I’ve sometimes had the weird experience of learning new truths about the gospel from an outsider. (more…)

My project to read the Bible this year has gotten me up to Genesis 30. I’ve had an amazing insight that has never occurred to anyone before. (more…)

The Supreme Court just rejected, 9-0, the Obama Administration’s attempt to abolish the ministerial exception. This is a good day for religious liberty. This is a very good day for religious liberty. (more…)

It’s that time of year. Mormons are making resolutions. Our stake is is circulating sheets of detailed statistical goals. How many young men aged 18-25 will serve missions from your ward this year? What number of post-baptism lessons will be taught to converts in the first quarter? Accompanying is a quotation from M. Russell Ballard — “the Lord micromanages this Church.” Yesterday our Bishopric talked about what they had learned from last year that they would apply to doing better this year. (more…)

As has been evident all along, the debate over gay marriage and special protections for homosexuality in law wasn’t really a debate about equality. It’s about gay privilege at the expense of religious freedom. (more…)

The New York Times has an article up on Mitt Romney’s campaign style when out meeting voters. I couldn’t see anything odd about it. Maybe because the kinds of questions he asks are exactly the kind of thing I ask and am asked whenever I meet new people at church. What are your family connections to the folks with you? What are your genealogical roots? (more…)

And one of the elders saith unto me, Weep not: behold, the Lion of the tribe of Juda, the Root of David, hath prevailed to open the book, and to loose the seven seals thereof.

And I beheld, and, lo, in the midst of the throne and of the four beasts, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as it had been slain…   

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This Christmas we will take the sacrament together. The ordinance will be, or can be, bigger than the time and place. Bigger than the place, because it binds us to all the Saints who are taking it with us worldwide, and to God in his heaven. Bigger than time, because it brings us to the foot of the cross and to the times when we made our covenants. (more…)

Dr. Jodi Smith’s profile is up at Mormon.org. Dr. Jodi Smith is one of those people who make you believe that calling us Saints might mean something. She gave us a few more years with Betsey Pearl in a very difficult and delicate operation around Betsey’s brainstem and she spent some of the very little free time she had comforting us and praying with us. Like most of us, she probably knows herself too closely to think of herself as a saint and would believe that I’m overpraising her. But I believe that in God’s eyes, who we are when we are at our best is probably who we really are. We are grateful to have known Dr. Smith. May she continue to improve the lives of these little ones.

Our Bishop pointed out to us that modern tithing settlement doesn’t have much of a practical purpose. Back in the day, dropping off some fraction of a beef cow in a tithing envelope every Sunday was impractical, so you needed some settling up where you brought in two steers and a heifer, and the Bishop gave you back a lamb and a few bales of hay to make it all square. Tithing settlement is a boost for the Bishop since he gets to interact with his non-”problem” members, but that’s about it. Instead, tithing settlement has–dare we say it?–a liturgical value. (more…)

The Jesus character in this Saturday Night Live skit tells the Tim Tebow character that Mormonism is true.

(Hat tip to Eric Nielson of Small and Simple.) (more…)

Some anti-Mormons are anti-Mormon innocently. They do not sin in their anti-Mormonism. They only err. (more…)

Some people have a problem when they do a literal reading of “smote off his head” in the case of Nephi killing Laban (1 Nephi 4:18), and Coriantumr killing Shiz (Ether 15:30-31).  Common questions are “How could Shiz raise up on his hands and struggle for breath if he had been decapitated?”  and “Wouldn’t Laban’s clothes have been covered in blood and gore, and wouldn’t Laban’s servant Zoram have noticed the blood?” (Warning: the rest of this gets gory and technical.) (more…)

Sung in Klingonese.

It warms my heart to see members rising to meet the 1977 challenge by President Kimball to Mormon artists in this manner.

I have long believed that most of the best Mormon music of the last fifty years was written for Primary children. While there has been some outstanding adult music, like Mack Wilberg’s arrangement of Come Thou Font of Every Blessing, it has tended to either be derivative or to not be performed nearly as much as it deserves (or both in Wilberg’s case.) However, “I am a child of God” has never been one of my favorites. Which leaves me pondering: Is it still kitsch if it’s translated to Klingonese?

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