Category: Features

  • Why Mormons Build Temples

    Alison Moore Smith

    The church has a channel on YouTube called Mormon Messages. Yesterday they posted a new video titled, “Why Mormons Build Temples.” (Comments and ratings are not open on this video.) How do you think this will work as a response to the upcoming airing of recreated temple ceremonies (accurate or not)?

  • Be Mannerly

    Alison Moore Smith

    In the spirit of President Hinckley’s six be’s, I’d like to submit some suggestions for visiting/home teaching etiquette. Here are my 12 be’s of assigned teaching. Please add your own!

  • Guest Blogger: Alison Moore Smith

    Blog Administration

    We are delighted to welcome Alison Moore Smith as a Times and Seasons guest blogger!

  • A New Book for the Mormon Canon

    Nate Oman

    There are a number of Mormon pamphlets and books that have achieved a kind of semi-canonical status within Mormon studies. Everyone agrees, for example, that Parley P. Pratt’s Key to the Science of Theology or John Taylor’s Mediation and Atonement are key texts for understanding nineteenth Mormon thought. If any evidence is needed, both texts,…

  • Faith and Healing

    Kylie Turley

    “And again, it shall come to pass that he that hath faith in me to be healed, and is not appointed unto death, shall be healed. He who hath faith to see shall see. He who hath faith to hear shall hear. The lame who hath faith to leap shall leap.” (D&C 42:48-51)  

  • Colonel Kane, Righteous Gentile

    Matthew Grow

    From nearly the moment Thomas L. Kane walked into Mormon history in 1846, Latter-day Saint leaders promised that his name would long be honored by the Saints. In part, they wanted to bolster Kane’s determination to take the deeply controversial stance of defending the Mormons. When his father John, a powerful federal judge, learned of…

  • Mormonism and Communal Studies

    Matthew Grow

    Scholars of Mormonism (like scholars of most topics) need to find ways to connect their subject to larger scholarly debates and frameworks. Mormon academics have used frameworks from American religious history to western history to the history of family and gender to legal studies. Another possibility is communal studies.

  • Who’s the Most Important Non-Mormon in LDS History?

    Matthew Grow

    The Bloggernacle has been awash lately in awards: Mormon of the Year, Mormon of the Year, 1950-present, and the Boggs-Doniphan Award. This last one asked for the most influential non-Mormon on Mormonism within the last year, for either good or ill, named about Missouri’s Governor Lilburn Boggs who infamously issued an Extermination Order against the…

  • Polygamy, Women’s Rights, and Marital Sexuality: Elizabeth Kane’s Theory

    Matthew Grow

    Nineteenth-century polygamy provoked a decades-long national shouting match over the evils and virtues of the practice. It also prompted a fascinating contemplation by Elizabeth Kane of women’s rights and marital sexuality.

  • Missionaries to Dinner, 1854 Style

    Matthew Grow

    On June 20, 1854, Elizabeth Kane received a note from her husband that he had invited some “common men” for dinner. Elizabeth, then 17, had been married to Thomas Kane, her second cousin, for a little over a year.

  • Understanding Thomas L. Kane

    Matthew Grow

    In Mormon country, Thomas L. Kane is remembered, if at all, as the nineteenth-century defender of the Latter-day Saints and the hero of the Utah War of 1857-58.

  • Welcome Guest Blogger Matt Grow

    Ben Huff

    I am very glad to introduce to you our next guest blogger, Matt Grow. We thought this would be a good time to have Matt blog with us because he just had a book come out last week from Yale University Press, Liberty to the Downtrodden: Thomas L. Kane, Romantic Reformer, on an important and…

  • Spooky action at a distance

    Sheldon G.

    I am a total NPR dork. I would LOVE to have Carl Kasell’s voice on my answering machine; when I was in middle school, I felt betrayed when I learned that Lake Woebegone wasn’t a real place; and I admit that I joined Ira Flatow’s Science Friday Facebook group (“for those who love Science Friday.…

  • Who Should Have Been Mormon of the Year, 1990-2007

    Kent Larsen

    This final of three posts, covers Times and Seasons reader Last Lemming’s suggestions for Mormon of the Year for the years 1990 through 2007. We already posted on Monday his picks for 1950 through 1969 and on Wednesday 1970 through 1989. I suspect as these posts get into more familiar and more recent territory, more…

  • Sunday School Lesson Links

    Frank McIntyre

    Owing to the fact that I am a moron, Jim F.’s excellent Doctrine and Covenants Sunday School lessons are inordinately hard to retrieve. Here are links to a few of them, and we’ll have the rest of them easy to get to by next week. Doctrine and Covenants Lesson 2 Doctrine and Covenants Lesson 3…

  • HUAC

    HUAC

    Sheldon G.

    After nearly 40 years in the wilderness, HUAC is back in style!

  • Last “Who Should Be Mormon of the Year” segment postponed

    Kent Larsen

    At Last Lemming’s request, I have postponed the last of the three “Who Should Be Mormon of the Year” segments until Tuesday morning. That segment covers 1990 to 2007. Last Lemming will be out-of-town during the weekend, and wants to be sure he is available to comment and react to others’ comments on the post.

  • “Twenty-Mark Note” Experiences

    Sheldon G.

    There is a certain category of life-experiences that I refer to as “Twenty-Mark Note” stories. The name for these experiences comes from a talk by the same name, given by President Packer at BYU-Idaho in 2002 (excerpted below).  I suspect that once you read President Packer’s remarks, you’ll immediately recall your own Twenty-Mark experiences:

  • The Road to the Temple

    The Road to the Temple

    Sheldon G.

     NPR recently did a story about a group of reporters’ visit to the newly constructed Draper Temple. The Draper Temple, by all appearances, is characteristically beautiful. I am as intrigued by the process of building a new temple, as I am by the end product itself. Some of the most marvelous stories from church history involve…

  • Who Should Have Been Mormon of the Year, 1970-1989

    Kent Larsen

    This second of three posts, covers Times and Seasons reader Last Lemming’s suggestions for Mormon of the Year for the years 1970 through 1989. We already posted on Monday his picks for 1950 through 1969 and on Friday morning we will list his picks for 1990 through 2007. I suspect as these posts get into…

  • Welcome to Guest Blogger Sheldon G.

    Marc Bohn

    We’re due for an infusion of new blood here at T&S, so we’ve decided to roll out the red carpet for one Sheldon G. Sheldon got his undergraduate degree from the U of U, where he majored in history, wrote his senior thesis on the reactions of LDS women to the Correlation-related changes to the…

  • Who Should Have Been Mormon of the Year, 1950-1969

    Kent Larsen

    I received an unexpected and fun email message after we began selecting the 2008 Mormon of the Year from Times and Seasons reader Last Lemming, who had made his own selections for Mormon of the Year for each year since 1950! In this first of three posts, we will include his suggestions for the years…

  • The Totality of Mortality

    Kathryn Lynard Soper

    When I picked up my manual to prepare to teach Gospel Doctrine this Sunday, I figured it would be a lesson about the spirit of Elijah (second week = section 2 = turning hearts, etc). I was surprised and delighted to find that Lesson 2 is instead about the atonement, highlighting powerhouse passages in Doctrine…

  • Times and Seasons 2008 Mormon of the Year: Mitt Romney

    Kent Larsen

    Image via Wikipedia After careful consideration, the staff of Times and Seasons has selected Mitt Romney as Mormon of the Year, our annual designation of the Mormon who had the greatest impact or influence on Mormons and Mormonism in 2008. During 2008 Romney concluded the most credible presidential campaign of any Mormon to date and…

  • Vote for Mormon of the Year

    Kent Larsen

    This post opens the voting for Mormon of the Year. Votes will be taken until midnight Eastern Time on Monday, January 5th, at which time the voting will close. The voting mechanism will attempt to restrict votes to one per person. THE WINNER OF THE ONLINE VOTE IS NOT NECESSARILY THE MORMON OF THE YEAR!!!

  • Who Should Be Mormon of the Year?

    Kent Larsen

    Its that time of year. The week between Christmas and New Year’s Day is traditionally the media’s time for reflection on the past year — the time when we see story after story on the best or most important stories of the year, or the most important person of the year (as Time magazine just…

  • Now a glorious dawn is breaking

    Jonathan Green

    What will it be like for a marriage to continue past death into the eternities? What does it mean to have a perfected body, or to love an eternal being? Stephenie Meyer has an answer. Breaking Dawn, the last novel in her Twilight series, presents a sustained and vividly imagined view of one of the…

  • Sunday School Redux 2

    Frank McIntyre

    The Joseph Smith manual had one of my favorite quotes in it this week: “I say to all those who are disposed to set up stakes [limits] for the Almighty, You will come short of the glory of God. To become a joint heir of the heirship of the Son, one must put away all…

  • 12 Questions for the LDS Newsroom, Part Two

    Dave Banack

    This is Part Two of responses provided by representatives of the LDS Newsroom to a set of questions submitted by T&S permabloggers. See Part One for the first six questions and responses.

  • 12 Questions for the LDS Newsroom, Part One

    Dave Banack

    Representatives from LDS Public Affairs who manage and direct the Newsroom site at LDS.org agreed to respond to a dozen questions submitted by the T&S permabloggers. We are pleased to post the first six questions and answers below, with the second set of six to follow shortly. We appreciate the time and effort that went…