My wife and I spent a substantial portion of our day yesterday visiting the Civil War battlefield at Fredericksburg, perhaps the bloodiest single area, taken as a whole, of the entire conflict (and, thus, in the domestic history of the United States).  There’s plenty of reason for sorrow in the history there, at the cruelties that humans have visited upon one another and, sometimes, at our sheer stupidity.   There are, however, some stories out of Fredericksburg that... Read more

    A week or two ago, my wife and I spent a substantial portion of the day in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris.  At one place, in the transept to the right of the nave near the southern rose window, there is a plaque commemorating the conversion of the prominent French poet, playwright, and diplomat Paul Claudel (1868-1955), eventually the recipient of multiple nominations for the Nobel Prize in Literature:   Ici se convertit Paul Claudel.   In his... Read more

      Plowing ahead . . .   The other mission entrusted by the First Presidency to Elders McKay and Cannon was, somehow, to get in contact with President Joseph W. Booth. They needed to reorganize the surviving members of the Church in the region, and without his language skills and his knowledge of the areas and the members, it would be virtually impossible for them to do so. They absolutely had to find him. Yet this was a... Read more

      On several occasions over the past few years, in various venues — see here, for example — I’ve published a list of four books that I recommend as a kind of “basic  packet” for people struggling with their testimonies, and I’ve explained that I think it important to preemptively strengthen faith as well as to fend off attacks, criticisms, or doubts.   Let me explain a little bit of what I have in mind:   Suppose that,... Read more

    Here’s a challenging little essay:   “There Are No Laws of Physics. There’s Only the Landscape.”   And here’s something that challenges a currently popular hypothesis:   “A New Study Could Explain Away Some Evidence for Planet Nine: A new model provides an explanation for the bizarre orbits of distant objects in the solar system that doesn’t require influences from a massive ninth planet.”   Finally, here’s a bit of science with a connection to Brigham Young University:  ... Read more

    Onward and upward:   A resident of Alpine, Utah, by the name of Joseph Wilford Booth was called to serve as the eleventh president of the Turkish Mission in August 1903. Elder Booth had previously served as a missionary in the same mission for almost four years, having only been released from his labors in April of the previous year. Already, he was headed back. This time, however, he was accompanied by his wife, Mary Reba, who would... Read more

    I was very pleased by the Supreme Court’s 7-2 decision yesterday in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission.  Here are some worthwhile initial commentaries written in response to the decision:   “Broad Enough to Matter”   “Masterpiece Cakeshop Ruling Is a Win for Religious Freedom, But . . . “   “In Masterpiece Cakeshop, Justice Kennedy Strikes a Blow for the Dignity of the Faithful”   “Christian Baker 1, Officious Bureaucrats 0”   “What Does the Masterpiece Cakeshop Decision Say About the... Read more

    “The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.” “In the history of science, ever since the famous trial of Galileo, it has repeatedly been claimed that scientific truth cannot be reconciled with the religious interpretation of the world. Although I am now convinced that scientific truth is unassailable in its own field, I have never found it possible to... Read more

    Some of you, no doubt, saw the relatively recent British film The Theory of Everything, about the famous cosmologist Stephen Hawking and his remarkable first wife, Jane Hawking.  It’s a sad movie in many ways — and not only for the obvious reason of Dr. Hawking’s horrific illness.  But it’s also something of a triumphant one.  He died this past March at the age of 76, despite the medical prognosis given him at age 21 that granted him... Read more

      From the book manuscript in its current state:   The earliest Mormon missionaries to the Near East dreamed of a Latter-day Saint presence in the Holy Land, something more than a few scattered elders and something larger than the graves of a few faithful Saints. They envisioned a Latter-day Saint colony in Pales­tine. Ferdinand F. Hintze, the first president of the Turkish Mission, wrote to his wife as early as 1889 that he was trying to get... Read more