Search results for: “A Mormon Image”

  • American Mormons Aren’t Leaving the GOP, the GOP is Leaving Us

    American Mormons Aren’t Leaving the GOP, the GOP is Leaving Us

    Believe me, no one wants to write about the Trump campaign (yet again) less than I do. However, events last week might have long-term consequences for the position of Mormonism in American society, and I thought it was worth a little bit of a look. The story starts with a major shake-up in the Trump…

  • Book Review: The Mormon Jesus

    Book Review: The Mormon Jesus

    I remain fundamentally unconvinced of the book’s central claim and argument, and am personally ambivalent about it—though in that I’m surely in the minority amongst Mormons (rank-and-file and all the rest) whom I suspect will heartily cheer the book’s primary claim: Mormonism, taken as a whole in it’s historic trajectory, is patently Christian.

  • Whom say ye that I am? A review of John Turner’s Mormon Jesus

    Whom say ye that I am? A review of John Turner’s Mormon Jesus

    This is the first in a series on John Turner’s The Mormon Jesus: A Biography. John Turner’s latest book — The Mormon Jesus: A Biography — is wonderful. The book opens with Jesus’ question to his apostles, as recorded in Mark 8:29, “But whom say ye that I am?” Over the succeeding nine chapters, Turner…

  • Conference of the Mormon Transhumanist Association, April 9, Provo City Library

    I was a radical feminist for about 48 hours in 1995. Sitting in the Marriott Center as a 20-year-old BYU student, I listened to President Hinckley read the Proclamation on the Family for the first time to the assembled masses. And oh how I seethed! It felt intolerable to be defined from outside, to be told…

  • Review: Mormon Feminism: Essential Writings

    Review: Mormon Feminism: Essential Writings

    I enjoyed reading Mormon Feminism: Essential Writings (OUP, 2016), a 300-page collection of articles and essays on Mormon feminism spanning the 1970s to the present. That I enjoyed it says a lot, as feminism isn’t really my thing. The editors (Joanna Brooks, Rachel Hunt Steenblik, and Hannah Wheelwright) did a great job not only selecting…

  • The Provenance of Mormon Baptism

    The Provenance of Mormon Baptism

    This is the second in a series of guest posts by Gerald Smith covering the release of his book Schooling the Prophet, How the Book of Mormon Influenced Joseph Smith and the Early Restoration. Read the first one here. Fifteen years ago a professor friend of mine at Boston College – a Jesuit Catholic university…

  • The Provenance of Mormonism

    The Provenance of Mormonism

    Thank you Nathaniel for your introduction, and thank you to Times & Seasons for the opportunity to share my thoughts and observations with you. A curious paradox of modern Mormonism is how Mormons and non-Mormons frame its heritage. Mormonism appeared in early nineteenth century North America as a new religion amidst a largely Protestant setting.…

  • The Expanse: Mormons in Space

    The Expanse: Mormons in Space

    The Expanse is an acclaimed novel series by Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck writing under the pen-name James S. A. Corey. The first novel, Leviathan Wakes, was released in 2011 and nominated for both the Hugo Award for Best Novel and the Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. Abraham and Franck have released a book…

  • 2016 Gospel Doctrine- Recommended Resources on the Book of Mormon (updated)

    2016 Gospel Doctrine- Recommended Resources on the Book of Mormon (updated)

    As with the Old and New Testaments, here are my suggestions for this year’s study of the Book of Mormon. (Edit for newcomers: Who am I and why do my suggestions have any merit?)

  • Call for Applications: Summer Seminar in Mormon Theology

    The Third Annual Summer Seminar on Mormon Theology “A Preparatory Redemption: Reading Alma 12–13” Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, California June 1–June 15, 2016 Sponsored by the Mormon Theology Seminar in partnership with The Laura F. Willes Center for Book of Mormon Studies and The Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship In the summer of…

  • Panel on Mormon Apologetics

    Panel on Mormon Apologetics

    If you are in the Provo area next week:

  • Internationalizing Mormon Leadership: The Normal Pace

    Internationalizing Mormon Leadership: The Normal Pace

    In the Salt Lake Tribune of October 5, Jana Riess regrets that the top leadership of the Mormon church is all-white and overwhelmingly American, and that the recent apostolic callings missed the chance to reflect the church’s international diversity. Others have expressed the same disappointment. I can appreciate their concern, but I wonder how many…

  • Reading the Book of Mormon for the First Time Again

    Reading the Book of Mormon for the First Time Again

    I read the Book of Mormon all the way through several times as a teenager. Between multiple readings and a knack for remembering anything that comes in the form of a story, by the time I was 19 I knew the Book of Mormon as well as any other 19 year old I met. Now…

  • What is Mormon Doctrine?

    What is Mormon Doctrine?

    For decades I’ve been fascinated at the regular conflation of doctrine, policy, and practice among members. We tend to claim the policy of today as not just practical, meaningful, and inspired, but as doctrine. Until it changes and we forget all about it. One example that comes to mind is the “doctrine” from my childhood of…

  • Do Mormons Have a Duty to Vote?

    Do Mormons Have a Duty to Vote?

    You might think that this is a strange question, and that of course everyone has a duty to vote. That’s part of being a good citizen, isn’t it? Well, there’s a growing body of opinion that says this isn’t so. It all starts widespread agreement that voting doesn’t make a lot of sense from the…

  • The Most Important Question about the Future of Mormonism

    A couple of weeks ago, Patheos had a fun series of blog posts on the future of the Mormonism. (I’m too lazy to provide a link; Google it.) Most of the contributions were insightful and interesting, but I was struck that none of them put front and center what I think is the more important…

  • Review: Fresh Courage Take, or What It’s Like to Be a Mormon Woman

    Review: Fresh Courage Take, or What It’s Like to Be a Mormon Woman

    I recently read the new book Fresh Courage Take: New Directions by Mormon Women (Signature Books, 2015; publisher’s page), edited by Jamie Zvirdin with a foreward by Joanna Brooks. Twelve enlightening essays reflecting the plight, fight, and delight of being a Mormon woman circa 2015. You might ask: Not being a Mormon woman myself, who…

  • Review: For the Cause of Righteousness: A Global History of Blacks and Mormonism, 1830-2013

    It’s time for a discussion of Russell Stevenson’s For the Cause of Righteousness: A Global History of Blacks and Mormonism: 1830-2013 (Greg Kofford Books, 2014; publisher’s page). I bought my copy at a book signing at Benchmark Books in Salt Lake. Deseret Book is carrying the book, but if you live in Utah County go…

  • A Mormon in the Disenchanted Forest

    In a few minutes I’ll be leaving to travel to California, where I’ll be speaking this weekend at the conference of the Mormon Scholars in the Humanities. I’ll be speaking Friday morning on Karl Ove Knausgaard, and Saturday on Nibley + Terryl & Fiona Givens on atonement theory.   Sunday evening at 7:00 pm, I’ll be…

  • Initial Short Speculation on Three Book of Mormon Passages and Ancient Cosmology

    Initial Short Speculation on Three Book of Mormon Passages and Ancient Cosmology

    Part of writing a book about ancient cosmology and Genesis 1 is… reading lots about ancient cosmology and Genesis 1. In doing so, I’ve had some thoughts about three Book of Mormon passages. I’ve generally set these on the shelf, so these are initial thoughts which upon further investigation may turn out to be highly significant or completely…

  • A Mormon Maximalism

    A Mormon Maximalism

    I’ve been practicing a kind of Mormon maximalism for a long time now. This impulse toward maximalism is itself religious in spirit. More, the impulse is aesthetic. It’s driven by a kind of wild hunger for the feel (literally, the aesthesis) of words, facts, theories, things, and people. I’m roaming the earth, eating everything in…

  • A Mormon Minimalism

    A Mormon Minimalism

    I’ve been practicing a kind of theological minimalism for a long time now. This impulse toward minimalism is itself religious. And it’s aesthetic. It doesn’t have to do with whether particular things are true or false (though, rest assured, such judgments must also be made), it has to do with the feel (literally, the aesthesis) of Mormonism as…

  • Seafloor Spreading, or Why I’m Mormon

    Seafloor Spreading, or Why I’m Mormon

    Let’s acknowledge that beginnings are important. This is one reason why we care so much about history. So let’s go back to beginning. Let’s go back to the origin, to the source, to what the Greeks called the arche. But how? Where is the origin?

  • Most Mormons

    Most Mormons

    I distrust Most Mormons. Whenever I see Most Mormons, I’m inclined to disagree with whatever is being said. If it were possible, I’d like to do away with Most Mormons entirely

  • A Brother in Zion: One man’s unlikely journey into Mormonism

    A Brother in Zion: One man’s unlikely journey into Mormonism

    It was the jumpsuit that brought it all into focus, a jumpsuit much like one he had worn years before. But this jumpsuit was white. That one had been orange. Dressed in the white polyester garment, David was prepared for baptism into a new church. A fleeting glimpse of himself dressed in white seemed to…

  • 2014 Mormon Book of the Year

    2014 Mormon Book of the Year

    With all the power vested in me (by myself), I hereby declare Joseph Spencer’s book, For Zion: A Mormon Theology of Hope, the 2014 Mormon Book of the Year.

  • The Mormon Challenge, Part 1: Creation

    Continuing with my project to actually read the LDS books I buy, I’m now reading The New Mormon Challenge (Zondervan, 2002), a serious book about Mormonism by a bunch of Evangelical scholars, edited by Francis J. Beckwith, Carl Mosser, and Paul Owen. Apart from our mere existence, two things about us really trouble Evangelicals: our…

  • 2015 Summer Seminar on Mormon Theology

    The Second Annual Summer Seminar on Mormon Theology “Christ and Antichrist: Reading Jacob 7” Union Theological Seminary, New York, New York June 8—June 20, 2015

  • Meeting the Mormons

    Meeting the Mormons

    Imagine that the Meet the Mormons movie was made any time between, say, 1940 and 1990. I think we know almost exactly what it would have looked like:

  • Expectations and Meet the Mormons

    Expectations and Meet the Mormons

    Early in my book publishing career, I worked for an innovative publisher of high-quality childrens picture books. One day, in conversation with my boss, the publisher, I criticized the Little Golden Books, a long-running line of cheaply produced picture books with very simple (and, I thought then, not very notable) stories. To my surprise, my…