You’re probably aware of this: “The Prophet Announces Salt Lake Temple Open House Celebration Dates: This landmark house of the Lord will reopen for tours from April 2027 to October 2027” Wonderful news. The open house is still more than two years away, of course, and the rededication will follow it. But it’s nice to have a definite date, to see light at the end of the tunnel. More than a few people — myself among them — are hoping... Read more
“Utah may join 12 states that recognize Good Friday as a legal holiday: ‘In my personal opinion, the more we reflect on the love of Jesus, the better people we are. Regardless of what the state does, it’s a sacred day for us,’ Father Stephen Tilley said” I’m not absolutely committed to the idea of making Good Friday a legal holiday, but I’m certainly not opposed to it. And making a three-day holiday of Easter weekend seems to me not... Read more
Important: The form on the Witnesses Initiative website was inadvertently created in such a way that it prevented people who live outside of the United States from accessing Witnesses and Undaunted. (They are currently available there for free streaming.) I’ve received inquiries from Australia and Switzerland seeking such access, and I think that we’ve now fixed the problem. But I’m in the United States and can’t quite verify that on my own. Can anybody from Canada report whether the... Read more
Controversy about the proposed McKinney Texas Temple (actually to be located in adjacent Fairview, north northeast of Dallas), appears to be bubbling up again, and critics of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are, once again, accusing the Church of trying to bully and intimidate a humbly idyllic little community into rolling over and playing dead while the Mormons callously impose an enormous, triumphalist temple on innocent rural people. (For aerial views of the neighborhood immediately surrounding... Read more
There’s a new book to which I’m looking forward. Here are a couple of articles about it: Mariya Manzhos, Deseret News: “Why everyone should be religious, according to Ross Douthat: In his new book, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat offers a roadmap for thinking your way into religious belief” ““Believe,” which is Douthat’s eighth nonfiction book, offers a roadmap for navigating the stumbling blocks along the way to belief. “The universe is not a trick” is a recurring... Read more
Several years ago, as I’ve mentioned here before, I read (and was very impressed by) Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer, Extraordinary Knowing: Science, Skepticism, and the Inexplicable Powers of the Human Mind (2008). Here’s how the blurb on Amazon.com describes the book: In 1991, when her daughter’s rare, hand-carved harp was stolen, Lisby Mayer’s familiar world of science and rational thinking turned upside down. After the police failed to turn up any leads, a friend suggested she call a dowser—a man... Read more
Are you aware that you can watch Witnesses and Undaunted, right now, at no charge? Do you realize that you could do that tonight? In fact, tonight would be a really good night to watch one or both of them. Maybe an especially good night, if your team loses the Super Bowl. Or, alternatively, if your team wins the Super Bowl. After all, you’ve already got the chips and dips and salsa and root beer. At one point, in... Read more
Some critics that I observe — most of them specimens of the type of detractor who finds fault, day in and day out, with virtually everything that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints does — have derived a great deal of hostile mirth from President Russell M. Nelson’s admonition that we try to retire terms like Mormon and Mormonism from active use, or, at least, that we try not to sponsor them ourselves. And they’ve really enjoyed... Read more
Newly posted on the never-changing, essentially moribund website of the Interpreter Foundation, in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship: “Prepping for the Last Battle,” written by one Daniel C. Peterson: Abstract: Intellectually acute, deeply learned, brilliantly imaginative, yet popular and easily accessible, C. S. Lewis was arguably the greatest Christian apologist of at least the past century. I believe that Latter-day Saints can benefit greatly from reading him and re-reading him and that those who are... Read more
Newly posted on the website of the Interpreter Foundation: Joseph Smith and Our Preparation for the Lord’s Final Judgment: Essays by George L. Mitton, “Foreword: Eschewing the Ephemeral,” written by Jeffrey M. Bradshaw: “In every conversation I’ve had with George, what impresses me most is his earnestness about the important, enduring matters of life. I didn’t know him when he was younger, but I imagine that he was always that way. In this, he has been a personal model... Read more
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