The preliminary program for the ninth annual meeting of the Society for Mormon Philosophy and Theology, which will be held this coming Thursday through Saturday in Logan (Utah), is now available on line:   http://www.smpt.org/   Pity that it overlaps with the conference on Saturday in Provo on "The Temple on Mount Zion."   And I won't be able to get up to Logan until, at the earliest, Thursday evening, since I teach a late class that day … [Read more...]

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    I'm happy to announce, belatedly -- I've been in airports and on airplanes! -- that Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture, has posted yet another new item:  Roger Nicholson's "Mormonism and Wikipedia: The Church History that 'Anyone Can Edit.'"   Abstract: The ability to quickly and easily access literature critical of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been made significantly easier through the advent of the Internet. One of the primary … [Read more...]

      Well, we arrived home rather late last night.   And that's it.   I was accompanying a tour of Turkey for major supporters of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship.  It's over now, and that's presumably the last substantial involvement I'm going to have with the Institute as a whole, the last time I'll be acting on behalf of, or in connection with, the organization as such.  (I will, it seems, be permitted to retain … [Read more...]

    Sigh.  I'm about to leave this wonderful city.  And then, to compound it, I have to plunge back into real work, with real students, and grades, and, yes, to a greater degree than ever before, university politics.   I've always found the history in Istanbul/Constantinople, and in Turkey more generally, absolutely rich, densely fascinating, stunning even.  And I still do.  I was impressed this time too, more than on previous visits, with the dynamism of the … [Read more...]

    Today was, largely, a repeat for my wife and me, since we came here early to take some other people around the sites that they would miss at the end of this trip because they had to leave early.     We took a cruise on the Bosphorus -- only halfway up, this time, rather than all the way to the Black Sea -- and then toured the Dolmabahçe Palace again.  Then, after lunch in a nice Turkish restaurant (called "Hamdi") near the Spice Market, we spent … [Read more...]

    I've just returned from the Grand Bazaar of Istanbul, where I was sent by my wife to accomplish a small task.  She's off elsewhere in the city with another member of our group, doing something related to the Istanbul Branch of the Church.  I was supposed to go with the rest of the group, but missed them.   I shouldn't be let loose without adult supervision.   I ended up buying a piece of Arabic calligraphy that I really liked.  I'm not normally a … [Read more...]

    We woke up yesterday in the old pre-Istanbul Ottoman capital city of Bursa and, after a brief drive through the older part of the city (it didn't even remotely begin to do justice to the place, but there is only so much that one can do), drove to Iznik, the ancient Greek Nicaea or Nikaia.  En route, I lectured on the seven ecumenical councils of the ancient Christian church.  A good snooze was had by all.   We looked at the ancient walls of the city, including … [Read more...]

    Published when he was into his mid-sixties, "Sailing to Byzantium" expresses William Butler Yeats's discomfort at his advancing age and his yearning for a spiritual realm (symbolized in the poem by the city of Byzantium or Constantinople, today's Istanbul) that would take him from the "place" where thoughtless and sensual youth (no longer available to him) was all that mattered, and that would enable him to transcend his failing body:   That is no country for … [Read more...]

  Professor Benjamin Huff does almost all of the work.  Dr. Dan Wotherspoon has intervened for two years in a row now to rescue us from being desperately behind in preparations for our annual conferences.   I do nothing.   But I'm the currently-serving president of the Society for Mormon Philosophy and Theology -- this is the kind of division of labor that I regularly seek to implement as part of my general life-plan -- and we're having our 2012 annual meeting in … [Read more...]