Gramma, What’s a Bastard?
March 28, 2018I was scrunched behind the big over-stuffed sofa, reading the forbidden works of Mark Twain. Oh horrors, I was reading the most forbidden book of all, Roughing It. I was tittering over what he said…
DiaBLOGue
Maps of Time
March 28, 2018We inch forward on hearsay,
rumors, and puffs of wind,
working the ancient arts
of dead reckoning, stars,
Commonplace Nightmares
March 28, 2018Most likely it was an act of God that
the cathedral caught fire even before
the hangman put the mask on my head
and all my executioners ran in search of water
Finitism and the Problem of Evil
March 28, 2018According to traditional theism, God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent. If God were omnibenevolent, he would want to eliminate evil. If God were omnipotent, he would be able to eliminate evil. So why should there be any evil? This problem is, by far, the most discussed subject in the philosophy of religion. In this paper, I argue that rejecting the traditional notion of God is the best way to deal with this problem.
Mormonism and the Idea of Progress
March 28, 2018Robert Nisbet defines the idea of progress as the notion that mankind has advanced in the past from barbarism and ignorance, is now advancing, and will continue to advance through the foreseeable future. It is arguably the central motivating philosophy that has led men and women throughout history to forge ahead to a brighter future.
Mormon Membership Trends in Europe Among People of Color: Present and Future Assessment
March 28, 2018I hope I’m not extending the metaphor too far, but it seems apparent the field is less white and more colorful as the church moves into the twenty first century. Most church members are aware (although some along the Wasatch Front have a hard time visualizing it) that rapid growth rates in Latin America, Africa, and the Philippines are essentially among people of color. However, it is my contention that future growth of the church even in the bastions of Nordic, Teutonic, British, and Celtic Europe—a region which supplied membership and leadership during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—will increasingly be among people of color not native to the European continent.
Preaching the Gospel of Church and Sex: Mormon Women’s Fiction in the Young Woman’s Journal, 1889-1910
March 28, 2018In 1889, Utah newspapers and periodicals informed their audiences about the start of a new monthly magazine, the Young Woman’s Journal (YWJ). Initiated and first edited by Susa Young Gates, the daughter of Mormonism’s second…
Edward W. Tullidge and The Women of Mormondom
March 28, 2018In this paper, I sing the virtues of Edward W. Tullidge, English convert to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, cultural enthusiast, and serious journalist and author. Tullidge, who was mercurial, changeable, and…
History of the Church — Part One
March 28, 2018I feel grace descend like whiskey-scented
oil poured over me in the upper room on
my way to heaven. I dance in the heat of
a fire, like ghosts following Sitting Bull
David O. McKay and the “Twin Sisters” Free Agency and Tolerance
March 28, 2018On a spring day in 1955, a group of distinguished gentlemen gathered at a White House dinner at the request of President Dwight Eisenhower. The guests included founding partners of three law firms, the President of the Teamsters’ Union, three Army Generals, a Cabinet Secretary, the publisher of the Boston Globe, the Vice President of ABC, the Chairman of CBS, the President of MIT, four CEO’s and one clergyman—David O. McKay, President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.