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Comment here on the Notes From All Over for the past week. Read More
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A website with answers. That’s what Time Magazine calls the new religion website Patheos.com in “What Do Religions Believe? A Website with Answers.” The Time article describes the new site as one “that sets out to explain the differences among religions as well as illuminate the areas of common ground.” Just today the site unveiled its Mormon Gateway section, a menu of resources designed to complement the more detailed information presented in the Library section of the site. Read More
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I learned earlier this week that the Church College of New Zealand is scheduled to close later this year, at the end of a 3-year-long process announced in June of 2006. What caught my attention, however, was a news report on opposition to the Church’s plan to dismantle the buildings that made up the school. Read More
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Although Moroni was anxious about the Nephites’ “weakness in writing,” he does note that the Nephites were able to “speak much,” and that their spoken words were “powerful and great” (see Ether 12:23–27). Read More
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When my wife and I talked with our missionary son recently, he said he was glad to be in Carson City, Nevada, instead of Las Vegas. When I asked why, he said: Gated Communities. Read More
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Here is the last installment of our 12 Questions with Marvin Perkins, comprised of Brother Perkins’ responses to our last two questions. We’d like to thank Brother Perkins for the time and effort he’s put in to giving us a set of very substantive and thought-provoking responses. Read More
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The Pew study has this awesome little database for comparing religious groups. Check it out. Did you know 7% of Mormons are Hispanic and 22% are Democrat or lean Democrat? And only 44% of Mormon adults are men? We need affirmative action!! Read More
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Comment here on the Notes From All Over for the past week. Read More
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Here is Part Three of our 12 Questions with Marvin Perkins, comprised of Brother Perkins’ responses to our next five questions. See Parts One, Two, and Four for our introduction of Brother Perkins and his responses to our other questions. Read More
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The LDS Church’s Chief Information Officer, Joel Dehlin, called for help Wednesday in a post titled Mormon Open Source Open for Business. The project seeks help with a number of LDS Church projects, including, first on the list, a rewrite of the software that runs the Stake and Ward Websites. Read More
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My paternal grandfather, Marc Ricks, is 98 years old. He was born in September 1910, just a few months after President Hinckley. Read More
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It’s not easy being a theologian in the 21st century. One of the main reasons is that science provides credible, non-theistic explanations for many of those “where did we come from?” questions that religion once had all to itself. Evolution seems to pose a particular challenge. John Haught, a professor of theology at Georgetown, tries to tackle the problem head-on in his book God After Darwin: A Theology of Evolution (Westview, 2000). Read More
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Here is Part Two of our 12 Questions with Marvin Perkins, comprised of Brother Perkins’ responses to our next four questions. See Parts One, Three and Four for our introduction of Brother Perkins and his responses to our other questions. Read More
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In General Conference of April 2009, Elder Russell M. Nelson reminded us: Read More
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Comment here on the Notes From All Over for the past week. Read More
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After reading the post from a couple days ago about optimal tithing rates, I started to think about some of the unanswered questions that have come to mind while I’ve been playing Brick Breaker in Elder’s Quorum pondering the mysteries of the Gospel. It seems like this audience might be able to offer some differing perspectives on these conundrums that, up to now, have kept me at a loss. A lot of you seem to be much smarter than I am. Have at them. Read More
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A recent DNA study has gotten some attention, both on our sidebar and in a post by J. Nelson-Seawright at By Common Consent. The Mormon question that inevitably comes up from such a study is does it cast any light on the question of whether Lehi really landed in the Americas long ago? J. Nelson-Seawright discusses some possible ramifications if the study (or ones like it) do matter. Let me make clear that, for those who think Lehi landed in an already populated America, this study is basically irrelevant. Read More
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Yettaw, who is Mormon according to several news reports, is now in detention in a Burmese jail. Worse, he has managed to get Burma‘s Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who was nearing the end of house arrest under a 6-year sentence, arrested also. Read More
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I recently read a short essay by Eric Hobsbawm, “Identity History Is Not Enough.” I came across it in his book On History, a collection of essays, but fortunately for you it is available online at the above link (except for the last page, for some reason). Mormonism is not mentioned, but the discussion seems to bear directly on the writing and reading of Mormon history. Read More
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Comment here on the Notes From All Over for the past week. Read More
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Its only been a problem once, but we didn’t expect our Temple to be like this. Read More
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Key to this is our ability to strip ourselves of pretense; to lay bare our faults, our doubts, and our struggles. It is a refreshing – and frightening – experience to be completely candid, to trust the others within the group to listen and respect our experiences, even as they candidly respond and criticize. It can be brutal at times, but behind that brutality is always a sense of love and friendship. Read More
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I’ve been thinking long and hard about what I should talk about in my inaugural post on this blog. Quite honestly, when I agreed to do a stint as a guest blogger, I thought it would be pretty easy. But, lately, it seems that all my Mormonism-related thoughts have been trite and meaningless. For example, I considered drafting a post complaining about one of the teachers Elders Quorum and his refusal to teach out of the manual. But, honestly, I think that post would have just ended up being a rant about a quorum discussion outlining the evils of facial… Read More
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For some time now I’ve been planning a series of posts looking at the LDS presence in different countries around the world. But unlike what has been done elsewhere, I want to find and present information that gives a view of what life may be like for most LDS Church members in that country. I also hope to give an idea of the development of Mormon culture in the country, mention a few of the well-known or notable citizens of that country who are Mormon, as well as a brief idea of the distribution and development of the Church in… Read More
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Family Tree Read More
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When I was a youth (pre-1978), a magazine article about the Church hit the newsstands in Washington D.C., and we, local members, were ecstatic with what we considered great coverage of the Church. So I was very surprised at the negative reaction of the missionaries in our ward. It seems that the article had a few negative things to say that we thought were minor (and accurate), and the missionaries felt were major derogatory statements that put the Church in a bad light. While the situation isn’t the same, I read a similar reaction yesterday, objecting to the mention in… Read More
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Can I remind us of something? The rhetoric here and elsewhere on the bloggernacle, the Internet, and evidently in the personal lives of some of us, seems all too often to be based on the idea that there is a worthiness test for compassion. Read More
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When I first heard about Twitter, I thought it was one of those truly dumb ideas that couldn’t possibly catch on. Now it is an infotsunami, sweeping over the world in a growing horde of 140-character snippets [see “People Are Flocking to Twitter” at LDS Media Talk for a quick update]. So do you join the wave or run for high ground? Read More