A couple of years ago I spent an afternoon digging weeds from my lawn, sweating into a soupy heat with podcasts for company. The talk-worn topics of online Latter-day Saint discussion skated past–power and privilege, margin and center, faithfulness and…
Category: News and Politics
Politics – Current Events – Media
Hong Kong’s Vital Moment for a Win-Win
The people of Hong Kong have delivered a spectacular message in Sunday’s elections, with a nearly total reversal of the 2015 election results. With a 71% turnout, and more than twice the votes cast compared with the last such election,…
Summer Seminar in Theology 2020: Call for Applications
The 7th Annual Summer Seminar on Latter-day Saint Theology “A Wrestle Before God: Reading Enos 1” Université Bordeaux Montaigne, Bordeaux, France June 22–July 4, 2020 Sponsored by the Latter-day Saint Theology Seminar in partnership with The Laura F. Willes…
Church Interfaith Outreach in 2019
One of the most common topics featured on the Church’s news sites this year has been interfaith outreach by Church leaders and members. A list of articles includes: January 17: “How BYU Is Creating an Environment of Respect and Understanding…
They are closer than you think
I read with horror the news this week that 9 fundamentalist Mormons in Northern Mexico were murdered, as did many of you. But at first, no doubt like many church members, I thought that this news had nothing to do with…
General Counsel and Outliers
Todd Rose starts his book The End of Average off with some really arresting stories that all make the same point: there’s no such thing as an average person. His most in-depth example is based on how the Air Force…
Temples, Sacrifices, and Revelations
Temples hold a central place in Latter-day Saint history. The narrative of building the Kirtland and Nauvoo Temples and the impact it had on our theology is a dominant theme of the early Church. Even going beyond that, however, much…
Call for Papers: BYU Studies Quarterly Special Issue on Evolution
BYU Studies Quarterly will soon publish a special issue “on the thoughtful integration of evolution and faith.”
This has all happened before
Over at the Interpreter, Nate Oman asks an important question. How will the church explain its relevance to a new generation that is less interested in the narratives that have served the church well in the past? Or as he…
Cores and Corollaries of the Word of Wisdom
The Church recently published some clarifications on issues related to our health code in the New Era magazine and gave them official status in a statement a few weeks later.[1] Essentially, vaping or e-cigarettes, marijuana and opioids, green and iced…
Fishing Adventures with President Monson
Many people know of Pres. Monson’s cabin up Provo Canyon at Vivian Park. His son, Clark Monson, reminisces about this on the pages of BYU Studies in “Rod Tip Up!” Kurt Manwaring talked with Monson about the essay. “When I…
Neutrality
During this particularly awful political moment, I allow myself a sigh of relief when I read news articles about Evangelical leaders and institutions embracing the current president.
Elvis, the Book of Mormon, and the Story
Starting at the end of the 80’s a story came to be told of a Book of Mormon written in by Elvis Presley. Over the years people retold the tale, including in the pages of newspapers, inspirational speaking and the…
Paul and Authority
Jana Reiss had up an interesting post last week where she suggested Mormons don’t know what to do with Paul as an apostle. In particular she claimed, “it’s discomfiting to realize that Paul’s apostleship was entirely of the self-proclaimed, charismatic…
Nephi’s Apocalypse
One of the most interesting, most popular, yet also quite controversial elements in the Book of Mormon is Lehi’s and Nephi’s vision. Some readers might agree with the interesting part but be surprised by the controversial part. This is after…
Echoes of the City of Joseph
Scott Esplin is a professor of Church History and Doctrine at BYU with a background in late 19th, early 20th century history and educational history. He recently published a social history of Nauvoo with Return to the City of Joseph:…
Whispering from the dust
As comments go this is a rather belated one, but PA decisions are not up to warp speed either; anyway, the decision is there, timely and adequate. The issue? Some years ago I wrote about the absences in Mormon weddings,…
Bread and Water
In my previous two posts, I discussed questions relating to the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. Another question my friend asked was: “If you miss the bread do you take the water? … Obviously the best answer for the first…
Cut Off From the Prophets
One interesting thing about most scripture is the gap between the texts we have the the prophets themselves. The Old Testament was heavily redacted and edited during the Hellenistic period to give us the texts we now have. As Nephi…
10 questions with Thomas Alexander
We’re happy to have an other of our co-posts with Kurt Manwaring with 10 questions with Thomas Alexander. Thomas Alexander was the Lemuel Hardison Redd Jr. Professor of Western American History at BYU. Alexander has had an illustrious career teaching…