In a candid moment in January 1858, an early Church leader named Zerah Pulsipher told his family that: “Most of you are young therefore you have the advantage of me because [yo]u have less Gentile Traditions to over com[e].”[1] This…
The “Come, Follow Me” manuals for 2021’s course of study are available online now. Looking ahead to the next year, I have been curious to see if they were going to stick strictly to the scriptures related to the history…
I recently read (okay, listened to) Benjamin Park’s book Kingdom of Nauvoo: The Rise and Fall of a Religious Empire on the American Frontier. Park has produced a rich piece of scholarship with fascinating details about the period, some of them…
For something relatively out of the blue, I want to take a moment to consider potential future candidates for the Quorum of the Twelve. The Quorum of the Twelve and the First Presidency are the highest in authority in the…
They’re not wrong. Not about everything.
I disagree with their choice of candidate. What they want would have—has had—disastrous results, but that doesn’t mean they’re entirely wrong.
If you were to ask someone what the founding vision of the Restoration was at different points in our history, I suspect that you would get different answers. Certainly, for us today, the First Vision stands out. Throughout much of…
This week’s Come, Follow Me lesson covers the story of Nephi praying on a tower in his garden, drawing a crowd, and revealing facts about the murder of the chief judge that he could only know through revelation. As I…
We round out the 10 questions interview series on Joseph Smith’s translation with a discussion between Richard L. Bushman and Kurt Manwaring about the gold plates. We’ve had a good run of interviews with scholars who have worked hard to…
Following on Chad’s recent discussions, I’m happy to share another offering in what has become a T&S mini–series on the recent volume Producing Ancient Scripture: Joseph Smith’s Translation Projects in the Development of Mormon Christianity (Salt Lake City, UT: The…
We’re continuing our discussion of Joseph Smith’s translations and the recently-released volume Producing Ancient Scripture today, turning to the Book of Abraham in an interview with Matthew Grey. This is a co-post to Kurt Manwaring’s interview with Matthew Grey, where…
Kurt Manwaring has continued his interviews focusing on Joseph Smith’s translations with a discussion with Thomas Wayment about the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible. In the interview last week, some of the editors of recently-published volume Producing Ancient Scripture…
Alma the Younger strikes me as one of the sterner of the prophets, which makes sense if you consider his background. I know a few people in my life who have had similar, if less spectacular trajectories. It’s not an…
It has been a big year for volumes that discuss Joseph Smith’s translation projects, with contributions ranging from Terryl Givens and Brian Hauglid’s The Pearl of Great Price: Mormonism’s Most Controversial Scripture last October, to William L. Davis’s Visions in…
I’ve heard multiple people say how much they’ve enjoyed the last five months of home church. Studying the scriptures however they want, and worshiping each Sunday as a family? More, please. Now that my ward has resumed meeting, there’s a lot to miss about home church.
Eugene England once shared an experience he had with the prominent Latter-day Saint Church leader, scriptorian, and doctrinaire Joseph Fielding Smith. President Smith had written extensively on the subject of the priesthood and temple ban against individuals of black African…
Understanding the nature of Joseph Smith’s translation efforts is an important part of understanding his ministry and the religions that have emerged from the early Latter Day Saint movement. Whether the Book of Mormon, the Joseph Smith Translation of the…
As I’ve been studying the “Come, Follow Me” material lately and talking about it with family, I’ve had a quote from Michael Crichton’s book Jurassic Park come to mind a few times. There are a few statements in this section…
History is a fascinating world to explore, with many twists and turns along the way as we come to understand more about the narratives we have received and how they were formed. Each generation of historians has the opportunity to…
In the movie version of the popular Harry Potter series, a father-figure to the titular character tells Harry that: “The world isn’t split into good people and Death Eaters [henchmen of the main villain]. We’ve all got both light and…
Before I move on from discussing the First Vision, I wanted to share something that I find exciting. Once in a while in Mormon studies journals, special volumes focus on the First Vision—such as the Spring 1969 issue of BYU Studies and a 1980…
John Hammond’s Quest for the New Jerusalem: A Mormon Generation Sagastates that Sidney Rigdon, “by his own admission, ‘made up’ religious experiences in his youth,” which seems like something worth looking into.
Edited with author’s note on the comments at end of post. Abortion is a hot-button issue. Maybe the hot-button issue. That’s why–after finishing a draft of this post in November of 2019–I sat on it for almost a year. I’ve…
How do we account for differences between the various accounts we have on record of the First Vision? What role does memory play in how it was presented over time? How have we viewed those accounts since they were first…
This coming week’s Come, Follow Me lesson covers Alma 30-31. Here are a collection of quotes from General Auxiliary Leaders of the Church, that you can use in your family or personal study. Alma 30 The Book of Mormon warns…
Imagining the Book of Mormon as a complex work reflecting numerous steps of compilation and abridgment helps explain some curious features of the encounter with Sherem in Jacob 7.
I’ve been thinking about the issue of race in the Church (and the history of the temple and priesthood ban in particular) a lot lately. As part of that thinking, I am working on a series of posts wrestling with…
Thinking of the Book of Mormon as the result of a series of textual accretions and combinations might help make sense of how curiously overdetermined the account of Nephite origins is.
I wrote this in over three years ago in response to a call for personal essays on LDS single experiences; alas, it was declined primarily for a lack of anecdotes. It’s not something I would necessarily write today and is…
This is a comment and reflection on David Bednar’s speech on corona and religious freedom, to be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGU7GG5t6Ek Of course religious freedom is an important value in human civilization, and, yes, of course it has to be defended,…
Today marks the 176th anniversary of the day that Joseph Smith died in an untimely fashion. As I’ve been pondering on what his legacy means to me personally, I wanted to write about three topics that were central to Joseph…
