I’ve read a couple of interesting newspaper articles recently on the experience of being a black Latter-day Saint:   “The Case for Black Mormons”   (Thanks to Tarik LaCour for bringing the item above to my notice.)   “Speaking to the pain of a black Mormon woman”   I find it simply appalling that any active, communicant, thinking Latter-day Saint would ever descend to using insulting racial epithets.   I quote from remarks given by President Gordon B.... Read more

    Not infrequently, I encounter the claim — often very derisively expressed — that Mormon doctrine is impossible to pin down.  “It’s like trying to nail jello to a wall!” declare some critics, not very originally.   And it’s unquestionably true that Mormonism is, on the whole, creed-less.  Our leaders aren’t theologians.  We don’t have a whole host of academically-trained doctrinal experts, and we’ve certainly never had an authoritative, official council in which such theologians have met to hammer out precise,... Read more

    I find this deeply sad, and hope that, eventually, most if not all of these folks will return to full fellowship in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints:   “Denver Snuffer’s offshoot is drawing away Mormons with the mantra: God can talk to you, too. But will these freewheeling fellowships last?”   There’s a great deal of work to be done in perfecting the Saints, proclaiming the Gospel, redeeming the dead, and providing for the poor... Read more

    I’m pleased to say that a new entry, from Dr. Jonathan Westover, has now been posted at Mormon Scholars Testify.   It’s the first new entry on the site in quite a while.   I’ve let the site go more than a bit, because I’m rather overextended.  (And the extensive traveling hasn’t made things easier.)   However, I’m hoping to start posting entries again fairly regularly.   And I was very pleased recently when Mormon Scholars Testify was... Read more

    My wife and I attended not one but two sacrament meetings today, in both cases to attend missionary farewells.  A couple in our ward will be going to Wheeler AFB in Hawaii as military relations service missionaries — he was an Air Force officer and then, having earned a doctorate in computer science along the way, taught at BYU-Hawaii — and the eldest daughter of our brand new next-door neighbors is headed off for a mission in Texas.... Read more

    It is reported that, when young people used to tell the former Archbishop of Milwaukee, Rembert Weakland, that they were having a difficult time understanding what it meant to be Catholic, he would advise them to participate in worship services in the same parish every Sunday for six months.  That is, he encouraged them to become genuinely integrated into a believing and worshiping community.  Likewise, he suggested that they work as volunteers in a soup kitchen for the... Read more

        I was elected student body president at my high school.  Here’s a note about that:   I had never, I think, held (or run for) an office in student government.  (My memory is actually a bit fuzzy on this point:  It’s possible that I once served on a class council.  I really don’t remember.)   But there was somebody — let’s call him SB (for “somebody,” not his initials) — who had been class president at... Read more

    I don’t know whether any in my reading audience are tempted by, or have been affected by, or know anybody who has been affected by, Snufferism.  If so, here’s a brief item from Robert Boylan that they might find of interest:   “Trouble in Snufferite Paradise”   It’s impossible, when thinking about Snufferism — which I myself do about once a year, for roughly two minutes each time; I’ve scarcely ever blogged a line about it — to think of... Read more