The Mormon Archipelago

Book Review: Thomas W. Simpson, American Universities and the Birth of Modern Mormonism, 1867–1940 (UNC, 2016). @ Juvenile Instructor
  -   This is a fantastic, convincing book. It was a real pleasure to read. I think it has a...

Scholarly Inquiry: Nicholas Frederick @ Juvenile Instructor
  -  Nicholas J. Frederick is an assistant professor of Ancient Scripture at Brigham Young...

Thomas W. Simpson Discusses His Book at the Tanner Humanities Center @ Juvenile Instructor
  -  Tom Simpson visited BYU, the Tanner Humanities Center, and Sam Weller’s this week....

Notes from the Council of Fifty Minutes Launch Event @ Juvenile Instructor
  -  This week, the Joseph Smith Papers Project released The Council of Fifty Minutes. These...

Papers and Panels on Mormonism at the 2016 Communal Studies Association in Salt Lake City @ Juvenile Instructor
  -  This year’s meetings of the Communal Studies Association will be held in Salt Lake...

A Genealogy of Self-Interest: Machiavelli and Hobbes @ New Cool Thang
  -  This is the third post in my series where I appropriate Jerry Muller’s lecture series...

אל קנה ארץ: Creator, Begetter, or Owner of the Earth? @ Faith-Promoting Rumor
  -  I have a new article up on my blog about the meaning of the verb qny in the divine...

Greek/Christian Condemnations of Profit/Usury @ New Cool Thang
  -  (This is the second in a series of posts dedicated to the relationship between Mormonism...

MHA Proposal Networking Thread @ Juvenile Instructor
  -  October 1, 2016 That’s the deadline for proposals for next year’s Mormon...

Capitalism and the United Order – Pt. 1 @ New Cool Thang
  -  This will be a new series of relatively short posts that will center around Jerry Z....

Review of Biblical Interpretation Beyond Historicity, ed. Ingrid Hjelm and Thomas L. Thompson @ Faith-Promoting Rumor
  -  If anyone is interested, I have a new post up on my site, which is a review of Biblical...

New Article: Kathleen Flake, “Ordering Antinomy: An Analysis of Early Mormonism’s Priestly Offices, Councils, and Kinship.” @ Juvenile Instructor
  -   It’s been a good year for top-notch journal articles on early Mormonism. Religion and...

Guest Post: A Plea to Identify People in an Old Photo @ Juvenile Instructor
  -  [We are pleased to cross-publish this post from Bruce Crow, a friend of JI. While you are...

The Meaning and Morals of Marriage @ New Cool Thang
  -  Terrence Deacon’s classic work, The Symbolic Species, is a very interesting synthesis...

Q&A with Brian Birch: “The Intellectual Life of Mormonism” @ Juvenile Instructor
  -  When we highlighted the creation of a new course at the University of Utah sponsored by...

Slavery in the Eschatological Kingdom @ Faith-Promoting Rumor
  -  I am following a discussion on David Bokovoy’s wall with some interest. Here he makes...

JI Heads Back to School 4 @ Juvenile Instructor
  -  History enrollments are on the decline nationwide. There are a number of possible...

The Word of Wisdom as a Boycott of the Free Market @ New Cool Thang
  -  A Word of Wisdom … showing forth the order and will of God in the temporal salvation of...

Common Consent, Consensus Formation and Habermas @ New Cool Thang
  -  Is there anything that you would be more willing to purchase when your mother is not...

Grace, Faith and “Loyal Opposition” @ New Cool Thang
  -  Grace without hierarchy is meaningless. I wish to unpack this claim using (while at the...

The Book of Mormon Wars @ Faith-Promoting Rumor
  -  Over the weekend I became aware of a piece written by Stephen Smoot at the Interpreter...

A Quick Note on Autonomy… @ New Cool Thang
  -  Autonomy is condemned within the scriptures: 34 And again, verily I say unto you, that...

The Rational and the Charismatic: Weber II @ New Cool Thang
  -  Last post I discussed Weber’s attempts to develop a taxonomy of communities and...

Righteous Dominion and Max Weber @ New Cool Thang
  -  It is nearly impossible to overestimate Max Weber’s influence upon social theory.  He...

For Thus It Is Written @ Faith-Promoting Rumor
  -  Check out an interesting new blog analyzing the influence of the KJV on the scripture...

Critiques of Nahom and Lehi’s journey @ Faith-Promoting Rumor
  -    Recently the Interpreter blog has published a few responses to my articles...

“That’s not how the Church Presents Itself”: An Irreverent Response @ Faith-Promoting Rumor
  -  The Church is largely to blame for the faith crisis among segments of the Mormon...

Redaction Analysis and the Doctrinal Mastery Core Document @ Faith-Promoting Rumor
  -  We are pleased to offer the following guest post from friend of the blog...

Review of R. Kratz, Historical and Biblical Israel: The History, Tradition, and Archives of Israel and Judah (2015) @ Faith-Promoting Rumor
  -  I have posted a review of an important new work in Hebrew Bible study at my blog.

The god Gad @ Faith-Promoting Rumor
  -  I have a new post up on one of the lesser known deities of the Bible, the god Gad. I...

Updated Old Testament Seminary Scriptures @ Dave's Mormon Inquiry
  -  A couple of years ago, with no public announcement or explanation that I am aware of, CES...

Bushman on Improving the LDS History Curriculum @ Dave's Mormon Inquiry
  -  An interesting AMA exchange with Richard Bushman was recently posted at Reddit. In one of...

Mormons and Race @ Dave's Mormon Inquiry
  -  Go read Russell Stevenson's review of Paul Reeve's Religion of a Different Color: Race...

Questions and Doubts @ Dave's Mormon Inquiry
  -  An article in the March 2015 Ensign is stirring up all kinds of discussion: "When Doubts...

Practical Apologetics: Historicity @ Dave's Mormon Inquiry
  -  Over the holidays I borrowed a copy of Historicity and the Latter-day Saint Scriptures...

The Council of Fifty: A Documentary History @ Dave's Mormon Inquiry
  -  I don't have time to do a proper review of the 490 pages of The Council of Fifty: A...

The Mormon Challenge, Part 1: Creation @ Dave's Mormon Inquiry
  -   Continuing with my project to actually read the LDS books I buy, I'm now reading The New...

Historians Saying Interesting Things About Mormonism @ Dave's Mormon Inquiry
  -  Between the new polygamy essays at LDS.org and the new religion curriculum at the BYUs,...

Two Approaches to Isaiah @ Dave's Mormon Inquiry
  -  This is going to be a post about Isaiah that does *not* talk about Second Isaiah. After...

Menacing Mormons @ Dave's Mormon Inquiry
  -  Just finished Patrick Mason's The Mormon Menace: Violence and Anti-Mormonism in the...

The Unwritten Order of Things, Revisited @ Dave's Mormon Inquiry
  -  At last night's Stake Leadership Training Meeting, the stake president announced the...

On Not Reading the Book of Mormon @ Dave's Mormon Inquiry
  -  Having heard nice things about the odd little book by Pierre Bayard How to Talk About...

Practical Apologetics: The First Vision @ Dave's Mormon Inquiry
  -  It's not surprising that the First Vision has become one of the faith issues that gets...

Religious Degeneration @ Dave's Mormon Inquiry
  -   So I read Niall Ferguson's small book The Great Degeneration: How Institutions Decay and...

Salt Lake City, We Have a Problem @ Dave's Mormon Inquiry
  -   Artist's rendering of a serious problem. It has always been the case that some...

Floating Through a Billion Years of Mormon History @ Dave's Mormon Inquiry
  -  Well, a billion years of geological history and a couple hundred years of Mormon history....

Ugrading Our Lay Clergy Model @ Dave's Mormon Inquiry
  -  People are still trying to digest the consequences of the Kate Kelly trial. Just today...

Calibrating Apostasy @ Dave's Mormon Inquiry
  -  The Council of the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles released a short...

Practical Apologetics: Keeping the Faith @ Dave's Mormon Inquiry
  -  Another installment in my occasional series (see here and here), this one prompted by a...

Five Things You Didn't Know About Young Joseph Smith @ Dave's Mormon Inquiry
  -  This is the second post in a series (see intro post) looking at Matt Bowman's The Mormon...

Stirring Up the Saints: The Mormon Reformation @ Dave's Mormon Inquiry
  -  So I read Bigler and Bagley's The Mormon Rebellion: America's First Civil War, 1857-58...

The Rise of Biblical Criticism and the Mormon Response @ Dave's Mormon Inquiry
  -  "The rise of biblical criticism" is the title of a section in Jaroslav Pelikan's Whose...

The Book of Mormon as Literature @ Dave's Mormon Inquiry
  -  One can read the Book of Mormon as canonized scripture, to guide the Church and its...

The Mormon People: Introduction @ Dave's Mormon Inquiry
  -   I bought and read Matthew Bowman's The Mormon People: The Making of an American Faith...

Mormonism at the Scopes Trial @ Dave's Mormon Inquiry
  -  I read Edward J. Larson's Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing...

Mormon Christianity: A Sympathetic View @ Dave's Mormon Inquiry
  -   Stephen H. Webb's Mormon Christianity: What Other Christians Can Learn From the...

Two Churches, Two Gospels @ Dave's Mormon Inquiry
  -  As a Mormon, you belong to two churches: your local congregation, be it ward or branch...

Mormon Christianity: A Little Bit Catholic @ Dave's Mormon Inquiry
  -   I'm about a third of the way through Stephen W. Webb's Mormon Christianity: What Other...

The God of Pragmatism @ Dave's Mormon Inquiry
  -  Here is William James' vision of a pluralistic universe, as expressed in the final...

Facebook Content Comes and Goes, but Blog Content Lasts Forever @ Dave's Mormon Inquiry
  -  Which is why I continue to maintain this solo blog and periodically post new content,...

Negotiating LDS History and Faith Challenges (notes, recap) @ Nine Moons
  -  A few weeks ago, I attended the Negotiating LDS History and Faith Challenges presentation...

What Goes Around @ Nine Moons
  -   Since the time I understood the basic idea of it, I have always believed in the Hindu...

FAQ: Temple Cancellation/Clearance @ Nine Moons
  -  Over at MormonMentality, NewlyHousewife has posted a great list of FAQs for those...

N.T. Wright on Jesus @ Nine Moons
  -  I took the advice of Henry Eyring yesterday – imagining the talk that I needed and...

A Stranger, A Pilgrim: Liveblogging El Camino @ a bird's eye view
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Tithing And Responsibility @ Nine Moons
  -  A court has ruled that paying back taxes is a higher priority than paying tithing –...

Prophets Don’t All Weigh The Same @ Nine Moons
  -  Mormons like to beat themselves up for not giving enough value to the man they call...

Mouths of Babes — Does Can Mean Should? @ a bird's eye view
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When Women Don’t Want The Priesthood @ Nine Moons
  -  Imagine for a moment a Northeastern urban ward. The average age is 32, a large number of...

Brother Husband @ Nine Moons
  -  If the stars align just so, my first novel will be released this summer. Needless to say,...

Wear Pants To Church Day @ Nine Moons
  -  A group is asking Mormon women to wear pants to church this Sunday as a sign of support...

The Best and Worst of the “Mormon Moment” @ Nine Moons
  -  We’ve been hearing for a while now about the so-called “Mormon Moment,”...

Our Dead V: Memorial Day at St. Paul’s Cathedral @ a bird's eye view
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God and Science @ Digital Faith
  -   Here's a second and final post on Collins and Giberson's The Language of Science and...

Latent Racism, Orientalism and “Magic Underwear” in American Society and Mitt Romney’s Presidential Campaign @ a bird's eye view
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Straight Answers to Gospel Questions: Evolution @ Digital Faith
  -   Time to fire up the blog for a few posts on the latest entry in my Now Reading box, The...

Genesis 1: Theories of Creation @ Digital Faith
  -   In the middle part of The Lost World of Genesis One, Walton details his theory of the...

Genesis 1 Is Functional Creation @ Digital Faith
  -   In propositions 2 through 6 of The Lost World of Genesis One author John Walton supports...

Genesis 1 Is Ancient Cosmology @ Digital Faith
  -   That's the first of 18 propositions discussed in John Walton's The Lost World of Genesis...

N. T. Wright on Paul @ Digital Faith
  -   In this last of my series of posts on Paul I will do a short review of N. T. Wright's...

Becoming a Mormon: Thinking about a Brand with Elder Ballard @ a bird's eye view
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Paul at General Conference @ Digital Faith
  -   My recent posts on Paul haven't proven too popular, but I'm still pursuing the topic. I...

A Revolutionary Paul @ Digital Faith
  -   Continuing with this series of posts on Paul, here's what N. T. Wright (in What Saint...

Reading Paul's Letters @ Digital Faith
  -   My last post was titled "A Mormon View of Paul." This post is more about the view of...

Highlights From Hardy @ Digital Faith
  -   Times & Seasons has posted a 12 Questions interview with Grant Hardy. He gives serious...

Like a Trampled Flag on a City Street @ a bird's eye view
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Pluralism and Persecution in the UK @ a bird's eye view
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Where Does It End? The Real Danger in Warren Smith’s Perspective @ a bird's eye view
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Christmas Testimony @ a bird's eye view
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Our Remembrance Sunday @ a bird's eye view
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