Category: Latter-day Saint Thought

  • How Sacred is Conscience?

    Craig H.

    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…

  • Foundation and Apostasy

    Jonathan Green

    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?

  • Reading Psalm 137 as a Microcosm of Discipleship

    Nate Oman

    Psalm 137 is one of those wonderful and paradoxical passages of scripture that contains within itself a universe.

  • When The Prophet Speaks

    Marc Bohn

    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:…

  • Jesus Said . . .

    Julie M. Smith

    I’m reading a commentary on Psalms and in the section on the authorship of the Psalms, the writer has this to say:

  • Resurrection B.C.

    Jonathan Green

    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.

  • Korihor and the United States Reports

    Nate Oman

    Let’s read the Book of Mormon as a commentary on American constitutional law and vice versa. Alma 30:7-10 reads:

  • Moral Hazard in the Scriptures

    Frank McIntyre

    For those hoping to find more economics in their scripture study…

  • Apostasy and the Dark Ages

    Dave Banack

    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).

  • Gospel culture and the others

    Wilfried Decoo

    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”.

  • 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.