In a short, but brilliant article at Difficult Run, Nathaniel Givens explains the (hopefully misleading) support surrounding Trump and his declaration that Muslims should be banned from the United States . He also goes on to explain the campaign surrounding Trump and what meaning can be extrapolated from it. Read more

[Along with a bunch of friends – linked below – I am reviewing LDS General Conferences beginning with the first available at lds.org, April 1971. At one session per week, we should finish when I’m about … 117, I think. Here are a few thoughts relating the April, 1971, Saturday Afternoon session.] Most people today, even most Christians, take the idea of Satan, the Devil, about as seriously as we take… well, SNL’s Church Lady. Clearly it’s much easier, not... Read more

This is the full post from which Peggy Stack quoted in Sunday’s Salt Lake Tribune. Ralph Hancock, professor of political philosophy at Brigham Young University and President of the John Adams Center, sees similarities and differences in the Church’s policies regarding children of polygamous households on the one hand, and, on the other, its policies regarding children raised in same-sex households. In both cases the Church must attend both to the challenge of apostasy and to the interests of the... Read more

It’s possible that there are some people who’ve never experienced the yearnings described by St. Augustine, Rābiʻa al-‘Adawiyya, Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, William Wordsworth, Eliza Snow, C. S. Lewis, Alvin Plantinga, and many others. If so, I honestly don’t know what to do for them… A slogan has been circulating among Mormon intellectuals of late, to the effect that “Richness is the new proof.”39 If this is taken to suggest that historical and other arguments no longer have a place in discussions... Read more

The following is a guest post from Tanner Shenewark, a BYU English student: In its newest annual report the Legatum Prosperity Index announced that the fragmentation of social and familial bonds is a primary factor in ISIS’s rise in the Middle East. Likewise, it noted that in high-risk countries such as Morocco, Tunisia, Yemen, and Kuwait public perception of support from family and friends fell 15 percent. The haunting echo of The Family: A Proclamation to the World (which turned... Read more

Elder Wilson’s BYU devotional on Tuesday was quite a significant statement, and rich with historical and literary reference. The speaker proposed to address the big issues of our time through the lenses of literature and history. You’ll want to listen to the whole thing, but here are some of my highlights: A century ago Western humanity’s faith in human progress led by science was dealt a heavy blow by the horrors of the First World War; a sense of dissolution,... Read more

Nathaniel Givens has gathered a group of friends to begin gleaning insights and inspiration from LDS General Conference talks beginning with the first available at LDS.og. So here are a few thoughts of mine on the Saturday Morning Session, April 1971 — and follow the links at the bottom of the page to others’ posts on the same session. Next week, we’ll continue with the afternoon session of the same conference, and so on, for the next few decades.  ... Read more

My latest in the Deseret News:”Of course no one in the marriage debate disputes human dignity as a bedrock principle; but when ‘dignity’ takes on a radically new meaning when it is divorced from any shared moral understanding.” http://www.deseretnews.com/…/Reason-dignity-and-the-Supreme… Read more