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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

Terryl Givens and Richard Bushman share a common pattern of scholarship. Both seek to put the Mormon experience into a broad cultural and historical framework. Both seek engage us by bringing Mormon history into dialogue with the broader history of our shared civilization. This is part of an encouraging direction in serious Mormon scholarship that seems to be moving beyond myopic focus of endless chronicles. Givens’ work had the added benefit of good prose that is actually fun to read. Read More

This story begins at the bitter end, with suicide in a Butte brothel. Read More

His fruitful new study provides lots to chew on this winter. Read More

Terryl Givens’ new book, People of Paradox, provocatively explores how distinctive features of Mormon faith are expressed in Mormon culture. Times and Seasons has decided to hold a symposium to review it, and to take up the conversation it begins. The symposium will include Read More

Here’s a post for your afternoon stupor. What were your mission Thanksgiving meals like? Tell us in the comments. Read More

What’s going to be on your plate tomorrow? Read More

Today, my older brother, James Daniel Fox, turns 40. That’s right: 40. Forty! Which means I’m thirty-nine, and that’s plain crazy. Something has gone dreadfully wrong, I know it. Read More

People of Paradox is unusual: Givens sets out four major paradoxes in Mormon thought and then shows how various aspects of Mormon culture (the life of the mind, architecture, visual art, dance, film, etc.), at various moments in history, negotiate those dilemmas. Read More

People frequently claim that Mormonism is an essentially atheological religion. It is not always exactly clear what is meant by this statement, but it generally seems to me something like we place right practice and sacred stories at the center of our faith rather than an abstract set of propositions. Whatever the merits of this claim, I think that it is hard to deny that the concept of “church doctrine” is enormously important within the church discussions. Read More

When we read the Book of Mormon, whose voice do we think we are hearing? Trying to answer that question, I think, is one of the essential moves in a Mormon mode of interpretation. Consider, for example, 2 Nephi 2:17, where Lehi pauses to speculate on Lucifer’s origins: Read More

In 2004, the church issued True to the Faith, a First Presidency-approved booklet discussing many points of church doctrine. The booklet includes a discussion of birth control. How does that official, First Presidency-approved discussion compare to both President Beck’s recent talk on Mothers Who Know, and to the anti-Beck statement at the What Women Know website? Read More

Is “multiply and replenish the earth” one commandment, or two? Read More

Several women I know and like recently signed on to an anti-President-Beck’s-talk statement. Read More