Mormon Heretic
Christmas Celebration and Sadness
Christmas is supposed to be a time of celebration of the Savior’s birth. For many, however, it can be a time of depression and sadness. My wife likes to go to Festival of Trees every year to view the decorations, and even donated a tree last year. Money raised from the festival goes to Primary […]
What Explains Trump support in Utah?
MaryAnn gave some excellent analysis in wondering if LDS population was a good predictor of Trump support in Utah. It turns out that she was right–LDS population by county was statistically insignificant in the analysis. The best predictors of a Trump supporter were % Registered Republicans, and % Rural. This is going to be very […]
Mental Illness – Part 2
Back in 2010, I asked for advice on how to handle a mentally ill man that I was home teacher of. I called him Ted back then and will continue to use that pseudonym. Let me quote from that post because to be frank, he scared the hell out of me. So, I dropped by […]
Can the Nation Heal?
In 2015, a Vox article noted that it is now socially acceptable to discriminate based on political affiliation. Some excerpts: “Political identity is fair game for hatred”: how Republicans and Democrats discriminate The experiment was simple. Working with Dartmouth College political scientist Sean Westwood, Iyengar asked about 1,000 people to decide between the résumés of […]
A Different Take on the Samaritan Story
I want to subtitle this post: Defending the Priest and the Levite. Not long ago, we had a lesson in priesthood on the Good Samaritan. This is one of my favorite parables, but the lesson quickly devolved into the traditional platitudes. People began to point fingers at the “hypocritical” priest and the Levite walking past the […]
BYU, LGBT & the Big12
College Football has undergone some seismic shifts in the past few years. The BYU-Utah rivalry took a big hit when the Pac-10 Conference decided to take Utah (from the Mountain West Conference) and Colorado (from the Big Twelve Conference), changing its name from the Pac-10 to the Pac-12 Conference. Other conferences have expanded by raiding […]
Utah: Is McMullin Fulfilling the White Horse Prophecy
Utah is leading the way for republicans who can’t stand Donald Trump AND Hillary Clinton. A recent Deseret News poll showed Trump, Clinton, and relative unknown Evan McMullin in a statistical tie! This poll took the statisticians at FiveThirtyEight.com by surprise, and they promised “We’re going to be adding McMullin to our model in Utah […]
The LDS Church in Ghana
Many of you are familiar with the story documented by Greg Prince in his biography of David O. McKay where blacks in Nigeria discovered the Book of Mormon and asked for missionaries in the 1960s. Nigeria wasn’t the only place; Dr. Emmanuel Abu Kissi has documented a similar history in Ghana in his book Walking […]
When “Forever Families” Weren’t
I’ve heard about the Law of Adoption as an LDS theological point of the past, but never really understood it very well. I enjoyed reading Brian Hales discussion of the concept in his book, Joseph Smith’s Polygamy: Volume 3. (This is a follow up post on the book; I previously discussed Hales position that there is no […]
Joseph Freeman: In the Lord’s Due Time
A friend asked that a read a book about the first black man ordained to the LDS Priesthood after the 1978 revelation: Joseph Freeman. (I’ve documented about 6 black men who were ordained in the 1830s and 1840s, as well as a few others who avoided the restriction despite the ban.) The book was […]
Mormon Heretic 