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8 responses
Welcome to the third week of the reading club for Adam Miller’s Future Mormon. For general links related to the book along with links for all the chapter discussions please go to our overview page. We’ll be trying to discuss a chapter each week. Please don’t hesitate to give your thoughts on the chapter. We’re hoping for a good thoroughgoing critical engagement with the text. Such criticisms aren’t treating the text as bad or flawed so much as trying to engage with the ideas Adam brings up. Hopefully people will push back on such criticism as that’s when we tend… Read More
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2 responses
On a cold day in January, Eldon Umphrey helps his son, Izyek, into Mission Creek in western Montana. The creek runs through the family property, and it has become a family tradition to perform baptisms there, even when there’s snow and ice. ~ Michael Umphrey (http://umphrey.net/) If you have a photograph you would like to submit for consideration in our A Mormon Image series, please see here for our submission requirements. Read More
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15 responses
When I was young, I discovered C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia and enjoyed every volume. Then one day, at my neighborhood library, I discovered Paul Ford’s Companion to Narnia, essentially an encyclopedia of Narnia, and I fell in love. The entries were arranged alphabetically, and there were more topics than I had ever imagined. It was well-ordered and — at least to my child’s mind — exhaustive. Encyclopedias hold that promise. Around the same time, I discovered Bruce R. McConkie’s book Mormon Doctrine. With short, clear entries, Mormon Doctrine provided definitive answers to a wide range of gospel questions. Only… Read More
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30 responses
Over at Slate, Daniel Engber had an interesting and instructive article a while back entitled “Bad Footnotes Can Be Deadly” on how the current opioid crisis has been aggravated by the misunderstanding of a letter to the editor of a medical journal and its misquotation over decades in the medical literature, with the error propagated and compounded by researchers who failed to check the original source. Engber’s article on the error’s persistence and influence documents a process not unlike the formation of urban legends and faith-promoting rumor. But if you’ve ever done scholarly research, you should also be nodding your… Read More
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22 responses
We tend to defer the responsibility of Religious Freedom to the State. But to what extent is it an individual matter as well? In this post I will guide us through some of the issues, and hope for a healthy discussion on what we can do to enhance Freedom of Religion. Is Freedom of Religion or belief a legal, institutional or personal affair? The USA First Amendment starts with “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion…“. In my discussions with Americans, Freedom of Religion is defined mostly on the legalizing of religions. One assumes that so long… Read More
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Calle del Templo, which in English translates to “Temple Street,” is the street on which the Madrid Temple stands. ~ Gabriel González (http://gabrielgonzaleznunez.wordpress.com/) If you have a photograph you would like to submit for consideration in our A Mormon Image series, please see here for our submission requirements. Read More
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5 responses
We’re happy to welcome another “international” blogger, Hans Noot from the Netherlands. During the past 36 years Johannus D. T. (Hans) Noot coordinated Religious Education in Belgium and the Netherlands for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He also supervised this work in Ireland, Poland, the Czech Republic, the Balkans and Italy. He earned a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in organizational behavior from Brigham Young University and is currently working on a Ph.D. in organizational anthropology at the University of Tilburg in the Netherlands. He is an organizational consultant and entrepreneur. His passion, too, lies in… Read More
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20 responses
Not the big screen, just lots of small screens. From the LDS Newsroom: Filming Begins on New Book of Mormon Videos. It will not be a beginning-to-end depiction; the project will select certain episodes and events, producing “up to 180 video segments three to five minutes in length, as well as up to 60 more running 10–20 minutes each.” These will no doubt become a go-to resource for Primary teachers, Sunday School teachers, and seminary teachers. Read More
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One response
With my assignment to the office of the Argentina Resistencia Mission, I helped pick up our new mission president. I snapped this photo as we walked to the terminal to await his arrival. Read More
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6 responses
This is the second week of the reading club for Adam Miller’s Future Mormon. For general links related to the book along with links for all the chapter discussions please go to our overview page. We’ll be trying to discuss a chapter each week. Please don’t hesitate to give your thoughts on the chapter. We’re hoping for a good thoroughgoing critical engagement with the text. Such criticisms aren’t treating the text as bad or flawed so much as trying to engage with the ideas Adam brings up. Hopefully people will push back on such criticism as that’s when we tend… Read More
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18 responses
When I was 19 years old and a junior at BYU, I took a volunteer opportunity teaching a semester-long “life skills” class at the Utah State Prison. Maybe it’s not apparent from that one sentence how absurd it was for a sheltered Mormon girl from rural Canada to be teaching “life skills” to a bunch of inmates, but trust me, it was pretty absurd. The closest I had ever been to criminal behavior at that point in my life was sneaking out of my house without telling my parents once to go get a Subway sandwich. I knew, however, that… Read More
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20 responses
One of the most striking features of the Bible is its division into Old and New Testaments, which present not only substantially different sets of religious beliefs and practices, but very different portrayals of God. The God of the Old Testament is a judgmental, jealous, and vengeful God, who destroys sinners without remorse, whether of his own people, the Hebrews, or even entire nations such as those of Canaan. God’s love and compassion are also visible in the Old Testament, but the harsher side is displayed quite dramatically. This judgmental conception of God is reflected not only in descriptions of… Read More
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7 responses
A few years ago I left my scriptures on the roof of my car when driving home from church. When I realized what I’d done I returned to find the pages scattered all over the road. These were my mission scriptures and they meant a lot to me so I spent about an hour gathering as many pages as I could. This is the result. In some ways this photograph symbolizes the process I have been through of deconstructing the very sure faith of my mission. My faith today is a lot less certain and much messier, but it feels… Read More
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57 responses
Over at BCC there were a few people claiming in the comments how Mormons were for Donald Trump for President. Now I completely understand why people would say this, given that Trump won Utah in the election. However I think that at best one needs to seriously qualify this statement. Read More
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One response
The title of and inspiration for this photograph of the Moroni statue atop Hill Cumorah in Palmyra comes from the text of Parley P. Pratt’s hymn “An angel from on High” (Hymns 13). Read More
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15 responses
Most of us are familiar with the story of the prophet Elijah, who is particularly famous for his dramatic confrontation with the priests of Baal. My favorite part of Elijah’s story comes after that, though, when he realizes that not much changed as a result of his demonstration of God’s power–the people are still worshiping idols, and the wife of the king has promised to assassinate him. Elijah, despairing and suicidal, travels to Mt. Horeb (more famously known as Sinai, the same mountain on which the Lord appeared to Moses) and waits. The voice of the Lord then comes to… Read More
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32 responses
This is the inaugural reading club for Adam Miller’s Future Mormon. For general links related to the book along with links to each reading chapter please go to our overview page. We’ll try roughly each week to deal with a new chapter. The first part will be a brief summary of the arguments and assumptions. The second part will be a critical engagement with an emphasis of bringing out the issues of the chapter. Please don’t take the criticism as my treating the text as bad. It’s much more intended to be productive criticism to try and bring into clarity… Read More
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One response
Times and Seasons hopes you will join us in welcoming our latest guest blogger, Michelle Lee. Michelle is a licensed therapist practicing in the San Francisco Bay Area. She currently works full-time for her local school district, providing mental health counseling and crisis management services to adolescents and their families, and also has a private practice on the side (specializing in the treatment of anxiety disorders). She earned her Bachelor’s degree in Human Development at BYU, and her M.A. in Marriage & Family Therapy from the University of San Diego, and has spent several years working with teens and adults… Read More
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13 responses
My PhD dissertation was about bias in cost and ridership forecasts for transit projects. Before getting into any data analysis, I address the question of how we should even be evaluating forecasts in the first place. One response to evidence that forecasts for transit projects have generally proven to be overwhelmingly biased has been an argument that forecast accuracy is unimportant, or less important than other considerations. And it’s true that accuracy isn’t the only possible way to evaluate a forecast. A 1993 essay on weather forecasting by Allan Murphy (which I came across by way of Nate Silver’s book… Read More
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I spent a lot of years at the kids table when I was young. Family dinners were a big deal. My grandmother lived for them. She was an excellent cook and a hostess extraordinaire. She would recite poetry and lead her guests in singing a few songs. She would also use her seating chart to try and make marriage matches. I have so many great memories of dinners and holidays and cousins and delicious food. I’m glad that the tradition is still alive with my own kids and their cousins. Read More
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General Doctrine, Latter-day Saint Thought, Mormon Review, News and Politics, Philosophy and Theology
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5 responses
The person who probably comes closest to my own views on many matters is Adam Miller. Back in the heyday of LDS-Herm we had tons of fantastic discussions on theology and philosophy. Ever since Adam’s last book came out I’ve wanted to do a reading club on it but just hadn’t had the time. One nice thing about this book is that it engages with a lot of the core theological topics where we disagreed. I’ve found I learn the most from disagreements. In agreements I’m usually just either confirming my biases or else I don’t read as closely as… Read More
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2 responses
So I finally got around to reading J. Spencer Fluhman’s book “A Peculiar People”: Anti-Mormonism and the Making of Religion in Nineteenth-Century America. I was expecting another account of “beat up the Mormons” episodes in the 19th century. Instead, it was an entertaining and informative review of how informally established Protestantism worked in the 19th century (hence my subtitle to the post). The focus is not so much on Mormonism as on how everyone else, in particular the Protestant majority, reacted to Mormons and their religion in 19th-century America. Read More
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One response
We’ve decided to revive our long dormant photo series “A Mormon Image,” which features photos and other images that carry meaning for us because they resonate with our “Mormonness.” As part of this, we’d like to issue a renewed call for photographs to be considered for inclusion in the series. What qualifies as a Mormon image? It should be a photograph or other image which relates to your own Mormon experience. It can be an image explicitly tied to religious ritual, such as a picture from before a baptism. It can be a family photo outside the temple, or a picture… Read More
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34 responses
During the three years I was a transportation planning student living in Los Angeles (I completed the final two years of my degree remotely), I had fairly consistent access to a car, but I generally only used it as a transportation mode of last resort since I preferred to travel by walking or transit, and I lived in very walkable, transit-rich neighborhoods (with terrible traffic and limited parking). I lived in three different apartments during that time. The first was within a marginally reasonable walking distance to the temple; the second was on a transit line that served the temple;… Read More
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16 responses
The Sunday School curriculum is currently covering the Kirtland period of LDS history, including a full lesson on the Kirtland Temple. While we often treat that temple as part of 19th-century history, it is still around, it is still used for religious services, and it is available for public tours for visitors of any religious faith. I asked Tom Kimball, who lives in Kirtland, to respond to some questions about the Kirtland Temple. Tom is a semi-retired Mormon bookseller of twenty years, a former board member of the Mormon History Association, and presently a staff service volunteer at the Kirtland… Read More
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14 responses
I’m Mormon and my husband is not. He has his own religion that constitutes an important part of his identity, vaguely informs his religious beliefs, and minimally informs his religious practice. I would not describe him as religious at all. He would describe me as extremely religious. Sometimes people at church ask me if my husband is “interested in the church.” My answer to that is, well, yes, he’s interested in the same sense that I’m interested in hockey. My husband is a huge hockey fan. He puts a lot of time and energy into watching hockey, listening to hockey… Read More
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7 responses
Times and Seasons is pleased to welcome Carole Turley Voulgaris as our latest guest blogger. Carole recently completed her PhD in transportation planning at UCLA and will be joining the transportation engineering faculty at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo this winter following her upcoming maternity leave. For the time being, she lives in the Seattle area with her husband, her cat, and (starting any day now) her baby daughter. Carole served a full-time mission in Germany from 2003 to 2004, and (in addition to her newly acquired PhD), she holds a master’s degree in transportation engineering from BYU and an MBA… Read More
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53 responses
We’ve talked a lot about recent LDS growth numbers here including my post on the drop in missionary numbers and Wilfried’s post on the controversial consolidation of units in Europe. Since then the Salt Lake Tribune has weighed in as well.[1] My argument about church growth is that while there are things we could do to improve numbers, we shouldn’t expect a return to the numbers we had in the 1980’s or early 90’s. There are many reasons for that but the basic one is a huge cultural shift in how religion is perceived. Given my relative ignorance of Europe,… Read More
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5 responses
I was so touched to see this bit of humanity, this respect and consideration for the stranger. It is one reason I love living in a city: where we are all so close together, we have more opportunity to exercise and witness kindness. Read More
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16 responses
Why does the act of charity, in this case, the transaction initiated by a beggar or panhandler, feel so uncomfortable to me? Mental recriminations if I give, guilt if I don’t. Perhaps it is because I don’t know the protocol, the expectations, and so I’m worried about an inadvertent transgression. But it isn’t that hard to act, to find a way to overcome my anxiety and hesitation to do something small. Read More