SideblogAnother guest post from BCC’s friend S.P. Bailey.
Brent played tee-ball. When he tried to get under the ball (he wanted a hit that sailed well over the infielders’ heads) his bat usually struck the thick rubber tee with a thud. The ball would leap from the tee, landing softly in the area covered by the pitcher who didn’t pitch. It was an unintentional bunt, and it was embarrassing. Read the rest of this entry »
I was recently reading an article about gnostics, mystery cults, and the secret teachings of Jesus. When read with a Mormon eye, much of it rang true to me. The article spoke about the secret knowledge that allows believers to pass through the “veil of the Temple” and become the sons of God. The author contended that this “mystery religion” lay at the heart of Jesus’ message, a message that the Gospel writers and Church Fathers downplayed and eventually rejected (allegedly).
I must confess to having read this article during a particularly dour section of the Sunday block. In my mind I was thinking about Christian exotica (and the wonderfully Strange Fruit at the heart of Nauvoo Mormonism) whilst my ears caught snippets of comments like “prayer is like a GPS receiver.” The juxtaposition was jarring — doctrines that swell the breast vs. the often pedagogical laziness of Mormon Sundays — and I silently wondered whether our religion is the most schizophrenic on Earth. Read the rest of this entry »
Some Utah Boy Scouts are being sued for starting a huge wildfire. I don’t think it would surprise anyone familiar with young scouts if they were guilty. My main memories of Boy Scouts (beyond the impulsive and explosive pyromania) are of heartless but enjoyable pranks, smoking hollow weeds, and groups of marauding thugs making fun of the weak and disabled, while they dreamed of fulfilling pubertal urges. My friend’s dad bribed me to obtain a Tenderfoot badge, which marked the extent of my official engagement in Scouts, Read the rest of this entry »
My good friend Michael Hicks, who is a professor of music at BYU and the author of Mormonism and Music: A History, out of the University of Illinois Press, has a new album out on BYU’s Tantara label, entitled Valentine St. Check it out, including clips, here. Tantara is best known for its choral, classical and jazz offerings; this is their first-ever singer-songwriter album. If you’re interested in Mike’s vita, you can see it here. Read the rest of this entry »
Another guest post from BCC’s friend S.P. Bailey.
Good pop songs are bags ready to be packed with meaning by you the listener. Witness the recent list of “the 50 greatest conservative rock songs.” Read the rest of this entry »
The other day the family sat down and watched the great film Babette’s Feast. Read the rest of this entry »
Presenting the first ever BCC podcast!
It’s not so much a podcast as, say, Steve, J. Stapley and Aaron Brown sitting around gabbing for what seems like forever.
Download this episode here.
And we need a good name — any ideas?
UPDATE: we have a new email account for listener mail. Please send your hack punditry, topic suggestions and gushing praise to podcasts at by common consent – dot – com.
In future historical treatments of Spencer W. Kimball’s ministry, race will almost certainly be seen as a central theme. Indeed, perhaps the single most influential act in his religious life was the elimination of Mormonism’s ban on priesthood ordination and temple ordinances for people racially conceptualized as being of African descent.[1] The most recent addition to the Mormon canon is the official statement, by Kimball and his subordinates in the First Presidency, granting priesthood to black men, and access to temple ceremonies to black men and women. Beyond this major change in church racial policy, Kimball’s life also incorporated other important racial themes, including his racially-defined special ministry to the Lamanites (i.e., Native Americans and Polynesians), and his famous teachings on avoiding interracial and inter-cultural marriages. In light of the centrality of racial themes to Kimball’s life and ministry, we might expect race to play some role in this year’s priesthood/Relief Society lesson manual on his teachings. Are we to be disappointed in that expectation? Read the rest of this entry »
Another guest post from BCC’s friend S.P. Bailey.
The sight of my sister’s pink tackle box full of scissors–each pair cuts its own little pattern–should not bother me so much. Read the rest of this entry »
S.P. Bailey will be guest posting at BCC for the next little while.
I had imagined myself on the Metroliner. I would catch the 4 a.m., sleep soundly to the lurch and sway of the train, and climb the gentle slope from Union Station to Capitol Hill in early morning sunlight. Read the rest of this entry »
Tomorrow Eldred G. Smith turns 100 years old. He is an anachronism incarnate. Few Mormons realize that there was such a thing Presiding Patriarch and that in 1979 President Kimball removed Patriarch Smith from his office and left it empty. The office remains empty to this day and while we honor Hyrum the martyr, his ecclesiastical legacy is now solidly history. Read the rest of this entry »
Kim Östman has an M.Sc. in communication microelectronics and is a soon-to-be Ph.D. candidate in comparative religion at Ã…bo Akademi University, Finland. Tentative thesis topic has to do with using the label “Christian” as a boundary maintenance device within Christianity. He is also a co-founder of the European Mormon Studies Association and has published at BCC Papers.
A public open house at the new Helsinki Finland temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was held between September 21 and October 7, 2006. A total of just under 56 000 visits were logged at the temple, situated in the city of Espoo, Finland. Some of these were naturally Latter-day Saints who visited even multiple times, but in any case some tens of thousands of Finns visited the temple of a religion often thought of as foreign in the Finnish religious landscape. Of Finland’s 5.2 million inhabitants, only 4 500 are Mormon. Read the rest of this entry »
The photograph below was taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft as it reached the edges of the Solar System, 4 billion miles away. The dot on the picture is Earth. Read the rest of this entry »
I just returned from the best testimony meeting I’ve attended in years. What was so very cool about it is that it was dominated by recent converts. Read the rest of this entry »
We all of us humans seem to want to know where we come from. The earliest religious stories, to the extent that we have been able to track them down, told their cultures whence they arose, how they began. To a superficial view, these are cosmic Just So stories. But they are more than idle speculation about why elephants have long noses. These ideas help to define us, help us to orient ourselves in the immensity of space and time. As far as I’m concerned, mr f (Herr Professor Freud) has taken this realization and warped it into a wriggling mass of dysfunctional relationships and sexual paraphilias. Still, we oughtn’t let mr f distract us from the fact that foundation narratives matter greatly. Read the rest of this entry »
So I just got home from a matinee showing of Little Children and I opened my mailbox to find the latest issues of Sunstone and Journal of Mormon History. I haven’t read either one yet (I’m way behind on my reading), but in my ongoing campaign to encourage people to subscribe to and read the LDS independent journals, I thought I would give you a sense for what’s in them in case something should strike your fancy. Read the rest of this entry »
Whenever I visit a home for the first time, inevitably and when convenient, I drift toward any bookshelf in view. A survey of any such edifice among our people is an enlightening experience. Some titles that were once great forces among us are now obscure or completely forgotten. Other titles persevere through decades and centuries. Quite telling among the thousands of books published during our history are those that carry the explicit endorsement of the Church. This group of books is most often associated with our Missionaries and our ward-house libraries. Read the rest of this entry »
There is a new blog in the Bloggernacle, the Feast upon the Word Blog, which is devoted to discussion of the scriptures, scripture study and scripture education. Check it out. Read the rest of this entry »
You come to church for an activity one night. You walk into the building and there, in the foyer, is an infant carseat with a note attached. Read the rest of this entry »
Remind me why we do this. Please.
Remind me why it is important to drag ourselves to services each Sunday. Even though it’s been four years, I still feel like such a newbie on some things, and the last six Sundays have made me want to run screaming, and left me exhausted and frustrated.
If I could go to church alone, or with only my husband, I know I could be edified, lifted up, study the passages, heck, maybe I could even hear the sacrament talks and learn something. But “alone” is not my lot.
Getting five people ready for church every Sunday is a task many an LDS woman does. Some seem to do it better than others. I am definitely an “other” here. By the time we get everyone dressed and out the door, any wisp of the spirit has long departed us, and we are often mad at each other and the kids. Read the rest of this entry »
Warner Woodworth is a social entrepreneur and Professor of Organizational Leadership and Strategy at BYU’s Marriott School of Business. He has contributed a kind of New Year’s essay on how Mormon individuals can change the world by helping to end poverty.
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