Jana Reiss had up an interesting post last week where she suggested Mormons don’t know what to do with Paul as an apostle. In particular she claimed, “it’s discomfiting to realize that Paul’s apostleship was entirely of the self-proclaimed, charismatic…
Nephi’s Apocalypse
One of the most interesting, most popular, yet also quite controversial elements in the Book of Mormon is Lehi’s and Nephi’s vision. Some readers might agree with the interesting part but be surprised by the controversial part. This is after…
Echoes of the City of Joseph
Scott Esplin is a professor of Church History and Doctrine at BYU with a background in late 19th, early 20th century history and educational history. He recently published a social history of Nauvoo with Return to the City of Joseph:…
Handcarts and History
In many ways, handcarts have come to symbolize the Mormon pioneer experience. There are a few reasons for this. With the tragic experiences of the Willie and Martin handcart companies of 1856, the handcart companies are among the easiest group…
Mormon Life on the Moon
I’m old enough to remember the moon landing, 50 years ago today. And I’m old enough to admit that I thought humanity would be much farther along in exploring our nearest neighbor than we are. But I’m encouraged by recent…
Whispering from the dust
As comments go this is a rather belated one, but PA decisions are not up to warp speed either; anyway, the decision is there, timely and adequate. The issue? Some years ago I wrote about the absences in Mormon weddings,…
Water Alone
In my last post, I discussed an argument in favor of needing to partake of both the bread and water during a sacrament service as opposed to it being permissible to only partake of the water. This post is essentially…
The Neglected Louie B. Felt
RoseAnn Benson’s book Alexander Campbell and Joseph Smith: 19th-Century Restorationists compares the two best known and successful figures in the broad restorationist movement of the 19th century. While those familiar with Latter-day Saint history know the relationship between the two…
Bread and Water
In my previous two posts, I discussed questions relating to the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. Another question my friend asked was: “If you miss the bread do you take the water? … Obviously the best answer for the first…
Cut Off From the Prophets
One interesting thing about most scripture is the gap between the texts we have the the prophets themselves. The Old Testament was heavily redacted and edited during the Hellenistic period to give us the texts we now have. As Nephi…
10 questions with Thomas Alexander
We’re happy to have an other of our co-posts with Kurt Manwaring with 10 questions with Thomas Alexander. Thomas Alexander was the Lemuel Hardison Redd Jr. Professor of Western American History at BYU. Alexander has had an illustrious career teaching…
Frequency of the Sacrament
I mentioned in my previous post that the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper has been on my mind lately. One reason is that I recently had a friend ask me a couple of questions he was having trouble finding answers…
Your apocalyptic hymnbook
Hymns are useful evidence of religious practice. Hymns are a basic element of personal devotion, but at the same time the compilation of the hymnbook is carefully monitored by church leaders and the performance of hymns is modeled during the…
Why the Sacrament?
For Christians, the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper was and is, in the words of one historian, “the central Christian ritual act.”[1] As Latter-day Saints, we participate in the breaking of bread and drinking of water on an almost weekly…
Battle for the Public Square
While it seems too soon to say the US is moving towards a more fully secular society like most of Europe, the tensions of the recent changes are playing out in interesting ways. The most recent kerfuffle is between the…
If this goes on—
If we wanted to hazard a guess at what the upcoming years and decades hold in store for the church in the United States, the decisive factors will likely be to what extent the country as a whole becomes more…
10 Questions with Matt Godfrey
We’re happy to have an other of our co-posts with Kurt Manwaring. This is 10 questions with Matt Godfrey. Matt Godfrey is the editor of Zion’s Camp: 1834 March of Faith and is also a general editor of the Joseph…
Some Abortion Thoughts
Abortion has been in the news of late. Given the polarized times we live in, particularly those of us in the United States, it’s perhaps unsurprising that states are pushing extreme bills. New York’s passed a very liberal law at…
Updates on the New Hymnbook
It’s been nearly a year since the new core hymnbook was announced. While there have been a few rumors about the book (like a smaller size and getting rid of hymns with problematic copyrights), very little actual news has come…
An International Church in an Isolationist Age
The most paranoid fantasies your persecution complex can dream up will probably come true eventually, although not where you live, but somewhere else in the world. It’s an unavoidable risk of establishing local branches of the church in places that…
God and Being
One of the big differences between our faith and traditional Christianity is over the question of Being. Being is one of those weird terms that confuses people studying philosophy. The idea is that “to be” whether within our conscious perception…
Revelation by the rooster
It is a week after Easter now, and surely Petrus (Peter, the English call him, but I prefer his more apostolic sounding Latin name) has come back from his great shock, delivered by the rooster; that early morning crowing did…
10 Questions with Quincy Newell
We’re happy to have an other of our co-posts with Kurt Manwaring. This is 10 questions with Quincy Newell. Newell is an associate professor of religious studies at Hamilton College. She’s also the author of Your Sister in the Gospel:…
On the Honor Code
Let me state my priors on the honor code. I think it’s an important set of rules that really sets BYU apart from most other top universities. Yet simultaneously I worry the honor code office has been poorly run for…
Don’t Reform the Honor Code
The current round of dissatisfaction with the BYU honor code will hopefully result in some tinkering around the edges and perhaps a few personnel changes, and then quickly be forgotten before it has a chance to undermine the university’s educational…
Easter
I’m not big on religious holidays. I know some look at all the holy days of Catholicism or similar faiths with envy. I don’t. I’m definitely a minimalist when it comes to religious days. Yet since the first day I…
Some tips for your obituary
For some time, I’ve been writing obituaries for a secular educational institution (which, for the sake of the failing hearts of its remaining alumni, will remain anonymous).
Ethics and Mormon missionary work: what memoirs tell us
They are still teenagers, 18 or 19, and are sent out to change the lives of adults. The boys dress up like CIA-agents, the girls like old-school women. They typically have no clue about the national, regional, social, cultural, religious,…
Grace and Cooperative Salvation
Since at least the time of Augustine of Hippo and Pelagius, western Christianity has been embroiled in a debate about salvation and grace. The two extremes have been represented as salvation by grace alone and earning salvation by our own…
When God Changes Address
One of the many striking episodes in the life of the prophet Elijah is his nearly-missed encounter with God atop Mt Sinai. Discouraged by the failure of his prophetic zeal to reform the Israelites, Elijah is instructed by the…