Category: Features

We often visualize the 19th-century Latter-day Saint missionary as a solitary hero braving the world to preach the gospel, but we rarely consider the staggering domestic cost exacted from the wives they left behind. While early Church leaders framed this separation as a holy sacrifice, the lived reality for pioneer women was one of crushing…

We often celebrate the First Amendment as the ultimate shield for religious minorities, assuming that the Founding Fathers’ “godless” Constitution created a neutral public square where all faiths could freely flourish. However, the lived experience of the early Latter-day Saints tells a drastically different story, revealing that the disestablishment of religion actually cleared the way…

Because we believe in human exaltation, Latter-day Saints are usually familiar with Psalm 82:6, where the psalmist declares, “I have said, Ye are gods.” We frequently cite this verse, along with Christ’s quotation of it in John 10, as biblical evidence of our divine potential. However, when we read this text through the lens of…

The King James Version of the Bible has profoundly shaped the Latter-day Saint vocabulary, but its 17th-century translation choices sometimes obscure the rich nuances of ancient Hebrew. One of the most misunderstood words in our scriptural lexicon is ?esed, famously rendered in the KJV as “mercy” or “lovingkindness.” But does this translation capture the true…

When we think of the musical landscape of 19th-century Utah, our minds tend to default to rustic campfire songs or simple four-part choral hymns sung by weary travelers. However, recent archival discoveries reveal a surprisingly sophisticated frontier culture, boasting a vibrant scene of theatrical orchestras, virtuosic brass bands, and complex original compositions. A fascinating new…

The history of Latter-day Saint interactions with Native Americans is a complex tapestry of theological affinity, colonization, cooperation, and conflict, often oversimplified in traditional pioneer narratives. How did Indigenous converts navigate this fraught reality to forge their own unique spiritual and cultural identity within the Church? A new interview over at the Latter-day Saint history…

We often think of genealogy as a deeply personal religious pursuit or a modern hobby driven by DNA tests and online databases, but in the founding era of the United States, tracing your lineage was a matter of survival, property, and freedom. While the American Revolution publicly rejected the British system of inherited political power,…

For decades, the theological relationship between Evangelical Christians and Latter-day Saints has been characterized by a complex mix of social admiration and doctrinal suspicion, leaving many to wonder what our Protestant neighbors actually think of us. While Evangelicals often praise Latter-day Saints as highly moral neighbors with strong family values, they simultaneously draw a hard…

In the late nineteenth century, Utah Territory was increasingly flooded with “stage loads” of East Coast fiction and novelettes that Church leaders feared would poison the minds of Latter-day Saint youth. To combat this influx of “Gentile” literature, Apostle George Q. Cannon founded the Juvenile Instructor Office in 1866, a private printing press dedicated to…