Category: Latter-day Saint Thought
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Your Reactions to Church Yesterday, 1/4
Recently I explored the writings of a Mormon literary thinker little-known among Church members today, Wayne Booth. In The Company We Keep, Booth proposes that human beings not only learn by induction and deduction, but by what he calls “coduction” — the discovery of knowledge in conversation with others. This is a cornerstone of how…
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CFM 1/12-1/18: Poetry for “In the Beginning God Created the Heaven and the Earth”
Creation is a crucial idea in LDS thought — we have shifted its meaning to suit a different cosmology, and its meaning remains in flux between the implications of our theology and what the rest of humanity understands. In LDS thought, not only is creation about using pre-existing materials (including us!) to create something new…
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Spiritual Experiences Going off the Rails
So I’m thinking about this issue after having watched Netflix’s documentary on Jodi Hildebrandt, “Evil Influencer”: what’s up with Mormons doing criminal and immoral things under the belief they are inspired by God? Such acts, of course, are pretty rare, but at this point it’s feeling a little disconcerting for it to appear that a…
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“As Far as It Is Translated Correctly”: The Bible and the Fulness of the Gospel
There’s been lots of talk about the church granting more allowance additional biblical translations beyond the KJV, but I’m arguing in this post that I don’t think that’s what Joseph Smith meant by the eighth article of faith “as far as it is translated correctly.” JS of course did a revision of the Bible, but…
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Your Reactions to Church Yesterday, 12/28
How did you react to Church yesterday? What did you notice? Did you end up thinking differently? [In case you missed this last week, I was ill and didn’t post.] Do you think your reactions were what they should be? Were they ethical? This is the latest invitation for reactions to local meetings, continuing the…
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CFM 1/5-1/11: Poetry for “This Is My Work and My Glory”
I’ve left off any image to represent Gods “work and glory”; since we teach that His work is “to bring to pass the Immortality and Eternal Life of Man,” I am not at all sure how to represent that. Images of what ‘heaven’ looks like all seem to me to be either unlikely or based…
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Was Jesus Married? Where Was He Born? The Restored Gospel and the Quest for the Historical Jesus
Now that I’m trying to avoid creating AI depictions of deity I feel like a Muslim. The “Quest for the Historical Jesus” is a scholarly endeavor to try to suss out details about Jesus’ life from a naturalistic worldview without any religious priors. Given the extreme scarcity of hard data you have to think deep…
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A Christmas Gift for the Restoration: A Beginner’s Guide to B. H. Roberts
As we settle into the Christmas season, our thoughts often turn to the gifts we can offer our community. In the spirit of the season—and as a small token of appreciation for the vibrant intellectual and spiritual discussions that take place here at Times and Seasons—I want to share a project I’ve been working on:…
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The Restored Gospel, the Great Apostasy, and the Didache
About a year ago I read and wrote a post on 1st Clement, arguably the earliest Christian document outside of the New Testament. I finally got around to reading the Didache, a Christian treatise that is also in the running for oldest authentic Christian document after the apostles (the confidence intervals for the documents coming…
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Beyond the King James Version: The Church’s New Handbook Policy on Bible Translations
Earlier this week, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints updated its General Handbook, most notably in the section regarding Bible translations. For those of us following the conversation at From the Desk—including the interview and copost with Joshua Sears last week—the timing feels serendipitous. For the better part of a century, the cultural…
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Sociology of Religion Terms and the Restored Gospel
Sacred Canopy Coined by sociologist of religion Peter Berger, a Sacred Canopy is a religiously-driven common worldview in a community. Where the very literal protective interdiction of St. Christopher on your daily drive, the daily calls to prayer, or a testimony of the Book of Mormon, are all part of a taken-for-granted worldview that seems…
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Your Reactions to Church Yesterday, 12/14
How did you react to Church yesterday? What did you notice? Did you end up thinking differently? [In case you missed this last week, I was ill and didn’t post.] Do you think your reactions were what they should be? Were they ethical? This is the latest invitation for reactions to local meetings, continuing the…
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CFM 12/22-12/28: Poetry for “The Matchless Gift of God’s Divine Son”
One advantage to providing the poetry for these lessons early is that it allows teachers and others a little time to adjust the timing of lessons. For example, this coming week’s lesson in Sunday School should be on the Family (see last week’s post), but given that the coming lesson is on the Sunday before…
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Catholic Integralism and the Constitution
So lately I’ve been noticing some rhetoric on the right that seems at odds with what had been more standard claims to a great devotion to the constitution. I’m probably not as linked into these networks as many others, so I’m curious what additional information T&S readers may know.
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Delighting in bloodshed
The first time I showed clips from Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will while teaching about Nazi Germany, I was not expecting to be overwhelmed by grief and anger and revulsion.
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The Evolution of a Ban: Paul Reeve on Brigham Young and the Curse of Cain
Most Latter-day Saints know that for over a century, the Church restricted men of black African descent from holding the priesthood and black members from temple ordinances, but the specific origins of this ban—and specifically how Brigham Young’s teachings on the “curse of Cain” hardened into policy—remain a source of confusion and pain for many.…
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When We Are Proselytized by Others
About a year ago my oldest sons were invited by some of their classmates to play volleyball at one of the local Korean Christian churches. We got there…and there was no volleyball, just an eager-looking freshman sitting in front with a Bible. Of course, coming from a proselytizing faith ourselves, we knew exactly what was…
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CFM 12/15-12/21(The Family): Poetry for “The Family Is Central to the Creator’s Plan”
The LDS focus on the family is one of our best-known doctrines—an idea largely based on our belief that we are children of heavenly parents. As a result of these beliefs, we consistently worry about how well we are doing as parents, and about the strength of our family relationships. I often wonder if we…
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Devotion in the Postinformation Age
There was a time, not all that long ago, when the Internet was going to solve everything. The truth was out there, freely accessible, and could no longer be hidden. All you had to do was look, and if you remained ignorant, it was both an intellectual and a moral failure.
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Your Reactions to Church Yesterday, 11/30
How did you react to Church yesterday? What did you notice? Did you end up thinking differently? Do you think your reactions were what they should be? Were they ethical? This is the latest invitation for reactions to local meetings, continuing the spirit of my post on September 25th about how we can take what…
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CFM 12/8-12/14 (OD 1 &2, Articles of Faith): Poetry for “We Believe”
When I think about the phrase “We Believe”, I lean to thinking that the more important word is “We” instead of the traditional focus on “Believe”. And I think the history of the early Church in the 1830s supports this focus. Many members of the Church were decidedly anti-creedal; i.e., they were against having a…
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Black Hole Cosmology and the Book of Abraham
[Note: I know that in my last post I noted that, pursuant to Elder Gong’s counsel on this, I wouldn’t be posting any more AI depictions of deity, but this post was in the queue before I was aware of the Gong talk, so this will be my last AI depiction of deity.] One of…
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Giving Thanks Beforehand
In the United States, tomorrow is Thanksgiving, ending a period when many people complain about Christmas coming earlier and earlier. If it isn’t the advertisements, it’s the music that somehow reaches our hearing earlier than expected. While I know many people love Christmas music and don’t mind hearing it almost all year, others are bothered…
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Your Reactions to Church Yesterday, 11/23
How did you react to Church yesterday? What did you notice? Did you end up thinking differently? Do you think your reactions were what they should be? Were they ethical? This is the latest invitation for reactions to local meetings, continuing the spirit of my post on September 25th about how we can take what…
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CFM 12/1-12/7 (D&C 137-138): Poetry for “The Vision of the Redemption of the Dead”
A less-discussed principle of the gospel is the idea that it is universal—i.e, that the gospel and its blessings are available to all of God’s children, including those who are dead. The application of this belief leads to performing ordinances for the dead, a practice that is unique, as far as I know, among Christian…
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How Do YOU Think Eternal Marriage/Family Should Work in the Next Life?
Lately I’ve heard a number of comments in church of ward members noting people of other faiths liking the idea of eternal marriage as a something of a validation of our beliefs. The recent movie release Eternity seems to play around with this idea of a woman getting to the afterlife and trying to figure…
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Your Reactions to Church Yesterday, 11/16
How did you react to Church yesterday? What did you notice? Did you end up thinking differently? Do you think your reactions were what they should be? Were they ethical? This is the latest invitation for reactions to local meetings, continuing the spirit of my post on September 25th about how we can take what…
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CFM 11/24-11/30 (D&C 135-136): Poetry for “ He “Has Sealed His Mission and His Works with His Own Blood”
Our feelings about Joseph Smith can often be conflicted. On one hand we revere him as the prophet of the restoration, who has “has done more, save Jesus only, for the salvation of men in this world, than any other man that ever lived.” But need to the use of the phrase “save Jesus only”…
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How Do We Teach/Talk about Polygamy?
So I found Brittany Romanello’s presentation to Dialogue on their series on DC 132 (15:30) interesting in the context of lots of internet talk about polygamy in anticipation for a discussion of DC 132 coming up tomorrow. Romanello talked about getting lessons on polygamy and said that in wards she’s been in as a teenager,…
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How and Why: Matthew Godfrey Explains the 2025 Scripture Updates
The recent 2025 updates to Latter-day Saint scriptures have raised important questions for many members. While we know the changes are minor (applying primarily to the study helps rather than the scriptures themselves) and stem from the monumental Joseph Smith Papers Project, official announcements often lack the full context for how and why these adjustments…