If you’re in the Los Angeles area, don’t forget to check out Sunstone West this weekend. Tonight’s program includes a showing of Nobody Knows: The Untold Story of Black Mormons, and tomorrow’s program includes a list of speakers and presentations on some interesting-sounding topics. I hope to see some of you there. Read More

My father used to point to the ceiling in our living room and claim he could still see a dent made by my head as I jumped up in excitement over discovering that my call was to the Switzerland Geneva Mission. Read More

Although she had immigrated to Boston, the story of Misha Defonseca didn’t get nearly as much press last week in the U.S. as it did in Europe, when she joined a long line of self-confessed fakes Read More

One of the distinctive features of the Book of Mormon is its pervasive anxiety about literacy Read More

The Church says it intends to discipline the missionaries responsible for these photographs. Given that they appear to have returned from their missions, what is that discipline likely to be? Beyond that, while these pictures certainly aren’t respectful or in good taste, how many returned missionaries out there have similar sorts of photographs sitting in their picture albums at home? Might not want to upload those to Facebook or Flicker any time soon… Read More

A few recent comments over at BCC have elaborated on a theme that one hears from time to time on the internet: “I didn’t get the whole scoop on LDS history while I was in Primary.” Read More

Elder Packer’s article in this month’s Ensign closes with some thoughts on Evolution that have the potential to stir up a debate on the issue within the Church after several relatively quiet years. Read More

How about the one about the frog in boiling water? Read More

Remember that one about youth being generals in the war in heaven? Read More

Among my many other vices, I like to read poetry. Read More

Should a psychologically healthy person be happy, cheerful, carefree? If you are not cheerful is there something wrong with you? Let’s see what Mormon scripture has to say. Read More

Today’s news carries a deja vu article: Surveys show high rates of depression in Utah, and some psychiatrists wonder if Mormon culture is part of the cause. (The story runs under a pretty direct illustration that shows an apparently depressed woman and a photo of the temple in the background.) Read More

I’m frequently asked how to homeschool kindergarten, so I thought it might be useful to post it for future reference. Read More

The Salt Lake Tribune recently ran a column written by Grant Palmer arguing that Christian salvation turns not on the performance of ordinances but rather on an ethical life. Theologically speaking, the article (as Dave has pointed out nicely) is a pretty pedestrian, anti-sacramental, and essentially Protestant reading of the New Testament. The really interesting question raised by the article is not its theology, but rather what it is doing on the editorial page of an mainstream, secular newspaper. I think that we can safely dismiss the notion that the column was published because the Trib has taken it upon… Read More

Mormons contributed to Mitt Romney’s campaign over the past year and half in some pretty eye-popping numbers (see, e.g., here and here). As such, I decided to comb through the campaign finance contribution records to see who exactly some prominent Mormons were donating to this past election cycle. Read More

Once upon a time, The Great Apostasy by Elder James E. Talmage was on every Mormon’s reading list. But somehow that topic went out of fashion for a couple of decades — no LDS books treated the subject and it received considerably less attention in General Conference talks. Suddenly, the Great Apostasy seems to be back. Read More

SMPT is meeting at the University of Utah on March 27-29, and the conference program is now posted on the web. Featured speakers include Stephen T. Davis of Claremont McKenna College and Jad Hatem of Saint Joseph University, Beirut. The conference is free and open to the public. Davis will also deliver a Tanner-McMurrin Lecture at Westminster College that weekend. Read More

An Onion article out today, like most good Onion articles, works off a premise that’s largely true. The headline reads “Rock-Bottom Loser Entertaining Offers From Several Religions” and the money quotes are: Read More

The Church issued a press release today annoucing the creation of a “Church Historian’s Press” to handle the publication of the Joseph Smith Papers. (The press release also mentioned “works related to the church’s history and growth.”) I am not quite sure what the rationale for this is. Previous volume of the papers were published by Deseret Book, which did a nice enough job, although of late the physical publication standards at Deseret Book have been falling. Perhaps the new imprint is to insure library quality production values. Maybe it just reduces administrative hassle to have the production done in-house,… Read More

Times and Seasons welcomes its latest guest blogger, Marc Bohn. Read More

The name Thomas has a tortured history in Mormonism. Read More

A medical bleg from a bloggernacle regular in need: My oldest daughter is expecting her third child. She has not slept (except for three hours) in twelve days. Read More

In the online Deseret News: “Today in the Bloggernacle,” with links to posts at BCC, Nine Moons, and Millennial Star. I’ve seen similar posts in recent weeks (such as here and here) under different titles but with the same format, so this appears to be a new regular feature. Just one more reason to check spelling and grammar before you hit the “post” button. Read More

I thought that one of Richard Bushman’s most provocative arguments in Rough Stone Rolling was his interpretation of the temple endowment, and I’ve been surprised that it hasn’t generated more interest. Read More

Regina Spektor’s contribution to the underrepresented lyrical genre of speculative historical romance suggests, from the perspective of Delilah, that the story could have ended differently: Read More

Angela Hallstrom’s debut novel, Bound on Earth, is worth reading. Read More

Earlier this month, Thomas S. Monson was set apart. This coming conference, church members will be asked to sustain him as President of the church. And members will almost certainly sustain him. But what if they didn’t? Read More

How often do you want to “fix things” for someone you love because you (think you) see so much more clearly than he does? Read More