The “Irish Potato Famine,” “Great Hunger,” or “Great Famine” killed a million Irish and drove a million others out of the country between 1845 and 1852, reducing Ireland’s population between 20% and 25%.   Imagine, to put it into perspective, a famine or disease that, over a period of just seven or eight years, killed between 32 and 40 million Americans and drove another 32-40 million into permanent exile abroad.   http://www.irishcentral.com/roots/history/Little-known-tale-of-generous-Turkish-aid-to-the-Irish-during-the-Great-Hunger.html   I’m looking forward very much to... Read more

    I expect that this will probably offend a few people out there.  If so, I’m sorry.  I’ve had Spanish-speaking friends literally all of my life, I have a Cuban daughter-in-law, and I like Hispanic cultures and cuisines very, very much.  No offense was intended.  (There.  I hope I’ve minimized the virtually inevitable cries of bigotry and victimhood.)   I found it really funny, and I thank Douglas A. Hernandez for sending it to me.  I would also like... Read more

    John 14:15-26   1.   “If you love me, you will obey my commandments. . . .   The person who has my commandments and obeys them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and will reveal myself to him.”  (John 14:15, 21) There is, as I’ve noted before, little if anything to support a teaching of salvation by grace alone, without works, in... Read more

    When John Menzies Macfarlane, a Scottish convert to Mormonism, needed a special song for Christmas 1869 for the choir that he conducted in St. George, Utah, he wrote one.  (St. George had only been founded in 1861, and it was still a very small and rough little settlement struggling to survive in an arid desert climate; its tabernacle and temple were still several years in the future.)   Here is the song that he wrote, in a performance... Read more

    Christ’s advent, his incarnation (or, literally, his enfleshment), his birth as a human baby, is what Christian believers celebrate at Christmas.   Why did the divine Son of God take our human flesh upon himself?   “Christ was made man that we might be made God.”  (Athanasius, On the Incarnation)     Read more

    Today’s installment in the “social” part of the “A Savior is Born” campaign:   https://www.mormon.org/christmas/lexi-walker   Watch it to the end, if you watch it at all.  A translation of the Latin text is provided for Schubert’s beautiful “Ave Maria,” and so forth.     Read more

    Another piece from the redoubtable Ralph Hancock:   http://www.patheos.com/blogs/soulandcity/2015/12/the-return-of-the-king/     Read more

    John 14:1-14   I’m sorry.  I can think of no commentary right now that would be better, richer, more theologically profound, or more comforting than this text itself.   But at least I can give it to you in a different translation — the one by J. B. Phillips; above is a link to the King James Version — hoping that the sheer power of the passage will hit you afresh:   14 1-4 “You must not let yourselves be... Read more

    http://www.salon.com/2015/12/03/syed_farooq_is_an_american_lets_stop_the_muslim_vs_christian_debate_and_take_a_look_at_ourselves/   Nobody can legitimately charge me with despising Islam or hating Muslims, let alone with demanding the internment of American Muslims in camps.  (See this post from yesterday, for example.)   I adamantly insist that ISIS and al-Qa’ida and their ilk represent a grotesquely deformed and evil caricature of the religion of al-Ghazali, Salah al-Din, Ibn Rushd (Averroës), Muhammad Abduh, Jalal al-Din Rumi, Rabi‘a al-‘Adawiyya, al-Biruni, Ibn Khaldun, Farid al-Din Attar, al-Khwarizmi, Ibn Tufayl, and my contemporary... Read more

    We’re sometimes obliged, as in this instance, to scrape the bottom of the barrel.  But the fact remains that this is the 176th consecutive Friday (out of the 177.5 total weeks of its existence) that Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture has published at least one new article:   http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/making-visible-the-beauty-and-goodness-of-the-gospel/     Read more