-
•
•
5 responses
Thus far I have played it safe. I have kept to spiritual languages that make sense to me and that, at least to some extent, I understand. This week we are continuing on a theme begun last week, but off the beaten track, at least off the beaten track of WEIRD (Western Educated Industrial Rich Democratic) culture, to which I myself belong. Last week we discussed how science can be a language of the spirit because creations not only testify of a creator, they teach the nature of their creator. In the case of the creator God, we discussed how… Read More
-
•
•
11 responses
Asking and seeking are clearly not the same as demanding. The former is Joseph Smith at 14, the latter is Martin Harris with the lost pages, and I think this distinction is evident to most people who watched the talk in good faith. Earlier I talked about how it seemed that many of the brethren came from inactive households, now there are two more that I didn’t know about until their conference talks: Elder Cook and President Ballard. Again, something to buoy up people who feel otherized because their family situation doesn’t match some ideal template. I also see… Read More
-
•
•
8 responses
On the Saturday evening session of General conference, Elder Renlund stated that: “Very little has been revealed about mother in heaven but what we do know is summarized in a Gospel Topic found in our Gospel Library application. Once you have read what is there, you will know everything that I know about the subject.” While there were cautions he offered that have raised concerns in some sectors of the Church, there is also a strong affirmation for the Gospel Topics essay on the subject. In that light, I felt that it was appropriate to collect and present all of… Read More
-
•
•
6 responses
“We are obsessed with ourselves. We study our history. Our psychology, our philosophy…Much of our knowledge revolves around ourselves, as if we were the most important thing in the universe. I think I like physics because it opens a window through which we can see further. It gives me the sense of fresh air entering the house. What we see out there through the window is constantly surprising us.”[1] Carlo Rovelli “The earth rolls upon her wings, and the sun giveth his light by day, and the moon giveth her light by night, and the stars also give their… Read More
-
•
•
12 responses
Sometimes called the “Valley Forge of Mormondom”, Winter Quarters was the primary (thought not exclusive) location that Latter-day Saints in the United States of America lived between their forced exodus from Nauvoo and their efforts to move westward to the Great Basin region. In a recent interview with Richard Bennett, Kurt Manwaring discussed the history and legacy of Winter Quarters with the president of the Mormon Trail Center at Winter Quarters. What follows here is a co-post to the interview (a shorter post with quotes and some discussion), but feel free to also read the full interview here. As the… Read More
-
•
•
12 responses
And think not to say within yourselves,We have Abraham to our father: for I say unto you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham. –Matthew 3:9 The mythos of the Latter-day Saint royalty that I bought into while growing up in the Utah of Utah went something like this: some families happened to give rise to a lot of functional, financially successful church leaders because their family had some spiritual special sauce that was transmitted from generation to generation, and this special sauce leads to both occupational and spiritual successes as a natural outgrowth… Read More
-
•
•
11 responses
There has always been a need for those persons who could be called finishers. Their ranks are few, their opportunities many, their contributions great. …I pray humbly that each one of us may be a finisher in the race of life and thus qualify for that precious prize: eternal life with our Heavenly Father in the celestial kingdom. I testify that God lives, that this is his work, and ask that each may follow the example of his Son, a true finisher.” -President Monson The history of human lifespan predictions is essentially the history of people theorizing that there’s some biological,… Read More
-
•
•
2 responses
I once had a teacher who loved to say that: “The more you know, the more you know you don’t know.” To some degree, this is not infrequently the case when it comes to studying issues in the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Let’s Talk About the Book of Abraham is an easy-to-read summary of the important scripture text from the Pearl of Great Price. Egyptologist Kerry Muhlestein recently discussed the book with Kurt Manwaring. What follows here is a co-post to that interview (a shorter post with quotes and some discussion), but feel free… Read More
-
•
•
16 responses
My husband frequently says of our team dynamic that he is the historian and I am the theologian, and that before I talk about anything I lay a theological framework for it. This is clearly interesting and endearing of me. The last couple of posts have been me laying the theological framework for this series, and now we get to get into actual examples of spiritual divergence. Just one last thing, though. A few comments in a previous post pointed out that I have not clarified what exactly I mean by spirit. This is a really good point because, frankly,… Read More
-
•
•
14 responses
Last time we used Duke’s National Congregations Study to see how racially representative Latter-day Saint bishops were of the Church. Today we’ll look at how old Latter-day Saint bishops are compared to their peer congregational leaders in other traditions. If we take the two most recent waves (2012 and 2018) of the survey and calculate the means and confidence intervals, it looks like Latter-day Saint bishops are relatively young (with an average age of 51) compared to congregational leaders from other traditions. I’ll admit to being surprised, I knew that Catholic priests tended to be older, but I guess I… Read More
-
•
•
9 responses
Series that dives into future technologies and trends, and what they might mean for the Church. Rachel’s tomb in Bethlehem, where Jewish women pray for fertility. “Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.”-Matthew 2:18 My wife and I would love to have a large family, we would have ten kids if we could, but unfortunately nature doesn’t always cooperate, so we *only* have six. Eye rolls aside, serious infertility can be particularly painful in a highly pronatalist church (there’s a reason infertility issues take up half of Genesis). I, along with many people… Read More
-
•
•
12 responses
Joseph Fielding McConkie recalled that when the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve were discussing adding the documents that are now Sections 137 and 138 that Elder Bruce R. McConkie had a few other suggestions. One was to add two Articles of Faith about the restoration of the Gospel and the Plan of Salvation (to which Thomas S. Monson good-naturedly responded: “We all know there are only thirteen Articles of Faith, not fifteen”).[1] McConkie also suggested adding several excerpts from the Joseph Smith Translation to the Pearl of Great Price, the entire Wentworth Letter, and the Lectures on Faith.[2] … Read More
-
•
•
25 responses
It’s going to be horrific. Read More
-
•
•
Jim Bridger and Brigham Young are two very important people in the Euro-American colonization of the American west. Their relationship with each other, however, was complicated. Kurt Manwaring recently discussed that relationship with Jerry Enzler in connection with Enzler’s biography, Jim Bridger: Trailblazer of the American West. What follows here is a copost to the full interview (a shorter post with quotes and some commentary), but feel free to hop on over to the full interview here. Young and Bridger only met on one occasion–June 28, 1847, as the vanguard company of Latter-day Saints settlers made their way west. Bridger… Read More
-
•
•
6 responses
Last week we learned how everything is made of spirit; that it is the substance of creation. This is critical to different spiritual languages because there are so many different manifestations of spirit. In fact, if the Book of Abraham is to be believed, everything we see is a manifestation of spirit, and they each have their own kind of language. Faith fits into this in a very particular way. We are creators. That’s what this whole life thing is about: the creation of creators. Being a creator is written into our DNA, and we are always creating, even without… Read More
-
•
•
46 responses
BYU’s recent policy changes that appear to be geared towards reinforcing the institution’s Latter-day Saint character are causing consternation in some circles, so I thought now would be a good time to be the bad guy and make a case for why proactive faculty boundary maintenance is needed for an institution like BYU to fulfill its mission. Like a lot of other people, I get the sense that recent changes are bellwethers for future shifts to come, so this will probably be a relevant topic for the next little while. First, a common response is that a religiously sponsored institution… Read More
-
•
•
6 responses
The other day I realized that Duke University’s National Congregations Study, which includes about 87 randomly sampled LDS wards, has information on the race and ethnicity of the “person who is the head or senior clergy person or religious leader in your congregation,” which I assume in the Latter-day Saint case is the bishop, so I decided to see if we can glean any information about how racially representative leadership is relative to membership. Upfront, statistically this is very much seeing through a glass darkly, but frankly I think it’s the only information that we non-COB employees have on this… Read More
-
•
•
9 responses
Continuing my hypothetical series about what I would do if I were asked to update the Doctrine and Covenants (and still keeping in mind that I have no plans to actually do so and I’m 110% sure the Church doesn’t have any plans for me to do so either), we come to looking at editing documents currently included in the Doctrine and Covenants. In the last couple decades, we’ve had an explosion of research into and availability of the root documents behind the Doctrine and Covenants in the form of the Joseph Smith Papers Project. This provides us with the… Read More
-
•
•
One response
Elisa Eastwood Pulido’s biography, The Spiritual Evolution of Margarito Bautista (Oxford University Press, 2020), provides a fascinating glimpse into one of the more significant but controversial figures in the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Mexico. An important founding figure among Mexican Latter-day Saints, Bautista was a successful missionary who helped to spread the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints among Mexicans and Mexican-Americans in Mexico, Arizona, and Utah; the father of family history efforts among Mexican Latter-day Saints; the most prolific indigenous author of Mormon literature to date; and a ceaseless advocate of empowering Mexican… Read More
-
•
•
4 responses
“The entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’…The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” Galatians 5: 14, 22-23 Section 93 of the Doctrine and Covenants is, in my opinion (which is correct), one of the most radical, beautiful works of theology ever written. While I could happily do a whole series about it, there is one particular part of it I want to draw upon for the sake of this series. The revelation in Section 93 starts with describing the nature of Christ,… Read More
-
•
•
6 responses
Free will is one of those issues where you have to think deep and hard about your definitions. Many philosophers will subscribe to one definition, but not another, so sometimes the whole debate on whether we have “free will” revolves around semantics that you can’t do justice to in a single post, so I won’t try. However, it is fairly clear that Latter-day Saint theology not only makes space for (at least some version of) free will (except we refer to it as “agency” in our vernacular), but puts it at the cornerstone of our teleology. Scientifically, the most famous… Read More
-
•
•
15 responses
I told you I wasn’t done with the Doctrine and Covenants yet. Follow me, and ponder the question: What if? It’s the year 2023 and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has decided to produce a new edition of their scriptures. For reasons that are unclear, the project was picked up by the most unlikely creature imaginable: Chad Nielsen, of Times and Seasons. Challenged to produce a new edition of the Doctrine and Covenants, Chad goes to work, planning out what he will do. Now, in reality, I know full well that the Church doesn’t care about… Read More
-
•
•
5 responses
I recently finished an excellent book providing a pop-science level understanding of the experiments surrounding the bizarre fact that very small objects are neither particles nor waves, or they’re both, or, you know, something. Read More
-
•
•
10 responses
I remember when I was a little kid and began to learn that there were different languages. I loved that primary song where you learn how to say “thank you” in languages from all over the world. It felt so cool, like learning some kind of secret code. But even as I learned these words I still assumed that when people heard them they were having the exact same experience that I was. For example, I heard the word “hola”, but in my mind it was immediately translated as “hello”. To me “hola” didn’t exist as its own word with… Read More
-
•
•
7 responses
“When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it–always.” Mahatma Gandhi Glory to Ukraine. Read More
-
•
•
58 responses
You would think that at some point we would learn from past experiences with priesthood bans. Concerning the priesthood and temple ban against people with black African ancestry, President Dallin H. Oaks noted that: Some people put reasons to the one we’re talking about here, and they turned out to be spectacularly wrong. There is a lesson in that. … I’m referring to reasons given by general authorities and reasons elaborated upon … by others. The whole set of reasons seemed to me to be unnecessary risk taking. … Let’s don’t make the mistake that’s been made in the past,… Read More
-
•
•
13 responses
When I was a Wikipedia editor years ago the Joseph Smith page stated that “[Smith] began teaching that God was…embodied within time and space,” and they cited Busman’s statement to that effect. I removed the “embodied in time” and explained that this is arguable, citing Alma’s statement that “time only is measured unto men.” (As I was writing this I re-checked the page, and it’s back up, oh well). So is God in and beholden to the flow of time? Church historians and theologians undoubtedly have a more informed take on this than I, but in terms of the science… Read More
-
•
•
11 responses
A pattern I’ve noticed in political and sometimes religious discourse lately is the concept of “good anger.” This isn’t the calm and measured, but firm response of Christ before the Romans or at the temple, but a deep antipathy with bite to it. The acidity of this anger is not considered a weakness, but is intentional; a feature, not a bug, justified because of the injustice that motivates the anger. My interest here is with the justification for the hate. In the same sense that there is a major difference between weaknesses of the flesh and open rebellion against God,… Read More
-
•
•
11 responses
The more I examine the universe and the details of its architecture, the more evidence I find that the universe in some sense must have known we were coming.-Freeman Dyson As noted in a previous post, fine tuning is a problem that has received mainstream acceptability within the scientific community. To summarize, for complex matter like stars and carbon to exist (which, by extension, is required for us to exist), matter needs to have characteristics that are just right. If the difference between the masses of this and that particle or the strength of this and that force were slightly… Read More
-
•
•
3 responses
Recently, Kurt Manwaring let me know that there was an issue of BYU Studies that had recently come out that I feel like will be a very impactful issue moving forwards. The issue–also published as a book entitled Yet to be Revealed–focuses on unanswered questions in Latter-day Saint theology and brings an impressive array of big names in the Latter-day Saint studies field as authors of the discussions. It covers topics like defining doctrine, how did Satan seek to destroy the agency of humankind?, How does God progress?, Was Jesus married?, the foreknowledge of God, and much more. More recently, however, Kurt… Read More