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4 responses
Those of you who spend a lot of time in the blogosphere are undoubtedly aware of the Ecosystem, sponsored by The Truth Laid Bear. The purpose of the Ecosystem is to classify blogs based on links. The most popular are names you probably know: Instapundit, Daily Kos, Eschaton, Andrew Sullivan, etc. The Top 10 are referred to as Higher Beings. The next 20 are Mortal Humans, which is followed by 70 Playful Primates, thus rounding out the Top 100. The blogs that I read most often (other than Times & Seasons) appear just below that level and are called Large… Read More
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14 responses
My Seminary students were never more united than this morning, when they all agreed that my “thought question” for today was not very interesting. Not one to be deterred by a little opposition, I decided to float the idea here. Read More
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22 responses
This morning in Seminary, I showed my students some clips from Chariots of Fire. We have been studying Isaiah, and I love the scene where Eric Liddell is preaching to a congregation in Paris while taking Sunday off from the 1924 Olympics. (Do they understand what he is saying with his Scottish accent?). During that scene, interposed with images of athletes stuggling to compete in slow motion to the haunting music by Vangelis, Liddell quotes from Isaiah 40:29-31: He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength. Even the youths shall faint and… Read More
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15 responses
Kristine’s description of her lunch with Esther Peterson got me to thinking about other women I wish I could have met. I was somewhat surprised that Louie Felt and May Anderson popped into my mind. These two women were the first two presidents of the Primary. Between them they presided over the Primary from 1880 (at its beginning) to 1940. Louie Felt was a plural wife; May Anderson never married. (May was quite a few years Louie’s junior.) Neither had children. I take my title from the title of an article about the two that appeared in the Children’s Friend,… Read More
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I’ve been interested in one line of recurring discussion in all the talk about Mel Gibson’s movie. (Keep in mind I’m focusing on “talk” about the movie; I haven’t yet seen the movie.) On the one hand, the charge that the movie is anti-Jewish. On the other, the counter that it’s not; that it’s telling the gospel story of crucifixion, the atonement. My point would be that these two views may not be exactly contradictory. I recently reread The Origins of Satan (1993) by Elaine Pagels. Her argument has framed my own response to discussions about Gibson’s movie—and to my… Read More
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7 responses
Everyone listens to Handel’s Messiah at Christmastime, but it was originally performed at Eastertime, and the Easter portion of the piece has some gorgeous and infrequently performed gems, like the tenor aria “Behold and see if there be any sorrow” and the soprano aria that follows “But thou didst not leave his soul in hell.” So if you haven’t listened lately, dust off your CDs and listen to the WHOLE THING, not just the MoTab recording of the “highlights.” There are lots of good recordings out there, but I like Christopher Hogwood’s with the Academy of Ancient Music, because I… Read More
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31 responses
Confession time. I am a lawyer. It is now official. Last week the Board of Bar Examiners sent me my certificate stating that I am duly liscensed and qualified to practice as an attorney and counselor at law before the courts of the Commonwealth of Virginia. Yesterday, I recieved in the mail an offer from the D.C. office of an international law firm, which I will probably accept. What this means is that I am on the threshold of the land of the Yuppies. Read More
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29 responses
Wow, this must be a record for the number of new topics in one day. At any rate, this is an article from the 26 Mar 04 BYU NewsNet that I thought was interesting. (If the link does’t work, try http://newsnet.byu.edu/story.cfm/49488.) Read More
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20 responses
I’ve been thinking recently of people I met in my twenties. Where we are now—that memory thing. A post a few weeks back by your own Jim Faulconer sent me on this most recent tour down memory lane. Jim was a person I met in my twenties—in the honors program reading room at BYU. At BYU I also met Mike Quinn, Lavina Fielding Anderson, Janice and David Allred. . . . . We were all idealistic, faithful, bookish Mormons, beginning our adult lives. From what I know, I believe that we’ve all “kept” the faith. Read More
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78 responses
In the chorister’s thread, some discussion has come up (okay, it’s been mostly me) about under-rated hymns. I think that this is an interesting enough subject to deserve its own thread. Read More
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73 responses
Yesterday, John Kerry spoke in a chuch and invoked biblical support for an attack on “our present national leadership.” Kerry alluded to the following passage from James 2:14-17: What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him? If a brother or a sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, And one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit? Even so faith, if it hath… Read More
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62 responses
Rather than hijack the discussion of Russell’s post, I’ll post my question separately: I wonder why we insist on a chorister every time we sing. In most cases no one is really following the chorister anyway; we follow the pianist. Having grown up a Protestant, I know that a congregation can have very good singing with no chorister. Read More
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102 responses
Scene: A discussion on family roles in Relief Society. A sister (sitting next to me, nonetheless), pipes up with, “I heard something that really made an impression on me. You see, the man is the head of the household. But the woman is like the neck. She guides and controls the head.” The sister went on. I was lost in the realization that the warning I had read on the Exponent II list about the proliferation of this analogy in Church classes in the wake of My Big Fat Greek Wedding was not, in fact, an urban legend. Read More
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7 responses
So why do I always resist the rather obvious point. The Sunstone crowd is greying, the Mormon history crowd is greying. . . . There is an easy answer, I suppose. I’m from the old Sunstone crowd. I’m greying. Maybe I don’t like facing the obvious. But I really don’t think that’s it exactly. Read More
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I spent a fair amount of time Sunday evening reading David Bigler’s book Forgotten Kingdom: The Mormon Theocracy in the American West, 1847-1896nk that Bigler’s book is written in the best tradition of local antiquarianism rather than professional history per se. There is very little attempt (even by history writing standards) of synthesis or analysis. Rather he puts a high premium on lively narrative and close attention to local detail ? e.g. he tells you the current street addresses of the locations of skirmishes or events from the days of Deseret and in the footnotes bemoans the vandalism of historic… Read More
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4 responses
From now on, we are going to try to have two guest bloggers simultaneously and stagger their appearances so that we have a new person coming on board each week. Thus, while Julie will continue to blog for another week, we have a new guest blogger coming on board today: Susan Staker. Susan is a graduate of BYU (B.A.) and the University of Utah (M.A.). She is also ABD in literary theory from the University of Utah. She is the co-author with Carol Cornwall Madsen of Sisters and Little Saints, a history of the founding of the Primary. (Amazon.com erroneously… Read More
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16 responses
We are all familiar with the words of the Savior to the Nephites after quoting Isaiah 54: “ye ought to search these things. Yea, a commandment I give unto you that ye search these things diligently; for great are the words of Isaiah.” (3 Nephi 23:1). In preparation for another week of Isaiah study (this is my third time teaching the book of Isaiah, the two prior attempts being in Gospel Doctrine), I decided to give in to my inner skeptic and ask this Seminary Thought Question: What is so great about the words of Isaiah? Read More
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17 responses
We’ve talked before about callings and authority; I’d like to talk here about something closely associated with the previous discussion, but which also has a peculiar dynamic all its own: callings and skill. Read More
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7 responses
Lesson 14: Enos, Jarom, Omni, Words of Mormon We will concentrate on Enos 1-18 and several verses in Omni. Read More
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27 responses
This morning my wife went with the sister missionaries to teach a discussion. The investigator was an intelligent, well-educated woman who was quite religious and very biblically knowledgeable. (We live in the South.) She had an interesting concern when the sisters taught her the plan of salvation: Not enough people were going to hell. Read More
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44 responses
A while back I commented on the greying of Mormon studies. I just ran across something that further confirmed my initial intuition. According to a survey collected at the 2003 Sunstone Symposium, the age break down of Sunstoners looks like this: 6% — Under age 25 7% — age 25-34 8% — age 35-44 14% — age 45-54 35% — age 55-64 30% — age 65 or older Wow! Think of what that means. Well over half of the participants are over the age of 55. A whopping 79% of Sunstoners are over the age of 45, and under the… Read More
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14 responses
Cirila and I are pleased to announce the arrival of our daughter, Mia Elizabeth Call. She was born early yesterday morning in Berkeley, weighing in at 7 lbs, 1 oz. Mom and baby are doing great. Here’s an early photo: Read More
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38 responses
Here are a few recent comments about teaching in the Church: Jim F.: “As you can see, I’m skeptical about Church teaching in general. I hope to see things otherwise, and it seems to me that the Church is interested in making them otherwise, but we’ve got a ways to go.” Gordon Smith: “I am very frustrated by the teaching that goes on in the Church. . . . I remember Dallin Oaks talking about the poor teaching in the Church, but I do not remember a very coherent vision of where we need to go. In any event, if… Read More
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61 responses
Aaron Brown has an interesting post (re-cycled from the ldslaw list) on whether or not we can draw inferences about God’s political priorities from institutional church involvement. Although Aaron is (needlessly in my opinion) coy in his post, the bottom line is that he thinks that the disjunction between Church political priorities and what was really important has been so wide that we shouldn’t draw inferences about God’s preferences from Church statements. (See Aaron’s comments here) Read More
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4 responses
There is a norm in the blogosphere that every ten thousand visitors or so, a blog is supposed to engage in a bit of statistical navel gazing. We are pleased to point out that in the last day or two we passed the 30,000 visitors mark. As some of you may know, this blog began its life as a joint venture between some of the most obnoxious posters on the ldslaw e-mail list. When I look back at those heady days of long ago (November 19, 2003) when Time & Seasons first hit the internet, I can see how far… Read More
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17 responses
Two BYU political science professors denounce the proposed Federal Marriage Amendment. One BYU law professor defends it. Both are solid expressions of their respective points of view. Responding to them will, of course, turn this thread into a debate over the nature of marriage–but before that happens, I’d like to point out that marriage itself plays almost no role in their actual claims. Read More
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This from Richard John Neuhaus at First Things (scroll way down): [A] recent national survey asked administrators and students about the First Amendment. Only 21 percent of administrators and 30 percent of students knew that the First Amendment guarantees religious freedom. Only six percent of administrators and two percent of students knew that religious freedom is the first freedom mentioned in the First Amendment. Only 41 percent of administrators and 32 percent of students believe that religious people should be permitted to advocate their views by whatever legal means available. On the other hand, 74 percent of students and 87… Read More
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21 responses
If you check out the links from “Kristine Haglund Harris” on the side bar you will notice that, depending on which of her three names you clikc on, you will be taken to either the website of The Republican National Committee, The National Rifle Association, or Bush/Cheney’04. This choice of links constitutes extreme action on the part of one of the site administrators in an attempt to get Kristine to send in her biographical information and a picture, so that we can get an introduction page for her like the rest of the permanent bloggers. In the mean time, we… Read More
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30 responses
I am feeling testy today, so I thought that I would post on a subject I have been thinking about for a while: the most over rated text in Mormon studies. Perhaps it is part of being raised in a prophetic, leader-revering culture, but there is a tendency on the part of Mormon intellectuals toward hagiography. Not of church leaders of course. (Being Mormon intellectuals has liberated them from anything so crass.) Rather, I am talking about hagiography by Mormon intellectuals of Mormon intellectuals. (See the article on Quinn.) Read More