Category: Latter-day Saint Thought
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If You Had Been a Mormon Boy Born in 1915 …
… and if you had lived in the Mormon Corridor or somewhere else with a fully organized Primary, you would have become a Trail-Builder when you turned 10 in 1925, and you would have received one of the new “First Year Books” to track your progress during the year as your learned to do some…
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Commentary on 1 Ne. 17, concluded
Continuing part 1 , part 2, and part 3. Nephi’s response to his brothers directly attacks their understanding of Moses’s significance.
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A Child’s-Eye View of the Mormon Silk Experiment
Utah’s 19th century silk industry was one of those projects encouraged by Brigham Young to stimulate home production and reduce Mormon dependence on a hostile world. Period literature is heavy on sermons advocating sericulture, treatises on raising worms and the mulberry trees they fed on, and praise for the quantities and artistry of finished articles.…
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“The ‘Wild West’ Has Ceased to Be”
David G. at Juvenile Instructor (the blog, not the periodical) has just posted Mormonism’s Unbroken Past: Transcending the 1890 Rupture, noting that 1890 is as historically significant to the Mormons as that year is to the wider history of the West: For us, the 1890 Manifesto marked as great a shift in outlook, traditional Mormon…
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Commentary on 1 Nephi 17, pt. 3
Continuing part 1 and part 2. Laman and Lemuel offer up their gloss on the story of Moses in verse 22 and in so doing model a particular type of scriptural and legal interpretation. They say: And we know that the people who were in the land of Jerusalem were a righteous people; for they…
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Spooky action at a distance
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.…
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Commentary on 1 Nephi 17, pt. 2
Laman and Lemuel make their appearance in chapter 17 in verse 17, where they say:
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Key to the Science of Unity
Our ward has been exploring the idea of Unity in our sacrament meeting talks this month, and I’ve heard the same attribution to Elder Dallin H. Oaks several times. It apparently comes from a “News of the Church” article in June 2007 which discusses the growing diversity in the Church. According to the article, Elder…
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First Mormon Studies Fellowships Announced
Mormon Studies took another step forward this week with the announcement of two doctoral fellowships in Mormon Studies. Courtesy of the George S. and Delores Doré Eccles Foundation, the two fellowships will be awarded one a year this year and next. With any luck, the fellowships will be repeated in future years, assuming that they…
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Commentary on 1 Nephi 17, pt. 1
This is the first of a series of posts in which I will be offering some commentary on 1 Nephi 17. Why that particular chapter you ask? The answer is that I believe that chapter 17 is setting forth a method of scriptural interpretation that proved to be very important both for the Book of…
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The Totality of Mortality
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…
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Call for Papers: SMPT at Claremont, 2009
The Society for Mormon Philosophy and Theology’s 2009 conference will be held at Claremont Graduate University, May 21-23, in cooperation with the Howard W. Hunter Chair of Mormon Studies and the Claremont Mormon Studies Student Association.
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The TRUTH about the Book of Mormon pronouncing guide EXPOSED
The Mormon Church does not want even its own members to know how to pronounce Shimnilom
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The Slaughter of the Innocents
After the wise men came, behold, the angel of the Lord appeareth to Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and flee into Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word: for Herod will seek the young child to destroy him.
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Hugs and Kisses
It’s holiday season, which means more friends and family and greetings, in person or otherwise, than usual. Add to that a few weddings receptions and you can get downright sore from all the hugging and hand-wrenching. Not to mention confused by the vast array of possibilities for saying hello or goodbye or Merry Christmas or…
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Of Courses
I recieved one of those continuing education catalogs in the mail today (from Lehman College, not BYU), and glancing through it, I began to wonder why the courses are all very basic. The courses are all introductory, and seem to be for those looking to start a career in relatively low-skill professions. I suppose there…
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Relics
The Book of Mormon is a reliquary in prose. In some extensive sections and at some critical moments, what drives the narrative is the question: how did a set of golden plates, a steel sword, a ball of curious workmanship, a breastplate, and two translucent stones end up inside a stone box buried in a…
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Dancing the Doctrines: Theology in Motion
A call for papers, panels, movement sessions and choreography Sponsored by the Department of Dance with support from the BYU Museum of Art July 17 and 18, 2009 at the Brigham Young University Museum of Art and in the BYU Richards Building dance studios.
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Past and Present
It’s an intellectual banality to point out that how one thinks of the present structures how one thinks about the past. The cliché, however, is useful when thinking about Mormon history.
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Millennial Vegetarianism
Enjoy that Thanksgiving turkey . . . while you can. You may be a vegetarian during the millennium.
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The Gospel and Immigration
A High Priest I know is in crisis. He is an immigrant who, like many other Church members, came to the US without a visa, according to what I understand of the situation. After arriving here he joined the Church, and eventually fell in love and married a U.S. Citizen, a wonderful, faithful Church member.…
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Bones
One of the subterranean threads running throughout the Book of Mormon is the mystery of whose bones are heaped upon the land northward.
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The Canonization of the Book of Mormon?
Penguin Books has just published a “Penguin Classics” edition of the Book of Mormon edited by Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp. Penguin Classics, of course, are the paperback editions of literary staples like Jane Austen or Charles Dickens. They are printed and marketed largely as texts for college classes. The assumption is that a text included in…
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2009 LDS Law Students Conference at Harvard Law School
The J. Reuben Clark Society’s annual student conference will be held this year at Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Registration is now open, and I urge LDS students, lawyers, and interested laypersons to attend. FYI.
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President Hinckley and J. Edgar Hoover
The FBI released its files on Gordon B. Hinckley last week in response to a FOIA request from the Salt Lake Tribune. Apparently the FBI conducted a background check on President Hinckley in 1951 in order to ensure he wasn’t a communist and clear him for a potential position with Voice of America. The results……