Adam asked [in a comment lost, alas, when we changed software] if suing the church might place one in the category of “groups that oppose the church.” He raises a question which, I think, does not have a yes-or-no answer. (more. . .) Read More

Why are we Mormons so damn intrigued by J. Golden Kimball? Read More

Imagine that you and a couple of friends started a group blog — called it Heaven’s Banner — in which you all pretended to be fictional people having really bizarre conversations (OK, so perhaps this wouldn’t take too much pretending). You and your friends work to create a semblance of warped verisimilitude, and then watch the show. Here is an interesting question: Are you liars? Read More

From time to time Mormons face various forms of legal and political harassment. Sometimes this happens in the United States, but as events in Venezuela dramatically illustrate the legal challenges that the Church faces abroad are generally much more extreme than those that it faces in the U.S. One result is that there is a real mismatch between the Church’s challenges and its resources. Read More

…it’s been a great year, one of the best my father can remember. The Fox family farm brought in over 90,000 bushels of wheat, including about 30,000 bushels of our high-protein dark northern spring (averaging about 80 bushels an acre for the latter, a particularly good crop). Some wild oat grass got into part of the farm, cutting down on the yield from about 400 out of our total 1800 acres, but otherwise there is little to complain about. The Amoths–a Mennonite family that have managed and farmed land for our family for three generations, and soon four–have every reason… Read More

Twenty years ago, there was an interesting debate between two political philosophers at Harvard that ultimately does a lot to explain the inevitability of pain for Mormons who embark on intellectual discussions of their religion. Read More

Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur get all the press around here, but one of my favorite Jewish holidays usually sneaks in just before or just after the high holidays. This year in particular, with news of floods and earthquakes filling my heart and head, the festival of Sukkot seems especially worthy of Read More

This post is ostensibly by way of reminding our Southern California readership that it’s not too late to catch the last day of the Claremont Conference on Joseph Smith. It’s also an excuse for me to ruminate on the ever-engaging question of what sixteenth-century blogging might have looked like had they, you know, invented computers and the internet and everything. Here’s a possibility: Read More

A few recent highlights: -Lisa at FMH writes a Feminist Polygamy Manifesto — don’t miss it. -Aaron at BoH: Faker or fakir? -Bloggernackers (heart) Elise Soukup: DMI, Mormon Stories, and a nice interview at M*. –Chloroform in print on iPod. -DMI wants to start a discussion group about whether discussion groups are permitted. Clearly he has forgotten “the first rule of discussion groups is you do not talk about discussion groups . . .” -Reminder: Volunteers sought to participate in polygamy . . . survey. -Finally, if you like your navel-gazing with a healthy dose of snark, you may want… Read More

In many ways, the Doctrine & Covenants is my favorite book of scripture, and as it now stands it is the result of a failure. Read More

From the informative and helpful New Zealand Cult List Read More

Over at Volokh, Maggie Gallagher makes the curious argument that society needs marriage because without marriage, people would be having children out of wedlock. Read More

In last General Conference, Elder Uchtdorf reiterated the 1999 counsel of the First Presidency, a counsel that has actually been given since the 1950s. Read More

Like Nixon, Times and Seasons maintains a detailed “enemies list.” Read More

It seems to have been a bicoastal weekend for real-world discussions of the bloggernacle. John Dehlin gave a great talk on blogs at the Seattle Sunstone Symposium (pod cast here), and I gave a brief presentation to Naomi Frandsen’s “Saturday Night Discussion Group” (a name that carries all sorts of unfortunate disco connotations for me.) Lacking the technical sophistication do a podcast, here is a shortened version of what I said: Read More

While I was running errands with my children one morning last week, I glanced up at the rearview mirror to see my four-year-old daughter’s finger probing her nostril. I reprimanded her, gently, and asked if she needed a tissue. “No thank you, Mom,” she answered cheerfully, “This kind comes out only by a fingernail, right?” Read More

In its latest issue, Time magazine “assembled some of the smartest people we know to identify the trends that are most likely to affect our future.” Read More

This season The University of Notre Dame has been airing a student recruiting advertisement called “Candle”. Read More

Former T&S guestblogger, Naomi Frandsen has started a semi-formal discussion group for Capital-area Mormons. There first meeting will be this Saturday. Here is the announcement from Naomi: Read More

Ronan has a thoughtful post about his trip to Gettysburg and the meaning of war. For my part, I will always think of Gettysburg as the sacred soil on which I successfully wooed my wife. Read More

A long time ago, when I was a practicing lawyer, I concocted a scheme with another Mormon lawyer to raise an investment fund targeted at companies that cater to vices. Alcohol, tobacco, p0rn, etc. Read More

One of the more prominent strands of modern political philosophy is what has been called “luck egalitarianism,” which of course raises basic questions for Mormon theology. Read More