Today’s installment in the “social” part of the “A Savior is Born” campaign:   https://www.mormon.org/christmas/lexi-walker   Watch it to the end, if you watch it at all.  A translation of the Latin text is provided for Schubert’s beautiful “Ave Maria,” and so forth.     Read more

    Another piece from the redoubtable Ralph Hancock:   http://www.patheos.com/blogs/soulandcity/2015/12/the-return-of-the-king/     Read more

    John 14:1-14   I’m sorry.  I can think of no commentary right now that would be better, richer, more theologically profound, or more comforting than this text itself.   But at least I can give it to you in a different translation — the one by J. B. Phillips; above is a link to the King James Version — hoping that the sheer power of the passage will hit you afresh:   14 1-4 “You must not let yourselves be... Read more

    http://www.salon.com/2015/12/03/syed_farooq_is_an_american_lets_stop_the_muslim_vs_christian_debate_and_take_a_look_at_ourselves/   Nobody can legitimately charge me with despising Islam or hating Muslims, let alone with demanding the internment of American Muslims in camps.  (See this post from yesterday, for example.)   I adamantly insist that ISIS and al-Qa’ida and their ilk represent a grotesquely deformed and evil caricature of the religion of al-Ghazali, Salah al-Din, Ibn Rushd (Averroës), Muhammad Abduh, Jalal al-Din Rumi, Rabi‘a al-‘Adawiyya, al-Biruni, Ibn Khaldun, Farid al-Din Attar, al-Khwarizmi, Ibn Tufayl, and my contemporary... Read more

    We’re sometimes obliged, as in this instance, to scrape the bottom of the barrel.  But the fact remains that this is the 176th consecutive Friday (out of the 177.5 total weeks of its existence) that Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture has published at least one new article:   http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/making-visible-the-beauty-and-goodness-of-the-gospel/     Read more

    The despicable murderer Syed Farooq and the despicable murderess Tashfeen Malik are receiving a great deal of attention, as they should.   But I see it as a moral duty not to permit the victims of their crime simply to be forgotten.  They were people, irreplaceable, infinitely valuable, with uniquely individual lives and experiences and hopes and capacities and potentials.   And they’re gone.  Lost to us.   Here are brief and, necessarily, grossly inadequate portraits of them,... Read more

    Interesting archaeological news out of Mexico City:   https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/mexico-experts-passageway-may-lead-to-aztec-ruler/2015/12/01/17eeaf54-988f-11e5-aca6-1ae3be6f06d2_story.html     Read more

    Jacob Hess suggests a way to help Latter-day Saints and their critics get beyond the hateful, polarizing rhetoric that has ensued in the wake of the Church’s policy explanation on homosexual marriages and children being raised in homosexual homes:   https://www.opendemocracy.net/transformation/jacob-hess/are-mormons-villains-or-just-people-with-different-story-about-their-ident   I’m not optimistic — demonizing and hating those with whom one disagrees seems to offer a perverse sort of gratification in all too many cases — but I like this article.     Read more

    Luke 22:35-38   a)  Jesus seems to be speaking metaphorically here, but his disciples misunderstand and take him literally.   b)  He’s definitely predicting an imminent time when society and dominant opinion will be hostile to the ancient Church.   c)  We should never have expected that society and dominant opinion would be friendly to the modern, restored Church.     Read more

    Neal Rappleye suggests a rich new meaning for the beloved but (perhaps) originally pagan symbol of the Christmas tree:   http://www.studioetquoquefide.com/2015/12/behold-love-of-god-christmas-vision.html     Read more