In a recent research paper, economist Lee Crawfurd seeks to answer this question by comparing missionaries who served in a predominantly high-income region – Europe – with those who served in low- and middle-income areas – Africa, Asia, or Latin…
Category: Mormon Life
Mormon Life – Family – Personal Reflections
Church is not boring
To correct one misconception, our Sunday meetings are not boring.
Moving on up
So the announcement that youth would rotate up in each January came as a surprise to a lot of people. Here are my first thoughts on the matter: I have heard more concern expressed recently that children in Senior Primary…
The New LDS Hymnbook: Changes and Possibilities
Recently, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced that they were going to prepare a new hymnbook and children’s songbook for use in the worldwide Church. Specifically, the goal is to create unity in hymn numbers and selections…
The Bread of Life, with Chocolate Chips
Today I am pleased to present a guest post from a good friend of the blog, Samuel Morris Brown. I learned to cook when my wife was recovering from cancer surgery. There’s a hollowness, kindred to cancer, hungry to swallow…
The Ever-So-Slightly Endangered BYU Man
A recent leak revealed what appears to be an old scale for evaluating potential BYU students. Basically, you take 10*GPA + ACT and then add points for stuff, like being from outside the West or taking AP classes. The most…
What the LDS Can Learn From the NFL
It has been a tough year for the NFL. Football is a sport; the NFL is a brand. After years of growing viewership, energetic fan support, spiking television revenue, and multiplying sponsorships, a series of largely self-inflicted mishaps has tarnished…
The Brigham Option: Living in a Post-Christian Nation
I have heard a lot about Rod Dreher’s The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation (2017), so I finally got a copy and read it. Short summary: Christian writer figures out Protestants no longer enjoy the…
Fiction and Culture: Mette Ivie Harrison’s The Bishop’s Wife
A good Mormon mystery Novels — particularly good ones — convey a sense of place. This is absolutely true of mystery novels, from Kwei Quartey’s police detective in Ghana to Alexander McCall Smith’s private detective in Botswana. But how much…
The Cult of Happiness
I attended a local Tedx evening earlier this week. One talk critiqued the “cult of happiness” that is fostered by social media posts. Everyone posts the great or good things about their life, complete with carefully cropped photos (the trip…
Practical Apologetics: What’s Wrong With You?
How do you talk to an Ex-Mormon? Or a less-active Mormon who you bump into at church or a ward activity or the grocery store? Here are some examples of what *not* to say: What’s wrong with you? Why don’t…
Reviving Our “A Mormon Image” Photo Series
We’ve decided to revive our long dormant photo series “A Mormon Image,” which features photos and other images that carry meaning for us because they resonate with our “Mormonness.” As part of this, we’d like to issue a renewed call for…
Guest Post: What Can LGBT Mormons Hope For?
A year and a half ago, I invited John Gustav-Wrathall, president of the support group Affirmation: LGBT Mormons, Families & Friends, to share his thoughts on the Church’s new policy affecting LGBT members and their children (see All Flesh from December 2015). Diverging responses…
Children at the Pulpit?
Yesterday was testimony meeting (for some of you, fast and testimony meeting). By good fortune, I have never had much anxiety about the “ward crazies” who say such interesting things on open mic Sunday — by good fortune, the wards…
Being subject to Voldemort
Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that Donald Trump is likely to destroy American democracy while leaving the nation in ruins and the world in flames, and let’s further assume that all of these are bad things. (I don’…
The Primary Program: Reflections and lessons learned
And now for something a little different on T&S… This past Sunday our ward Primary presented its annual program. As I was writing the program last month, I appreciated seeing sample scripts and reading other Primary leaders’ reflections online, so…
Accidental Institutional Skills, Like Genealogy
Strange thing: Simply by working to accomplish their primary mission, large institutions develop skills and capacities somewhat or even entirely unrelated to that primary mission. So, for example, the US Army is very good at education, because it has to…
“Come Back” — with some thoughts on why they left in the first place
A couple of weeks ago I taught Lesson #12 in the Howard W. Hunter manual, titled Come Back and Feast at the Table of the Lord. The title comes from Pres. Hunter’s remarks at the press conference given the day…
Going All Sorts of Gentile
It’s almost Pentecost, when the Holy Ghost went wild, which brings to fiery minds the thought of not only that particular world-turned-upside-down event but assorted others a whole lot like unto it, which other events alas never got their own…
20th Century LDS Thought on Sexual Assault: Some Context
The Salt Lake Tribune recently published an article called “How outdated Mormon teachings may be aiding and abetting ‘rape culture.’” While I am also concerned about ways in which Mormon culture may encourage rape culture (see here and here and…