“No More Strangers and Foreigners”
April 17, 2018As I look back on more than sixty years in the Church, two changes stand out as being most significant: I have seen my church permit all worthy male members to hold the priesthood, and…
DiaBLOGue
A Celebration of Sisterhood
April 17, 2018I recently completed a short season of speaking at Mormon women’s conferences, largely related to Relief Society. I do not do this as a professional speaker. I don’t sell books, and (at the moment) I…
Family Scriptures
April 17, 2018For a book of remembrance we have written among us, according to the pattern given by the finger of God; and it is given in our own language (Moses 6:46). Sometimes in my journey through MIA I…
Religion and Suicide: A Records-Linkage Study
April 17, 2018Since the early studies of the French sociologist, Emile Durkheim, suicide has interested sociologists. But suicide, by its very nature, has resisted study, and the problem of studying it has not eased over the years.…
Four Characteristics of the Mormon Family: Contemporary Research on Chastity, Conjugality, Children, and Chauvinism
April 17, 2018From its inception, Mormonism has been characterized by a blend of traditional American culture mixed with unique, sometimes even radical, elements. The nineteenth-century Mormon family combined aspects of Puritan family morality with a unique theology…
The Binding of Isaac: A View of Jewish Exegesis
April 17, 2018For Jews, the Bible is an animate being. Understanding it means understanding everything we have experienced. The sum of meaning in the Bible is the sum of life’s meaning. Judaism is over 2,000 years of…
Recollections from an Ex
April 17, 2018mused in several voices
to the tune of tinkling cymbals
It wasn’t like she didn’t blend right in.
In fact, based on the type of clothes she wore,
People always figured she was from Salt Lake.
Her skirts were long enough, that’s for sure.
Friendship and Intimacy
April 17, 2018In some ways, our culture doesn’t teach us very much about intimacy. It teaches us about sex as if it were intimacy. Similarly, it doesn’t teach us very much about friendship. It teaches us about…
Spiritual Searching: The Church on Its International Mission
April 17, 2018Early in the 1950s, President David O. McKay took forthright steps to move the largely domestic church into the international world. Within months after assuming his presidency, he embarked on a series of world tours, much as Pope John Paul of today’s Catholic Church has done, visiting places and lands where the Church remained strong…
Notes on Apostolic Succession
April 17, 2018The recognition of Brigham Young as leader of the Church in August 1844 and the reorganization of the First Presidency under his direction in December 1847 have provided the basic pattern and precedent for apostolic…