This morning, as the Tabernacle Choir (or whoever they were) sang “Come Thou Font of Every Blessing,” I came to the same realization that I come to every Conference. I love the Church. (more…)

Adios, Dr. Sunday School.

For my research in cultural history, I read a lot of books about American history, particularly the turbulent period from the Revolution to the Civil War. Most of the books are reasonable and readable and give some flavor of the nature of American culture for this period. Abzug’s book (published 1994 by OUP) stands out as well-written, convincingly argued, and filled with compelling narratives. (more…)

The latest issue of BYU Studies just hit my mailbox yesterday. I’ve only read three of the articles so far, but I thought I would try to give you a sense for what is in it so you can see whether anything catches your interest. (more…)

As bloggers have pointed out in the recent discussions over the prospect of Vice-President Cheney speaking at BYU, Senator Robert F. Kennedy spoke at BYU on March 27, 1968. (more…)

I have run the gamut of General Conference experiences. Growing up in England we used to watch General Conference on videotape. I remember hardly anything, except that we had these small TVs set up in the chapel that had old men talking on them. I also remember the colour brown (think old skool BCC). Whether we watched all sessions on tape or just one of them, or even a kind of Greatest Hits version, I don’t know.

Then, in the early 1990s, something amazing happened. (more…)

It seems as though there are always rumors before every General Conference of big doings. Usually these rumors don’t pan out, or they turn out to be things that only meet the definition of “big” used by church bureaucrats (revising geographic area responsibilities and the like). (more…)

I fully understand that given Dick Cheney’s offer to speak at BYU’s commencement, BYU and the church would have little choice but feel obliged to honour the sitting Vice President. (more…)

In the game of Doctrinal Poker, First Presidency messages are aces. (more…)

Recently a friend of mine sent me an email containing the following. It had been given to his wife at a church function. Somehow she managed to not immediately crumple it up and burn it, instead she passed it on to her husband so he could read it incredulously, too. (more…)

Like Annie Savoy (played by Susan Sarandon in her best role) in the movie Bull Durham, I believe in the church of baseball.

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At the age of three, Liz moved to the house just outside of Salt Lake City where she spent the next fifteen years of her life. At the age of five, she decided that her life goal was to know everything. Despite being confronted many times with the fact that this goal is not precisely realistic, she hasn’t stopped trying to obtain a generalist education in a specialist world. To that end, Liz is currently a junior at BYU, studying Chemistry and English, and in her spare time enjoys watching PBS (especially Nova), knitting things that by some definition might be sweaters, and theorizing on Harry Potter.

I’ll admit that I was pretty skeptical about the relevance of the Two Ancient Roman Plates exhibit that recently opened at BYU’s Harold B. Lee Library. The interest in ancient metallic plates seemed like just another attempt to stretch for historical justification for the Book of Mormon–interesting as a speculation, but “like most speculations has very little reference at all to the actual facts of real life, as we know them” (Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest). I was happily surprised to come away from a discussion with John Welch, the exhibit’s curator, with some interesting insights into the ancient concept of sealed documents, particularly some speculations (see above quote) about the relation of these ideas to the Book of Mormon. (more…)

Another possible mishap in the Mormon corridor. Someone shared with me an experience with raising righteous children in the Mormon corridor. The children had been invited to a birthday party on Sunday. The people inviting were not Mormon. The children wanted to go, the parents did not want them to, and they were able to talk to a solution: the children took presents on Saturday and informed the birthday child that they would be unable to attend on Sunday. (more…)

When asked about polygamy, a common answer given by modern-day Mormons is that polygamy acted as a social welfare mechanism, providing financial and social security for otherwise single and poor women. I know that my own family’s lone polygamy story stresses this aspect. My great-great-grandmother was orphaned on the way to Utah, and wound up marrying my relatively well-off and already married great-great-grandfather because she had no other way to survive. If I remember correctly there was a significant age difference between the two. They wound up settling in a small community in Cache Valley. Her relationship with the first wife was quite rocky, and when my great-great-grandfather left town, this much younger second wife would clean out the chicken coop and move herself and her children into it until he returned. (more…)

So I’m watching for the first time “Hustle & Flow” tonight while checking my e-mail. My ears perked up when a skinny white boy wearing a white shirt and a tie knocks on the door of the main character, the pimp DJay (played by Terrence Howard), and DJay incredulously barks “You Mormons are some brave *#($*@!” (The young man, it turns out, wasn’t really a Mormon, but the keyboard guy). (more…)

Mormons are often accused of polytheism, and the accusation is generally meant to exclude them from the respectability of Abrahamic religion (the established monotheism of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam). The notion that the LDS would be excluded from Abraham’s legacy would strike many LDS as bizarre, particularly given the fact that the scripture named for Abraham is a vital text in understanding Smith’s vision of the nature of God’s relationships to humanity and to other beings.

I have often been reminded by reasonably knowledgeable and well-intentioned Latter-day Saints that in point of fact Smith was a henotheist. While I am sympathetic to the underlying impulse (shielding Smith from the opprobrium of the monotheists), that answer is misleading. (more…)

The General Synod of the Church of England apologised last year for its role in the slave trade. The church, through the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, once owned the Codrington Plantation in Barbados, where slaves had the word “society” branded on their backs with a red-hot iron.

Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury has said: “The body of Christ is not just a body that exists at any one time, it exists across history and we therefore share the shame and the sinfulness of our predecessors and part of what we can do, with them and for them in the body of Christ, is pray for acknowledgement of the failure that is part of us not just of some distant ‘them’.”

The Archbishops of Canterbury and York are to lead a procession through London today to mark the 200th anniversary of Britain’s abolition of the slave trade. They will join a group who have walked 250 miles from Hull (where abolitionist MP William Wilberforce held his Parliamentary seat) in yokes and chains. They will be “freed” by the Archbishop of the West Indies.

I joined a book club that discusses theology books and there is a strong contingency that belongs to a new, hipster artsy church. I really like these people and they’ve been asking me to come to church with them since the beginning. Last Sunday I decided to go and I really liked it. (more…)

Coming in on the train this morning I read a front page article in the Chicago Tribune, “Beauty Queen Targets Ugly Behavior.” It was about Amanda Rammell, Idaho’s representative to the Miss USA pageant going on this week in Los Angeles. Rammell is a Mormon and has been vocal about the need for more positive role models for tween girls than Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton. According to the article, some are calling the influence of the Brit pack the “prostitot” trend–girls being sexualized prematurely. (more…)

Without question, the internet provides an interesting challenge for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Google “Mormon,” “Joseph Smith,” or “Mormon temple,” and it will not take long to find information hostile to the church.

The internet offers a richer tapestry of Mormon history and theology than has previously been available to most Mormons. I have no exact data, but I think it is safe to say that more than a few Latter-day Saints have found their online forays damaging to their faith (the same is true for other Christians probably, who google “Mark” and come back with the “Messianic Secret”). Anti-Mormon sites abound, and with only a few clicks, faithful Mormons can find their faith challenged in ways that were previously not so readily threatening. Non-Mormons are also offered easy views of Mormonism which are unflattering to say the least. Two scenarios: (more…)

Many of us are aware of the General Conference address from April 1844 that summarized a variety of important doctrinal, metaphysical, and theological innovations of the Nauvoo period. The sermon, now called the King Follett Discourse, was inspired by Follett’s death and could appropriately be called an official eulogy. Few of us are aware of Follett’s obituaries. (more…)

By the time Emmeline Blanche Woodward was fourteen, she had already lost her father, finished school at the New Salem Academy, become a teacher and was on her way to her first marriage. Her betrothed, James Harris, was the 15 year-old son of the local Mormon leader, and soon Emmeline and her family were baptized members of the LDS Church.

Less than a year later, Emmeline and her family joined the church migration of the Saints to Nauvoo, Illinois. Sadness and grief marked her short time in Nauvoo, where her first child died shortly after birth, and her husband abandoned her. Carol Cornwall Madsen described this time in Emmeline’s life: (more…)

I live and work in the same compound, which means that I never really go home. I work, eat, socialize, and cannot avoid the same group of people. The other night I was in the gym and ran into a colleague. He looked at me and incredulously asked “What are YOU doing here?” “Um, um, um” I stammered for a bit… “I’ve been having some trouble with insomnia lately, so I’m trying to work out…umm…” He looked horrified and said “I meant, what are you doing here at this job, I thought you transferred to Washington D.C.” Oh. (more…)

A few months ago, I began an authorship and abbreviated content analysis of the Ensign over the last 30 years. It was a follow-up to a similar but much smaller project I did of Dialogue and BYU Studies early last Autumn. (more…)

A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thou beside me…    Omar Khayyam
 
A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thou beside me,
and I will soon be fat, drunk, and in trouble.                 Alfred E. Newman [1]

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In Job 19, Job laments his affliction, suffering the anguish of one abandoned by friends, family, and even God. He wishes for his words to be an eternal testimony of his pain, that he not be forgotten as time passes and God chooses another victim. (more…)

We blessed our last child yesterday. I am well aware how difficult this ritual has been for some among us, and I am sympathetic to their concerns. Some of our friends have opted to bless their children at home in order to allow greater fluidity in the ordinance, while others have declined to participate at all. We have chosen to bless our children in the church in the presence of the several communities to which we belong. Though I am intellectually fascinated by the ritual of LDS infant blessing, its apparent connections to Puritan covenantal systems, the close affinity of healing and welcoming new life that it suggests, I wanted today to share a personal testimony.

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Yesterday, I was standing in the hall at the end of the three-hour block when a curly-headed, sturdily-built, adorable 5-year-old girl came tearing out of her Primary classroom yelling, “I’M FREE!! I’M FREE!! I’M FREE!!”

Awesome.

I shouldn’t be writing this. I should be grading my students’ papers. Something happened last week and it has been toying at the back of my mind for days now. What is the role of litmus testing in our online debating? (more…)

Inspired by Russel Arben Fox, I thought I’d repost something I originally wrote on the eve of the Iraq War. It was not a policy critique, but an attempt to position current events into the continuum of history: (more…)

Just recently I was asked to do a fifty minute presentation on LDS Women’s History at an upcoming Relief Society Enrichment Day. (more…)