Category: Features

Sunday School lessons – Book Reviews – Interviews

Sunday School Lesson 28

Lesson 28: Doctrine and Covenants 121:1-33; 122 Sections 121, 122, and 123 are each part of a letter written by Joseph Smith from Liberty Jail to the church leaders in Quincey, Illinois. Read about that experience in a good Church history.

Sunday School Lesson 23

Lesson 23: Doctrine and Covenants 88 Notice that section 87, on war, was given only a few days before this section, “an olive leaf [. . .] plucked from the Tree of Paradise, the Lord’s message of peace.” How is the message of section 88 one of peace to the Saints?

Sunday School Lesson 22

Lesson 22: Doctrine and Covenants 89 Notice that this is the first revelation given after the School of the Prophets was organized. Is there a connection between that organization and this revelation?

Book Review: David O. McKay: Beloved Prophet

I have mixed feelings about the very presence of Woodger’s David O. McKay: Beloved Prophet. On the one hand, as someone who wants to read biographies of all of the prophets of this dispensation, I’m always happy to see a new addition to the fold. While there are other biographies of President McKay, the pickings are pretty slim–and expensive (but see post below).

Book Review: David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism

Yes, I’m reviewing two books on David O. McKay. My original intention was to review them together (and explore the larger issue of writing faith-promoting as opposed to warts-and-all history), but I decided that wouldn’t be fair. It didn’t seem fair because David O. McKay: Beloved Prophet is a credible entry in the well-established subgenre of LDS biography. It does exactly what it is supposed to do. But David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism is a category killer.

12 (or so) Questions for Kathleen Flake

Back in November, we solicited questions for Kathleen Flake, author of the terrific book The Politics of American Religious Identity (2004). We are now pleased to present her responses. Thanks Professor Flake! 1. How have you negotiated the tension between focusing on Mormon studies versus the broader issues within your discipline? How have your faith and your interest in Mormon studies affected your career at Vanderbilt, if at all? My focus has not been on Mormonism as an end in itself. Rather, I have experimented with using Mormonism as a tool to understand the “broader issues.”

Book Review: Back to the Well: Women’s Encounters with Jesus in the Gospels

This statement from The Blog of Happiest Fun got a lot of links from other female bloggernaclites: I would like to spend more time discussing the lives of strong women in the scriptures. Women like Hannah, Deborah, Jael, or Anna the prophetess. There are so many women that I find interesting, and I don’t hear about them enough. I’d like to study their lives some more.

Sunday School Lesson 17

Lesson 17: Doctrine and Covenants 59:13-14, 21; Doctrine and Covenants 119; Doctrine and Covenants 120 Thought questions for D&C 59 were included in lesson 16, so I will not repeat them here.

Book Review: City Saints

The interaction of the LDS church and its members with New York City is a fascinating topic. Someday, that story will doubtless be the focus of one or more great works of Mormon regional history which will have truly broad appeal to members. And those works will in turn acknowledge City Saints: Mormons in the New York Metropolis (edited by Scott Tiffany) as an important step in the examination of church members in New York City. However, City Saints itself, while interesting, informative, and quite readable, suffers from conceptual flaws that undermine its impact and ultimately result in a whole that is less than the sum of its more impressive parts.