I had a conversation recently with a wonderful young woman, who, ready to embark on university study declared to me that there was nothing that she could see in Mormon theology that excluded and undermined women.  I was heartened that she was so faithful but I’m not convinced that her literalness will last much into [...]

I love my city.  My family’s bones are here, laid across the plains, generation upon generation.  Street names in North Canterbury bear record of my family’s presence.  My mother’s ancestors, like those of many others’, were settler pioneers who found their way here from England, Ireland, Wales, and Germany, never to return.  They left traces [...]

Nathan is an Aries.  This makes him infuriatingly certain.  His position on matters political, economic, religious, domestic, sporting and so forth are brazenly assured.  Last week I sent him a text quoting  a Mormon Matters podcast panelist Dr Phillip Barlow who said: ‘The opposite of faith is not doubt, its certainty.” His response was as [...]

Our kids came to us in dribs and drabs.  Our eldest (18 years old) is our only biological child.  It irked me for some years that we couldn’t spontaneously produce the kind of sizable brood that holds up Fast and Testimony meeting each month.  But when our boy was 10 we kind of got into [...]