Category: Latter-day Saint Thought

  • Egyptian Brass Plates and a naming contest

    Frank McIntyre

    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.

  • Mormon identity and culture

    Wilfried Decoo

    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…

  • The Form of Mormon Temple Ceremonies

    Ben Huff

    For a concrete idea of what Mormon temple services are like, comparing them with a Catholic Mass actually goes pretty far.

  • Religious Pragmatism

    Dave Banack

    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…

  • Mitt Romney’s Speech “Faith In America”: Your Reaction

    Matt Evans

    Thank you, Mr. President, for your kind introduction.

  • Another Conference on Mormons

    Jim F.

    Call for Papers: “Interpretation: LDS Perspectives” Sponsored by Mormon Scholars in the Humanities and Mormon Scholars Foundation

  • Graduate Student Conference at Claremont: Call for Papers — CHANGE!

    Jim F.

    “May These Principles Be Established”: Mormonism in the Political Arena

  • Grad Student Conference: Mormonism in Politics

    Jim F.

    Graduate Student Conference at Claremont: Call for Papers “May These Principles Be Established”: Mormonism in the Political Arena

  • Women Who Know

    Patricia Karamesines

    … grow tomatoes in their home garden, and lots of them. Men who know grow them, too.

  • Taking On the Big Questions

    Ben Huff

    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?

  • LDS Historical Sites

    Dave Banack

    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…

  • Summer Seminar update

    Jim F.

    For those interested in the BYU summer seminar, I’ve revised the post, adding the titles of and abstracts for the papers.

  • BYU Summer Seminar

    Jim F.

    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.

  • Three, Part One

    Kaimi Wenger

    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?

  • Missing Essentials

    Dave Banack

    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…

  • A Mormon Narrative for the 21st Century

    Dave Banack

    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…

  • Biographies of a New World Man

    Dave Banack

    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…

  • “New Pioneers … On the March!”

    Ardis E. Parshall

    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?

  • Amazon’s take on the Book of Mormon

    Frank McIntyre

    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…

  • Essential Texts in Mormon Feminism?

    Kaimi Wenger

    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.

  • Why a Second Coming?

    Jim F.

    It might seem that there are few Hegelians in the world today.

  • Preserving the Veil from Survey Data

    Frank McIntyre

    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.

  • Perfection

    P. Anderson

    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…

  • Tooth Bugs

    P. Anderson

    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…

  • From Russia With Love- Updated

    P. Anderson

    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…

  • Santa-god and the Second Naivete

    Jim F.

    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.

  • Venus Robinson Rossiter: Learning to Serve

    Ardis E. Parshall

    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.

  • Murder in the Metropolis: Part the Fourth (Conclusion)

    Ardis E. Parshall

    Hooper Young was arrested in Connecticut three days after the discovery of Mrs. Pulitzer’s body.

  • Murder in the Metropolis: Part the Second

    Ardis E. Parshall

    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.

  • Murder in the Metropolis: Part the First

    Ardis E. Parshall

    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.