Category: News and Politics

  • The First Great Mormon Film?

    Greg Call

    No, this post is not about a Richard Dutcher movie (though Brigham City was interesting and well-acted). I am referring to Tasha Oldham’s remarkable documentary, “The Smith Family.”

  • Mormons and “American Jesus”

    Greg Call

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  • Famous Mormons

    Kaimi Wenger

    Practically every church member I know likes to talk about famous Mormons. Of course, there aren’t a lot, and my experience has been once the discussion gets past a few well-known members — Steve Young, Orson Scott Card, Dale Murphy, Shawn Bradley, Danny Ainge, Donny & Marie — the conversation tends to skew towards the…

  • God and Football

    Gordon Smith

    Living in Wisconsin, I have observed that the line between religion and football is thin. During my formative years, I was the lone Minnesota Vikings fan in a small Wisconsin town. Fortunately for me, the Vikings were quite good during the 1970s … although never quite good enough to win the Super Bowl. More importantly,…

  • Sex

    Kaimi Wenger

    Is it good, bad, or neutral, to have sex before marriage? This topic comes up often in discussions in many places. The church has taken the unambiguous position that pre-marital sex is wrong. For us as members, what does the church’s teaching mean about its (and our) attitudes about sex generally?

  • Lord of the Rings

    Gordon Smith

    I saw the third installment tonight. The triology is an awesome accomplishment, but I still liked the books better than the movie. As you may know already, the movie has generated a plethora of Christian reviews (see here for links), mostly positive. Does this strike anyone else as odd?

  • Should I subscribe to Sunstone again?

    Greg Call

    Sunstone magazine is different things to different people: a gadfly; a breath of fresh air; a gripefest; scholarship for nonscholars; a needed Mormon arts outlet; an enabler of apostate rantings. For me, it was a first introduction to a broader range of Mormon thought than I was raised with. Unlike Nate’s youth, mine was devoid…

  • CTR Rings to be Banned in France?

    Matt Evans

    As though Americans needed more evidence of the absurdity of France’s government, today Chirac proposed a law to ban students from wearing religious tokens in school. Chirac thinks this is a moral battle — his conscience leads him to prohibit Jewish boys from wearing yarmulkes at school: “In all conscience, I believe that the wearing…

  • Gay Marriage Humor

    Gordon Smith

    This was sent to me by my friend Dan Burk, who is currently a visiting professor at Berkeley: The consecration of Gene Robison as bishop of the New Hampshire Diocese of the Episcopal Church is an affront to Christians everywhere. I am just thankful that the church’s founder, Henry VIII, and his wife Catherine of…

  • Mormons and the ACLU – Short Redux

    Kaimi Wenger

    A while ago I posted on my blog, discussing whether a good Mormon can also be a good member of the ACLU. (I concluded that it is possible to be both — see the four-part discussion, 1, 2, 3 and 4; see also links to further discussion here). That multi-post discussion in turn kicked off…

  • BYU Law School

    Nate Oman

    Since we have been having a discussion about BYU, I thought I would post a little bit about BYU and my particular discipline: law. Although I went to BYU as an undergrad, I didn’t go there for law school. Still, I have friends that did, I know some of the faculty, and I have always…

  • The “P” Word, Again

    Kaimi Wenger

    Polygamy is in the news once again. CNN reports that an excommunicated member was banned from discussing his ideas about polygamy with his daughter in a child-custody case, and is now suing for the right to teach her about polygamy.

  • How to Make a Mormon Political Theory

    Nate Oman

    How should Mormons use Mormonism to think about law and politics? My question is not about what the “right” Mormon answer is to this or that issue. Rather, it is about how we go about constructing a Mormon theology of politics. It seems that we have three possible alternatives.

  • Mormons as Sports Fans

    Gordon Smith

    After reading the amazing conversation on gay marriage below, I am in the mood for something a little lighter. How about sports? Mormons enjoys sports as much as any group … maybe more than most, since we are sober at sporting events. Anyone out there who is associated with BYU knows that the football team…

  • Against Civic Religion

    Nate Oman

    Some time ago, Russell and Adam challenged me to explain what was wrong with cyrpto-protestant prayers in the public schools. What follows is my response along with some general thoughts on civic religion.

  • Church Boundaries and Political Gerrymanders

    Nate Oman

    Greg’s post below on the criteria used in drawing ward boundaries, reminds me of another interesting issue: the use of ward boundaries as a criteria for drawing political boundaries

  • LDS Fiction Writers

    Gordon Smith

    Below we are discussing books in the Mormon Studies genre, but one of our readers — Sid Sharma from Ann Arbor — emailed me to inquire about LDS authors who write “modern, literary fiction.” Good question. Who are some LDS authors we really love to read? Anyone care to share a review of a favorite…

  • Why Marriage Deserves Constitutional Protection

    Matt Evans

    Maggie Gallagher’s response to conservatives who have expressed qualms about amending the constitution to define marriage is superb. She approaches the issue from two angles. First, on the federalism argument, she points out mundane matters that are part of the constitution, and wonders why these topics merit nationwide uniformity, rather than state-by-state experimentation, but that…

  • The Federal Government as Public Nuisance

    Nate Oman

    I think that most Mormons are aware of that during the last half of the nineteenth century relations between the Church and the federal government were often chilly at best. Most Mormons, however, are unaware of the some the creative legal tactics employed by their nineteenth-century coreligionists.

  • Sex and Censorship at NYU

    Kaimi Wenger

    I just have a millisecond to blog today, but I couldn’t pass up the chance to link this story about the (gasp!) despicable censorship at NYU, that well-known bastion of conservative thought. Apparently they are refusing to let a film student film actual sex for her film project.

  • …And Now The Movie

    Nate Oman

    Of course we always knew it would happen, but we didn’t think that it would happen so quickly: Times & Seasons has been made into a movie, with Helen Hunt and George Clooney, no less. At anyrate, the script has been written. Check it out here

  • What if Davis v Locke arose in Utah?

    Matt Evans

    As I read Dahlia Lithwick’s coverage of the Davis v Locke oral argument, I wondered what approach the court and press would have taken had the case originated in Utah. Dahlia writes: [Justice Kennedy was] bothered by the fact that Davey had his scholarship revoked simply because he’d declared a double major in pastoral ministries…

  • The Utah Domination Clause

    Nate Oman

    Under the Utah Constitution, “[t]here shall be no union of Church and State, nor shall any church dominate the State or interfere with its functions.” The interesting part of this is the Domination and Interference Clauses. What might they mean?

  • Passion Redux

    Gordon Smith

    My entry below about Mel Gibson’s forthcoming film Passion generated some very thoughtful comments that I had overlooked until now. Rather than responding way down there, I thought it best to bring this topic to the top, as it is bound to generate more interest. The focus of the comments — a mini-debate really, between…

  • Mormon Images

    Nate Oman

    There is a strange schizophrenia about popular images of Mormons. On one hand, we get stereotyped as shinny, well-scrubbed, conservative, paragons of middle American virtues circa 1955. On the other hand, we get stereotyped as dangerous, homicidal, polygamist fanatics. As Gordon points out in his post the latter stereotype popped up recently in Law &…

  • Passion

    Gordon Smith

    Have you seen the trailor for Mel Gibson’s film about the last 12 hours of Christ’s life? This has been the subject of much debate, as Jewish leaders raise concerns about anti-Semitism and others respond. Here are some responses from people who have actually seen a rough cut at the behest of the New York…

  • Law & Order: Criminal Intent

    Gordon Smith

    I just saw what was perhaps the most offensive portrayal of the Church that I have ever seen on network television. In an episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent that originally ran on November 16, a young man (almost 18) is cast as a Manson-like figure. He assembles of group of three young women…

  • Should Mormons consider the “Christian Right” as friends?

    Kaimi Wenger

    It seems to me that church members are becoming enamored of the political groups which are often identified “Christian Right” — politically powerful, vocally conservative groups like the Family Research Council, American Family Association, and Focus on the Family. I receive many e-mail messages from family members, forwarding petitions or other communiques from such groups.…

  • My (Mormon) Hang-up with (Opposition to) Gay Marriage

    Russell Arben Fox

    Hello all. My thanks for Nate for inviting me (if only for a while) to participate in this blog, and thanks for the introduction Kaimi. Speaking of such, I notice that Times and Seasons started off without any general explanations or identifying comments. Is that a policy, or just because it was assumed that most…

  • Gay Marriage — David Brooks and the Conservative Case

    Kaimi Wenger

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