We’re approaching the anniversary of Joseph Smith’s birth.  (He was born on 23 December 1805.)  It’s seldom noticed by Latter-day Saints, which is probably fine, but I also think that mentioning it is appropriate.  Here’s a column that I published in the Deseret News back on 14 December 2011:   In January 1819, Joseph Smith Sr. and his eldest son, Alvin, initiated a lawsuit against Jeremiah Hurlbut, the eldest male member of a prominent founding family in Palmyra,... Read more

    My Christmas column in the Deseret News for 2018 has now appeared:   “Christmas and Christ’s ‘mortal tabernacle'”   ***   “Elder Holland: To My Friends Who Want to Believe”   ***   Last week, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced a policy change that will permit holders of the Aaronic priesthood (overwhelmingly, young men) to perform baptisms and serve as witnesses to vicarious baptisms for the dead in the Church’s temples.  Young women of... Read more

    Sad, indeed, would the whole matter be if the Bible had told us everything God meant us to believe. But herein is the Bible greatly wronged. It nowhere lays claim to be regarded as the Word, the Way, the Truth. The Bible leads us to Jesus, the inexhaustible, the ever-unfolding Revelation of God. It is Christ “in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge,” not the Bible, save as leading to Him. George MacDonald  ... Read more

    Thanks to Tom Pittman for creating this brief but very helpful video:   “How to Use Amazon Smile to Make Donations”   Folks, there is absolutely no reason not to use this.  It costs you absolutely nothing.  Nothing.  And yet it can benefit causes that you choose.   Now, on one level, it doesn’t yield huge revenues.  It generates half of one percent of your purchase price.  So, if you buy something for a hundred dollars through smile.amazon.com —... Read more

    I published this Christmas-related column on 22 December 2016:   Behind the tinsel and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, beyond Santa Claus, Christmas represents an enormously serious claim — the incarnation of God or, literally, God’s “enfleshment.” “And the Word was made flesh,” says John 1:14, “and dwelt among us.” It’s a proposition unique to Christianity among the Abrahamic religions; Judaism and Islam make no such claim about the divine. In the first chapter of Genesis, God repeatedly observes that... Read more

    I published this column in the Deseret News about two and a half weeks before Christmas 2013:   The first verse of the popular late-19th-century Christmas carol “Away in a Manger” (often mistakenly attributed to Martin Luther) ends peacefully with “the little Lord Jesus, asleep on the hay.” Unfortunately, though, “The cattle are lowing; the poor baby wakes, but little Lord Jesus no crying he makes.” Richard Mouw, the prominent Calvinist theologian who just completed two decades as president... Read more

    In 2014, Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture began publishing specially commissioned personal essays at Christmas and Easter.  As of today, we’ve published a total of six such pieces.  Here are the three Christmas essays that have appeared thus far:   First, by the Latter-day Saint novelist Orson Scott Card:   http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/christmas-is-about-a-baby/   Second, a Christmas essay by Clayton Christensen of Harvard Business School:   http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/he-did-it-a-christmas-message/   And that was followed by a Christmas message from Sharon Eubank, the director of LDS... Read more

    Concluding the third chapter of the manuscript of my book on Islam for Latter-day Saints:   Umar was assassinated in 644 A.D. and was succeeded by a gentle if weak old man named Uthman.[1] He was assassinated, in turn, in 656 A.D., and finally it was Ali’s turn to assume the caliph­ate. It seemed for a while that the dreams of the Shiites had come true, or at least that they were about to do so. But conditions... Read more

    Some very raw notes from part of a manuscript:   “He called me by name, and said unto me that he was a messenger sent from the presence of God to me, and that his name was Moroni; that God had a work for me to do; and that my name should be had for good and evil among all nations, kindreds, and tongues, or that it should be both good and evil spoken of among all people.”... Read more

    A thought on science and religion from the late Hugh Nibley:   Science represents a high court from whose judgment there is no appeal, the idea (Freud expresses it in his The Future of Illusion) . . . that all other judgments are outmoded traditions; [that] the judges are free from prejudice and bias, and above petty personal interests, if they let the facts speak for themselves; that they suspend all judgment until all the facts have been... Read more