To help us compensate for the shortage of lawyers at T&S, Raymond Takashi Swenson has agreed to guest blog for a week or two.
Year: 2008
The Hallmark of Monson’s Presidency?
“Change for the better can come to all. Over the years we have issued appeals to the less active, the offended, the critic, the transgressor — to come back. ‘Come back and feast at the table of the Lord and taste again the sweet and satisfying fruits of fellowship with the Saints.’ In the private sanctuary of one’s own conscience lies that spirit, that determination to cast off the old person and to measure up to the stature of true potential. In this spirit, we again issue that heartfelt invitation. Come back, we reach out to you in the pure love of Christ and express our desire to assist you and to welcome you into full fellowship.
Sunday Afternoon General Conference Open Thread
As has become tradition around here, Times and Seasons is opening up a thread for comments and discussion, insights and observations, thoughts and questions, arising from Sunday afternoon’s General Conference session. Enjoy!
Sunday Morning General Conference Open Thread
As has become tradition around here, Times and Seasons is opening up a thread for comments and discussion, insights and observations, thoughts and questions, arising from Sunday morning’s General Conference session. Enjoy!
Thoughts on Hinckley and Monson
Since Kaimi was kind enough to link to it, I thought I’d elaborate a bit on some comments of mine which Peggy Fletcher Stack used in her excellent article summarizing the accomplishments of President Hinckley, and the opportunities and challenges facing President Monson. It would be interesting to hear more from some of the other sources she made use of in putting her piece together (Melissa Proctor, Ronan Head, etc.), but for now, here is at least a little bit the context of my remarks.
Saturday Afternoon General Conference Open Thread
As has become tradition around here, Times and Seasons is opening up a thread for comments and discussion, insights and observations, thoughts and questions, arising from Saturday afternoon’s General Conference session. Enjoy!
Saturday Morning General Conference Open Thread
As has become tradition around here, Times and Seasons is opening up a thread for comments and discussion, insights and observations, thoughts and questions, arising from Saturday morning’s General Conference session. Enjoy!
Martin Luther King in Deseret
On this 40th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, and in the pre-Conference blogging lull, perhaps there is room in your day to remember Dr. King’s visit to Salt Lake City.
An Ethics of Teaching
I’m reading a short book that reviews what one might call the virtues of teaching: learning, authority, ethics, order, imagination, compassion, patience, character, and pleasure. Each virtue (which might be though of as an aspect of the character of an ideal teacher) is reviewed in its own chapter. The ethics chapter suggested an interesting question to me: Is there an LDS ethics of teaching that differs in any particulars from a Christian or secular ethics of teaching?
And Yet Another Joseph Smith Photograph
The April 1st posting of this article may tempt you to think this is an April Fool’s prank. I wish it were. It is not.
History, apostasy, and faith-promoting rumors
Mormon belief in an early Christian apostasy suggests a couple of historiographic projects that are, I think, doomed to failure, but there might be an alternative
Mormon Studies This Week
This is a big week for Mormon Studies on the Wasatch Front, with events at the University of Utah, Utah Valley State College, Westminster College, and BYU.
Mormon identity and culture
The following is part of a larger study on the concept of “gospel culture”, which I have been working on. In a previous post I presented the question “How American is the Church?”, which yielded very interesting comments. For the present post I excerpted some further parts on culture and Mormon identity, with various questions to the reader.
Confessions of a News Junkie
Sunday morning. Clicked off This Week with George Stephanopoulos just a couple of minutes after clicking it on. Feeling especially weary of the twenty-four hour news cycle for some reason today… the relentless intensity, the insatiable talking-heads, and a seemingly never-ending electoral season.
BYU: The Crimson or the Crimson Tide of the West?
Actually, it’s more like the Intermountain Cornhuskers, or the Mormon Maccabees
Playing with Fire
The Gospel of Kristine
As we’re all told in Sunday School, “Gospel” means “good news.” And it’s certainly good news that T&S emeritus (and current BCC) blogger Kristine Haglund is going to be taking over as editor of Dialogue.
Easter Weekend, by Eugene England
[This post was originally put up on Holy Saturday, April 7, 2007. I thought about putting up something different this year, but I couldn’t think of anything that can approach the beauty of this essay. Enjoy]
The Three Trees: a Folktale for Good Friday
[This post was originally put up on Good Friday, April 6, 2007. I thought about putting up something different this year, but I couldn’t think of anything that can approach the beauty of this little story. Enjoy.] Once upon a time, three little trees stood in a forest high on a mountain, dreaming of what they would be when they were grown.
The CSI Effect and Mormon History
Television police dramas are so popular that they have come to influence the American legal system — or so say believers in the “CSI Effect.”
Is priesthood authority a historical category?
No, it isn’t. Which means that defining an early Christian apostasy as the loss of priesthood authority doesn’t tell us anything, even in a Mormon framework, about the apostasy as a historical event
The God We Hold Hostage
[Revised from the Archives.] The Garden of Eden story doesn’t have a point.
Twenty-Nine Palms Sunday
We worshiped as a family, at a natural altar of stones, on a snow-specked mountain side.
The Secular as Sacred
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the seemingly secular things that I’ve come to hold sacred, whether they be songs, books, films, works of art, or even places. My spiritual regard for these things is often rooted in my own experience, yet, I also believe that I’ve come to appreciate many of them in a spiritual sense because they broach truth in their own right. Brigham Young once said “The truth and sound doctrine possessed by the sectarian world, and they have a great deal, all belong to this church” (JD 11:375).
Rumor-Mongering: Joseph Smith Daguerreotype
The Church History Library/Archives staff have been hit with a wave of telephone calls today from Church members looking for confirmation of the latest rumor to hit the LDS fan rumor mill.
Substituting One Speculation for Another
Our Sunday School class opened this morning with a discussion of the “generals in the war in heaven” nonsense that the Church is trying so hard to quash.
Kosovo
When we arrived at church two weeks ago, everything looked normal. The building was clean and not a chair was out of place.
Sunstone West
If you’re in the Los Angeles area, don’t forget to check out Sunstone West this weekend. Tonight’s program includes a showing of Nobody Knows: The Untold Story of Black Mormons, and tomorrow’s program includes a list of speakers and presentations on some interesting-sounding topics. I hope to see some of you there.
The Missionary at Mass
My father used to point to the ceiling in our living room and claim he could still see a dent made by my head as I jumped up in excitement over discovering that my call was to the Switzerland Geneva Mission.
Forging a Life
Although she had immigrated to Boston, the story of Misha Defonseca didn’t get nearly as much press last week in the U.S. as it did in Europe, when she joined a long line of self-confessed fakes