I suspect that his brothers’ lack of understanding had less to do with their inability to grasp our simplistic Sunday School summary of the allegory of the olive tree, and much more to do with how culturally and theologically “other” this picture was compared to their own understanding.
Theorizing the Restoration in the Sixteenth Century
I’ve written before about Sebastian Franck, a spiritualist who charted his own path through the religious turmoil of the Reformation era. As I was recently reading Franck’s letter to the Anabaptist theologian Johann Campanus, I was struck by how familiar…
Review of Perspectives on Mormon Theology: Apologetics
After a few warm-up posts last month (here, here, and here), it’s time to get serious about apologetics. Greg Kofford Books just published Perspectives on Mormon Theology: Apologetics, edited by Blair G. Van Dyke and Loyd Isao Ericson. The book…
Shining Light vs. Secret Charity
There’s been a lot of stories about Church activity in Houston and other places where members have stepped up to help people in the hurricane. You’ve probably seen a lot of stories. I’ve even linked to a lot myself. I’ll…
Nephi’s Abrahamic Trial – Reading Nephi – 15:1-11 part II
I think we see here an Abrahamic trial.
What’s in a name? A historical note on the title of the Mission President’s Wife
Last year, Cassler and McBaine published results of their survey on “the Naming of Women’s Positions and Organizations in the LDS Church.” Around 400 survey respondents who self-identified as LDS women answered questions about whether or not they would change…
PRRI Poll Numbers on Mormons
I love religion polls and surveys. I think they tell us a lot about what has been a rather transformative period in American religion the past 20 years. While I’m still eagerly awaiting the next ARIS survey, PRRI came out…
Revelation’s Demand for More Revelation – Reading Nephi – 15:1-11 part I
More contrasts between Nephi and his brothers—although this passage strikes me as less political…and more intimate and personal.
Fiction and Culture: Mette Ivie Harrison’s The Bishop’s Wife
A good Mormon mystery Novels — particularly good ones — convey a sense of place. This is absolutely true of mystery novels, from Kwei Quartey’s police detective in Ghana to Alexander McCall Smith’s private detective in Botswana. But how much…
The Hermeneutic of Revelation: There is Always More – Reading Nephi – 14:18-30
The end of the narrative of Nephi’s grand vision is to point beyond the vision and beyond Nephi.
Primary Sharing Time Lesson: All Are Alike unto God
This month’s Primary Sharing Time outline provides two weeks to cover the topic of the Sabbath. Because our presidency covered the topic well last week, I’ve created an alternate Sharing Time lesson plan. Given recent events in the US, I…
Future Mormon: Chapter 4
Welcome to the fourth week of the reading club for Adam Miller’s Future Mormon. For general links related to the book along with links for all the chapter discussions please go to our overview page. We’ll be trying to discuss a chapter…
The Cult of Happiness
I attended a local Tedx evening earlier this week. One talk critiqued the “cult of happiness” that is fostered by social media posts. Everyone posts the great or good things about their life, complete with carefully cropped photos (the trip…
Binaries of the Lamb and the Devil – Reading Nephi – 14:8-17 part II
I feel somewhat affronted by the angel’s adamant declaration and insistence on the binary nature of humanity.
The Evidential Problem of Evil
The problem of evil is a long standing issue in philosophy and theology. More or less it’s the recognition that there is something wrong if God is all loving and all powerful yet we experience all the evils of mortality.…
Thoughts on Vulnerability (in the wake of Charlottesville)
I once had a client who was a white supremacist.* The thing about being a therapist is, you quickly learn that everyone’s got a story. In this case, there was a history of domestic abuse, a parent with extreme racist…
Practical Apologetics: What’s Wrong With You?
How do you talk to an Ex-Mormon? Or a less-active Mormon who you bump into at church or a ward activity or the grocery store? Here are some examples of what *not* to say: What’s wrong with you? Why don’t…
Guest Post: Justifying Visions
Mark Bukowski got degrees in philosophy and psychology at UCLA, studying with the noted scholar of German idealism Robert Solomon and Angela Davis, a student of Marcuse. While an undergraduate he became a bit of a student radical, marxist and…
Practical Apologetics: The Doubting Elder
Time for another installment in this occasional series. As reported in the Deseret News, Elder Christofferson delivered a presentation to new mission presidents at the Provo MTC in June. He first discussed the use of the Book of Mormon as…
A Mormon Image: A Tween’s View of Kirtland
Did Nephi Know of the Return from Exile?
I was rereading some of Nephi’s sermons tied to his incipient Christianity. It struck me that it’s not clear Nephi knows about the 2cd temple period and restoration from Babylon. Now I’m still not 100% sure of this. So I…
Church Endorses Apologetics, Sort Of
Here is a clear positive step for the Church: posting an online resources page with almost 30 links to pages or sites with information on LDS doctrine and history. Each link gets zero, one, or two asterisks, depending on if…
A Mormon Image: Communing With the Saints
My loved ones are embarrassed by public breastfeeding, so I retire to the mothers’ room to fulfill the measure of my creation. ~ Bethany West If you have a photograph you would like to submit for consideration in our A Mormon…
Guest Post: Seminary Assessments and Americacentrism
James Holt lives in Manchester, UK and is Senior Lecturer in Religious Education* at the University of Chester. This involves training teachers to teach Religious Education in schools, as well as aspects of education for teachers training to teach in…
What’s Worse, Bad Apologetics or No Apologetics?
The golden era of Mormon apologetics ran from Nibley to FAIR and Old FARMS. With so many distinctive doctrines as well as a high public profile, Mormonism attracts a lot of criticism, so the urge to publicly defend Mormon beliefs…
The (In)Consistencies of Church Employment
In 2012 a BYU religion professor named Randy Bott created a firestorm when he made fairly racist comments justifying the priesthood ban to blacks in an interview with the Washington Post. Many called for Bott’s firing. Shortly thereafter Bott took…
Future Mormon: Chapter 3
Welcome to the third week of the reading club for Adam Miller’s Future Mormon. For general links related to the book along with links for all the chapter discussions please go to our overview page. We’ll be trying to discuss…
A Mormon Image: Izyek Steps into the Waters
On a cold day in January, Eldon Umphrey helps his son, Izyek, into Mission Creek in western Montana. The creek runs through the family property, and it has become a family tradition to perform baptisms there, even when there’s snow…
Mormon Doctrine for Grown-ups: A Review of Terryl Givens’s Wrestling the Angel
When I was young, I discovered C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia and enjoyed every volume. Then one day, at my neighborhood library, I discovered Paul Ford’s Companion to Narnia, essentially an encyclopedia of Narnia, and I fell in love. The…
Bad footnotes can be spiritually deadly
Over at Slate, Daniel Engber had an interesting and instructive article a while back entitled “Bad Footnotes Can Be Deadly” on how the current opioid crisis has been aggravated by the misunderstanding of a letter to the editor of a…