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On Masks
A couple weeks ago, I was going to write a quick fun post asking whether, in a post-pandemic world, the church would start letting people wear masks to church Halloween parties.[fn1] After all, in the...
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Faculty Demographics at BYU
A couple weeks ago, President Nelson issued a joint statement with the NAACP condemning racial injustice. Toward the end of that statement, they said: We likewise call on government, business, and...
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Me and Donovan Mitchell
The other day, Twitter recommended a bunch of topics for me to follow. And its recommendations confirmed for me the folly of paying attention to social media algorithms. Why? Well, the first...
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Rep. John Lewis and Religious Freedom
Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson. Public Domain Yesterday and today, the late Representative John Lewis is lying in state at the Capitol. Thousands of people lined up to pay respects to...
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Birthday, Baptism, Pandemic
Drawing of a Mormon baptism ceremony, circa the 1850s. Public domain. My son was supposed to be baptized a few months ago. His grandparents had tickets to come to Chicago. He was ready to invite his...
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Charlie Parker at 100
William P. Gottlieb, photographer. Public domain. Today would have been the 100th birthday of jazz great Charlie Parker. If you’re unfamiliar with Charlie Parker, he was one of the founders of bebop, a...
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Uyghurs, the Church, and Religious Freedom
Uyghur girls. Xinjiang. Photo by kpi. CC BY 2.0 About a week ago, Disney released its live-action Mulan for rent on Disney+. As people watched it, they noticed something: in the closing credits, Disney...
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Whiteness and Jesus
Jesus cleansing a leper, medieval mosaic from the Monreale Cathedral, late 12th to mid-13th centuries. Public domain. Over the last couple weeks I’ve been reading The Color of Christ: The Son of God...
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#TrumpTaxReturns on The Surly Subgroup
Image from 401kcalculator.org. CC BY-SA 2.0 As far as I know, the only news in the U.S. since Sunday has been the New York Times‘s investigation of leaked Trump tax returns. I certainly know that the...
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What Gets You Through?
Note: there’s nothing particularly Mormon-y about this post, except that it deals with what one Mormon has done to stay sane during the pandemic. Back in May, two months or so into the pandemic, I...
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On Terryl Givens and Abortion
Yesterday Terryl Givens published what he characterized as “A Latter-day Saint Defense of the Unborn” at Public Square Magazine. He ultimately concludes that Latter-day Saints are obligated to oppose...
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Special Musical Numbers, Christmas 2020 Edition
Photo by Thomas Galler on Unsplash A member of my bishopric asked if I’d do a special musical number for church Sunday. But given that this is 2020 and we have Zoom church, I’m not performing it live....
View ArticleA Musical Celebration of Christmas
I mentioned the other day that my ward had asked me to perform a virtual musical number for our December 20th Zoom sacrament meeting. I chose a saxophone duet of “What Child Is This”: I also wanted to...
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Prejudice Against Me Among Professors of Religion
Ben P L, “The First Vision.” Public domain Sunday evening, my family and I were reading Joseph Smith–History in a not-quite-too-late bid to keep up with the Sunday School reading. And, although I’ve...
View ArticleMoroni Visits Joseph Smith
I have to admit, I’m going to be a little sad if this week’s Sunday School lesson doesn’t start with Earth Wind and Fire‘s “September.” Added bonus: after last night’s scripture study (and subsequent...
View ArticleBYU Religion’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Hiring Policy
The Church Education System has just finalized new hiring standards for the BYUs’ religion departments. The new standards have a laudable purpose: they mean to “strengthen[] the faith and deepen[] the...
View ArticleMark Hofmann and Taxes
In anticipation of watching Netflix’s Murder Among the Mormons,[fn1] I started rereading Victims: The LDS Church and the Mark Hofmann Case.[fn2] And right at the end of chapter two something leapt out...
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IRS Whistleblowers Revisited
Photo by adil113. CC BY 2.0 Has it really been nearly a year and three months since Lars Nielson released his brother’s whistleblower complaint against the church? What felt like the story that would...
View ArticleHugh Pinnock, Mark Hofmann, and Taxes
Last week I mentioned that, in anticipation of Murder Among the Mormons I was reading Victims. And I talked about Mark Hofmann’s tax planning. I’m only a little bit further through the documentary...
View ArticleTwo Reflections on Korihor
“And this Anti-Christ, whose name was Korihor, (and the law could have no hold upon him) began to preach unto the people that there should be no Christ.” — Alma 30:12 Korihor was the third of three...
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