Category: News and Politics

We’re happy to present Kurt Manwaring’s interview with Benjamin Park. He’s a professor of history at Sam Houston University and has been a visiting fellow at the Maxwell Institute. He just had published American Nationalisms: Imagining Union in the Age of Revolutions. He’s been working on research on the political culture of Nauvoo in the…

We’ve been in Jerusalem long enough to be able to spend time with pilgrims of varying denominations from all over the world. I personally love the concept of pilgrimage. I love being able to find the spiritual world within the material one, and I love how it brings people together through a special kind of…

As more or less self-appointed wedding-specialist I simply had to watch the “wedding of the year”, between the British prince Harry and the American actress Meghan Markle. And what a splendid event it was, a joy to watch, and a rich inspiration for ‘pondering’. So let us ponder. First, it was a “real wedding” indeed,…

Nephi’s eclectic messianism can be read as prophesying an ethical futurism.

In D&C 46:11 we read, “there are many gifts, and to every man is given a gift by the Spirit of God.” I’ve long taken that to mean that literally every person on earth has a spiritual gift, if they’ll hearken to the light of Christ. Often we don’t realize just how many gifts we…

All my life I’ve imagined the Book of Lehi—those tragically lost 116 pages—as having been written by Lehi. But the Book of Lehi was engraven on plates

This post is part of a series of reflections on I Nephi. If you’re interested, the introduction to the series is here. To peruse earlier entries, click the authors tab at the top of the page and then click on my name. I welcome your own thoughts on these specific verses (or on my reflections) in the…

The term “prosperity gospel” describes an execrable set of ideas in American Christianity, chiefly that wealth is a marker of righteousness, and that believers can ensure material wealth and prosperity through spiritual practices. But “prosperity gospel” is often applied to a much broader set of beliefs

You’ve probably noticed I’ve not been around much of late. I was fighting off a case of the flu which seemed to be persisting a tad long. I figured it might be a secondary lung infection as I was also having fevers at night. I went to the local Instacare expecting to pick up an…

Continuing our work with the 10 Questions team, we are pleased to present Kurt Manwaring’s interview with Spencer Fluhman, Director of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship at BYU and an editor of “To Be Learned is Good: Essays on Faith and Scholarship in Honor of Richard Lyman Bushman.” Manwaring and Fluhman cover a wide…

As part of our work with the 10 Questions team, we will be posting later this week on Kurt Manwaring’s upcoming interview with the Maxwell Institute’s Spencer Fluhman. In the meantime, however, we thought we would highlight a great interview 10 Questions recently posted with Jonathan Stapley, bloggernacle regular and author of “The Power of Godliness:…

Meeting with my ward high priests group has been one of my favorite parts of the week for several years.

To promote #10questions interviews about “To Be Learned is Good” with Richard Bushman, @spencerfluhman, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich and @patrickqmason, @MI_BYU is sponsoring a book giveaway. FOLLOW & RT on Twitter by April 5 for a chance to WIN A FREE COPY.

Based on a talk given this Sunday in sacrament meeting. This year, Easter and General Conference are on the same day, which illustrates how we measure time in multiple ways.

This post is part of a series of reflections on I Nephi. If you’re interested, the introduction to the series is here. To peruse earlier entries, click the authors tab at the top of the page and then click on my name. I welcome your own thoughts on these specific verses (or on my reflections) in the…

Murmuring undermines one’s relationship with God and one’s ability to cope either with the storms of the cosmos or the wounds inflicted by our family members.

In the current unhappy state of online Mormon discourse, stating the obvious is sometimes controversial, and for that reason all the more necessary.

The Society for Mormon Philosophy and Theology will be meeting at Utah State on Friday-Saturday, March 16-17, with a focus on “The Exaltation Revelations,” D&C 76, 84, 88, and 93. The program includes talks on divine justice, the potentially universal scope of salvation, the law of the celestial kingdom, the role of the priesthood in…

“And they did worship the Lord”—that’s the conclusion to the whole row. I wonder at it. What was the change?

As part of our work with the 10 Questions team I’m proud to announce their interview with Matthew J. Grow and R. Eric Smith, editors of The Council of Fifty. The council of 50 is one of the more mysterious bodies Joseph Smith organized. Many people didn’t know of this government body in waiting that…

The eternal cosmological drama in which we’re embedded demands that we work to reflect the divinity of our enemies back to them if we wish them to join with us in our Zionic alliance of apotheosis. And whether we do, that is what we ought to wish.