I now live in Matthew Sheperd’s hometown. He had studied at political science Casper College where I now teach. I never knew him, but I remember his death. I think about him often. I am only 11 days older than him.     Never forgot.   Never again. Read more

CALL FOR PAPERS – OCTOBER 15: THE FOURTH BIENNIAL FAITH AND KNOWLEDGE CONFERENCE WESLEY THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY WASHINGTON, D. C. FEBRUARY 22–23, 2013 Keynote address by Philip Barlow (Utah State University). The Faith and Knowledge Conference was established in 2006 to bring together Latter-day Saint graduate students in religious studies and related disciplines in order to explore the interactions between religious faith and scholarship. During the past three conferences, students have shared their experiences in the church and the academy and... Read more

Today the University of Virginia is announcing the intent to establish the Richard Lyman Bushman Chair of Mormon Studies, an endowed faculty position. This is a landmark event for a number of reasons. One is the prominence of the department choosing to establish this chair. As the UVA Religious Studies website points out, it has an excellent reputation: The department’s undergraduate program has been rated by the Gorman Report as the best in the nation, and the department’s graduate program is ranked by the National Research Council as the... Read more

John Rawls defines pluralism as the existence of many conflicting comprehensive doctrines (religious and secular) within a society. I think my Shem (10) in this this picture is an example of what pluralism might symbolically look like. Read more

I didn’t go to the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte last month However, my friend R.C. Johnson, the chair of the Natrona County Democratic Party, was there and she was at a meeting of Mormon Democrats (see this article in the Daily Beast which features Grant Hardy). She was fighting for me and Wyoming. Notice her LDS button!   R.C. Johnson, above, from Casper, Wyo., while not a member of the LDS Church, came to the meeting of LDS Democrats... Read more

There is a certain apologetic strand of Mormon reflection on the Bible that points out that the God(s) of the biblical texts are not identical with the  theological constructs developed in classical philosophical theology.  This view emphasizes two central aspects of “the God of the Bible”: 1) God is one among many gods; 2) God is anthropomorphic.  These arguments have tended to focus on particular representations of God in ancient Israelite religion from the 8th-4th century. (more…) Read more

The Brandon Flowers “I’m a Mormon” video got a lot of buzz and for good reason. It is pretty awesome. Brandon and some of his bandmates also played at a rally in Fall 2010 for Senator Harry Reid and President Obama. Here is “Read My Mind”: and “Home Means Nevada”: Like Brandon, I can say there is still a fire burning in there. Read more

There has been a number of rather contentious and awkward conversations about Heavenly Mother on the bloggernacle. My view is that we should spend more time thinking about the role that mother’s play in our society and our relationship with the mothers in our own lives. I think that one of the great contributions of feminist theory is the emphasis on the here and now…and the need to avoid unnecessary abstraction. In “Mother” by Roger Waters (originally perform by Pink... Read more

I was once a conservative activist. When I tell this to people, they rarely believe me. Thanks to my aunt, I now have some archival evidence. This comes from a letter my mother sent to my aunt at the end of my freshman year at Ricks College. Dated April 16, 1995 Christopher will return April 30. We are looking forward to seeing him again. He has accepted an internship with a research group that corrects inaccurate statements in the media.... Read more

Guess I should have been reading Religion News Service instead of First Things yesterday. Something (doubly) ironic about this if I could just put my finger on it. Read more