Jeff Lindsay has produced a good list of suggested readings that some of you might find interesting:   http://www.jefflindsay.com/lds/lds-reading-list/     Read more

    Some members of the Church believe that lobbying, demonstrations, petitions, rallies, marches, protests, and so forth should be brought to bear upon the leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in order to pressure them into making what those members believe would be desirable improvements in Church practices and even doctrines (e.g., on the ordination of women and the validation of homosexual relationships).   They not infrequently point to the priesthood revelation of 1978, which,... Read more

      “Science makes major contributions to minor needs.  Religion, however small its successes, is at least at work on the things that matter most.” Oliver Wendell Holmes   I’m not sure that I fully agree with this comment.  In fact, at two points, I’m sure that I don’t.  However, I understand his point and am sympathetic to it.     Read more

    Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture actually published two articles today.  Here’s the second of them:   http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/the-case-of-plural%E2%80%89was-in-the-earliest-text/     Read more

    It being Friday, there’s a new article up from Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture:   http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/the-case-of-the-th-plural-in-the-earliest-text/   Happy weekend!     Read more

    I somehow missed this story when it appeared late last April, but it’s such a pleasant one that I want to be sure that others see it:   http://www.fides.org/en/news/37699-AFRICA_EGYPT_Muslims_collect_money_to_build_a_church_in_the_Egyptian_province_of_Al_Manufiyya#.VpkRuUuegdv     Read more

    Thanks to Russell Spencer for bringing this very welcome item to my attention:   http://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/egypts-president-attends-mass-vows-rebuild-churches#     Read more

    In August 2000, the organization that was then called FAIR and is today called FairMormon held the second of its annual conferences, in Alta, Utah.  One of the speakers at the 2000 conference was Danel W. Bachman, and here is the paper that he presented, in which he examines a representative specimen of the work of the professional anti-Mormons Jerald and Sandra Tanner:   http://www.fairmormon.org/perspectives/fair-conferences/2000-fair-conference/2000-mormonism-shadow-or-reality-history-or-propaganda-joseph-smith-as-a-case-study      Read more

    Today’s reading, 1 Nephi 20 (compare Isaiah 48), is the first of the infamous “Isaiah chapters” in the Book of Mormon.  “Infamous,” because readers who’ve been sailing along, thus far, with the fairly straightforward narrative of the book of 1 Nephi now run into prophetic texts that are, to most, as inscrutable as T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets.  Many either skip these chapters or altogether surrender their plan of reading the Book of Mormon.   At least one reader of my... Read more

    “No legacy is so rich as honesty.”  William Shakespeare (or “William Shakespeare”), All’s Well That Ends Well, Act III, Scene V     Read more