BYU’s speaker policy: “No speaker will be invited to campus whose expression of personal or political values would demean the principles of BYU and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” Read More

Do all job seekers, academic or otherwise, share Mitt Romney’s “Mormon problem?” Where do you list your religion on your CV? Nowhere. Everywhere. Read More

This post is third in my series of moving angst. Read More

I think that one of the reasons that God commanded Brigham Young to build the Salt Lake Temple was to signal his discount function. Read More

A quick question/poll, for our readers: Do you use aggregation to read blogs? If so, which aggregator(s) do you typically use? The major choices I’m aware of are Archipelago, LDSelect, and Google Reader; are there other popular options? Do you use any of these? All of them? Why (not)? And what feature(s) do you (not) use? I’m curious. Read More

Apparently more men are taking their wives last name on marriage (hat tip: Stephen Thurston). And hey, this sounds like a great idea. I’m just wondering how to make it work with polygamy. Pity the poor membership clerk who has to update the records of that new member, Brigham Work Angell Decker Beaman Huntington Partridge Snow Rollins Pierce … Read More

How comfortable would you be if someone important – your prospective father-in-law, or that trophy client you’ve been courting – showed up at your door and asked to go to church with you? Read More

How I spend my Sunday nights, and what it means for the future of Mormon thought. Read More

The standard reply to every bad-bishop or awful-ward story is well known by now: “The church is perfect, but the members aren’t.” Your interaction with an awful leader or member or ward — hypocritical, sexist, gossipy, unrighteous dominion, Red Sox fan, or otherwise unpardonable — is due to the humanity involved. The church itself is just fine, and please bear in mind that hide-bound church individuals are hide-bound only in their individual capacity. Why, the scriptures even tell us that unrighteous dominion is sadly inevitable. How exactly do we reconcile that line of reasoning with Matthew 7? Read More

This Friday and Saturday, the Miller-Eccles group in southern California will hear a presentation from Rob Briggs on the topic: “Mountain Meadows Massacre: How could this heinous massacre have happened?” Information is as follows: Read More

Over the last several years, I’ve gotten to know a good number of Mormon men whose life goal is to land an academic job in order to provide for their family. Read More

The Mormon court system emerged from the much older tradition of ecclesiastical discipline among the English Protestants who settled North America. Read More

Tomorrow will mark the fourth anniversary of the beginning of the war in Iraq. Several bloggers have acknowledged that anniversary this month by responding to a challenge: link to whatever you wrote about the war in March 2003, and explain what, if anything, you were wrong about. I have put up my own response here. But for Times and Seasons, I want to reprint something else I wrote, just under four years ago: a post inspired by President Gordon B. Hinckley’s April 2003 General Conference address, “War and Peace”. Read More

The Book of Revelation was intended to be interpreted symbolically. Read More

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Several months ago, I blogged on this topic at FMH. For Women’s History Month, I’d like to revisit the question, for this somewhat different audience: From a feminist perspective, is polyandry more or less acceptable than polygyny? Read More

Earlier this week I engaged in what I am told is an annual academic ritual, and wrote a memo to the Dean explaining what I have done this year in terms of teaching, scholarship, and service. Since I have been engaged in a number of projects related to Mormon studies, the question arises should I include these in the memo? Does Mormonism “count” academically speaking? Read More

Folks in the nacle are talking recipes lately. I’ll share a tasty winter recipe I made a few weeks ago: A basic (but quite tasty) Pork Roast. Read More

In a job interview, the rhetorical approach you are looking for is “I can solve all your problems for you”: increase enrollments, raise the department’s research profile, advise the student club, pull in outside funding, the whole enchilada. (Can you really do all this? Of course you can! You now have a Ph.D., right?) Now is not the time for false modesty. Humility, however, is an essential part of your job search. Read More

Feminist Mormon Housewives has been in superlative form in celebrating Women’s History Month. WHM posts so far have included Ronan’s discussion about an Akkadian princess and poetess; Julie’s feminist Family Home Evening lesson; Kiskilili’s discussion of women’s status in Ancient Mesopotamia; Margaret Toscano’s personal essay about her history; Heather O.’s post on pregnant women soldiers in the Civil War; Julie’s Young Women’s version of the anointing at Bethany; and now a guest post from Todd Compton about the life and feminism of Emily Dow Partridge. It’s simple — if you’re not reading FMH this month, then you’re missing out on… Read More

FYI. A change in policy effective this month: Read More

By now, everyone knows about Arthur Killer Kane, the bassist of the New York Dolls who converted to Mormonism. But there is another significant Mormon connection to the 1970s glam rock scene. Read More

Wells run dry – TEST Read More

Of all the women whose stories have been told in these pages, Ora Johnson Dalton would probably be the most astonished to learn that her life could be honored as a model of faith. Read More

These church bulletin bloopers have been making the rounds; on the off chance you haven’t seen them yet: Read More

Over at the great and spacious blog, Richard Bushman writes that “what I would hope for [in blogging] is more serious and focused thought, the kind that Nate Oman turns out, rather than off-the-cuff chatter that is fun but leads nowhere.” Similarly, recent discussion at DMI focuses on whether blogging can or should displace conventional scholarship. These discussions touch on the same questions: Why are we blogging, anyway? Are some types of blogging more valuable than others, as Bushman seems to suggest? Should we all be more like Nate? Read More

I am currently doing some research on Mormon legal history, and earlier today found myself reading through an old issue of Western Humanties Review from 1951. Read More

A recent Gallup poll explored what Americans think of Mormons. Read More