Category: Latter-day Saint Thought

  • Feminist Agitation, Mormon style

    Greg Call

    Julie’s post on the daughters of Zelophehad and the ensuing comments reminded me of a story I read in a locally-published book called An Ensign to the Nations: History of the Oakland Stake. It seems that in the late 70s, the Church’s opposition to the ERA caused a bit of an uproar in the Oakland…

  • Joseph’s Phrenology Report

    Christopher Bradford

    I know, I know, this is something you’re more likely to see from Nate, but I couldn’t resist, especially after seeing Nate’s post of the Joseph Smith caricature.

  • Church PR and the CIA

    Nate Oman

    As many people are aware, the Church currently employees a New York based PR firm. The topic has come up from time to time in press accounts about the Church, and journalists have labored mightily to make this into an interesting fact. I am doubtful. However, there are some interesting Church PR stories, including the…

  • Causing Others to Sin

    Kaimi Wenger

    Kristine raises some interesting points in her discussion of modesty. The comments (which have been very interesting so far) have made me reflect on an argument I often hear raised by church members: Women shouldn’t wear revealing clothes, because that will make men think unchaste thoughts about them. (This particular argument isn’t in the comments…

  • Rebekah

    Julie M. Smith

    I’ve been thinking about Genesis 27 where, according to the headnote, Rebekah ‘guides’ Jacob in receiving a blessing intended for Esau. Even the Institute manual concedes that this story “is a troubling one in many respects.”

  • The Faith of Abraham

    Christopher Bradford

    Jesus is our Great Exemplar, the one who invites us, “Follow thou me.” We are counseled to consider how Jesus would act if he were in our shoes, and to model our lives after his. Some inspiring scriptural passages describe the potential we have to become like him.

  • The Daughters of Zelophehad

    Julie M. Smith

    On several occasions, I have asked rooms full of adults if anyone could relate the story of the daughters of Zelophehad to us. No one has ever been able to do it. That’s a shame. This story needs to be brought forth out of obscurity, to grace the flannel boards in Primary, to star in…

  • The Value of Esotericism

    Christopher Bradford

    When I began participating in online discussion forums, I selected the nickname “Grasshopper,” rather than using my real name. One of the perceived benefits of the Internet is our anonymity (except on this onymous blog, of course). Benefit, yes, but also a drawback, to some extent, since someone posting pseudonymously is clearly hiding something and…

  • Leading the Church Astray

    Julie M. Smith

    My question about what precisely we mean when we say that the prophet will never lead the Church astray came up on another thread. I’d like to explore that question here. A few notes to begin the discussion:

  • Ambulation in Mosiah 4

    James Siebach

    Ambulation in Mosiah 4. Part 1. King Benjamin has infused his sermons with a theology heavily freighted with corporeal rhetoric. I mean by that, he preaches the gospel of Christ, and living the divine life, by using lots of sensory verbs–seeing, hearing, tasting–and lots of mental operations–believing, knowing, understanding, speaking, asking, rejoicing. He also uses…

  • True to the Faith

    Julie M. Smith

    True to the Faith was introduced to the Church in the April 2004 Ensign: “The Church has issued a new doctrinal guidebook aimed at youth, young single adults, and new members. True to the Faith: A Gospel Reference is a collection of brief, simple statements on gospel doctrines and principles. Almost 200 pages in length,…

  • Mother’s Day

    Julie M. Smith

    It’s almost Mother’s Day. I don’t like Mothers’ Day. You might expect to hear that from a woman who is childless, or who has strained relations with her children. I’m a married, at-home mom, and I enjoy being a mom. But I still don’t like Mothers’ Day.

  • Moutain Meadows in the Supreme Court

    Nate Oman

    De Toqueville once remarked on the strange habit that Americans had of eventually turning every great question of politics and policy into a lawsuit, and presenting the issue to the courts for resolution. As it turns out, the Mountain Meadows Massacre also eventually found its way into a lawsuit and in the fullness of time…

  • The Figurative Bible and the Literal Book of Mormon

    Kaimi Wenger

    On another thread, BCC contributor and Sunstone editor managing editor John Hatch makes a very interesting observation. He writes: I’ve spoken to plenty of Church members who are more than willing to accept the Adam and Eve story as a metaphor. I recently spoke to a friend who is a bishop who told me he…

  • The Malaysian Model

    Kaimi Wenger

    So now it’s not just the limited geography and the hemispheric models anymore, now there is the Malaysian model. (Link via Dave). The Malaysia idea is certainly novel, and presented as well as I think it possibly could be. The author, Ralph A. Olsen, notes that it avoids a large number of standard Book-of-Mormon location…

  • That awful smallpox story

    Kaimi Wenger

    One of the more disturbing images from General Conference was in Elder Packer’s use of a story (a version of which I’ve heard before elsewhere) about chicken pox and smallpox. Elder Packer stated: “When I was in the seventh grade, in a health class, the teacher read an article. A mother learned that the neighbor…

  • The Church as a Corporation: Part III

    Nate Oman

    Here are a few more odds and ends about the Church as a corporation that I was able to find out. First, I wanted to correct two mistakes in my earlier posts. I recently found out that after Joseph Smith was murdered, it was not Brigham Young and the Twelve who succeeded to the office…

  • Our Terrible and Tender God

    Ben Huff

    Prepping a guest lecture for seminary a few weeks ago I was struck with the alignment between Adam’s and Eve’s shrinking from the presence of God after they ate the forbidden fruit, and the shrinking of the wicked from the presence of God at judgment (e.g. 2 Nephi 9). Adam and Eve feel naked, and…

  • Ronald Reagan’s Unappreciated Gift to Mormon History

    Nate Oman

    Love him or hate him, Ronald Reagan has given a great boon to Mormon historians, one which they have yet to really appreciate. I am talking, of course, about the legions of conservative judges that Reagan appointed to the federal bench.

  • LDS Hermeneutics

    Julie M. Smith

    My least favorite thing about graduate studies in biblical studies was coming to the realization that there was a multisyllabic, Latin- or Greek- derived word for everything, and that precious few of these words would be found in a standard dictionary. Elder Dallin H. Oaks had an experience with this:

  • Reproductive Ethics

    Julie M. Smith

    As a result of the ‘saved in childbearing’ discussion, my husband and I came up with two interesting ethical questions:

  • More Prooftexts

    Julie M. Smith

    I was inspired by Kristine’s post to think about prooftexts. My nomination is 2 Timothy 3:16: All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:

  • Sinners, all

    Karen Hall

    I have some strange childhood memories. One of the most vivid is my baptism day. October 31, 1981. Unfortunately, the memories of the baptism itself are somewhat hazy, but what I remember clearly is this feeling of being completely cheated by happenstance. I had an October birthday, and our stake did primary baptisms on the…

  • My Least Favorite Prooftext

    Kristine Haglund

    Here it is: What I the Lord have spoken, I have spoken, and I excuse not myself; and though the heavens and the earth pass away, my word shall not pass away, but shall all be fulfilled, whether by mine own voice or by the voice of my servants, it is the same. (Doctrine &…

  • The Church as a Corporation: Part III

    Nate Oman

    This is Part III (see Part I and Part II) of my post on the legal history of the Church as a corporation.

  • Moses as a Key to Theology

    Susan Staker

    We tend to think of theology in discursive terms—as a collection of ideas or propositions. When we talk about the development of theology we are apt to trace the history of abstractions such as faith, hope, love, priesthood. With Joseph Smith, I’ve come to believe it is much more enlightening to attend first to characters…

  • The Church as a Corporation: Part II

    Nate Oman

    What follows is a continuation of my earlier thoughts on church legal histroy (see Part I). Despite the absence of comments, I hope someone is reading this stuff. If not who cares. I have access to the Moveable Type software, therefore I get to post what I want to.

  • The State of the Women

    Julie M. Smith

    Sherrie Johnson, a sociologist at BYU, recently presented findings of a study concerning the satisfaction levels of LDS women. I haven’t seen the study, but there is a Deseret News article about it here.

  • The Church as a Corporation: Part I

    Nate Oman

    I have been doing a bunch of research of late on the history of corporate law. As I was doing so, I was struck by how much of early Mormon history could be illuminated by the evolution of corporate law. What follows in this and subsequent posts are essentially my research notes. We have enough…

  • Do Dogs Go to Heaven?

    Nate Oman

    We recently had to put our dog down. It has been a traumatic experience in our family and has given rise to the inevitable theological quandry: What is the precise spiritual status of animals? I have repeatedly heard people cite to Moses 3:7 — “all things were before created; but spiritually were they created and…