Posted in Church, Church teaching, Study, teaching on Mar 2nd, 2011
I was looking for something in the Ensign, and noticed two little links at the bottom, “Submit an article to the Ensign. View our updated content submission guidelines.” Really? Open submissions? Apparently so. How long has this been going on? The submission guidelines have some interesting things. For example, under the “General Ongoing Needs” section, [...]
Posted in Church teaching, Quotes of Note on Feb 23rd, 2011
No, it’s not what you’re thinking. I believe this story is from when he served as mission president in New England, 1965-68, and I’m still not quite sure what to make of this story, other than that President Packer is not always the “hard-liner” he is made out to be.
Posted in Bible, Church teaching, Doctrine, History, Scripture on Nov 9th, 2010
In my last post (and hinted at in the one before that), I raised the idea that prophets tend to share the worldviews and myths of their culture, with myth properly defined as something like “worldview expressed in narrative.” Their revelations are by necessity received and framed within that worldview. In other words, prophets in [...]
Posted in Church teaching, Culture, Doctrine, Scripture on Oct 29th, 2010
In my own struggles to balance faith and tradition with scholarship, I find it useful to see how others have done so, particularly when I see close structural parallels between the two traditions. Peter Enns speaks from a Protestant perspective but Protestants aren’t the sole source of useful insight. I’ve enjoyed Jewish perspectives more, explored [...]
Posted in Church teaching on Oct 20th, 2010
Over at FaithPromotingRumor, TT analyzes a collection of statements from various manuals about using “outside” materials in preparing lessons. That’s something I’ve wanted to do for a while, because I’ve suspected that Church materials are not entirely consistent with their directives about this. At one extreme is the unsigned Church News article (the authority of [...]
Posted in Bible, Church teaching, Podcast, Scripture on Sep 17th, 2010
Edit: Some people are reporting errors, for others it’s working. Please leave a comment or send me an email with the error message so we can get it fixed. If the links below don’t work, try downloading from this alternate link. [Audio clip: view full post to listen] (Right-click and save here to download.) Opening [...]
Posted in Church teaching, Doctrine on Sep 12th, 2010
Other than tradition that Jonah is historical, there is the New Testament argument. This argument is fairly common and made by non-LDS as well as LDS, but on examination, I think it’s insufficient to prove what its proponents claim. This also applies, by the way, to Lot’s wife turning into a pillar of salt (Luke [...]
Posted in Arts, Church, Church teaching, Personal Narratives, Speculation on Sep 3rd, 2010
The LDS church, if you’re new to its intricacies, has a series of programs set up for children and youth to participate in and advance through. For the boys, this is Boy Scouts. For the girls, this is Achievement Days for the 8-11 year-olds and Personal Progress for the teens. This year, a new Personal [...]
Posted in Bible, Church teaching, History, Scripture on Jul 15th, 2010
Right about now in Gospel Doctrine classes, everyone should nearing the Divided Kingdom stories, when Jereboam breaks off and takes 10 tribes with him, and we get two Israelite kingdoms (Israel and Judah) with two Israelite kings (Reheboam and Jereboam.) And coincidentally right about now, it gets darn hard to keep everyone straight. Instead of [...]
Posted in Bible, Church teaching, Doctrine, History, Podcast on Jun 3rd, 2010
Another one! We just keep coming. As always, if you like it, share it. Tell your Gospel Doctrine teacher, your family, those poor people stuck in Primary and Nursery who crave mental stimulation, etc….. [Audio clip: view full post to listen] Right-click to download here. Here are the notes and references which turn out to [...]
One Eternal Round
is the group blog of the
Patheos Mormon Portal.
