Patheos Featured Writers

Rosalynde Welch
Columnist

Rosalynde Welch is a member of the Webster Groves, Missouri ward of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She holds degrees in English literature from Brigham Young University and the University of California, San Diego, where her dissertation focused on private conscience in early modern English literature. She writes on interreligious issues for the St Louis Post-Dispatch, and she blogs on Mormon issues at timesandseasons.org. She also serves as the managing editor of the Mormon Review, and she steals the occasional afternoon to pursue her own research agendas in early modern literature and Mormon literature and philosophy. Rosalynde and her husband, together with their four young children, make their home in St Louis, Missouri.

Works by Rosalynde Welch
My Kids Hate Trump, and That Worries Me
Rosalynde Welch | March 01, 2016
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Whither Mormonism? Look to Quorums and Councils
Rosalynde Welch | October 05, 2015
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I, Rosencrantz
Rosalynde Welch | January 11, 2014
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Singing in ten-thousand part harmony
Rosalynde Welch | November 04, 2013
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What we can't know about social conservatism
Rosalynde Welch | October 11, 2013
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Modesty and the Imaginary Me
Rosalynde Welch | October 08, 2013
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Stay-at-home mothers are not moochers
Rosalynde Welch | October 07, 2013
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"Austenland" is much better than the critics are saying
Rosalynde Welch | September 25, 2013
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The best question to ask is not whether this book is deeply right or deeply wrong, but......
Faith and Love in Ten Thousand Words or Less
Rosalynde Welch | November 27, 2012
What I learned in freshman English didn't change my life until years later....
Duck Beach to Absurdity: A Review of "Duck Beach to...
Rosalynde Welch | October 31, 2012
A fine, funny new film explores the fraught cultural territory of Mormon singles....
Shame, Stigma, and Social Engineering
Rosalynde Welch | October 17, 2012
Shame is destructive, but can it be harnessed by the community for good use?...
Verifying Scripture in an Empirical Age
Rosalynde Welch | October 04, 2012
We verify the Lord's word when we take it into our lives and make it true....
Chicken Omelettes, or What We're Really Arguing About
Rosalynde Welch | September 27, 2012
What a Facebook conversation taught me about the nature of reality, and what that means......
A Blogger Against Blogging
Rosalynde Welch | September 19, 2012
The present becomes merely an instrumental passage through time, a means to a deferred......
A Is for Agency
Rosalynde Welch | September 11, 2012
If agency is the condition that results in individual humans taking different paths, we......
Born on the Cricket Pitch
Rosalynde Welch | July 26, 2012
Are the Christian ethics of the global North good for the global South?...
The Odd Couple: Story and Community
Rosalynde Welch | June 28, 2012
John Dehlin's Mormon Stories project has a contradiction at its center. Whether it's a......
Anxiety and Resurrection
Rosalynde Welch | June 06, 2012
I was drowning in post-partum anxiety. Then theology saved my life....
Religious but Not Spiritual
Rosalynde Welch | May 30, 2012
What does it mean to "observe" a religious holiday? And more importantly, what should I......
One Weird Old Tip for Young Women Leaders
Rosalynde Welch | April 03, 2012
Less pampered princess, more spiritual self-reliance, please....
Emily Rapp says that she wishes she had aborted her disabled son. The best response is......
Inside One Mormon Family: Raising Faithful Children
Rosalynde Welch | February 09, 2012
Everyday family life fosters or hinders a child's spiritual growth than any Sunday......
Bring on your quinoa brownies, your Bible-verse Toms, your infants photographed in......
Occupy the Pink Aisle
Rosalynde Welch | January 12, 2012
Rather than dismissing the pink aisle in the toy store as illegitimate and artificial,......
Little Lord Jesus, Asleep on the Hay
Rosalynde Welch | December 22, 2011
What kind of a mother would leave her baby lying alone in a manger? It goes against......
Mormon Priesthood and Meritocracy
Rosalynde Welch | December 14, 2011
What good is a patriarchal priesthood, anyway? More than you might think....
Choosing Faith vs. Receiving Faith, Part 2
Rosalynde Welch | December 01, 2011
Religious beliefs are not chosen; they capture us. Faith is not a triumph of the human......
Choosing Faith vs. Receiving Faith
Rosalynde Welch | November 18, 2011
Is faith simply a choice to believe? Is doubt the necessary condition for a free choice?...
Flowers Under the Big Tent
Rosalynde Welch | October 23, 2011
Rock star Brandon Flowers is a new face of the LDS Church. What does this mean for......
I Know You Are, But What Am I?
Rosalynde Welch | October 13, 2011
How Latter-day Saints should -- and should not -- respond to charges that their......
Women's Voices, Women's Prayers
Rosalynde Welch | October 05, 2011
Women don't pray in LDS General Conferences. Is that a doctrine or a policy? Maybe it......
A Mormon Baptism and Happy Endings
Rosalynde Welch | September 14, 2011
Reflections on a son's baptism, and what it means....
Female Inequality, Two Ways
Rosalynde Welch | September 11, 2011
Feminists were right to worry about gender inequality in the classroom, but now they......
The Mormon Magnificat
Rosalynde Welch | September 01, 2011
In the LDS Church, to “magnify” a spiritual calling is to claim gifts both practical and......
Should I Burst My Filter Bubble?
Rosalynde Welch | July 26, 2011
What happened when the Internet collided with my deepest moral intuitions....
My Hot Heaven
Rosalynde Welch | July 20, 2011
Should large families be held to higher environmental standards?...
Mozart in Hell
Rosalynde Welch | July 13, 2011
Don Giovanni asks which is better: eternal suffering or eternal oblivion? It's not a......
Wishing Well, Penny
Rosalynde Welch | July 05, 2011
Personal revelation is wishful thinking, and it's okay for believers to acknowledge......
Christian Liberty, Secular Nation
Rosalynde Welch | June 28, 2011
The idea of Christian liberty underwrites the vocabulary of freedom Americans will......
The Book of Mormon, Redux
Rosalynde Welch | June 21, 2011
The surprising subtext of "The Book of Mormon" beats South Park at its own skeptical......
Perfect Union, Imperfect Family
Rosalynde Welch | May 31, 2011
Tatiana and Krista are twins conjoined at the head by a neural bridge. They offer a......
Rapture and Knowledge
Rosalynde Welch | May 24, 2011
I respect the courage and integrity of modern believers who are willing to hazard real......
What is it with Mormons and trashy genre fiction?...
A Prairie Prodigal and a Saturday-Night Sabbath
Rosalynde Welch | May 03, 2011
Garrison Keillor's fundamentalist Christian upbringing feeds the genius of his work. Is......
Why the academic humanities destroy religiosity, and what to do about it....
Seven Lessons for Easter from Exodus
Rosalynde Welch | April 19, 2011
A fortuitous encounter with the Old Testament has brought me surprising new perspectives......
Downstairs in Downton Abbey
Rosalynde Welch | April 12, 2011
Despite what you might think, the television series offers acute insight into the......
Milton to Mormon: Free Yourself from Mental Slavery
Rosalynde Welch | April 05, 2011
What a dialogue across the centuries can teach us about free agency -- and why it may......
Neat Girl Versus Sweet Girl
Rosalynde Welch | March 29, 2011
Neat girls and sweet girls negotiate our vexed relationship to feminism, even as they......
Catastrophes of Meaning
Rosalynde Welch | March 09, 2011
This is not the tired cliche about questions being more important than answers, nor is......
I may not mourn the passing of some of our cultural taboos, but I'm a qualified......
The Arguments of Religious Freedom under Fire: Part 3
Rosalynde Welch | February 24, 2011
Enlightenment liberalism has driven itself into a philosophical cul-de-sac, and the only......
The Arguments of Religious Freedom under Fire: Part 2
Rosalynde Welch | February 16, 2011
Societies in their creaky, many-limbed complexity have a way of lurching forward in......
The Arguments of Religious Freedom under Fire: Part 1
Rosalynde Welch | February 09, 2011
Elder Oaks' speech on religious freedom is built around a family of four related claims......
We're All Mormons Now, Janeen Jacobs Brady
Rosalynde Welch | February 04, 2011
How 70's Mormon kitsch from Janeen Jacobs Brady reflected the culture wars of the time. ...
To Choose or to Be Chosen: Lessons from "The Giver"
Rosalynde Welch | January 26, 2011
I am interested in refining a naive understanding of Mormon teachings on free will and......
The Cub in the Global Marketplace: Amy Chua's "Tiger...
Rosalynde Welch | January 19, 2011
American parents, riven by our own narcissism and the conflicted messages of a......
A Landmark Achievement
Rosalynde Welch | January 12, 2011
Grant Hardy's new book offers a neutral rendezvous space for devout and skeptical......
Mormon Forms and Mormon Formalism
Rosalynde Welch | January 05, 2011
Mormonism is deeply iconogenic, or at any rate iconophilic: it embraces social forms......
The story of Santa allows both children and adults to practice a kind of methodological......
Life Among the Sugarplums
Rosalynde Welch | December 15, 2010
Sometimes one cannot avoid the conclusion that life in the real world is indeed colder,......
Women, Desire, and the Hidden Discourse
Rosalynde Welch | December 08, 2010
We're already talking about female sexuality, a lot, but we don't recognize it. We......
On Black Friday and Other Religious Holidays
Rosalynde Welch | December 02, 2010
The Harry & David catalog may seem like a strange catechism, but markets... seem to......
After Choice
Rosalynde Welch | December 01, 2010
Third-wave feminism's emphasis on "choice" presents a theological problem. We need to......
Salt and Seed, an Introduction
Rosalynde Welch | November 16, 2010
Two purposes for this column: salt, to preserve and to season the best ideas I encounter......