Category: Latter-day Saint Thought
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Grinding the Faces of the Poor Through the Lottery
I do not have the brain chemistry for gambling. If I bet my house on a coin flip and won, I would be a sleepless wreck for weeks anxiously wondering about what would have happened had I lost. (Like tobacco, this is one of those Latter-day Saint rules I would keep even if I left…
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A Review: Second Class Saints
The priesthood and temple ban against individuals with Black African ancestry is a topic that is both fraught and crucial in understanding the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Matthew Harris’s recently-published Second Class Saints: Black Mormons and the Struggle for Racial Equality provides one of the most in-depth looks at…
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Cutting-Edge Latter-day Saint Research, July 2024
Clarke, Steve. “When conspiracy theorists win.” Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy (2024): 1-24.
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John Turner on his Joseph Smith Biography
John Turner is known in Latter-day Saint circles for his biography of Brigham Young and his book The Mormon Jesus: A Biography. Next year, however, he will add to that collection with John Turner’s Joseph Smith biography. Turner recently spoke about the forthcoming biography with From the Desk, and announced that “I loved writing Joseph…
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Churches with Sound Fundamentals Are Very Robust
Imagine President Nelson and the First Presidency came out with a revelation prophesying that the Second Coming would happen on a specific year (yes, that would never happen in the Church for a great number of reasons, but suspend disbelief for a second). This message was trumpeted from the General Conference pulpit on multiple occasions…
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Being a Mormon without Believing in a Historical Book of Mormon, Part 1
I think I stopped believing that the Book of Mormon was historical in 2011. I keep a journal, but didn’t write that “event” down. Anyway, sometime around then, but I’ve continued practicing Mormonism. I was called as a bishop in December 2018, so did the bishop thing not believing the Book of Mormon was historical.…
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Joseph Smith’s Uncanonized Revelations, a Review
Joseph Smith’s Uncanonized Revelations, edited by Stephen O. Smoot and Brian C. Passantino, is a new collection of revelations by or attributed to Joseph Smith. It builds upon the research and publication of documents by the Joseph Smith Papers Project, drawing together the relevant documents into one easily accessible place and providing context for each.…
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On Pie and Beer Day
Last Utah post for a while, I promise Imagine you lived in the Jewish Autonomous Oblast in Russia, or some other area settled by a historically disenfranchised religious group. Also imagine, if you will, that this Jewish or Muslim or what have you group had a local holiday that celebrated their escape from persecution and…
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The New Ex-Mormons
We just returned from our yearly-ish pilgrimage to Utah. Trips to Utah are always an opportunity to stick my finger in the air to get a more subjective, qualitative sense of things are going in the Church. Of course, Utah does not equal the Church in so many ways, but it does act as a…
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A Review: The Last Called Mormon Colonization
Growing up in Utah, I heard many pioneer stories about my ancestors and their colleagues who traveled west to settle the Intermountain West region. I found, however, that many of the stories focused on the journey itself rather than the years that followed as they established settlements and survived in an arid region. The latter…
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Misuse of the “Lost Sheep” Parable
People often misuse the Parable of the Lost Sheep, where the Lord leaves the 99 to go after the 1, and draw analogies and connections that don’t make a lot of sense given the premises of the Parable, so I thought I’d make a set of guidelines for logically using the Parable. Note: I have…
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The 1978 Priesthood Revelation Process
The term “revelation” in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a word with multiple interpretations, as can be seen in the process that led to the 1978 priesthood revelation.
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To Live in Utah or not to Live in Utah? The Grand Debate
I asked Dalle-3 to “Create two images side-by-side, one representing Utah in a good light and one representing Utah in a bad light. Show me images that show bad things particular to Utah and good things particular to Utah, instead of just generic bad and good things.” In the image it generated “the left side…
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Wilford Woodruff and the Founding Fathers
While Wilford Woodruff has only one canonized document in Latter-day Saint scriptures (Official Declaration 1), he did record a number of visions and revelations of his own. Perhaps the best-known among these is his vision of Wilford Woodruff and the Founding Fathers that led him to do proxy temple work for them and other eminent…
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Interesting Wikipedia Articles About Latter-day Saints
Martin Luther King Jr.’s Murderer, Ex-Mormon (according to Wikipedia) James Earl Ray A recent project of mine has been to figure out a way to generate a list of all Wikipedia articles that mention the word “Mormon” or “Latter-day Saint” so that we can generate the comprehensive compendium of all things Latter-day Saint/Mormon on Wikipedia. …
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The Latter-day Saint Chicago Experiment
The Chicago Experiment was an effort to train some of the best teachers in the Church to the academic standards of Biblical Studies applied elsewhere in Western Civilization during the 1930s. The results were mixed, with some of the scholars going on to improve the Church Education System, while others struggled to reconcile what they…
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The Endowment and the Traditional Latin Mass: Beauty, Holiness, and Structure
Due to some things I’m involved in, I recently attended a Traditional Latin Mass (TLM). For the uninitiated, after Vatican II the Catholic Mass was changed to be more user-friendly. It was conducted in the vernacular instead of Latin and was shortened. While in the past the priest traditionally faced towards the East as he…
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All Indians Today Descend From Lehi
As the children of Lehi and Sariah intermarried with first Ishamel’s offspring and then their children intermixed with the natives of the Americas, what has been the result genetically after 2,600 years? Are the American Indians encountered by the Europeans in 1492 and beyond also descendants of Lehi and Sariah?
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Cutting-Edge Latter-day Saint Research, June 2024
Greenhalgh, Spencer P., and Amy L. Chapman. ““Come for the Memes, Stay for Defending the Faith”: Far-Right and Anti-Feminist Red Pill Influences in the# DezNat Twitter Hashtag.” Mormon Social Science Association: 2:1.
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Sien Hoornik, Vincent Van Gogh, and Making All Things New
Sorrow, a Van Gogh drawing of a pregnant Sien Hoornik Selling only one painting during his lifetime, Vincent Van Gogh has become the archetype of the tortured genius not appreciated until after his death. His long-running mental health problems have been the subject of movies and ballads (with one moving example being Don McLean and…
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Wedding Rings as Symbols
I’ve attended my fair share of Latter-day Saint weddings in Utah and there is one common element that has puzzled me.
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Public schools should not post the Ten Commandments
Schools should post the Proclamation on the Family instead.
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The Buddhist Alma the Younger and Forgiving the Unforgivable
While Saul/Paul and Alma the Younger were arguably committing the worst kind of sins by fighting against God, in both narratives they were sincere and possibly even well-meaning, albeit theologically wrong. They weren’t, say, torturing or killing people en masse as far as we know, and it seems like if there is a textbook case…
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Michael Austin on the Book of Mormon
A fascinating read that was recently published is Michael Austin’s The Testimony of Two Nations. I’ve already done a review of the book, but wanted to highlight a recent interview that Michael Austin did at the Latter-day history blog From the Desk that shared some interesting insights from the book. What follows here is a…
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Ancient Horses in the Americas, False Negatives, and the Paleobiology Database
Distribution of Equus fossils in the Americas from the Quaternary, Paleobiology Database The fossil record for horses in the Quaternary in the Americas, a very niche topic, has had particular interest to Latter-day Saints for well-known reasons. At the outset I should lay my cards on the table and state that I hold to a…
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The State of Israel, Follow Up
So quite the discussion a few weeks ago, and my apologies for returning to it since the last one got a little heated. I did mean the post as a Bloggernacle topic, or how do we interpret the issue of the State of Israel in in terms of our religion? Again, that’s why I brought…
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You Might Be a Pharisee if…
The Pharisees get a bad reputation from their portrayal in the gospels, but it probably isn’t deserved. Jewish scholar Amy-Jill Levine recently discussed why that is likely to be the case that we are guilty of misunderstanding the Pharisees in a recent interview at the Latter-day Saint history blog From the Desk. What follows here…
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Joseph Spencer on Bruce R. McConkie’s Legacy
Long-time followers of my blog posts (if any exist) are likely aware that I have a complicated relationship with Elder Bruce R. McConkie. He was hugely influential to me in my teenage years and early twenties before my own views of Latter-day Saint theology began to conflict with his in a few very notable ways.…
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From Whence Muhammad?
Fun fact: One of the most prominent movies about the life of Muhammad (who, out of respect for Sunni Muslim sensitivities, is never actually shown onscreen) was produced and directed by Latter-day Saint Richard Rich, who has also done some Book of Mormon films, and whose aesthetic you might recognize from movies like the…
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Alienation – you keep using that word
I generally have vowed to stay out of specific political discussions online, but this is not about any specific political issue – I have seen this claim too often with many issues or candidates from all side of the spectrum and in different locales (and not just the presidential election in the USA that dominates…