Okay, so there was way too much time between part 1 and part 2 of round 2. I will be blaming that on the raging cold I am currently suffering through (even though I didn’t get it until today). I am miserable and therefore everyone should be miserable (especially those items that lost last week).

Speaking of which, our winners from the last competition were:

1. Funeral Potatoes (despite heavy anti-tuber lobbying), 10. Johnny Lingo (despite heavy admin lobbying), 5. Missions, and 4. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Hey, 3 out of 4 ain’t bad!

Today’s contestants are:

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There was a time when I struggled with labeling myself a feminist. I’ll be the first one to say that there are certain flavors of feminism that are ridiculous and/or disturbing. Two things changed my mind. First, the realization that I am a Christian and that I am not willing to forsake that name because of ridiculous and/or disturbing groups that also self identify as such. Second, I became a student of our history. (more…)

I’ve been attending a military group in Kabul, Afghanistan for the past several months while working at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. I’ll be returning next week for another nine months of dust, long hours, living in a metal trailer, and worshipping with 15 “old guys.” I have a great deal of affection for the old guys. They welcome me to Priesthood Meeting every week with a glint of humor. Every once in a while someone makes a joke that it’s actually Relief Society, and asks me where the centerpiece is. (more…)

There are always some people whose ideas are considered bad or dangerous by other people. For instance, in answering the following questions, consider a fundamentalist Mormon who advocates polygamy, the Adam-God doctrine, racial restrictions on priesthood, and other elements of the Mormon past as eternal truths. (more…)

Kristine N has guest-posted with us before. She is a graduate student in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Purdue University.

Monday Jan. 22, CNN reported the Chief Executives of GE, BP, and the eight other corporations that make up the United States Climate Action Partnership (USCAP) petitioned Congress in favor of legislation designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Jeff Immelt, Chairman and CEO of GE told reporters at a press conference “The time has come for constructive action that draws strength equally from business, government, and non-governmental stakeholders.” The plan endorsed by USCAP includes a “cap-and-trade” program similar to that used for controlling sulfur dioxide emissions, and similar to the one proposed in the Kyoto protocol. (more…)

Back in college, I once drove with two friends from Provo to Salt Lake CIty, and we spent the entire hour debating an abstract question.  Assume an infinite number of monkeys sitting in front of keyboards, randomly pecking away.  How long would it take until one of them typed To be, or not to be.  That is the question?  Our sophomoric ignorance did nothing to decrease the enthusiasm and decibel level of our conversation. (more…)

As has often been discussed on BCC, Joseph Smith and the early Mormons interacted with the Bible in exciting and sometimes mysterious ways. Philip Barlow has elegantly described the evolution of Mormon interactions with the Bible, and a variety of sources have provided limited exegetical apparatus for texts, generally for the purpose of establishing as normative a particular interpretation of scripture.

It has occurred to me in the past week or so that a textual compendium of early Mormon exegesis would be quite helpful in teasing apart what early Mormons believed about the world, which was to an enormous extent filtered through the KJV. (more…)

Every once in a while, some false prophet declares that the Bloggernacle is dead. (more…)

Brigham Young claimed that Joseph Smith taught that Adam was God.[1] I think this is a misunderstanding on Brigham’s part but it is not the crass error that it at first seems. Joseph’s Adamic theology did indeed accord Adam a semi-divine status. He is, however, subordinate to the Son (and the Father by implication). Joseph linked Adam with the “Ancient of Days” spoken of in Daniel:

“Dan VII Speaks of the Ancient of days, he means the oldest man, our Father Adam, Michael; he will call his children together, & hold a council with them to prepare them for the coming of the Son of Man. He, (Adam) is the Father of the human family & presides over the Spirits of all men, & all that have had the Keys must stand before him in this great Council. This may take place before some of us leave this stage of action. The Son of Man stands before him & there is given him glory & dominion.—Adam delivers up his Stewardship to Christ, that which was deliverd to him as holding the Keys of the Universe, but retains his standing as head of the human family.”[2] (more…)

I love going to the show. These days I usually see two movies per week; one on Friday evening after work and a second one at a Saturday matinee. Two weeks ago I saw Little Children and Pan’s Labyrinth; last week, Notes on a Scandal and The Painted Veil; last night, Catch and Release (hey, cut me some slack, the timing worked for me, and Tommy Stinson of the Replacements wrote some of the music), and this afternoon I plan to see Letters from Iwo Jima. (more…)

I had two experiences yesterday that forced me to recognize my own prejudice. (more…)

Heavenly Father’s Day. You’re welcome that we’re healthy. Thank you for Jesus, the glorious, the beautiful.

In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

–AA, 2007 (cf Mt 18:10; Mk 10:14-6 which we will paraphrase as “please indulge a sentimental father”)

My Seminary kids ask great questions. They apply a youthful logic to the Gospel. For them, things just need to make sense. If they don’t, brows are furrowed.

So, we were looking at D&C 76, that remarkable delineation of Mormon soteriology. One student asked what would have happened had Hitler died at the age of 7. The orthodox answer would be that baby Adolf would be an heir of the Celestial Kingdom. “But that’s not fair,” she replied. “Fate saved him from the evil he would have done had he lived. Fate decides whether we go to the Celestial Kingdom.” What would you have said to that?

Well, round one ended on a high note with the closest call we’ve had yet between two contenders. 6. 3 Nephite Stories came from behind and squeaked by 11. Handcart Reenactments 51% to 49%. Perhaps we will have more competitive matchups in the round of thirty-two.

The winners from the last round were: 1. The Angel Moroni, 2. Green Jello, 14. Asking out via clues/scavenger hunts, 4. Harry Anderson, 5. The Cultural Hall, 6. 3 Nephite Stories, 7. Dancing Book-of-Mormon length apart, and 8. Dear John Letters. Dale Murphy, once again, has lost *sob*

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True or False: A man who openly and repeatedly tells members of his ward that he would make a good bishop is obviously wrong, and is the last person who should be considered for that calling.

True or False: A person who openly and repeatedly tells members of the ward that she would make a good gospel doctrine teacher is obviously wrong, and is the last person who should be considered for that calling. (more…)

Today is my mom’s 62nd birthday.

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Mark Brown is our newest guest blogger here at BCC. He is known on the records of the bloggernacle as Mark IV. Mark believes that hell is the place where it is always summer but never baseball season.

I see friends shakin’ hands, sayin’ “How do you do?”
They’re really sayin’ “I love you.”
…And I think to myself, what a wonderful world.
Lyrics by Bob Thiele, performed by Louis Armstrong

Friendship is one of the grand fundamental principles of Mormonism.
Joseph Smith, Jr.

Everybody needs a friend.
Gordon B. Hinckley

I’d like to explore the idea of friendship in a Mormon context and to suggest that the success of the church depends upon our ability to make and be friends. (more…)

In Mormon historical and doctrinal discussions, it is not uncommon to hear doubts voiced about whether such-and-such quotation by so-and-so General Authority as reported in the Journal of Discourses was accurately transcribed or not. In my experience, this happens most frequently in discussions of the Adam-God Theory, but there are other examples. (more…)

The King Follet sermon of Joseph Smith is his famous discourse on the destiny of the soul. It has been debated over and interpreted by generations of saints. Some have swept certain implications of his words aside, while others have amplified aspects of others. One of the most important contributions of this discourse to Mormon thought are Joseph’s teachings on the history of every human being. (more…)

A young man gave a talk in our Sacrament Meeting that was a first for me, in that instead of using scriptures and written notes, he used his PDA. He said he had come to appreciate the Old Testament, as he discovered how New Testament writers (he focused on Paul especially) had drawn from the Old Testament, particularly the Psalms. He was using his hand-held devise to track himself from one testament to the other, showing how a phrase in Paul had its match somewhere in the Old Testament. My thoughts strayed from his presentation to wonder if he was using a computer program that would search and match phrases for him, and then to think about problems of translation. (more…)

Mormons often comment that there is almost no hell in our eschatology, that even the telestial glory is so wonderful suicide might seem a reasonable path thither. In this respect, we are accused of being unwitting Universalists. Outer Darkness, Perdition, lurks, however, outside the kingdoms that encompass the holiest saints and the lowliest murderers and thieves. In this hell, there is no corporeal existence, no access to the eternal human family, no connection to any member of the Godhead. I suspect that most current Latter-day Saints would have a very short list of the residents of Outer Darkness, the Sons (no daughters, sorry) of Perdition. Sometimes it seems like little more than Dante’s lowest level of the Inferno: a lone Judas Iscariot suffering forever. There is some textual evidence that Joseph Smith had a significantly longer list. (more…)

Howdy! Remember back when we used to gather around, in the warm glow of the monitor, discussing the relative merits of funeral potatoes and Trunk ‘r Treat as cultural markers of Mormonism. Good times, good times.

Well, I went on vacation to the land of intermittent internet and none of the lazy slackers around here could be bothered to keep the dad-burned thing going. Don’t worry, I won’t whine about it or badmouth my cobloggers, no sirree! I’ll just get back to this time-consuming, back-breaking labor instead of writing my dissertation and feeding my family so that you people can have your fun.

When last we gathered round the board, these were our winners:

#1 Arnold Friberg, #2 The Christus, #14 Short-sleeved shirts with ties, #4 The Mormon Tabernacle Choir, #5 Large Families, #11 The Mission Field = Not Utah, #10 Johnny Lingo, and #8 For the Strength of Youth. Regarding these results, all I can say is, Bloggernacle you ugly, come down out of that tree or I will beat you with a stick.

Today’s competitions will be between: (more…)

“Except for two or three older writers, all modern literature seems to me not literature but some sort of handicraft, which exists only so as to be encouraged, though one is reluctant to use its products. Even the best products of handicraft cannot be called remarkable and cannot be praised without a ‘but.’” (more…)

In Matthew 16:19, we read as follows: (more…)

CEK is Chris Kimball: a father of three, husband of one, son of two, a tax lawyer and a rock climber. His guest post helps rectify the sad lack of the lawyer’s perspective in Mormon Studies.

Mormonism is essentially a sacramental religion, defined by ordinance and ritual more than doctrine or belief. Any effort to define “Mormon doctrine” is fraught with difficulty and virtually certain of error, although one might venture that the “belief” portion of the temple recommend interview defines doctrine.^[1] As Edward Kimball says, “Church history shows that General Authorities frequently declare, clarify, refine, and qualify interpretations of doctrine, but these statements generally constitute only informed opinion.”^[2] (more…)

Learning as a child that Butch Cassidy’s real name was Robert Leroy Parker was a revelation to me. Later I learned that Butch was born in Beaver, Utah to Mormon immigrants from England (Preston Lancashire). (more…)

The following was said at today’s BYU Devotional by President Boyd K. Packer:

Largely due to television, your generation lives inside of the great and spacious building.

Please discuss amongst yourselves.

Rather than attempt a witty exposition of Brother Faust’s message (a call to recognise and avoid the temptations of the devil) I have two questions that I want you to help me thrash out. You see, I’m slowly working on a project centred on the Mormon Satan doctrine. I am intrigued by the strange role of Old Sulfur Breath in Mormon theology and hereby enlist your intelligence, dear reader. (more…)

Richard Dawkins is perhaps our generation’s most famous atheist (though many of us prefer the late Bertrand Russell on many counts). A behavioral biologist (ethologist) with roving popular interests, he has made his most recent splash with The God Delusion. As a scientist and a theist, I am sympathetic to both faithful and scientific approaches and do not believe, in general terms, that either has exclusive access to truth. Still, at the end of the day, I am a theist, so clearly I disagree with at least some of Dawkins’s arguments.

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Usually I’m firmly committed to the underlying principles of modern biology; natural selection seems like a perfectly fine way for happily adapted creatures to come into being.

About an hour ago, one of my offspring was with me in a public place with a well-traveled cement floor, onto which he accidentally dropped his gum. He picked it up and popped it right back in his mouth. Just now, this same small human organism refused to eat a piece of lettuce that had been in the same bowl with a cherry tomato. (I refuse to disclose whether I got him a bowl of pure and delightsome lettuce).

Shouldn’t this sort of behavior have been bred out of the gene pool a long time ago??

If I ruled the world, I would get rid of chain e-mails altogether and devise a special form of torture for those who send them. The e-mails are rarely funny, usually vaguely sexist or racist, and insulting to one’s intelligence. Last week at work I received one that was especially tasteless. It contained a gif titled Saddam’s Cat which shows a cat batting at dangling legs. I was in a coworker’s office with several other people when she opened the e-mail. Laughs all around. A few hours later, someone sent around an e-mail with the video of Saddam’s hanging attached. A quick search showed that millions of people have logged into YouTube or Google and watched Saddam Hussein die. Have you? (more…)