I ran across this post from the incomparable Ryan Burge the other day that confirmed something I’ve suspected: neither the left nor the right like us. Occasionally Latter-day Saint liberals love to point out that, despite our political alliance of convenience with the right, we’re not their favorite. They’ll hold their noses and take our votes, but they don’t like us. And all of that is true, but the problem is…the left is no different. They’ll occasionally make nice and ma...| Times & Seasons
What did you notice in Church yesterday? How did you react? Think differently? This is the latest invitation for reactions to local meetings, continuing the spirit of my post on September 25th about how we can take what happens in Church meetings—sermons, lessons and anything else—and enter a conversation with them, magnifying what was said or adding what we think. The point here is that no matter how poorly prepared the speaker or teacher is, we can still find elements in what is said an...| Times & Seasons
Baptism for the Dead is one of the beliefs that make the LDS Church distinctive among religions today. Frequently discussions with non-Mormons focus on what Paul meant in 1 Cor. 15:29 while ignoring the broader question that our doctrine addresses with proxy ordinances: If baptism is required for everyone, then what about those who passed on without it? Or, to put it another way, don’t we have a responsibility to others, less fortunate than we are? Regardless of whether they are alive or dead?| Times & Seasons
How do we measure the full legacy of a figure like Heber C. Kimball? We often focus on the man himself—his loyalty to Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, his mission to England, or his role as First Counselor. But a fascinating new interview at From the Desk with biographer Andrew Kimball argues for a much broader, more complex answer. Discussing his book, The Blood in Their Veins, Kimball posits that Heber’s true story is inseparable from the sprawling, multi-generational family he created. ...| Times & Seasons
Often our cultural paradigms for fidelity and sexual propriety are, frankly, seemingly low-testosterone, low-sociosexuality cases. Of course Mr. Rogers is going to be faithful to his wife (although I don’t claim any knowledge of his T-count). Or all those skinny Mr. Darcy-type, regency period love interests that Mormon women are obsessed with (another post for another day). | Times & Seasons
The 1856 handcart tragedy remains a defining, painful moment in Latter-day Saint history, and the question of “who is responsible?” has echoed for generations. We often settle for simple answers or familiar myths. However, a recent interview at the Latter-day Saint history blog, From the Desk, with Don H. Smith and Mark C. Austin, authors of Bring Them to Zion, challenges these easy narratives. Their analysis argues that the disaster cannot be blamed on any single individual. Instead, the...| Times & Seasons
You should probably pay attention to a religious movement that shares some of our beliefs and uses some similar terminology, wants to control key institutions of society, and includes Donald Trump’s spiritual advisor.| Times & Seasons
[WARNING: the following includes some things that maybe considered spoilers by those who haven’t seen the film.] I’m not sure how well it is known, but the film “Truth and Treason”, currently in theaters, tells the story of a young LDS man in Hamburg, Germany in 1942. Helmuth Hübener’s story has been told before, perhaps best in Tom Rogers’ 1976 play, Huebener. The film’s story is a faithful retelling of the events, starting with the attacks on Helmuth’s friend and fellow chu...| Times & Seasons
How we’re perceived in popular culture is one of those questions that usually devolve into anecdote slinging, with all the biases inherent in what we remember or are in a position to experience. Recently I ran across a “corpus,” or a dataset, of scripts in movies. Specifically, the Baskin Lab at UC Santa Cruz keeps a dataset of 1,068 films in an easily digestible text format, so I wrote a script to detect any usage of the word “Mormon” and to give me the immediate context surroundin...| Times & Seasons
This is the latest invitation for reactions to local meetings, continuing the spirit of my post on September 25th about how we can take what happens in Church meetings—sermons, lessons and anything else—and enter a conversation with them, magnifying what was said or adding what we think. The point here is that no matter how poorly prepared the speaker or teacher is, we can still find elements in what is said and what happens that inspires and edifies us. Even if church meetings aren’t c...| Times & Seasons
Adversity is rooted in the problem of evil—if God is good, then why does he allow evil to exist? Or if “man is that he might have joy,” why is there so much suffering in life? And worse, it often seems like for some the suffering is “but a moment”, while for others the suffering continues lifelong. While our theological explanations of why this happens make logical sense, they often come across as either blaming the victims or minimizing the suffering. Worse still, too often we expl...| Times & Seasons
Most of the time when we hear the phrase “A Principle with Promise,” we think of D&C Section 89 and the promise that we can “run and not be weary.” However, some kind of promise is associated with every gospel principle—there is at least one consequence that accompanies every principle, and the accompanying consequences follow obeying the principle. Does anyone doubt that maintaining good health can allow us to ‘run and not be weary?’| Times & Seasons
The Utah War was a dramatic episode in the history of the antebellum western United States. One of the most remarkable records to discuss the experience of traveling west with the Utah Expedition is the memoirs of William Clark. These were recently published anew, edited and annotated by William P. MacKinnon and Kenneth L. Alford. These authors recently discussed the Utah War in an interview at the Latter-day Saint history blog, From the Desk. What follows here is a copost to the full interv...| Times & Seasons
The recently-published book Seven Visions: Images of Christ in the Doctrine and Covenants by Adam S. Miller and Rosalynde F. Welch is a fantastic opportunity to listen in on a conversation between two brilliant theological minds as they explore seven different sections of the Doctrine and Covenants with a Christological focus. The book is structured as a series of letters back and forth between the two authors, discussing the seven sections in question (19, 45, 76, 88, 110, 130, and 138). It...| Times & Seasons
Organizations require structure. And the larger that an organization gets, the more structure it needs. That might seem pretty obvious in today’s world, but I suspect it was less obvious in the 1830s among the Saints who had joined the church, many because of the way other churches operated.| Times & Seasons
I want to share a few thoughts on Christianity and community building. I know this is a big topic discussed for thousands of years, but I want to give my two cents anyway despite not being a trained theologian. In my amateur opinion, I do think that Jesus said that community building was important and it’s how I interpret what he was saying about the kingdom of God. I see this interpretation as similar to how I interpret Joseph Smith’s thought. I thought Elder Uchtdorf’s talk had a lot ...| Times & Seasons
First off, apologies for all the AI posts, but the big AI players do this thing where they drop their latest products right next to each other to try to steal the news cycles from each other, so AI alternates between droughts and floods. | Times & Seasons
As we read the Book of Mormon, we will better appreciate its authenticity if we see its stories in the context of the Nephites and Lamanites continuously bumping up against Native American tribes who were already in the Americas. The Promised Land was not an empty land, as many throughout Church history sometimes imagined. In fact, our testimony of the truths taught within its pages are all the more powerful when we look at this ancient record with eyes wide open to the cultural world it actu...| Times & Seasons
