http://www.livescience.com/58456-1000-year-old-toy-viking-boat.html   I always find discoveries such as these — a little toy boat and a well-preserved shoe — very human, and somewhat touching.  (It probably doesn’t hurt that one of my ancestral lines goes back to Norway; my grandmother immigrated to the United States when she was eighteen.)   They seem so real, and they make those to whom they belonged very real in my mind.  Not mere abstractions, but people not altogether unlike me and my family and... Read more

    I’m sometimes accused by hardcore anti-Islamists of denying that there are any problems in the Middle East or in the Islamic world more generally.  And, of course, this is true.  I have, for example, never called attention to the sorry plight of contemporary Christians there, precisely in the same way that I’m not doing it now:   http://www.foxnews.com/world/2017/03/21/christianity-in-iraq-is-finished-says-canon-andrew-white-vicar-baghdad.html     Read more

    Today’s installment of my weekly Thursday column for the Deseret News is a kind of book review:   http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865676721/Answers-Will-Come-shares-how-to-cope-with-religious-doubts-questions.html   I hope it’s obvious that I liked the book.     Read more

    It’s soul-satisfying to see new temples arising in areas near and far.  I love temples.   At this link though, I especially like the video about the statues of the Savior and the Twelve that have just been installed in the as-yet-unopened Visitor Center on the grounds of the still-under-construction Rome Italy Temple.   I think these statues make a statement.  Especially the statue of the apostle Peter, who is holding the symbolic keys of authority.  After all, there’s another... Read more

    Rod Dreher, author of The Benedict Option, responds to a piece that I myself blogged about just a few hours ago:   https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/utah-full-of-mormons-benedict-option/     Read more

    “People who prefer to believe the worst of others will breed war and religious persecutions while the world lasts.”  (Dorothy L. Sayers, The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers, Vol. 1, 1899-1936: The Making of a Detective Novelist)     Read more

    A very interesting historical document.  Oddly, I don’t believe that I’ve ever read it before:   http://www.ldsliving.com/The-First-Time-a-Woman-Spoke-in-General-Conference-Lucy-Mack-Smith-s-Talk-from-1845/s/84948?utm_source=ldsliving&utm_medium=email   It comes from an important new anthology of Latter-day Saint women’s sermons.     Read more

    http://www.nationalreview.com/article/446012/feminist-columnist-stay-home-moms-illegal-australia     Read more

    Wednesday, 16 August 2017, will be the fiftieth anniversary of the discovery of chiasmus in the Book of Mormon.  Please plan on joining us for a gala celebration — co-sponsored by BYU Studies, Book of Mormon Central, the John A. Widstoe Foundation, and the Interpreter Foundation — that will begin at 7:oo PM in the Joseph Smith Building Auditorium on the campus of Brigham Young University.   More details forthcoming.     Read more

    What would it be like to actually reside on the Moon?  Life couldn’t be all about science, all the time.  That’s not even true for scientists here on Earth.   Here’s a thought-provoking — if, to me, not altogether satisfying — proposal in that connection:   http://www.space.com/36221-moon-temple-lunar-colony-art-project.html   Fortunately, the isolation of Moon colonists from Earth wouldn’t be absolute.  In fact, well into the nineteenth century, transoceanic voyages between Europe and the Americas took considerably longer than space... Read more