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    Saints, Volume 4: A Review

    The fourth and final volume of Saints: The Story of the Church of Jesus Christ in the Latter Days was published today. This newest book, Sounded in Every Ear, tells the story of the Latter-day Saints from 1955 to 2020, bringing the history up nearly to the present day. It discusses an era in which conversion rates exploded in South America, the Pacific islands, eastern Asia, and Africa. The 1978 revelation that ended the priesthood and temple ban was an important event enabling that growth. Temple construction to support membership across the world became a big deal, with the number… Read More

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    In the last two posts, I’ve argued that a limited chronology model primarily focused on Mosiah-3 Nephi 7 doesn’t excessively strain historical plausibility, and then turned around and argued that 1 Nephi-Enos was a living text that was adapted to reflect the state of the Nephite coalition around the time of Benjamin and later. But what does this have to do with a rational belief in Book of Mormon historicity? Read More

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    I previously argued in Public Square Magazine that advancements in AI may be making a compelling secular case for the existence of God. Following on from that article, I’d like to explore another related topic. Read More

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    Moroni is an important figure in Latter-day Saint lore. For example, I’ve written previously about how some authors have taken any mention of angels and the Book of Mormon in the same story as a reference to Moroni, whether that conclusion is warranted or not. But another area in which Moroni plays a role is in stories about the dedication of early temple sites of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. One prominent example is a story of the dedication of the Manti Temple site. In a recent interview at the Latter-day Saint history blog From the Desk,… Read More

  • A Review: A Documentary History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Mexico, 1875-1946

    A Documentary History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Mexico, 1875-1946 by Fernando R. Gomez (founder of The Museum of Mormon Mexican History) provides a streamlined and updated look into the history of the Church in Mexico. Read More

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    The Church’s Messages to the Supreme Court

      An amicus brief is a document submitted to courts by groups or people who have some interest in the outcome of the case. For landmark Supreme Court cases a lot of professional organizations, for example, will take a position and outline their reasons. My understanding is that the justices and their clerks don’t actually have to read these, but if it’s a brief from a person or organization that is important I assume they do, and occasionally the judge will cite an amicus brief in their decision-making. I went through the Supreme Court docket and identified all the recent… Read More

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    Early last year, I wrote about symbols I had observed in Wilford Woodruff’s journals. It turns out that I wasn’t the only person who had that on the mind – Joshua Matson had done some earlier and more intensive research on the same topic that he shared in a presentation at the Building Latter-day Faith Conference on March 4, 2023. From there, he worked on and published an article in BYU Studies and then discussed symbols in Wilford Woodruff’s journals in an interview at the Latter-day Saint history blog From the Desk. What follows here is a copost to the… Read More

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    So in continuing this series on my thoughts on belief and history (I may pick that as a title), I wanted to give some background on why I ended up linking Mormonism and Plato. I did an interview with Gabriel Proulx a few months ago, and he assumed I’d been interested in philosophy for a long time. Not so. I had NO interest in philosophy as an academic discipline as an undergrad and focused on history then and throughout my academic training. I came across my interest in Plato from that angle. The only philosophy class I ever took was… Read More

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    One of the markers of being the cool intellectual member is that you know where all the bodies are buried. I remember as a middle schooler cross-checking The Godmaker’s Journal of Discourses references and feeling like I was the recipient of arcane, secret knowledge. Of course, now the Internet has shouted everything from the rooftops  and most people knows about the big tough issues (e.g. pretty much all Latter-day Saints know about Joseph Smith’s polygamy now). But still, there are some more niche issues that are still primarily the purview of the more well-read class.  And with the Internet it… Read More

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    A Review Joseph Fielding Smith: A Mormon Theologian

    I remember a conversation with an institute teacher that I was particularly close to while I was attending college. I was in his office and noticed a framed sketch that included important intellectuals and writers in Latter-day Saint history. While I liked most of them, I pointed out that I didn’t care for Joseph Fielding Smith and Bruce R. McConkie and the perspectives they held. The institute teacher then said, “I agree, but can you deny that they belong there because of the impact they had?” Joseph Fielding Smith: A Mormon Theologian, by Matthew Bowman is an impressive glimpse into… Read More

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    Missionary service is a time of growth and an opportunity to serve, but it can also be a source of extreme pressures and stress for missionaries that manifests in different ways. One of the more famous examples came in the 1950s in the British Isles, where pressure from a mission president led to people taking advantage of the appeal of baseball to increase the number of baptisms they reported, regardless of whether it led to actual, long-term conversion. In a recent interview at the Latter-day Saint history blog, Greg Prince discussed baseball baptisms. What follows here is a copost to… Read More

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    Approaching the Book of Mormon as a historical text helps make sense of aspects of the book that an exclusive focus on the text as a work of fiction or on its nineteenth-century context overlooks. Several of these aspects relate to the opening books, from 1 Nephi to Enos. One aim of these books is to explain how several objects symbolizing political and religious authority came to be the rightful possessions of the Nephite king, while another important goal is to explain how the Nephite people came to exist in their current form. As that form changed, so did the… Read More

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    An Honorary White Horse Prophecy Award: Or, Romney Wasn’t the Only Republican “Latter-day Saint” Politician to Stand up to Trump

    The quotes around Latter-day Saint are not for Romney, but Brooks, as explained below. Also, none of this should suggest that I’m on Team Democrat, and I don’t want this to devolve into some brute-force democrat versus republican fight in the comments, but on the issue of, you know, not overthrowing the republic I think reasonable people can come together.  Like many I have been often disappointed by the paucity of republicans willing to stand-up to Trump, and I’m saddened that the one Senate republican who has a track record of putting his power where his mouth is will be… Read More

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    Over the next few posts, I’m going to sketch out an argument that believing in the historicity of the Book of Mormon is a rational choice. To put it briefly: the Book of Mormon does not need to strain historical plausibility nearly as much as it might seem; treating the Book of Mormon as a document that existed in history offers insights on the text that a focus only on its 19th-century context would overlook; and the historicity of the Book of Mormon offers a compelling explanation for a number of things that are otherwise difficult to explain. Read More

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    In this next post in something of a series (I’m holding off numbering these or giving them all the same title, since the concept is a bit amorphous) I wanted to lay out my approach to belief in topics that are historical. This title is something of a play on words, as I don’t mean so much as believing a believer’s narrative about historical things pertaining to Mormonism. Instead, what I mean is that I “believe” what the historical documentation and scholarly evidence indicates. I “believe” history. Yes, I’m well aware that there’s a lot of debate about a lot… Read More

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    This Abominable Slavery: A Review

    This Abominable Slavery: Race, Religion, and the Battle over Human Bondage in Antebellum Utah by W. Paul Reeve, Christopher B. Rich Jr., and LaJean Purcell Carruth is a fascinating and detailed glimpse into the debates about slavery and race in Utah Territory in the 1850s. Incorporating never-before transcribed accounts of the 1852 legislative session that saw Utah Territory leadership pass a series of laws intended to regulate unfree labor, this volume provides a thorough analysis of those laws, the debates that surrounded them and how they fit into the national context of the United States at the time. In doing… Read More

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    A Shrinking Church in a Shrinking World

    Obviously I think the Church would bulldoze temples before it got this bad, but still, an interesting thought experiment.  Over the next century or so we are going to potentially see a bizarre phenomenon with Church growth. In some countries churches will shutter en masse with wards and stakes being merged many times over–all while membership could be increasing or even exploding in terms of percent population.  How can this happen? In many countries the background population will be cratering. Throughout the history of Church growth we have largely taken the growth or stasis of the denominator of background population… Read More

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    Having done a few posts on being a practicing Mormonism while disbelieving in Book of Mormon historicity, I wanted to shift gears a little bit to explain a few more aspects of my believing framework. I’ve talked about my views on what I see as the good that our religion (others too) does for the lives of its members here in life, and I want to start a series a posts on what I see as a historical framework to Mormon belief that I find compelling. I’ll go over this in more detail in upcoming posts, but the gist is… Read More

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    Pharisees and Publicans, Thespians and Jocks

    “God, I thank you that I am not like other people: even like this jock. I watch my language, am always worthy to pass the sacrament, am on the honor roll, and I give a tenth of all my income.” As a note, I put this post in the queue for the 5th a long time ago, not realizing that it was General Conference weekend, I’ll keep it up, but in posting on General Conference Saturday I’m in no way trying to draw attention from what should be drawing your attention today.  With high school almost 20 years in the… Read More

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    One aspect of Islam that I appreciate is their approach to translation of scriptures. You see, the Quran is considered a sacred text that was originally revealed in Arabic, and translations into other languages are often called “interpretations”. This is because Muslims believe that the Quran’s sacred character is unique to the Arabic language, and that translating it into another language changes its meaning. While I don’t know that the original language of a volume of scripture is sacred per se, any translation of that text can be viewed as an interpretation that changes its meaning to one degree or… Read More

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    Among “amateur” LDS scholars (however you want to define that), Morgan Deane is, in my estimation, unfairly overlooked. While his specialty – military history – is something of a niche (though it shouldn’t be), it readily works with the Book of Mormon, especially with the accounts of wars. Part of the issue, methinks, is that “war” and “violence” are not particularly palatable topics amongst academics, and so we get occasionally forced eisegesis like the kind in the book Proclaim Peace (which, I think, has a decent premise taken way too far; we really should eschew violence as often as possible… Read More

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    Marion D. Hanks is one of the most influential general authorities who never served in the Quorum of the Twelve or First Presidency. Today he is best known for his hymn, “That Easter Morn”, his advocating for Christlike service, and the support he lent to Black members of the Church in the years leading up to the Priesthood Revelation. In a recent interview at the Latter-day Saint history blog From the Desk, Hanks’s son and biographer, Richard D. Hanks, discussed Marion D. Hanks’s life and legacy. Read More

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    My AI Generated Podcasts on the Bear Lake Monster and the Great Apostasy, And Other AI News

    Apologies for doing another one of these so soon after the other one, but when it rains it pours. Since I last posted OpenAI released “advanced voice mode” to all plus subscribers. What this means is that the lag we’re used to when talking to AI is now gone, and now it is indiscernible from speaking to a real human being, up to and including detecting sarcasm, humor, and the like. I have been using it to brush up on my very rusty mission Spanish, and now any pre-missionary who wants to go above and beyond and practice, say, giving… Read More

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    I don’t usually respond to articles that I dislike, generally just letting them talk for themselves, but the Miller and Dunn chapter promotes the myth of “soaking,” which is supposedly a chastity loophole that I discuss here. They reference a college newspaper which cites TikTok, so still no real evidence that soaking is a thing.  Read More

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    The Church recently released a new batch of hymns for the new Latter-day Saint hymnbook. I feel like some of my predictions are paying off with the new round of hymns. Back in 2018, I called it that “This is the Christ,” “Come, Lord Jesus, Come,” and “Amazing Grace,” would likely be added. (I could say the same for “Come, Thou Fount” with the last round, but that one was beyond obvious.) But, beyond those, there are some very excellent inclusions that I am excited about. Let’s go through each of the new hymns and I’ll share some thoughts and… Read More

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    Latter-day Saint Book Discussion, Addicted: Notes from the Belly of the Beast

    A very, very, particular niche subgenre I find educational (“enjoy” isn’t the right word) are accounts of mental health struggles or extreme circumstances by people who really know how to write. For those of us who have never been starving or so depressed that we defecate in our bed because we can’t get out of it, it is hard to know anything about the internal sense experience of those events. I recall reading one account where the writer who had been subjected to torture dismissed the phrase “burn like a red hot iron.” Unless you have been burned by an… Read More

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    Growing up in the Church, I repeatedly heard stories where missionaries encountered people who had been reading anti-Mormon literature and told them that “you wouldn’t decide on which car to buy by reading only the stuff put out by a company’s competitors – you would also read what the company that produced the car has to say to get a balanced view. The same should be true for religions.” When looking at historical sources, unfortunately, it isn’t always easy to do the same, because the religion’s own sources are no longer extant. Such was the case with the early Pharisees… Read More

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    Open Canon: Scriptures of the Latter Day Saint Tradition, edited by Christine Elyse Blythe, Christopher James Blythe, and Jay Burton is a book that I loved reading. It is an anthology of essays focusing on the documents created and used as scripture in the broader tradition of religions that trace their roots to the early Latter Day Saint movement. The focus on the creation and reception of texts, the various branches of the Smith-Rigdon movement, and thoughts about texts that could be considered non-canonical scriptures are all right up my alley, and given the quality of research being presented, I… Read More

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    Why the King James Version is the Best Bible Translation

    As a TBM there are a surprising number of issues dealing with religion where I have some agreement with Richard Dawkins, and one of them is that the King James Version is the best version of the Bible.  When I say “best,” I don’t mean “most accurately conveys the oldest documents.” I know there are older arguments that try to argue something along these lines (J. Reuben Clark wrote a booklet about it, but when I was in Stephen Robinson’s class at BYU he didn’t seem to think his arguments held much water), but I have no reason to doubt… Read More

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    J.R.R. Tolkien and the Resurrection

    J.R.R. Tolkien had an enormous impact on my teenage years. I read Lord of the Rings by the time I was eleven and loved it enough to reread it each year for the next few years. By the time I was thirteen, the Silmarillion was my favorite book and my mom was bringing home the History of Middle Earth series from the library for me to read. As a result, Tolkien had some impact on my religious thoughts during this formative period. Read More