For the past decade, I’ve suggested that Deseret Book is one of the significant impediments to the growth of Mormon culture outside those elements involving worship. LDS books, music, film, art and other cultural products, especially innovative ones, are hampered by Deseret Book’s size, focus and control of the market for LDS materials.
What can we do about it? (more…)
Three excellent quotes from this week’s Sunday School lesson:
Men and women who turn their lives over to God will discover that He can make a lot more out of their lives than they can. (more…)
Over at MAD-Board, there is rumor about a policy change, to the effect that women may now be sealed to more than one (deceased) husband (just as men may now be sealed to more than one deceased wife).
Can anyone confirm or un-confirm this one?
This past week I received a card in the mail from the BYU Alumni Association, asking for my help in “editing” my biographical information in an “Alumni Directory” in preparation. While I’ve certainly given the Alumni Association biographical information in the past, for some reason this time I started asking myself “is this worth my time?” and, in the Mormon context, “is this worth anyone’s time?” (more…)
In the Old Testament God likens his relationship to the House of Israel as that of a bridegroom to his wife. In the New Testament, the Church is described as the bride of Christ. The choice of the image of marriage, it seems to me, is hardly accidental. It provides, I think, the background for the commandments against speaking evil of the Lord’s anointed and by extension — I believe — the Lord’s Church.
Belief and membership — the two ideas that we use most commonly when thinking about our relationship to the Church — are, it strikes me, far too thin to capture what is really at work in it. Belief implies that what is primarily at stake is assent to a set of propositions. Membership is a bit better in that it nods toward the social dimension of the relationship, but membership tells us nothing about the level of reciprocity or commitment involved. I am a member of the Oman family, a member of the Virginia Bar, a member of my HOA. These are very different sorts of membership.
Marriage is a much richer concept. To be a member of a marriage is to have a very thick set of obligations, affections, and relationships. It is also to have a fierce commitment to the maintenance of the relationship with its obligations and affections. We go on dates with our spouses, but not our HOA. We entwine our lives and souls and (no twittering please) bodies with our spouses.
We also hold our tongues. (more…)
During the last few years, I’ve noticed that less often is “the plan of salvation” used in General Conference, and more often we hear “the plan of happiness.”
Anyone know why? (more…)
So I’m at the pool last week with someone I really like but don’t know all that well and we’re kvetching about grocery prices, etc., when out of nowhere she says, “So I know you lost a baby daughter last winter. How are you doing with that?” (more…)
Between loving fresh vegetables and an assumption about gardens being “doctrine,” I find myself planting every spring and harvesting what the bugs didn’t nibble in the summer and fall. Except for a few condo-living years when dirt was a scarce commodity, I have planted religiously. But (more…)
A week ago I visited Mountain Meadows for the first time.
I was surprisingly hard to find. While the site does appear on maps of the area, there aren’t any signs until you get within a mile of the entrance. That is a shame. (more…)
Has the Church really made an unsolicited offer to buy Facebook (see here which spun off to here)? (more…)
The gospel doctrine lesson on Alma 43-52 proposed four principles of war as waged by the righteous:
Ever been in one of the few LDS stores outside the United States? or in countries that don’t speak English?
The selection can be quite discouraging. (more…)
Adam’s post about the California Supreme Court’s recent decision, and the resulting brawl in the comments got me thinking about the basis of discrimination. In 1998, while I was a senior at BYU I spent a semester in Williamsburg, Virginia doing research in the archives at the College of William and Mary. The week before my job in Williamsburg was to begin, I drove down from DC, where I had been working over the summer, to find a place to stay. I had three options. One turned out to be unfurnished, which took it off the list. The second option was a house filled with a mix of grad students and college seniors. The ownership structure wasn’t entirely clear, but I think that the house actually belonged to the parents of one of the students. After showing me the room, my putative landlord asked me why I was in Williamsburg. I explained that I was a BYU student doing research in the archives. He got a very serious look on his face, and explained that he had grown up in Spokane, Washington with many Latter-day Saints and found them to be very “un-Christian” and would prefer not to rent to a Mormon. (more…)
It comes up often enough, doesn’t it: People compare race to sexual orientation, when discussing questions of marriage, medical access, and so on. Is this comparison legitimate? (more…)
The title says it all. The California Supreme Court has required that doctors with religious objections to lesbian households must nonetheless assist a lesbian women in artificially conceiving a child. (more…)
I heard a story on This American Life a couple of weeks ago that has had me thinking about the reality of Satan and just what that means for us in our lives. (more…)
We were driving to a wedding Friday morning so naturally we started talking about Jacob and Esau. (more…)
Times and Seasons is thrilled to have Kent Larsen as our latest guest. Kent has been very busy in book publishing in New York City for twenty years and has followed LDS publishing closely for ten years. He has also been posting on arts and media for over three years at A Motley Vision, so Kent is no newcomer to LDS weblogs. See this AMV post for more information about Kent’s many interests. Welcome, Kent.
The bishop is worried about ward reverence. He should be, truth be told. (more…)
I think we can all agree that, from a risk analysis perspective, global warming and gay marriage share a lot of characteristics. (more…)
Let me remind everyone that I support the Church’s position opposing same sex marriage. (more…)
An Adult Religion Class will be offered this Fall in the Primary room of the Pflugerville Building on Thursdays from 8pm-9:30pm beginning on August 28th. The class will cover Psalms 1-89 and will be taught by me. The class fee is $16.25. Questions? Email me at my first name AT timesandseasons DOT org.
(I hope you haven’t discussed this before, at least not in this way.) At the height of national debate over the Equal Rights Amendment, Elder Bruce R. McConkie explained that all LDS women should look to Eve: “Eve, the mother of all living, is truly the perfect pattern for all her daughters. Oh that all women would follow the path laid down by the first woman of all women and do the things that she did that all might be saved!”
I have done some preliminary research and realized members of the church interpret the Eve story diversely— (more…)
God willing I will be giving a presentation on making the desert blossom as the rose and Mars settlement, tomorrow, August 14th, at 4:30 PM at the Mars Society conference. I would love to hear from any of you who might be attending.
Need a smile? Then you might wish you’d gone to sacrament meeting on March 15, 1857 in the Salt Lake Thirteenth Ward: (more…)
Just last week I heard a familiar comment at church: Brigham Young’s policy was to feed the Indians rather than fight them. The actual record of relations between Pioneers and Indians was a bit more complicated, especially in Utah Valley, the watery jewel of early Utah. (more…)
I don’t want to debate the ins and outs of the tragedy at Mountain Meadows. It was horrific no matter how you cut it. My more immediate problem is personal (more…)
Georgia isn’t the only place with skirmishing this weekend: “LDS leader’s address still causing controversy,” a long article at the Deseret News, recounts the comments of five Sunstone panelists (and one unfortunate commenter) to LDS Relief Society President Julie B. Beck’s October 2007 Conference talk “Mothers Who Know.” (more…)
Did you know that BYU had a combined-gender missionary club in the early 1920’s named the Y.D.D.? It took me a month to discover the secret of the initials: “Young Doctors of Divinity.” (more…)
You are probably too erudite to discuss this, but I’m bringing it up anyway: vampire books. You know what I’m talking about. (more…)
Some of you will have noticed the posts on the sweetness of Mormon life. (more…)
I really liked Dr. Horrible’s Sing-along Blog, a short musical internet film in three parts. Perhaps you think this is a shameful admission, like my fondness for the Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. And perhaps you’re right. But there it is. I liked the superhero goofiness. I liked Dr. Horrible’s acting. I really liked the singing.
UPDATE: Now available for free.
SPOILERS (more…)
Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve encountered an interesting banner link in my gmail account: (more…)
If you’ve been on a cross-country trek visiting in-laws or golf courses (or both) instead of reading new blogs posts, here are a few good posts you might have missed. (more…)
I stumbled across a few LDS socialist stories when I was writing my MA thesis. (more…)
We saints do pioneer reenactments a lot. Dress up, pull a handcart, dance a little to “whoa, haw, Buck.” I’ve been thinking about that and I need your help. (more…)
I recently read Martin Marty’s The Christian World: A Global History (2007). The subtitle is slightly misleading, as Marty recounts Christian history on a continent-by-continent basis. The last two chapters, covering the modern return of Christianity to Africa and Asia, raise issues of particular interest to the LDS experience: correlation and assimilation. (more…)
Falcon 1 is going to try for orbit this evening. The launch will be broadcast live. This is groundbreaking first. If it succeeds, the Falcon 1 would be the first rocket from the new space industry to make orbit. (more…)
Can you help me a bit more with this topic? . . . Since LDS funeral sermons were given exclusively by men before 1900, they make an interesting comparison with LDS women’s death poetry of the same time period. (more…)
I recently read Your Inner Fish: A Journey Into the 3.5-Billion Year History of the Human Body (Pantheon Books, 2008) by Neil Shubin, a paleotologist and professor of anatomy at the University of Chicago. By coincidence, Jared at LDS Science Review had posted the same book in his “Currently Reading” list. Here is our conversation about this interesting book. (more…)
A vineyard of red wine.
I the Lord do keep it;
I will water it every moment:
lest any hurt it, I will keep it night and day.
Why does “communion sweet” in the sacrament require both bread and water?** (more…)
Lately I’ve got interested in the idea of the desert blossoming as the rose. (more…)
Let’s have a big round of applause for Craig Harline’s busy two weeks as a guest blogger, then roll out the red carpet for our next guest, Kylie Turley. Kylie teaches honors writing at BYU (so watch those errant commas and inscrutable relative pronouns in your comments!) and is also on the staff of the LDS literary journal Segullah. According to a short bio posted at the Segullah site, Kylie is a native of the great state of Wyoming and researches Mormon women’s history. Thank you, Craig, and welcome Kylie!
So my colleagues have caught on to my secret plan to convert them all. (more…)
The Lovely One and I were idly chatting Sunday afternoon when we accidentally figured out what would be the geekiest possible activity, probably the platonic ideal of geekdom. (more…)
From Steven Vanden Broecke, The Limits of Influence (more…)
I’ve enjoyed the chance to post and thank those who invited me and those who commented. I already promised that my previous post was also my last “real” post, and I’ll stick to that. But I did have one last mini post in mind, a question spurred by a recent event. (more…)
Without meaning to, this story (you can read it, but it is better to listen to it–it’s only a minute or so long) does a better job of explaining the nature of our relationship with God than almost anything else I have encountered.
Happy Pioneer Day. Time to break out the Nauvoo legion lapel button. (more…)
The development of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has always been marvelous, but our sense of just what it is doing has changed quite dramatically from one decade to another. When Joseph Smith first went to (what in hindsight we call) the Sacred Grove, (more…)
Let us praise pioneers. Of all sorts, but today especially the traditional sort. I myself am thinking of Carl and Mathilda, whom I came to know through one of those wholly unexpected spine-tingling unbelievable fantastic experiences.
(more…)
The Deseret News just ran a lengthy article giving some details on the long-awaited but soon-to-be-released book Massacre at Mountain Meadows, by three LDS historians. (more…)
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