Hosannah
March 29, 2018“I looked it up last night.” Elaine stopped conducting our choir practice to ask if we knew what Hosannah meant. It was dark out, almost 10:00 p.m., and the canyon winds blew cold for October…
DiaBLOGue
Stealing the Reaper’s Grim: The Challenge of Dying Well
March 29, 2018I first encountered death at age three when my infant brother, after only one day of life, succumbed to respiratory failure. I have few memories of the viewing, but do recall the delicate blue veins on the side of his infant scalp. There was great sorrow in the chapel. But, as the years passed, his death became an abstraction. Now, over three decades later, after witnessing a fair amount of human suffering and death, both through personal experiences and my professional role, the process of dying is no longer an abstraction to me. I have, in fact, become a reluctant authority.
The Authorship of the Pentateuch
March 29, 2018The Pentateuch includes the first five books of the Hebrew Bible (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy). These books separate into two unequal parts: Genesis and Exodus-Deuteronomy.[1] Genesis traces the ancestral origins of Israel. No…
Did Christ Pay for Our Sins?
March 29, 2018Amulek asks us a rhetorical question, “Now, if a man murdereth, be hold will our law, which is just, take the life of his brother?”(Alma 34:11). Obviously the answer is no, and Amulek says as much. We don’t think it is just to punish innocent people for crimes they did not commit. And we are right to think so. But Amulek concludes, “The law requireth the life of him who hath murdereth therefore there can be nothing short of an in finite atonement which will suffice for the sins of the world”(Alma 34:12).
Through a Glass Darkly
March 29, 2018In their projected restoration, contractors
pulled down aging plywood, discreetly
placed to hide remnants of the stained-glass
window shattered in the fifties by a bevy
Mormonism and Determinism
March 29, 2018Mormons have historically rejected any form of universal causal determinism because it appears to conflict with its basic commitment to free agency. However, Rex Sears has recently argued that (1) free agency and causal determinism…
Under the Faultline
March 29, 2018The night before, the earth had jolted us,
A ripple in our sleep till Dad called it
A quake and brought to life the massive plates
Beneath us gnashing the ages. It was
Social Forces that Imperil the Family
March 29, 2018Since mid-century, dramatic changes in family demographics have characterized patterns of parenthood and sexual partnerships in America. As age at marriage has increased, the age at initiation of sexual inter course has decreased so that adolescents and young adults are spending several years sexually experienced but not married. Cohabitation is becoming a common experience during this stage of their lives. The age at which people start having children has not changed as much as has age at marriage so that an increasing proportion of children are born to single parents. At the same time, marriages have become much less stable so that adults are spending more time single after marriage, and children are more likely to live at least part of their lives with a single parent.
The Basic Tune of the Sparrow
March 29, 2018Outside the glass that keeps us warm,
the sparrows,
most common of creatures,
of whom the promise is made
Was Jesus a Feminist?
March 29, 2018The answer to the question, “Was Jesus a feminist?” depends on how you define feminism. Just as we have come to realize that there was not just one monolithic “Judaism” in Jesus’ time, but many…