Category: Latter-day Saint Thought
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Book Review: To Stop a Slaughter: Just War and the Book of Mormon by Morgan Deane
Among “amateur” LDS scholars (however you want to define that), Morgan Deane is, in my estimation, unfairly overlooked. While his specialty – military history – is something of a niche (though it shouldn’t be), it readily works with the Book of Mormon, especially with the accounts of wars. Part of the issue, methinks, is that…
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On Marion D. Hanks
Marion D. Hanks is one of the most influential general authorities who never served in the Quorum of the Twelve or First Presidency. Today he is best known for his hymn, “That Easter Morn”, his advocating for Christlike service, and the support he lent to Black members of the Church in the years leading up…
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Historical Narratives and the Pharisees
Growing up in the Church, I repeatedly heard stories where missionaries encountered people who had been reading anti-Mormon literature and told them that “you wouldn’t decide on which car to buy by reading only the stuff put out by a company’s competitors – you would also read what the company that produced the car has…
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Why the King James Version is the Best Bible Translation
As a TBM there are a surprising number of issues dealing with religion where I have some agreement with Richard Dawkins, and one of them is that the King James Version is the best version of the Bible. When I say “best,” I don’t mean “most accurately conveys the oldest documents.” I know there are…
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J.R.R. Tolkien and the Resurrection
J.R.R. Tolkien had an enormous impact on my teenage years. I read Lord of the Rings by the time I was eleven and loved it enough to reread it each year for the next few years. By the time I was thirteen, the Silmarillion was my favorite book and my mom was bringing home the…
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CNN Doesn’t Even Have to Dog Whistle With Us
This morning this headline was prominently displayed at the top of the page of CNN (on the mobile version, the Internet version was much more tame to their credit). The version I snapshotted above is newer, the original version had “Mormon” prominently displayed in both the title and the subheading. (It originally said something…
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Sonia Johnson: A Mormon Feminist, a Review
Sonia Johnson: A Mormon Feminist by Christine Talbot is a provocative and insightful entry in University of Illinois Press’s Introductions to Mormon Thought series.
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Russell M. Nelson: 100 Years Old
Today marks the 100th anniversary of President Russel M. Nelson’s birth. Celebrations in Utah are abounding to mark this milestone—the first time The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has had a Centenarian at its helm. For example, Utah Governor Spencer J. Cox declared the day as “President Russell M. Nelson Day” in the…
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Top Mormon Studies Amateurs
Mormon Studies is relatively open-minded when it comes to accepting the contributions of amateurs. Here I am defining amateurs as people who are not employed by academia as their main gig, whether or not they have a graduate degree–some do, some don’t; also, here I am defining “Mormon Studies” broadly, as any original research endeavor…
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Secret Covenants: A Review
It seems that there is always more to discover and discuss about Joseph Smith’s introduction of plural marriage into the church. Secret Covenants: New Insights on Early Mormon Polygamy, edited by Cheryl L. Bruno is going to be a landmark in those discussions moving forward.
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Data Visualization of New Testament Books by Size, Time Since Christ, and Authenticity
A part of the graph, the link below has the whole thing. Of the big AI players, Anthropic’s Claude is quite good at making diagrams, so I used it to generate an infographic I’ve always wanted to see, something that conveys in one visual how far away from Christ a book in the NT was…
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On Premortality and the Priesthood and Temple Ban
When I was a priest, the adult advisor was excited to teach us a lesson about the premortal existence. He bounded up, grinning from ear to ear as usual, and said “I’ve been doing lots of reading, and I have some great stuff to share,” and he did. For the most part, it was an…
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The Kirtland Temple Endowment
In modern Latter-day Saint terminology, the Endowment is a specific ordinance performed in temples around the world. In the first temple to be constructed by church members (the House of the Lord in Kirtland), however, the term has a somewhat different meaning. In a recent interview at the Latter-day Saint history blog From the Desk,…
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Five stories about the time God told me to run a marathon
1. …and all I got was a finisher’s medal Saying that God told me to run a marathon is a provocative formulation, but not inaccurate.
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Apologetics and the Sheep Stealing Model
A few days ago Latter-day Saint apologist Jacob Hansen of A Thoughtful Faith had a debate with noted Catholic apologist of Pints with Aquinas fame Trent Horn that has been garnering some attention. At the outset, I love these sorts of things. A respectful but straightforward debate about contrasting religious views can help both…
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Review: Bruce R. McConkie: Apostle and Polemicist, 1915–1985
Bruce R. McConkie: Apostle and Polemicist, 1915–1985 by Devery S. Anderson is the latest entry in Signature Books’ Brief Mormon Lives project. As has been the case with other books in the series, this one is a short biography of an individual of note in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and is…
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An Abbreviated Journal of Discourses
While Bruce R. McConkie’s controversial Mormon Doctrine is famous in Latter-day Saint circles, it wasn’t his first controversial project. Prior to that time, he worked on preparing a “best-of” collection from the Journal of Discourses that was known as Sound Doctrine. The project was close to publication when the First Presidency intervened and shut it…
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A Review: Unique But Not Different
Unique But Not Different: Latter-day Saints in Japan by Shinji Takagi, Conan Grames, and Meagan Rainock is a fascinating glimpse into the world of Japanese Latter-day Saints. The book is based on a comprehensive survey data, which it explores to examine the diverse social, political, and ideological backgrounds of Japanese Latter-day Saints. Over the course…
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Smith Family Women
Joseph Smith grew up in a family with strong-willed women. Among those are two who left some notable records of the early Church, particularly Lucy Mack Smith (his mother) and Katharine Smith Salisbury (his sister). Two recent posts at the Latter-day Saint history site From the Desk discuss these two Smith family women and their…
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Book of Mormon Historicity, Part 3: Quiet
So I often think about life when I finally finish the book I’ve been working on for a long time. Probably a lot of questions and some unhappiness both from Orthodoxy and ex-Mormons. Both sides may be unhappy that I held such views while serving as bishop. That’s understandable. One point I wanted to address…
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O’Sullivan’s Law and Latter-day Saint-Adjacent Organizations
Chat-GPT’s rendition of a very strict, orthodox Mormon, right next to a liberal, heterodox Mormon, because even heterodox Mormons still wear buttoned-up, tucked-in shirts evidently. O’Sullivan’s law, one of those cute Internet “laws,” states that “any organization or enterprise that is not expressly right wing will become left wing over time.” Like most Internet laws,…
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Being a Mormon without Believing in a Historical Book of Mormon, Part 2
Again I make no pretenses to “resolving” this complicated topic and expect plenty of pushback, but, like I said in my last post, I see these conversations as important. It does appear to me that the evidence is contrary to the BoM being historical (I’ll post about that more), and yet I see Mormon practice…
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A Review: Commentary on the Community of Christ Doctrine & Covenants, Volume 1
I’ve been hunting down resources to use in studying the Doctrine and Covenants, and one of the books I wanted to highlight in that regard is the Commentary on the Community of Christ Doctrine & Covenants Volume 1: The Joseph Smith Jr. Era, by Dale E. Luffman. It is a fascinating glimpse into both the…
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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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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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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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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…