Category: News and Politics

During the first half of the 20th century, Mormons were not only proud of their Church, but were proud to be Americans. Mormons tended to vote in similar ways to residents of the rest of the country. Thirty years later, in 2008, we moved back to Utah. What I found shocked me.

“I’m pro-choice because I believe in agency.” “Women should be free to choose.” “I’m personally pro-life, but other people should have the ability to choose abortion.” I hear these comments all the time from members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Many loud voices popularize these claims; even prominent Latter-day Saint voices…

One type of journalism I particularly enjoy not reading is the LDS-shaped hole in long-form articles about the agonies of American Christianity.

In a long-ago post, John Fowles referred to a Book of Mormon couplet as the book’s thesis: Inasmuch as ye shall keep my commandments ye shall prosper in the land; but inasmuch as ye will not keep my commandments ye shall be cut off from my presence (2 Nephi 1:20)

First and foremost: “The Pure Language Project” in the current volume of the Journal of Mormon History is the best explanation to date of the significance of the documents relating to the Egyptian papyri (referred to collectively as the “Egyptian Language Documents,” or ELD for short) for the development of Church doctrine and Joseph Smith’s…

Apparently in about a week BYU will host a “Women’s Empowerment Event” that is a local variation of similar such events that are being held around the country. Looking at the invites and speakers for the most part it looks like a pretty typical DEI-type event with a bunch of corporate sponsors and speakers such…

It seems like ‘church capacity’ would be a useful concept. In parallel to ‘state capacity,’ church capacity might describe the ability of a religious organization to carry out its missions, promote its doctrine, gain adherents, participate as an entity in broader society and accomplish its other purposes.

The Gesta Romanorum, a medieval collection of moralizing stories, includes the tale of a hermit who despaired at the world’s injustice and resolved to abandon his calling.

Many people have said there’s a gigantic hole in Western US studies/histories. Outside of the realm of “Mormon Studies” very few scholars or historians want to touch Latter-day Saints (except for polemical reasons – Jon Krakauer and Sally Denton have tackled “Mormons”, but for polemical and intellectually suspect reasons). I’ve noticed this as well.  In…

The only other “And Philosophy” essay of mine that mentions the Church is in Sherlock Holmes and Philosophy, though I don’t discuss the obvious thing: the second half of “A Study in Scarlet” where evil Mormons use Danites to terrorize women in marriages with lecherous older men (incidentally, when a young’un, I read a version of “A…

I’ve participated with the “Bloggernacle” since before it was called that (I recall the whole Banner of Heaven debacle, which shows my age somewhat).  I have never served as a power player or all that prolific, and I mostly just lurk these days as I find most of the arguments the same old same old;…

If you’ve been following the LDS blogging world for the last 20 years or so, you’ll recognize Ivan Wolfe from posts and comments at various blogs. Ivan lives in Arizona, where he teaches writing at ASU. He has published essays on several topics I’d like to hear more about, including Battlestar Galactica and Philosophy, The…

It’s true: In March 2022, the FEC fined the DNC and Hillary Clinton’s presidential election campaign for incorrectly declaring payments to an oppo research firm involved with the Steele dossier. As a Democratic voter in 2016, I must say that news of the fine means…absolutely nothing to me. The stakes in the 2016 election were…

If you’ve followed the controversy at Hamline University (located in St. Paul, Minnesota) in recent months with BYU in the back of your mind, you might have felt a degree of familiarity.

There was a BYU faculty member in my ward growing up that mentioned that he had to downplay his being a Democrat at work because, well, BYU.  I had no reason to doubt it at the time, but a few years later when I enrolled at BYU I came to the realization that by far…