Category: Latter-day Saint Thought
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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…
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Summer Seminar update
For those interested in the BYU summer seminar, I’ve revised the post, adding the titles of and abstracts for the papers.
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BYU Summer Seminar
The annual summer symposium, this year “Joseph Smith and His Times,” will be held on Thursday, August 9, 2007. The symposium will feature papers by twelve summer seminar fellows on the theme “Mormon Thinkers, 1890-1930,” covering topics ranging from the influence of Herbert Spencer on Mormon thought to Mormonism and Modernity.
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Three, Part One
Which Dialogue articles should the savvy blog-reader have hot-keyed and ready to go? What would the top three articles be, for useful citation in blog conversation?
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Missing Essentials
Once upon a time, there was a book called Essentials in Church History. It was first published in 1922 and authored by Joseph Fielding Smith, who was made Assistant Church Historian in 1906 and an Apostle in 1910 (then President of the LDS Church from 1970 to 1972). For many years, this book (in one…
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A Mormon Narrative for the 21st Century
Historians don’t just catalog events, they assemble events into stories or “historical narratives.” But to really be relevant or worth reading, a given historical narrative has to tap into a bigger theme or “grand narrative” (using the term rather loosely). I’m going to flesh out that concept a bit, then float some observations on the…
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Biographies of a New World Man
Joseph Smith, it’s fair to say, was a rebel and a runner and a restless young man. That, plus his many religious accomplishments, makes him an attractive subject for biographers both in and out of the Church, who have responded by writing dozens of Joseph Smith biographies. In fact, I think that when it comes…
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“New Pioneers … On the March!”
What does today’s Deseret Morning News editorial have in common with my 1941 copper medal bearing the legend “Our Standard Bearer†over the likeness of President Heber J. Grant?
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Amazon’s take on the Book of Mormon
Amazon.com has an algorithm for noting the “Statistically Improbably Phrases” in any given book. The idea is to look for word combinations that are uncommon generally but common in the book in the hope that this provides potential buyers some insight into what the book is about. Here are the ones for the Doubleday edition…
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Essential Texts in Mormon Feminism?
In honor of Women’s History Month, I’d like to reopen our occasional series of Essential Texts in Mormon Studies. Traditionally, posts in the series have asked commenters to suggest their top five books within some segment of Mormon studies. For this post, let’s discuss what might be the essential texts in Mormon feminism.
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Preserving the Veil from Survey Data
Suppose I find that being Mormon raises income, makes your children nicer, and does all sorts of wonderful things. In fact, suppose God blessed every person who converted instantly and spectacularly with beautiful hair and perfect teeth.
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Perfection
In Comparative World Religions (REL 151) my freshman year I was taught that the word “Holy” is derived, or related to the word “Whole.” The basic idea being that part of being a perfect Divine being is the state of being complete, whole, or finished. I’ve wondered in the past just what perfect really means…
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Tooth Bugs
Recently my husband and I came across a set of rather old LDS song books. As my ward’s primary chorister my favorite was The Primary Song Book: Including Marches and Voluntaries. The edition is missing the title page and so I’m not sure when it was published (and am at a loss as to how…
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From Russia With Love- Updated
There is a certain sort of person that is just so self-absorbed and generally unaware that it just doesn’t feel wrong to gossip about them, they’d just enjoy the extra attention. In my childhood ward it was Brother L.- in that ward people traded gossip about Brother L. like baseball cards. In fact it feels…
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Santa-god and the Second Naivete
I spent all of September and a good part of October finishing an essay on community for a journal on the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, and it nearly killed me.
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Venus Robinson Rossiter: Learning to Serve
Venus Rossiter, serving in Tahiti with her husband, Mission President Ernest C. Rossiter, wrote to the Relief Society General Board early in 1919 with her report for 1918.
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Murder in the Metropolis: Part the Fourth (Conclusion)
Hooper Young was arrested in Connecticut three days after the discovery of Mrs. Pulitzer’s body.
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Murder in the Metropolis: Part the Second
William Hooper Young, known as Hooper, was born in 1871 in Philadelphia, where his mother, Libbie Canfield, was visiting, while his father, John W. Young, was in Utah.
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Murder in the Metropolis: Part the First
As the ebbing tide of September 18, 1902, lowered the level of the barge canals near Jersey City, New Jersey, a passing trolley engineer spotted the nude and mutilated body of a woman lying in the mud.
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Charlotte Owens Sackett: Teaching the Sisters to Sing
Lottie Owens was born in 1877 in Willard, Box Elder County, Utah. Her mother’s family were early Church members in Nauvoo; her father had emigrated to Utah as a convert from Wales.