Category: Features
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President Nelson’s Sources
What is it about our Church leaders that lends their speeches authority? While ultimately the belief that the men we sustain as prophets, seers, and revelators are in communication with God is what lends them the greatest amount of authority, I believe that there are other factors that shape how they are perceived and how…
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President Nelson’s Favorite Topics and Statements, Part 4: The Plan of Salvation
For forty years before his call to the Quorum of the Twelve, Russel M. Nelson spent his career as a cardiovascular and thoracic surgeon. One aspect of his work that had a profound impact on him was that it “brought me into contact almost daily with seriously ill patients who faced the real prospect of…
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President Nelson’s Favorite Topics and Statements, Part 3: The Family
Throughout my time studying President Nelson’s conference addresses, I observed that one topic that he came back to over and over is families. Whether it be decrying the fragmentation of families, encouraging men to pay more attention to their wives, or offering encouragement to women who are mothers, Russell M. Nelson has had a lot…
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John Turner on Brigham Young
John Turner’s well-known biography Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet (Harvard University Press, 2012) provides one of the most well-rounded and in-depth look at the second president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It remains today one of the definitive biographies of an incredibly complicated man and leader. Recently, Kurt Manwaring sat down with…
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President Nelson’s Favorite Topics and Statements, Part 2: The Church
Last year, the Church released the guidelines by which a committee was evaluating hymns and songs for inclusion in the next hymnbook and children’s songbook and a list of topics they wanted to see more hymns about. What surprised me as I studied President Russell M. Nelson’s general conference talks was how frequently the list…
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President Nelson’s Favorite Topics and Statements, Part 1: God and Power
This is the beginning of the second part of my analysis of President Russell M. Nelson’s general conference talks, focusing on his favorite topics and statements. In looking at what President Nelson talks about, I tried to take a few approaches to understand his favorite topics objectively. Approaches included word count analysis of his talks…
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President Nelson’s Conference Addresses, Part 1: Introductory Comments
A couple years back—not long after President Russell M. Nelson was sustained as President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—Elder Neil L. Anderson spoke of a project his wife undertook: While my wife, Kathy, has known President Nelson personally for nearly three decades and has no question about his divine mantle, upon…
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“Come, Follow Me” and The Family: A Proclamation to the World
The “Come, Follow Me” manuals for 2021’s course of study are available online now. Looking ahead to the next year, I have been curious to see if they were going to stick strictly to the scriptures related to the history of our modern dispensation (Doctrine and Covenants and parts of the Pearl of Great Price),…
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Nephi and the Garden Tower: A Children’s Play
This week’s Come, Follow Me lesson covers the story of Nephi praying on a tower in his garden, drawing a crowd, and revealing facts about the murder of the chief judge that he could only know through revelation. As I read the lesson, I felt like the story was highly dramatic! So, for my family,…
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Thoughts on the Gold Plates
We round out the 10 questions interview series on Joseph Smith’s translation with a discussion between Richard L. Bushman and Kurt Manwaring about the gold plates. We’ve had a good run of interviews with scholars who have worked hard to examine the essential historical records surrounding Joseph Smith’s translation projects in order to find a…
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Hebrew Studies and the Book of Abraham
We’re continuing our discussion of Joseph Smith’s translations and the recently-released volume Producing Ancient Scripture today, turning to the Book of Abraham in an interview with Matthew Grey. This is a co-post to Kurt Manwaring’s interview with Matthew Grey, where he discusses his research about the ways in which Joseph Smith’s study of Hebrew affected…
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Translation and the Adam Clarke Commentary
Kurt Manwaring has continued his interviews focusing on Joseph Smith’s translations with a discussion with Thomas Wayment about the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible. In the interview last week, some of the editors of recently-published volume Producing Ancient Scripture made a point of discussing the findings of Thomas Wayment and Hayley Wilson-Lemmón about the…
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Joseph Smith’s Studies and Translations
It has been a big year for volumes that discuss Joseph Smith’s translation projects, with contributions ranging from Terryl Givens and Brian Hauglid’s The Pearl of Great Price: Mormonism’s Most Controversial Scripture last October, to William L. Davis’s Visions in a Seer Stone: Joseph Smith and the Making of the Book of Mormon this April,…
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The Metaphysics of Translation
Understanding the nature of Joseph Smith’s translation efforts is an important part of understanding his ministry and the religions that have emerged from the early Latter Day Saint movement. Whether the Book of Mormon, the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible, the Book of Abraham, or (as some might argue) the temple endowment ceremony, his…
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A Small and Simple Quote
As I’ve been studying the “Come, Follow Me” material lately and talking about it with family, I’ve had a quote from Michael Crichton’s book Jurassic Park come to mind a few times. There are a few statements in this section of Alma that have brought it to mind. The first is found in Amulek’s words…
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The Wagon Box Prophecy and the Temples
History is a fascinating world to explore, with many twists and turns along the way as we come to understand more about the narratives we have received and how they were formed. Each generation of historians has the opportunity to try and peel back the world we live in and get at the truth of…
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“By his own admission”: a one-footnote review
John Hammond’s Quest for the New Jerusalem: A Mormon Generation Sagastates that Sidney Rigdon, “by his own admission, ‘made up’ religious experiences in his youth,” which seems like something worth looking into.
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Memory and the First Vision
How do we account for differences between the various accounts we have on record of the First Vision? What role does memory play in how it was presented over time? How have we viewed those accounts since they were first recorded? These are big questions that are central to our understanding of Joseph Smith’s experience. …
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Quotes to accompany your Come Follow Me study – Alma 30-31
This coming week’s Come, Follow Me lesson covers Alma 30-31. Here are a collection of quotes from General Auxiliary Leaders of the Church, that you can use in your family or personal study. Alma 30 The Book of Mormon warns against false teachings. “As you use your agency to carve out time every day to…
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I Even Remain Alone: LDS Men sans Families
I wrote this in over three years ago in response to a call for personal essays on LDS single experiences; alas, it was declined primarily for a lack of anecdotes. It’s not something I would necessarily write today and is longer than a normal blog post. Nevertheless, it’s still a perspective that I rarely see,…
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A Lake of Fire and the Problem of Evil
I remember talking to an atheist on the riverfront walk in Dubuque, Iowa one day while serving my mission. He told my companion and me that he couldn’t believe in God after some of the things he had seen, and went on to describe (in a fair amount of gruesome detail) visiting a Catholic church…
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Review: 2nd Nephi: A Brief Theological Introduction
I think one of the most repeated refrains I see in comment threads in the bloggernacle is that our Church meetings generally lack the vibrancy and ability to deeply engage with the scriptures and ideas in ways that can stimulate interest and growth. As Terryl L. Givens put it in a recent interview, “one of…
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A Prophet for President
Imagine that when you check the news tomorrow morning you see that Russell M. Nelson has announced that he is running for the office of the President of the United States. Now imagine that later the same day, you receive a call from your bishop, and he extends a calling to you to serve as…
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Saving Alvin
How we approach the scriptures affects what we see in them. In other words, our assumptions, our traditions, our cultural baggage that we carry with us as we enter the world of scriptural texts are lenses that give meaning and shape to what we find inside those scriptures. Two approaches that I would like to…
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Reflections on Meetings in the Church of Christ
One of my favorite quotes of all time about Mormonism focuses on the concept of Zion. “Zion-building is not preparation for heaven. It is heaven, in embryo. The process of sanctifying disciples of Christ, constituting them into a community of love and harmony, does not qualify individuals for heaven; sanctification and celestial relationality are the…
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Monotheism and Mormonism
One of the most central and difficult issues of Christian theology is how to fit together a commitment to monotheism with a belief that Jesus is a divine being. While we, as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have resolved some aspects of this in our own ways, we still have…
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Seer Stones and Grammar
Book of Mormon translation is one of those interesting subjects that is central to the ongoing Book of Mormon wars. As well, to me, one interesting aspect about the Book of Mormon is how self-aware of its own creation it is. For example, in Mosiah 8 (part of this week’s “Come, Follow Me” discussion), there…
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Review: Buried Treasures: Reading the Book of Mormon Again for the First Time
Michael Austin’s book, Buried Treasures: Reading the Book of Mormon Again for the First Time is a quick, insightful and though-provoking read about the Book of Mormon. The book began its life as a series of blog posts at By Common Consent, documenting some of Austin’s thoughts as he read the Book of Mormon in-depth…
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Race and Lineage among early Latter-day Saints
Race is an incredibly sensitive topic, but it is also an incredibly important topic to discuss and understand. A number of important books have been published about the racial narratives that were adopted by early members of the Church in recent years, including Max Perry Mueller’s Race and the Making of the Mormon People (The…