Recent anecdotal evidence suggests that someone in the bowels of Church headquarters has launched yet another installment in the periodic holy war against masculine facial hair. A new member of our stake presidency was instructed by a visiting Area Authority Seventy to shave his beard. He was told by the Seventy that there was no scriptural or doctrinal basis for this instruction, but that it is currently an “unwritten policy.” At about the same time, several acquaintances of mine who volunteered to serve as veil workers at, respectively, the Oakland and Saint Paul temples were informed that they could do… Read More

The church web site is reporting that church President Gordon B. Hinckley will receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom from national President George W. Bush. President Hinckley writes that: I will be deeply honored to receive this prestigious award from the President of the United States. I am profoundly grateful. In a larger sense, it recognizes and honors the Church which has given me so many opportunities and whose interests I have tried to serve. To the Church, to my associates, and to our people everywhere I extend my gratitude and with each of you share the honor of this… Read More

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad,* William Morris was to remember that distant afternoon when he blogged about the (potential) existence of a Mormon magic realism. . . I recommend William Morris’s excellent series of posts on this topic. The discussions can be found here, here, and here. Go read up, so that your children won’t be born with the tail of a pig! *Firing squad: Well this is Utah, after all. Read More

I just noticed this post over at the Mirror of Justice, discussing an article by Monte Stewart and Dennis Tolley which suggests that scholars undervalue the scholarly production of conservative religious law schools, and (it appears from the post) the faculty of these schools. The findings are certainly interesting. The authors also note that their research indicates that BYU is the second most conservative of the religiously affiliated law schools. Read More

I’m so grateful that one of our ex-guest-bloggers, greg.org, gratefully took the opportunity to bear his testimony about Napoleon Dynamite, a Rushmore-esque indie film by Mormon writer and director Jared Hess. Check out greg.org’s remarks here. Read More

Ironically, one of the most debated questions in religious studies is the definition of religion. In most disciplines there is at least a general consensus about how to define the subject of inquiry. Biochemistry is the study of the chemical substances and vital processes occurring in living organisms. Astronomy is the scientific study of matter in outer space with particular attention paid to the positions, dimensions, distribution, motion, composition, energy, and evolution of celestial bodies and phenomena. Clear disciplinary boundaries are not limited to the hard sciences, however. If you study English Literature it is plain to everyone what the… Read More

Unfortunately, Damon Linker won’t be able to complete the second week of his two week guest-blogging stint with T&S; some unexpected work and personal responsibilities have overwhelmed him for the moment, and he doesn’t think he’ll have the time or energy to contribute as he would like, much less be able to do justice to the many excellent comments which his last post elicited. Some of those comments were rather severe, as he knew they would be–you can’t be a non-Mormon professor at BYU and not know that saying Mormons aren’t Christians will strike a huge nerve–but that didn’t bother… Read More

…the Supreme Court has taken a pass, reversed the Ninth Circuit Court’s decision, and dismissed Michael Newdow’s suit against the Pledge of Allegiance on the technical grounds that he is not his daughter’s custodian, and therefore he has no standing to bring a complaint on her behalf. The case was 8-0 in favor of dismissal (Scalia had recused himself). Full story here. I suppose watching the Supreme Court actually try to ban the words “under God” from the Pledge would have been entertaining, as would have been an attempt on their part to constitutionally affirm this particular bit of civic… Read More

My thoughts this morning echo the words of a poem by Lula Greene Richards (1849-1944). Lula was the editor of the Woman’s Exponent, a staunch defender of women’s right to vote, to obtain an equal education, and to choose their own occupations. This poem comes from Branches That Run Over the Wall. Read More

What a fascinating series of comment on my “Are Mormons Christians?” provocation. I have several things to say in response. First I want to explain my admittedly (and deliberately) extreme formulation from yesterday, i.e., “not even close.” Though I think my boss could have done a much better job in making the case, I think he was right: Mormons simply believe too many things that are too radically discontinuous with the orthodox Christian tradition to be considered Christian. Compared to these differences, those separating Catholics and Baptists and Lutherans and Eastern Orthodoxy are quite tiny. As someone noted in the… Read More

It’s been a bear of a day at work (editing 70 text pages of correspondence for the magazine), so I’m going to have to be somewhat short today. I’m pleased to have been able to inspire so many interesting comments in response to my provocation about the “fairy-tale” character of Mormonism, especially those that go beyond the too-easy “inside it makes perfect sense but outside it looks silly” response, which I’d think is hardly the right outlook for a missionary faith: the point is to bring those on the outside IN, is it not? I would only add on the… Read More