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42 responses
I did not have a positive reaction to Elder Rasband’s talk in the most recent General Conference, and I wasn’t happy when our Elder’s Quorum teacher announced we would be basing our lesson on it last week, either. But I decided to try re-reading the talk with an open mind, and I’m glad I did. The main reason the talk, By Divine Design, rubbed me the wrong way when I first heard it, is that I associate people who see God’s hand in numerous, small, every-day coincidences with the same class of superstitious belief that finds meaning horoscopes. This is,… Read More
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Heaven & Earth Mormonism and the Challenges of Science, Revelation and Faith February 22nd – 23rd, 2018 Classroom Building, Room 511 Utah Valley University Program PDF here; conference website here. The relationship between science and religion has been among the most fiercely debated issues since the Copernican revolution displaced traditional wisdom regarding the nature of the cosmos. Some have argued for a sharp division of labor while others have sought to harmonize spiritual and empirical truths. From its beginnings, Mormonism has wrestled with the implications of modern science and has produced a variety of theological responses. This conference will explore… Read More
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12 responses
In passages like this one, Nephi strikes me as incredibly concrete and practical in nature—much more a Brigham Young than a Joseph Smith. Read More
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9 responses
Like the story of Moses (to which Nephi often refers) the story of Lehi’s & Saraiah’s exodus is epic and foundational, as well as typological. Read More
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16 responses
A few years ago, President Rosemary Wixom of the Primary shared a story from the life of Mother Teresa in General Conference: In a 1953 letter, Mother Teresa wrote: “Please pray specially for me that I may not spoil His work and that Our Lord may show Himself—for there is such terrible darkness within me, as if everything was dead. It has been like this more or less from the time I started ‘the work.’ Ask Our Lord to give me courage.” Archbishop Périer responded: “God guides you, dear Mother; you are not so much in the dark as you… Read More
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82 responses
So many were shocked by today’s Gallup poll breaking down Trump’s job approval rating by religion. More Mormons approved of Trump’s Job performance than any of the other religious groups. A staggering 61% of Mormons approved of his performance. Like many people I was shocked it was that high. I suspect the poll seemed worse given it came out on a day when Trump was once again enmeshed in controversy over racist comments. Read More
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34 responses
This week in Sunday School and Primary the lesson is on Abr 3 and Moses 4 with a focus on the plan of salvation. I wanted to go in a somewhat different direction than the lesson would go. You might call this my scribbling on the margins of the lesson. Read More
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Submissions are due this coming Monday for the Society for Mormon Philosophy and Theology’s upcoming conference at Utah State University, March 15-17. The conference theme is “The Exaltation Revelations,” D&C sections 76, 84, 88, and 93. For full details see the Call for Papers (PDF). Read More
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48 responses
The NYT’s framing of the life of President Monson was, to say the least, interesting. The obituary begins: Thomas S. Monson, who as president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints since 2008 enlarged the ranks of female missionaries, but rebuffed demands to ordain women as priests and refused to alter church opposition to same-sex marriage, died on Tuesday at his home in Salt Lake City. He was 90. It’s just as illuminating to contrast the way the NYT approached President Monson’s death with that of other leaders. Here’s their tweet for President Monson. Thomas Monson, the president… Read More
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4 responses
Sandwiched in between the Daughter’s of Ishmael’s complaints about their afflictions and Laman’s complaints about the women’s afflictions (16:35-36 and 17:20-21), Nephi acknowledges that they were indeed afflicted. Read More
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10 responses
Jesse Lyman Hurlbut, a Methodist minister, first published the Hurlbut’s Story of the Bible in 1904. In the book, he retells 168 Bible stories in simplified modern English prose. The author’s purpose was to provide a version of key scripture passages that young readers would find accessible. The numerous republished editions that have appeared throughout the years witness to the popularity of the volume. The author is a distant cousin in my family tree, but because of the similarity between his name and mine, I have always perceived a personal connection to his life’s work. In honor of his project,… Read More
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20 responses
One of the clearest signals of being one of the Mormon people is our unique experience of the passing of the head of our church. Read More
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One response
Orrin Hatch is retiring from the Senate. McKay Coppins first broke a story months ago that Hatch was expected to retire with Mitt Romney planning on running for his seat. Then the last few months Hatch seemed to indicate he was reconsidering. He also made many favorable statements about Trump, much to the displeasure of some Utahns. Trump himself clearly wanted Hatch to run again. Today though it seems like Hatch finally decided to stick with his original plan. Read More
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52 responses
In their new book, The Christ Who Heals: How God Restored the Truth that Saves Us, Fiona and Terryl Givens make the case for how “the doctrines and scriptures of the Restoration have enriched our knowledge of the rock and foundation of our faith — Jesus Christ.” The book is a delight: The Givenses draw on a rich cast of characters — from spiritual leaders in the second century after Christ to General Authorities in the present — to map out the evolution of our understanding of the Savior. Each chapter explores a distinct aspect of our restored understanding of the… Read More
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13 responses
I’m excited about this new meeting. I’ve created a sample teaching outline for Primary presidencies below, so if that’s what you’re mainly here for, scroll down. For those who are interested, though, here’s how I’m thinking at this early stage about the deeper structure and future possibilities for this meeting. The pairing of priesthood power with temple proxy ordinances has intriguing theological implications. It effectively shifts the locus of priesthood in the children’s minds from the chapel (where the deacons pass the sacrament, the focus of the old Priesthood Preview) to the temple. I find this quite significant. It has… Read More
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10 responses
While it’s not really new news, Sociological Science had an interesting story on how American religion is becoming polarized and losing its middle ground. We’ve known for quite some time that mainline churches were rapidly losing members since the 1980’s. Further we’ve known that the rise of the Nones the past 15 years often came from people objecting politically to the social conservatism of religion. The question was whether the United States was secularizing like Europe. Quoting from the study, Read More
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16 responses
2 Nephi 25:23’s “we know that it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do” has proved surprisingly controversial the past few decades. I mentioned last week some of the views on grace during that period. My own view is that this is much more a rhetorical issue than a doctrinal one, despite the way the debate has frequently raged. That said the exegesis of 2 Nephi 25 does seem to be a point of disagreement. BCC a few years back did a nice overview of the issues. Read More
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4 responses
The first account we have of a woman speaking in General Conference is Lucy Mack Smith, speaking in Nauvoo, Illinois, in October 1845. But women were teaching in the Church long before that, and the continued long after that — not just in General Conference. In their collection At the Pulpit: 185 Years of Discourses by Latter-day Saint Women, Jennifer Reeder and Kate Holbrook have created a wonderful thing. They have brought us the strong, inspired voices of 54 Mormon women (plus 7 more in the e-book), from Lucy Mack Smith speaking a “gathering of emigrating saints at Lake Erie”… Read More
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21 responses
A recent leak revealed what appears to be an old scale for evaluating potential BYU students. Basically, you take 10*GPA + ACT and then add points for stuff, like being from outside the West or taking AP classes. The most one could possibly get is 100 points, but this would require being… rather unique. There was some excitement because, although this no longer is true, at the time BYU gave 1 point for being male, presumably to try and bring the gender balance closer to equality. Read More
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25 responses
I really wanted to comment on recent articles of polls on doubt and Mormons but didn’t have time due to other commitments. I hope you don’t mind a few comments on the Huffington Post article about doubt based upon the Next Mormons Survey. The author Benjamin Knolls is a contributer with Jana Reiss in the recent Dialogue issue on doubt. He gets at an issue I’ve long been interested in – more objective analysis of Mormon retention. Polls and surveys over the past two decades have really allowed us to see what’s going on in a fashion that really wasn’t… Read More
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14 responses
The Deseret News today had an interesting article “Grace is not a Mormon heresy, LDS leaders and scholars say after doctrinal ‘climate change’” It’s an interesting story about how Mormons came to accept talking about grace. Reading it though I realized that the author seemed to make a fundamental confusion that really bothered me. He conflates the language we use to talk about grace with the doctrinal meaning of our beliefs. After all we may believe something yet simply use different language to describe it. Likewise a common problem in discussions with our Evangelical friends is finding we use the… Read More
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I had been studying the scriptures quite intently for the year or so before I first went to the temple. This really added to the experience for me, because I could see all the ways that temple worship connects with everything we know from the scriptures. The form of temple worship is quite different from what we experience elsewhere in the church, and I know some people who have found it a bit disorienting at first. In my case, though, with so much from the scriptures fresh in my mind, everything made sense and felt that much more right and… Read More
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18 responses
There’s an interesting issue of distinguishing good consequences from good people. Good people can make bad decisions leading to bad consequences. My favorite example of that is apostle Reed Smoot who was made a Senator in 1902. I take it for granted that he was a good man. However he sponsored the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act in 1930 which many think led to a deeper and longer depression than was necessary.[1] I think the opposite is true as well. Bad people can do good things. Two examples from the past are Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson. I think the moral failings… Read More
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6 responses
Perhaps I ought to be grateful that no such crisis demanding the voice of the Lord has come into my life. Or perhaps I should wonder at the silence of the heavens. Read More
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The Society for Mormon Philosophy and Theology has a few upcoming events. Read More
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23 responses
I’ll give you a couple of book discussions after one short paragraph on fiction and history. Both fiction and history are a form of narrative. Historical narrative is (ideally) constrained by facts and historical evidence; both fiction and history are constrained in a looser sense by the sensibilities of their reading audience, as few people will read a boring or irrelevant or uncredible narrative, whether packaged as fiction, nonfiction, history, or scripture. We readers want plausible, relevant, interesting narratives. Life is too short to bother with anything else. So let’s start with some fiction, Mette Ivie Harrison’s His Right Hand,… Read More
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14 responses
It’s hard for us, as humans, to pry apart the empirical from the normative—and for good reasons. Facts don’t come to us bare of value. Especially with regard to those facts that we appreciate and evaluate in existential contexts (i.e., contexts related to our identity and overall worldview), they always already appear normatively laden (i.e., as meaning something). At least as a pragmatic matter, bare facts are secondary abstractions (whatever metaphysical status we ultimately attribute to them). Nephi certainly saw Laman & Co. as acting in ways that had specific meaning and bearing, and I’m convinced that he saw his… Read More
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10 responses
Why did everyone tremble when they looked on the Liahona? Read More
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30 responses
It has been a tough year for the NFL. Football is a sport; the NFL is a brand. After years of growing viewership, energetic fan support, spiking television revenue, and multiplying sponsorships, a series of largely self-inflicted mishaps has tarnished the NFL brand. There is the national anthem protest controversy, initiated by Colin Kaepernick and carried on by a handful of other players and teams, stoked by comments from President Trump, and now sort of fading into the background — but leaving many fans feeling somewhat alienated from the game. There is the Ezekiel Elliott suspension, which turned into the… Read More
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4 responses
Welcome to the fifth chapter of the originally weekly 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. 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 if they disagree or even just see flaws in the logic. That’s when we… Read More