After we got the DVD player, the videos slowly fell out of circulation. They had no special features, no subtitles — and they required rewinding! Some were a bit worn, too — particularly the kids videos. So we were all too happy to make the switch, becoming a DVD household. Natural pack-rat tendencies meant that the videos didn’t get truly tossed — they just got put into a box. Meanwhile, new movie purchases for the past several years — Cars and Monsters Inc. and Batman Begins and whatnot — have been on DVD.
Julie’s Papers (2 of 2)
After transcribing Julie’s papers, which surprisingly took only a few weeks since they were so interesting that I became fanatical about transcribing during the day and polishing a translation at night, I gave a presentation to the Archives staff about their newest collection.
What is Church Doctrine? One Possible Theory…
Church Doctrine is a ubiquitous idea among Mormons, but in some ways it is quite mysterious.
Julie’s Papers (1 of 2) [Updated]
In the Age of Too Much Information, we may forget the unrelenting forces of fire, vermin, carelessness, ignorance, vandalism, damp, and neglect that have destroyed so much of the written evidence of history.
Romney II: The Story Continues
T&S reader and political junkie Marc Bohn is often the first to notice any new Romney material. There were a slew of articles this weekend that discussed Romney and Mormonism, covering all sorts of interesting ground, and Marc has put together this synopsis, with links, of several of the most interesting:
Linguistic answers to theological questions
The southern German and Austrian greeting Grüß Gott! ‘may God greet [you]’ is perceived by many local members and American missionaries as a too-frequent or otherwise inappropriate use of a divine title.
The End of the Primary Supplements
Brigham Young and the Spectacle of Litigation
On February 24, 1856, Brigham Young delivered a blistering attack on lawyers and law courts.
DT Demo
I’m a sentimental guy, but really. I received the following email today from the BYU alumni association:
Mormons, the Cross, and the Power(lessness) of Christ
Over the past couple of weeks, four things I’ve recently read have continued to stick in my mind: Nate’s post on the power (or lack thereof) of prayer, Kaimi’s post–and the ensuing long thread–on his daughter’s desire to wear a cross, an extremely thoughtful FARMS review of an apparently equally thoughtful book about Mormonism by an Anglican priest…and finally, Matthew 5. Taken together, they make me wonder why we Mormons think about Christ’s atonement the way that we do.
Scripture and Interpretation: Some Thoughts Inspired by “The Family: A Proclamation to the World”
A couple of weeks ago we had stake conference, and among other things the visiting authority talked about “The Family: A Proclamation to the World.” Among many good and true things, he said that we ought to treat the Proclamation as scripture and that the only reason it was not added to the Doctrine & Covenants is because President Hinckley didn’t want us to all have to go out and buy new scriptures. I don’t want to read too much into what was clearly an off the cuff remark, but this struck me as a rather facile attempt to explain the status of the Proclamation. It did get me thinking, however, about the status of such texts.
Church whisperers
The buzz pervades the chapel. The whispers assemble to an insistent setting escorting the speaker’s voice over the sound system. The multiple murmurs from all corners of the audience spawn a hum that any outsider would consider disturbing. But we are used to it – our own relentless liturgical sound.
Some Thoughts: 30 Years after President Kimball’s Plea to Mormon Artists
We’ve all heard something like this before: “I can’t really claim credit for what I’m about to read, because it came to me as inspiration. God is the author.†The follow up is usually a poem which compares faith (or some other virtue) to a gate/ not a fate/ Spirits’ bait/ please don’t wait—or something Edgar A. Guest might have composed. You do not say anything. You do not voice the words in your head (“God must’ve been having a really bad dayâ€) because you respect the sincerity of the writer—and maybe you recognize your own arrogance. (Surely the Spirit can inspire good thoughts, even if the instrument of expression is untrained.)
Does coffee make you unclean?
In the Pentateuch, we find two ways of doing wrong. There is the more familiar sequence where a person sins by violating divine law and must atone for the guilt, but also the sequence where a person becomes unclean through contact with a tabooed person or object and must be ritually cleansed.
From the Archives: The Talk I’ve Never Given
From March 2004 to February 2007 is approximately 10,000 blogyears.
Julie Desaules Desaules: Heart of Her Extended Family
Thousands of French Protestants fled to Switzerland during the religious wars of the 16th century. One such family settled in the village of Saules, in Neuchatel.
Colligite fragmenta ne pereant
In a manuscript I’m looking at right now, I’m trying to find what verses two or three biblical citations refer to. Before I declare them to be hopeless cases, do any of the three sound familiar to you?
I Hate Podcasts
I tend to find podcasts highly annoying. This is for several reasons.
“Echoes of Lives Wrecked”
[Disclaimer: This post is in tribute to BYU’s excellent but short-lived page on the history of Mormon polygamy.
Preserving the Veil from Survey Data
Suppose I find that being Mormon raises income, makes your children nicer, and does all sorts of wonderful things. In fact, suppose God blessed every person who converted instantly and spectacularly with beautiful hair and perfect teeth.
The Power of Prayer
I am something of a realist and a cynic. I assume that I basically have little or no power over the universe, and that there is almost nothing I can do to change that. You know the story of the guy walking along the beach and throwing back star fish. Someone points out that there are more star fish than he can possibly save, and he replies, “Perhaps, but I made a difference to that one,” throwing another star fish back into the ocean. I have to confess that my sympathies tend to be with the questioner.
The ordinary
However well we do in school or our jobs or in our church callings or in any endeavor, most of our lives are and will be ordinary.
The problem with “liberal Mormon”
The problem with “liberal Mormon” is not the liberal Mormons, whoever they might be, but rather the term used to classify them. It seems to me that the term is used as a catch-all for at least five mostly unrelated things.