I just saw a comment at Amira’s that made me wonder just how much crossover there is between T & S readers and Message Board readers. I know that some regular participants here, like Grasshopper and Clark, also participate on different forums like FAIR Boards or Nauvoo.com. Read More

Clark reports that Hugh Nibley has passed away. I thought we should announce this. I expect that some of my co-bloggers will have more eloquent things to say. I’ll only note that brother Nibley was a great scholar and a great man, and the world of Mormon Studies is smaller without him. Read More

You’ve all seen them, spoken with them, discussed things with them. They’re your evangelical anti-Mormon friends, neighbors, classmates, co-workers, relatives. (Not to mention those random strangers who accost you as you go to the temple.) We get comments from these folks around here sometimes as well. I’ve always been a little surprised by the types of arguments put forth by evangelical anti-Mormons, because it seems to me that they prove too much. Evangelicals, it seems, are best at giving Mormons a strong reasons to become an atheist (or agnostic, or Unitarian). Read More

We don’t read the monthly Ensign message with you. We don’t start and end with prayer, and we’re unlikely to be much help if you need the sideboard moved into the dining room. But we talk together about church topics; we (sometimes!) check up on each other to see how others are doing; we make friends and provide support. We’re not called by the Elder’s Quorum president or given a formal route. But we’re likely to talk with each other a lot more than a regular home teacher ever does. And if the essence of home teaching is regular contact,… Read More

I think that people ought to be able to sell their kidneys. Especially poor people. Read More

My a capella group, The Longfellow Singers, will present “Sacred Harmony: A Celebration of Worldwide Choral Traditions” this coming Sunday as a benefit concert for the victims of the recent southeast Asia tsunami. We will be singing selections from Renaissance-era Europe as well as folk songs and hymns from Africa, Korea, New Zealand and the United States. The music is absolutely gorgeous, if I do say so myself. Although a collection will be taken, it is a free concert and there is absolutely no obligation to make a donation of any kind. So, if you will be in the Boston… Read More

Lost in all of the buzz about the Bloggernacle Awards (I was tempted to make a big acceptance speech until I realized that I got only 21 of the votes cast for the category I won, meaning that the vast majority of the voting public was against me) was an interesting set of comments asking about which blog could claim the honor of first Mormon blog. Read More

That’s the implication of this angry piece by David Velleman, a philosophy professor at the University of Michigan. Reading about the activities of certain evangelical groups to proselytize in the wake of the tsunami catatrosphe (some of which, I agree, are more than a little insensitive), Velleman reflects upon his discovery, over a decade ago, that his long-dead family (Dutch Jews, all) had been subject to some proxy proselytizing themselves: Read More

OK. I know that this will mark me as a total geek, but I recently came across a copy of Census of 1850, which is the first census with information on Utah. The numbers provide a fun snap shot of the Mormon commonwealth three years after its founding. Read More

Someone named Katherine posted the following on the What Think Ye? thread: “The subjects of women and the Priesthood and women and the church are ones I honestly struggle with. My questions are does God love women less than men, does he esteem us less, and are we worth less in the eternities? While my heart says that couldn’t be, I have every earthly and heavenly evidence to the contrary. I beg for your collective wisdom–how can I know that his female children have the same value to him as his male children?” Read More

We’re commanded in the scriptures to fear God. Why? What does this formulation mean, anyway? Read More

I experience flashes of poetry, but I was assigned an unreliable muse in the heretofore, alas. My moment of greatest poetic inspiration arrived when I was twelve or thirteen, on a trip across country in our fifteen-passenger Ford van. My mother devised a contest among us siblings to compose the best family cheer, and, motivated as I always have been by competition, I came up with these four immortal lines: Get the baby, shut the door! What’s for dinner? We want more! Though we’re busy and sometimes mad, The Frandsen family is really rad! Needless to say, I won the… Read More

Last week my bishop encouraged us to read M. Russell Ballard’s talk “Pure Testimony” from last General Conference. I did, and it has caused me to reevaluate how I share my own testimony. Read More

I recently returned from what may turn out to have been a very important job interview. (Then again, it may not.) When my wife mentioned this interview to a friend via e-mail, the friend wrote back, asking if I’d received a priesthood blessing before I’d gone. I hadn’t. Read More

Next fall my firstborn will start kindergarten. As such he has the choice between the local elementary (4 blocks from home) and the charter school (Freedom Academy). He has other choices but he isn’t going to exercise them, so we’ll ignore those. Read More

For those interested, here is the final schedule for the LDS Law Students’ Conference Read More

The Book of Mormon has a number of not so complimentary things to say about contention. Generally speaking, I have heard this interpreted as an admonition to be nice and change the subject if anything controversial comes up. My problem with this, of course, is that I am not especially nice, and I like controversy. Read More

Karl was a stutterer and he had to say the sacrament prayer. Read More

In honor of Valentine’s Day, a love simile: If married love were chocolate, it would be have to be a bittersweet dark, because no chalky milk or bland white could adequately convey the depth, complexity, and challenge of fidelity in marriage. Read More

For those in the New York City area this weekend, you have a chance to come and heckle Kaimi and I in person. Read More

My wife just mentioned this to me, and it has me wondering. If the church really wants mothers to stay at home, then why do many full-time church employees seem not to be paid enough to make that happen? Read More

Yes, Pink. Apparently the color scheme of at least one bloggernacle site is enough to deter workplace browsing. John F. writes that he cannot visit Feminist Mormon Housewives while at work, because “ I feel nervous about a fellow associate walking in (or a partner, for that matter) and seeing the hot pink and knowing what they are wondering.“ Read More

Here’s a verse for the poor slaves and servants to that vile master, p0rnography. Read More