“Looking in caves to verify a Book of Mormon-era famine” *** This is a pretty big news item: “Church to allow baptisms, blessings for children of LGBT parents, updates handbook regarding ‘apostasy'” *** A very inspiring thirteen-minute video: “This week on social: Watch this inspiring video from Elder Holland’s Facebook on overcoming grief” *** “How a Latter-day Saint convert from ‘the slums’ became Utah Valley University’s first female president” ... Read more
I posted the remarks below nearly a year ago. For particular reasons, I’m posting them again: I continue to be struck by a quotation from then-Elder Russell M. Nelson that was, I believe, cited in the September 2014 issue of the Ensign: “We were born to die and we die to live,” he wrote back in 1992. “As seedlings of God, we barely blossom on earth; we fully flower in heaven.” This is one of the... Read more
Matthew 18:1-5 Mark 9:33-37 Luke 9:46-48 Compare John 3:3, 5; 13:20 The idea that we should be childlike has become a cliché. Sometimes we scarcely hear it. And, sometimes, we misuse or misunderstand it. But, coupled with concepts that the greatest of us should (in a sense) be the least of us, and that leadership consists in service to others, it’s difficult to understate the radical character of Jesus’ teaching on this point. His notion... Read more
I published a Deseret News column several years ago entitled “The Mystery of the Orderliness of the Universe.” It drew considerable mockery from certain atheists. One in particular, a dogmatic fellow with scientific pretensions who’s based in Florida, from which he’s been periodically spewing contempt for me for about a decade, pronounced what I wrote “childish.” He reserved his particular scorn, though, for the penultimate sentence of my column, which concluded by expressing the suspicion “that, in fact, the... Read more
I published the following article in the Deseret News back on 25 January 2012: John Whitmer may be my favorite official witness to the Book of Mormon. With the rest of the Eight Witnesses, he claimed to have “seen,” “handled” and “hefted” the golden plates in June 1829. Seven years later, he again wrote forcefully of that experience: “I desire to testify to all that will come to the knowledge of this address, that I have most... Read more
I’m frequently assured by his disciples that the late Christopher Hitchens was a first-rate scholar whose writings and speeches about theism were deeply learned and impeccably researched. Having spent considerable time with his 2007 bestseller god is Not Great, I find such assurances risible. Mr. Hitchens was a gifted stylist and a formidable polemicist, and there are many things about him that I rather liked, but he was careless and sloppy, and his positions were often —... Read more
This is very important and quite concerning: “Moscow Snuffs Out Religious Liberty in Eastern Ukraine: And does so with the cooperation of the Russian Orthodox Church.” Moreover, by the way, yes, it does mention the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Now contrast the situation in Eastern Ukraine with that in the Persian Gulf State of Kuwait: “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Receives Official Recognition in Kuwait” *** This... Read more
Matthew 17:22-23 Mark 9:30-32 Luke 9:43-45 Compare John 7:1 Both Mark and Luke say that the disciples “didn’t understand” what Jesus was saying, though what Jesus was saying seems unmistakably clear: He would, he told them, be betrayed and killed, and he would rise again on the third day. What was difficult to understand about that? It’s hardly vague. They obviously understood at least part of it, because Matthew says that “they were greatly distressed” by what Jesus... Read more
This evening, I came across a passage from Jürgen Habermas (b. 1929), the extremely distinguished German philosopher and social thinker, who calls himself a “methodological atheist.” In its German original, it reads as follows: Das Christentum ist für das normative Selbstverständnis der Moderne nicht nur eine Vorläufergestalt oder ein Katalysator gewesen. Der egalitäre Universalismus, aus dem die Ideen von Freiheit und solidarischem Zusammenleben, von autonomer Lebensführung und Emanzipation, von individueller Gewissensmoral, Menschenrechten und Demokratie entsprungen sind,... Read more
This item was kindly brought to my notice by Matthew Wheeler: “‘To defeat ISIS, we need to destroy its extremist ideology.’ A pertinent message from Sayyid Shaykh Muhammad al-Yaqoubi on how repel the tide of extremism through traditional, Sunni Islam.” It’s possible — I can’t recall — that he also alerted me to this absolutely wonderful story: “Muslims Invited To Pray Inside Synagogue After Fire Damages Their Mosque” *** I’m not a fan... Read more
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