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9 responses
It’s been a long time coming, but this is part III of a series on “Scams in Zion,” with part I (showing that Latter-day Saint-heavy counties have less fraud) here, and part II discussing our multilevel marketing problem here. Here I’m directly addressing a particular kind of affinity fraud we’re known for: Ponzi schemes. I ran across a site where a financial lawyer fairly exhaustively tracks all known Ponzi schemes in the US over one million dollars and provides a helpful database. I went ahead and downloaded his file, pulled the number of people in each state from the… Read More
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Voice of the Saints in Mongolia by Po Nien (Felipe) Chou and Petra Chou is an informative account of the establishment and growth of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Mongolia. As the first comprehensive history of the Church in Mongolia, the book breaks historical ground and provides valuable insights into the challenges and blessings of bringing the gospel to a rugged, harsh climate and a people with deeply rooted (non-Christian) beliefs and traditions. Read More
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9 responses
The most cited article I’ve ever written was also my first professional publication: “Why Your Mormon Neighbor Knows More About This Shows Than You Do” in Battlestar Galactica and Philosophy from Open Court Press (not to be confused with the Battlestar Galactica and Philosophy from Blackwell Press). One reason I wrote that article was that while there were a few scattered articles, websites, and other venues that acknowledged LDS/Mormon influence on the original show (and the faint traces of it in the more recent version), nearly all of them got something wrong – often egregiously so. Read More
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11 responses
I had a season in my life when I was angry at God and it was more than a passing blip that was quickly buried under fear of getting struck by lightning. Anger at God is in some ways the summun malum of sin. Having moments of weakness that lead to poor decisions is one thing, but an act of conscious rebellion is rightfully put into a whole other category. It was a dark season when it felt like we had a target on our back: financially we were sinking deeper into the red while it seemed like virtually everything… Read More
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24 responses
The race-based priesthood and temple ban that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had in place from the 1850s until 1978 is a heavy, but important subject to study. I’ve shared a review about W. Paul Reeve’s recently-released Let’s Talk About Race and Priesthood where I stated that it was one of “the best and most important entries in a fantastic series”, and I stand by that statement. Recently, W. Paul Reeve shared some of the insights he has gained from his research on the topic of race and the priesthood in an interview at the Latter-day Saint… Read More
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3 responses
Joseph Smith rarely wrote poetry, but there are a couple notable exceptions. Read More
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8 responses
I’ve participated with the “Bloggernacle” since before it was called that (I recall the whole Banner of Heaven debacle, which shows my age somewhat). I have never served as a power player or all that prolific, and I mostly just lurk these days as I find most of the arguments the same old same old; you can only have the same arguments about authority, obedience, scripture, etc. before they get really tiring. However, I do have a few random thoughts/reflections (in no particular order) on the ‘Nacle based on my many years hanging around. Your mileage will definitely vary about… Read More
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3 responses
If you’ve been following the LDS blogging world for the last 20 years or so, you’ll recognize Ivan Wolfe from posts and comments at various blogs. Ivan lives in Arizona, where he teaches writing at ASU. He has published essays on several topics I’d like to hear more about, including Battlestar Galactica and Philosophy, The Princess Bride and Philosophy, and others. Please join me in welcoming Ivan Wolfe. Read More
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17 responses
Traditionally artistic depictions convey deity in the ethnicity of the artist and his/her surrounding culture. Consequently, I’m not going to begrudge early Latter-day Saint art’s depiction of a European Heavenly Father any more than I would a Japanese depiction of Amaterasu looking Japanese. However, as a faith becomes more cosmopolitan it becomes all the more important for all its members to be able to see themselves in depictions of deity. As far as God’s actual “race,” race is a social construct in the here and now, so it’s a bit of misnomer to try to define God in terms of… Read More
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5 responses
I haven’t had as much time to produce AI religious art as I would have liked, so this might be it until we get the next version to play around with, but a few insights: AI is actually okay at depicting religious sentiment in art without specific prompts. For example, below is a MJ image (not mine, from a FB page I follow) with little else in the prompt except “repentance” and “forgiveness.” If you can ignore the extra fingers it’s a reasonably moving depiction. AI is sometimes okay at depicting imagery with little else but the actual scripture verses… Read More
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3 responses
In Saints, volume 2, one of the key players was Susa Young Gates. A prominent daughter of Brigham Young who went on to do a lot of notable activities herself, Susa is a relatively well-known figure in Latter-day Saint history. One aspect of her story that received attention in Saints was Susa Young Gates’ divorce with Alma Dunford. The was an important part of both of their life stories, and an aspect that was the focus of a recent interview at the Latter-day Saint history blog From the Desk with Lisa Olsen Tait. What follows here is a co-post to the interview (a… Read More
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9 responses
Some religious artistic motifs and scenes have been done to death while many have barely been touched. Since text-to-image came online I’ve been cogitating about its possibilities for creating religious artistic imagery at scale for every…single..event in the standard works. However, as I have mentioned before, what we have so far, while great in many ways, is not so great at understanding complex scenarios with multiple people. So far it’s primarily good at contexts that can be described simply. As sort of a pilot study I created a Midjourney Art Edition of Genesis Chapter 1. Here I draw inspiration from… Read More
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The New York Police Department has very fine-grained data on crime frequency, with latitude and longitude coordinates for reported crimes. Of course, I’m sure a cop isn’t walking around with a GPS device to get it exact, and if you look at the data it tends to be laid out on a grid, suggesting that the latitude and longitude coordinates are basically placeholders for street intersections and buildings. I was curious whether the Manhattan temple (and religious buildings in general) had an any kind of a crime bubble around it–basically whether the presence of a visibly religious structure might make… Read More
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17 responses
I recently took the plunge and dropped the $30 for the monthly subscription to MidJourney v5, the text-to-image generator that is currently leading the pack (by far). I uploaded a picture of Joseph Smith’s death mask, merged it with additional prompts about age and details about Joseph Smith’s eye and hair color, and asked it to make a photorealistic image. As you can see, the skin in the midjourney image still has some flecks from the death mask, but overall it’s not bad (except bottom-left Joseph looks scary). As a point of comparison, here is the death mask and the… Read More
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Belle Harris‘s experience in prison is an interesting story from late nineteenth-century Latter-day Saint history. Part of why it’s fascinating is that she kept a record of her time while she was in prison. Recently, Church historian Ken Adkins talked about the Belle Harris prison journal at the Latter-day Saint history blog From the Desk, partly due to the recent online publication of the journal by the Church Historian’s Press. What follows here is a co-post to the interview (a shorter post with excerpts and some discussion). Who exactly was Belle Harris? Ken Adkins explained that: Belle Harris was raised… Read More
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7 responses
“Gothic church & Islamic mosque architectures combined.” From Midjourney v5. I’m a strong believer in the educational value of visiting religious services other than one’s own. However, you need to do it right so that you’re respectful and it doesn’t come off as a “let’s observe the natives in their natural habitat” kind of voyeurism, and that can be tricky. When we lived in Philadelphia we visited the historic Unitarian Church in downtown Philly as a family and realized too late that other churches usually have some kind of Sunday school for the kids while the parents watch the sermon,… Read More
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16 responses
A rhetorical practice I’ve seen more and more lately is apologizing for others. This usually happens in the context of a Church leader saying something the supposed apologizer disagrees with, and often takes the form of “as a Mormon, I apologize for…” I think this approach is wrongheaded, whether you agree with the apologizer or not. Apologizing implies having been in the wrong. Being “punished for [our] own sins” means we don’t carry the guilt of what others have done. Full stop. There is simply no reason for you to apologize for what somebody else has done. If you feel… Read More
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6 responses
I’m on the record at various places on this blog as warning about future hiccups in Church growth. Medium-term, I think we need to reconcile ourselves to a world where the center of traditional Church strength enters a period of no or negative growth for the foreseeable future. Additionally, as developing countries become developed countries the higher levels of growth in other areas of the world will taper off as well. (However, a few months ago I was on the record as predicting that Church growth would be under 1% this year, and I was wrong). However, for various reasons… Read More
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4 responses
At the start of each year, there is a whole collection of publications that enter the public domain. This year is a relatively big year for people interested in Latter-day Saint song books, since the 1927 Latter-day Saint Hymns, along with a few other song books (the 1927 edition of the Primary Song Book and some anthem collections) are now public domain. Read More
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25 responses
Cowboy riding a tapir, from DALL-E In some fields scholars try to come up with novel takes on the same thing hundreds of their colleagues have studied. Non-genetic, physical anthropology only substantively moves forward now whenever a fluke well digger stumbles upon humanoid remains. Particle physics is kind of nipping at the edges until the next big collider comes online, after which there are thousands of people scrambling to analyze the exact same data. Macroeconomics has theorized and modeled all available macro-level data to death. Oh, and the poor Biblical scholars are trying to come up with novel takes on… Read More
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One response
A repeating theme in Second Temple Judaism is the expectation for a political messiah that would rule Judea. While Christians are aware of this primarily through the expectations that Jesus of Nazareth encountered during his ministry, there are many other people who tried to fulfill that role. Herod the Great may have been one of these people who claimed messiahship. In a recent interview at the Latter-day Saint history blog From the Desk, Jodi Magness discussed Herod the Great. What follows here is a co-post to the full interview (a shorter post with excerpts and some discussion). First, it is… Read More
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7 responses
President Spencer W. Kimball is well-known for encouraging members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to keep journals. He set an example of doing this, and produced a large journal that was recently made available through the Church History Library digital collections. Recently, Latter-day Saint archivists Jeffrey Anderson and Brandon Metcalf discuss the journals of President Spencer W. Kimball in an interview at the Church history blog From the Desk. What follows here is a copost to that interview (a shorter post with excerpts and some discussion). Wilford Woodruff is probably the other president of the Church… Read More
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7 responses
With the advent of on-demand, free porn virtually everybody has access to a level of sexual novelty, variety, and frequency that an ancient emperor could have only dreamed of. The invention of the VCR allowed for people to view pornographic material without having to go to a seedy inner-city theater; the invention of fast Internet and streaming allowed for even more on-demand accessibility and choices for anyone with an Internet connection; and the advent of Youtube-type services for pornography centralized the options and made them even more cheap and accessible. I believe that with the combination of AI and VR… Read More
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5 responses
After the death of Jesus Christ, early Christians spent centuries grappling with understanding who he was. The early creeds developed largely as an effort to reach an official consensus on understanding Jesus’s divine and human natures. While The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a restoration of the primitive church, early Christianity and the debates they had are still part of our heritage and history. At a recent interview at the Latter-day Saint history and theology blog, From the Desk, Jason Combs discussed some of these early debates and the resulting Nicene and Chalcedonian creeds. What follows here… Read More
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2 responses
Let’s Talk About Race and Priesthood by W. Paul Reeve is a thought-provoking and insightful book that explores some key aspects of the intersection of race and religion in the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. To me, this volume is up there with Brittany Chapman Nash’s Let’s Talk About Polygamy as both the best and most important entries in a fantastic series. Reeve, a professor of history at the University of Utah, draws on his extensive research to provide a nuanced and detailed account of the Church’s racial policies and practices from its founding in the… Read More
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2 responses
Mary Magdalene is a well-known figure in the New Testament whose life has been the subject of speculation and storytelling for much of Christian History. One of the more recent instances of this is The Chosen. In a recent interview at the Latter-day Saint history blog, From the Desk, Bruce Chilton discussed Mary Magdalene, offering insight into who she was, who she isn’t, and how she has been portrayed over time. What follows here is a co-post to the full interview (a shorter post with excerpts and some discussion). Read More
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11 responses
One of the more interesting non-profits in the US today is the “Long Now” foundation. Funded by the Silicon Valley types that want to find a more interesting use for their money than library naming privileges, it is concerned with a more long-term approach to thinking about human problems and threats to civilization, and by long they mean long. While concerns about nuclear exchanges or climate change operate on a scale of decades or centuries at the most, what are the biggest threats to our species in, say, the next 100,000 years? Many of their concerns deal with low probability,… Read More
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8 responses
Doctrine and Covenants, Section 131 has had a huge impact on how we understand the afterlife. There is, however, some debate about a few key aspects of the text mean that also have implications for our fate in the afterlife, especially when it comes to marital status. Given the debates, it is probably best to observe a degree of humility about our knowledge of how the afterlife works. Read More
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11 responses
There’s been a lot of chatter lately about the mental health crisis facing the liberal kids these days. I don’t know if I have much to add in terms of generalities that hasn’t already been said, so here I’ll discuss its relevance for the Church long-term. If youth were leaving organized religion in droves and they were thriving, having children, communities, and general happiness that would be one thing, but they’re not. My responses to the concerns about liberal youth leaving the Church, and how the Church must adjust or die, are several: they’re not as uniformly activist left as… Read More
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6 responses
The other day, I came across an interesting talk from Glen L. Rudd about Moroni and his postmortal adventures. While interesting, however, it is unfortunately inaccurate on a few points. In particular, listing Zerah Pulsipher as someone who saw the Angel Moroni is inaccurate to the statements that Pulsipher recorded about his conversion. Read More