Glenn Pearson begins his book by denning good LDS scholars as “scholars in the best priesthood sense” (p. 1). Because he doesn’t explain this term, I’m not certain what he means, but because I am…
We can imagine ourselves visiting Aunt Rachel Grant, long-time president of the Thirteenth Ward Relief Society and one of the Mormon Church’s “leading ladies,” at her home on Salt Lake City’s Second East Street. In…
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times . . . . It was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”[1] This was Charles Dickens’s appraisal of life…
The trees are making white
buds. Shrunken heads,
last year’s berries, hang
on leafing branches. I do not
Few men in Mormon history have exemplified the unity of science and religion better than Henry Eyring. A devout student of science for over sixty years, a brilliant chemist who was internationally renowned, and at…
The year 1981 saw the deaths of Harvey Fletcher and Henry Eyring, men of great religious faith whose superb professional achievements placed them in the first ranks of the nation’s scientists. (See Steven H. Heath’s…
For much of its history, the Relief Society has been primarily concerned with educating and providing compassionate service to its own members, carrying out instructions passed on from priesthood leaders, keeping its own organization running…
How is the Mormon Church viewed by those who are not members? One view is that Mormons are successful and prosperous, that they “take care of their own,” that they live good lives, and that…
Parley P. and Orson Pratt were, with the exception of Joseph Smith, the most significant of the Mormon thinkers to emerge during the early years of the Restoration. Not only did the Church develop complex…
The most prolific and perhaps most influential early Mormon pamphleteer was Orson Pratt. From his conversion in 1830 to his death in 1881, he authored over thirty works on both religious and scientific topics. Influential…