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18 responses
Book of Mormon translation is one of those interesting subjects that is central to the ongoing Book of Mormon wars. As well, to me, one interesting aspect about the Book of Mormon is how self-aware of its own creation it is. For example, in Mosiah 8 (part of this week’s “Come, Follow Me” discussion), there is a discussion about seership and the use of “interpreters” that allow the owner to “look, and translate all records that are of an ancient date” (Mosiah 8:13). In the case discussed in the scriptures, the seer is King Mosiah II and the record is… Read More
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Michael Austin’s book, Buried Treasures: Reading the Book of Mormon Again for the First Time is a quick, insightful and though-provoking read about the Book of Mormon. The book began its life as a series of blog posts at By Common Consent, documenting some of Austin’s thoughts as he read the Book of Mormon in-depth for the first time in decades (after spending a significant amount of time during those decades focused on literary criticism and Biblical studies). The book, published by the By Common Consent Press earlier this year, takes the form of a collection of short essays that,… Read More
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27 responses
Race is an incredibly sensitive topic, but it is also an incredibly important topic to discuss and understand. A number of important books have been published about the racial narratives that were adopted by early members of the Church in recent years, including Max Perry Mueller’s Race and the Making of the Mormon People (The University of North Carolina Press, 2017). Kurt Manwaring recently sat down with Max Mueller to discuss the book in a 10 questions interview. What follows here is a summary of the interview, but I encourage you to go read the full interview here. Max Perry… Read More
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14 responses
The late Clayton Christensen spends a chapter of his book How Will You Measure Your Life? on how to make sure you live with integrity, in accordance with your principles. His suggestion: make resolutions and stick to them, 100% of the time. If you stick with them only 98%, before you notice you’ll have abandoned them altogether. A bit to my surprise, I found myself reacting strongly against this proposition. It took me some thought to articulate what I think Christensen’s approach to moral integrity leaves unexamined, and I think it comes down to a couple things that aren’t often… Read More
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12 responses
There is a part of me that is deeply drawn to the Christian religions that have existed for hundreds or thousands of years. Perhaps that comes from my fascination with history (particularly the Byzantine Empire), perhaps from beautiful experiences with choral music written by Christians from the Renaissance up through our own day. Perhaps some comes from spending the better part of a decade involved in the music ministry of a small Presbyterian Church in northern Utah. And perhaps some comes from my fascination with theology and learning how different people have addressed the difficulties associated with the subject over… Read More
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6 responses
Last Sunday, my extended family gathered by videoconference to share Easter communion. My sister Rachel Frandsen Jardine delivered this sermon from her home in Lima, Peru. It moved me as much as anything I’ve ever heard in a chapel. Thanks to Rachel for allowing me to share it here. At Easter, we try to grasp the heart of Christianity. This season, I have found myself reflecting on the idea of emptiness. Here’s Luke’s story of the Resurrection in which the emptiness of the tomb is very important. On the first day of the week, very early in the morning,… Read More
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12 responses
Many of my choices in books this year have been influenced by a decision to try and catch up on literature about the Book of Mormon. I feel a bit overwhelmed, to be honest, since there’s a lot out there and I have been more focused on the New Testament in recent years. I recently finished reading Christ and the Antichrist: Reading Jacob 7, a collection of essays on Jacob 7 that resulted from a two-week gathering of the Mormon Theology Seminar. There are both a published book version and a free PDF version offered through the Maxwell Institute. It’s… Read More
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17 responses
This Holy Week I’ve been monitoring my employer’s livestreamed Roman Catholic masses and services, meaning that I (for the first time) attended a Holy Thursday mass and a Good Friday service. So it happened that, during the reading of the Gospel of John in the Good Friday service, I noticed something peculiar. In response to Jesus’s raising of Lazarus from the dead, the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the council, and said, “What are we to do? This man is performing many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him,… Read More
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11 responses
Bear with me as I go out into the theological weeds to explore an obscure doctrinal debate about the resurrection. As my wife and I studied the “Come, Follow Me” curriculum section on Easter, we discussed Amulek statements about the resurrection in Alma 11. Our question was: What exactly does it mean to “restored to its perfect frame, as it is now, or in the body” (Alma 11:44)? Does it mean that the body is perfectly brought back to the condition it was when it died (“as we now are at this time”) and may undergo further healing and development… Read More
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7 responses
During General Conference last weekend, President Russell M. Nelson called for a worldwide fast on Good Friday (April 10) to “prayerfully plead for relief from this global pandemic.” Notably, this is the second collective fast in less than two weeks that Nelson has organized to petition God to alleviate “the physical, emotional and economic effects” of the global coronavirus pandemic. For those less familiar with the practice, Latter-day Saints periodically engage in ritual fasts, which generally involve abstaining from food and drink for 24 hours (or 2 meals), prayerfully dedicating the fasts to specific purposes, and contributing the value of… Read More
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34 responses
Last week the church reported 16,565,036 members. What did some foresee a quarter of a century ago for 2020? Back to the past’s future. In the Ensign of August 1993 an analysis of church growth concluded: “If growth rates for the past decade remain constant, membership will increase to 12 million by the year 2000, to 35 million by 2020, and to 157 million by the mid-twenty-first century.” (p. 75). Same projection by Bennion and Young in 1996,[1] based on various variables but with plenty of reservations, leading to a cautious: “The First Presidency in 2020 will preside over no… Read More
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28 responses
There are several statues that exist at Temple Square in Salt Lake City, but two stand out as the most well-known and prominent. The first is the Angel Moroni, standing at the highest spire of the Salt Lake Temple. Created by Cyrus E. Dallin, the statue of the angel represents the Book of Mormon prophet who finished the record and later delivered it to Joseph Smith. Regarded as a fulfillment of the apocalyptic prophecy of an “angel flying in midheaven, with an eternal gospel to proclaim to those who live on the earth,”[1] replicas or variations of the statue have… Read More
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5 responses
Sam Brown is a friend of Times & Seasons and teaches pulmonary and critical care medicine at the University of Utah School of Medicine. When I became a God-believer three decades ago, I think I understood something about the sacred stillness of the sabbath from my time camping beside the alpine lakes of the high Uintahs. One feels embarrassed to think of those cool blue worlds as oases when they are surrounded by glistening verdure and flickering stands of aspens, but spiritually I couldn’t turn my eyes away from them. Those lakes and their sheltering mountains were key components of… Read More
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8 responses
The world is facing extraordinary times. With the COVID-19 pandemic raging worldwide, everyone is (or soon will be) feeling an impact from it in one way or another. It will likely leave some lasting changes on our society. Within the Church, it provides us with an extraordinary opportunity to reflect on how we have been doing things and to consider how we can change and possibly improve. In the age of technology that we live in, there are plenty of opportunities available, such as the has been shown with how the Church is handling general conference. In the past, pandemics… Read More
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5 responses
It’s General Conference weekend! That means ten hours of hearing from prophets and apostles and other inspired leaders of the Church. It also means eight hours of trying to keep children engaged (at best) or occupied (at least). Our household favorite is this: Before each session, each person picks a gospel word. (We don’t allow variations on the names of deity “out of reverence or respect to the name of the Supreme Being” and “to avoid the too frequent repetition of his name.”) We associate each word with a particular bowl of some small candy, like M&Ms or chocolate chips. Then… Read More
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4 responses
SWOT analysis seems to be something business majors learn their first semester. I’ve never been a business major, but it seems like a reasonable way to start thinking about what the church is facing in these virus-invested times of unknown duration. Read More
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94 responses
I am saddened by the wickedness of my generation. Three weeks ago – before the Coronavirus quarantine – I returned to the YSA ward that I attended in college. I noticed a man sitting by himself on a pew. I didn’t remember his name, but I did remember him. He sat by himself on that same pew seven years ago. Seven years sitting alone at church. If this was an isolated incident, I would not be so despondent. But this was not isolated. A few weeks before, a young man visited my New York YSA ward. He was new to… Read More
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5 responses
Along with “baby Yoda” memes, Disney’s Mandalorian made two phrases trendy: “This is the way,” and “I have spoken.” Being a Star Wars fan, the phrases quickly made their way into the lexicon of my household. So, it was humorous to me to find an entire lesson in “Come, Follow Me” this year entitled “This is the Way,” even though it makes sense in context. Towards the end of his record, Nephi lays out the Doctrine of Christ in detail and concludes that: “This is the way; and there is none other way nor name given under heaven whereby man… Read More
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19 responses
“The life of the common law has been in the unceasing abuse of its elementary ideas.” So observed S. F. C. Milsom, a Cambridge legal historian and one of the greatest scholars of the common law. It was important to the authority of the common law that it demonstrate continuity– so important that leading common lawyers and judges like Edward Coke and Matthew Hale could insist that the law had never changed. Its authority lay in the assumption that its precepts had always been there, “the memory of man runneth not to the contrary.” And yet the world changed drastically… Read More
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9 responses
In these challenging times, an experience I posted fourteen years ago on Times and Seasons comes back to mind. How would I draw a conclusion now? This was the experience: *** Martha was one of the older sisters in our branch. We counted a scant dozen of them, singles and widows, making more than half of the congregation and being its very backbone. When I got to know her, Martha was in her sixties. Huge by nature and strong from her lifelong labors as a market woman, she lived in a modest but sunny apartment, four flights high. Rent and… Read More
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60 responses
I’m only a translator in the sense that people keep paying me to translate things for them. Read More
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12 responses
There have been some common underlying themes to several Times and Seasons posts these past few months. The three themes or questions that I have in mind at the moment are: “What is the nature of the Great Apostasy?”, “What is the nature of the Restoration?”, and “What is the relationship of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints with the broader tradition of Abrahamic faiths?” I’ve posted about the Church’s Interfaith efforts, about B.H. Robert’s understanding of the Church of the Devil and the Church of the Lamb of God, and an attempt on my part to understand… Read More
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9 responses
When my bishop announced that we would not be holding usual church services last Sunday, my main feeling was one of short-term relief: I absolutely love my calling as Gospel Doctrine teacher (I never want any other!), but I simply didn’t know where I was going to find time to prepare a lesson that weekend with all the other commitments that I had going on. My second feeling was one of excitement. I’ve long believed that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints exists to serve families (rather than the other way around) and so the recent moves towards… Read More
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20 responses
We’ve all seen the changes. Two hour church. High Priests don’t meet separately. No more Scouts. Come Follow Me. Etc., etc., etc. Anyone with a serious continuing connection to the Church is still adjusting. And those adjustments include adjustments to our culture. You’ve probably seen the changes in culture. They include changes to our terminology (“ministering”, “come follow me”), changes in how we structure our lives (“two hour church”, home-based study and study groups) and changes to the cultural goods we consume (podcasts, YouTube videos). During my life the culture associated with the Church had already changed markedly before the… Read More
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25 responses
One of the more awkward moments of my time in graduate school came when I was reading a book about Mormon polygamy while taking a break in the lab. A visiting scientist from Pakistan who was doing research in the same lab saw me reading the book and asked me: “That looks like an interesting book. Are you preparing to take a second wife?”, then joked about taking a second wife himself. A bit flustered, I explained that my wife and I weren’t interested in expanding our family that way, that my church had stopped practicing plural marriage over a… Read More
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18 responses
Some of my friends were elated when they heard that church meetings were canceled because of COVID-19, or Coronavirus, “Church cancelled!” texts went out. Celebratory emojis were shared. On a more serious note, a family member wondered whether there would be long-term effects on church attendance. Would people keep staying home on Sunday once they got in the habit? We may well see a dip in activity rates. But COVID-19 will only be the trigger. The root problem is deeper. Many members have lost sight of why we go to church in the first place. Church as we know it… Read More
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My wife and I held our own service this morning– we read a scripture, listened to several conference talks– and it was uplifting, but perhaps less of an investment than on most Sundays; so this evening my wife said, “Let’s sing some hymns.” So we went to the piano, and then she said, “Let’s sing some Primary songs,” so we got out the big blue book and sang for maybe an hour, just the two of us. “Can a little child like me/ thank the Father fittingly?” “He sent his son.” “I feel my Savior’s love.” “Love one another.” I’m… Read More
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They say novel Coronavirus disease is easier on kids, but I’m not sure that’s the case. Read More
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12 responses
Our readers will have heard that the First Presidency announced yesterday that all church meetings and activities have been suspended, due to the worldwide Covid-19 pandemic. As a result, most members and families will worship at home starting this Sunday. In addition, the Church’s counsel says, “We encourage members in their ministering efforts to care for one another. We should follow the Savior’s example to bless and lift others.” So despite the pandemic, we should try to find ways to minister and help others (as I suggested earlier this week). This is not new for everyone. On occasion church is… Read More
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2 responses
We all have our flaws and our inexcusable shortcomings– Mormons as well as non-Mormons. We sometimes offend or injure others, ignorantly or thoughtlessly or sometimes even maliciously. Mormons as well as non-Mormons. These failings can make religious fellowship difficult– painful rather than uplifting, as it should be. In recent discussions on this blog, people have shared painful experiences they have had in the church. It is impossible, I think, not to be moved by some of these experiences. Sometimes a person will conclude that participation in church is more of a hindrance than a benefit, and that they would be… Read More