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Addendum to Jacob Sorensen’s Patriarchal Blessing

Podcast version of this piece. I don’t know, Jake,why Dad asked me to drive you there,but I did hear every word Brother Allen said,and here’s a few he skipped: Our Heavenly Fatheris pleased with your…

The Private Investigator

Listen to the podcast version here. The doorbell rang as I hung up the phone, and then I heard my father’s deep, imposing voice fill our entryway. I stood and walked slowly into the unlit…

Ministry of angles

Podcast version of this piece. You who more than oncespelled angle when meaning angel,are now one—maybe both.A sharp line on white paperdriving hardand fastin another spacewhose numbersI do not know. YetIn the arithmeticof our individual…

Morning Light

Podcast version of this piece. That dark matter that fashioned us, days laterMade light by command, what voice, I wonderCould shake atoms into place and stir invisibleWaves through the air, as something we cannot seeAllows…

The New Calling

Podcast version of this piece. No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be,Am an attendant lord, one that will doTo swell a progress, start a scene or two,Advise the prince; no doubt,…

Smoot in New Light

The eight essays in this collection describe and interpret the US Senate’s investigation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints during the Progressive Era. Nominally an investigative hearing on the election of Utah…

England’s Life of Paradox

The attacks of September 11, 2001 are a spectacular reminder that the struggle between religion and politics is alive and well in the twenty-first century. Eugene England’s life, which ended just weeks before those attacks,…

Establishing Zion in the Heat of Battle

On April 13, 2021, President Biden announced that the United States would be withdrawing its troops from Afghanistan, indicating a shift in American foreign policy in the Middle East. Saints at War: The Gulf War,…

An Assortment of Meditations

Samuel M. Brown’s Where the Soul Hungers is something of a grab bag of sundry reflections on the gospel. As Brown himself explains, the book is intended to be part “pure devotions” and part “philosophical…