Category: Latter-day Saint Thought
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God As a Longshoreman
Without meaning to, this story (you can read it, but it is better to listen to it–it’s only a minute or so long) does a better job of explaining the nature of our relationship with God than almost anything else I have encountered.
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Carl and Mathilda
Let us praise pioneers. Of all sorts, but today especially the traditional sort. I myself am thinking of Carl and Mathilda, whom I came to know through one of those wholly unexpected spine-tingling unbelievable fantastic experiences.
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Massacre is Just Around the Corner
The Deseret News just ran a lengthy article giving some details on the long-awaited but soon-to-be-released book Massacre at Mountain Meadows, by three LDS historians.
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Cycling Through Mormon History
For you, summer might be a succession of beaches, barbeques, and baseball games, but for one young man this summer is an extended bicycle tour of American religious sites. He has posted excellent photos of his visits to the Smith family farm and the Hill Cumorah Pageant that I’m sure you’ll enjoy. If he makes…
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How Sacred is Conscience?
Any guest or new blogger obviously runs the risk of repeating topics that have been worn into the ground. Apologies in advance if that is the case here, but it seemed to me that possibly missing in the current debate, er, discussion, over a certain issue in California and how church members ought to respond…
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Foundation and Apostasy
What if the historical evidence for the foundation of the early Christian church is indistinguishable from evidence for its apostasy? What if the early church and its scriptures only arose through processes of decay?
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Reading Psalm 137 as a Microcosm of Discipleship
Psalm 137 is one of those wonderful and paradoxical passages of scripture that contains within itself a universe.
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When The Prophet Speaks
Dave’s Mormon Inquiry has a post up about a new article in Meridian Magazine today that likens the brewing battle over gay marriage in California to the War in Heaven. The comments of the post link to an editorial from the Daily Universe editorial board this week that I found pretty shocking. The money quote:…
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Jesus Said . . .
I’m reading a commentary on Psalms and in the section on the authorship of the Psalms, the writer has this to say:
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Resurrection B.C.
According to an article in the New York Times today, evidence of Jewish belief in a resurrected Messiah decades before Christ’s birth may have been discovered.
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Korihor and the United States Reports
Let’s read the Book of Mormon as a commentary on American constitutional law and vice versa. Alma 30:7-10 reads:
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Apostasy and the Dark Ages
Do these concepts have anything to do with each other? Apparently some Mormons think they do, hence Davis Bitton’s corrective essay “How Dark Were the Dark Ages?” (conveniently reposted at Meridian Magazine).
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Gospel culture and the others
How do ‘we’ as Mormons learn to view ‘others’? We can try to answer this question from the angle of various approaches to the concept of “gospel culture”.
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Egyptian Brass Plates and a naming contest
If this is common knowledge I completely missed it. So I post this in memory of all those who also slept through indecent chunks of early morning Seminary.
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Mormon identity and culture
The following is part of a larger study on the concept of “gospel culture”, which I have been working on. In a previous post I presented the question “How American is the Church?”, which yielded very interesting comments. For the present post I excerpted some further parts on culture and Mormon identity, with various questions…
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The Form of Mormon Temple Ceremonies
For a concrete idea of what Mormon temple services are like, comparing them with a Catholic Mass actually goes pretty far.
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Religious Pragmatism
Oliver Wendell Holmes famously wrote, “The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience.” [1] In various writings, he expanded that claim, contrasting a natural law approach to justifying legal and ethical rules of conduct with his own more modest approach rooted in history and experience and falling under the broad…
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Mitt Romney’s Speech “Faith In America”: Your Reaction
Thank you, Mr. President, for your kind introduction.
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Another Conference on Mormons
Call for Papers: “Interpretation: LDS Perspectives†Sponsored by Mormon Scholars in the Humanities and Mormon Scholars Foundation
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Graduate Student Conference at Claremont: Call for Papers — CHANGE!
“May These Principles Be Establishedâ€: Mormonism in the Political Arena
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Grad Student Conference: Mormonism in Politics
Graduate Student Conference at Claremont: Call for Papers “May These Principles Be Establishedâ€: Mormonism in the Political Arena
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Women Who Know
… grow tomatoes in their home garden, and lots of them. Men who know grow them, too.
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Taking On the Big Questions
Today’s colleges and universities have abandoned their most important task, en masse, says Anthony Kronman in his recent Boston Globe article. What are the prospects for getting back in the saddle?
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LDS Historical Sites
A couple of months ago I heard a presentation on the general topic of historical sites that the Church owns and manages. I came with a pocketful of snarky questions but left with some appreciation for how tough the task is and (on the whole) how well the sites are set up and managed. I’ll…