Category: Cornucopia

Most summers for the last twenty-two years, I’ve come to Italy for a week or more

“A faith that has never been doubted is not as valuable or authentic as a faith that has been doubted.”

A dear friend of mine recently wrote to me, confiding that she’s been coming to the slow and vertiginous realization that she’s never had a strong testimony of the gospel, despite a life of exemplary activity in and service to the Church. With her permission, I’ve shared my response to her letter below.

Are the rules of Mormonism constitutive or regulative?

There are two “religious” magazines that I like to read fairly regularly. Neither is Mormon.

This is a post about Mormonism and Leo Strauss.

I can think of at least three different ways in which one can read the scriptures.

What is the bloggernacle? Good question. People’s views are likely to differ, and the quest to define the nacle is bound to be an ongoing one. It’s a fun question, but for now I’m just going to point out a significant new post on the topic: DMI Dave has been around long enough to have…

Simon, 5, loves this little boy. His family is a little bit too Conspicuous Consumption for me, but how can you deny a five-year-old his best friend? Which is why I’m spending an afternoon at his 500$ birthday party at the karate studio.

On the whole, I am in favor of the smell of tobacco in church, but it is a tricky question.

A prior thread examined rationales for extending priesthood eligibility to women. This thread will examine the opposite question: If you believe that women should not receive priesthood eligibility, why not?

Some of our readers and participants have expressed a belief that eligibility for priesthood ought to be extended to women. I’m curious about the reasoning underlying different participants’ acceptance of this argument.

Over at BCC Taryn has an interesting post on the Book of Mormon and socialism. Her basic claim is that the Book of Mormon endorses socialism. At one level, I think that she is absolutely correct, on another level I think that the claim is vacuous.

“If you gave women the Priesthood and then took it away, would they be less happy than if they’d never gotten it to begin with?”

I always find it interesting to hear what people think of as being central and peripheral to Mormon experience. Take sex for example.

In the comments to Julie’s dialogue with Randy B. on the meaning of “preside” in Mormon discourse, she issued (and re-issued!) a challenge to any interested reader: find a statement from a 20th-century Church leader showing that our concept of presiding has teeth. Never one to pass up a challenge—particularly one that will allow me…

I like Michael’s post about seer stones.

Two long-time members of Times and Seasons, Kristine Haglund Harris and Melissa Proctor, have decided that their season with this blog has come to an end, and that it’s time for them to move on. This is our farewell to them.

. . . because this may be the longest post you’ll read this year. (I want a Niblet!!) Randy wanted me (and Nate) to explore the issue of presiding a little more on the temple thread, but some yahoo cut off comments, so Randy emailed me.

From its inception, Times and Seasons has been a forum for relatively diverse political, theological, and applied approaches to Mormonism.