Category: Cornucopia

Among Mormon History nerds, “Camelot” refers to the period of time in the 1970s and early 1980s when Leonard Arrington served as Church Historian. It is traditional to look back on it as a Golden Age that was tragically lost.

I’ve taken down the post titled “The Real Danger?” because it was pointed out to me that its impetus was unnecessarily divisive. This was certainly not my intent and so I considered deleting my first paragraph. Without a statement of that impetus, however, the post simply became a denunciation of pornography, which someone else pointed…

Mormons have an ingrained habit of interpreting their history in the rosiest of all possible terms, even when — as a historical matter — a less rosy interpretation makes more sense.

Last year in Sunday School, as we were finishing up the Doctrine and Covenants, the teacher asked us what the spirit of Elijah meant to us. I immediately thought: “the spirit of adoption.” I’m not sure where that thought came from, but I have continued to think about it in the past few months.

In the past, I have suggested that the Mormon constitution is English, but of late I have wondered whether it might be Roman.

I’m very pleased to present the second Times & Seasons baby of the month, my daughter Mara Gwen.

Peggy Fletcher Stack’s recent Salt Lake Tribune article on the Church in Chile is definitely worth a read.

In Notes from all over a link was added to a news item claiming that the latest Dutch spelling reform requested that the name “Christ” be written with a lower-case “c”. That information was spread on various American news channels and blogs. Flurries of comments ensued.

Ok, here’s the last session for this General Conference. It’s been fun.

Welcome to the second day of General Conference. President Hinckley, President Faust, and Elders Oaks, Ballard, Wirthlin, Scott, Holland, and Uchtdorf have yet to address a general session this year, so there is a lot to look forward to today.

I am not sure how an open thread on Priesthood Session will work, but let’s give it a try. I hope someone will provide summaries of the talks to provide a basis for the conversation.

Ready for Round Two? Here is the open thread for the Saturday afternoon session of General Conference.

This is an open thread for discussions of the Saturday morning session of General Conference.

Over the past few years, we have been watching General Conference at home. I know this is old hat in Utah and some other regions, but it’s a relatively recent innovation in the nether regions, enabled by the internet, satellite television, or certain cable providers. For families with children, General Conference in the home is…

Q: So Dave, how did you come up with the idea for LDSelect? A: It’s a long story. The concept goes back to when I was dating Fawn Brodie, a few months after I got kicked out of Hogwarts . . .

Should “providential history” be left to seers? Is it ever possible in a pluralistic world to persuasively ferret out meaning in the chaotic and seemingly arbitrary movement of history?

Imagine an LDS woman, 18 years old, who has lived her entire life far from the centers of Mormonism. Next fall, she plans to attend BYU. What will she experience?

I just checked, and my last post on T&S was in January. Although I have never experienced a period of prolonged inactivity in my Church life, this posting drought has caused me on more than one occasion to reflect on the state of mind of “believing inactives.”

Elijah Abel is one of the more important figures in the history of Mormonism.

In light of the recent publicity surrouding the Buckley Jeppson case, I thought that some readers might be interested in this post from a couple of years ago. It goes, I think, to the question of the significance of the Canadian-sanctioned marriage of Jeppson and his partner. I am not offering this post as a…

It happened in the mid-seventies, one summer afternoon, in the Swiss Temple at Zollikofen.

Last Friday and Saturday, I participated in a panel at the Miller-Eccles group, on the topic of Mormon blogging.

So yesterday I was hanging out after church waiting for my Elder’s Quorum President to finish his business so my companion and I could home teach him.

We are pleased to present to you John David Payne as a guest blogger.

When we are not in our “Mormons are not weird”-PR mode,