaplains specifically. A number of things have developed since then, so it…

As the Church’s membership has become predominantly non-American and non-English speaking, the question of how to construct a Mormon ethnic identity within the wide variety of existing cultures worldwide has become a present concern for millions of Latter-day Saints.

This week while we’re hearing lurid tales from Tom Green County, Texas, it is worthwhile to remember exactly how ugly were the lies once printed about our own people, some of them told unashamedly by federal appointees and officers of the 19th century court.