Let’s start with an observation that I hope will be uncontroversial: there is a big difference between how people solve crimes in the actual world and how readers try to solve crimes in mystery novels. Here is a crystal-clear example of the difference: in the real world, the person that all of the evidence points to is almost always the person who committed the crime. In a mystery novel, the person that all of the evidence points is the one person you can be sure did not commit the crime. [Read more…]

Mette Ivie Harrison is a critically-acclaimed writer of numerous books,including ‘The Bishop’s Wife’. We’re grateful for her thoughts.

In “The Education of the Human Race,” the great German writer and philosopher Lessing suggested that humans as a species have gone through three stages of development. The first stage was the Old Testament phase where we had to be punished or threatened with punishment in order to do what was not wrong. The second stage was the New Testament phase where we were rewarded or promised a reward (blessings or going to heaven—or a higher heaven, or resurrection) if we did what was right. [Read more…]

The 10th annual meeting of Mormon Scholars in the Humanities will take place at Boston University, May 26–27. The conference is open to the public. If you are interested in attending the Friday night banquet, tickets may be purchased here. For more information, see www.mormonscholars.net or contact Jenny Webb at president@mormonscholars.net.

It seems like everyone is familiar with those diagrams with various circles that explain Mormon cosmology, and which outline the progression of the human soul through eternity (do an image search for “plan of salvation” for some beauties). I thought it would be fun to sketch out the Plans of Salvation for various sources.
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So, me, a biologist, wrote this book on speculative theology. The promise is rather, shall we say, curious (‘weird’ would also work)? The usual thinking goes, especially for Mormons, that first we do religion, then science. If either is to bow, it is science. The book is an experiment on the premise that the reverse it true: the real world must impose its will on our theology (as explained in the work, I mean something specific by this term). It’s a long argument hence the book-length treatment. I tried to squeeze it into 140 words, but my arguments lost some of their heft and nuance. So look at my book and you’ll get the big picture, but I wanted to explain why I think it is at least worth thinking about.

I am a computer modeler. I build ecologies in a computer; then populate these ecologies with digital creatures. The weird thing is, and it has been shown to be true again and again, that these digital creations tell us useful things about real flesh and hemolymph creatures. This is shocking to me. I’m always completely astonished that digital entities made of 1s and 0s can teach me about actual animals living in the wild. Why should that work? [Read more…]

Can we talk about CPS? I mean, of course, Chosen-People Syndrome, or the belief that one belongs to a race, people, or organization that has a unique and special relationship to God. Latter-day Saints generally believe that we fall into this category, but there is nothing special about that. Most people believe, and have always believed, that their kind of person is special. [Read more…]

Notice of Lecture by Brent Rogers, one of the editors of volume 5 of the Documents Series in the Joseph Smith Papers. If you’re in Salt Lake City on Thursday, it should be fun.

In conjunction with the publication of Documents, Volume 5: October 1835–January 1838, Brent M. Rogers, Associate Managing Historian of the Joseph Smith Papers and coeditor of Documents, Volume 5, will be giving a lecture titled “‘We ask thee, O Lord, to accept of this house’: The Temple in Joseph Smith’s Kirtland” on May 18 in Salt Lake City.
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Earlier this year I asked you how your local Easter service went. Today I’d like to ask you how your Mother’s Day service went. [Read more…]

Sorry this is a little late.
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The Mormon newsroom broke the news this morning that the church is ending its venture and varsity scout programs for boys 14-18 years old in the U.S. and Canada. I was particularly interested in this announcement not just because I was active in scouts when I was younger, but because until fairly recently I served in a young men calling that required me to serve as a scout leader, and I have two sons that will eventually be part of the program. Given President Monson’s personal attachment to scouting, I never thought the church would disengage from BSA during his lifetime. There was a first presidency letter sent out this morning announcing the change, included with the letter is a set of guidelines about the activities for priests and teachers, and there is a set of questions and answers on the newsroom about the change. [Read more…]

Source

We take for granted that angels are silent notes taking, but did you know that Satan is too?

As a youth, I recall having vague notions about the actions that were necessary to avoid temptation, but if you would have asked me, say, last week, I don’t think I would have had the temerity to assert that “Avoid vocalizing your thoughts!” is one of them. I mean, that’s just magical thinking that I can hardly pin on the church, right? [Read more…]

Again it’s my pleasure to bring you brief reviews of outstanding books that deserve (and have received elsewhere) much fuller review by more qualified persons. My goal here is not to replace that more fulsome review, but to give a layman’s perspective and some idea of where these books fit into the libraries of non-professional Latter-day Saints. [Read more…]

It’s almost Mother’s Day. I can tell from the little knot of confusion pushing itself towards the front of my consciousness. On Father’s Day, it’s easy to choose the hymns: “O My Father,” and “Our Father, By Whose Name”– Our Father, by whose name all fatherhood is known…Thy children bless in every place, that they may all behold thy face/and knowing thee, may grow in grace.

No more a stranger or a guest, but like a child at home…

There aren’t hymns for Mother’s Day, not really. Beyond affirming Her existence, we don’t know what to sing or say. So we argue–it’s easy enough to name the doctrinal and historical complications of naming Our Mother, and often, those complications are a comfort. The retreat into theory eases the ache of the simple questions.

Until someone writes a series of small, perfect poems asking simple questions, like the ones in Rachel Hunt Steenblik’s Mother’s Milk, forthcoming from BCC Press. [Read more…]

This past Sunday the stake president asked me to speak in one of the wards in our stake. The assigned topic was cultivating the faith necessary to have success in missionary work as a ward. That got me thinking about faith and how it relates to how we think about the church’s long term fate.

It strikes me that there are two extremes in the way we think about the church and its long term destiny. [Read more…]

By Carolyn Homer (with comedic assistance from Eric D. Snider). Carolyn is a Mormon attorney engaged to a Catholic attorney in Washington D.C. Eric is a film critic and humorist in Portland, Oregon.

Friends keep asking Brad and me when we’re getting married. We appreciate the support, but we believe marriage is a private decision, to be made by no one but the bride, the groom, and the Catholic Church.

Brad and I want a Catholic wedding, and the Catholic Church takes marriage very seriously — almost as seriously as it takes divorce.

Being Mormon, I respect quirky theologies. Your faith? Your rules. But now that respect has gotten me into trouble. You see, Brad and I are divorced. (Not from each other.) [Read more…]

Last night the Chicago Chapter of the J. Reuben Clark Society (the professional society for Mormon lawyers) sponsored an event titled “Religious Liberty Today: An Interfaith Discussion.” It was a great event, and I’d like to tell you about it.

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Woe to them that are at ease in Zion. (Amos 6:1:)

I have not been able to get this verse out of my head since I learned yesterday that the US House of Representatives narrowly voted to eliminate 800 billion dollars of benefits designed to help the poorest Americans get health care in order to fund an 800 billion dollar tax cut for the wealthiest. I have never seen a starker example in my country of the wealthy and powerful manipulating the structures of society in order to enrich powerful people at the expense of the most vulnerable members of society. This is exactly the sort of thing that the prophets were always talking about. [Read more…]

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich recently published one of the best books ever written about nineteenth-century Mormonism. I can’t recommend it highly enough. It’s called A House Full of Females: Plural Marriage and Women’s Rights in Early Mormonism, 1835 to 1870. The folks at Juvenile Instructor are hosting an online book club this summer; it begins later this week.

Here’s an excerpt from my interview with Ulrich on the Maxwell Institute Podcast, where I ask her about how she paints a fuller, richer, grittier and more complex portrait of the early church: [Read more…]

Glen Nelson is a ghostwriter of twenty books, with three New York Times best sellers to his credit. He founded Mormon Artists Group in 1999 and remains its director. MAG has created 30 projects with 90 LDS artists. As a librettist, he has written three operas, five song cycles, two cantatas, and has published poetry and essays and collaborated with artists on many projects. He and his wife have published a book on their art collection, The Glen & Marcia Nelson Collection of Mormon Art. Nelson arrived in New York City 30 years ago, the year his driver’s license expired, which he has not renewed.

It started out as a dare, almost. Richard Bushman asked me what I would do if I won the lottery. Those weren’t his exact words, but he was curious to know what a seven-figure windfall might mean for Mormon Studies. He challenged me to identify the big ideas that could transform the ways Mormons think of themselves, interact with the public, and connect with each other.

For me, the solution was a single word: art. [Read more…]

Last year, Jonathan Stapley and I reviewed the newly released initial segment of George Q. Cannon’s journals from the Church Historian’s Press. Cannon, a fixture in Utah Mormon leadership, politics, and business for the latter half of the nineteenth century, reported his activities in Church and State with interesting fidelity in what was once a closely held journal. Just recently, more of the Cannon journal was released and Cannon has a particularly frank account of deliberations among the apostles over the question of organizing a First Presidency. Brigham Young had been dead since August 1877 and the apostles had stepped up as a twelve man presidency, just as they had done in Nauvoo after Joseph Smith’s death. Remarkably for us perhaps, some of the same puzzles were still present over the question of reorganization of a First Presidency. Did they really need to proceed? Was a Presidency really needed to effectively govern? How would it be selected? Who should be president–what of the health of older apostles? Why did some apostles object to a new presidency? Who were those objectors? Cannon sheds remarkable light on these and other questions in this drama.[1]
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For most of my academic life, I have had a minor obsession with stories based on the Faust legend—tales of human beings who wanted something so much that they were willing to sell their soul to the devil to get it. It’s not the oldest story in the world, but it’s up there. What intrigues me so much about the various Faust stories in literature is the wide variety of things that people want most. We learn a lot about individuals, and the cultures that produced them, by studying what they rate as more important than their souls. [Read more…]