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32 responses
A Deseret News article reports a recent devotional by Elder Oaks where he expresses concern over some recent social trends. Discuss. Read More
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15 responses
I’ve been witness to many discussions, in and out of the bloggernacle, questioning the importance of some of the stories in the Book of Mormon. Read More
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24 responses
Although he goes to nursery in the Wakefield Ward each Sunday, my son attends pre-school twice a week at the Braddock Baptist Church in Annandale, Virginia. Read More
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89 responses
It was late spring in London, and just as the weather outside started warming up, things inside started heating up, too. Read More
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24 responses
(Now updated!) We’re very happy to announce our newest guest blogger: Rosalynde Welch. Read More
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20 responses
OK. I’m not sure if that title bears exactly directly on what this post is about, but as an R&B fan I had to use it before my time runs out. I’m a guest-blogger, which means I’m only supposed to get two weeks. I’m not sure if today is my last day or if I’ve managed to sneak past Cerberus at the gates. For about the past month I’ve been questioning an assumption that I had. My assumption has been that Mormons have a responsibility to base their personal opinions and positions on scripture — and not just on a… Read More
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14 responses
We lawyers have several disadvantages in trying to live the gospel. For one, everyone seems to hate us. However, there is one perk that almost offsets all the drawbacks of being a lawyer/disciple. That is that we have greater access to legal metaphors for the atonement. Read More
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35 responses
We LDS like to refer to ourselves as a peculiar people. Read More
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33 responses
This map, from the New Historical Atlas of Religion in America, shows the largest religious denomination in each US county. This does not mean that the majority of the county belongs to the denomination, only that no other denomination is larger. My guess is that Hancock County, Illinois (Nauvoo) will be the first purple county east of the Rockies. Maybe it already is (I don’t know the age of this map). What are the other contenders out east? Which will be the first purple county in California? . Read More
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30 responses
Paul Morphy was a New Orleans born chess genius who wowed the world (or at least that small and geeky portion of it that cares about chess) with his aggressive and imaginative play in the decade before the Civil War. Read More
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118 responses
If you’ve spent five minutes in the bloggernacle, you’ve heard a liberal-leaning Latter-day Saint bemoan the constant conservative harping among members of the church. Read More
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9 responses
I was feeling a little jealous of all of these Bloggernacle get-togethers, so I flew to Washington D.C. to meet Matt, Nate, and Kaimi. Read More
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41 responses
I’m not a big fan of much of David Brooks’s writings, as he is often too Manichean to be useful (here’s a good parody). But in the opening pages of Bobos in Paradise, Brooks does a nice job of describing the shift in American culture from a class structure based on lineage or money to one based on education and achievement. Read More
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19 responses
Times and Seasons is my main way of wasting time these days, but I do have other vices, one of them being chess. Read More
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33 responses
Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee. (Psalms 122:6) News reports are rampant with rumors that Yasir Arafat is either dead, in a coma or on life support. What seems certain is that Arafat’s end is nigh. Read More
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6 responses
This is off-topic, but I thought I’d put in a word for the 9/11 Commission Report. Read More
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78 responses
George W. Bush, in my mind, is very much like Bill Clinton. Both men seem to have the ability to make otherwise sane people on the other side of the political fence become nutcases. Read More
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30 responses
Well, we have ourselves a new president. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. A week or two ago, Brandy Siegfried mentioned Ron Suskind’s article “Faith, Certainty, and the Presidency.” I didn’t read the article, but I heard Suskind talk about it on NPR, and found it very interesting. Read More
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44 responses
I have generally avoided posting on same-sex marriage, and I am not attempting to initiate another debate on the merits. But I believe that one of the huge stories of the presidential election will be the importance of this issue. While most people I know thought this election would be a referendum on the war in Iraq, it now appears that the tipping issue may have been same-sex marriage. More on my other blog. Read More
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290 responses
One of the so-far-untold stories of the election is that Mormon Senator Harry Reid will almost certainly assume leadership of the Democratic Party in the United States Senate. Senator Tom Daschle appears to be going down in South Dakota, thus providing an opening for Reid. Of course, the Democrats are a minority in the Senate, but they are far from irrelevant. I assume this makes Reid the most powerful Mormon politician in the United States. (Will he be the most powerful Mormon politician ever?) Ironic, in light of the recent dominance of the Republican Party among Mormons, that our most… Read More
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20 responses
Not that anyone needs any more suspense tonight, but I’ll be keeping a curious eye on Utah’s election results. Read More
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13 responses
Our internet host is having some problems keeping up with traffic on this incredibly busy day. The problem is exacerbated since they’re also hosting some official election supervisor sites in Florida. We’ve had one hiccough so far today — about an hour and a half of down time — and we may see more. Just an FYI. Read More
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12 responses
Nate’s post on the Sabbath returns me to some thoughts on the Sabbath I’ve been kicking around for a while. Earlier this fall, as I was looking for music for my ward choir to do, I considered Healey Willan’s setting of “O Quanta Qualia.” The text is as follows: Oh, what their joys and their glories must be, Those endless sabbaths the blessed ones see, Crown for the valiant, to weary ones rest, God shall be all and in all ever blest. Read More
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2 responses
We’ve been getting a ton of spam lately from a new batch of spammers using new .info sites. So I just added a general moderation rule for any .info sites. I also added a specific unblock for danithew’s site — his posts should go through okay. I don’t think we have any other real commenters who use .info sites. If so, I can unblock them as well. (And this isn’t a true block, it just directs these comments into the moderation queue for individual approval or deletion). Read More
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19 responses
Let your moderation be known unto all men. The Lord is at hand. (Phillipians 4:5) We have often heard the saying “moderation in all things.” But the words moderate, moderation and moderately only appear sparingly in the scriptures and the phrase “moderation in all things” does not appear at all. Then again, on second glance, this may simply be an interpretive or editorial choice. The King James Version prefers the words tempered, temperate and temperance and the Book of Mormon follows the KJV’s example. Thus we see the phrase “temperate in all things” more than once scripturally (1 Corinthians 9:25,… Read More
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24 responses
One of the points of contention between believers and skeptics has to do with the question of morality. Roughly speaking, the exchange goes something like this: Believer: God is the source of morality. Without a belief in God one cannot have a belief in morality. Therefore skeptics are immoral. QED. Skeptic: Nonsense! There are lots of skeptics who behave in thoroughly ethical ways. Furthermore, they mold their behavior to conform with particular ethical standards, even though those standards lack any particular theological foundation. One can clearly be a skeptic and be a moral person. Framed in these terms (and I… Read More
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2 responses
Lesson 43: Mormon 1-6, Moroni 9 Since I’m putting these together between conferences all over North America, the last lesson and this are not as complete as I would like. My apologies. Read More
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38 responses
Thank you, Adam, for the intro, and T&S for the guest-spot. It’s a sacrifice for my other little blog, but I can really use the extra income. Today i’m thinking about my job and what it’s doing to me. I work on the tenth floor of a not very big building in downtown Salt Lake. My office is small but comfortable, and in the back corner of the building, where no one ever wanders by. Read More
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13 responses
We had an excellent discussion of reverence in our combined Priesthood-Relief Society meeting yesterday. At the end of the meeting, I made a comment which provoked mixed reactions after the meeting, and now I am wondering about that comment. Read More
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49 responses
“Are you pregnant?” In the past two weeks, for some reason I have had four people ask me this question and variations on it: “Are you and Kristen expecting another?” “Are you going to have another baby?” “When is the next baby coming?” Read More