In April 2005, I spent two weeks on assignment for the Joseph Smith Papers Project in Missouri and Illinois, visiting court houses and archives searching for documents pertaining to early Mormon history. On the second evening of my stay in northwestern Missouri, I drove down a lonely dirt road to a desolate place that had significant meaning for me as a Latter-day Saint. When I arrived, I found only a small creek surrounded by trees, grass, mud, and a small plaque that identified the site of the Haun’s Mill Massacre… Read More

That stands for “Historian In, Historian Out”–Times and Seasons bids farewell to one historian, Paul Reeve, and welcomes another, David Grua. Read More

The mission president called. Would I, as his counselor, conduct a baptismal interview? A case he wouldn’t have the zone leaders handle, a woman with a troubled past. Most likely involving a chastity issue. Read More

You heard it here first: a member of the Quorum of the Twelve has ordered you to blog about the Church. Read More

This year, Simon turned nine, Nathan turned six, and Truman turned three. For previous installments, see here, here, and here. Read More

From the archives. This Christmas season I’ll be reposting a few favorite Christmas posts from the past. This first one is from December 18 of 2005 and may not make sense as a Christmas post until a later one I put up. I would appreciate that any substantive comments be left in the combox of the original post. I’m leaving this combox open for any technical comments or for comments on this introductory paragraph. (more…) Read More

If Mormons had a liturgical year, the distinctively Mormon part of December would be tithing settlement, not a limp dutifulness like Joseph Smith’s birthday. Read More

According to Eugene England, this is the best Mormon poem ever written: Read More

In fall 2001 (vol. 27, pp. 125-149) the Journal of Mormon History published an article I wrote entitled “‘As Ugly as Evil’ and ‘As Wicked as Hell’: Gadianton Robbers and the Legend Process among the Mormons.” Let me share a few excerpts from it and then pose a question. Read More

Imagine that universally-respected researchers had determined that most of the people in your community eat too much sugar and fat, and are at serious risk of developing diabetes, hardened arteries, and other ailments associated with poor diet and inadequate exercise. Read More

I have a theological crush (not to be confused with an intellectual crush or a garden variety crush) on Rob Bell. Read More

In 1874 a short lived satirical newspaper appeared in Utah, under the title Enoch’s Advocate: A Temporary Journal Devoted to the Interests of the United Order of Wooden Shoes. The paper’s sole intent was to take jabs both in picture and in print at Brigham Young and the United Order effort he had launched territory wide that year. Read More

“I am persuaded that many do not understand the Church’s teachings about personal criticism, especially the criticism of Church leaders by Church members.” Thus begins Elder Oaks’ 1987 article on criticism, its uses and abuses. Our Relief Society President used it as the basis for a Sacrament Meeting talk last month and I thought it deserved a renewed audience. As is typical of Elder Oaks, this is a well thought out piece. Enjoy! Read More

Clarissa, the daughter of commenter East Coast, is a seventh-grader, the only Latter-day Saint in a student body of more than 600. Read More

Up at 6:20am, into the shower, on with the shirt and tie and jacket. Grap some Grape-Nuts in the kitchen. Open the front door: a half-inch or so of sleet on the ground. No biggie, I think. Normally I walk, but this morning I’m running late, so I hop in the car, drive to the chapel for PEC meeting. No one there. Drive around the chapel twice: still no one there. Cancelled for sleet?, I ask myself. Drive home, log on the computer, check the e-mail. Yep, sure enough: the stake presidency cancelled all meetings yesterday evening (we were supposed… Read More

As of this writing, Google News lists 769 newspaper reports about Mitt Romney’s speech yesterday, and 8,232 stories since yesterday containing the word “Mormon”. Please share your finds with the rest of us. Read More

Much of the commentary and criticism swirling around Mitt Romney and the religion issue seems to take as its starting point the assumption that there is a single Mormon view on any particular issue, decided by LDS leaders and accepted by the LDS membership. Too bad there isn’t a Mormon view on particular issues. That kind of kills the theory. Read More

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We recently surveyed a bunch of politically savvy bloggernacle types — including some of our own T&S crew — and asked them to answer in a few paragraphs this question: “What would you say tomorrow (in the much-anticipated “Religion Talk”) if you were Mitt Romney?” Here are replies we’ve received: Read More

Each Monday they rotate drivers. Every three weeks it is my mom’s turn. She picks up Margarete and MaryLou in her Buick and they drive to St. George to visit Shirlee. Read More

In a 19th-century Utah newspaper, a wise and thoughtful satirist argued that the polygamy “problem” had wrongly been characterized as a numbers issue—how many wives a man had—rather than a quantity issue—how much wife a man had. The satirist offered this ingenious answer under the heading, Read More

I suspect that on Thursday Mitt Romney’s Mormonism will perform the function that Mormonism has been fulfilling in American politics for a century and a half: It will be an anvil on which this mainly Protestant nation hammers out the place of religion in public life. Read More

In the historiography of communication, orality refers to reliance on the spoken word as well as to the corresponding institutions and habits of mind, while literacy means not just the ability to read, but also the mental habits and social institutions that attend the use of writing, or more specifically the use of an alphabetic writing system, or the particular cognitive framework that has developed along with the alphabetic systems of Western Europe. The Mormon concept of a historical apostasy can be described in terms of orality and literacy. In fact, Brian Stock, an eminent historian of medieval literature, has… Read More

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In 1846 during the Mormon Exodus from Illinois, as the Saints were strung out in various camps across Iowa and farther west, Mormon Warren Foote went in search of a mill to grind some of his grain: “It is quite a curiosity for the inhabitants here to see a “Mormon,” he wrote. Read More

Mitt Romney has decided to formally address his Mormonism in a speech this Thursday. His campaign is stressing that he won’t be detailing Mormon doctrine, but speaking more broadly to the role of faith in America and in Mitt Romney. This speech will cause every major news organization on the planet to discuss Mormonism this week, with coverage that may exceed even that of the Salt Lake City Olympics, where Mormonism appeared only as a local interest sub-story. This week Mormonism will be at the center. Over the next week we will offer threads about the speech, commentary and global… Read More

It has no doubt been noticed–for those that care about the deep red-blue rivalries of Utah, anyway–that Times and Seasons does pretty well when it comes to drawing upon the Cougars insofar as perma- and guest-bloggers are concerned, but until this point, our track record with the Utes has been lacking. With arrival of Paul Reeve, an assistant professor of history at the University of Utah, as a guestblogger for the next little while, we hope to turn that record around. Read More

Terryl Givens is doing a great deal in People of Paradox. Read More

Terryl Givens was kind enough to share some reflections on his book, People of Paradox: A History of Mormon Culture, in response to our questions. His answers follow, in italics. Read More