Category: Cornucopia

The recent conference on Mormonism and American Politics at Princeton University, organized by former Times and Seasons blogger Melissa Proctor, was–from the perspective of this participant at least–a resounding success: plenty of exchanges, ideas, and arguments, some presented formally through papers and many others emerging informally through conversations after and between sessions, all packed into…

How an obscure academic article yielded marketing gold.

John Varah Long was cited to appear before church officials in 1866 for, among other reasons, “belonging to the young men’s social club, and other conduct unbecoming a saint.” Is it possible that the social club, one cause of Long’s excommunication, was also a model for the church’s Mutual Improvement Associations?

After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.

I have long thought that there ought to be an online clearing house for research papers related to Mormonism. My proposed model is SSRN, the Social Science Research Network, where scholars in law, economics, and other disciplines upload copies of working papers and published articles. Each article is accompanied by an abstract, and all of…

Go read this. Then return and report.

That time of year thou may’st in me behold

Ben called my attention to this discussion. David Bokovoy, who is working on a PhD in Hebrew Bible at Brandeis and is the CES director in Boston, sets out this argument:

A recent change in the wording of the Book of Mormon may suggests a shift in the church’s view of the relationship between Lamanites and American Indian tribes. The prior introduction, written just 26 years ago by Elder McConkie, stated that the Lamanites were “the principal ancestors of the American Indians.”

Reading the Book of Mormon is a lot like reading Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan.”

In the summer of 1879, a meteor streaked across the sky above Utah, and people throughout the state tried to describe what they had seen and heard.

So it’s vouchers time in Utah. Here are what I see as the relevant issues, minus the apocalyptic rhetoric:

A Evangelical classmate of mine discovered an easy tactic for bothering his Mormon classmates, that often required him only to occasionally omit the letter B or W from a sentence. In discussion about the church, he would conspicuously mention the name “Spencer Kimball,” or “Gordon Hinckley,” or “Ezra Benson.” This drove many of my Mormon…

This weekend, Princeton will host an interdisciplinary conference to discuss the contested intersection between religion and American politics. Speakers include Richard Bushman, Richard Land, Kathleen Flake, Philip Barlow, Marci Hamilton, Alan Wolfe, Helen Whitney, Mark Silk, Noah Feldman, Sarah Barringer Gordon, Stephen Macedo, Thomas Griffith, Melissa Proctor, Robert George, Russell Arben Fox, Chris Karpowitz, David…

I’m tired of waiting around for Mormonism to develop the rich extra-biblical tradition of our Christian friends. Let’s get the ball rolling!

My God paints the skies for me.

Don’t forget, this weekend is Sunstone East, organized by blogoddess Kristine Haglund.

November is TV sweeps month, where networks and stations vie for audiences to set their advertising rates for the coming months.

1. I don’t like Halloween. When we moved to Germany, I was looking forward to spending a couple years without interference from the least export-worthy American holiday celebration I can imagine. 2. Since I was last here, Halloween has been exported to Germany.

A while back the chattering class got its knickers in a knot about demography.

So, that costume you’re going to wear to your ward Halloween party tonight? The one you’ve been working on for weeks? The one that you’ve consulted your parents/spouse/children/roomates/bishop/stake high council about? The one that manages to be simultaneously perfectly orthodox as well as moderately heretical, perhaps even a little risque? The one you’re so proud…

Which of the following statements would you agree with? 1. A school voucher system should be put into place, to more easily allow parents to remove their children from sometimes-deficient public schools and place them in more appropriate, parent-selected educational environments.

Today’s LA Times has a longish article on the recent official announcement of Richard Bushman as the Howard W. Hunter Visiting Professor in Mormon Studies, in the School of Religion at the Claremont Graduate University in Southern California. [There is also a story at the Salt Lake Tribune.] The appointment as a visiting professor is…

Are all of us praying to Mother in Heaven, unawares?

I have been doing research lately on the resolution of civil disputs in Mormon courts in the nineteenth century. Last week, I presented some of my research at the American Society for Legal History conference at ASU. I recorded my presentation and made it into an episode for the Law Talk podcast that I do…

True or false: Mormons believe God is a married couple. (To receive credit, you must explain your answer. )

Before there were Young Men and Young Women, there were the Young Men’s and Young Ladies’ Mutual Improvement Associations. Before there were correlated lesson manuals and basketball and scouting and Young Womanhood awards and dancing-a-Book-of-Mormon’s-width-apart there were homemade programs.

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia is building a university from the ground up. It is to be much less conservative than other Saudi institutions, but is explicitly based in Muslim values. This opens some very exciting possibilities.

And I will shew wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of the Lord come. Joel 2:30-31 (Photo: San Diego Fire Moon, originally uploaded by Tamara Hart, link…

Note: this post begins a series of posts on President Beck’s recent conference talk. If you feel the need to vent your dislike of the talk, I imagine that you might possibly be able to find a thread somewhere in the Bloggernacle where you can do just that. But you can’t do it here.