Yesterday, I posted an item — part of a larger series of posts indicating his sincerity — to illustrate Joseph Smith’s apparent lack of affectation.   This was much the same impression that his contemporaries had of Joseph, even late in his career. “He is a man that you could not help liking as a man,” George W. Taggart wrote from Nauvoo to his three non-Mormon brothers in the fall of 1843, “setting aside the religious prejudice... Read more

    It’s interesting to see this discussion of the history and nature of religious studies, and to reflect upon what the widespread (and, in some places, the rather sudden and imperious) adoption of the contemporary religious studies/Mormon studies paradigm might portend for the Saints and the Church:   http://fornspollfira.blogspot.com/2015/09/a-brief-history-of-religious-studies.html   Posted from Nauvoo, Illinois     Read more

    http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2015/sep/22/earthquakes-could-be-triggered-by-sound-waves-that-fluidize-faults   So please whisper, and turn your sound system down.   Posted from Nauvoo, Illinois     Read more

      You want impressive?  Consider this:   http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/saudiarabia/11712286/Billionaire-Saudi-prince-to-give-away-32-billion-fortune.html   Thanks to Charles Steinman for bringing it to my notice.   Posted from Nauvoo, Illinois     Read more

    Solemn reflections today, as we visited Carthage Jail, due east of Nauvoo, and particularly as we sat in the room where Joseph and Hyrum Smith, respectively the President and Patriarch of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, were attacked along with John Taylor and Willard Richards of the Council of the Twelve.   It’s a privilege to be traveling in company with Gary Ernest Smith, who has created some memorable art responding to the martyrdom of... Read more

    I had to find just the right blade of grass to stand on, and then to remain absolutely motionless, in order to do an interview with KSL Radio’s Doug Wright yesterday on the continuing uproar about Ben Carson’s remark that a Muslim shouldn’t serve as president of the United States.   I’m frankly appalled that at least a few Latter-day Saints — and so closely following Mitt Romney’s candidacy! — seem to favor a religious litmus test for... Read more

    It was the palpable genuineness of Joseph Smith’s accounts of his experiences that brought the British literary critic and educator Arthur Henry King into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1966. “When I was first brought to read Joseph Smith’s story,” he wrote, I was deeply impressed. I wasn’t inclined to be impressed. As a stylistician, I have spent my life being disinclined to be impressed. So when I read his story, I thought to... Read more

    http://archival.link/mormoncave/story   Well . . .   There seem to me some real problems with the historical sources on this, such as they are.  But I suppose it’s not inconceivable that there’s some connection to Joseph Smith and, perhaps, to his activities as a treasure-digger.  Maybe.   I’ll be interested in feedback from historians and other experts out there, and from LDS readers more generally.   Feel free to weigh in.   (Thanks to Michael De Groote for... Read more

    Granted, Alaska then wasn’t like Alaska now.  But, still, it was scarcely tropical:   http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/b2f0ca3a594644ee9e50a8ec4ce2d6de/Article_2015-09-22-US-Alaska-Dinosaur/id-ffb2704d3ee64a3e894acab9b682d786   The notion that some dinosaurs may have been more bird-like, even more mammal-like, than we’ve long imagined is very interesting.  It’s certainly not what I was taught, back in my dinosaur-loving childhood.   Posted from Nauvoo, Illinois     Read more

      I don’t believe that many who knew of him were surprised, and I suspect that he himself was delighted — he had yearned for his beloved Jeanene for more than twenty years, he’s been quite ill for some time, and he was (so I’ve heard) entirely willing, even eager, to go  — but it was still sad to hear of the passing of Elder Richard G. Scott:   “Elder Richard G. Scott Dies at Age 86”  ... Read more