Category: The Church
Let’s Have Some Compassion for Our Untouchables
If you grew up in a nation with a formal caste system, would you let society dictate how you treated others, especially the shunned and shamed untouchables? Would you deplore…
How to Talk to Concerned Church Members Who Are “COVID Policy Doubters” (CPDs)
Some Latter-day Saints, probably only a minority, were frustrated with a recent request from Church leaders. Some of the frustration might be lessened after carefully considering the wording of the…
A Sacrament Meeting Worth Shouting About
Sunday turned out to be one of the most exciting sacrament meetings I can recall. It was exciting because a wonderful young lady, a 16-year-old who came to America as…
BillionGraves: A Remarkable Tool for Finding Graves of Your Ancestors
With the need to return to Utah for a while, my wife and I decided to drive instead of our normal routine of flying. This gave us a chance to…
New Scholarship on the Influence of the Small Plates on Mormon’s Writings
One of the things that fascinates me in my role as a co-editor for the Interpreter Foundation’s journal, Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship, is seeing how…
Geocentric Astronomy in the Book of Abraham? Dan Vogel’s Refutation of LDS Scholars
Circumpolar star trails in a long-exposure photo of several hours, showing that stars closer to Polaris move on shorter trails, thus moving more slowly. The circumpolar stars always stay…
The Jewish Copper Plates of Cochin, India and a Hint of an Ancient Jewish Tradition of Writing on Metal Plates
A recent post here critiqued an attempt to explain the origins of the book of Ether based on inspiration from a rare book, A Key to the Chronology of the…
Religious Liberty: Have We Forgotten the Pain of the Hutterites?
College students these days learn what a wise leader President Woodrow Wilson was, a good progressive. An example of the positive summary of his work is the historical summary of…
No, B.H. Roberts Did Not Abandon Belief in the Book of Mormon
Sad to see an irresponsible critic of the Church pushing the easily debunked theory that a General Authority, B.H. Roberts, lost his testimony due to the overwhelming problems in the…
Further Thoughts on the Nephite Interpreters and Mesoamerican Culture
An important new study on relationships between the Book of Mormon and Mesoamerican culture was just published on Friday by Mark Alan Wright: “Nephite Daykeepers: Ritual Specialists in Mesoamerica and…