Mormon

Sister Wives are Socialist

I know I’m behind the times. I don’t watch television very often, and I don’t have cable or satellite tv. But I recently got a Netflix subscription, and I discovered that Sister Wives was on. Over the past few weeks, I’ve watched all 18 episodes of season 1 and season 2. It really is entertaining. […]

Pre-Halloween Mormon Massacre

How do you write a Mormon-themed Halloween post?  Thanks to SamBee at StayLDS, I was reminded that Oct 27 marks the 173rd “anniversary” of the Extermination Order.  Even more gruesome is the fact that today, Oct 30, is the 173rd anniversary of the Haun’s Mill Massacre–a true horror-story fit for any Halloween tale.

Woodruff's Vision of the Founding Fathers

Stephen Taysom put together a collection of essays in a new book titled Dimensions of Faith: A Mormon Studies Reader.  Topics include biographies, theory, experience, memory, and media/literature with authors such as Newell Bringhurst, Larry Foster, and Jonathan Stapley (to name a few.) Many of us are familiar with Wilford Woodruff’s vision of the Founding […]

Why They Stay

Heretics, Jesus, and Jarrod's Problem

Life has been unusually busy of late.  Sorry I haven’t posted very often–I’ll try to get back on track.  A lot of my posts take some time to research, but Jarrod gave me a softball.  Rather than leave his comments on my “About page, I thought I could churn out a quick post (requiring no […]

Ten Years after 9/11

The past few days have brought a series of news stories remembering the terrible tragedy that happened 10 years ago.  I was curious to see if there would be any differences in our church services.  On the one hand, Music and the Spoken Word invited NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw to narrate a special tribute to […]

Book of Mormon Maps

It’s been quite some time since I blogged about Book of Mormon geography theories.  KC Kern runs a website called Book of Mormon Online, and has recently updated his website with satellite images with Google maps of some of the theories.  (Click here.)  I always post stuff on my blog first, but there have been […]

Ancient Proof-Texting

Back in 2008, Jeff Spector introduced me to the concept of proof-texting.  I think we’re all familiar with the idea of taking a scripture out of context to support a certain religious belief.  However, I didn’t realize that this practice goes back thousands of years.  Charles Harrell and Greg Kofford Books has recently published a new […]

Bloom calls Smith "most eminent intellectual in Mormon history"

In 1969 Leonard Arrington asked 50 prominent Mormons to identify the “five most eminent intellectuals in Mormon history.” The list was published in Dialogue.  Twenty-four years later, Dialogue decided to run the survey again.  It was re-published a few month ago in the Deseret News, and it has been a favorite bloggernacle topic for the […]

Interesting Presentations at Weber State

Due to a scheduling conflict, Sunstone was forced to find a new venue for this year’s conference. Rather than stay at the Sheraton in Salt Lake City as they have for the past few years, the conference moved to Weber State University in Ogden. I was only able to attend the Saturday conference, but wanted […]