In many ways, the Doctrine & Covenants is my favorite book of scripture, and as it now stands it is the result of a failure.
Thinking about the Trinity
It is hardly news to this crowd that Mormons don’t accept the traditional understanding of the Godhead, the Trinity.
Drat! They’re on to us!
From the informative and helpful New Zealand Cult List
Maggie Gallagher’s tautology
Over at Volokh, Maggie Gallagher makes the curious argument that society needs marriage because without marriage, people would be having children out of wedlock.
Remain in your homeland
In last General Conference, Elder Uchtdorf reiterated the 1999 counsel of the First Presidency, a counsel that has actually been given since the 1950s.
Our Enemies List
Like Nixon, Times and Seasons maintains a detailed “enemies list.”
The Deep Meaning of the Bloggernacle (Abridged)
It seems to have been a bicoastal weekend for real-world discussions of the bloggernacle. John Dehlin gave a great talk on blogs at the Seattle Sunstone Symposium (pod cast here), and I gave a brief presentation to Naomi Frandsen’s “Saturday Night Discussion Group” (a name that carries all sorts of unfortunate disco connotations for me.) Lacking the technical sophistication do a podcast, here is a shortened version of what I said:
On the Blowing of Noses and the Bearing of Testimonies
While I was running errands with my children one morning last week, I glanced up at the rearview mirror to see my four-year-old daughter’s finger probing her nostril. I reprimanded her, gently, and asked if she needed a tissue. “No thank you, Mom,” she answered cheerfully, “This kind comes out only by a fingernail, right?”
Malcolm Gladwell on the Future of Religion
In its latest issue, Time magazine “assembled some of the smartest people we know to identify the trends that are most likely to affect our future.”
A Marketing Hypothetical
This season The University of Notre Dame has been airing a student recruiting advertisement called “Candle”.
Jerusalem
Last week Janice and I spent several days in Cornwall, Great Britain, with the BYU students doing London Study Abroad.
An Announcement for DC-Area Bloggernaclites
Former T&S guestblogger, Naomi Frandsen has started a semi-formal discussion group for Capital-area Mormons. There first meeting will be this Saturday. Here is the announcement from Naomi:
The Romantic Usefulness of Military History
Ronan has a thoughtful post about his trip to Gettysburg and the meaning of war. For my part, I will always think of Gettysburg as the sacred soil on which I successfully wooed my wife.
Book Review: Lengthen Your Stride: The Presidency of Spencer W. Kimball
If you liked the recent President McKay biography, you are going to love the new biography of President Kimball.
Senator Hatch Takes Sin Money
A long time ago, when I was a practicing lawyer, I concocted a scheme with another Mormon lawyer to raise an investment fund targeted at companies that cater to vices. Alcohol, tobacco, p0rn, etc.
Supplementing Angels
A not-so-hypothetical from a reader: Your daughter’s AP English class is using Tony Kushner’s Angels in America as a central part of a semester’s curriculum. You are friends with the teacher and would feel comfortable suggesting that she supplement the Angels module with another book or short story dealing with Mormonism from a different, hopefully “insider,” perspective. What work of Mormon literature would you suggest?
A Paradox of Our Own
One of the more prominent strands of modern political philosophy is what has been called “luck egalitarianism,” which of course raises basic questions for Mormon theology.
Are we mainstream?
Slate has an interesting photo-essay on the architecture of mega-churches. One of the featured buildings is the Conference Center in Salt Lake City (known among Church Historical Department employees as the “meganacle”). I was struck by the following bit of commentary from the essay: The approach of the architects, Zimmer Gunsul Frasca of Portland, Ore., shows the influence megachurches have had on mainstream religions. I’ve tried parsing this several ways, but it seems to me that the only way of reading it is as claiming that Mormons are a mainstream religion, as opposed to the evangelical megachurches.
Harriet Miers
Last year, on November 2, I was still undecided about whether to cast a vote for George Bush.
Heder-day Night Live
Last night Jon Heder, star of Napoleon Dynamite, hosted “Saturday Night Live.” I caught a few of the sketches he played in, and one thing was pretty clear: the kid’s no Philip Seymor Hoffman. He’s amiable and sweet-faced, to be sure, but there’s a muddiness to his voice he can’t seem to clear, and his mouth, for all its soft pliability, is suprisingly unagile with dialogue. I haven’t seen his latest effort, a supporting role in the romantic comedy Just Like Heaven, but in my judgment he doesn’t have either the chops or the charisma to make a career of movie-acting. It’s too bad, because he seems like a genuinely good kid, and Napoleon earned him a ton of celebrity-capital among an important demographic; he might have been the really big, genuinely Mormon star we haven’t had yet. I just hope the boy has managed to keep clean in Hollywood and New York; those are pretty muddy straits for a squeaky-clean BYU boy.
Intelligences: Neo-platonic and Cartesian
“Intelligence” is one of those wonderfully ambiguous words in the scriptures.
Julie’s Homeschooling Manifesto
We’ve talked about homeschooling before, but once was Bryce’s baby and the other was a peripheral issue. Because people ask from time to time, I thought I’d set out my thoughts about homeschooling in a friendly Q-and-A format.
A Note of Grief (With a Thought on the Law)
This morning I attended the funeral of a young man, much too young to die.
Mormons Pick Nominees, Part II
First it was Ginsburg.