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9 responses
I was just given access to Chat-GPT’s image functionality. Now you can upload images and have it answer questions about it. (Yes, I know, but bear with me, after this I think it will be a while before we have anything fundamentally new in the AI space, so this might be my last AI series for a while). I’ve always had a sort of passing interest in temple architectural history and design, so I thought I’d get Chat-GPT’s take on the possible architectural influences of different temples, asking it to “explain the architectural influences of this building and provide examples of buildings… Read More
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The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints saw a group of highly-impactful university professors during the 20th century who helped to shape Latter-day Saint thought. For many, Hugh Nibley, Truman Madsen, Eugene England are a well-known part of their experience with the Church. Another figure that deserves to be remembered in that group is Lowell Bennion. In a recent interview at the Latter-day Saint history blog, biographer George Handley discussed Lowell Bennion and his contributions to the Church. What follows here is a co-post to the full interview. Read More
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Events conspired to create a schism in the Church in Mexico, but eventually the Third Convention group that had split reunited with the Church. Read More
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Compiled by Dennis B. Horne Editorial note: the below excerpts from President Kimball’s journal were selected because I find them to be extra uplifting and edifying, or otherwise special in some way. I did not include a date with them because when I encountered and chose them I was interested in precious spiritual experience and insight, not scholarship. Some of these items can be found by using the index and links previously posted as “Precious highlights in President Spencer W. Kimball’s Journal.” Below is what I judge to be some of the cream of the cream in his diary. These… Read More
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A favorite speaker at general conference when I was growing up was Neal A. Maxwell. Eloquent and deeply thought out talks were something of a hallmark for him, with plenty of alliteration thrown in for good measure. His life and discipleship was discussed in a recent interview with Bruce C. Hafen at the Latter-day Saint history blog From the Desk. What follows here is a co-post to the full interview. Read More
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4 responses
A monthly piece summarizing all recent, peer-reviewed scholarly articles and books published on Latter-day Saints. Read More
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Compiled by Dennis B. Horne Editorial note: the below excerpts from President Kimball’s journal were selected because I find them to be extra uplifting and edifying, or otherwise special in some way. I did not include a date with them because when I encountered and chose them I was interested in precious spiritual experience and insight, not scholarship. Some of these items can be found by using the index and links previously posted as “Precious highlights in President Spencer W. Kimball’s Journal.” Below is what I judge to be some of the cream of the cream in his diary. These… Read More
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The Country Music history podcast Cocaine and Rhinestones called this book “everything a Country Artist’s autobiography should be.” Even if you aren’t into this particular genre (I was not and have no plans to read any anytime soon), this is a worthwhile read. And despite the (content warning) constant cussing (including many “f-bombs”), I even felt the Spirit at one point. Let me explain: Read More
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I think I have mentioned before that I am a huge Ryan Burge fan. Ryan Burge is an Associate Professor of something or another at some college or another, but the point is that he is the preeminent go-to for journalists on data visualizations and insights into the sociology of religion in the United States. He recently posted a graph from the very large FIRE survey of college students showing political partisanship by religion, and it looks like our college students are the most Republican of any other religious group. Now, a few things. First, he didn’t formally report the… Read More
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Compiled by Dennis B. Horne Editorial note: the below excerpts from President Kimball’s journal were selected because I find them to be extra uplifting and edifying, or otherwise special in some way. I did not include a date with them because when I encountered and chose them I was interested in precious spiritual experience and insight, not scholarship. Some of these items can be found by using the index and links previously posted as “Precious highlights in President Spencer W. Kimball’s Journal.” Below is what I judge to be some of the cream of the cream in his diary. These… Read More
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The ideal husband, according to Midjourney In the movie “Her” the Joaquin Phoenix character develops a relationship with an AI during a messy divorce. Released about a decade ago, the movie addresses philosophical themes about personhood and relationships that at the time seemed interesting in a philosophy class thought experiment way, but not really relevant to our day-to-day. Well, I just got access to Chat-GPT’s new voice function, and we’re there now. Admittedly, it does still pause before answering, but besides that there’s very little that would distinguish it from a real human being. The staccato-like speech that characterized previous… Read More
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Despite dealing with isolation and neglect, Latter-day Saints in Mexico continued to function and serve well. But eventually, things reached a breaking point. Read More
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At the last general conference, I was impressed by something briefly mentioned by Quentin L. Cook. He talked about a seventh-generation member from Tahiti, with her ancestors joining the Church in 1845 (2 years before the Latter-day Saints in the U.S. migrated to Utah/Deseret or Brigham Young organized the First Presidency).[1] It was a brief (but important) reminder that the history of the Church is larger than the United States and the United Kingdom, even in the earliest days of the Church. While Micronesia and Guam do not have as long of a history with the Church as Tahiti or… Read More
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I thought it would be interesting to run some basic numbers on how many people from different groups we could expect in our wards and other associations if they were representative. There are a number of takeaways here. First, if there aren’t this many people in your ward, Elder’s Quorum, or what have you, then your Church experience is non-representative of the US and that should be acknowledged. Second, in the case of demographics that aren’t as easily visible or selective by religion these numbers give a reasonable estimate of how many of these different groups are in your wards… Read More
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Today marks the 200th anniversary of the day Joseph Smith said that he saw the golden plates, with last night being the anniversary of the evening that he recalled the Angel Moroni appearing to him. Yet, from time to time, there have been questions raised about whether Joseph Smith consistently said that it was Moroni who appeared to him. A couple of those questions have been addressed in posts from the Latter-day Saint history blog From the Desk about the Angel Moroni and the Salamander Letter. What follows here is a co-post, focusing on the question of who Joseph Smith claimed… Read More
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Joseph Smith claimed that the Book of Abraham was a translation of some of the papyri he purchased along with some mummies in Kirtland. It is difficult to ascertain the full nature of those papyri since a lot of them burned. But we can learn some about the history of those papyri from the fragments which remain. In a recent interview at the Latter-day Saint history blog, Kerry Muhlestein discussed some of what we know about the ancient owner of the Book of Abraham papyri. What follows here is a co-post to the full interview. Read More
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Like many I’ve been recently drawn to the hard-to-look-away car crash that is the Tim Ballard/OUR saga. I am very disconnected from the conservative Utah zeitgeist that’s given rise to this debacle, and I haven’t done a deep dive into the particulars, but in a sense that makes my perspective not worthless on a meta-level in terms of messaging, since I think my experience mirrors that of most members on the street who only have a casual familiarity with what’s going on. A few things can be true at once, as much as people try to pigeonhole these types of… Read More
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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. Read More
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I’ve had a sense for a while now that people tend to exaggerate the influence of the Church on Latter-day Saint and Utah politics. Its influence is important to be sure, but some have this image that half of Utah is ready to jump when 50 North Temple Street says jump, and I’ve always thought it’s more complicated than that. Case in point, was there a discernible bump in vaccinations in Utah after the Church officially endorsed getting the COVID vaccine? I looked at the total number of vaccinations administered by state across time in Utah and nearby, non-LDS states… Read More
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Harold B. Lee: Life and Thought by Newell G. Bringhurst (Signature Books, 2021) is a highly affordable and readable biography of one of the most influential figures in the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Although his tenure as president of the Church was short, Harold B. Lee had already reshaped much of the Church’s administration in the forms of Correlation, the Welfare Program and the mentoring of general authorities even before becoming the prophet-president. Bringhurst explores the life of this remarkable man in this volume of Signature Books’s Mormon Lives (or brief biographies) series. Read More
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While Mexico had stabilized from the Revolution, the 1920s saw continuing strains for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Mexico. Read More
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Orchestra of Angels I’m not a musical person. I was started on the classical guitar quite early and became decently proficient at it by the time I was in Jr. High, but I just didn’t have the fire to practice for hours like many in the music world have. I enjoy a good tune, but I can’t tell the difference between, say, Mozart and something a graduate student would write (I actually wonder if musicologists couldn’t without pre-existing knowledge of Mozart’s musical corpus and it’s emperors with no clothes all the way down, but I digress). However, there is some… Read More
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The Community of Christ and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are sibling churches, both descending from the early Latter Day Saint movement. Since each group went their own way after the death of Joseph Smith in the 1840s, however, they have spent the last 170+ years growing and developing in different ways. In a recent interview over at the Latter-day Saint blog From the Desk, Kat Goheen (member of the Community of Christ) and Joshua Sears (Latter-day Saint) discussed how the two groups have developed differently in their approach to scriptures. What follows here is a co-post to… Read More
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The Latter-day Saint colonies in Mexico were becoming successful after years of effort. But the Mexican Revolution changed them forever. Read More
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Saqiyuq is an oral history of three generations of Inuit women who lived on Baffin Island near Greenland. Of particular interest to me was the grandmother matriarch’s history, since, born in 1931, she provided a first-hand account of the transition from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle where people starved or not depending on the ebb and flow of the caribou herds, all the way to snowmobiles and state schools. A few observations/excerpts apropos to this blog: 1) Apphia, the grandmother matriarch, provided an account of the competition between the Anglican and Catholic missionaries for Inuit converts, with nearly all the non-Inuit in… Read More
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It’s been a bit since we last had an update on the new hymnbook and children’s songbook, but it sounds like we’re getting close to an announcement of the project coming to full fruition. Read More
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The Listener, by James Christensen Meditation is one of those practices with religious roots that has managed to become popular even in very secular, non-believing spaces, but I haven’t really caught the meditation bug. I’ve done a few guided meditations and have enjoyed them, but in terms of stress release I’d rather just get a massage or play soccer. On a recent podcast I listened to the guest mention that he had tried the floating tank fad and “just got bored.” It was one of those moments when you hear somebody confirm something you haven’t been able to admit to yourself… Read More
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The Mexican Revolution impacted every Mexican, and that included the Mexican Latter-day Saints, some of whom did their best to stay out of the conflict, some of whom became casualties of war, and some of whom joined in the revolution. Read More
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A monthly piece summarizing all recent, peer-reviewed scholarly articles and books published on Latter-day Saints. Bushman, Richard Lyman. Joseph Smith’s Gold Plates: A Cultural History. Oxford University Press, 2023. The venerable Richard Bushman’s latest; a cultural history on the golden plates as artifacts. He’s been working on this for years. “Bushman examines how the plates have been imagined by both believers and critics—and by treasure-seekers, novelists, artists, scholars, and others—from Smith’s first encounter with them to the present. Why have they been remembered, and how have they been used? And why do they remain objects of fascination to this day?”… Read More
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A couple years ago, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints included a list of the covenants made during the endowment session in their general handbook. It was a surprise, to be sure, but a welcome one. Yet, I missed a part of the significance of the text presented until reading a recent interview with Samuel R. Weber over at the Latter-day Saint history blog From the Desk—not only are the specific covenants included, but definitions were as well. In particular, the Law of the Gospel, had an official definition pinned down for the first time in recent history, which… Read More