Yes, I’m linking to yet another item about John Dehlin that I thought worthwhile and potentially interesting to readers here:   http://lds.net/blog/buzz/lds-news/opinion/john-dehlin-and-excommunication/#.VL9BZEuisdv   My critics on this matter need not trouble themselves to write to me about it again.  I’ll continue to post such links.  Unless there’s nothing more that comes to my attention on the subject that seems worth sharing.  Then, in that case, I won’t.   I’m not seeking these things out, and I’ve written nothing like… Read more

    “History is about the past. Yet it exists only in the present – the moment of its creation as history provides us with a narrative constructed after the events with which it is concerned. The narrative must then relate to the moment of its creation as much as its historical subject. History presents an historian with the task of producing a dialogue between the past and the present. But as these temporal co-ordinates cannot be fixed, history becomes… Read more

    This article, brought to my attention by Jabra Ghneim, is a counterpoint that’s worth hearing — despite its inevitable stupid jab at Fox News and despite distorting reality in its own way:   http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/01/14/are-all-terrorists-muslims-it-s-not-even-close.html   In the meantime, there are scarcely words for such evils as this.     Read more

    “I am a creationist and an evolutionist.  Evolution is God’s, or Nature’s, method of creation. Creation is not an event that happened in 4004 BC; it is a process that began some 10 billion years ago and is still under way.”  (Theodosius Dobzhansky [Феодо́сий Григо́рьевич Добржа́нский] [d. 1975], famous Russo-American geneticist and evolutionary biologist, principally at the California Institute of Technology and Columbia University)     Read more

    Give a man a match, and he’ll be warm for a minute.  Set him on fire, though, and he’ll be warm for the rest of his life.     Read more

    An admirably clear post from Nathaniel Givens:   http://difficultrun.nathanielgivens.com/2015/01/20/why-john-dehlin-faces-church-discipline/   I really didn’t intend to post much about the Dehlin case — I think its importance has been vastly exaggerated — but people keep putting interesting things up . . .         Read more

    May this be an inspiration to other faithful Saints to go and, in their own way, do likewise:   http://ldsmag.com/how-donny-osmond-shares-his-lds-beliefs-online/     Read more

    In the wake of a somewhat cryptic post on his Facebook page in which he speaks of losing faith in religious leaders, etc., there’s been a huge buzz of speculation across the internet over the past week or two about what many have hoped might be Glenn Beck’s disaffection from his Mormon religious affiliation.   Here’s a short item posted yesterday, in which Beck speaks of the man who introduced him to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day… Read more

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    Matthew 9:9-13 Mark 2:13-17 Luke 5:27-32   This account, of the calling of Levi or Matthew, provides one of our clearest glimpses into the character of Jesus.  And it’s a very impressive one.   Levi or Matthew is himself a tax collector — not the most highly esteemed profession then or now, perhaps, but infinitely worse then.  And Jesus is portrayed as dining with a whole group of “tax collectors and sinners.”   When he’s rebuked for the… Read more